Comedy – Page 17 – Bitch Flicks

Older Women Week: ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’: A Celebration of (Older) Women

This is a guest review by Amanda Morris.

Sassy and fearless storyteller, 82-year-old Ninny Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy), takes Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates) and viewers on a journey through a tableaux of Southern family and friendship in Fried Green Tomatoes. There’s a lot going on in this film worth talking about, from race and sexuality to class and masculinity. But let’s focus on how the film presents older women. Based on a Fanny Flagg original novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, the movie presents a vision of mature women who are survivors that guide their families and communities with compassion, stubbornness, and love.

Original trailer for Fried Green Tomatoes

Set in 1920s Alabama, Fried Green Tomatoes is a story about the healing power of stories, as much as it is about how Evelyn develops a friendship with Ninny that is forged from story. The primary characters are older women, with men taking supporting roles, which is an impressive reversal for any Hollywood film. The story within the story features the friendship and love between young Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker) and Idgie Threadgoode (Mary Stuart Masterson), Ninny’s family and friends from 50 years in the past. Ninny, Evelyn, Mama Threadgoode (Lois Smith), and Sipsey (Cicely Tyson) present four different views of older womanhood in this complex film that touches on many taboo subjects that older women aren’t usually permitted to grapple with on film. All four demonstrate the the kind of agency and decision-making prowess usually reserved for younger women and men.

“I’m too young to be old and I’m too old to be young,” Evelyn says to Ninny during one of their visits. Ninny asks a few pointed questions and then diagnoses Evelyn as going through menopause. This subject opens the door to a further conversation about Ninny’s son Albert, “the Lord’s greatest gift,” who died at 30. Mentioning child death and menopause in the same scene is unusual, not to mention the casual and straightforward way it is handled, without excess drama or emotion. Rather, these issues are presented as just a part of life, and Ninny’s wisdom is hard-earned and taken in stride, which helps the middle-aged Evelyn change her own attitude about feeling depressed and lost.

For Ninny, who remembers by the end of the film that the most important thing in life is “friends, best friends,” keeping friendships alive through story provides a pathway to both the fascinating past and the unknowable but exciting future. On her birthday, Ninny tells Evelyn not to fear death because even though she is “at the jumping off place,” she isn’t scared at all. Ninny’s spirit is energetic and intoxicating as she regales Evelyn (and us) with the life and times of Idgie and Ruth, including how Idgie was accused of murdering Ruth’s husband, Frank Bennett (Nick Searcy). Ninny’s frank mode of speaking, indomitable spirit, and ability to treat everything as an adventure, even while sampling the fried green tomatoes that Evelyn brings for her birthday, sets this character apart from other representations of older women on screen. In fact, Ninny is so different from our expectations of an 80-something woman that the disconnect between Ninny and the nursing home where she lives becomes starkly apparent when Evelyn discovers that Ninny really is meant to stay in this dying, sad place for good.

In American society and in Hollywood films, too often women are invisible, much less a force to be reckoned with. Older women in particular are meant to be hidden away, not viewed as holders of wisdom or desired as sexual beings or feared as people who could create change or cause damage. And when women ARE a force in film, there tend to be dire consequences for demonstrating independence and strength. This is not the case in Fried Green Tomatoes. Ninny and Evelyn are older female characters who not only carry the film with their stories but also demonstrate real strength and determination in the face of denial, obstinacy, and youthful swagger. Consider one of my favorite scenes in the final third of the film where Evelyn stands up to two young women over a parking lot slight:

Evelyn discovers her inner Towanda

Who else hasn’t wanted to react this way when cut off in a parking lot or in traffic? Evelyn’s action is cathartic for older female viewers as we imagine ourselves in her seat, embracing our inner Towandas right alongside her. She is accessible because she is imperfect, emotionally complex, and full of vigor. As a character, Evelyn is not just a reflection of Southern middle-aged womanhood; she is a modern Everywoman and we cheer for her every discovery and improvement that she makes for her own benefit, such as her decision to invite Ninny to live with her and Ed (Gailard Sartain), who is less than thrilled with the idea.

When Evelyn states, “Don’t you ever say never to me,” this is a direct reflection of Ruth’s statement when she and Idgie have to jump from the train. The scenes in this film intertwine and interconnect in ways that help viewers see older women as positive, strong, and wise role models. Even the tertiary but important characters of Mama Threadgoode and Sipsey show strength and determination when it isn’t popular or socially acceptable to do so.

The scene where Sipsey stands up to Frank Bennett and says, “I ain’t scared of you,” sets the stage for her later accidental murder of the man when he tries to abscond with his and Ruth’s infant son from the Cafe.

Cicely Tyson as Sipsey

While murder is decidedly against the law, audiences are meant to sympathize with this older Southern black woman who is standing up to white male domination.

As for Mama Threadgoode (Smith), she also stands up to societal expectations when she invites Ruth to stay for the summer as a way to reach Idgie. She says to Ruth after Idgie, who appears indifferent to Ruth’s presence, walks away, “Oh, it’s got to work. Somebody’s got to help her and I can’t.” The expectation is that mothers can fix their children’s problems, and Mama Threadgoode reverses that expectation by reaching outside for help.

Nominated for two Oscars (Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published), Fried Green Tomatoes weaves a moving picture of older women that is uplifting even as this vision borders on the sentimental. Gentle strength is the beating heart of this story, embodied by the older female characters who weave powerful stories that are strong enough to heal even the toughest cynic among us.

Amanda Morris, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of multiethnic rhetorics at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, and when she’s not writing or wrangling students, she loves shark fishing, gardening, and cooking with her man.

Older Women Week: You Don’t Own Me: ‘The First Wives Club’ and Feminism

Movie poster for The First Wives Club

This guest post by Mia Steinle previously appeared at Canonball and is cross-posted with permission.

In the late nineties, as I was entering early teenagerdom and as a group of marketers was inventing the term “tween,” my favorite movie was about a group of middle-aged divorcees waging war on their self-centered ex-husbands. The First Wives Club had come out in 1996, and it’s possible — nay, likely — that my parents rented it from our local Blockbuster shortly thereafter, but it wasn’t until some years later, at the dawn of a new millennium, that I was treated to this quintessentially 90s nugget of female empowerment, over and over again on my friend’s VCR.

Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, and Bette Midler in The First Wives Club

We admired Bette Midler as ballsy, street-smart Brenda, who is incensed that her ex-husband Morty has the gall to bring his girlfriend (Sarah Jessica Parker) to their son’s bar mitzvah. We laughed at Goldie Hawn as Elise, a habitually drunk, botoxed actress, whose producer ex-husband has just taken up with an even younger actress (Elizabeth Berkeley, whose performance makes SJP look like a comedic genius). And, while the other ladies are fun and glamorous, I think we were most touched by the neurotic realism of Diane Keaton as Annie, an anxious, eager-to-please, but ready-to-burst housewife whose husband (played by the Rev. Eric Camden, aka Stephen Collins) leaves her for their therapist.

After the suicide of a mutual friend — a woman who gave the best years of her life, and her self-esteem, to a man who then left her for a younger woman — the ladies band together to get back at their exes. As Annie explains, it’s a matter of justice; they made life easy for their ex-husbands for years, only to be discarded in middle-age — that time of life when society tries to force women into invisibility: sexually, romantically and professionally.

The ladies set to work destroying their exes, using a combination of cunning and, perhaps most unconventionally, financial savvy. Their greatest successes aren’t born of cat fights with second wives, but of their ability to read tax returns (Morty cheated on his), rig auctions (Annie uses her winnings to buy ownership of her ex-husband’s advertising firm) and do simple arithmetic (turns out Elise’s ex-husband’s new girlfriend is only 16). And their accomplices, on the surface, are the types of characters who don’t usually get to be clever, the types of characters we’re supposed to laugh at. But Maggie Smith as a wealthy socialite, Jennifer Dundas as Annie’s lesbian and feminist daughter and Bronson Pinchot as an interior decorator of vague foreign origin, are just as smart and savvy as the first wives. Not being male, not being young and not being straight aren’t liabilities for these characters.

As a 12-year-old, my life bore little resemblance to theirs, but The First Wives Club gave me one of my first, delicious glimpses into womanhood — a womanhood that includes sassy retorts and getting drunk at lunch and hanging out with your best friends (and also with Bronson Pinchot and Gloria Steinem). It’s a version of womanhood where we know that Maggie Smith, no matter how old, is always cooler than Sarah Jessica Parker. Where finding out that your daughter is a lesbian is no big thing. (“Lesbians are great nowadays!” Annie remarks after hearing the news.) Where female empowerment isn’t just a nebulous buzzword, but something you achieve and celebrate.

When I sat down this week to watch the movie with fellow Canonball editor Lindsay (who had never seen it before — by contrast, our contributor James owns two copies), I wondered how it had weathered the 15 years since its release. But, really, aside from a few instances of characters exclaiming, “It’s the nineties!” the movie holds up surprisingly well. In a way, it’s almost more progressive than a lot of today’s female-led comedies. Spoiler: while we’re left to assume that Brenda and Morty are going to get back together, neither attention-seeking Elise nor insecure Annie take back their ex-husbands. As Annie explains:

He wants to come home again and he feels emotionally ready to recommit to an equitable and caring relationship. I told him to drop dead.

Because at its core, The First Wives Club isn’t a story about romance or marriage. It’s a story about finding the bravery to stand up for yourself — especially when “yourself” is a woman, and not the young, pretty kind either. And seeing Keaton’s Annie transform from the nervous wreck that I so deeply identify with, to the kind of woman who can tell the dad from 7th Heaven to drop dead, is like a breath of fresh air.

Mia Steinle is a journalist living in Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared in Huffington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, and POLITICO, among others.

Older Women Week: ‘The First Wives Club’: "Don’t Get Mad. Get Everything."

Film poster for The First Wives Club

This is a guest post by Jen Thorpe.

The First Wives Club is the story of four women who became friends with each other when they were in college. After graduation, the friends ended up drifting apart. This is a situation that happens to a lot of women. Life gets in the way.

People get married, have children, and (hopefully) find “real jobs.” It becomes increasingly difficult to find the time (or the energy) to socialize with friends who are no longer a part of our day-to-day lives. When you are in your 20s, you truly believe that you will be best friends forever. You intend to stay connected. Years later, you wonder whatever happened to those friends (whom you haven’t heard from in years).

In the movie, three of the friends reunite after learning that the fourth friend, Cynthia Swann Griffin (played by Stockard Channing) died by suicide after her husband divorced her. The surviving friends are now in their mid-forties. Each one is either divorced or is going through the process of divorce.

The movie does a good job of picking up on some of the thoughts that women who are 40 or over struggle with. Elise Elliot (played by Goldie Hawn) is overly concerned about aging. There is a scene where she begs her plastic surgeon to make her lips fuller (again). He resists, reminding her of all the plastic surgery she has already undergone and pointing out that she is beautiful.

Elise looking for wrinkles at the plastic surgeon’s office

Not every woman over 40 is going to turn to plastic surgery as a “fountain of youth.” Elise chose it because she is an actress who is having difficulty finding work. Suddenly (or so it seems to Elise) she is only being offered the role of “the mother.” For her, aging essentially means that she will no longer have a career. Elise is the perfect example of what really does happen to actresses once they turn 40.

She is a more extreme example of what many women (who are not actresses) feel when their hair starts turning gray and they begin to get “crow’s feet.” The fear is that these very natural parts of aging mean that the woman is no longer desirable, or sexy, or beautiful. There are women who are absolutely terrified of “getting old” because they worry that no one will want them.

Unfortunately, this fear is not an unfounded one. Elise’s husband, Bill Atchison (played by Victor Garber) is divorcing her and has started dating a woman who is much younger than than Elise. Tension builds when Elise is asked to play the role of “the mother” in a script where Bill’s new lover will play the lead role of the daughter.

A similar thing happened to Brenda Cushman (played by Bette Midler). She got married to Morton “Morty” Cushman when they were young, ran the cash register in his electronics stores, and had a son with him. Now, Brenda is 45 and Morty has left her and gotten into a serious relationship with Shelly Stewart (played by Sarah Jessica Parker). Brenda and Morty’s fifteen-year-old son has trouble coping with this situation.

Brenda laments to her friends that everything with she and Morty was just fine. Then, on their 20th wedding anniversary, Morty began having what Brenda calls a mid-life crisis. In short, he decides that she isn’t fun anymore and is holding him back. He replaces her with a thinner, younger, blond woman who is about half her age.

“Who’s supposed to wear that? Some anorexic teenager?”

There is a scene where Brenda is walking past a department store with a friend. She stops to look at a tiny black dress in the window. “Who’s supposed to wear that?” she rhetorically asks her friend, “Some anorexic teenager? Some fetus?” Her rant continues with her intent to lead a protest by never buying any more clothing until the designers “come to their senses.”

Her words are something I can personally relate to. I recently turned 40, and I am no longer the “anorexic teenager” that I was in high school. I’ve gained some weight since then. This is normal. We get older, our metabolisms slow down, and weight loss becomes more difficult. I, too, wonder when the designers will “come to their senses” and produce clothing that adult, women can actually fit into!

Annie Paradis (played by Diane Keaton) has a slightly different story. She isn’t actually divorced yet. She and her husband Aaron Paradis (played by Stephen Collins) are separated. They had been going to couple’s therapy but now are each seeing a therapist individually. Annie truly believes that they are in the process of working things out and getting back together.

Her daughter, Chris Paradis (played by Jennifer Dundas) describes her mother as a “doormat.” Chris is a college student and old enough to see that her father isn’t treating her mother very well. She is frustrated that her mom allows it. Unlike Brenda’s son, Chris doesn’t want her parents to get back together.

There is a scene where Annie is going on (what she believes) is a date with Aaron. She is convinced that he is going to tell her that he wants to get back together. Instead, after they have become intimate in his hotel room, he announces that he wants a divorce. This completely destroys Annie.

She is a woman who, like many women, has issues with self-esteem. After a lifetime of suppressing her anger, and striving to always be “nice,” Annie finally lets out her feelings in a loud, sobbing, messy way. At the same time, the phrase she uses most often during this catharsis is “I’m sorry.”

Annie screaming “I’m sorry!!!”

Annie, Brenda, and Elise form the “First Wives Club” and decide that they want to find a way to take revenge upon their husbands. The main plot of the movie focuses on the many ways the women do exactly that. Their ex-husbands find themselves losing favorite possessions, losing money, and (potentially) losing their jobs. Women who are going through a divorce may want to watch this movie simply to live vicariously through it. What happens is overblown and unlikely to happen in the real lives of most women.

Later, the women start to want more than revenge. They decide to turn their efforts toward helping other divorced women. Again, this requires their ex-husbands, whom they have now managed to blackmail, to spend more money. To me, this part of the plot felt a bit forced and strange. The change from “let’s get ’em” to “let’s open a charity” was rather abrupt.

The First Wives Club was released in 1996, a time when almost no one carried a cell phone. As such, the majority of phone calls that take place in the movie are done on land-line phones with clunky receivers. There is a scene where Brenda goes out to dinner by herself. She doesn’t spend the meal fiddling with her cell phone – and neither do any of the other people in the restaurant. Times have changed since the late 1990’s (and realizing this makes me feel “old”).

Jen Thorpe is a freelance writer, podcaster, and gamer. She is the cofounder of the No Market website (nomarket.org) and writes for it frequently on a wide variety of topics and subjects. You can keep up with everything she does by following her @queenofhaiku.

Older Women Week: Aging and Existential Crisis in ‘3rd Rock from the Sun’

Poster for 3rd Rock from the Sun

This is a guest post by Jenny Lapekas.

3rd Rock from the Sun follows the story of four aliens sent to earth in human form to study the ways of humans. Their mission was originally supposed to last only one day, but the High Commander, Dick Solomon (the delightful John Lithgow) extends it to six hilarious seasons filled with the flamboyant comedy and intelligent, pithy dialogue we rarely see or expect anymore in the American sitcom. What the crew doesn’t anticipate are both the joys and inconveniences of their human bodies: emotions, sexuality and relationships. Dick immediately falls for his office mate at Pendleton University, Dr. Mary Albright (Jane Curtin), who finds him pompous, arrogant and strange beyond belief. Although Dick mocks Mary’s thesis, wrecks her car and even breaks up with her to date the university’s new English professor, Mary comes to love Dick and can never keep away from him for too long. Harry (French Stewart), the “Transmitter,” is the clueless brother, Sally (Kristen Johnston), “Security Officer,” is the seductive but unrefined sister, and Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), “Information Officer,” is the eldest of the crew, but confined to an adolescent earth body. Throughout the series’ run, Jane Curtin was in her 50s, and the show’s treatment of her age reflects this.

Upon their arrival, the aliens count their fingers and toes in their Rambler.

Mary is a powerful presence in the series; she’s an attractive, articulate college professor with a Ph.D. and the heart of Dick Solomon, the High Commander in his wacky group of interplanetary adventurers. While Harry is undoubtedly a queer figure in his role as the buffoon within the somehow functional family unit, and Nina, Mary’s assistant, arguably remains stuck in her typecast role as the “sassy, black woman,” Mary’s position as an older woman propels her through the series as ironically naive, desperate for acceptance from a band of outsiders, and hopelessly in love with Dick. Although Mary is initially disliked by Dick’s family, Sally, Harry and Tommy warm up to her after she proves that her earnest sensibilities compliment Dick’s rashness, exuberance and incessant need for the spotlight. While Dick’s antics are endearing, certainly, Mary’s drive for stability is an unmistakable dynamic in the pair’s relationship, especially while in the company of Dick’s family.

Mary goes camping with the group, and Sally reluctantly bonds with Mary when, applying ointment to a blister on Sally’s foot, Mary shows her a scar on her chin, the result of a field hockey scuffle with a girl when she was younger. Mary claims, “I dropped my stick and opened her up like a melon,” and an impressed Sally responds, “Albright, you’re pretty tough…for a prissy little bookworm.” As the Security Officer of the mission, Sally relates to Mary through the theme of violence. This pleasant moment appears as the result of Mary’s wisdom and life experiences, which are, in this case, unexpected since Mary is, after all, only a “bookworm” in the eyes of Dick’s family. Because Sally is young and beautiful, and she arrives to earth gendered as a male who is bitter about his anatomy and not romantically attracted to men initially, she enters the scene with male privilege and feels entitled to dismiss Mary as a mere distraction for Dick, who should be focusing on the mission; however, we come to find out that Mary is the mission. Because Sally stands out as an obvious feminist character–an Amazonian warrior–it’s relatively easy for viewers to pass over Mary as the middle-aged, level-headed academic in favor of the Solomons’ shenanigans. While Sally is conflicted about being “the woman” once they land, Mary has already spent many years as an earth woman, which means that her past indiscretions are unearthed.

Throughout the show’s run, Mary is the object of ridicule by Dick’s family for her age and her alleged lascivious past. Her mother even tells Dick that she had to crush birth control pills and sneak them in Mary’s cereal every morning because Mary was so promiscuous as a teenager. However, Mary quickly becomes the unofficial matriarch of the Solomon posse as Sally is much too militant and oblivious to the ways of earth to practice responsibility and forethought, aside from cooking and cleaning for her family–her “duties” as a woman. Sally can certainly act the part, but it’s always fleeting and disingenuous. Not quite as stubborn as Dick and not nearly as clueless as Harry, Sally’s downfall is her conflicted approach to womanhood, which actually serves to reframe the face of femininity and its gendered expectations on the show; Sally intermittently embraces and rejects the roles she’s expected to take on as “the woman” of the mission while Mary welcomes all facets of womanhood, including her sexual exploits.

Although Mary is immediately drawn to Dick’s zany genius, she finds him an obnoxious office mate.

When Dick convinces Sally to lose her virginity in season two, he explains, “Dr. Albright dove right in, and it was her first time.” At this, a nearby Tommy bursts out in incredulous laughter; the implication is not only that Mary has had many suitors in her lifetime, but that she’s apparently been on earth a very long time. Later, Mary tells Dick, “When I was a young professor on the fast track, there were things that I did.” When Dick asks what those things were, Mary admits, “The Dean.” While Mary seems mildly regretful, she readily offers this information, and Dick refrains from judging her. Mary, then, serves to guide Sally’s path as a woman while on this planet. Mary assures the long-legged alien that being a virgin is a personal choice that is no one’s business but her own. Because sexuality and old age seem contradictory to the aliens, it seems comically unnatural to Dick’s family that Mary is or was ever the object of sexual arousal.

Because Mary is teased for her old age, especially since she’s no longer viewed as the sexual being she was once known as, it’s at the forefront of particular episodes. In season three, Dick hounds a photographer who once took “tasteful, artistic” nude photos of Mary when she was younger, and he comes to terms with them only after he begins shredding them. He discovers that the shots are beautiful and capture how beautiful Mary was, but he also realizes that she’s still sexually appealing because he loves her; he tells her that she has aged “like a fine wine.” What’s striking about this resolution is that Dick must see the photographs to behold and master this young image of his lover in order to feel secure in his position as her boyfriend. When Mary sees the photos, she comments that she was a “hottie.”

Ironically, Mary’s love for wine renders her immune to the poison placed in her drink by alien-hunters.

While Mary’s love for indulging in all of life’s pleasures is a recurring source of amusement on the show, Mary never denies that she enjoys sex and booze. She even gets drunk with Dick while playing a board game and admits to sleeping with Dick’s nemesis, Dr. Strudwick, a conversation the anthropology professor can’t even recall the following morning. Despite her earth antics, mild by comparison, Mary is the unequivocal voice of reason in a show that features the traditional formula of three kooky men and the woman who spends her time proving that she’s as worthy as they are, despite her status as an empowered woman. Mary is our surrogate in an environment that has little to no handling on the Solomons. We then need Mary in order to navigate our way through the misinformed and sometimes deranged misadventures of the crew.

Mary is the only earthling who finds out that the Solomons are aliens, and Dick even points out their home planet for her.

When the teenage Tommy decides that he’s fed up with high school girls, he begins to pursue Mary, and even requests that she call him the more sophisticated “Tom.” Tommy spends time with Mary because he values her knowledge and wisdom as an older woman, but he eventually caves to Dick’s demands that he back off the woman Dick is “not in love with.” In this case, we see a reversal and a challenging of what we know to be the standard fantasy of most men: to be with young girls. However, Tommy is the crew’s Information Officer, and he seeks earth women who can offer just that: knowledge and maturity. Tommy is a feminist character in his conscious decision to reject vacant, naive beauty in favor of substance. Because Tommy is indeed the oldest alien, he recognizes the value in dating Mary, even if she doesn’t realize the two are dating. In this way, Mary is prized as an older woman rather than demeaned as one.

Tommy and Dick stand off outside Mary’s front door. Tommy says, “For the first time on this planet, I’ve met a woman who appreciates me for what I think.”

Without the balanced mix of Mary’s centered cool and her willingness to participate in the farcical plots of 3rd Rock, we have no anchor securing our spot somewhere between the logical and the absurd. Mary acts as a catalyst for progress and learning within the aliens’ lives, particularly that of Dick, who is irrevocably enlightened by knowing her. It’s because of Mary’s endless array of neuroses–abandonment issues, childhood obesity, dysfunctional family relationships–and codependent relationship with Dick that we come to adore the aliens and also recognize that we may be the aliens instead. Jane Curtin also refuses to be overshadowed by the eccentric comedic presence of John Lithgow, which is no small feat.

When their mission is canceled, Dick tells Mary that she’ll remember him as “a feeling.”

Although Dick is an alien, and therefore a genius and a master of physics, Mary gives Dick a lesson in feelings during the group’s mission, a subject that was thoroughly foreign to him. The High Commander’s decision to extend the mission is a direct result of Mary’s ability to incite human emotion in an otherwise clinical, dismissive Dick–to teach him how to be human. In other words, we can thank Mary Albright for six seasons of intergalactic comedy gold from writers Bonnie and Terry Turner. Shortly after arriving, Dick tells Mary, “I want very much to feel, and I want even more to be felt, and I mean that from the heart of my bottom.”

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.

Top Ten Reasons Why I Am Thankful for Lake Bell’s ‘In a World’

Movie poster for In a World …

This is a guest post by Molly McCaffrey.

1) Number one and most important of all, I’m thankful this movie was written and directed by a woman and that it’s a story about a strong, smart, interesting woman.

Director and screenwriter Lake Bell at the Sundance Film Festival

I am incredibly thankful about that.

2) I’m thankful this movie stars an actress who doesn’t look like every other Hollywood actress. Yes, Bell is beautiful, but she also doesn’t have the button nose, full lips, perfect posture, and blond hair that has become so annoyingly ubiquitous among our female movie stars.

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) sing their guts out in In a World …

And neither do her co-stars…

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Cher (Tig Notaro) watch Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) record a voice-over.

(You also gotta love a movie that has both Tig Notaro and Geena Davis.)

3) On a related note, I’m thankful Bell’s protagonist, Carol Solomon, doesn’t always act like a leading lady—she shuffles, lurches, and acts generally spazzy. She doesn’t always look glamorous either—she doesn’t always wear makeup or look perfectly primped and often wears regular-people clothes (sweatpants, thermal underwear, t-shirts, football jerseys, overalls, ill-fitting dresses, etc.)—just like the rest of us.

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) hatch plans to take over the voice-over industry.

At the same time, I’m glad Carol looks attractive when she wants to without looking trashy or showing off all the goods.

4) I’m also thankful that several men are attracted to Carol even though she doesn’t know how to dress or stand up straight (and that the men who are drawn to her are attractive but not perfect either).

Carol Solomon’s love interest, Louis (Demetri Martin)

5) I love, too, that this film shows an intelligent, driven, attractive young female protagonist in a relationship, but it isn’t what defines her. Let me say that again: Thank God her relationship doesn’t define her!

I was equally thrilled that Carol had casual sex with some random guy she met at a party and celebrated it. And that she didn’t end up regretting her actions or have something bad happen to her as a result. In this movie, sex was just part of life—no big deal—much like it is in real life.

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) karaoke the night away in In a World …

6) I was also head over heels over the fact that the two sisters—Carol and Dani—were so close and leaned on each other for everything.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) and her sister, Dani (Michaela Watkins)

I was glad, as well, that the person who had an “affair” in this movie was a woman (rather than a man) and that she didn’t actually go all the way.

7) I really appreciate, too, that this movie shows a young person living at home with a parent and that she isn’t doing so because she’s a lazy, lost, unmotivated slacker.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) and her father (Fred Melamed) argue about her career.

And I was truly blown away by the film’s characterization of Carol’s family—a real family having down-to-earth, regular problems.

No, nobody is dying of cancer, nobody is mentally ill or disabled, nobody is in prison, nobody is an alcoholic. The characters in this movie are just average people with average problems—like jealousy, resentment, miscommunication, and selfishness.

I am very grateful about that.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) and her father (Fred Melamed) on the way to an industry party.

8) I’m thrilled about several things relating to Carol’s job…

I’m relieved Carol works in a non-glamorous industry that we don’t usually see featured in movies—the voice-over industry.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) records a voice-over.

I love, too, that she cares so much about her work even though it doesn’t pay the bills.

And I’m glad that the film shows her having some success in that field without totally dominating it a la every other movie ever made (Erin Brockovich, Jerry Maguire, The Devil Wears Prada, Working Girl, etc., etc.).

9) I’m downright ecstatic about the fact that Carol didn’t have to trip or fall to make us laugh, avoiding the ridiculous formulas that often dominate movies about women.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) surrounded by her work notes in her bedroom at her father’s house.

Thank you for that, Lake Bell!

Tangentially, it was also awesome that Carol was irritated by stupid people doing stupid things and didn’t apologize for that.

10) And last but not least, I’m incredibly thankful this movie made me laugh and feel and, for God’s sake, think.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell)

If only all movies did the same.

Molly McCaffrey is the author of the short story collection How to Survive Graduate School & Other Disasters, the co-editor of Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There, and the founder of I Will Not Diet, a blog devoted to healthy living and body acceptance. She has worked with Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple and received her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Currently she teaches at Western Kentucky University and designs books for Steel Toe Books. She is at work on her first memoir, You Belong to Us, which tells the story of McCaffrey meeting her biological family.

‘Elizabethtown’ After the Manic Pixie Dream Girl

DVD cover for Elizabethtown

This is a guest review by Amanda Civitello.

When she was ten, my little sister pronounced herself a “Young Feminist in Training” and authored an editorial for a school newspaper entitled, “Sarah Palin: Feminist? No!” I was surprised, then, when she said last week that she wanted to watch Elizabethtown for our girls’ movie night. “Really?” I asked. “The film that launched the Manic Pixie Dream Girl?” She shrugged, and, as she predicted, I loved it. I loved it for what it is: a fun little moralistic summer movie with a good soundtrack and an interesting – if somewhat farfetched – premise, as well as an incredibly moving final fifteen minutes. The story of a failed shoe designer whose plans for suicide in the wake of his “fiasco” are foiled by his father’s premature death, writer/director Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown stars Orlando Bloom as Drew, the brooding architect of a catastrophic business failure, and Kirsten Dunst as Claire, the woman who descends from the sky – practically literally; she’s a flight attendant – to rescue him from his melancholy with an overabundance of quirky good cheer. But rather than find it a guilty pleasure, something I liked in spite of the inadequacies and disappointments of its manic pixie of a female lead character, I found that Claire didn’t really merit the MPDG moniker at all.

From its first appearance, in a review of Elizabethtown by film critic Nathan Rabin, the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” seemed preternaturally possessed of staying power. It had two things going for it: a catchy name and truth. There are too many films in which a female lead seems to exist solely to improve the outlook of the male lead with a winning combination of pep, quirkiness, and vintage clothing. Unsurprisingly, it’s very easy to find a plethora of examples of characters fitting this trope.

Kirsten Dunst (Claire) and Orlando Bloom (Drew) in Elizabethtown. This is just before Drew tells Claire she needn’t make jokes to be likeable.

The idea of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl was, at the beginning, a critique of those films that view women through an unabashedly male gaze, in which the viewer identifies primarily with the leading man and is therefore predisposed to regarding the leading lady as an extension of the man. (Elizabethtown makes Drew the identifiable character from the first few moments, which consist of voiceovers from Orlando Bloom. We’re definitely supposed to watch Claire, not stand in her shoes.) In many cases – as in the case of Elizabethtown, as Nathan Rabin so rightly argued – the female character does serve to remind the male of his zest for life, and that’s all she seems to do. The MPDG was meant to describe a phenomenon of the male gaze as evident in scripts written by men and films made by men, as Rabin explicitly stated: “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” At its inception, therefore, the MPDG was all about critiquing men. In recent years, however, as writers have pointed out, the MPDG label has expanded to become more broad. It’s often used to describe a kind of woman, rather than how she is written/seen by a man, and to incorporate characters and films – like Annie Hall – without good reason, and has actually been used to describe real women. It’s even become shorthand for one real woman in particular: Zooey Deschanel. It’s ridiculously simplistic and extraordinarily misogynistic to reduce a real woman to a trope.

For me, then, the MPDG label, while it started out as a catchy, if somewhat simplisti, truthism, turned problematic and even pejorative in recent years. (As a side note, because it isn’t really germane to this post: using the word “manic” is troubling as well. After all, “manic” is a weighty word, associated as it is with bipolar disorder. There are other, but less memorable, words that could better describe the kind of peppy, preternatural cheerfulness that hangs about these characters. My discomfort with the use of “manic” is compounded when the character demonstrates depressive tendencies, as does Claire in Elizabethtown. When the term is applied to real people with real conditions it’s even more troubling, as it is here to Edith Bouvier Beale, who suffered from a stress-related condition with tragic consequences.) It was, therefore, with great relief that I read the many articles this past spring/summer heralding the demise of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. You don’t need me to summarize them, so check out these posts from Jezebel and xojane, and let’s get back to Elizabethtown, because now that we have poked holes in the trope itself, and others have concurred or found other reasons to get rid of it, I think the film that launched the MPDG deserves a second look.

“Do you ever just think, ‘I’m fooling everybody?'” — Claire

Elizabethtown is an interesting little indie-esque effort from Cameron Crowe. By and large, it succumbs far too readily to mistakes that detract from the enjoyment of the film. The great moments – and there are two – manage to redeem it in my estimation. The first is a long conversation between Drew and Claire, in which Bloom and Dunst really manage to capture the joy of recognizing oneself in someone else, and in which Crowe effectively contrasts their discussion – alternately probing and amusingly shallow – with the ordinary tasks we all do while on the phone. The second sequence is Drew’s cross-country road trip with his father’s ashes, following a map that Claire has (mostly unbelievably) made for him. The stops on Claire’s map are all places of historic, national, or cultural importance. Drew scatters some of his father’s ashes in the waters of the Mississippi and along a stretch of flat American highway surrounded by farmland. He visits the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel and Earnestine and Hazel’s Bar & Grill in Tennessee. It’s a reminder of all the things worth seeing and visiting in this country (and, like lots of other reviewers, has made me totally game for a road trip). Drew’s trip is juxtaposed with memories of his childhood, and we see little Drew dancing and roadtripping with his dad, and it’s this connection – the idea that someone’s dad can be to him as great a man as Martin Luther King, Jr. – that is really compelling. But these effective and moving scenes are hampered by the many, many scenes that don’t work, most notably Drew’s mother Hollie’s (Susan Sarandon) big moment at her husband’s memorial. That, unfortunately, is the victim of poor editing: the first part of her scene is a comedy routine detailing all the things she’s tried to learn since her husband’s death, and at one point, borders on the ridiculously crass (it is a memorial service, after all). The second part, the part that should have stood mostly on its own, with only a few words of introduction, is a moving little tap dance she performs to their favorite song. Like the road trip that follows, it’s a quiet, personal moment that’s deeply rooted in the little things that give life meaning.

With regard to its female characters, Elizabethtown has far more issues. Of the three female characters – Claire, Drew’s sister Heather, and their mother, Hollie – each is the victim of poor writing. The characterization of Heather in particular is downright egregious: it seems that her only personality trait is a kind of modern-day hysteria. She’s a woman who begs her brother to “handle everything” with regard to their father’s death because he’s the only one capable of it, who watches her mother flit from activity to activity in a frantic display of unmoored grief, and occasionally widens her eyes and throws up her hands and shrieks. While deep, raw grief is to be expected, as a grown woman with a kid, Heather is the caricature of the stereotypical woman who just can’t deal with it, because she’s just too darn emotional.

Drew and Claire

Claire, on the other hand, is at least compelling in spite of her faults. She’s interesting, and she has an admittedly underdeveloped back story. She’s a self-described “helper” and a “substitute person.” She invents trips to Hawaii and waxes on about boyfriends that don’t exist. She is, at her heart, immersed in much the same pursuit of happiness as Drew. She has her own struggles which we grasp only tenuously. The problem with Elizabethtown is that it doesn’t explore that complexity nearly enough – but not that it doesn’t exist in the first place. Claire isn’t a vacuously vapid MPDG; she has beginnings of a complex characterization that the writer only hints at, but doesn’t seem to think is worth developing. There were opportunities to do so: Why doesn’t the conversation about Claire’s unnecessary jokes continue? Why don’t we get to see an answer to Drew’s confrontation about the faux-boyfriend? Why, when we know as well as Drew that she has something slightly darker lurking beneath the quirky veneer, do we not get to see it? In my book, that’s a bit worse than creating a one-note plot device of a character.

So: did Claire deserve to be the original Manic Pixie Dream Girl? I don’t think so. I think it was perhaps a fair assessment upon a single viewing. But tucking her neatly into the MPDG box denies vital aspects of Claire’s character. True, we don’t know much about her ambition or life apart from Drew. That’s absolutely a failing on Cameron Crowe’s part as screenwriter. And for part of the film, Claire certainly does fill that role for Drew. She’s there to answer the phone when he wants someone – anyone – to talk to, happy to sit on hold waiting for him while he bounces between his fuming ex-girlfriend and crying sister, neither of whom – credit where it’s due – particularly like being kept on hold. Claire is the placid one, patiently waiting her turn to work her magic, as Drew expects. What saves Elizabethtown is that Drew comes to recognize that his sort-of girlfriend is not an MPDG.

“I’m impossible to forget, but I’m hard to remember.” — Claire

When Drew says, “You don’t have to make a joke. I like you without the jokes,” he pinpoints Claire for what she is: a complex character hiding behind a cheerful façade. Midway through the movie, he realizes that he doesn’t need Claire to be anything but who she is. He calls her out for the jokes he previously found engaging and attractive and confronts her about her imaginary boyfriend Ben. It’s a shame that Elizabethtown doesn’t show us this new Claire. We’re presented with a glimpse of the real woman, and then she slips away. This most interesting shift, when Drew realizes that he doesn’t want an MPDG for a girlfriend anyway, is given the least amount of exploration, because the film almost immediately switches to the long closing sequence of Drew’s cross-country road trip, back to the overarching theme of grief.

Drew isn’t the only one to think this way. Claire’s theory of “substitute people” actively refutes the MPDG pigeonhole. In describing this theory – which basically sounds a whole lot like Manic Pixie(-ish) Dream People – Claire is asserting that she knows perfectly well the image she projects. The implication, of course, is that it’s nothing but an image. She knows just as well as Drew that what she’s saying is a convenient label, nothing more. She’s aware of it in much the same way as is Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, although Clementine is far more direct in her refutation of the MPDG label: “Too many guys think I’m a concept, or I complete them, or I’m gonna make them alive. But I’m just a fucked-up girl who’s lookin’ for my own peace of mind; don’t assign me yours.”

“You shouldn’t be a substitute for anybody.” — Drew

Elizabethtown’s major problem is that it makes a halfhearted attempt to be a love story, when really, it’d have done far better to focus on grief. It would have been a much more compelling movie, because the moments that shine are the ones which have Drew – sometimes with Claire – facing the full implications of what happened. Would we have read the film differently from the start if there’d been no sex scene, no agonizing introspection over whether or not they’re dating? I think so. And it would have been refreshing to see a movie featuring a male/female friendship that wasn’t aching to become more.

In the end, from the oversaturated colors to the overwhelming (but expectedly awesome) soundtrack and the entirely implausible narrative, Elizabethtown is a kind of fairy tale: the kind of story that sticks with you in spite of its tenuous grip on reality, the kind of confection that you enjoy even though it falls apart when you look too closely. Cameron Crowe would have been better to structure Elizabethtown like 500 Days of Summer. 500 Days of Summer works because of its nonlinear narrative and impressionistic array of short scenes. Where Elizabethtown explicates far too much, spelling out each character’s thought process and motivation, 500 Days of Summer allows for the audience to draw conclusions and make connections between scenes. When the story is written in such a way, when there’s no need to explain everything, the characters can be more spontaneous. They can have moments in which they do not conform to our expectations of them. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind works, in part, for the same reason. ESotSM and 500 Days of Summer are not passive films. They require far more thought from the audience than does a film like Elizabethtown, where all plotlines seem to find a neat little happy ending. They work precisely because they’re impressionistic, which is, at least in my opinion, the most effective way to treat a modern fairytale.

Amanda Civitello is a Chicago-based freelance writer and Northwestern grad with an interest in arts and literary criticism. She has contributed reviews of Rebecca, Sleepy Hollow, and Downton Abbey to Bitch Flicks. You can find her online at amandacivitello.com.

Am I the Only Feminist Who Didn’t Really Like ‘The Heat?’ Or Why I Want My Humor Intersectional

Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy in ‘The Heat’

Written by Megan Kearns.

I was extremely excited to see The Heat. Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, both of whom I love, headlining a comedy? As a huge fan of Bridesmaids, seeing self-proclaimed feminist Paul Feig direct another lady-centric comedy got me giddy with excitement. AND with Bullock and McCarthy??? Yes, please! I don’t care what anyone says, Sandra Bullock is a fantastic actor, even in shitty films. And McCarthy is hilarious.

I purposely saw it the weekend it opened to support women in film. Seeing films opening weekend sends a message to Hollywood which films matter to audiences. In this case, that female-centric films do sell, that they do matter.

Both FBI Special Agent Sarah Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) and Detective Shannon Mullins (Melissa McCarthy) excel at their jobs. Ashburn is in the FBI and while the men don’t respect her, she thinks they’re intimidated by her (which she’s probably right), she gets shit done. Mullins, a Boston cop, is feared by everyone at her precinct, including the chief of police. But she too gets shit done. Both women are top-notch at their jobs. And they clash when they first meet. Not because of catty bullshit pitting the women against one another, a common trope in way too many movies and TV shows. But because they both want to succeed at their jobs and they don’t want anyone getting in their ways.

But I have to be honest. I didn’t really like The Heat that much. After talking to quite a few feminists, I feel like the only feminist who didn’t love it.

I adore Bullock and McCarthy, and I loved seeing them on-screen together. They possessed an effortless chemistry. It was great seeing a film focusing on female friendship between two career-driven, successful women. And there were some funny parts. Don’t think that I didn’t laugh. I did. But for me, the movie suffered from weak dialogue and a weak plot. Can we finally please for-the-love-of-all-that-is-fucking-holy stop having debates as to whether or not women are funny?? Please??? To me this was a case of funny ladies in a not-so-funny movie.

What really tainted the movie for me was its preponderance of ableist, racist and transphobic humor. I was horrified when I saw these jokes continually occur one after another. Fuck that noise.

When we’re introduced to Mullins, she’s staking out drug dealing suspect Terrell Rojas. There’s something extremely bothersome in the first 15 minutes of the movie about a white cop driving after a black man running on foot set to upbeat music as if this is supposed to be funny. Then there are watermelon jokes (naturally). When Ashburn and Mullins run into Rojas later on, they end up holding him upside down by his feet over the railing of a fire escape. And then drop him. While the audience around me roared with laughter, I didn’t find it funny. At all. As Sarah Jackson said on Twitter, “celebrating police brutality and unfunny race jokes,” just isn’t funny.

No, no, no, just no

But the racism doesn’t stop there. While it’s great that there were people of color in the film, having a white woman, refer to a Latino character as Puss in Boots, alluding to the Antonio Banderas voiced character in Shrek (ugh, fuck no), undermines diversity with racism. Oh, but wait. I forgot it’s all okay because at one point in the film, Mullins says, “9 out of 10 guys I fuck are black.” Oh, the Lisa Lampanelli argument. You can do all sorts of racist shit and say horrific racist things but you CANNOT be a racist if you have sex with black men or have black friends. Riiiight.

Then there’s the extremely offensive transphobia. When Ashburn meets Mullins’ family, they ask her if she’s really a woman. When she tells them yes, they retort, “From the get-go? No operation?” and “How do you get such a close shave?” Oh ha ha ha, trans people are SO FUNNY. No, just no. Now I know people will say but Ashburn isn’t trans so it’s not a slight. Yes, it is most definitely a transphobic joke. Here the “joke” is that a woman looks masculine or androgynous. Her androgyny, her lack of conformity to stereotypical beauty norms automatically means she’s transgressing traditional gender roles, so that must make her transgender. Trans women and trans men are continually mocked, belittled and dehumanized in media and our society.

And there’s Mullins’ five-minute (supposedly humorous) tirade on the size of her boss’ balls. How his balls are little “girl balls.” That’s right, let’s insult a guy by insulting the size of his testicles. Only “real” men have balls. Wait no, only “real” men have big balls. Newsflash, masculinity isn’t tied to scrotum size. And trans men may not have balls at all. They’re still men.

Oh and we have to make fun of accents too. Hey, why not? Ashburn has a difficult time understanding Mullins’ brother saying the word “nark” because of his Boston accent. Oh accents are soooo funny!! Maybe I’m particularly annoyed by this because I live in Boston. And apparently all Bostonians have ties to crime, if I’ve learned anything from watching movies.

Then of course there’s DEA Agent Craig, aka The Albino. Did anyone else cringe at this?? God I hope so. Albinism is a disability. So now we’re making fun of people with disabilities for “looking like evil henchmen” and calling them “Snowcone??” Make it stop.

With all the offensive “jokes,” I was expecting fat-shaming jokes too. I loved that Melissa McCarthy’s weight was never an issue in the film. No jokes were made about her weight. Oh wait, I take that back. DEA Agent Craig tells her she looks “like the Campbell soup kid all grown up.” Really? We see Mullins as a sexually confident, assertive woman and we can’t get away without some fat-shaming snark? There is however an epic take-down of the horrors and toxicity of beauty culture in the form of Spanx. Yes, I’ve worn them, yes they are a demonic torture device. This was especially awesome considering the hideously disgusting fat-shaming vitriol Rex Reed spewed at McCarthy.

Screw you, Spanx!

But I have to say that while part of me is delighted to see different depictions of gender presentation, particularly non-stereotypical depictions of beauty (not every woman wants to wear dresses and lots of make-up), does Melissa McCarthy always have to be in slovenly clothes or ridiculous costumes in every movie I see her in?? She’s a beautiful woman. But it’s as if the films she’s in don’t believe that a plus-size woman can be. Why can’t we see a plus-size woman looking different? Or for that matter, why can’t we see more women of all sizes on-screen??

I did love Bullock and McCarthy’s camaraderie and watching their friendship unfold. And it’s fantastic to see two women over the age of 40 headlining a blockbuster movie. Especially when Hollywood abhors aging women and suffers from massive amounts of ageism. And you could tell they had a fucking blast making this movie. It was also awesome to not have a romance in the film, an aspect that delighted Feig as well. While there were flirtations, no romance upstaged the film. The ladies’ sisterhood took center stage.

Part of me was highly annoyed the film didn’t transcend the trappings of a buddy-cop comedy. Although Monika Bartyzel at Girls On Film asserts that critics have missed the point as The Heat breaks new ground by not being groundbreaking. And I get what she’s saying. But there’s something to be said for just showing women in film rather than having to analyze patriarchal oppressions.

While there’s very little commentary on gender and sexism, and an ass load of misogyny spewed by DEA Agent Craig — Sidebar, is that why it’s okay to make fun of his disability, because he’s a douchebag?? No, no, no — Ashburn and Mullins kind of “blow off misogynistic bullshit.” But thankfully there’s a very brief and subtle commentary on sexism in the workplace amidst a conversation between Ashburn and Mullins at a bar about how hard it is to be a woman in this line of work.

But did it have to follow in the shadow of buddy-cop movies by also containing transphobic, ableist and racist jokes? Couldn’t it have done without that??

Sadly I wasn’t a huge fan of ‎The Heat. I wish I had been. But I just couldn’t get past the extremely problematic humor. Sigh. I wish it hadn’t been so racist, ableist or transphobic. I wanted to like this, especially because it was written by Katie Dippold, a writer and producer of my fave feminist TV show Parks and Rec. But feminism isn’t just about gender equality and putting more women in film. Although that’s a huge start. It’s about combating all forms of institutional discrimination and oppression. And not perpetuating prejudice.

If only ‘The Heat’ could have been as awesome as these ladies.

Despite its flaws, I wholeheartedly believe we need more female-centric films. Way more. And you know what? I’d rather have a female-centric movie I’m not a big fan of rather than none at all.

I’ve read that author (and very funny tweeter) Jennifer Weiner doesn’t like to criticize or speak negatively about books by other female writers because she knows how difficult it is for women to get published. And then when they do, male authors get reviewed more often, and typically by male critics, since gender disparity exists in the critic world too.

And I totally get why she does this. Sisterhood and solidarity can be extremely powerful. There’s a dearth of female film directors, female-fronted films, female screenwriters, female film critics. So I always feel guilty when I don’t lavish a female-centric/penned/directed film. But here’s the thing. I really shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not my critique is going to derail other female filmmakers. Not that I’m saying my words carry as much weight as say NY Times’ Manohla Dargis or anything. But I don’t want to add to the din of voices hyper-scrutinizing women-led films.

Like my Bitch Flicks colleague Leigh Kolb, I too “want theaters to be packed with genre films with women at the helm — in character, with the writing credits, as directors.” I want to get to a point when we have an abundance of women in films — women of all races, ethnicities, sexualities, classes, abilities, etc. — in front of and behind the camera. Wouldn’t that be awesome?? Of course it would. Diversity and equality are good for all.

Then I can critique a film to my heart’s content without worrying that some asshat in Hollywood thinks they shouldn’t greenlight more women-centric films. Hollywood never thinks to stop making movies with male protagonists. One shitty dude-centric movie? Bring on more dude films. A shitty women-centric movie?? All lady movies must suck.

Gender shouldn’t be blamed for a film’s failure. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want my humor to be hilarious as well as feminist and intersectional. Trust me, I do. So here’s a tip filmmakers. You want to make a truly feminist film? Don’t muck it up with prejudicial bullshit. Feminism isn’t about women standing on the backs of other oppressed people in order to get ahead. I want to root for ladies on-screen without cringing the entire time I’m watching. Is that really too much to ask?

‘Sixteen Candles,’ Rape Culture, and the Anti-Woman Politics of 2013

Movie posters for Sixteen Candles

Written by Stephanie Rogers (but not in time for Wedding Week).

Holy fuck this movie. I started watching it like OH YEAH MY CHILDHOOD MOLLY RINGWALD ADOLESCENCE IS SO HARD and after two scenes, I put that shit on pause like, WHEN DID SOMEONE WRITE ALL THESE RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY PARTS THAT WEREN’T HERE BEFORE I WOULD’VE REMEMBERED THEM.

Nostalgia is a sneaky bitch.

I wanted to write about all the wonderful things I thought I remembered about Sixteen Candles: a sympathetic and complex female protagonist, the awkwardness of adolescence, the embarrassing interactions with parents and grandparents who JUST DON’T GET IT, crushing hard on older boys—and yes, all that stuff is still there. And of course, there’s that absolutely fantastic final wedding scene in which a woman consents to marry a dude while under the influence of a fuckload of muscle relaxers. OH WAIT WHUT.

Ginny Baker getting married while super high

Turns out, that shit ain’t so funny once feminism becomes a thing in your life.

The kind of adorable premise of Sixteen Candles is that Molly Ringwald (Samantha Baker) wakes up one morning as a sixteen-year-old woman who still hasn’t yet grown the breasts she wants. Her family, however, forgets her birthday because of the chaos surrounding her older sister Ginny’s upcoming wedding; relatives drive into town, future in-laws set up dinner dates, and poor Samantha gets the cold shoulder. It reminded me of the time my parents handed me an unwrapped Stephen King novel on my sixteenth birthday like a couple of emotionally neglectful and shitty assholes, but, you know, at least they REMEMBERED it.

Anyway, she rides the bus to school (with all the LOSERS), and in her Independent Study “class” the hot senior she likes, Jake Ryan, intercepts a note meant for her friend Randy. And—wouldn’t you know it—the note says, I WOULD TOTALLY DO IT WITH JAKE RYAN BUT HE DOESN’T KNOW I’M ALIVE. Well he sure as fuck knows NOW, Samantha.

Samantha and Randy, totally grossed out, ride the bus to school

So, these are the important things in Sixteen Candles: Samantha’s family forgets her birthday; she’s in love with a hot senior who’s dating Caroline (the most popular girl in school); and there’s a big ol’ geek (Farmer Ted) from Sam’s daily bus rides who won’t stop stalking her. Oh, and Long Duk Dong exists [insert racist gong sound here]. Seriously, every time Long Duk Dong appears on screen, a fucking GONG GOES OFF on the soundtrack. I suppose that lines up quite nicely with the scene where he falls out of a tree yelling, “BONSAI.”

Since the entire movie is like a machine gun firing of RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY parts, the only way I know how to effectively talk about it is to look at the very problematic screenplay. So, fasten your seatbelts and heed your trigger warnings.

The 80s were quite possibly a nightmare.

Long Duk Dong falls out of a tree (BONSAI) after a drunken night at the homecoming dance

The first few scenes do a decent job of showing the forgotten-birthday slash upcoming-wedding fiasco occurring in the Baker household. Sam stands in front of her bedroom mirror before school, analyzing her brand new sixteen-year-old self and says, “You need four inches of bod and a great birthday.” I can get behind that idea; growing up comes with all kinds of stresses and confusion, especially for women in high school who’ve begun to feel even more insecure about their bodies (having had sufficient time to fully absorb the toxic beauty culture).

“Chronologically, you’re 16 today. Physically? You’re still 15.” –Samantha Baker, looking in the mirror

While Samantha laments the lack of changes in her physical appearance, her little brother Mike pretends to almost-punch their younger sister. When he gets in trouble for it, he says, “Dad, I didn’t hit her. I’d like to very much and probably will later, but give me a break. You know my method. I don’t hit her when you’re just down the hall.” It’s easy to laugh this off—I chuckled when I first heard it. But after five seconds of thinking about my reaction, I realized my brain gave Mike a pass because of that whole “boys will be boys” thing, and then I got pissed at myself.

The problem with eye-rolling away the “harmless” offenses of young boys is that it gives boys (and later, men) a license to act like fuckers with no actual repercussions. The “boys will be boys” mantra is one of the most insidious manifestations of rape culture because it conditions both boys and girls at a young age to believe boys just can’t help themselves; violence in boys is inherent and not worth trying to control. And people today—including political “leaders”—often use that excuse to justify the violent actions of men toward women.

Mike Baker explains to his dad that he hasn’t hit his younger sister … yet

Unfortunately, Sixteen Candles continues to reinforce this idea throughout the film.

The Geek, aka Farmer Ted—a freshman who’s obsessed with Samantha—represents this more than any other character. The film presents his stalking behavior as endearing, which means that all his interactions with Samantha (and with the popular kids at school) end with a silent, “Poor guy!” exclamation. Things just really aren’t going his way! And look how hard he’s trying! (Poor guy.) He first appears on the bus home from school and sits next to Samantha, even though she makes it quite clear—with a bunch of comments about getting dudes to kick his ass who “lust wimp blood”—that she wants him to leave her alone. Then this interaction takes place:

Ted: You know, I’m getting input here that I’m reading as relatively hostile.

Samantha: Go to hell.

Ted: Come on, what’s the problem here? I’m a boy, you’re a girl. Is there anything wrong with me trying to put together some kind of relationship between us?

[The bus stops.]

Ted: Look, I know you have to go. Just answer one question.

Samantha: Yes, you’re a total fag.

Ted: That’s not the question … Am I turning you on?

[Samantha rolls her eyes and exits the bus.]

POOR GUY! Also homophobia. Like, all over the place in this movie. The words “fag” and “faggot” flood the script and always refer to men who lack conventional masculine traits or who haven’t yet “bagged a babe.” And the emphasis on “Man-Up Already!” puts women in harm’s way more than once.

Samantha looks irritated when her stalker, Farmer Ted, refuses to leave her alone. Also Joan Cusack for no reason.

The most terrifying instance of this happens toward the end of the film when Ted ends up at Jake’s party after the school homecoming dance, and the two of them bond by objectifying women together (and subsequently creating a nice little movie template to last for generations). The atrocities involve a very drunk, passed-out Caroline (which reminded me so much of what happened in Steubenville that I had to turn off the movie for a while and regroup) and a pair of Samantha’s underwear.

This is how we get to that point: After Jake snags Samantha’s unintentional declaration of love during Independent Study, he becomes interested in her. He tells a jock friend of his (while they do chin-ups together in gym class), “It’s kinda cool, the way she’s always looking at me.” His friend responds—amid all that hot testosterone—that “maybe she’s retarded.” (This statement sounds even worse within the context of a film that includes a possibly disabled character, played by Joan Cusack, who lacks mobility and “hilariously” spends five minutes trying to drink from a water fountain. Her role exists as nothing more than a punch line; she literally says nothing.)

Joan Cusack drinking water (queue laughter)

Joan Cusack drinking a beer (queue laughter)

Jake’s girlfriend, Caroline, picks up on his waning interest in her and says to him at the school dance, “You’ve been acting weird all night. Are you screwing around?” He immediately gaslights her with, “Me? Are you crazy?” to which she responds, “I don’t know, Jake. I’m getting strange signals.” Yup, Caroline—IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD NOT REALLY.

Meanwhile, in an abandoned car somewhere on school premises (perhaps a shop lab/classroom), Samantha sits alone, lamenting Jake’s probable hatred of her after their interaction in the gym where he said, “Hi!” and she freaked out and ran away. Farmer Ted stalk-finds her and climbs into the passenger seat. Some words happen, blah blah blah, and a potentially interesting commentary on the culture of masculinity gets undercut by Ted asking Samantha (who Ted referred to lovingly as “fully-aged sophomore meat” to his dude-bros earlier in the film) if he can borrow her underwear to use as proof that they banged. Of course she gives her underwear to him because.

Ted holds up Samantha’s underwear to a group of dude-bros who each paid a buck to see them

Cut to Jake’s after-party: everyone is finally gone; his house is a mess; Caroline is passed out drunk as fuck in his bedroom; and he finds Ted trapped inside a glass coffee table (a product of bullying). Then, at last, after Jake confesses to Ted that he thinks Samantha hates him (because she ran away from him in the gym), we’re treated to a true Male Bonding Moment:

Ted: You see, [girls] know guys are, like, in perpetual heat, right? They know this shit. And they enjoy pumping us up. It’s pure power politics, I’m telling you … You know how many times a week I go without lunch because some bitch borrows my lunch money? Any halfway decent girl can rob me blind because I’m too torqued up to say no.

Jake: I can get a piece of ass anytime I want. Shit, I got Caroline in my bedroom right now, passed out cold. I could violate her ten different ways if I wanted to.

Ted: What are you waiting for?

C’MON JAKE WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR GO RAPE YOUR GIRLFRIEND. Or wait, no, maybe let’s let Ted rape her?

Jake: I’ll make a deal with you. Let me keep these [Samantha’s underwear, duh]. I’ll let you take Caroline home … She’s so blitzed she won’t know the difference.

Ted carrying a drunk Caroline to the car

And then Ted throws a passed-out Caroline over his shoulder and puts her in the passenger seat of a convertible. This scene took me immediately back to the horrific images of two men carrying around a drunk woman in Steubenville who they later raped—and were convicted of raping (thanks largely to social media). This scene, undoubtedly “funny” in the 80s and certainly still funny to people who like to claim this shit is harmless, helped lay the groundwork for Steubenville, and for Cleveland, and for Richmond, where as many as 20 witnesses watched men beat and gang rape a woman for over two hours without reporting it. On their high school campus. During their homecoming dance.

Jake and Ted talk about how to fool Caroline

People who claim to believe films and TV and pop culture moments like this are somehow disconnected from perpetuating rape need to take a step back and really think about the message this sends. I refuse to accept that a person could watch this scene from an iconic John Hughes film—where, after a party, a drunk woman is literally passed around by two men and photographed—and not see the connection between the Steubenville rape—where, after a party, a woman was literally passed around by two men and photographed.

Caroline looks drunk and confused while Ted’s friends take a photo as proof that he hooked up with her

And it only gets worse. Caroline wakes up out of nowhere and puts a birth control pill in Ted’s mouth. Once he realizes what he’s swallowed, he says, “You have any idea what that’ll do to a guy my age?” Caroline responds, “I know exactly what it’ll do to a girl my age. It makes it okay to be really super careless!”

It makes it okay to be really super careless.

IT MAKES IT OKAY TO BE REALLY SUPER CARELESS.

So I guess the current anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti-woman Republicans found a John Hughes screenplay from 30 years ago and decided to use this cautionary tale as their entire fucking platform. See what happens when women have access to birth control? It makes it okay to be really super careless! And get drunk! And allow dudes to rape them!

Of course, believing that Caroline is raped in Sixteen Candles requires believing that a woman can’t consent to sex when she’s too “blitzed to know the difference” between her actual boyfriend and a random freshman geek. I mean, there’s forcible rape, and there’s not-really rape, right? And this obviously isn’t REAL rape since Ted and Caroline actually have THIS FUCKING CONVERSATION when they wake up in a church parking lot the next morning:

Ted: Did we, uh …

Caroline: Yeah. I’m pretty sure.

Ted: Of course I enjoyed it … uh … did you?

Caroline: Hmmm. You know, I have this weird feeling I did … You were pretty crazy … you know what I like best? Waking up in your arms.

Fuck you, John Hughes.

Caroline wakes up, unsure of who Ted is, but very sexually satisfied

And so many more problems exist in this film that I can’t fully get into in the space of one already long review, but the fact that Ginny (Sam’s sister) starts her period and therefore needs to take FOUR muscle relaxers to dull the pain also illustrates major problems with consent; her father at one point appears to pick her up and drag her down the aisle on her wedding day. (And, congratulations for understanding, John Hughes, that when women bleed every month, it requires a borderline drug overdose to contain the horror.)


Ginny’s dad drags her down the aisle on her wedding day

The racism, too, blows my mind. Long Duk Dong, a foreign exchange student living with Samantha’s grandparents, speaks in played-for-laughs broken English during the following monologue over dinner: “Very clever dinner. Appetizing food fit neatly into interesting round pie … I love, uh, visiting with Grandma and Grandpa … and writing letters to parents … and pushing lawn-mowing machine … so Grandpa’s hyena don’t get disturbed,” accompanied by such sentences as, “The Donger need food.” (I also love it, not really, when Samantha’s best friend Randy mishears Sam and thinks she’s interested in a Black guy. “A BLACK guy?!?!” Randy exclaims … then sighs with relief once she realizes the misunderstanding.)

Long Duk Dong talks to the Baker family over dinner

And I haven’t even touched on the problematic issues with class happening in Sixteen Candles. (Hughes does class relations a tiny bit better in Pretty in Pink.)

Basically, it freaks me out—as it should—when I watch movies or television shows from 30 years ago and see how closely the politics resemble today’s anti-woman agenda. Phrases like “legitimate rape” and “forcible rape” shouldn’t exist in 2013. In 2013, politicians like Wendy Davis shouldn’t have to stand up and speak for 13 hours—with no food, water, or restroom breaks—in order to stop a bill from passing in Texas that would virtually shut down access to safe and legal abortions in the entire state. Women should be able to walk down the street for contraception in 2013, whether it’s for condoms or for the morning after pill. The US political landscape in 2013 should NOT include talking points lifted directly from a 1984 film about teenagers.

I know John Hughes is a national fucking treasure, but please tell me our government officials aren’t using his screenplays as legislative blueprints for the future of American politics.

A Letter to Hollywood: Keep Films Like ‘The Heat’ Coming

The Heat movie poster.

Dear Hollywood Movie Executives,

As I have driven by my local movie theater this summer, I’ve been struck by how I haven’t wanted to see most of the movies. You haven’t been getting much money from me.

But I’d like to talk to you about The Heat, which opened nationwide last weekend.

I’m not a buddy-cop movie aficionado; in fact, I could count the number of films in that genre that I’ve seen on about a half of a hand, tops. But The Heat? I wanted to see it. So you got some of my money.

Judging from the crowded theater at a weekday afternoon showing–including a trio of dude-bros in front of me–and the fact that the film came in second at the box office, you got some of lots of people’s money.

The Heat promotional still.

There’s money in this for you. What’s “this”? This is producing and releasing blockbuster films with female leads.

I know, I know. You’ve been hesitant to do so. Men’s stories have long been the standard-bearer of literature and film. Men’s stories are universal, women’s stories are for women. In the middle of June, 90 percent of feature films were about men or groups of men, and Man of Steel had about six times the number of showings as all of the films about women combined.

Mullins (McCarthy) and Ashburn (Bullock) work together.

Stories about (white) men have been easy for you for a long time. Just because it’s easy, doesn’t mean it’s good or right–or even the most financially sound.

When Bridesmaids (directed by Paul Feig, who directed The Heat) was released, it passed up Knocked Up as Judd Apatow’s highest-grossing film. Pitch Perfect made almost $100 million worldwide.

Is this just our petite lady-ration? One big female-fronted blockbuster per year?

Please sir, I want some more.

The Heat delivers just the kind of big escapism that one would expect from a summer blockbuster. Melissa McCarthy is absolutely amazing. She is a national treasure. And while the film is fairly formulaic, the punch lines are not.

Ashburn and Mullins also drink together.

Officer Mullins (McCarthy) roughs up and arrests a man soliciting a prostitute. He feels her full wrath because he tries to excuse his actions by saying his wife just had a baby and everything downstairs was messy. There is not one punch line about Mullins’s weight. More than one man comes to her in desperation because she’s not called them back. While Ashburn (Sandra Bullock) walks the stereotype line (she’s an “unlikable” but highly successful single woman), she’s a good agent, and she and Mullins complement one another.

Spanx (Ashburn’s, not Mullins’s), vaginas, areolas … the premise of the film may be masculine, but women weren’t just inserted into men’s roles. This female-centric comedy worked. Women are funny.

And I’ll tell you what–those dude-bros in front of me were laughing hard when Mullins was criticizing Ashburn’s Spanx (because her “furnace” couldn’t “air out” in them).

Mullins is shocked by the concept of Spanx.

Women are funny. Female writers are funny (Parks and Recreation‘s Katie Dippold wrote The Heat). Female performers are funny. Jokes about strictly female experiences are funny–for everybody.

If women can laugh at men’s jokes–which doesn’t seem to be a problem–then men can laugh at women’s jokes. It’s pretty simple. The Heat shows us that. Cops, whiskey, drug rings, and a refrigerator full of guns and ammo may feel masculine, but Ashburn and Mullins show that women can wield it all.

The Heat made me laugh and cry.

I want more. I want theaters to be packed with genre films with women at the helm–in character, with the writing credits, as directors. The Heat 2 is already in the works, but there is so much opportunity for women in blockbusters. And I want dude-bros going to those movies in droves. I bet they will, too.

Now you need to believe it.

These female-led blockbusters are always “surprise,” hits, but how many times can you be surprised by the success of movies with female protagonists? At some point, you need to realize that people like this.

If you take up my plea and fund more female-centric films, I must warn you: some of them might not be awesome. Some may be mediocre, or bad. Just like movies with male leads. When Freddie Got Fingered bombed, the takeaway wasn’t that men can’t carry comedies. Remember that.

When the film ended, I stopped the trio of teenage boys and asked them if they liked the movie. It was unanimous: yes. I asked if they ever thought about not seeing it because the main characters were women. It was unanimous: no. (One exclaimed, “Not once.”)

If you don’t believe me and my dude-bros, here’s some recommended reading: NPR, Jezebel, Women and Hollywood, and Vulture all give the film favorable to glowing reviews.

One more thing: we need to talk about marketing. These movie posters are an atrocity. Mullins’s weight wasn’t an issue on-screen, but clearly your marketing departments felt the need to drastically change her.

Make them stop that.

No.

Sincerely,

Leigh Kolb

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Travel Films Week: Marriage Is A Bumpy Road: ‘Two For The Road’s Difficult Journey

Movie poster for Two for the Road

Written by Myrna Waldron.

Two For The Road’s nonlinear narrative follows the courtship and marriage of Mark (Albert Finney) and Joanna Wallace (Audrey Hepburn) over a period of 12 years. In the present day, the Wallaces are preparing to go to a party celebrating a house that workaholic architect Mark has designed. As they pass by a church holding a wedding, they look inside the car and find the bride and groom looking utterly miserable. Joanna comments, “They don’t look very happy.” Mark replies, “Why should they? They just got married.”

The Wallaces’ marriage is fractured and close to the breaking point. They think back to the various road trip vacations they’ve taken together, and reflect on just where things went wrong, and why. The Joanna of 10 years ago is a conservatively dressed young woman who is a member of a travelling choir. Mark is travelling on his own to do research on European architecture. They are brought together by chance–Joanna’s entire troupe has come down with chicken pox, and Mark was hoping to fool around with one of the more flirtatious members of Joanna’s choir (a one-scene wonder played by Jacqueline Bisset).

Each of their road trips across time serves as a metaphor for the state of their relationship. As they start out as young hitchhikers, there is a feeling of freedom interwoven throughout. Mark talks about how he dislikes marriage because he sees it as a “contract.” He correctly deduces that Joanna is a virgin, and stops just short of bragging about all the casual sex he’s had. It’s important to note that Joanna had never had a lover before she met Mark. She’s completely devoted to him, and he takes her for granted. She impulsively decides to stay hitchhiking with Mark because she believes she’s in love with him–their entire courtship is a string of impulsive decisions. At the end of their week together, after they spend hours frolicking on the beach, Joanna runs off sobbing because she believes that she’ll be nothing but a beautiful memory to him. Mark then proposes to her in a desperate attempt to get her to stay with him. This impulsivity is one reason why, later on, we are meant to wonder whether they should have married in the first place.

Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney in Two for the Road

There is certainly a great deal of agency enveloped in Joanna’s character. Mark might be the dominant one, but she is clearly not going to let him dictate her life or their marriage. It was she who decided to enter into a relationship with Mark and she who decided that she wasn’t going to let Mark turn the memory of her into a meaningless fling. Mark claims to dislike the idea of marriage, but Joanna means enough to him that he will give up his expected bachelorhood for her. Joanna is the glue holding their marriage together, which is metaphorically represented through the running joke where Joanna always locates Mark’s missing passport. As Mark says, she is indispensable.

The next road trip the Wallaces take, chronologically, is with the family of Mark’s former girlfriend Cathy (Eleanor Bron, whom Beatles fans may recognize from Help!). The Wallaces have been married almost 2 years at this point. Cathy has married Howard Maxwell-Manchester (William Daniels), a stogy, neurotic dictator of a man who uses “Communists” as an insult, and makes ridiculously illogical decisions all in the name of sticking to his own predetermined rules. They have a daughter, Ruthie, and they have adopted a childrearing philosophy of “Leaving things to [her] own decision.” This results in a child who is spoiled, bratty, destructive, and nasty. Mark and Joanna’s miserable road trip with the Maxwell-Manchesters illustrates the kind of marriage neither of them wants to have. Mark asks Joanna, “Do you still want to have a child?” Joanna answers, “I still want a child. I just don’t want THAT child.” Howie speaks condescendingly to everyone and has influenced Cathy’s thinking to the point where she mindlessly echoes his philosophies. Instead of disciplining their child when she is obnoxious, they tell off Joanna for being hostile and resentful towards Ruthie. Howie even makes a sexist jab at Joanna and assumes she dislikes Ruthie because she represents the child she wants to have.

Still from Two for the Road

During this road trip, the only thing keeping the Wallaces sane is each other. The crowded car, overly rigid schedule, and horrible parenting metaphorically represent the resentment that the Wallaces have for the Maxwell-Manchesters, and how the Maxwell-Manchesters keep judging the state of their marriage. The Maxwell-Manchesters pry into personal details, dictate how the Wallaces are expected to “behave,” and treat Joanna like a baby factory (and a mere extension of her husband) instead of as a woman. There is particular dramatic irony when the Wallaces have finally had enough (as Ruthie has repeated nasty things that Cathy has said about Joanna behind her back), and Howie accuses Mark of trying to dominate Joanna’s thinking and acting. It is particularly hypocritical for Howie to make this accusation, as he couldn’t be more conservative and dominating if he tried, and Mark is actually doing what Joanna wanted all along, which was to be on their own away from the Maxwell-Manchesters.

Hypocrisy is a common theme in this film, particularly in Mark’s case. I have found it difficult to sympathize with him, as he’s foul-tempered, selfish, irrational, a workaholic, overly ambitious, and, worst of all, ignores his wife and daughter. He claims he hates the idea of marriage and yet impulsively marries Joanna. He says he’ll never ignore a hitchhiker as long as he lives, and 10 years later, he breaks that promise. He has a one-night-stand while on a business trip alone, but writes a letter to Joanna full of lies about how much he misses her. Once he becomes successful, he claims that he has given Joanna everything that she ever wanted, but in truth, has just given to her everything that he wants. (He reminds me a bit of Homer Simpson gifting Marge a bowling ball with his name on it.)

Still from Two for the Road

It seems that the more disastrous the road trip is, the closer it brings Joanna and Mark together. The next time they vacation, Mark has bought himself an MG TD that turns out to be a clunker. The car repeatedly breaks down, and Joanna fixes it. The car is an obvious metaphor for how their marriage turns out. On this trip, Joanna tells Mark that she is pregnant. Once again his hypocrisy comes out, because although in the past he expressed that he did not want children, he is ecstatic at her announcement. Their car eventually catches on fire, and in the process of disposing of it, they meet Maurice Dalbret (Claude Dauphin), a wealthy but demanding man who hires Mark for his architectural talents. Maurice is the fire that threatens to burn their marriage down.

Maurice’s entrance into their lives serves as a turning point on their marriage road, because he monopolizes Mark’s attention to a ridiculous degree. Mark is thrilled to be successful and living the high life, but all Joanna wants is attention from her husband. Money and success go to Mark’s head, and he becomes such a workaholic that he pushes Joanna away. The screenplay was written by a man (Frederic Raphael) but the sympathy of the story clearly lies with Joanna. She has been repeatedly wronged by Mark, so when she makes her own regrettable decisions, they are significantly more sympathetic. This is also notable since infidelity situations in pop culture inevitably end up blaming the woman in the relationship, whether she was the one who did the cheating or not. In each case, it is Mark’s fault–his fault for thinking of sex as meaningless, and his fault for ignoring his wife and child through his endless ambition.

The story makes a very important commentary on marriage. Fighting is inevitable, as are periods of silence. The Wallaces repeatedly comment on how married people can sit at a fancy dinner table and have nothing to say to each other. But honesty, faithfulness, agreement on important matters (such as children), communication and attention are critical to keeping that marriage a success. Joanna and Mark especially repeatedly fail at this, and it stretches their marriage to a near-breaking point. They constantly question each other about why they are still together.

Still from Two for the Road

Mark eventually drives Joanna into the arms of Maurice’s wife’s brother David (Georges Descrieres). Despite his own infidelity, Mark is deeply wounded and humiliated by Joanna’s affair, even though it lasted only one day. Joanna was so desperate for someone to talk to her and understand her that she leapt at the first opportunity. She herself has broken a promise that she would love and be faithful to Mark forever, but because Mark neglected her so profoundly, he is to blame for her affair. Can their marriage survive their mutual infidelities? SHOULD it survive?

The film respects its audience enough not to definitively give an answer. The Wallaces survive the multiple bumps in the road and keep on driving. Both of them need to change for their marriage to work, and fortunately, change is implied metaphorically through their final road trip. Instead of once again driving through France and stopping at the same spots repeatedly, Mark instead drives to Rome to start working for a new client. Instead of staying and enduring Maurice’s demands, he quietly rejects him and explicitly chooses Joanna. No longer being under the thumb of Maurice can only make things better, since it was his entering into their lives that changed the course of their marriage.

In the final moment of the film, the Wallaces share one last exchange. Once again, Joanna has found Mark’s passport for him. In response, he says, “Bitch.” She replies, “Bastard.” Those final words struck me so heavily. Do they mean those insults? Are they being playful? Do they need to snipe and be sarcastic at each other in order to survive? I want to believe that those final words were affectionate, but I found myself feeling ambivalent as to whether this marriage was worth saving.

Admittedly, I have not yet gotten married myself, but I felt as if I was a participant in this marriage as I watched the film. Comparing the heady early days of their courtship to the infidelities and fights of the modern day feels almost as painful as if I’d suffered through the memories myself. Joanna deserves a husband who is wholly devoted to her. Mark is talented enough that he shouldn’t be held back. I can see that there is love there between them, and that they genuinely don’t want to break up. But there is still resentment, selfishness, and infidelity.

Can they work through these problems? Only the road ahead will tell us.

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.

‘How I Met Your Mother’ One of the Few TV Shows to Explore a Childfree Life for Women

Written by Megan Kearns as part of our Infertility, Miscarriage and Infant Loss Week. Originally published at The Opinioness of the World. Cross-posted with permission.

I was ready. Poised to be pissed. For the first half of last season’s How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM) episode “Symphony of Illumination,” I sat on the couch, scowling perpetually.

In the previous episode “The Rebound Girl,” we learn journalist Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) and playboy Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris)’s adulterous one night stand (although is it really a one night stand if you’ve slept together and dated before?? But I digress…), resulted in Robin telling Barney she was pregnant.

Throughout the entire series, Robin has proudly declared she never wanted kids. In all 7 seasons of Ted’s monologues to his children about how he met their mother, Ted has never once mentioned Robin having children. Nada. Zero. Zilch.

Would Robin have an abortion? Would her pregnancy be a false alarm? As abortions are a common medical procedure yet rarely seen in movies or TV shows, I was hoping for an abortion storyline. But I knew that if Robin was in fact pregnant, the writers would give her a child. So when Monday’s episode opened with Robin narrating to her future kids, I was bullshit.

Why the fuck does EVERY woman in movies and TV series want children?! Ugh.

As an unmarried woman in her 30s with no children, I’ve chosen to not get married and not have children. I’ve never really wanted them. Yet I’ve been told repeatedly (I cannot stress repeatedly enough) that I will eventually change my mind and have children. As if my choice is some cute and trendy passing phase. It’s the same bullshit response I’ve received from ignorant peeps when they find out I’m vegan. Oh, you’ll start eating meat or at least dairy some day. Oh, you’ll start having babies one day. Gee, thanks for enlightening me about MY life choices, asshole.

Now, I’ll admit that as I creep ever so closely to 35, my biological clock (god I hate that term but it does fit here) has been softly ticking. I know the statistics. My chances of having children drop substantially after age 35. In last week’s episode”Symphony of Illumination,” Robin struggles with this very same dilemma when she discovers not only is she not pregnant, she can’t have children. At first she’s relieved. But then she starts to mourn her infertility.

Instead of telling her friends the truth, Robin tells them she just learned she can’t be an Olympic pole vaulter. Later, when best friend Lily asks if she’s alright, Robin tells her she’s taking the news harder than she thought. Lily asks her if she ever even wanted to be a “pole vaulter.” Robin explains:

“No, I was always adamantly against having a pole vaulting career, even though it’s what most women want…In Canada, it’s very big up there. You know, it’s meet a nice guy, get married, vault some poles. But I never wanted that.

Of course it’s one thing not to want something. It’s another to be told you can’t have it. I guess it’s just nice knowing that you could someday do it if you changed your mind. But now, all of a sudden that door is closed.”

Later, Robin reveals:

“So I can’t have kids. Big deal. Now there’s no one to hold me back in life. No one to keep me from traveling where I want to travel. No one getting in the way of my career. If you want to know the truth of it, I’m glad you guys don’t exist. Really glad.”

Robin had been telling her story to imaginary kids. At the end of the bittersweet episode, Ted narrates that Robin never did become a “pole vaulter.” She became “a famous journalist, a successful businesswoman, a world traveler” and briefly a bull fighter…”but she was never alone.”

These scenes broke my heart. Tears streamed down my face (yes, I’m a weeper). I was sad Robin couldn’t have children. But a wave of relief washed over me. FINALLY, a TV series depicted a female character choosing a different path.

The HIMYM writers could have had Robin become a parent through adoption instead like Monica and Chandler on Friends and Carrie and Doug on King of Queens. Robin laments her infertility not because she wanted children. But because her choice, the choice to change her mind, was taken away. It’s one thing to not want something. But it’s quite another when the possibility of that thing that you didn’t even want is gone. Robin’s dialogue – her worries, her hopes, her fears – eerily echoed my own.

What if I wake up one day and regret my decision? What if I want a daughter or son to read to, cook vegan food for, play games with, take to museums, teach feminism to (hey, it could happen)? But what if I don’t? Do I want to uproot my entire life? Wouldn’t my life be just as complete if I never have kids? Yep. It would. And therein lies my problem with the media.

Through movies, TV series and ads, the media perpetually tells us all women want children. If they don’t, they must be damaged, deluding themselves or they just haven’t found the right man yet. Because you know silly ladies, our lives revolve around men. Tabloid magazines repeatedly report on female actors’ baby bumps. As Susan J. Douglas argues in Enlightened Sexism, “bump patrols” reduce women to their reproductive organs, reinforcing the stereotype that women aren’t real women unless they procreate.

Now, please don’t mistake me. If you’re a woman (or man) who wants kids or has kids, congrats. Mazel Tov. Seriously. I love my friends’ children. I love seeing their cute pics online. I love playing with them…and giving them back at the end of the day. Children are adorbs (sometimes) with their rambunctious spirits, incessant questions and inquisitive natures. But not everyone wants kids. And that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t.

Choosing to be childfree is on the rise as 1 in 5 women (up from 1 in 10 in the 70s) in their 40s doesn’t have a child. But you wouldn’t know it from watching TV. The only TV shows that come to mind where a female character questions whether or not to have children and chooses not to are Samantha on Sex and the City, Elaine on Seinfeld, Emily on The Bob Newhart Show, Jane Timony on Prime Suspect (the original with Helen Mirren) and Christina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy.

Jessica Grose at Slate points out Whitney differs from HIMYM in its portrayal of a woman questioning her child-free choice. Independent Whitney doesn’t want to get married or have children. But in the episode “Up All Night,” she completely reverses her position and concedes once she discovers having no kids is a deal-breaker for her boyfriend Alex. The message is that Whitney “has to agree to consider all the trappings of traditional womanhood” to be considered “a person.”

HIMYM suffers many gender problems. Yes, it infuriated me Lily received so much backlash when she went to LA to pursue her dream of an art career. Almost everything Barney says or does – his sexist stereotypes, objectification of women, and fat-shaming – pisses me off. And yes, it bugs me that Robin’s unconventional female personality of Scotch drinking, hockey loving, cigar smoking and gun ownership has been pinned on her father raising her as a boy…even going so far as to name her Robin Charles Scherbatsky, Jr. But the show hasn’t fallen into the sexist trap that a woman isn’t a “real” woman without a baby.

When Ted shares with his kids (and us the audience) that Robin never had children, he highlights the full life she led. Her life wasn’t empty because she didn’t become a mother. Women are socialized to want to get married and have babies. But what if you don’t want babies? Is something wrong with you? Or is something wrong with the system reinforcing the notion that all women want to be moms?

Ladies, you’re not broken, incomplete, unfeminine or any other nonsensical bullshit if you choose not to have children. Whatever you decide, whatever is right for you…well, that’s just fabulous. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The League of Gentlemen: Drag and Transmisogyny in British Comedy

Written by Max Thornton.

Do you remember Work It? If you’ve spent the last year and a bit trying to scrub all memory of it from your brain, I don’t blame you and I’m sorry for reminding you of those ten excruciating days in January 2012 when ABC was airing a sitcom “about” (to quote its Wikipedia entry) “two men who must dress as women in order to keep a job in a bad economy.”

ABC president Paul Lee justified this terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad show by saying: “I’m a Brit, it is in my contract that I have to do one cross-dressing show a year; I was brought up on Monty Python. What can I do?” His epic wrongosity on many levels notwithstanding, the man is right about one thing, and that is Britain’s bizarre, confusing obsession with drag. I am never quite sure if the cross-dressing that permeates British culture, from Python to Christmas panto, is a Rocky Horror-style celebration of diversity and queerness, or the basest form of “LOLOLOL A MAN IN A DRESS!!” transphobic humor. TV show The League of Gentlemen exactly straddles this line.

This is a local shop for local people. There’s nothing for you here.

The League of Gentlemen aired three short seasons and a Christmas special on the BBC between 1999 and 2002. I first encountered the show in late-night reruns and the 2005 feature film, which between them fueled an obsession strong enough for me to keep the theme music as my ringtone for a couple of years. It’s been a while, though, since I gave this show any thought (other than appreciating the creators’ nightmare-inducing follow-up project, Psychoville) – until last week, when I stumbled upon the happy knowledge that BBC Worldwide has made all of season one available on YouTube. LoG, though an influential powerhouse of modern comedy back in Blighty,is unfairly little-known outside of its country of origin, and I’ve had no luck hunting down seasons two or three (curse you, DVD box set that I for some reason left at my parents’ house!). However, the three hours that constitute season one provide quite enough fodder for reflection on their own.

The show centers on the strange, sinister, often very sad inhabitants of fictional Middle England town Royston Vasey. The unifying master plot of season one is the “New Road,” a highway being built to connect Royston Vasey with the wider world, and the range of responses from the locals; but really the focus is on the locals themselves, with their bizarre quirks and quiet desperation.

Nearly every character in Royston Vasey is played by the three performing members of the League (a fourth, Jeremy Dyson, stays off-camera): Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss, and Reece Shearsmith. Each adopts an impressive variety of personae, from creepy butcher to embittered vicar to obnoxious teen horror buffs to the iconic shopkeepers Tubbs and Edward. Almost all of the characters are grotesque (except for one or two of those played by Shearsmith, aka the good-looking one) – it’s not something that’s confined to the female characters for nasty transmisogynistic laughs, and frankly Shearsmith makes almost as attractive a woman as he does a man.

Reece Shearsmith: yep and also yep.

In a fascinating decision for a show whose entire female cast is played by men, one of the characters is a trans woman. Going into my rewatch, I was concerned about the handling of Royston Vasey’s local taxi driver Barbara (voiced by Pemberton): in 2013, the mainstream British media is still rifewith transmisogyny, and how much worse would it have been in a sitcom in 1999?

And at first it does seem like the only joke is going to be “HAHA A TRANS WOMAN, ISN’T THAT HILARIOUS??!!!” In Barbara’s first appearance, we see her cab’s exterior and hear a gruff voice speak. In the course of chatting with her passenger, she casually reveals that she buys dresses (laugh track!) and that she takes hormones and they have intimate effects (laugh track!). These early jokes are pretty grossly offensive: the camera pans over Barbara’s high heels, jewelry, and extremely hairy chest (for fuck’s sake), and we don’t even catch a glimpse of her face until the final episode of the season. Meanwhile Barbara cheerfully overshares details of her forthcoming bottom surgery to whoever happens to be in the cab. The cumulative effect is dehumanizing, othering, and pathologizing, reinforcing both the laziest transmisogynistic humor – she has a deep voice and a hairy chest (because trans women always just hang onto unwanted secondary sex characteristics), but she also wears dresses and heels! Hahahahahaha! – and the transphobic notion that trans people are somehow obscene, through being particularly inappropriate and overly obsessed with surgery and genitalia.

Lots of shots like this, but heaven forfend we see her face. We might think she was an actual human being.

But. If half the characters on your show are actually men in dresses, and if you’re making them funny by actually writing jokes for them, the hypocrisy and comedic paucity of relying on ugly “man in a dress” mockery of your trans character quickly become apparent. Although the transmisogyny never fully leaves (I suppose each week you want to catch new viewers up on the HIGH-larious conceit of a trans woman existing), the jokes definitely take on a kinder spirit as the season goes on. Witness this exchange, when Barbara tells snooty Mrs. Levinson about the “beast of Royston Vasey”:

Barbara: “They dug something up working on the new road.”

Mrs. Levinson: “Oh, Barbara, stop it. You’re giving me the willies!”

Barbara: “Well, you’re very welcome to mine – it’s coming off in a fortnight anyway.”

That’s a genuinely funny, non-hateful trans joke. What a shame the League didn’t write more like that.

On the upside, as much as Barbara’s propensity to graphic oversharing is played for transphobic laughs at her expense, the residents of Royston Vasey never seem that fazed by it. They are shown to be thoroughly accepting of Barbara, much more so than you might expect from a Middle England village on TV in 1999. When petty-minded Geoff, having been the butt of a homophobic joke he didn’t quite get, asks Barbara for clarification, he sighs, “I don’t know why I’m asking you – you’re a woman.” (Of course, that little moment of acceptance is promptly ruined by Barbara’s reply, “Not quite, Geoff. They’ve got to open me up first, along the base of the scrotum…”)

And the inevitable scene of awkward sexual encounter between Barbara and out-of-towner Ben is written with surprisingly little transphobia. I mean, it still relies on some pretty disgusting tropes of trans women’s supposed excessive sexual aggression and obsession with genital configuration, but Ben’s dialogue in the scene is remarkably free of trans panic. In fact, every line he speaks could be recontextualized without change to a scene with a cis woman to whom he wasn’t attracted.

These are minuscule successes, but then I have very, very low expectations for mainstream media depictions of trans women – especially in a comedy, especially in the last century (the last 14 years constitute a long time in the advance of trans rights). The thing is, The League of Gentlemen is at its core not a hateful show (unlike certain of its imitators). There’s a sketch portraying the relationship between a pampered rich woman and her maid, which skewers British class relations at the expense of the privileged. There’s a character whose specialty is finding people with disabilities and talking well-meaning but appallingly ignorant drivel at them until he’s dug himself deep into a chasm of offensiveness. There’s an acting troupe whose educational play on acceptance of gay people is a masterclass in cluelessly paternalistic fauxgressive claptrap. In general, LoG excels at zeroing in on Middle England’s most small-minded, unexamined fear and hatred of difference, particularly when it’s coated with a misguided and sanctimonious belief in one’s own tolerance. The case of Barbara is striking because it’s a rare failure to ridicule the right target.

But I sill love the show, and you should still watch it.

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