Comedy – Page 15 – Bitch Flicks

‘Philomena’: A Feminist Gender and Religion Critique

Philomena is based on the true story of Philomena Lee, an Irish woman who got pregnant as a teenager and was relegated to a convent where she was forced to perform grueling manual labor before her young son was sold to an adoptive US family. Fifty years later, Philomena works with a washed-up ex-journalist to find her son while he uncovers the dark truth behind her son’s adoption and the church’s betrayal. Overall, I’d say this is a feminist film that tries to expose oppressive gender roles that linger on today and allows its heroine, played by the exquisite Dame Judi Dench, to be her own person: a woman who makes her own decisions and mistakes while remaining irrepressibly full of humor and love.

I wouldn’t exactly characterize Stephen Frears much-praised film Philomena as a comedy. I’d describe it as more of a dramatized exposé of the corruption of the Irish Catholic church with moments of levity that give a desolate story warmth and humanity. Philomena is based on the true story of Philomena Lee, an Irish woman who got pregnant as a teenager and was relegated to a convent where she was forced to perform grueling manual labor before her young son was sold to an adoptive US family. Fifty years later, Philomena works with a washed-up ex-journalist to find her son while he uncovers the dark truth behind her son’s adoption and the church’s betrayal. Overall, I’d say this is a feminist film that tries to expose oppressive gender roles that linger on today and allows its heroine, played by the exquisite Dame Judi Dench, to be her own person: a woman who makes her own decisions and mistakes while remaining irrepressibly full of humor and love.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DBPqcp6Hc4″]

Philomena is in the business of critiquing institutions; specifically: religion, gender, class, and media. The interactions between ex-journalist Martin and Philomena highlight class disparity. Sometimes the exposure is subtle. Martin flies to the convent while Philomena drives with her daughter. Philomena is giddy at the prospect of free champagne on the flight to America as well as the complimentary grand breakfast buffet and the posh hotel room. She doesn’t “get” Martin’s sense of humor or cultural references, and she reads romance formula fiction, never guessing at the “formula” obvious in all her books. These moments are designed to make the audience chuckle at the sweetness of Philomena’s naivete while underscoring her lack of privilege, education, and wealth.

Philomena feels "like the Pope" for being allowed to ride on the airport transport service. — Philomena feels like royalty for riding on the airport transport service.

Other times, the class disparity is stark and painful. Philomena realizes she could never have given her son the opportunities and lifestyle he enjoyed as a result of his adoption. Martin is, on occasion, cruel to her because the things that excite her are old hat for him; he’s jaded and has come to expect a life of comfort and privilege. He also mocks Philomena for her faith, insinuating that her class status is why she believes in a higher power (because he is too learned and intellectual to believe in anything). The movie shows that though Martin is more worldly, wealthier, and better educated than Philomena, he doesn’t enjoy life the way that she does. She refuses to be bitter or angry like he is. He begins to understand and accept the fact that Philomena needs him, with his connections and his status as an upper-crusty white man, to find out the truth about her son.

Martin rebuffs Philomena for her excitement about the hotel's omelet station — Martin rebuffs Philomena & her excitement about an omelet station

Philomena‘s religion and gender critique go hand-in-hand. Religion judges and punishes young women (some as young as 14) for giving in to “carnal” desires that they haven’t been educated about to even understand the potential consequences. The film also highlights forced labor along with constant recriminations to show how religious forces incite fear, shame, and blame that Philomena and countless others carry for over 50 years. Philomena experiences a particular guilt because she enjoyed the sexual encounter that led to her pregnancy. The church teaches that female bodies and female pleasure are sinful, and many of the nuns are revealed to be bitter and vengeful, a perfect example of patriarchy-complicit female figures of authority. There is no discussion of the culpability of the male cohorts whose sperm was a necessary part of the baby-making equation. Sound familiar? The religious right continues this mentality with its abstinence-only education while heaping stigma galore onto young women who become trapped in pregnancy, insisting that the female body is a breeding ground for impurity and that all the fault lies within the woman, who is, in many cases, forced to suffer all the consequences.

Young, inexperienced Philomena at the fair.

The kicker is that “female sin” is big business for the church in Philomena. The convent forces young women to “pay off” their debt/sin by working ungodly hours (pun intended) in the convent, and then they illegally sell the babies to the US for a great deal of money. The church destroys evidence and refuses to help families reunite even after 50 years of separation. The film claims that this was in part due to a continued resentment and desire to punish the sins of the young mothers, but it’s perhaps more true that the church is covering its tracks. Here, the church, a religious institution, takes advantage of the weak, the helpless, the poor, and the disenfranchised. Here, the church, targets women in particular using the notion of female sin to solidify their dogma and to reinforce their power (financial in this case). The exploitation of women by religious institutions is not new and continues today, as female reproductive rights are leveraged to cause divisiveness and to reinforce the power of political groups, religious groups, and the patriarchy.

The real-life Anthony with a nun before he was sold.

Despite it all, Philomena remains a good-hearted person. She stands up to Martin when necessary, insisting that this is her story. She asserts that she’ll be the one who makes the decisions and that her reaction is her own, not his or a media that seeks only to capitalize on her tale of woe and exploit her for its own gain. She continues to love and accept her son regardless of the many things she learns about him that an old-fashioned religious person like herself could have found alienating. In the end, she forgives the convent, proving that she is the bigger person and more Christian than the nuns and religious institution that tormented her. While the circumstances of the film are tragic and devastating, Philomena’s doggedness, her bravery, and her journey have exposed wide-spread corruption and opened the door for other mothers to reunite with their long-lost children. Though she’s an ordinary woman without means, a fancy education, or influence, she stood up to a powerful institution steeped in centuries of history, and she said, “No more.” Philomena’s quest shows us that the personal is political and that one woman can make a difference in the the world.

Judi Dench sits with the real Philomena Lee.

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Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

My Love-Hate Relationship With Joss Whedon

It started when I was 13. Some friends and I went to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It sounded like a lovely idea. A movie with a cheerleader as lead for my more “girly” friends, a vampire flick with a female heroine for me and the guy friends who were dragged along on this group “date” and just wanted to see vampires. It wasn’t like we had a choice–none of us had a car, and this was the only thing playing that we were old enough to watch at the theater our parents dropped us off at. I thought it would be perfect until it occurred to me in the lobby, while procuring nachos and popcorn, that this film was devised to please everyone, and usually when movies set out to please everyone, they pleased no one. But, it was a movie, and on a hot summer day that meant air conditioning; plus, there would be vampires, a female heroine and that was all I needed to give it a try.

The cast of Dollhouse — The cast of *Dollhouse*

This is a guest post by Shay Revolver.

It started when I was 13. Some friends and I went to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It sounded like a lovely idea. A movie with a cheerleader as lead for my more “girly” friends, a vampire flick with a female heroine for me and the guy friends who were dragged along on this group “date” and just wanted to see vampires. It wasn’t like we had a choice–none of us had a car, and this was the only thing playing that we were old enough to watch at the theater our parents dropped us off at. I thought it would be perfect until it occurred to me in the lobby, while procuring nachos and popcorn, that this film was devised to please everyone, and usually when movies set out to please everyone, they pleased no one. But, it was a movie, and on a hot summer day that meant air conditioning; plus, there would be vampires, a female heroine and that was all I needed to give it a try.

I sat, I watched, I was stuck somewhere between annoyance and amusement that my nachos weren’t the only thing in that theater covered in cheese. It seemed like for every great thing about the movie there was something equally as bad, if not worse. Even at that age, I worried that the film would be remembered more for the five-minute vamp death rattle scene at the end than for the female lead. Being the resident cinephile, or film-loving smart ass, I tried to save the film by saying it was supposed to be campy. In my head that was the only way I could wrap my mind around what had just occurred. I worried that if the film wasn’t successful there would be no more films with strong female leads–that we would have to keep being arm candy and damsels. Everything that made her complex, easy to relate to and bad ass was turned into a joke. I left the theater feeling sad.

In the interim, there were other films with strong female leads that caught my eye. Some of them were American but most of the time, I had to turn my gaze to the art houses and screening rooms of the East Village and Lower East Side. The women I was looking for could only be found in indie and foreign films. Sure, there was the pop up complex, bad ass heroine (or antihero) here and there beaming in beauty once in a while on the big screens of the mainstream, but they were so few an far between that I could count them on one hand and very rarely did they resonate in the way the other films did. Then something different happened. Studying in my dorm for midterms, during a very crazy junior year with my brain frying and a cold brewing, I turned on my TV and on some random network, there was Buffy. Buffy 2.0. to be exact, and in all of its campy goodness I could not turn away.

There was a woman on TV, being bad ass and somewhat complex (as complex as a teenage girl could realistically be), and I along with millions of other people ate it up. On the surface, it was beautiful and a pleasure to watch. In my philosophy studying brain it was full of conflicts, ideas and other interesting complexities. As the series progressed there was less complexity in Buffy and more complications. During the series run, much like the movie, I found that for every step forward there was a step sideways, often back. But, I couldn’t turn away. In my head I juggled with the bizarre coincidence that Buffy’s “virtue” was linked to the sanity of all the men around her. Her virginity literally turned Angel evil. It was a pattern that played out throughout most of the show. Her sexuality was a prize to be given and taken at will. It was also her downfall. She would be punished for choosing to express her sexuality, for having desires, for not being the “proper girl.” It was one of the themes that bothered me throughout the show.

When discussing how male writers and directors portray women and their “complexities,” the name that gets called out the most is Joss Whedon and his strong, complex female hero Buffy Sommers. I, for one, was always team Faith. She was way more complex and realistic than Buffy. I could relate to her. While Buffy spent most of her non-training conversations lamenting over wanting a relationship and kicking ass in between sessions of just trying to get a date, Faith was more concerned with finding herself, being independent, and if love came along, that’d be cool too. She wasn’t nice all the time, she straddled the line of morality and was okay with who she was. She was a creature of pure impulse, turning into the woman she was going to be, who never tried for perfection. Watching her evolve was fascinating. She was like Catwoman to Buffy’s Batman and I could relate. While Buffy went on to have “relationships” that mimicked the plot line of almost every Lifetime movie, Faith was content to be alone instead of settling for the sake of not being alone. She was punished with being labeled as insane for expressing her independence and sexuality.

Sarah Michelle Gellar & James Marsters as (everyone's favorite dysfunctional couple) Buffy and Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer — Sarah Michelle Gellar and James Marsters as (everyone’s favorite dysfunctional couple) Buffy and Spike in *Buffy the Vampire Slayer*

When the short lived Firefly and its companion movie Serenity came to us, in true to Whedon form, the “virgin” lives and is strong. The “whore” is ultimately punished for her ways and although she does manage to survive and ride off into the sunset with Mal, her redemption comes only with settling down with a man to make her honest. While I will forever love the females in power aboard the ship, they were often led astray by their desires. The message often came off as, sorry ladies you can’t have it all. Even the hard-hitting River Tam was as bad ass, complex and brilliant as they came; she was also a virgin and very broken. She had passed the age where her sexuality should be expressed. She was incapable of expressing herself, and she went insane for contact. At the end of the day, the only woman who could save herself was the one who let go of her sexual identity or any idea of companionship, and she remained isolated and broken. Despite her strength, her survival often depended on the men around her.

This trend continued with Dollhouse, where the female bodies were literally used as objects and in a way that can only be expressed as soul rape, they are forced to forget the trauma and sleep until their bodies are called upon to be used again. Yes, in some scenarios these women were called upon to be more than just a warm body in the bed of the highest bidder, only worth what someone else was willing to pay for them, but the disturbing part was that they had no choice in what was happening to them, making it akin to a psychic roofie-style rape. I’ve heard the arguments that men were kept in the dollhouse as well , or that women were in power in the dollhouse, but none of that makes the situation any less horrifying. In the end, Echo is saved by a man. She was rendered incapable of saving herself. I looked away.

That has always been my issue with Joss Whedon’s work. As strong as his female characters are, they’re often on some level tortured and in some ways punished for being exactly what I was looking for in a female lead on TV. They seemed unable to find completion without having a man in their lives. That is what completed them. That was how they found themselves. It was also how they were punished. Buffy couldn’t save the world until she fell in love with her series-long tormentor and almost-rapist Spike. River Tam would collapse under the weight of her own strength. In Dollhouse, all of his female characters were used as pleasure objects and shells for men, and other women were serving as their pimps. There was no end to his female characters’ suffering; their worlds just got grimmer. There was no chance for redemption. Yes, they’re all strong in the traditional sense of the word because it is such a rare thing to see in media, but they’re also all still traditional archetypes.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m happy that he keeps creating these strong female characters, I wish more male creators would do the same. Gender equality in casting, Salt withstanding, is often hard to come by. I just know that I would love it even more if he wouldn’t make them set up to fail, if he wouldn’t put them in situations where their survival is dependent upon men, or where their happiness was aligned with or subject to the men in their lives. I’m hoping that the Agents of S.H.I.E.L..D. proves me wrong in the long run, and a shift is coming now that he has proved his weight. But so far we’ve already seen one damaged woman, one about to fall prey to her romantic desires, one who lacks sexuality, and another who has been mind controlled. For a very long time Whedon was the only game in town for seeing a continuous flow of strong women in power. Now there are other options, and most of them are women writing and creating roles for other women. It has been proven that there is a market for the characters that Whedon has often said that he wants to create. I see glimpses of these women in the characters that he does portray. Now that he has reached the level that he has in his career, hopefully he will show us these women that he wishes he could have created, shown and brought to fruition as he often laments. I can’t wait to see them.

Shay Revolver is a vegan, feminist, cinephile, insomniac , recovering NYU student and former roller derby player currently working as a NY-based microcinema filmmaker, web series creator and writer. She’s obsessed with most books , especially the Pop Culture and Philosophy series and loves movies and TV shows from low brow to high class. As long as the image is moving she’s all in and believes that everything is worth a watch. She still believes that movies make the best bedtime stories because books are a daytime activity to rev up your engine and once you flip that first page, you have to keep going until you finish it and that is beautiful in its own right. She enjoys talking about the feminist perspective in comic book and gaming culture and the lack of gender equality in main stream cinema and television productions.. Twitter @socialslumber13

HBO’s Dark Comedy of Geriatrics and the Nurses Who Love Them In ‘Getting On’

But Laurie Metcalf hammering a nail into the wall with a gynecologist’s ducklips thingy is priceless, as is a confused patient’s eyes clearing as Niecy Nash holds her hand. Here is perhaps where the show’s delicate balance between comedy and compassion becomes most apparent; the understaffed nurses are, at times, ridiculous in their adherence to bureaucracy and hospital politics, but they, and the patients they serve, are also given moments of generosity and human connection.

Written by Rachel Redfern

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhGQxLFS_P4″]

It is a wide wonderful world filled with HBO. My love for the brilliantly gritty channel has grown exponentially the past three years, starting with the toe-curling, cherry-popping of my innocence that was True Blood and from there, it took over my computer screen in a way I never knew was possible: Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, Girls, Deadwood, The Wire, Veep and we haven’t even mentioned their miniseries yet.

And for every person who protests against the channel’s, hmm, illuminating use of sex and violence (and perhaps not entirely unjustly—there were a few scenes in Game of Thrones that made Quentin Tarantino raise an eyebrow) can it be denied that going back to a network show after a satisfying three-day binge of cable, feels lackluster and overly clean without the free-flowing use of the F-word?

Therefore, I give you Getting On, the latest British show to make its way across the pond in a cabled retelling, leaving us asking, is it a show ahead of its time?

Getting On is a dark comedy from creators Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer (Big Love) following the daily trials of the beleaguered Billy Barnes Extended Care Unit. There, we meet its aging female patients–ambitious director of medicine Jenna James, Laurie Metcalf (Roseanne), kiss-up head nurse Dawn, Alex Borstein (Family Guy), empathetic nurse DiDi, Niecy Nash (Reno 911), and neurotic supervisor Patsy, Mel Rodriguez (Community).

Three comediennes: Laurie Metcalf, Alex Borstein, and Niecy Nash

Obviously, the setting is a bit unusual, and potentially disturbing; some are concerned about the show trivializing a difficult time of life and the rigors of hospital work. Yet, death happens to everyone, so in the same way that we can all relate to the subject matter, it also makes us, at best, a bit uncomfortable, and for some, possibly a painful reminder of someone they’ve lost.

Which makes the whole comedy setting seem so insanely inappropriate, but perhaps brilliant at the same time? I mean, at least ER had hot doctors and a lot of people who made it out alive; you get the sense with Getting On that there won’t be that many George Clooneys and even less chance that the fountain of youth will appear in the final season.

getting on1 — DiDi (Niecy Nash), our hero.

However, will Getting On resonate with an older audience? The original British version never made it past the third season, but I’m hopeful, as the show has some incredible dialogue and fantastic acting.

And besides its unusual setting, the show sports three main female characters (all middle-aged) taking care of elderly women. Basically, Getting On defies every statistic about women in Hollywood by single-handedly employing almost every woman over the age of 40 located in Los Angeles: women with wrinkles, saggy boobs, and poorly executed fashion choices; women of color, women with money, women without it; foul women, funny women, fantastic women. I even loved episode two’s racist, homophobic grandma that kept throwing up on everyone and then throwing things at everyone.

While the show isn’t perfect, it’s boldly treading into off-limits territory (or at least boldly following in the footsteps of it British predecessor) and exposing both funny and profound elements of growing old.

Now, let’s hope that the show isn’t cut off while still in its prime.

‘Frozen’: Disney’s First Foray into Feminism

I was surprised by Disney’s latest animated film “Frozen”. I was sure it was going to feed us Disney’s standard company line about princesses and marriage and girls needing to be rescued all the time. I was wrong. Though the film still showcases impossibly thin, rich, white girls who are princesses, this isn’t a story about romantic love or some dude rescuing a damsel in distress. “Frozen” is a story about sisterhood and the power that exists inside young women.

Spoiler Alert

Frankly, I was surprised by Disney’s latest animated film Frozen. Even though it featured the voice of my beloved heroine Veronica Mars (or as she’s known in real life: Kristen Bell), I was pretty sure Frozen was going to feed us Disney’s standard company line about princesses and marriage and girls needing to be rescued all the time. I was wrong. Though the film still showcases impossibly thin, rich, white girls who are princesses, this isn’t a story about romantic love or some dude rescuing a damsel in distress. Not only does Frozen effortlessly pass the Bechdel Test within five minutes, it’s a story that’s centered around sisterhood and the power that exists inside young women.

The most important relationship in Frozen, the one that drives all the action, all the pathos, is that of Anna and her sister Elsa. The two of them love each other very deeply, but they struggle to connect. Snow Queen Elsa strives to protect her little sister from harm first by hiding her own amazing abilities to create/manipulate snow and ice and then by refusing to allow Anna to marry a man she’s only just met. Elsa has donned the mantle of big sister with a great deal of seriousness, including all the responsibility that comes with it. When Elsa’s powers are outed at court, Anna’s unflagging love and determination prompts her to go after her fleeing sister who holes up in a pristine snow castle. We learn that Elsa was right to protect her sister from a hasty marriage, which is a huge change from Disney’s traditional espousing of the myth of love-at-first-sight, but we also learn that Anna’s love and acceptance is the only thing that can save her reclusive sister.

In Frozen, female agency and power are paramount. Elsa has cosmically awesome winter powers (she should seriously consider a trip to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters). Anna, our heroine, is normal, which is a refreshing change of pace from most fantasy stories where the lead is imbued with a striking talent or birthright. Though Anna has no unique skills or magical powers, it is her compassion that makes her extraordinary. Anna’s personality makes her special because she never gives up, never questions her own capability, and never thinks she can’t do something. With her courage and conviction, Anna is the driving force behind all the film’s action. The male characters are mostly along for the ride, lending support or acting as obstacles to the true goal of the film: the reconnection of two estranged sisters.

Let’s talk a little bit about Elsa’s winter superpowers. From adolescence, Elsa and her parents fear her growing powers. Elsa seeks to control, minimize, and hide her powers. With the “swirling storm inside”, Elsa loses her grip on her carefully guarded secret and outs herself at her coronation party. After fleeing the scene, she sings, “Conceal. Don’t feel. Don’t let them know,” before declaring she’s going to, “Let it go.” (Full song below.)

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DQYdcUB0eg”]

Elsa’s abilities that are connected to her emotions and mature with age are obviously a metaphor for her powerful sexuality, and I’d even go so far as to argue that Elsa and her family struggle with her queer sexuality, her parents even fearing that she would infect her younger sister. Yes, I think there is general discomfort around female sexuality in all its forms. However, Anna is blossoming sexually, and there is not the same stigma or fear surrounding it because her conventional hetero sexuality gravitates towards marriage to a prince. There is no male love interest for Elsa (despite Anna having two suitors). Elsa’s queer sexuality is so foreign that her subjects are horrified, and she must isolate herself, becoming a literal ice queen. While Elsa feels free to be honest with herself and to feel her feelings within her isolated castle, she does not believe acceptance is possible nor that she can be a part of normal society.

Elsa tries to scare Anna away and even accidentally hurts her in the process.

When Elsa accidentally strikes Anna with a shard of her ice powers, Anna’s heart becomes frozen, and only “an act of true love” can thaw it and save her from death. Everyone in the film assumes true love’s kiss will cure her, but, frankly, I had my fingers crossed (literally) that Elsa would have to kiss her sister to save her (platonically, of course). We were all wrong. It turned out that Anna had to perform the act of true love, keeping her firmly in the self-actualized role of heroine, making her own choices, taking action, and creating her own destiny. That’s an even better plot twist than I could have imagined! Anna’s act of self-sacrifice shows Elsa that acceptance is possible, that Anna knew about her dark secret and loved her anyway. They’re not saved by a man or romantic love. This is an act of true love between sisters, and that act saves them both. One word: beautiful.

Disney was clearly doing their feminist homework when they came up with Frozen. They created a story about young women that didn’t revolve around men, where family and sisterhood trump everything else, where two sisters save each other. They even have Kristoff ask Anna for consent before he kisses her, and the movie doesn’t end with a wedding. Disney still has to work on its depiction of impossible female bodies that are usually white. They need to start telling stories about regular girls and not just richie-rich princesses. They need to be more open and honest about their queer characters instead of hiding them under metaphor, but all in all, Frozen is a huge leap forward for Disney. I’m glad I went to see it. I’m glad I took my six-year-old niece to see it with me, and though their white skin and privileged lifestyle doesn’t match hers, I think Frozen imparted an important lesson about sisterhood, love, and acceptance that is invaluable to young girls everywhere.
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Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

‘Tootsie’: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Woman

So what’s feminist about it? Although the word “feminist” is never uttered, Michael plays Dorothy as a bold, liberated woman. At the audition, slimy director Ron Carlisle (Dabney Coleman) tells Dorothy she’s too “soft and genteel” and “not threatening enough” for the part. Dorothy replies: “Yes, I think I know what y’all really want. You want some gross caricature of a woman. To prove some idiotic point, like, like power makes women masculine, or masculine women are ugly… Well shame on the woman who lets you do that.” Right out of the gate, Dorothy not only speaks her mind, but also openly protests sexism.

Movie poster for Tootsie — Movie poster for *Tootsie*

This guest post by Rebecca Cohen appears as part of our theme week on Male Feminists and Allies.

Have you seen the 2012 AFI interview with Dustin Hoffman, where he gets emotional about his role in the cross-dressing 1982 comedy Tootsie? In the video clip, Hoffman relates his disappointment in discovering that, although makeup artists could help him pass as a credible woman, he would never be a beautiful woman. Hoffman says he cried, realizing that if he were at a party he would never approach a woman who looked like him. He concludes tearfully, “There’s too many interesting women I have … not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.”

The video of those remarks went viral recently, and most reactions were enthusiastically positive. Hooray for Dustin Hoffman, breaking through his social conditioning to see the world from a woman’s perspective. Thank you to Dustin Hoffman, for expressing the harshness of beauty standards in such a concise and heartfelt way. Making Tootsie made Dustin Hoffman a feminist ally.

Right?

Well… yes and no. Hoffman’s statements, like the movie Tootsie itself, are a good start. They’re a sincere attempt by a well-intentioned man to address feminist issues. Still, both his words and the movie fall short in many ways.

The Good

In Tootsie, Hoffman plays unemployed actor Michael Dorsey, who disguises himself as a woman to land a job on a daytime soap opera. After winning the role, Michael must continue to pretend to the world that he’s actress Dorothy Michaels. Hilarity, as you might expect, ensues.

Although the role she’s auditioning for, Emily Kimberly, is written as a ball-busting harridan, Dorothy plays her with both fire and vulnerability. Director Ron remains unimpressed, but producer Rita Marshall (Doris Bellack) is obviously moved by the portrayal, and Michael/Dorothy gets the job.

This in itself is pretty layered and rather feminist, if you think about it. The role of Emily Kimberly is written as a sexist stereotype, a cardboard cutout of an unfeminine woman – basically, a man in a dress. But when presented with an actual, literal man in a dress, Ron declares him too feminine. The film thus (probably unintentionally) unpacks some complex ideas about gender and performativity. In order to pass as a woman Michael must play Dorothy as delicate and refined; in a way, he has to present as more feminine than a “real” woman. And this, ironically, almost costs him the role.

From there, the movie continues to develop an overtly feminist narrative. In order to avoid kissing a male co-star, Michael refuses to perform a scene as written. Instead of swooning, the character asserts herself. Producer Rita loves it. Michael/Dorothy continues to depart from the scripts, insisting on making Emily Kimberly feisty and self-assured, and Rita continues to allow it. The character’s popularity grows, Dorothy’s fame grows, and soon Dorothy becomes an outright feminist role model, even appearing on the cover of Ms. Magazine (and Cosmopolitan too, perhaps so we can be assured she’s not that militant). At one point, Rita marvels at what Dorothy has accomplished: “You are the first woman character who is her own person, who can assert her own personality without robbing someone of theirs. You’re a breakthrough lady for us.”

Dorothy also becomes a personal role model for co-star Julie (Jessica Lange). Through her friendship with Dorothy, Julie gains the strength and self-confidence to break up with Ron. She tells Dorothy, “You wouldn’t compromise your feelings like I have. You wouldn’t live this kind of lie, would you?… I deserve something better, you know? I don’t have to settle for this.” Through the movie, Julie repeatedly expresses how Dorothy has taught her to stand up for herself.

At the same time, Michael learns his own lessons about feminism, drawn from his experiences living as a woman. He’s taken aback by the effort and expense required of women to keep themselves attractive. He attempts to voice concerns on set, but gets frustrated when Ron dismissively talks over him. Experiencing the world as Dorothy, Michael comes to believe he really has a new understanding of what women endure. He tells his agent, George (Sydney Pollack): “I feel like I have something to say to women, something meaningful,” explaining how he knows what it is to feel helpless and not in control.

In one of the most memorable moments of the film, Michael/Dorothy, fed up with Ron’s patronizing treatment on set, stands up to him:

Michael/Dorothy: Ron, my name is Dorothy. It’s not Tootsie or Toots or Sweetie or Honey or Doll.

Ron: Oh Christ.

Michael/Dorothy: No, just Dorothy. Now Alan’s always Alan, Tom is always Tom, and John’s always John. I have a name too; it’s Dorothy. Capital D, O, R, O, T, H, Y. Dorothy.

Titling the film Tootsie emphasizes that Michael’s experience of being marginalized, of struggling to demand respect, is meant to be understood as a focal point of the film.

So, clearly it’s a feminist movie. In some ways.

The Bad

So why does Rita Marshall, a seasoned and capable TV producer, never include independent, assertive women on her show until Dorothy Michaels comes along and steamrolls her into it? Did it never occur to her that such a thing was possible, or that her mostly female audience might enjoy it? Similarly, why is Dorothy the only woman who stands up to Ron’s harassment, even though it’s evident he’s been behaving this way with impunity for years?

The film seems to imply that Michael, coming from a position of male privilege, is uniquely positioned to call out sexism. He isn’t accustomed to enduring second-class status. Women deal with it grudgingly, because, you know – that’s how the world works. But Michael hasn’t been conditioned to accept it. So he doesn’t.

Here’s the thing. This situates Michael as the White Knight, the male savior of women’s rights. Spending only a few months experiencing how the world treats a woman, he’s better able to challenge the status quo than the women who’ve spent their entire lives experiencing it. Like many cross-dress comedies, Tootsie falls into the trap of implying that a man is better at being a woman than any woman knows how to be.

Also, what does Michael do with his newfound understanding of the struggles women face? He sees how Ron mistreats Julie, lying to her yet claiming it’s to spare her feelings. But Michael does essentially the same thing to his longtime friend Sandy (Terri Garr). He sleeps with Sandy to cover up his secret, then lies to her and strings her along even as he’s steadily falling in love with Julie. It’s women, specifically Sandy and Julie, who bear the brunt of the harm caused by Michael’s deceit. Recognizing how men use lies to abuse women doesn’t stop Michael from doing it himself.

Even after the truth is revealed, Michael never apologizes to Julie for deceiving her. (Interestingly, he does apologize to her father in suitably man-to-man fashion.) He tells Julie, “I just did it for the work. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody.” In other words, instead of acknowledging her hurt and owning the harm he caused, he tries to explain and justify. He tells her, “I was a better man with you as a woman then I ever was with a woman as a man.” This is the lesson Michael draws from his experience as Dorothy: it has made him a better man… somehow.

Thus the film undercuts its early feminist promise. Michael never has to answer to the women who admired him as a feminist icon, only to find out he was a man all along. He never apologizes to the women he deceived on a very intimate level. He doesn’t, when all is said and done, make anything better for women. But that’s not important. What matters is that he has become a better man. “I just gotta learn to do it without the dress,” he explains.

Terri Garr, speaking to the Onion AV Club in 2008, shared her thoughts about Dustin Hoffman’s Tootsie-inspired insights about gender: “They put a man in a dress, and he’s supposed to know what it feels like to be a woman. But of course he doesn’t. I think what Dustin [Hoffman] says is, ‘I realize now how important it is for a woman to be pretty. And I wasn’t pretty.’ God! That’s all you realized? Jesus Christ. Oh well. Don’t quote me. Actually, quote me.”

Dustin Hoffman’s epiphany about women being judged based on their looks is most certainly A Good Thing. So is his acknowledgment of his own role in marginalizing women who don’t meet a certain beauty standard. But even as he laments all the interesting women he never took the time to know, Hoffman’s comments still center on himself. It’s about his loss in not getting to know these hypothetical women. It’s about his regret. And fundamentally, as Terri Garr points out, something is still missing.

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/Ch57pIuYhbM”]

I’m genuinely pleased to know that making Tootsie taught Dustin Hoffman to be a better man, just as his character Michael Dorsey learned to be a better man. But being a male feminist or feminist ally isn’t primarily about men’s personal character growth. It’s supposed to be about liberating and empowering women. And it’s frustrating to see people respond as though Hoffman has discovered some earth-shattering truth, when women have already spoken and written about these issues at length. Why does it carry more weight when a straight, white, cis, wealthy, famous man expresses it?

Of course, like it or not, people listen when straight, white, cis, wealthy, famous men speak. So I can’t criticize Dustin Hoffman for using the platform he has to amplify a feminist message, even if what he says should be obvious to everyone by now. Terri Garr is absolutely right: Dressing as a woman for a day does not convey the entirety of what it means to be a woman in a patriarchal society. But I wouldn’t object if more men wanted to give it a try.

Rebecca Cohen is the creator of the webcomic “The Adventures of Gyno-Star,” the world’s first (and possibly only) explicitly feminist superhero comic.

“I Wasn’t Finished”: Divine Masculinity in ‘Untamed Heart’

Caroline somehow knows that Adam is not a typical young man simply working for minimum wage at a local diner in Minnesota; he is a heavenly catalyst sent not to offer completeness in Caroline’s life, but to remind her that she is worth loving, even in his absence.

This guest post by Jenny Lapekas appears as part of our theme week on Male Feminists and Allies.

In Tony Bill’s romance Untamed Heart (1993) Adam (Christian Slater) is very much a Christ-like figure throughout the film–he carries an aura of secrecy, we see him consistently bathed in light in many scenes, and he saves Caroline (Marisa Tomei) from her would-be rapists in a dark park in Minneapolis. In fact, Adam–whose name echoes the biblical Adam of the Garden of Eden–saves Caroline throughout the film, and it only makes sense, after proving his sacrificial love for the waitress, that he dies at the film’s conclusion. The film immediately focuses on Adam as it opens with his upbringing as an orphan raised by nuns. When the juvenile Adam has medical issues with his heart, one of the concerned nuns pleads, “Don’t you break our hearts,” a clear indication of his divine links as a person and a child of the church.

When Caroline questions Adam about fighting off the pair of drunken men, she is almost accusatory: “You follow me home?” After her attack, the last thing she wants to believe is that Adam’s sweet gaze is actually predatory. Adam interrupts her charming babbling with a sobering, “I wasn’t finished,” which becomes his mantra throughout the film; Caroline tends to talk herself in circles, but Tomei has a way of winning over viewers with her cyclical monologue when interacting with the dreamy Christian Slater.

The street lamp looks almost like a halo above Adam’s head as he carries home an unconscious Caroline, post-attack.

To further emphasize Adam’s goodness, all other male characters found in Untamed Heart are in some way flawed: Two men who show interest in Caroline end up as her assailants, Caroline’s father is uptight and largely absent, and her immature little brother fails to pick her up from work, causing her to walk home alone. After her attack, we see a defeated-looking Caroline at the mall amidst the holiday bustle. As she rises on an escalator, we see Adam pass by on the descending side–we’re almost surprised to see such a saintly man traveling downward rather than ascending upward, albeit in the space of a mall. Caroline is taken by surprise when he lovingly places his hand over hers.

Most noticeable is that Adam is bathed in light as he floats downward and gazes at Caroline.

“If you look up long enough, you’ll see a shooting star,” Adam tells Caroline when he begins walking her home from work: not only evidence of his virtue but also a pleasant reminder that Caroline can take a break from suspiciously looking around her long enough to look above her. The couple’s nonverbal agreement to walk home together after their shifts secures Adam’s placement as Caroline’s guardian, protector, and confidante. While the men Caroline typically encounters are quick to dismiss, forget, or victimize her, Adam is fixated and irrevocably in love with her.

Even as the two first become intimate, Adam appears “too good” to engage in earthly pleasures. Because Caroline is studying to be a beautician, she invites Adam over to cut his hair, but it’s delayed when Adam begins touching Caroline’s breasts as he sits before her; rather than sexual attraction, this scene highlights the awe Adam feels for Caroline. Although she leads him to the bedroom, it is Caroline that is being led to understand what true love looks like. After Caroline undresses and sits with Adam on her bed, he begins to cry, and she tells him, “I’m gonna fall in love with you,” which halts any possibility of sex or foreplay we anticipate in this scene; rather, this vow is their foreplay. As he continues to cry, she explains that he doesn’t have to return her love; this scene can be read as the couple merging as one, giving themselves to each other, in a landscape of celibacy.

When Caroline explains to Adam that his heart is diseased, visibly agitated, he exclaims, “No one is taking away my heart!”

When Adam dies, he does so peacefully, and not so unexpectedly. After he is stabbed by Caroline’s attackers while taking out the garbage, he leaves the hospital early and finds Caroline. He believes that he has the heart of a baboon and that he will survive, despite what doctors tell him. Because Adam knows that his love is innocent, he equates this to the state of his heart, and ultimately, how he feels about Caroline. Because Adam seems to exist on a different plane than those around him, it only makes narrative sense that he passes away after he and Caroline have fallen in love. We don’t expect any violent or traumatic death; rather, Adam sort of burns out, like the sun. At his funeral service, Caroline describes him as an angel and attributes agency to herself within the romance: “I was good at loving him.” Adam enters Caroline’s life not only to care for her but also to prove that she is not as flaky as she may have thought.

Caroline spots Adam’s massive scar as he changes at work.

The pair find one another amidst rude customers, raucous holiday gatherings, and those who fail to understand their young relationship. Caroline tells her best friend Cindy, “I don’t make sense, he doesn’t make sense, together we make sense!” Slater brings instant mystery to this role as the quiet busboy who secretly admires his waitress co-worker, and ensures that she arrives home safely every night after making the walk from work. We also fall in love with Tomei’s vulnerability and her willingness to trust the newness of a young romance after so many failed relationships. Caroline somehow knows that Adam is not a typical young man simply working for minimum wage at a local diner in Minnesota; he is a heavenly catalyst sent not to offer completeness in Caroline’s life, but to remind her that she is worth loving, even in his absence.

We love Adam because he comes to Caroline quietly, modestly, seeming to have always existed in the shadows, behind the scenes, loving her selflessly from afar, making his presence known only out of necessity. In a busy city that seems to challenge our mousy heroine at every corner, Adam is an ally, a soul mate, and a reason to watch the not so tired plot of “boy meets girl.”

Jenny Lapekas has a Master of Arts degree in English, and she teaches Composition at Alvernia University in Pennsylvania. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema.

“A Bit Of An Evolution”: On Louis C.K.

It’s exhausting to consume any media as a trans* person. It’s not really a matter of if I will become a punchline, but when. This goes triple or quadruple for comedy, and Louis C.K., for all his good qualities, is no exception.

Written by Max Thornton as part of our theme week on Male Feminists and Allies.

It’s exhausting to consume any media as a trans* person. It’s not really a matter of if I will become a punchline, but when. This goes triple or quadruple for comedy, and Louis C.K., for all his good qualities, is no exception.

Louis C.K. is a very funny guy, and for a white straight cis man he is often a great ally. The webpage www.arewhitepeopleraciallyoppressed.com uses one of his bits as its only explanation for its giant, bolded, all-caps “NO!” He’s pretty excellent at using his tragicomic sensibility to draw attention to inequalities in a way that might make other white straight cis men think as well as laugh. But he still has a ways to go, and I hope that he will learn and improve.

Louis CK on a rare happy day — Louis C.K. on a rare happy day

What’s interesting about being a fan of Louis C.K. is that he does learn and change, and we have watched him evolve his understanding of some things. His 2008 album Chewed Up opens with a tiresome bit about “Offensive Words,” which surely must have seemed as embarrassing five years ago as it does now:

Faggot. I miss that word… Faggot didn’t mean gay when I was a kid. You called someone faggot because they were being a faggot, you know? Someone was just being a faggot. … But if one of them took the dick out of his mouth and was being all faggy and saying annoying faggy things like, ‘People from Phoenix are called Phoenicians,’ I’d be like, ‘Hey, shut up, faggot! FAGGOT! Quit being a faggot and suck that dick.’

As we used to say when I was a kid, it’s so funny I forgot to laugh.

I’m pretty sure this bit is still being used by douchebros to justify their bigotry, but hopefully at least some of those douchebros have seen the poker scene from a 2010 episode of C.K.’s semi-autobiographical FX sitcom Louie. In this scene, the Louis C.K. character and a group of his comedian friends discuss homosexuality with their one gay friend, who winds up steering the conversation in quite a serious direction. C.K. has explained that this scene was intentional redress for his casual excusing of slurs in the past. “What does it do to a gay man when I say the word ‘faggot’?” was not merely a rhetorical exercise, but a question he raised with a gay friend and thought about deeply in the writing of the poker scene. C.K. says, “I think that the discussion of the word faggot that I did in the poker scene was a bit of an evolution. I pretty much never say faggot on stage anymore.”

His mea culpa over last year’s Rapeocalypse debacle – an incident (don’t they seem to be almost weekly these days?) where an unfunny comedian’s rape “joke” sparked a raging internet debate about comedy and offensiveness – also proves that he can learn from his mistakes, to the point that he now actively tweets against offensive jokes.

louis-ck-tweet — Has anyone tried this? Does it work?

Louis C.K. makes me laugh a lot, and he says some really on-the-ball things about a lot of subjects (“two guys are in love and they can’t get married because you don’t want to talk to your ugly child for five fucking minutes??”), but watching his sets or his show still makes me clench in the pit of my stomach.

It’s not that his material on gender relations is uniformly bad. Some of it is excellent, and some of it is downright feminist. The trouble is, he does it in a really essentialist way. Men and women are defined as poles of a biologically determined binary. And he talks about men as though we’re utterly captive to our hormones. Sometimes it almost sounds as if he’s saying, “Men have treated women really poorly for millennia, because biology.” Testosterone, contra certain trans men who will tell you otherwise, is not a misogyny potion. Neither (although I don’t have personal experience with this) is a Y chromosome.

Obviously I don’t mean to say that we shouldn’t talk about relationships between men and women. It’s hugely important to recognize and challenge the ways in which gendered oppression and violence are performed specifically by men against women; but we need to do this in a way that acknowledges that these categories are imperfect and fluid and not immutably predestined or tied to biology.

C.K. is pretty solid on that first part, but he’s still not mastered the second. And it’s frustrating because he’s so clearly someone who’s spent time engaging with other intersections of oppression, especially race and sexuality, and it’s made him a better person, a better comedian, and a better artiste; so I wish he’d bother to do the same with trans* concerns.

I do worry that Louis C.K. is too much the leftist darling who can get away with anything. On the one hand, it’s not unreasonable to laud people when they learn and change for the better; on the other, fawning over straight white cis dudes for showing the slightest modicum of basic human decency is pretty gross. It’s hard to balance the discourse in response to allies, but at least we know this one is thoughtful and self-aware. If we hold Louis C.K. accountable for his failings, we can generally expect that he’ll listen and learn, and that’s perhaps the most important quality in an ally.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

Why ‘Veronica Mars’ is Still Awesome

“Why,” you ask, “are you writing about Veronica Mars, a TV show that’s been off the air for years?” A few reasons. Mainly because the show is, was, and ever shall be kickassly awesome. The premise always sounds silly: teenage girl detective solves cases and fights crime, but it’s so much more than that. Veronica (embodied perfectly by Kristen Bell) is wicked smart and a wicked smart-ass. She’s an independent, dogged, talented, funny, intelligent, perpetual underdog with an enviable fashion sense (I always wanted to dress like her) and a knack for getting into and out of trouble. My other reason for writing this review is because creator/writer/director Rob Thomas is fulfilling every V Mars fan’s fantasy and making a movie that follows up on the canceled show.

Veronica Mars movie poster — *Veronica Mars* movie poster

It’s hard to say whether or not the movie will be any good. It takes place at Veronica’s 10-year high school reunion where she’ll be, once again, solving a murder. I think it’s worth checking out because the show itself was smart, funny, and engaged in important social issues with its strong female protagonist. Now, you might be asking, “If I’ve never seen the show, why should I care?” Answer: Because the show Veronica Mars is simply put great television. I admit, I’m something of a hater. Even the shows I like, I usually find a lot to critique. While Veronica Mars isn’t perfect, it tackled big issues with wit, compassion, and ovaries, such as class, race, the intersectionality of class and race, homosexuality, trans parenting, adoption, suicide, abuse, abandonment, addiction, animal cruelty, the stigma surrounding female teen sexuality, and on and on. In Season One, the two major mysteries that Veronica is trying to solve are:

Who murdered her best friend?
Who raped her?

Veronica Mars Camera Car — Veronica taking seedy pictures for a surveillance job.

How many shows have you seen where the heroine is a struggling rape survivor? How many shows have you seen where the heroine is hunting down her rapist to make him pay (because Veronica doesn’t just believe in justice…she believes in revenge)? The theme of Veronica’s rape is on-going, continuing into Season Two when she finally solves the crime, and painful feelings and memories are dredged up in Season Three when she sets out to catch a serial rapist on her college campus, truthfully representing the fact that sexual assault survival isn’t something people just “get over”; it’s something they must deal with in multiple ways throughout their entire lives. I love the way Veronica refuses to be silent. Despite being humiliated at the sheriff’s office when she reports the crime, despite the fact that she can’t remember who her assailant is because she was drugged, Veronica’s doggedness allows many of us who were cowed into silence to vicariously live through her strength and perseverance. In Season Three, Veronica shares her power with the survivors of the serial rapist (who shaves his victims’ heads to further humiliate them). She shares her story with them and repeatedly declares herself to be their advocate and champion when no one else seems to care whether or not justice is served. For that alone, I love this show.

I also admire the relationship she has with her father.

Keith giving Veronica a directive that he knows she'll ignore. — Keith giving Veronica a directive that he knows she’ll ignore.

Keith Mars (another case of perfect casting with Enrico Colantoni) is raising his very smart, independent (read: defiant) teenage daughter on his own. Together, they joke and laugh and communicate. Keith may give Veronica too much freedom and may trust her a bit too much, but, in the end, we always know he’s doing the best he can, making all of his choices with her best interest at heart. What really gets me is that they unabashedly love each other. Veronica chooses her father over her unsupportive so-called “friends” and peers. Keith doesn’t stifle his daughter, while teaching her that hard work and tenacity is what sets her apart from her wealthy classmates. It’s rare to see a single father scenario on TV, and it’s even rarer to see it done half as well as Veronica Mars does it.

I also adore Veronica’s friends. Her best friend Wallace Fennel (portrayed by Percy Daggs III) is so sweet and so genuine. He proves time and time again that he’s a much better friend to Veronica that she can ever be to him. Veronica is humanized as we see her flaws when she takes advantage of Wallace’s friendship, but Wallace is so good-natured that he that he usually just goes along for the ride (though he does call her on her selfishness from time to time). I think it’s great that there’s NEVER any sexual tension between them. They are friends and neither of them wants or seeks more EVER. This is a good example of realistic friendships and Rob Thomas knowing there’s a line between drama and melodrama.

Then there’s Mac, played by the adorable Tina Majorino. Cindy Mackenzie is known as “Mac,” in part, because of her last name, but mostly because of her badass computer skills. When Veronica and Mac team up, it’s like fireworks of awesome gooey brains just flying all over the place. I love that these two smart gals find each other, and they talk about waaaaay more than just boys (another instance of the show passing the Bechdel Test), for starters: hacking databases and email accounts, setting up remote surveillance, and dealing with Mac’s discovery that she was adopted. Their relationship is pretty great because they’re encouraging of each other, supportive, and they have complementary skills, all of which make them an awesome sleuthing team.

Veronica & Mac try to convince Parker to go out. — Veronica and Mac aren’t afraid to get goofy.

There’s a lot to love about this show. Its plethora of cameos, quick wit, and hilarious pop cultural references are part of the amazing package deal. If you’re a V Mars fan, you’re probably wondering why I haven’t mentioned the Duncan and Veronica vs. Logan and Veronica vs. Piz and Veronica deal. I guess it’s because most shows geared towards women and young girls have a love triangle scenario. Though I got sucked into the love triangle like everyone else did, I think what’s so special about Veronica Mars is that its heroine isn’t defined by her romantic relationships. She is so much more. She’s a daughter, a friend, a spy, a scholar, an excellent snickerdoodle baker, a photographer, a dog lover, and, above all, a confident, sassy young woman who lives by her own rules and has an amazing, unlimited future ahead of her. Do I even need to say it? We need more role models like Veronica Mars in film and on television, and we need them STAT.

I even came up with a super fun drinking game for it called Vodka Tonic with a Lime Twist & Veronica Mars. I hope you’ll play! [End shameless plug.]

It’s ‘About Time’ for a Strong Family Narrative

Everyone loves a feel-good story about an awkward ginger falling in love and bonding with his family! About Time follows the life of Tim (Domhnall Gleeson), a young lawyer whose father (Bill Nighy) informs him on his 21st birthday that he has the ability to time travel. Specifically, that all the men in his family have the ability to time travel. I was a little bit perplexed that the women are kept in the dark about the family secret, but I guess it’s a metaphor for paternal bonding or whatever. Tim immediately endeavors to use his newfound gift to find a girlfriend, which feels slightly immature for a guy who’s out of school and in a steady career. Nevertheless, Gleeson keeps the tone light and heartwarming. Tim soon meets Mary (Rachel McAdams) and makes frequent use of his time travel to ensure that every aspect of their relationship development is perfect.

Written by Erin Tatum.

Everyone loves a feel-good story about an awkward ginger falling in love and bonding with his family! About Time follows the life of Tim (Domhnall Gleeson), a young lawyer, whose father (Bill Nighy) informs him on his 21st birthday that he has the ability to time travel. Specifically, that all the men in his family have the ability to time travel. I was a little bit perplexed that the women are kept in the dark about the family secret, but I guess it’s a metaphor for paternal bonding or whatever. Tim immediately endeavors to use his newfound gift to find a girlfriend, which feels slightly immature for a guy who’s out of school and in a steady career. Nevertheless, Gleeson keeps the tone light and heartwarming. Tim soon meets Mary (Rachel McAdams) and makes frequent use of his time travel to ensure that every aspect of their relationship development is perfect.

charlotte — Tim initially sets his sights on Charlotte.

What I like about Tim is that he’s flawed in a relatively benign way. While we’ve been conditioned as viewers to see the lead roles as starcrossed lovers, despite Tim’s undeniable love for Mary, he’s indiscriminate. He doesn’t really care who he falls in love with as long as he’s in love. As a testament to this, the film devotes a surprisingly large amount of time to showing his failed conquest of his first love, Charlotte (Margot Robbie). Far from the traditional notions of Hollywood romance, Mary arguably only becomes Tim’s true love because she was the first girl to give him a chance. Tim even goes on an ambiguous date with Charlotte while he’s dating Mary, wherein Charlotte predictably expresses playful remorse for initially rejecting him and makes a move. Tim carefully cuts it off just short of cheating – only by a hair’s breadth – to avoid venturing into unsympathetic protagonist territory. (He conveniently runs home to Mary and spontaneously proposes.) I will say that I’m not a fan of bringing Charlotte back into the narrative to encourage the audience to thumb their nose at her and feed into smug Nice Guy vindictiveness. However, I do like that Tim and Mary are just sort of together out of coincidence because it proves that you don’t always need an epic back story or a lot of angst to be happy with someone.

I have some concerns about female agency in this movie. Tim meets Mary several times with varying degrees of success. He redoes their initial conversation so much that he ironically lands a date with her by using her own opinions verbatim from previous attempts. He discovers through his lackluster interactions with Charlotte that even time travel and the clairvoyance that it brings can’t force someone to fall in love with him, but his experiences with Mary suggest otherwise. Sure, Mary was attracted to him from the start and you could conclude that any little tweaks Tim made wouldn’t have that much of an impact if they truly were “meant to be.” Obsessively manipulating every tiny aspect of your relationship to meet your idealized standards doesn’t exactly feel like you’re allowing the chemistry to develop organically. There’s definitely something uncomfortable about picking a random girl as your love object and then meticulously premeditating everything until she’s basically a blank slate for the perfect partner. That’s not really liberating for Mary. It’s the (500) Days of Summer mentality minus the petulant entitlement.

These problematic aspects are mostly redeemed in that the romance isn’t actually the heart of the story. Refreshingly enough, Tim’s relationships with his family quickly come back to the foreground to pack more of an affective punch than sappy a love story ever could on its own. I’ve never seen the main romance as a faux A-plot in a romcom-esque drama and I couldn’t have enjoyed that twist more. The bond between Tim and his father turns out to be the most emotional aspect of the film. At times, I found Tim’s dizzy sister Kit Kat (Lydia Wilson) airy fairy to the point of being almost obnoxiously childlike, but Wilson and Gleeson have a phenomenal, easy chemistry that evens out her frayed edges. They’re one of my favorite brother/sister relationships in recent memory. Although Tim is clearly protective of her, it’s never overbearing or controlling. When Kit Kat turns to drinking to deal with her abusive boyfriend and gets into a car crash, Tim tries unsuccessfully to undo events before realizing that she needs to make the decision to better her life choices on her own. Somewhat implausibly, she has this epiphany in a few short sentences and finds new love and stability with Tim’s geeky best friend Jay (Will Merrick, bizarrely playing Gleeson’s peer despite a ten year age gap). I much prefer Tim and Kit Kat’s relationship as partners in crime to the romanticized possessiveness of brothers over sisters. I also think the fact that Tim was unable to protect her from all the bad things in life and gently encouraged her to make changes herself is much more realistic. People can get wrapped up in their lives and not notice what’s going on with their family, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they love them any less or should feel obligated to beat themselves up. They can still do the best they can as a support system. The only person I wish had been explored more is Tim’s mom. Oh well, I guess you can’t expect everyone to be totally developed. It’s just strange given that everyone else in his family seems so close.

Tim's dad comforts him after breaking the news of his diagnosis. — Tim’s dad comforts him after breaking the news of his diagnosis.

A few unexpected plot twists keep things from becoming stale and work to set limits on the God complex of time travel. Tim takes Kit Kat back in time to stop her from meeting her abusive boyfriend after the car crash, which happened to occur on the day of his daughter’s first birthday. Things appear to go off without a hitch until to his horror, he returns home to a completely different child. His dad explains that he can’t go back in time past the birth of his child because it would effectively create a sperm roulette and produce different children every time, meaning that events are set in stone with the birth of each of his future children. This caveat acquires heart wrenching significance when his dad is diagnosed with terminal cancer. He and Tim continue to spend time together through time travel after his death, but it isn’t long before Mary announces she wants another baby. The meetings between father and son must come to a close. (Although I’m not quite sure how they happen. He can’t time travel because he’s dead. If Tim travels back, isn’t it just his memory of his dad? How does he continue to live? If he is “alive,” it’s a bit rude to leave your dad in purgatory.) Their final scene together is a massive tearjerker. Tim ultimately decides to stop time traveling altogether and live each day to the fullest. Even if you have the power to live every moment again, sometimes the present is perfect enough.

In ‘Clue,’ the Real Mystery Is the Bechdel Test

On any dark and stormy night in the fall, it is a wonderful thing to curl up with a mug of mulled cider and watch Clue. The murder mystery based on the eponymous board game may have been a huge flop when it was released in 1985, but it has gained a passionate cult following in the last 28 years, probably due to its infinitely quotable dialogue and gleeful disregard for the pile of bodies amassed as the movie progresses – as well as being shown on cable about once every two hours.

Movie poster for Clue — Movie poster for *Clue*

This guest post by Erin K. O’Neill appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

Six strangers gather in a New England mansion for a mysterious dinner party. It is revealed that their host is blackmailing them all, but then the tale darkens. First the host is murdered, and then the cook and the maid – and to make a long story short…

Too late!

On any dark and stormy night in the fall, it is a wonderful thing to curl up with a mug of mulled cider and watch Clue. The murder mystery based on the eponymous board game may have been a huge flop when it was released in 1985, but it has gained a passionate cult following in the last 28 years, probably due to its infinitely quotable dialogue and gleeful disregard for the pile of bodies amassed as the movie progresses – as well as being shown on cable about once every two hours.

I seriously love Clue. It’s my favorite board game and one of my favorite movies, and has been since one of my friends sat me down and made me watch it one Halloween a long time ago. It’s bawdy and brash and downright hilarious, especially if you have a taste for farcical whodunits.

But: Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

It has to have at least two named women in it,

who talk to each other,

about something besides a man.

In order to help you understand whether or not Clue passes the Bechdel Test, I shall need to take you through the criteria of the test, step by step.

1. Does the movie have two named women in it?

There are five women characters who have names in Clue.

Mrs. Peacock, the hysterical senator’s wife.

Mrs. White, the widow of a nuclear physicist.

Miss Scarlett, Madam of a Washington D.C. brothel.

Yvette, the maid and Miss Scarlett’s former employee.

Mrs. Ho, the cook. While being listed in the credits as “The Cook,” in one of the first scenes in the movie Wadsworth calls her by her name.

In fact, in the entire movie only one female character doesn’t have a name, and that’s the Singing Telegram Girl.

And so, Clue passes the first step in the Bechdel Test.

2. Do these women talk to each other?

Absolutely. Clue is an ensemble movie with a mile-a-minute dialogue – and more one-liners than I care to count. So, here are a few of my favorite exchanges:

Miss Scarlet: Maybe there is life after death.

Mrs. White: Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage!

Mrs. White: Maybe he wasn’t dead.

Professor Plum: He was!

Mrs. White: We should’ve made sure.

Mrs. Peacock: How? By cutting his head off, I suppose.

Mrs. White: That was uncalled for!

Miss Scarlet: What was he like?

Mrs. White: He was always a rather stupidly optimistic man. I mean, I’m afraid it came as a great shock to him when he died, but, he was found dead at home. His head had been cut off, and so had his, uh… you *know.*

[Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, and Mr. Green cross legs]

Mrs. White: I had been out all evening at the movies.

Miss Scarlet: Do you miss him?

Mrs. White: Well, it’s a matter of life after death. Now that he’s dead, I have a life.

And so, Clue passes the second step in the Bechdel Test.

3. Do the women talk to each other about something besides a man?

The third leg of the Bechdel Test is often the one movies fail – while there are often women characters, how often do they not speak of men? And Clue has some integral issues with the plot and structure that would make it difficult to pass this leg of the test.

For one, the movie is an ensemble with a male butler at the center. Wadsworth, throughout the film, controls the action and guides the other players through the plot – he holds all the cards and asks all the questions. Furthermore, it’s a murder mystery where the first and most crucial victim, Mr. Boddy, is a man. Much of the dialogue, even if it’s about murder, is about a man.

And finally, Mrs. Peacock, Mrs. White and Miss Scarlett are all being blackmailed for actions that entirely have to do with men: Mrs. Peacock for accepting bribes for her husband’s senate vote; Mrs. White for allegedly killing her husband (and possibly at least one of her previous husbands too); and Miss Scarlett for running a house of ill repute that caters to men. This means that even when the women are discussing their histories and their motivations, the topic of conversation is men.

In the dinner scene, Mrs. Peacock tries to start conversation by asking the other women about their husbands and asking the men about their careers. It’s a telling moment, which could perhaps be forgiven by the film’s setting in 1954, which reveals how narrow topics of conversation for women can be. Even in 1954, they could have discussed Abstract Expressionism, or thematically, the McCarthy hearings on the House Committee of Un-American Activities. After all, communism is just a red herring.

I’ve seen Clue, well, let’s just say a lot. And, I had to rewatch the film three times but also scour a copy of the shooting script to find any dialogue where two women talk about something besides a man. As far as I can tell, it happened twice:

Miss Scarlett: Would you like to see these Yvette? They might shock you.

Yvette: No, thank you. I am a lady.

Miss Scarlett: And how do you know what sort of pictures they are if you’re such a lady?

Mrs. Peacock: Uh, is there a little girl’s room in the hall?

Yvette: Oui oui, Madame.

[points]

Mrs. Peacock: No, I just want to powder my nose.

Yep. The second instance is a pun on peeing.

Are these two, three-line exchanges enough to pass the Bechdel Test? There appears to be much debate about this leg of the test. Some critics claim that in order to pass, the women must speak to each other for more than 60 seconds, or that there must be some depth to the conversations. Since the original comic makes no such distinction and states that the two women must simply talk to each other about non-men related topics, I would argue that their two bits of dialogue meet the criteria.

And so, Clue passes the third step in the Bechdel Test, by the skin of its teeth.

Erin K. O’Neill is an award-winning writer, photographer, and visual editor currently located in her hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan. A devotee of literature, photography, existentialism, and all things Australian, Erin also watches too much television on DVD and Netflix. Follow her on Twitter, @ekoneill.

‘Withnail and I’ and the Danger of the Feminine Man

Withnail and I promo — *Withnail and I* promo

This guest post by Barrett Vann appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

In the film Withnail and I, there are a grand total of four women, only two of whom have any lines, and even then, only a handful. That considered, the film is actually quite interesting from a gender standpoint. Its two protagonists, Withnail, and “I” (named in the script as Marwood), are out of work actors in 1969, strung out and skint broke. Within the world of the film, which deals largely with people who are “outside” mainstream society in one way or another, the stereotypically feminine serves as a marker for the other, and in some cases, the deviant.

Both the two protagonists are marked as feminine in various ways. Withnail is effete and dandyish; Marwood is given to sensitivity and introspection. Both have hair which, while not hippyish by any measure, is nonetheless longer than standard; Marwood’s a tumble of Pre-Raphaelite curls, whilst Withnail’s is viciously slicked back. At one point, Withnail sneers that he’s been turned down from a job because his hair is too long. Their drug dealer, Danny, has hair to his shoulders, and in one scene, expounds on the virtues of long hair, saying, “I don’t advise a haircut, man. …Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.”* Even though this is clearly drugged-up nonsense, it’s a moment of great symbolic significance at the end of the film, when we see that Marwood has shorn his curls in favour of a 1914 cut.

In a scene early on in the film, Withnail throws up over Marwood’s boots after drinking anti-freeze, and to get rid of the smell, Marwood scrubs them with essence of petunia. Later on, down their local boozer, a huge drunk calls Marwood a “perfumed ponce” as he’s on his way to the lavatory. Now, paranoia is one of Marwood’s consistent character traits, but it’s interesting that his reaction to this is a very near cousin to the way a woman might react to similar harassment. He doesn’t snap back, or get annoyed or defensive at the implication; instead, he tries not to react visibly, whilst internally he panics, very aware of the potentially sexual danger the man might present.

As he stands in the toilet cubicle, he notices graffiti on the wall reading I FUCK ARSES, and his voiceover-ed internal monologue seizes on it immediately. “I fuck arses? Who fucks arses? Maybe he fucks arses. Maybe he’s written this in some moment of drunken sincerity. I’m in considerable danger; I must get out of here at once.” Similarly, later in the film, in the face of Uncle Monty’s uncomfortable advances, he adopts a tactic recognisable to probably any woman. Smiling compulsive, nervous smiles, he tries desperately to deflect Monty with politeness and changes of topic.

Marwood is therefore not only perceived by others to have feminine qualities, he reacts to that perception in what is not a stereotypically masculine fashion. When he thinks about the drunk, it is to cast him as comparatively more masculine than himself; “I don’t consciously offend big men like this. This one has a definite imbalance of hormone in him. Get any more masculine than him and you’d have to live up a tree.” Even the phrasing, “I don’t consciously offend big men like this,” implies that this is something that happens even when he doesn’t have essence of petunia all over his boots.

Another heavily feminised male character is Withnail’s Uncle Monty, whose cottage in the Lake District Withnail and Marwood go to stay at. Monty is instantly recognisable as a caricature of the faded old theatre queen; he lives alone with his cat and his memories, his manner of speech is elaborate and affected. He giggles and simpers and emotes at the slightest provocation. He also ticks all the boxes of the predatory homosexual. In his first scene, he remarks with relish that “There is a certain je ne sais quoi – oh, so very special – about a firm… young… carrot,” to the obvious discomfort of Marwood, and later in the film, once he’s joined Withnail and Marwood at Crow Crag, sexually harasses and assaults Marwood.

It is interesting to note that prior to the scene of the attempted rape, though his behaviour is marked as feminine in appearance, Monty seems to be nothing but a thoroughly average English gentleman. When he comes to Marwood’s room, however, he’s dressed in a silk dressing gown and velvet slippers, and wearing makeup. Not garish makeup either–delicately applied rouge, a little bit of eyeshadow, a smudge of lip colour. The contrast between his appearance and his behaviour in this scene is striking, whilst visually coded as very feminine, Monty is aggressively sexual, physically looming over Marwood, backing him into a corner and growling that “I mean to have you, even if it must be burglary!” This is not to say, of course, that feminine people cannot be sexually aggressive and dangerous, but that societal standards have designated this kind of behaviour as the extreme of masculine.

Consistently, then, femininity in men is dangerous. It may be actively dangerous, as in Uncle Monty, who assaults Marwood whilst in near-drag, or passively dangerous, in that it makes the feminine man a target for harassment, as in the lout at the pub who calls Marwood a perfumed ponce. Ultimately, it is dangerous because it marks the other, and to be other is to be in danger. When Marwood cuts his hair, it is because he’s landed a leading role in a play and is leaving Withnail’s kind of life for the safety of employment, of making a living in a socially-sanctioned fashion.

Do I think this portrayal of femininity in men as dangerous is intentional? No, I don’t. Withnail and I is in a lot of ways a love letter to a certain period in Bruce Robinson’s life, and to his friend Viv, off whom Withnail is based. A cynical, twisted sort of love letter, certainly, but one that feels to me sad, and fond, and which looks with affection at those who are marked as other within it. It’s still very interesting, though, to look at this pattern and what it says about our society, where femininity is simultaneously vulnerable and sexually dangerous, and to be feminine is automatically to be outside the norm.

*All quotes used in this article are from the screenplay, rather than the film itself, and so may differ in places from the dialogue as it is in the movie.

Barrett Vann has just graduated from the University of Minnesota with degrees in English and Linguistics. An unabashed geek, she’s into cosplay, literary analysis, high fantasy, and queer theory. Now that she’s left school, she hopes to find a real job so in a few years she can tackle grad school for playwrighting or screenwriting, and become one of those starving artist types.

Maude and The Dude: Feminism and Masculinity in The Big Lebowski (1998)

Populated by mostly male characters, The Big Lebowski is, to some extent, a tale of male friendship. Nevertheless, the cult comedy should never be interpreted and celebrated as exclusively a guy’s film. The Big Lebowski offers an amusing, subversive portrait of masculinity and features an excellent comic performance by one of the most gifted actresses working today. What’s more, it suggests that the future is matriarchal.

Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

Stuffed with unique characters and superb comic performances, The Big Lebowski is an insanely enjoyable crime caper about mistaken identity, fake kidnapping and fraud. Set in LA in the early 90s, its cast of characters includes zealous bowlers, avant-garde artists and Malibu pornographers. Perfectly played by Jeff Bridges, the hero is Jeff Lebowski, an ageing hippie and contemporary slacker who prefers to be called “The Dude.” Referencing The Big Sleep and the screwball comedy, The Big Lebowski has scenes of surreal visual wit and a wonderfully funny script. The movie was, bizarrely enough, neither a great commercial or critical success when it was released in 1998. Nonetheless, affection for it has grown and the pot-smoking, White Russian-drinking Dude has become a beloved icon of contemporary American cinema. There are now academic conferences and festivals dedicated to The Big Lebowski as well as a faith. Yes, Dudeism is truly a cult.

I will not go into the mad plot in detail but the central premise of the tale is that the Dude is mistaken for a pompous, paraplegic, elderly tycoon (David Huddleston) who shares his name. I am more interested in the brothers’ comic characterizations of the two Mr. Lebowskis, the older man’s adult daughter, Maude, and his young ‘trophy wife’, Bunny. I will draw particular attention to their portraits of the Dude and the tycoon’s daughter. As with the men, the women of the film could not be more different. Maude (Julianne Moore) is a somewhat snooty feminist artist who has decided to have a child and Bunny (Tara Reid) is a nymphomaniac with links to the porn industry. I will not only look at the Coens’ representation of women in the comedy but will also examine their ideas about masculinity. Let us first consider the Dude.

Feminist artist Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore)

We first see the Dude wandering through a supermarket late at night, being contemptuously eyed by the sales clerk. When he finally goes to the counter, the Dude casts a look at George Bush Senior giving a statement on the store’s television. This is around the time of the first US-Iraq War and the President is issuing a warning: “This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.” As not a few Lebowski scholars have rightly noted, the movie’s hero does not conform to capitalist and militarist models of American masculinity. We do not really know how he does it but the Dude survives quite happily outside the world of work. A man without ambition is still considered atypical or odd in society. He is, to a considerable extent, a subversive being. The Dude’s laid-back, pleasure-loving ways are both amusing and appealing to both male and female viewers. It is no accident that we first see the Dude in a supermarket. His relaxed lifestyle, modest apartment and endearingly scruffy appearance all give the finger to the consumerist ethos. The Dude is also a pacifist with a radical past. He claims that he was an author of the original Port Huron statement as well as one of the Seattle Seven. The dominant placing in his home of the iconic photo of Nixon bowling is also a tongue in cheek expression of his anti-establishment politics. The Dude’s personality and progressive values are at odds with the military-industrial complex. Frankly, I think the film’s great cult appeal in both the US and around the world is due, in considerable part, to his peace-loving personality and progressive principles. The Dude appears to be the antithesis of macho American militarism. The cowboy narrator (Sam Elliot) who begins and finishes the tale may be a charming, dreamy character but he is intended as a send-up of a mythic figure of American masculinity. The characterization of the Dude’s buddy Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) as a ham-fisted, egotistical, Vietnam-obsessed nut also serves as a parody of American power. The old-fashioned, obsolete storyteller introduces us to a different kind of man.

The Dude also displays pretty feminist leanings in his recognition of society’s commodification of the female body. A desiring heterosexual man, he openly flirts with Bunny and happily beds Maude. Pornography, however, does not seem to play a significant part of his single sex life. “Mr. Treehorn treats objects like women,” the Dude cries at one point about a certain Malibu-based pornographer named Jackie Treehorn. His upside down observation points to a certain progressive awareness. When Maude shows him a clip of Logjammin’, a film directed by Treehorn and starring her stepmother, his response is droll and sardonic. In the film, a cable man appears at the apartment of two young women. Bunny is semi-dressed and her roommate is topless. Maude notes how “ludicrous” the story is and the Dude responds with a somewhat unexpected sharpness.

Maude: Lord. You can imagine where it goes from here.

Dude: He fixes the cable?

When the Dude encounters Treehorn himself, he is impressed by the man’s pad but not his ambitions. He is not convinced by the director’s promises of technological advancements in the industry and sees through his artistic pretensions. The following snippet amusingly illustrates his skepticism:

Jackie Treehorn: I deal in publishing, entertainment, political advocacy.

The Dude: Which one’s Logjammin’?

“Real-life” incidents and hallucinatory sequences indicate that the Dude manifests classic Freudian fears of castration but I suspect that it is the Dude’s mostly uncomplicated, easy masculinity–as well as laid-back ways and good nature–that make him an unsuspecting (initially at least) sperm donor for Maude.

The Dude’s first proper meeting with the feminist artist is at her loft. Maude’s eye-catching entrance is literally over the top. Passing directly over him, she sails through the air on ropes before spraying paint on the canvas below. When she descends and frees herself from the harness, we see that she performs her conceptual art in the nude. She dresses and approaches the Dude. With her geometric bob and green velvet robe, the pale, red-haired Maude has a markedly Bohemian look. In a composed though dramatic voice, she fires questions about sex at the Dude. “Does the female form make you uncomfortable, Mr Lebowski?” she asks. The Dude does not seem at all uncomfortable. Maude explains, “My art has been commended as being strongly vaginal which bothers some men. The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina.” The Dude remains unfazed. Maude seems to have a mid-Atlantic accent. Her crystal-clear enunciation of “vagina” is, in any case, quite special. The Dude is primarily interested in his missing carpet–watch the film!–but Maude continues to ask him if he likes sex. Before he has the chance to answer, she tells him, “The male myth about feminists is that we hate sex. It can be a natural, zesty enterprise…” She then defines satyriasis and nymphomania for him before informing him that Bunny suffers from the latter. What is comic is incongruous, of course, and the interplay between the two is both very funny and well-observed.

In their portrait of Maude, the Coens appear to paint the conceptual artist as pretentious. Their characterization parodies so-called self-regarding aesthetic styles and artsy affectations. In another scene set in her studio, Maude laughs eccentrically on the phone to Italy. Her male colleague in the room giggles along with her. Their laughter is shown to be smug and silly. It is a pointed critique but–as with all satirical portraits–the intention is to shame human–male and female–vanity. The target of the Coens’ satire here is, also, the narcissism of the affluent artist. What is potentially more problematic is their parody of a female, feminist artist. The references to self-referential portraits and nudity are intended to allude to feminist artistic traditions. However, the mocking is not nasty but knowing, and these references could also be meant to ironically refer to popular notions of feminism. Although crafty and patronizing, Maude is not a hateful, misogynistic projection. She is, rather, a richly singular, strong and amusing comic character. Moreover, her theatrical, over-the-top nature actually functions to upset such readings. Julianne Moore’s interpretation of Maude is both vivid and clever and should always be highlighted in pop culture discussions of the comedy.

The Dude and Maude have sex when she later appears without warning at his home. She opens her robe and simply says, “Love me, Jeffrey.” Cut to the Dude smoking a post-coital jay while Maude asks questions about his background and lifestyle. Her face remains impassive as he tells of his radical days and love of bowling but you can tell that she is not impressed. A brief hope that he may have had musical talents is swiftly extinguished when he tells her that he used to a roadie for Metallica. The Dude is initially unaware that Maude has chosen him as a sperm donor and is, quite naturally, taken back by her desire to have a child with him. Quite hilariously, she responds by scolding him for his superficiality: “Well yes, what did you think this was all about–fun and games? I want a child.” However, the Dude does not seem bothered by his purely reproductive role when Maude tells him: “Look Jeffrey, I don’t want a partner. In fact, I don’t want the partner to be someone that I have to see socially or have any interest in raising the child himself.” Maude’s unabashed self-interest and imperious air amuse the viewer. The Dude’s castration anxieties may ironically refer to his lack of sway over Maude and misogynist fears of castrating feminists but the Dude is fundamentally quite happy to provide for his feminist “lady friend” and do what she wants. In a celebrated hallucinatory sequence, a film within a film, Maude plays a commanding Valkyrie.

What is, of course, arguably more predictable and disappointing about The Big Lebowski is the small number of female characters. There is only one other female character of note in the comedy: Bunny Lebowski. Bunny is a Californian stereotype: a tanned, party-loving blonde. The Coens do, in a way, sabotage the stereotype through exaggeration: Bunny is not portrayed as a victim but as an outrageously self-assertive, promiscuous young woman. When the Dude first encounters her relaxing by the pool, she makes him the following offer: “I’ll suck your cock for a thousand dollars.” There is also, it is true, no female solidarity shown by the main female characters in the film. Maude does not like or approve of her stepmother. Although a feminist, she seems to have no problem calling a Bunny a slut. It is not surprising, however, that there is no love lost between them. Seemingly loyal to the memory of her late mother, Maude is, quite understandably, not overjoyed at her father’s marriage to a much younger “trophy wife.” As a feminist, she also cannot commend Bunny’s pornographic experiences.

There is, also, perhaps, a less progressive side to the Coens’ portrait of Maude. Is she not yet another female character in a Coen Brothers movie pregnant or craving a child? Think Fargo or Raising Arizona. What to make of this tendency? Is it pro-natalist or merely life-affirming? Does it reflect male awe of fertility and indicate an endorsement of matriarchy? What makes The Big Lebowski more subversive, however, than Raising Arizona is that the female character is a single mother who does not want a father for her child and has no need for a male provider. Maude is a fundamentally anti-patriarchal cult heroine. She should, therefore, be celebrated by feminist dudettes or dudes everywhere.

It is Maude who sheds light on the real state of the Big Lebowski’s wealth and power. She explains to the Dude that her father does not have money in his own right and that her mother was the wealthy one. We also learn that Lebowski’s role in the company is actually inconsequential. He helps oversee the charities and is given “a reasonable allowance” by Maude. The old man was, moreover, not a great professional success in the past. “We did let him run one of the companies briefly but he didn’t do very well at it,” his daughter explains. The Dude responds with initial wonder but Maude convinces him that this is the case: “I know how he likes to present himself. Father’s weakness is vanity, hence the slut.” Maude not only helps The Dude get a handle on the schemes surrounding him but she also punctures masculine vanity and shines a light on the pretensions of fathers. Personified by Maude’s father, patriarchy is shown to be fraudulent in the Big Lebowski. The dominant placing of Dude’s iconic poster of Nixon in his home, of course, serves as a knowing comment on fallen, deceitful fathers.

At the end of the movie, the cowboy narrator assures us, “I happen to know there’s a little Lebowski on the way.” The Coens’ zany Valentine to Californian eccentricity does not end in marriage or even cohabitation. This ending is amusingly intended as a satisfying resolution for both genders. It may not be romantic but both the hero and his “lady friend” get what they want: Maude is blessed with a little Lebowski and the Dude contentedly returns to his old life. The Big Lebowski simultaneously salutes the freedoms of unconventional men as well as female reproductive agency and power. Populated by mostly male characters, The Big Lebowski is, to some extent, a tale of male friendship. Nevertheless, the cult comedy should never be interpreted and celebrated as exclusively a guy’s film. The Big Lebowski offers an amusing, subversive portrait of masculinity and features an excellent comic performance by one of the most gifted actresses working today. What’s more, it suggests that the future is matriarchal.