I had never heard anything like this sketch; I was enthralled. The timing. The repetition. The silence. Such gorgeous pauses. In a world where it feels like we need to fill every space with some yammering, to hear someone on stage using silence–to be brave enough to use it–made me take notice of this person Tig. And not just me. ‘The New York Times’ ran a piece about her 13-minute paean to Taylor Dane.
Tig Notaro needs your attention. I fell in love with her work in 2012 when I heard a This American Life sketch while driving down a highway.
[youtube_sc url=”https://youtu.be/jSwzYB545hY”]
I had never heard anything like this sketch; I was enthralled. The timing. The repetition. The silence. Such gorgeous pauses. In a world where it feels like we need to fill every space with some yammering, to hear someone on stage using silence–to be brave enough to use it–made me take notice of this person Tig. And not just me. The New York Timesran a piece about her 13-minute paean to Taylor Dane.
Then a barrage of sadness and struggle came for her. Tig had a life-threatening infection. Her mother died suddenly. Then Tig was diagnosed with breast cancer.
And this all became material for her standup. And the basis for the Netflix documentary Tig.
The set she did after her diagnosis is already the stuff of comedy legend. Comedians in the room that night began to bow at her feet.
Louis C.K. was there and he ended up selling her set on his site.
Directors Kristina Goolsby and Ashley York follow Tig through the aftermath of illness and grief. I particularly appreciate two elements of the documentary: the focus on writing as a craft and the attention to the struggle of fertility issues. Neither seems to get much good attention in films, and Tig offers the reader a look inside the mind of a female writer who wants to mother a child.
It shouldn’t be surprising that Notaro allows the filmmakers to go so deep into her world; she has come to be known a confessional comic after the set heard round the world. The film is heartbreaking and funny, just like Notaro’s standup. At times we flinch with her as she hears a verdict on her one shot at in vitro, the next moment we are cheering for her as she finds love.
Viewers watch her workshopping a bit, practicing it in front of audiences with different rhythms and wording. Rarely do we get to see the hard work of writing in a film (the closest I have seen such work happening is when I watched Fun Homeon Broadway). The awareness that writing is hard, that Notaro is producing work that requires time, honesty, attention, and a little bit of bravado reminds viewers that art is hard. Even though on stage Notaro makes it look easy.
So it was satisfying to me to see that one joke–about her breasts revolting against her body–come to fruition in her HBO special Boyish Girl Interrupted. The special serves as a climax to the story of Tig in that it finishes the joke. When Notaro takes on the persona of her grumpy breasts, she nails the timing and the wording in front of the sold out theater.
And she happens to do half of the set without her shirt on, her smooth chest an affront to all constricting ideas about what “woman” means.
I questioned whether I should even post a still from the HBO special since in many ways it is like stealing one of her punchlines. Should I have offered you, dear reader, a spoiler alert? Am I taking something from her by using this picture to represent her text?
Is taking off her shirt salacious? Provocative? Evocative? Confessional? All of the above. I implore you to watch the set and answer that question for yourself. I can tell you this: you haven’t seen anything like what Notaro is doing in the mainstream media.
The body is no longer a Lacanian reflected ideal, it is a biological mess that often exists beyond anyone’s control. The effect of this convention is two-fold–a bait and switch of expectations but also the creation of a sense of biological sameness: man or woman, everybody poops. By placing the body in a biological space instead of a symbolic one, physical comedy is questioning the visual tendencies of subconscious desire.
This guest post by Donna K. appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.
When I was taught the definitions of comedy and tragedy as an angst-y teen, I remember being struck by the way in which they were generalized. In tragedy, everyone dies. In comedy, everyone gets married. I remember thinking, “Yes, marriage IS hilarious!” But in fact, marriage was comic in the sense that everything worked out for everybody–everybody often being defined as the white male with power. Over the last decade, the male gaze has quietly been averted through a new wave of female-driven comedies. Television shows like 30 Rock, Broad City, Orange is the New Black, The Mindy Project, Inside Amy Schumer, and films like Bridesmaidsand Appropriate Behavior have paved the way for comedy, specifically the role of women in it, to be re-defined: comedy is a choice. Comedy is not who will marry whom it is the choice to marry or not, to tell one’s individual story, to laugh in the face of the controlling patriarchy until there is nothing left to laugh about.
One of the hallmarks of the new class of female comedies is to subvert the “to-be-looked-at-ness” of the female form, begging an audience to gaze upon woman but then exposing the gawkers to the truths below the surface in a physical- almost biological- comedy; Julie (Julie Klausner) publically wets herself in the very first episode of the new series Difficult People; Amy Schumer’s skit “Milk Milk Lemonade”reminds audiences that the sexy booty fetishized in music videos is, in reality, “where your poop comes out”; the explosive diarrhea of food poisoning ruins the extravagant rite of wedding dress shopping in Bridesmaids. The body is no longer a Lacanian reflected ideal, it is a biological mess that often exists beyond anyone’s control. The effect of this convention is two-fold–a bait and switch of expectations but also the creation of a sense of biological sameness: man or woman, everybody poops. By placing the body in a biological space instead of a symbolic one, physical comedy is questioning the visual tendencies of subconscious desire. No longer do audiences expect to walk into a theater or turn on a TV and be greeted with a vision of feminine perfection; now they might be subjected to blood, sweat, tears, and all other kinds of bodily fluids of not just the female form but the human one. The body is an object but not one strictly made for pleasure (yet pleasure is nice too, of course).
In Broad City the character of Ilana (Ilana Glazer) sets the mood propping up mirrors, putting on make-up, prepping herself to be a vision of desire (Season 2 Ep. 8, ““Kirk Steele””). She turns on her vibrator, and some porn, and is ready for some self love: she is not here to please anyone but herself. When Danny (Chris Messina) opens the drawer of Mindy Lahiri’s (Mindy Kahling) nightstand in The Mindy Project and proclaims “Mindy has the same neck massager as Ma,” (Season 3, Ep. 8 ““Diary of a Mad Indian Woman””) not everyone might understand the implication (pssst, pharmacies sell vibrators in disguise). New female comedy isn’t presenting sex as a males want toward females; it is showing sex as a thing all genders desire, even to the point they make it happen alone. Self-love in female comedy could potentially feed into the male gaze, making him even more afraid of castration or exciting him through pleasurable moans, but what is also occurring is a normalization of female sexual pleasure. Sex and the City led the way and now movies like Appropriate Behavior (full of bi-sexuality, threesomes, and a strap on!) and Trainwreck (even if Apatow is undeniably a slut shamer!) are reminding audiences that women use their vaginas for things other than birthing and male satisfaction. These comedies are creating what Laura Mulvey calls a “new language of desire” (where the controlled and the controller are interchangeable between genders, quietly inserting the fact that this dynamic has, in actuality, always existed).
Much like the voice-over in 90s comedies that presented a personal and omniscient guide to female protagonists (Sex and the City, Mean Girls, Clueless,andElection), flashbacks are now the go-to convention used to expose the inner and past lives of women. Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior is a flashback in its entirety, slowly showing the steps that led to the opening break-up between Shirin (Akhavan) and Maxine (Rebecca Henderson), a slow methodical break-down of motivations and personal histories. In 30 Rock, a nerdy child Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) speaks German in a short moment of memory, a happening common in the series with the young Liz sometimes played by Fey’s real life daughter. The characters of OITNB have constant, harrowing flashbacks that connect their present to a long receding past, in Sophia’s (Laverne Cox) pre-transition flashback her character is played by Cox’s real life twin brother. How can one see a character as a hollow, empty image when they are created with an entire life? A life that sometimes even edges into their fictional world? Women are not, as Mulvey says, “Freez[ing] the flow of action.” They are, and have always been, part of the action, whether recognized or not. The stories of women remain untold and the reminder that lives exist beyond their simple image, even in a fiction, is an enormous step forward in terms of making an active female figure rather than a passive one. Herstory isn’t a joke, it is a thing that roots woman in the world, it makes women makers of meaning and not strictly bearers of it.
And then come our good, old friends satire and parody! Comediennes are taking the unattainable expectations and fears of the male gaze, pointing at them and laughing as hard as possible, exposing the ridiculousness in objectification and shaming the power struggle into submission- it is almost like an S&M relationship with the status quo. When Liz Lemon does promos for her show “Dealbreakers” (Season 4 Episode 7, “Dealbreakers Talk Show,” a show that points out the faults in men that make them un-marriable: yas!), she ends up becoming so nervous about her appearance she is reduced to crying from her mouth after off-brand eye surgery. When Amy Schumer consults every possible man in her life, from doctor to mailman to boy scout, on whether she should go on birth control, it is hilarious but it is also not too far from the truth. When Annie (Kristen Wiig) wakes up early to apply make-up and return to bed before her sex friend wakes to give the illusion of flawlessness, it is a joke, and it is also, unfortunately, not a joke. Satire is a powerful way of exposing questionable societal norms, ridiculous attitudes, and insane standards; it is a socially acceptable way to challenge the patriarchy and air our grievances. If we collectively confront the male gaze through satire those in power can no longer turn a blind eye to the true absurdity that exists.
By choosing how we are looked at and creating comical stories beyond the marriage plot, we are making an enormous reclamation of our bodies and ourselves: power lies in choice. Alternative ways of seeing and being seen are created with each new story told, a visibility that is only just starting to be explored as we struggle to be better represented in mainstream media. Contemporary comedies with female leads are now ruled by countless types of desires as we are stick out our tongues at the gazing males frozen in the audience. Raising our laughter is just another form of raising our voices for change.
Donna K. is a cultural critic, film festival consultant and creative producer based in Southern Vermont. She is a member of the Women Film Critics Circle and a writer for Hammer to Nail. You can follow her musings about visual storytelling on her blog Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then.
Meryl Streep is having the time of her life in ‘Ricki and the Flash’ — playing rock star, acting alongside her daughter Mamie Gummer, macking on Rick Springfield, and wearing leather pants. Her joy is infectious, and lends an overall lighthearted tone to what could be a very sad movie about estranged families.
Meryl Streep is having the time of her life in Ricki and the Flash — playing rock star, acting alongside her daughter Mamie Gummer, macking on Rick Springfield, and wearing leather pants. Her joy is infectious, and lends an overall lighthearted tone to what could be a very sad movie about estranged families.
Streep plays Ricki Randazzo, formerly known as Linda Brummer back in her square suburban mother days. She left her marriage and her three children to escape intractable dissatisfaction; basically, imagine if Streep’s character in Kramer vs. Kramer went on to become frontwoman for a dive bar’s house band.
Ricki’s life is far from perfect: she struggles to get by with her cashier job at a Whole Foods stand-in, she won’t commit to her boyfriend/lead guitarist Greg, but she doesn’t seem to regret her life or her choices.
Then: a phone call. Her daughter Julie’s husband has abruptly left for her for another woman. She’s falling apart and “needs her mother,” a role Ricki hasn’t played in decades.
Mamie Gummer is fantastic in her role as Julie. She genuinely portrays the devastating depression of grief while milking plenty of humor from her character having absolutely zero fucks left to give. Streep and her daughter perfectly utilize their natural chemistry as Julie’s inability to play at normalcy jibes with Ricki’s counterculture vibe, both sticking out awkwardly behind the Brummer’s white picket fence.
There’s a fantastically tense dinner where Ricki’s also reunited with her sons Josh (Sebastian Stan) and Adam (Nick Westrate), who are revealed by Julie to be respectively engaged and gay, though they haven’t felt moved to tell their biological mother either of those things. As strained as Julie and Ricki’s relationship is, there’s a wider chasm between Ricki and her sons.
Even though Ricki does bond with Julie and with her ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline), Diablo Cody’s smart script avoids excessive sentimentality; it is clear that Ricki can never make up for lost time, and that her children will always have a family she’s not entirely a part of, including their seemingly perfect stepmother Maureen (Audra McDonald). Maureen is stunningly polite and kind when she basically kicks Ricki out of her house, and subsequently reaches out to Ricki with an invite to Josh’s wedding. I really liked seeing these two women not hate each other despite their obvious conflict, and Audra McDonald is really good in her few scenes.
At the big wedding in the end, everyone gets along despite some awkward moments, and when Ricki and the Flash crash the wedding stage (sorry, other band!) they get all the uptight rich people in their boogie shoes. (The third act felt a bit like a condensed version of director Jonathan Demme’s previous wedding movie, Rachel Getting Married.) We know it can’t really be happily ever after for this family, but there is hope for much-less-unhappily ever after.
A significant portion of the film’s run time is Ricki’s band rocking out, so if that’s not your jam, you might get bored (my husband sure did). But director Jonathan Demme has made some incredible concert movies (Stop Making Sense and Neil Young: Heart of Gold), and he puts those talents to use here. And giving the band significant screen time allows us to see the joy in Ricki’s life, so she’s not just some pathetic deadbeat mother who ruined her life. And also lets us see Meryl Streep sing “Bad Romance,” which is worth the price of admission.
Ricki and the Flash is not a movie of great consequence, but it is nearly perfect for what it is. Unless you’re a weirdo like my husband who hates rock ‘n’ roll, you should see it.
Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh who was born in the same hospital as Meryl Streep.
R and Julie have opted out of the capitalist conveyor belt that turns humans into braindead zombies and or war-mongering huddled masses. While it could also be read as a fundamental laziness to even stand up for themselves, the two succeed by not fighting.
This guest post by Emily Katseanes appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.
George Romero’s 1978 zombie flick Dawn of the Dead opens in a newsroom. As the world descends into chaos, darkness and violence, two talking heads are deadlocked into an intellectual debating about the causes of what’s killing so many people and then bringing them back. The theme of humanity’s utter banality and pettiness is backed up as we meet our main character, Francine, who is trying to get her boss to stop broadcasting inaccurate shelter station locations at the bottom of their screen. Even the 2004 remake of this movie repeats this cynicism. Zack Snyder’s film of the same name includes a particularly gruesome scene in which a human husband restrains his pregnant, zombie wife, keeping her alive to birth an undead child, which of course, causes the outbreak to take down the rest of the remaining humans.
Seriously, what a bad day.
The message in both cases is overwhelmingly clear: the post-apocalyptic zombie landscape is one in which the violence of the undead’s feasting is small potatoes compared to man’s inhumanity to fellow man. It’s a familiar theme in both dystopian and zombie genres.
And that’s what makes Warm Bodies such an interesting dystopian flick: The film deftly defies expectations by presenting a world gone to hell that’s still full of humanity and, dare I say it, romance. The 2013 film centers around a charmingly vulnerable and mostly decay-free Nicholas Hoult as R, a zombie with a heart of gold and a reluctance to resort to the monstrous behavior normally associated with the undead. Partway through the film, he encounters Julie (Teresa Palmer), a tough, tender, and fully alive human girl. The two form a friendship and, later, romantic relationship. The star-crossed lovers’ relationship sets off a chain reaction that ends up rehabilitating most of the undead and uniting them with the living against the malicious, more-decayed Boneys.
The film first defies the genre by blending the zombie gross-out factor with a teenage romance, as if George Romero and John Hughes collaborated on a script. But beyond that, Warm Bodies stoutly rejects the pessimism that haunts the hellscapes that are Romero’s zombie America and Hughes’ Shermer, Illinois high schools. Instead, the film fully embraces all the messiness of the Millennial and manages to make an argument for hope in that mostmalignedgeneration.
Hoult’s character R is the narrator and driver of the plot. He’s a deadpanned young dude, given to quips such as this introduction to his best friend Marcus, played humorously by Rob Coddry: “This is my best friend. By best friend, I mean we occasionally grunt and stare awkwardly at each other.”
R’s blend of irony and sincerity—he really does count Marcus as a friend even as he pokes fun at the concept—registers well with the Millennial attitude. Hoult, who’s even Millennial enough to be the subject of a Buzzfeed listicle, is outfitted as well as any Brooklynite or San Franciscan can be who’s cool without trying to be too cool. He wears a red hoodie with skinny jeans and lives in an airplane bedecked with a record player and other irony-heavy objets d’art, such as a bobbleheaded Chihuahua and an old-fashioned viewfinder.
R, as befits the stereotype of the Millennial hipster, is sensitive almost to a punch line. He laments the loss of the pre-zombie world not for its safety or conveniences, but for a population that “could express themselves, and communicate their feelings and just enjoy each other’s company.” (In that most-Millennial blend of irony and sincerity again, the movie plays off a visual gag, showing a world of everyone sucked into smartphones, even as R’s voiceover remains serious.)
Julie, on the other hand, reads as a woman of the new Millennium, albeit differently. Although she’s not the bespoke-wearing, Zooey Deschanel, quirky girl who handcrafts and bakes, she’s a woman in the vein of Scandal’s Olivia Pope or The Mindy Project’s Mindy Lahiri. She’s traditionally feminine and yet stoic, independent and able to hold her own against any men (including her dad, played by John Malkovich). Whereas R is the perpetually awkward, sensitive boy, Julie is cool, competent and clad in plaid.
He may be undead and falling in love with someone alive, but like teens the world over, R still can’t pick up his clothes.
Beyond aesthetics, R and his fellow fresher zombies, called “u,” increasingly follow Millennial markers. They’re more listless than ravenous, underwhelmed rather than driven by rage and seem, more than anything, bored by the routines of middle-class life. R and Marcus meet to hang out at an airport bar and other zombies are seen going through the motions of their pre-death jobs. But, again echoing Millennials and the fraught economy they came of age in, it’s a middle-class lifestyle that’s no longer accessible to them. In an economic recession that renders a 9-to-5 with a travel expense account almost as mythical as a zombie, the lifestyle that Marcus portrays of the traveling businessman is as far away for Julie and R as it is for most 18- to 24-year-olds.
R and Julie also tap into the somewhat aimless creativity of the hipster/Yuccie generation. They’re creative, but it’s geared toward no particular endeavor. Julie and R aren’t poets, painters, or revolutionaries. Their creativity expresses itself as curators: of clever one-liners, tastefully decorated rooms, and arty Polaroids of each other. They’re lifestyle bloggers for the post-apocalyptic youth.
All of this makes the dystopia of Warm Bodies at once threatening and not threatening at all. While the zombie threat is a plot catalyst, the actual undead shamblers often take a backseat to the interactions between the two leads. And that’s where Warm Bodies’ genre subversion really takes off. Like all dystopian flicks, it’s a commentary on our current world. The difference is that while most films in this genre present characters who are oblivious or somehow unaware of the lurking catastrophe humanity’s bringing upon itself, Warm Bodies presents characters who are well aware the world’s already gone to hell. They’re just not going to buy into all that negativity, man.
“I guess I’ll improve the world or…whatever.”
And that’s not just a twist on the zombie dystopia. It’s a twist on how R and Julie’s generation is painted throughout media.
In addition to being the main characters, R and Julie are the happiest. In a world that’s fraught with danger and starvation, most of the other humans and zombies on screen seem to experience only fear and grim determination. In one of their early scenes together, R and Julie drive a red convertible. It’s a familiar scene of carefree enjoyment, whooping and hollering as they speed around.
But even beyond that, Julie and R are successful. They’re the ones who enact change in the world, creating a “cure” for zombie-ism by getting the undead creatures to feel love again. And they do it by proving the Millennials’ critics simultaneously right and wrong. R, Julie and their allies end up shifting the world by doing…not much of anything. It’s Julie and R’s simple affection for each other, born of those afternoons taking Polaroids and dancing to records, that gets the zombies feeling, dreaming and living again.
R and Julie have opted out of the capitalist conveyor belt that turns humans into braindead zombies and or war-mongering huddled masses. While it could also be read as a fundamental laziness to even stand up for themselves, the two succeed by not fighting. It is the peaceful revolution hippies of the 1960s might have wanted or it’s the ultimate move by a generation of wimps.
But whatever it is, it works. It changes the world, for the better. And that’s a narrative that’s not only missing from most dystopias, but from many depictions of the current generation. Of course, like a lot of narratives about Millennials, this remains problematic. The world of Warm Bodies is overwhelmingly white and the characters read as upper-middle class. In a film arguing for optimism for the youth, it’s both telling and disappointing that the youth included are white and affluent. There’s still a long way to go to get our representations to actually reflect the demographic of the world they exist in. It’s also easy to blow off the movie as teenage fluff and in a way, it is. It’s a cutesy romance that uses Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as a skeletal structure and adds a killer soundtrack and a budding romance to flesh it out. But like R, who (mild spoiler alert), becomes human by the end of the film, it’s a vision of humanity that grows less not more fetid as it goes on.
A native Nevadan, Emily Katseanes has degrees from the University of Nevada and New Mexico State University. She has done everything from cleaning houses to filing fatality information at a gold mine to reporting on city council meetings in rural Idaho. Currently, though, she works her favorite job of all: teaching English at Louisiana State University.
‘Trainwreck’ made me cry. As in weep. I’m not talking about my eyes welling up, or having to furtively swipe a single tear off my cheekbone, but full on is-there-snot-leaking-from-my nose CRYING. I’m sitting there in the theater wondering if there was some alternate trailer for this movie cut to “Everybody Hurts” that I missed. And hoping I’m not ruining my eye makeup. [I did.]
Amy Schumer and Bill Hader in ‘Trainwreck’
Trainwreck, WE HAD A DEAL. I go see you opening weekend instead of Ant-Man, you provide me with two hours of an effervescent blend of rom-com sweetness and dick jokes. Nowhere in this negotiation was there any discussion of GENUINE EMOTIONS. I didn’t sign up for this.
Trainwreck made me cry. As in weep. I’m not talking about my eyes welling up, or having to furtively swipe a single tear off my cheekbone, but full on is-there-snot-leaking-from-my nose CRYING. I’m sitting there in the theater wondering if there was some alternate trailer for this movie cut to “Everybody Hurts” that I missed. And hoping I’m not ruining my eye makeup. [I did.]
Things start off promising. I laughed out loud when we saw that Amy had a job writing for a magazine. Job in publishing is the free space in Rom-Com Bingo. That Amy writes for a grody men’s magazine called S’Tuffed signaled to me we were gonna get all the rom-com tropes but subverted in the same way our hard-drinking sexually-capricious heroine deviates from your standard female lead. That doesn’t happen. Hardly any other spaces on Rom-Com bingo get filled. There isn’t even a Meet Cute.
Amy doesn’t like spooning.
Amy and her romantic interest Aaron (Bill Hader) Meet Normal when she interviews him for a story for the magazine. They interact like normal humans who genuinely get along (well, exceptionally funny normal humans). They start dating, and there are some hiccups because Amy isn’t used to Real Relationships, but those hiccups don’t even result in any wacky misunderstandings. When Amy and Aaron get to their necessary third act near-breakup, it looks like a real relationship struggling because of interpersonal differences. Ugh, real life.
Amy and her sister Kim (Brie Larson)
Meanwhile, in Trainwreck‘s most striking departure from the rom-com model, Amy has lots of stuff going on her life aside from dating this dude. Most notably, her complicated relationships with her family. Amy and her younger sister Kim (Brie Larson) get along, but Amy has trouble relating to Kim’s stable family life, with a square husband (Mike Birbiglia) and an oddly well-behaved stepchild. There’s further conflict between Amy and Kim as they deal with moving their father, who has multiple sclerosis, into assisted living. [Perhaps you can guess where the weeping kicks in.] The sister relationship in Trainwreck is as real and recognizable as the romance, if not more so. Schumer and Larson really nail the complicated interplay of jealousy and judgment between Amy and Kim.
There are also dick jokes. Trainwreck is very funny. Amy Schumer brings her magic, and the supporting cast is full of delightful oddball characters. I particularly liked a (TAN!) Tilda Swinton as Amy’s sociopathically brash editor and LeBron James as an extremely sensitive and supportive best friend to sports doctor Aaron. [Bill Hader is quite notably the straight man throughout, but he’s Bill Hader so he still gets in some big laughs.]
LeBron James as LeBron James is one of the comedic highlights of ‘Trainwreck’
Somehow, Trainwreck pulls off segueing between the risque comic bits we all came for and its unexpected side of pathos and heartbreak. While Judd Apatow’s confident direction deserves some of the credit, I think the most important factor here is Schumer’s impressive acting chops. She’s charismatic and funny enough that she should be a movie star even if she can’t really act, but she can. I hope this is the first of many Amy Schumer movies.
But next time I see one, I will adjust my expectations and bring along a pack of tissues.
Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh, where there was a rather chilly reception to the scene where LeBron James talks about how great Cleveland is.
‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’ wants to remount the early campy Bond movies for the 21st century. Kind of like ‘Austin Powers’ did, but without so many jokes, because they detract from how coooooool these spy dudes are. We’re talking gadgets, one-liners, babes, convoluted action sequences, and brooding permitted only upon the death of one’s father or mentor.
Fuck Daniel Craig’s haunting pathos and Oscar-caliber cinematography. Bring on the shark lasers.
Colin Firth and Taron Egerton in Kingsman: The Secret Service
This review contains spoilers, but… I really don’t think that matters.
Remember when we talked about how exciting it was to see a woman at the center of a power-fantasy id-gone-wild movie Jupiter Ascending? Kingsman: The Secret Service (which just happens to have been released only a week after Jupiter Ascending) is a PERFECT example of what we normally see from those movies. In short: White Dudes Rule.
Kingsman: The Secret Service wants to remount the early campy Bond movies for the 21st century. Kind of like Austin Powers did, but without so many jokes, because they detract from how coooooool these spy dudes are. We’re talking gadgets, one-liners, babes, convoluted action sequences, and brooding permitted only upon the death of one’s father or mentor.
Fuck Daniel Craig’s haunting pathos and Oscar-caliber cinematography. Bring on the shark lasers.
Or, as the case may be, space balloons.
Trouble is, the filmmakers include a hefty dose of anglophilia in their love letter to early Bond, a fondness for the Empire Days that is inherently racist and also just really played out. (Director Matthew Vaughn, co-writer Jane Goldman, and source material authors Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons are all English or Scottish [and all white], but self-congratulatory anglophilia might be even more annoying than wannabe anglophilia. Keep Calm and Carry On Oppressing.)
Kingsman is an apolitical spy agency funded by a trust created when a bunch of aristocrats lost their heirs to World War I. There are a dozen (white, male) agents all named after the Knights of the Round Table. When one of them dies, each agent presents a candidate as a replacement, these candidates train together and face a series of potentially lethal elimination tests until there is only one. I am sure it will surprise you ZERO that the recruits are almost all white dudes, and the first person dispatched is a woman of color (leaving behind Sophie Cookson’s Roxy to play Smurfette for the rest of the movie). And that we’re meant to admire our working-class hero Eggsy (Taron Egerton) for his pluck and gumption standing up to the other candidates and their Eton educations. You break that glass ceiling, Eggsy.
“Do your best impersonation of a German aristocrat’s formal greeting”
And even though Eggsy is working-class, he’s still only in this position because of who his father is: a former recruit to Kingsman who threw himself on a grenade on his first mission, saving Eggsy’s sponsor and mentor Galahad (Colin Firth, having a lot of fun). Galahad grooms Eggsy to be a proper gentleman (in one of the movie’s best gags, he alludes to the transformations in Trading Places and Pretty Woman, only to have Eggsy respond, “Oh you mean like in My Fair Lady?”), which is an integral part of his spy training because the only thing cooler than being an upper-class British person is becoming an upper-class British person, I guess. I am not lying when I say that the graduation present from the Kingsman academy is a bespoke bulletproof suit.
Samuel L. Jackson as the villainous Valentine
MEANWHILE, evil villains plot. And would you believe that the evil villains are PEOPLE OF COLOR? Whaat. No. Gasp! Shock. Truth be told, the villains are BY FAR the best part of the movie. We have Samuel L. Jackson as Valentine, an environmentalist communications mogul, if such a thing exists, and his right-hand-woman Gazelle (Sofia Boutella), who has two prosthetic bladed legs she uses as deadly weapons. I don’t fully understand the motivation behind Jackson’s lisping, peacocking approach to his character, but I always appreciate when he has the chance to play something other than Samuel L. Jackson. He made me laugh a lot. Boutella’s Gazelle is the perfect reincarnation of the mostly-silent, inexplicably loyal, undeniably badass Bond villain sidekick, and it is cool to see a disabled character be the best fighter in the room. But it sucks to see a bunch of “gentlemanly” white people battle a flashy black man and his buxom-but-deadly assistant. Again.
Sofia Boutella as Gazelle
There’s a chance for some not-entirely-gross class commentary to make its way into Kingsman, but it’s wasted in favor of more extreme violence. You see, Valentine’s evil plan is basically to trigger the plot of Stephen King’s Cell: he gives away billions of sim cards, and then unleashes a signal that makes people near those sim cards go on violent rampages. He sells protective implants to the rich and powerful and provides an oasis for them to sit out this bloody culling of Earth’s population. (The rich and powerful who refuse to play Valentine’s game are locked in a dungeon. This list for some reason includes Iggy Azalea.) The implants can also be triggered to explode, giving Valentine a kill switch for every one of the world’s rich and powerful.
Eggsy with Michael Caine’s Arthur, the leader of Kingsman
Remember when I said there were going to be spoilers? Here are the spoilers. Eggsy finds out the head of Kingsman (Michael Caine) has one of the implants and is allowing the plot to move forward. When Eggsy goes on to thwart the evil plan, he triggers all the implants to explode. We watch a glorious montage of cartoonish mushroom clouds erupting from the necks of the world’s elite: from heads of state (including our president) to the socialites sipping champagne while waiting out the apocalypse in Valentine’s bunker.
Heads go boom.
If the movie ended there this would be a much more positive review. There’d be cool, meaty ideas here about Kingsman being corruptible because of its ties to aristocracy, and our working-class hero actually bringing about the revolution the villain only pretended to want by eliminating the 1 percent rather than seeking to control them. But, well, Matthew Vaughn wanted to shoot some really disgusting bloodbath scenes.
So Valentine gets his signal out for several minutes, and we cut around the world to regular people horribly murdering their loved ones and anyone else in proximity. Eggsy and co. eventually stop it, but it is clear that more of these literally poor innocent bastards ended up dead than the jerks who signed up for implants. I have a problem disassociating from mass destruction in movies, and I got really sad about how the world would be irrevocably broken by this slaughter, when the movie wanted me to be laughing about Eggsy getting “rewarded” with butt sex with a Swedish princess for “saving the world.” Yes, really.
I am, of course, overthinking it. Kingsman: The Secret Service is a very silly movie. I can barely remember the Spy Kids films, although I must have watched the first two 30 times back in my babysitting days, but I think this is pretty much Spy Kids + mild gore, sex jokes, and f-bombs. This is a movie made for your inner-4-year-old, but it’s only fully effective if your inner-4-year-old is a white boy.
Robin Hitchcock is a Pittsburgh-based writer whose blood is probably 6 percent Nyquil at this point. Take your vitamins and wash your hands, people.
Tomlin and Fonda’s onscreen chemistry is absolutely spot on, giving life to moments that may otherwise have fallen flat. One of the most refreshing things about Grace and Frankie is its attitude to female sexuality in older women. Life (moreover, sex) doesn’t have to stop because you’re getting older. The series illustrates this with frankness and honesty, and we don’t shy away from seeing the woman in that light.
Something really special is happening in Netflix’s new baby Grace and Frankie. The series aired in its entirety a few weeks ago with relatively little promotion, considering the impressive cast involved. Grace and Frankie marks the return of Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin to comedy television. Not that either of them ever really left the comedy world, though the last time we saw them together was in the ’80s film 9 to 5, which is by all accounts wonderfully funny and female centric. Tomlin and Fonda both starred in 9 to 5 and have been reportedly BFF’s ever since. In a way, following their 2015 Golden Globes presentation, they are almost a pre-cursor to the female comedy duos of today. Think Tina and Amy, Ilana and Abbi, and Wiig and Rudolph. If anyone set the standard for the hybrid hilarious BFFs/comedy duo, it’s Tomlin and Fonda. So, does Grace and Frankie live up to the hype?
Tomlin and Fonda play Frankie and Grace respectively, two women who are shocked to discover that their business partner husbands have been having a secret affair for the past 20 years. They have decided to divorce their wives and marry each other, after the law changes and “we can do that now.” Sol (Sam Waterston) and Robert (Martin Sheen) begin to make a life with each other, whilst Grace and Frankie are left to pick up the pieces. The first episode, aptly titled “The End,” begins with the moment that Robert and Sol break the news to their wives – over dinner at an expensive restaurant (oh the middle-class!). Grace and Frankie are only friends because of their husband’s partnership-turned-relationship, and the only thing they both have in common is that they are both belong to a group of women who are white, mature, middle-class and are generally ladies of leisure; they don’t work and rely on their husbands’ income. Grace is your typical vodka-infused, uptight, emotionless Lucille Bluth type, and Frankie embodies new-age hippie culture and is more at home smoking a joint than “doing lunch.” The set-up of the show is nothing new; we expect the laughs to come from either tired stereotypes surrounding homosexuality or from Grace and Frankie bickering. It’s a pleasant surprise to find that Grace and Frankie doesn’t rely on old and unfunny cliches to make us laugh (or cry).
Whilst Grace and Frankie could easily have tailed off into a comedy about the titular character’s love/hate relationship, the main focus of the series is actually two women supporting each other and pulling one another through an incredibly painful time. The theme of age and the fear of growing old alone is prevalent through the series, reinforcing society’s stigmas about lonely spinsters. Television often has little time for older women, but Grace and Frankie explores the heartbreak and isolation that comes with going through a divorce after 40+ years. Whilst Grace and Robert seem to hate each other (and have done for some time), the saddest story is that of Frankie and Sol. At times gut-wrenching, we see two people who have formed a relationship on the best of a friendships and having to learn to live without it. Tomlin pulls of a phenomenal performance, and epitomizes the highs and lows of such a life changing event. There is a moment in “The Funeral” where Frankie accidentally gets into Sol’s car, forgetting for a moment that they won’t be going home together. It’s a small action, but so significant and Tomlin handles it with perfection.
Even with all the seriousness, Grace and Frankie still has comedy at its heart. There are some wickedly funny lines (that mostly come from Tomlin’s Frankie) and provide plenty of occasions to laugh out loud. The gags don’t come thick and fast, unlike most contemporary comedy scripts, but Kaufman is clearly very happy to let the punchlines linger. It works superbly well because it allows the show to be incredibly funny without having to instantaneously move on to the next joke. At times it almost feels that there should be a laugh track within those pauses, but the absence of one actually helps to cement the reality of Grace and Frankie’s newfound situation. We are laughing because it’s the only way we can deal with this. Who hasn’t been there? There are also some hilarious recurring themes–Frankie’s relationship with technology, Grace’s exploration into sexuality and home-made lube, and the constant quips that the women throw at each other. Tomlin and Fonda’s onscreen chemistry is absolutely spot on, giving life to moments that may otherwise have fallen flat. One of the most refreshing things about Grace and Frankie is its attitude to female sexuality in older women. Life (moreover, sex) doesn’t have to stop because you’re getting older. The series illustrates this with frankness and honesty, and we don’t shy away from seeing the woman in that light. They aren’t just mothers, grandmothers or wives; they are women, with desires and emotions. It would have been great to see more of this, and more of Jane Fonda looking fucking amazing in lingerie!
The supporting cast are very likable, but Grace’s daughter Brianna (June Diane Raphael) is the standout star, often delivering the best lines of the series. The ensemble cast work incredibly well together, providing a neat backdrop for Tomlin and Fonda. Having said that, the romance/non-romance between Coyote (Frankie’s son) and Mallory (Grace’s daughter) was one of the only issues I took with the series. I’m all for sub plots, but neither Coyote or Mallory are particularly engaging characters hence their “affair” seemed incredibly uninteresting, especially in comparison to the far more engaging main narrative.
Grace and Frankie could have also spent more time with its title characters -the show is about them, but a monumental amount of scenes were dedicated to Robert and Sol and the blossoming of their relationship. Whilst it was great to see a gay couple (especially an older gay couple) transcend camp cliches, I couldn’t help thinking that the show isn’t supposed to be about them. Certainly, the series feels more at ease when Tomlin and Fonda are onscreen and I just wished we had seen more of that, instead of the men.
Grace and Frankie triumphs because it doesn’t utilize the gay characters as a trope or a way to increase viewership. Sexuality doesn’t become a selling point. There is more to Robert and Sol than just their relationship, and there is far more to Grace and Frankie than just jilted middle-class ex-wives. It’s a sweet, easy to watch series which not only makes us laugh out loud but also gives us an insight into characters that are usually simply tired stereotypes. It’s probably not going to push any boundaries or make a statement, but enjoyable and well written. I, for one, can’t wait for Season 2.
Becky Kukla is a 20-something living in London, working in the TV industry (mostly making excellent cups of tea). She spends her spare time watching everything Netflix has to offer and then ranting about it on her blog.
‘Welcome to Me’ is pitched as “woman wins the lottery and uses it to finance her own daytime talk show.” I interpreted this as “Joan Calamezzo: The Movie” and immediately added it to my to-watch list. What that quick summary fails to mention is that Kristen Wiig’s character Alice Klieg has borderline personality disorder, and that her decision to produce her talk show coincides with her going off her meds.
Kristen Wiig in Welcome to Me
At the end of her now-legendary Tonight Show interview as Daenerys Targaryen, it is revealed Kristen Wiig is there to promote Welcome to Me, pitched as “woman wins the lottery and uses it to finance her own daytime talk show.” I interpreted this as “Joan Calamezzo: The Movie” and immediately added it to my to-watch list. What that quick summary fails to mention is that Kristen Wiig’s character Alice Klieg has borderline personality disorder, and that her decision to produce her talk show coincides with her going off her meds. Yes, Welcome to Me is in the perilous genre of the mental illness comedy. Is it the Silver Linings Playbook for borderline personality disorder or another Blue Jasmine offering a vague Blanche DuBois-esque mélange of symptoms in lieu of actual characterization? Welcome to Me falls somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.
A very special episode of Welcome to Me
On her show, Alice describes her history of mental health diagnoses: manic depression, rapid-cycling bipolar disorder, and most recently, borderline personality disorder. As a mentally ill person myself, I nodded my head along to the ever-changing labels psych patients keep up with. But borderline personality disorder is outside my personal mental health history, and I know very little about it. I don’t even “know” anything about it from Hollywood; the only other borderline character I could think of was Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted, and that film strongly challenges the appropriateness of that diagnosis. So I cannot tell you if Welcome to Me “gets borderline personality disorder right” (but herearesome articles that address that question, each with different conclusions).
Alice delivering one of her “prepared statements” on television
Whether or not Alice is a fair representation of borderline personality diorder, she is a clearly realized character. Wiig plays her with a flat affect most of the time, somewhat interpersonally detached and awkward, and either unaware or uninterested in social decorum (her “prepared statement” after her lottery win begins, “I was a summer baby born in 1971 in Simi Valley, California, and I’ve been using masturbation as a sedative since 1991”). But Alice’s emotions are easily and erratically triggered in ways that leave deep wounds, evidenced by her talk show segments re-enacting small slights from her past, like a friend swiping some of her makeup. Alice’s personal take on her condition becomes clear when she reflects on “all the times in my life when I was supposed to feel something but I felt nothing, and all the other times in my life where I wasn’t supposed to feel anything but I felt too much and the people around me weren’t really ready for all of my feelings.”
Alice has an emotional breakdown on the set of her talk show.
While the writing and acting create a consistent vision of Alice, it is one wholly defined by her mental illness. She’s not a person, she’s a DSM-V checklist. So it is impossible to relate to her character, even as a mentally ill person myself.
And it becomes very hard to watch Welcome to Me as a comedy because laughing at Alice feels cruel. She is taken advantage of by the small-town tv station that airs her show, who keep telling her they need more money because she’ll robotically write them checks until she’s spent nearly all her fortune. Her therapist (Tim Robbins) is condescending and callous. And when people ARE kind to Alice (like her best friend Gina [Linda Cardellini] and her co-worker and occasional lover Gabe [Wes Bentley]), we see her hurt them terribly through her own self-involvement and volatility. It is a very sad story. The absurdity of the talk show in the center stops being funny and becomes tragic. And not being able to laugh at Kristen Wiig riding a “swan boat” onto stage while she sings her own theme song is just a waste.
No one wants meatloaf cake
Welcome to Me offers the ingredients of a good drama about mental illness and a good comedy about a low-budget vanity talk show, but combined this comes out like the meatloaf “cake” with sweet potato “frosting” that Alice presents on her show. It’s unpleasant and you wonder why anyone would make it in the first place.
Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh. If she had her own TV show, she would hire a professional to sing the theme song.
On the eve of the release of season 3 of ‘Orange is the New Black,’ and while the rest of the world’s feminist media critics still struggle to sort out ‘Sense8,’ I decided to take a look at one of Netflix’s least-buzzed-about original series: ‘Grace and Frankie,’ which premiered in May to little fanfare outside a late night tweet from one Miley Cyrus. ‘Grace and Frankie’ stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as the title characters, whose husbands Robert and Sol (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) leave them for each other after admitting to a 20-years-running affair. Grace and Frankie move into the beach house the couples shared and forge an unlikely friendship while navigating the single life for septuagenarians. The show has its charms, such that I might have watched the entire season without journalistic integrity as a motivation, but ‘Grace and Frankie’ let me down in a lot of ways:
Promo image for Grace and Frankie
On the eve of the release of season 3 of Orange is the New Black, and while the rest of the world’s feminist media critics still struggle to sort out Sense8, I decided to take a look at one of Netflix’s least-buzzed-about original series: Grace and Frankie, which premiered in May to little fanfare outside a late night tweet from one Miley Cyrus. Grace and Frankie stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as the title characters, whose husbands Robert and Sol (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) leave them for each other after admitting to a 20-years-running affair. Grace and Frankie move into the beach house the couples shared and forge an unlikely friendship while navigating the single life for septuagenarians. The show has its charms, such that I might have watched the entire season without journalistic integrity as a motivation, but Grace and Frankie let me down in a lot of ways:
You may also need big bowl of vanilla ice cream and whiskey, as enjoyed by Lily Tomlin as Frankie
1. The premise turns out to be rather boring. It is easy to imagine a late 90s pitch meeting, where “It’s like The First Wives Club—but their exes are gay. For each other!” is met with applause and pats on the back for cooking up something so “edgy.” And given that the creators of Grace and Frankie are 90s sitcom powerhouses Marta Kauffman (Friends) and Howard J. Morris (Home Improvement), you might expect something embarrassingly old-fashioned along those lines. Fortunately this is not the case, but Grace and Frankie overcorrects: everyone is so accepting of Robert and Sol coming out, and breaking up their marriages to do so, that most of the dramatic interest is obliterated.
2. This blandness coincides with an unfortunate case of bi-erasure. No one ever uses the B-word, even though Robert and Sol seem to have truly loved their wives romantically and sexually before falling for each other. [Spoiler alert!] A late-episode plot development will probably force reconsideration of this issue in season 2, but I’d rather bisexuality not be addressed through a negative stereotype like unfaithfulness.
She’s a kooky free spirit, she’s uptight and snobby!
3. The odd couple dynamic between Grace and Frankie is alarmingly unimaginative. One is a WASP and one is a hippie! Can you imagine the peyote-fueled hijinx that must follow?
4. It leans heavily on the HILARITY of old ladies saying dirty words while rarely bothering to weave those dirty words into otherwise funny dialogue.
“If anybody is gonna sit on Ryan Gosling’s face, it’s gonna be me!”
5. And yet the series is remarkably chaste outside of its discussion of sandy vaginas and yam-based personal lubricants. Grace and Frankie wants to be celebrated for acknowledging the sex lives of seniors, but the most sexual chemistry we see on screen is between Lily Tomlin and the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
6. The characters are in the very boring As-Perpetually-Seen-on-TV Upper Upper Middle Class, and the show never engages with how the characters’ economic privilege intersects with their aging or sexual identity.
7. The first episode rips off the How to Get Away With Murder scene where Annalise removes her wig and makeup, which a) is significantly less meaningful with a white woman b) undermined by the drastically incomplete removal of Jane Fonda’s makeup. This is her “deconstructed” look:
Jane Fonda’s “bare” face
8. And for a show whose main selling point is celebrating women of a certain age, it is a shame they felt the need to shave eight years off Jane Fonda’s age and five years off Lily Tomlin’s to make both protagonists 70 years old. And then have Grace list her age as 64 on a dating website.
9. The one person of color in the cast is the least-developed character. That’s one of Sol and Frankie’s adopted sons, Nwabudike “Bud” Bergstein (Baron Vaughn). It feels like the one chance we get to know him is through his chemistry with his future sister-in-law Brianna (June Diane Raphael), but that relationship is sidelined in favor of…
June Diane Raphael and Baron Vaughn as Brianna and Bud
10. The creepy “I stalk you because our love is so pure” “connection” between the other cross-section of future step-siblings: Mallory (Brooklyn Decker, who has surprising comic timing) and Coyote (Ethan Embry, who is disturbingly 20 years older than he was in Empire Records WHERE DOES TIME GO). Mallory has a hunky doctor husband and Coyote is a drug-addicted loser, but I think we’re still supposed to root for those two crazy kids to work it out? I am only rooting for a restraining order.
Brooklyn Decker and Ethan Embry as Mallory and Coyote
11. And June Diane Raphael is as underused as she normally is, in keeping with her place as television’s Judy Greer.
12. There is an episode in which some of the main characters are trapped in an elevator and one of the characters unexpectedly delivers a baby outside of a hospital setting, but these two storylines occur at different times and places. How dare you tease us with the cliché singularity, show, and not follow through.
Duty calls, Dolly!
13. Dolly Parton does not guest star, denying us the 9 to 5 reunion we want—no, need—no, DESERVE. This better be corrected in season 2.
Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh who can personally attest to the deliciousness of whiskey-soaked vanilla ice cream.
Lindsay does not like to think of herself as a mother. Whether it has to do with her negative feelings about her own mother, or the fact that it might make her seem old (or, quite possibly, a combination of both), it becomes very obvious that she does not seem to feel comfortable in this role.
Now the story of a wealthy family who’s literally lost it and the two mothers who had no clue how to keep it all together. It’s Arrested Development.
When it comes to parenthood, there is little to be learned from the Bluth family other than how not to do it. There are bad parenting choices all over the place. Moreover, when it comes to parenthood, discussions usually focus on the mother as the central character involved in the matter, sidelining the dads, which has to do with the antiquated gender roles our society is still prone to perpetuate. It is due to this habit that when talking about bad parenting, it is the mothers who are judged a lot more harshly than the fathers. When a mother neglects what is still often believed to be her natural role of the nurturing individual in a child’s life, she often faces scrutiny and reproach. Acknowledging this inadequacy, this article will nonetheless concentrate on the mothers of Arrested Development. Let the record show, however, that the fathers of the Bluth family are just as bad, if not worse.
Lucille Bluth, the matriarch of the family, has managed to raise her kids to resent her. The four (later to be five) siblings don’t usually agree on much. All the more telling is the fact that they readily agree on one thing: that their mother is a horrible person.
She has, however, maintained the love and loyalty of her youngest son, Buster, by strictly repressing his independence. The two of them have an inappropriately codependent relationship which, at times, reaches disturbing levels.
Lindsay Bluth has handled her daughter in the exact opposite way. She rarely knows Maeby’s whereabouts, nor does she seem to care at all. She prides herself on her liberal parenting style and all the freedom she is giving her daughter, when in reality, she simply fails to take notice of her.
While Maeby does enjoy the pleasures of a laisser-faire upbringing and the ability to take control of her own life as she pleases, she is also deeply hurt by her parents’ neglect.
All of this, however, is, in all its awfulness, used – and works perfectly – as a comedic device.
Stay-in-bed Mom
Not only does Lindsay forget Maeby’s birthday every single year, but she oftentimes fails to acknowledge, or even forgets, that she actually has a child. Thus, over the course of the previous four seasons, Maeby goes through a whole series of attempts to shock or spite her parents, none of which are successful, as they go completely unnoticed. This is already established in the very first episode when she tries to teach her parents a lesson about how their family ties are so loose that she doesn’t even know her own cousin, by kissing George Michael on the mouth – consequently sending him into a spiral of awkwardly improper feelings for her.
Her parents’ disinterest in her life reflects in her performance at school. Lindsay doesn’t care what grades Maeby gets, nor does she even know what grade she is in. This does work to Maeby’s advantage when she decides to quit school and work as a fake but highly successful movie executive instead.
Interestingly enough, Maeby’s constant need to rebel against her parents takes after Lindsay to some extent. After all, the whole reason Lindsay married Tobias was to spite her parents who, as they make perfectly clear, will never like nor accept him.
Lindsay does not like to think of herself as a mother. Whether it has to do with her negative feelings about her own mother, or the fact that it might make her seem old (or, quite possibly, a combination of both), it becomes very obvious that she does not seem to feel comfortable in this role. When she refuses to take Maeby to the Bluth company’s Christmas party, she argues: “You see, if I show up with you, it’ll just make me seem like I’m a mother.” As Maeby replies, “I’ve never thought of you that way,” which speaks volumes in itself, Lindsay is flattered and responds, “That’s sweet.”
Season 4 illustrates quite clearly the relationship between Lindsay and her daughter. In the two episodes dealing with Lindsay’s experience, Maeby is not a part of the plot. This is foretold metaphorically as Lindsay deems her framed photos of Maeby unnecessary baggage and leaves them behind, because her suitcase is too full. As a matter of fact, Maeby only appears in these episodes disguised as a shaman, which isn’t revealed until later in the season. This can be seen as an apt metaphor for Maeby’s struggle of being around all the time but never being seen. The episode centers around Lindsay, who, when asked by said shaman whether she has kids, instinctively says no.
Maeby’s Season 4 episode, on the other hand, deals exclusively with her trying to get her parents to notice that she is flunking high school – unsurprisingly, to no avail. As it turns out, Lindsay and Tobias have sold their house and gone their separate ways, abandoning Maeby, who they both believe they had sent to boarding school. While she is visibly disappointed by all of this, she is clearly not at all surprised. This goes to show just how badly she already thinks of her parents and how well she blends in with the Bluth family, where oblivion is king and no one has any respect for anyone.
One thing Lindsay deserves some credit for, though, is that by not caring about Maeby, she is also very accepting of her. Lucille, on the other hand, is highly critical of her children, especially focusing her verbal disapproval on Lindsay. Her looks and weight in particular are what Lucille loves to dwell on. When Lindsay declares that she “doesn’t feel like being criticized around the clock,” Lucille’s harsh, yet hilariously nonsensical reply is: “I don’t criticize you. And if you’re worried about criticism, sometimes a diet is the best defense.”
In fact, Maeby does learn to appreciate her mother’s aloofness when she briefly befriends Lucille, who quickly starts subjecting her to the same rebuke about her physical appearance. She subsequently even tells Lindsay that she’s glad to have her as a mom.
Another thing that sets Lindsay apart from her mother Lucille is that she is not a control freak. Lucille who, incidentally, sometimes happens to be out of control due to her excessive drinking, keeps tabs on all the goings-on in the Bluth family. In a way, she is the evil puppeteer of the family, monitoring her children’s every move and manipulating them not only into doing things for her and getting her what she wants, but also into turning against each other for that very purpose.
Her fear of her children ganging up on her is another reason she pits them against each other. In Season 1, for instance, she tells Lindsay that Michael thinks of her as a stay-in-bed mom – when it was really her, who coined this ever so fitting description of her daughter.
Maeby pretending to move out of the model home, in an effort to outrage her parents. Lindsay, meanwhile, is sound asleep.
A run for their money
Despite their differences (of opinion and in general), Lucille and Lindsay share quite a few (appalling) characteristics.
While they both have a very hands-off parenting style, they certainly have a very hands-on attitude towards the family money. When it comes to finances, both are hugely irresponsible. They have grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle and are not willing to relinquish it in the face of their going broke. In a family where no one cares about anything but themselves, they take whatever they can get their hands on, mostly by lying to everyone about everything – that being another character trait the Bluth family has collectively perfected.
Not unlike the rest of the Bluths, they are both entirely out of touch with reality. Whether it’s Lindsay’s pretend interest in political causes and desultory fundraisers, or Lucille’s bizarre appraisal of the world (“I mean, it’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost? Ten dollars?”), it becomes very clear that money is a non-issue for them. This does not change in a time where it should be and is very much of great concern, seeing as the company is in jeopardy of going out of business.
With the goal of maintaining her luxurious lifestyle, she uses her children as pawns in order to maneuver her way around her son Michael’s policy of handling the company money responsibly. What matters to her is that she gets her way. Her disregard of other people’s feelings also shows in how overly vocal she is about disliking her children, especially GOB. Out of her four biological children she clearly harbors the most disdain for him. After her “baby,” Buster, Michael seems to be the one who she is the fondest of. The way she phrases this demonstrates not only her inability to say something nice to her children, but also how much of a burden she seems her children to view as: “You are my third least favorite child.”
However, this fondness might have to do with the fact that he handles the family money. A case in point is the following conversation in Season 1:
Michael: “I don’t have the money, alright, Mom?”
Lucille: “Then why are you here?”
Not only does she not make a secret out of not liking her children, at times she even goes out of her way to be mean to them. For example in Season 1, when she deliberately tries to hit GOB with her car, which she later blames on an unsuspecting Michael. In order to prevent him from remembering what really happened that night, she repeatedly hits him over the head with heavy objects, all the while pretending to be the caring mother figure who just wants the best for her son and is there to nurse him.
Speaking of nursing…
When George Sr. goes to prison, Lucille’s grip on Buster tightens. For fear of being all alone, she relies on her youngest son to be there for her. This works well for poor, brainwashed Buster, whose affection for Lucille knows no bounds.
As the overbearing mother that she is to him, she dresses him, gives him baths and decides what he can and can not do. In return, he does what he can to serve and please her, which grows more absurd as the series progresses: From the fairly harmless zipping up of her dresses to the unsettling practice of a mouth-to-mouth ritual when Lucille takes up smoking and Buster inhales the smoke from her mouth and blows it out the window, because she refuses to get up to do this herself.
Despite all this closeness and codependence, their relationship is subliminally based on a mutual hatred of some kind. His constant presence, as they can no longer afford to send him off to postgraduate studies, annoys Lucille and she starts to resent Buster.
Small, yet very real insults are exchanged behind each other’s backs. Lucille says about him, “His glasses make him look like a lizard,” whereas Buster speaks his mind to his siblings, who regularly badmouth their mother themselves: “She gets off on being withholding.”
Aside from being terrible at parenting, Lucille is an alcoholic. While she is usually heavily “under the influence,” the whole family is subject to and under the influence of her insane whims.
Her drinking might also help explain why Buster seems a little bit strange in general. When he unwittingly drinks alcohol for what we believe to be the first time, the narrator clarifies: “It was the first taste of alcohol Buster had since he was nursing.”
Clearly, theirs is a love of many a troubling detail. There are little clues dropped here and there that shape up to an image of an unhealthy, sheer unbreakable bond between mother and son. It is a slippery slope from Buster’s remarks such as “This is not how my mother is raising me” (note the present tense) to Lucille admitting in Season 3 that she has only just quit taking her post-partum medication, 32 years after having Buster. Michael gently suggests “cutting the cord,” but Lucille isn’t having any of it. “He needs me” and “he’s weak” are her excuses to keep him under her wing.
When ultimately he does break free from Lucille’s dominant parenting, he literally doesn’t get very far: He gets involved with Lucille’s best frenemy, Lucille 2, who lives across the hall, and quickly moves in with her. In a way, she takes on the role of a mother-substitute while also being Buster’s lover, the lines of which seem to be a big blur for Buster as it is, as is often insinuated throughout the seasons of the show, but especially in season 4.
For the first time, Buster is free from Lucille and greatly enjoys his newfound liberation (with the other Lucille). He wants to experience life and do all the things his mother never allowed him to do.
Meanwhile, a jealous Lucille, who has never lived alone, is initially terrified and tries to break up Buster and Lucille 2. However, it doesn’t take long for her to also explore her freedom, and soon she is found dancing drunk in her apartment, smoking a cigar and singing along to “Mama’s all alone, Mama doesn’t care, Mama’s lettin’ loose” blasting on the stereo.
As the two of them are living it up without each other, it becomes clear that this is not a long-term solution. Buster eventually breaks up with Lucille 2: “I’ve already got a Lucille in my life!”
However, Buster is not the only one to seek a replacement for the other. Lucille needs the security of taking care of “her baby” and takes whoever is convenient to her at the moment.
Lucille’s trust in Buster is shaken and she gets an adoptive child who she believes to be named Annyong (“Hello”). She uses him to make Buster jealous as a type of revenge for him leaving her for a different Lucille. Though she is deeply annoyed by the kid who hardly ever speaks a word other than “his name,” she still keeps him with her as a way of showing Buster how little he is needed.
When Buster goes off to the army, she admits that if anything were to happen to him, she would be lost.
She instantly pulls George Michael close to her and declares, “You’re going to have to be the baby of the family” and with a kiss on the cheek she commands, “You’re never going in the ocean. You’re my baby, I’m never letting you go!” as she holds him in a tight embrace.
Undoubtedly, she is not thinking clearly in this state of emergency, because usually, Lucille isn’t one for showing her affection. In fact, as she once hugs Michael, he seems startled and confused as to what is happening.
What is remarkable about the Bluth family is that, considering all their resentment toward and estrangement from each other, they are exceptionally close. They see each other every day or speak on the phone and while those are rarely friendly interactions, they are still very involved in each other’s lives.
All the overwhelming chaos and the myriad of issues create a wide array of feelings – and where there are feelings, there is certainly a bond. In the end, they can count on being there for each other, even when bribing is usually involved.
Lastly, it remains to say that Jessica Walter is brilliant in the role of the detached, alcoholic mother. For all those who can’t get enough of the wonderful and hilarious Lucille, there is always the adult animated TV series Archer, where Walter voices a character that bears an uncanny resemblance to Lucille Bluth.
We need new filmmakers like Cecile Emeke to break new ground with digital media. Smash the stranglehold of white filmmakers being the only ones telling Black stories that often dredge up old stereotypes and tired narratives. We need the specificity of Emeke’s vision. And dammit, I need more Rachel and Olivia in my life.
“It would be nice to have a story where it doesn’t always have to relate around men, or drug dealer boyfriend, babymama drama, (gun crime), or my Daddy’s gone. It doesn’t have to be like that. There are other narratives you know.”
–Michelle Tiwo (Olivia in Cecile Emeke’s Ackee and Saltfish)
I happened to be on Twitter the day Ava DuVernay hosted her 12-hour Rebel-A-Thon social media conversation with 42 Black filmmakers on May 27. With the hashtag #Array, various screenwriters, directors, and producers answered questions from fans and interacted with one another. I gave a shout-out online with my support, but also stated that I wanted to see more underrepresented filmmakers outside of the U.S.
Another Twitter user following the hashtag dropped filmmaker Cecile Emeke into my mentions. I quickly went to YouTube and discovered her humorous comedic web series Ackee & Saltfish.
Cecile Emeke, creator/writer/director of Ackee & Saltfish and Strolling
Completely crowd-funded, Cecile Emeke has created quite an impression with her work. She is redefining what Black female writer/directors can bring to the table. And this is critical, especially from a Black European female. Just like Black women in the U.S., it is hella rare for Black women in Europe to bring their voices to the table. The excitement I have for Amma Asante and the success of her critically underrated (and underplayed) Belle only makes me hunger for stories about Black women across the pond. Emeke herself has some strong words about being tired of white filmmakers telling Black stories with a white gaze. This familiar complaint is even more searing especially with the release of Girlhood by French filmmaker Céline Sciamma. (You can read what Emeke has to say about that here.)
Ackee & Saltfish is a very important piece of work that should be signal boosted with viewership and financial support immediately. It has an authentic, playful, low-key coolness that I want to see more of. The two lead characters in the series, Michelle Tiwo (Olivia) and Vanessa Babirye (Rachel), are not contrived stereotypes, and are not dealing with the usual negative tropes ascribed to Black female characters (refer again to Michelle Tiwo’s words I quote at the beginning of this piece). They are carefree Black women just living their life.
Michelle Tiwo (Olivia) and Vanessa Babirye (Rachel) having a typical chat that revels in sharp verbal zingers.
Let me stress this: we hardly ever see Black women just dealing with themselves and their friendships without contrived outside interference. Every webisode centers on Olivia and Rachel just chilling within their friendship. Some viewers may mistake this for being a plot-less series (or may be reminded of the old American comedy Seinfeld being a show about “nothing”). The show hinges on subtle character-based humor. Olivia and Rachel are the plot. The conflict in Ackee & Saltfish is the differences in how Olivia and Rachel interact with one another. Olivia is the more assertive, outspoken realist, whereas Rachel is the more laid-back and soft-spoken one, often looking at her friend Olivia with an expression of incredulous wonder at the things she says. The friendship feels real to me, and the way Emeke films the series, the viewer may often feel like the third person in the room simply hanging out and listening to the two banter about Lauryn Hill tickets, bread backs, how one’s breath smells, or why Solange Knowles should adopt Olivia. The easy back and forth between the two actors may have the feel of improv, but their lines are scripted by Emeke.
Rachel’s boyfriend prepared a dish of Ackee without Saltfish and Olivia has come undone over it.
My favorite episode is about Olivia and Rachel hanging inside a carpet store because it’s raining and they don’t want to get wet. While trying to stay dry they have to contend with a faceless store owner who keeps pestering them with “Excuse me!” when he sees they are not there to buy carpet. Eventually they hear music playing in the store, and they start dancing, doing moves I’ve done myself (like The Butterfly). It’s silly and reminds me of the random moments I’ve had with my friends.
Olivia thinks she’s the next Serena Williams. Rachel is not impressed.
Thus far, all the episodes (including the original short film) only show Olivia and Rachel interacting with each other. I’m hoping that as Emeke’s fan base grows, and she can secure more funding to make more episodes, that she will eventually allow us to see these two besties engage with other characters. I want the web series to be picked up and turned into a TV series with longer episodes. There are six episodes available to watch online. There is also a 10-minute “support” video where Emeke and her actors talk about the work they’re doing while encouraging viewers to give financial support with donations so they can create more content. (I have done that!)
The other project Emeke has in her creative arsenal is the intriguing documentary series called Strolling in the U.K., and Flâner in France. Emeke films young Black people strolling in their neighborhoods as they talk about what it’s like living in their respective spaces. Over nine episodes (about 10 minutes each) participants discuss race, class, gentrification, colorism, colonial legacies, Afrofuturism, what it means to be a Black British person, or a Black French person (or British Jamaican, or British Nigerian), Black mental health, sexuality, sexism, misogyny and the list goes on. The power of this documentary series for someone like me, a Black American, is the decentering of African Americans as the dominating cultural force in the African diaspora. I can listen to new Black voices who share the same transatlantic African history, but who have a differing perspective on how the African diaspora should connect based on where their ancestors landed after enslavement. They are echoing my Twitter call to hear from underrepresented voices from across the pond. Strolling is a Black cultural call and response, a digital “How your people doin’ over there Fam?” and they answer “Living like this, Sis.”
Strolling in the U.K. with young Black Brits in the Strolling documentary series.
In Flaner, Emeke allows young Black French voices to be heard speaking their own truth.
Emeke would like to take the Strolling series to other places outside of Europe, and I am here for it. How amazing it would be if she were able to travel to Japan, India, Brazil, Mexico, and Australia, Indonesia or parts of Canada to record unique voices with unique perspectives? People of African descent are everywhere, blended into other cultures with rich stories to tell the rest of the world. The Strolling series is also an opportunity for White and non-Black people of color to understand that there is not one monolithic “Black” experience. Thank goodness. That would be boring.
We need new filmmakers like Cecile Emeke to break new ground with digital media. Smash the stranglehold of white filmmakers being the only ones telling Black stories that often dredge up old stereotypes and tired narratives. We need the specificity of Emeke’s vision. And dammit, I need more Rachel and Olivia in my life.
Friendship goals. Rachel and Olivia. More please.
P.S. I know you were wondering, here it is:
Ackee and Saltfish the dish. Google the recipe and enjoy.
I owe a great debt to Tomlin for helping me discover comedy, for helping shape my sense of humor, and for helping me define a sense of identity that might not have ever emerged without her. How can anyone argue that women aren’t funny, when my sole entire reason for making people laugh was inspired by a (funny) woman?
At this year’s annual Golden Globes, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin presented the award for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical Series. While it was nice to see the stars of one of the best comedies ever made, 9 to 5, it was also exciting to see these two talented actresses reunite on stage in what was of course a quick promotion for their soon-to-debut Netflix series, Grace and Frankie. But what was most notable was the tongue-in-cheek banter they had on stage, discussing how “nice” it was to finally put at rest the “negative stereotype” that men aren’t funny. Of course, it is not exactly true that men have never been funny, but for some reason it has always been heavily debated whether or not women are funny. What I found most ironic was the fact that Tomlin led this conversation, because of all the talented comics out there—male or female—I have always regarded her as my greatest (and funniest) comedic muse.
It is no secret within my social circle that I am absolutely bananas over Lily Tomlin, and from an early age to boot. While I was in grade school, I was introduced to Tomlin from a Laugh-In reunion special that aired in the early ’90s and upon being exposed to her widely popular Ernestine the telephone operator and Edith Ann characters, I found Tomlin’s comedic creations imitable. From that moment, I was hooked. Back before the days of IMDb, I would spend hours in a video rental store, searching through the “Comedy” section for her name or her face on a VHS sleeve (remember those?). It wasn’t before long that I found a “best of” compilation of a little sketch comedy show called Saturday Night Live that featured two of Tomlin’s hosting stints. This newfound discovery of nostalgic humor led me to my first love of comedy. To put it simply: I owe my adoration of sketch comedy and my obsession with SNL to Lily Tomlin. Because of Tomlin, I found the courage to move to the land of improv, Chicago, in the hopes of performing sketch comedy and turn it into a career. Ya hear that? A woman—a FUNNY woman—inspired me to find a career in making people laugh.
And why not? Lily Tomlin is one our most premier comediennes as of all time. Hell, The Laugh Factory includes an artist’s rendering of her among many of the greatest comedians who ever lived. Why we are even still debating this “women are/aren’t funny” theory is beyond my own belief, because as an aspiring comedic performer, I have always touted Tomlin as one of the greats.
First and foremost, Tomlin revolutionized comedy for women. Before Tomlin, most female comics were self-deprecating (Phyllis Diller) or performed material regarding marriage and children (Joan Rivers). Tomlin’s turn in the spotlight did away with joke-telling and produced sketch comedy acts involving a variety of characters inspired by people she had known while growing up in the diverse, blue-collar environment of Detroit. Tomlin’s act embraced the counterculture of the 1960s, during the time of the civil rights movement and the sexual revolution. Gender dynamics were changing, and Tomlin was at the forefront of the women’s lib movement in comedy. She performed material that focused on the working class and the poor, material that required an edgy intelligence that did not go for punch lines or cheap laughs. She certainly didn’t limit her comedy to material about her looks or motherhood or married life—though her sketches didn’t shy away from such matters either. Tomlin was not a standup-comic, but a cerebral comedic performer.
Tomlin’s talent for creating eccentric, offbeat characters landed her a spot on NBC’s Laugh-In, and her prolific career took off overnight. Some of her most beloved characters came about on this variety show, including Ernestine, a snorting, nasally-voiced telephone operator who controlled the phone lines with her sharp tongue and smart-alecky insults. She also gave us Edith Ann, a philosophizing seven-year-old who sat in an oversized rocking chair spouting off words of wisdom while sticking out her tongue. Tomlin’s knack for producing dozens of three dimensional characters would eventually provide her enough material for her own television specials, of which landed her several Emmy awards. These specials reflected the changing times involving racial and gender politics, material that did not involve a lot of punch lines or pratfalls but certainly served as intelligent yet controversial material that not even Louis CK or Chris Rock would have the balls to produce back in the day (and if anyone can track down these specials in DVD format, please let me know!). I would even say Tomlin should be given credit for introducing comedian Richard Pryor (whom collaborated with Tomlin on a few of these specials) to the mainstream when most producers were too scared to let Pryor have any air time. Tomlin was an underground comic almost too dangerous to showcase amid the still-shrewd comedy scene of the 1970s.
Throughout the ’80s, Tomlin starred in films that showcased multidimensional females that could lead to strong box office returns. She has always chosen roles that project a strong persona, never submissive to authority let alone a male figure. Tomlin’s characters are in essence Tomlin herself: offbeat, eccentric, but always strong and independent. Tomlin proved she could stand toe-to-toe with comedy legends like Art Carney in The Late Show. She had a physicality that could keep up with the comedic ferocity of Steve Martin in All of Me (and possess his body no less!). Tomlin’s strong sense of humor and femininity also proved successful alongside other actresses, sharing the screen as well as countless laughs. In 9 to 5, Tomlin’s Violet Newstead is one of three women who take down their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical” male boss, Franklin Hart. Violet delivers a speech of disgust towards Hart that’s one of Tomlin’s most pivotal moments in her acting career:
“Okay, okay, I’m gonna leave, but I’m gonna tell you one thing before I go: don’t you ever refer to me as ‘your girl’ again…I’m no girl, I’m a woman. Do you hear me? I’m not your wife or your mother—or even your mistress. I am your employee and as such I expect to be treated equally with a little dignity and a little respect!”
Violet’s demand for equality was a calling that every working woman heard loud and clear, and with the chemistry between Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton, women AND men came to the movie theaters in droves, paving the way for comedic actresses in film that proved female-driven comedies could bring the masses to the box office. Without Tomlin’s collaborative talent in 9 to 5, there would be no Outrageous Fortune, no Big Business (another Tomlin film—this time paired up with the Divine Miss M, Bette Midler), no Baby Mama, Bridesmaids, or The Heat.
Even as an older actress in today’s Hollywood—when most “women of a certain age” are relayed to playing mothers—Tomlin has never been one to play a matriarch as paper thin. She portrayed Mary Schlicting, Ben Stiller’s mother in Flirting with Disaster, as a post-’60s hippie living in a ’90s world and still producing LSD. In Eastbound & Down, her Tammy Powers character was a bowling champion that could spout out more profanity than Danny McBride’s Kenny Powers while exchanging pharmaceutical drugs. In Admission, her Susannah character is a highly renowned feminist author who nearly kills Tina Fey’s date with a shot gun. In Web Therapy, her Putsy Hodge dons an array of costumes, from a fu Manchu beard to a prisoner jumpsuit, to the annoyance of her daughter Fiona, as played by Lisa Kudrow. These performances certainly don’t read as “motherly matriarch,” but as performed by Tomlin, they certainly scream “hilarious.”
With her new comedy, Grace and Frankie, Tomlin proves again how relevant and hilarious her talents still are in a series co-starring Jane Fonda involving two older women whose husbands come out as gay and have fallen in love with each other. For Netflix to add a comedy series (from Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman I might add) about two older women beginning anew, it proves that the old adage of women not being funny is untrue, and with Tomlin in tow, this comedy series will no doubt succeed in continuing to prove that theory wrong.
Late last year, Tomlin was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor for her contribution to the American arts. As one of Tomlin’s biggest fans, I had been petitioning for this recognition for years. Yet the moment was bittersweet, because while this was certainly good news for one of my favorite all-time idols, the fact was I would not be there to salute her at the event. One of my career goals in life was to speak on Tomlin’s behalf at the Kennedy Center. Tomlin and I have a few similarities: we both have southern roots planted in Kentucky, we both have an eye and ear for characterizations and impressions, and we both happen to be gay (in fact, Tomlin became the first outed lesbian to received the Kennedy Center honor in its entire history). I owe a great debt to Tomlin for helping me discover comedy, for helping shape my sense of humor, and for helping me define a sense of identity that might not have ever emerged without her. How can anyone argue that women aren’t funny, when my sole entire reason for making people laugh was inspired by a (funny) woman? Women may not have always been considered funny, but thanks to Tomlin’s efforts, women (as well as men) have reason to be funny.
Kyle Sanders lives in Chicago and plans to take improv classes at the Improv Olympic (as soon as his rent gets paid). In the meantime he occasionally contributes to NewsCastic: Chicago and GiGa Geek Magazine among other blogs that deem his thoughts worthy.
