Comedy – Page 7 – Bitch Flicks

Vintage Viewing: Mabel Normand, Slapstick Star in Charge

Part of Vintage Viewing, exploring the work of female filmmaking pioneers.

Mabel Normand was once known as “The Queen of Comedy” and “The Female Chaplin.” Her name was featured in the title of her shorts as their star attraction, which she soon parlayed into creative control as director. Normand mentored Charlie Chaplin as well as Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, who went on to mentor Buster Keaton in his turn. Mabel is, therefore, a cornerstone in the development of the American slapstick auteur, but one whose role is regularly overlooked. Her indirect connection with scandals, from Hollywood shootings to Arbuckle’s sensational trial, was used to tarnish her image and spark campaigns to ban her films, exploited by what biographer Thomas Sherman calls “behind-the-scenes Hollywood power brokers seeking to reshape the existing order.” Because of her early death in 1930 from tuberculosis, Normand is now remembered mainly through portraits by male co-workers, Mack Sennett and Charlie Chaplin, rather than her own words.

“Say anything you like, but don’t say I love to work. That sounds like Mary Pickford, that prissy bitch. Just say I like to pinch babies and twist their legs. And get drunk.” – Mabel Normand (close friend of Mary Pickford)

Normand began her career as a model and bathing beauty. In 1910, she joined D.W. Griffith’s Biograph, where she met Mack Sennett and showed potential as a serious actress in The Squaw’s Love, The Mender of Nets and The Eternal Mother. At the rival Vitagraph, she was mentored in film comedy by the duo of Flora Finch and John Bunny, saying “every fiber in my body responded to Flora Finch’s celebrated comedies.” Comedienne Ruth Stonehouse had also been on the scene since 1907, but Normand would become the first director of this cinematic comedienne pack. As Mack Sennett’s lover, Normand left Biograph for Sennett’s Keystone Film Company in 1912. In 1914, Normand began to direct shorts and starred with her protégé, Charlie Chaplin, in Tillie’s Punctured Romance, the first feature-length comedy, a fat-shaming extravaganza that nevertheless ends with solidarity between its female rivals and the rejection of their manipulative suitor. Dissatisfied with simplistic slapstick, Mabel strove for emotional authenticity, believing “if you seem to have any idea that you’re playing at something, you won’t get across” and claiming “no director ever taught me a thing.” Such naturalistic theories visibly influence the later aesthetic of Chaplin and Arbuckle. As Normand had in Mabel At The Wheel, Tamara de Lempicka would later use the image of driving to craft an icon of the empowered New Woman.

"Self-portrait in the Green Bugatti" - 1925 — “Self-portrait in the Green Bugatti” – 1925

In 1915, Normand’s engagement to Sennett broke up over his affair, with Normand suffering major concussion when rival Mae Busch hit her with a vase. This marked the end of Normand’s directing career, after less than two years. A male director would surely be assessed for future promise, yet even Normand’s defender, Thomas Sherman, writes dismissively that “she never had pretensions to being a filmmaking pioneer.” Roscoe Arbuckle, however, highlighted Normand’s active collaboration, saying “Mabel alone is good for a dozen new suggestions in every picture” (see Fatty and Mabel Adrift). Of Chaplin, Normand said, “We reciprocated. I would direct Charlie in his scenes, and he would direct me in mine. We worked together in developing the comedy action, taking a basic idea and constantly adding new gags.”

More than a collaborator, Normand’s biography contradicts claims of her limited ambition. Spurred to leave Keystone in 1916 by difficult relations with Mack Sennett, Sennett lured her back by offering her her own studio. The fact that Normand swallowed her pride, for the sake of her own studio, surely indicates how important creative control was to her. She dismissed three directors before handpicking F. Richard Jones to craft her star vehicle, tomboy Cinderella story Mickey, from a scenario by Anita “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes“ Loos. Normand was involved in every aspect of production. The release of Mickey was shelved for over a year, which Sennett blamed on lukewarm responses from distributors, pushing Normand to sign a five-year contract with Samuel Goldwyn. Once released, Mabel Normand’s Mickey became the highest grossing film of 1918, only too late to save her studio.

Normand with Cheyenne co-star and friend, Minnie Devereaux

Mabel Normand was noted for her generosity in refraining from upstaging other performers, and for her insistence on a slapstick equality in which she took a pie to the face as often as she threw one, in shorts like That Ragtime Band. She was the original “girl tied to the train tracks” in Barney Oldfield’s Race For A Life, but rescued her love interest on screen as often as she was rescued. Normand’s slapstick should be appreciated for its pioneering stunt-work as much as comedy. Mabel’s stunts included: leading a lion on a string, piloting a plane, diving off a cliff into a river, wrestling a tame bear, riding a horse bareback, jumping off a second story roof, dangling from a third story roof, being thrown from a moving vehicle, being dragged through mud on a rope, brick-throwing fights, and driving speeding race cars.

Mabel’s Strange Predicament – 1914

“I had nobody to tell me what to do. Dramatic actresses had the stage to fall back on, the sure-fire hits of theatrical history in pose and facial expression; but I had to do something that nobody had ever done before.” – Mabel Normand (showing pretensions to being a filmmaking pioneer)

The film that developed Chaplin’s Little Tramp persona, Mabel’s Strange Predicament, begins like later Chaplin films, with the pathos of the disheveled Tramp’s rejection by Mabel’s hard-hearted snob. The focus then shifts to Mabel’s own predicament, locked out of her room in pajamas and falling prey to farcically escalating sexual misunderstandings. Pajamas were considered so provocative that the film was banned in Sweden, explaining Mabel’s panic. Mabel’s own “sweetheart” almost strangles her after finding her under his friend’s bed (hiding from Chaplin’s persistent advances). Her sweetheart’s married friend reveals willingness to harass Mabel, as soon as the two are alone. A wedge is thereby driven between Mabel and Alice Davenport, who sees Mabel as sexual competition. In all this, Chaplin is utterly useless, blindly pressing his own suit. Only Mabel’s dog offers unconditional friendship. This kinship with animals would fuel many set-pieces in Mickey. Despite the film’s flippancy and happy ending, the overall impression is of a Mabel constantly stifled by the possessiveness of others.

By shifting the focus from Chaplin’s scorned heart to Mabel’s predicament, our interpretation of both characters shifts, too. Mabel begins the film as the snooty girl, but ends as the victim of exhausting demands on her affection. Conversely, Chaplin begins sympathetically as the archetypal Tramp – a whimsically drunken, lovelorn underdog – but ends as an oblivious and entitled sex pest. Most accounts agree that Chaplin was infatuated with Normand, fueling tension with Sennett. In Mabel’s Strange Predicament, we understand her beauty as a nuisance and hindrance to Mabel’s liberation, not a mere motivator for men. Perhaps the resulting unflattering impression of Chaplin explains the film’s top-rated IMDb review by Michael DeZubiria, calling it “a disappointment for Chaplin fans, but it is a curiosity piece to see what results when he works under a different, and far less talented, director.” A Cinema History, however, spotlights the skill of the “far less talented” 20-year-old Normand’s dynamic editing, keeping a tight pace with cross-cutting and short duration shots.

Suggested Soundtrack: TLC, “No Scrubz”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5WtaPhTMQo”]

Mabel At The Wheel – 1914

“I hated to be simply a means by which someone else was creating something.” – Mabel Normand (showing pretensions to being an auteur)

Mabel At The Wheel showcases Normand’s daring as a stuntwoman, brawling, tumbling from moving vehicles into mud, and racing cars. Its dynamic climax also shows her mastery of parallel editing, rapidly cutting between simultaneous events to build tension, a hallmark of her original mentor, D.W. Griffith. Mabel at the Wheel is the film where tensions with Chaplin exploded, with Sennett restrained from firing him only by distributors clamoring for more Chaplin pictures. IMDb’s trivia suggests that this is owing to Mabel being “quick to dismiss [Chaplin’s] own ideas for more refined comic business,” though her slapstick is visibly subtler and more naturalistic than Chaplin’s at this point. As Mabel at the Wheel itself depicts, when men fight over Mabel, it’s always Mabel who gets hit. Chaplin’s autobiography, My Life In Pictures, and Thomas Sherman both suggest the real problem was Chaplin’s inability to “countenance this girl, years younger than himself, directing him in his films,” despite Normand being his mentor in cinema. The jealous saboteur and shrieking bully that Chaplin plays in Mabel At The Wheel is therefore interesting, not only for contrasting with his later self-authored image, but for reflecting his reported behavior on set.

Chaplin never found a comic partnership to rival Mabel’s with Arbuckle, Margaret Dumont’s with Groucho Marx, Flora Finch’s with John Bunny, Lucille Ball’s with Vivian Vance or Stan Laurel’s with Oliver Hardy. He never again found, or perhaps permitted, a co-star with Mabel’s ability to rival both his physical daring and his emotional range, despite the undeniable spark this gives their interplay. A “Battle of the Sexes” angle, that debates whether Chaplin or Normand is more talented, surely misses the point: couldn’t both have grown to their fullest potential through equal collaboration? Wouldn’t Chaplin have sparked off madcap Mabel, as her naturalist theories inspired the developing emotional depth of his comedy? Wouldn’t Mabel, who had never performed comedy for a live audience, have developed discipline and sharper timing by learning from Chaplin’s years of vaudeville experience? Chaplin’s insecurity is not solely responsible for torpedoing Normand’s directing career, but his support could certainly have saved it.

Suggested Soundtrack: Lady Gaga, “Bad Romance”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuDqb1mp4oo”]

Mabel’s Blunder – 1914

“To make a farce heroine more than a mere doll, you must think out the situation yourself and, above all, you must pay great attention to every little detail in the scene. The little bits of business that seem insignificant are what make good comedy“ – Mabel Normand

Mabel’s Blunder, written and directed by Normand, suffers from Mabel’s lack of a really talented co-star, but further develops themes from her earlier films. As Chaplin does in Mabel’s Strange Predicament, Mabel’s boss and future father-in-law finds himself sexually harassing a man who has been substituted for Mabel, making male viewers imagine themselves as the harassed woman. Mabel’s forced smile, while harassed by her boss, pointedly contrasts with her privately expressed disgust. Normand again symbolizes her independence in Mabel’s Blunder by taking the wheel, posing as a chauffeur to spy on her cheating fiancé. Mistaken for a man, Mabel is attacked by a jealous suitor for talking to another woman, once more exploring how jealousy suffocates female freedom. Her cheating fiancé applauds the jealous suitor, exposing his double standards. The pointedness of this gender commentary is undermined, however, by a traditional happy ending in which the “other woman” is harmlessly revealed as the fiancé’s sister, while the implications of his own father’s harassing Mabel are never really confronted. All in all, Mabel’s gender reversals are not as biting as Alice Guy’s, but the two have a comparable comic perspective, a distinctive voice that was suppressed by the exclusion of female filmmakers.

Suggested Soundtrack: Yoko Ono, “What a Bastard the World Is”

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

While Lois Weber and Mabel Normand were helping to shape Hollywood’s cinematic style, back in Alice Guy’s homeland, France, Germaine Dulac was busily birthing experimental film and auteur theory. Next month’s Vintage Viewing: Germaine Dulac, Surrealist Theorist. Stay tuned!

Brigit McCone performs stand-up and cabaret, writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and slapping sticks.

‘The Foxy Merkins’ and the Uncharted Territory of the Fat, Lesbian Protagonist

That separation is reinforced by much of the film’s comedy, but Margaret isn’t positioned as an object of ridicule or disgust, as is often the case with fat and/or gender non-conforming characters. She is naive, gauche, and in over her head, but she is also the character with whom the audience empathizes most.

This guest post by Tessa Racked appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

This article contains spoilers for The Foxy Merkins.

Selected for the NEXT series at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival along with films like Obvious Child and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, The Foxy Merkins is a comedy by and about queer women with an episodic structure and humor fueled by social awkwardness and mundane absurdism (think Louie). Simply put, it’s part fish out of water comedy, part buddy film, and all lesbian hookers. Set in contemporary New York City, the film creates a world of sex work in homage to Midnight Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho, but populated by women who have sex with other women. As with its progenitors, this subculture is scandalous, but hardly clandestine. These sex workers bide their time on the sidewalk in broad daylight until approached by other women, which occurs with relative frequency.

The film charts unexpected territory by merging stereotypes about seemingly disparate subcultures. Its narrative maintains the beats of taboo sex and danger expected from a story about sex workers, but does so through the filter of lesbian culture and stereotypes. In one exchange between the two main characters, Jo (Jackie Monahan) advises Margaret (Lisa Haas) to market her services by using the hanky code. However, the film’s version isn’t quite the same one used by gay men in the 70s to signify their kinky preferences: “A yellow bandana in your left back pocket means you have more than one cat… a red bandana in your right back pocket means you like women who have been through the Change.”

Jo and Margaret at work. “A lot of the girls hang out in front of Talbots.”

The film predominantly focuses on Margaret, a newbie sex worker with a degree in Women’s Studies who happens to be fat and butch. She is a pastiche of red-blooded hunk Joe Buck (Jon Voight) from Midnight Cowboy and sulky sylph Mike (River Phoenix) from My Own Private Idaho, but her size and gender expression set her apart from their more normative representations of beauty. That separation is reinforced by much of the film’s comedy, but Margaret isn’t positioned as an object of ridicule or disgust, as is often the case with fat and/or gender non-conforming characters. She is naive, gauche, and in over her head, but she is also the character with whom the audience empathizes most.

Margaret bumbles her way through interactions with clients, but this characteristic diverts from the standard depiction of fat and/or gender non-conforming women as undeserving of sexual desire. The Foxy Merkins uses a more nuanced approach. We do see glimpses of her as a sexual being, such as a scene that begins by implying she’s just had an orgasm, even if it quickly turns its focus on her awkwardness. This trait is partially inherited from Joe Buck, who isn’t genteel enough to seduce the rich Manhattanites he targets. It’s charming in its relatability: as someone who can barely navigate small talk in a professional setting, let alone a sexual encounter, I could easily see myself in Margaret’s shoes. But these scenes are also ground for meta-humor, as film trope clashes with cultural expectations. What happens when someone who looks like Margaret assumes the role of soul-searching hustler formerly and famously occupied by normatively attractive men? The Foxy Merkins’ predecessors supply setting, story, and characters, but like a Warner Brothers cartoon character running off their background onto a blank screen, there is a dearth of precedent for a fat, butch film character to communicate sexual allure, either to fellow characters or to an audience who has been groomed to lust after thin, feminine women. The energy that Haas brings to these scenes suggests an undercurrent of resigned bewilderment.

Margaret socially functions as a sexual being by virtue of existing within a subculture of lesbian sex work, but that subculture largely retains real-world beauty standards, rendering her body simultaneously unattractive and sexually commodified. Jo explains to Margaret how she is seen by potential clients: “You’re the type of lesbian they are mortified to be seen with… they do not want to be caught with you. So they’re gonna pay you extra to sneak around with them… honestly, you should have so much more money.” Thin, femme Jo takes on the role of Margaret’s docent, as well as her foil. Carefree (and often careless), Jo opts to do sex work as a way of rebelling against her wealthy upbringing. Despite repeatedly stating that she is not sexually attracted to women, she is more experienced and successful than Margaret in their profession. In one scene, the two walk down a busy Manhattan street as Jo casually claims to have slept with every woman they pass, while Margaret seems to barely keep up with mentally processing what her friend is telling her.

Margaret’s allergies are triggered while visiting a client’s house.

The film continues to grapple with the clashing expectations of Margaret’s profession and appearance through a sequence of encounters with a rich, conservative client (Susan Ziegler). During their first encounter, the client asks Margaret to take her clothes off. In opposition to the sexy tone she ought to set, she chastely removes her bra and underwear once she is under the bedsheet. (Her client coquettishly refers to this maneuver as a “magic trick.”) While another film might construct an erotic scene with gliding closeups and sensual music, this one involves a stationary shot of Margaret squirming and rocking under the sheet as her client waits patiently off to the side, amplified sounds of rustling cloth the only soundtrack. The scene self-consciously buys into the mainstream trope that “nobody wants to see” fat bodies or expressions of queer sexuality. The client obviously wants to see Margaret’s body and have sex with her, but Margaret remains in her culturally sanctioned role of chaste lesbian/unseen fat person to the point of absurdity.

Unsurprisingly, this is not a film that passes up a chance to satirize the right wing. Margaret’s aforementioned client has hired two men (Charles Rogers and Lee Eaton) to dress as cops, burst into her hotel room, and terrorize Margaret, who is unaware that the scene is staged. In the second of three scenes to this effect, Margaret is completely naked. Fat bodies in a state of undress are usually cause for a film protagonist to express disgust, with the expectation that the audience will empathize with that disgust. This time, however, the fat body belongs to our protagonist. She isn’t modestly positioned with her back to the camera or cheekily blocked by an object in the foreground. The audience sees her full frontal in the center of the screen, flanked by the two cops pointing guns at her. As with her “striptease,” the camera is unwavering. This static view heightens our sense of Margaret’s shock and embarrassment, but is also confrontational. This is a film that asks the audience to relate to a fat, lesbian protagonist: if a viewer has been trying to empathize with Margaret by downplaying her size or queerness up to this point in the movie, those characteristics have become starkly unavoidable.

The male gaze that reinforces standards of thinness and straightness and is ubiquitous in cinema, even if only present in a handful of scenes in The Foxy Merkins, is embodied in this scene by the two cops. They repeatedly tell Margaret to drop what she’s holding, despite her protests that she isn’t holding anything and attempts to placate them by making dropping motions with her empty hands. They even insist that she has “something tied around [her] waist” and is wearing “a collared shirt,” as if they have no sense of what a fat woman’s body looks like in the nude. An absurdist feedback loop is created of a command that cannot be followed and cooperation that is inherently uncooperative. This dynamic is reminiscent of the often frustrating relationship that queer and fat people have with a dominant culture that demands compliance even when attempts to do so are demonstrably futile. We still hear voices of authority telling us to “drop it” with regards to weight and desire for non-heteronormative love and sex, despite evidence that diets don’t work in the long run and sexual orientation can’t be changed at will.

But these two men have no genuine authority, they have been ordered to act as police by the client. As Jo later explains to Margaret, “It’s her fetish, it’s her kink. She likes to see people naked with the police.” The client watches these confrontations from behind the bedsheets, distancing herself from the situation by feigning shock and claiming that Margaret showed up in her room uninvited. This rich, white, thin woman who is hiding her own queerness to maintain her privilege actively seeks pleasure from seeing the oppression of marginalized people. Their third date even includes a Black woman, ostensibly the client’s maid, getting shot by the cops. Jo, who has the privileges of her appearance and wealthy upbringing, similarly benefits from the situation, as she has been paid to withhold from Margaret that the scenes aren’t real. The client’s fetish parallels the common use of schadenfreude in film to entertain at the expense of not only fat people, but people of color, sex workers, and queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people.

Of course, The Foxy Merkins is a comedy, and the scenarios it presents are not as cruel as the realities it satirizes, or even the films to which it pays homage. The pretend bust is the closest Margaret comes to experiencing violence on the job, and even that ends with the cops and their shooting victim laughing and walking offscreen together. Nevertheless, the lighthearted humor speaks to real disparities in media representation. The audience is not allowed to forget that Margaret is occupying a position that the film industry did not historically intend to include someone of her sexuality, gender expression, or size. Both as a lesbian hooker and as a film character, her existence is a struggle. She ultimately realizes that she must move on from the former role, but as the latter, she is a quiet triumph.

Tessa Racked is a Women’s Studies major who makes a living as a social worker, writes about fat representation in film at Consistent Panda Bear Shape, and dispenses witticisms @tessa_racked. They live in Chicago.

What They Did Right in ‘The Heat’

Her character may at first feed the stereotype that fat people are overbearing, belligerent and take up too much space, but the camera doesn’t make her body a joke (with accompanying thunder-thighs music). I like M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” as the song of choice, and they do look pretty believably badass, with a comic overtone.

I had barely typed anything in before I got this

This guest post by Rhea Daniel appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

The thing with fat-haters is, that even a fat person, man or a woman, trying to stay healthy is offensive to them. Anybody who keeps bringing up your body out of the health concern, it’s just an excuse, they don’t really want to see you jiggling around. To quote Junot Díaz, “You think people hate a fat person? Try a fat person who’s trying to get thin.”

The presumption is that all fat people are unhealthy and lead a sedentary lifestyle, never mind that with all this fat-obsession in the medical field, the health of skinny kids gets ignored.

So let’s see what is perceived as “fat”: as with my case, anything above a US size 6 or 8 and you’ve crossed the point of no return. A size 2 would be perfect (but a size 0 would be too thin). Even the plus size industry is guilty of false advertising, fat models with the voluptuous, “proportionate” ideal are a crock. The fact is that the perception of the ideal female body has changed several times over hundreds of years, and here’s my beef: if this is true, and we know that the female body ideal is somehow connected to food availability and wealth, and that our bodies are some sort of sounding board off of which these subconscious perceptions are projected, different ones for different cultures and classes, then it’s time to stop falling for this illusion. And it’s time for women to stop doing it to each other.

So to The Heat.

Melissa McCarthy plays an ill-tempered, foul-mouthed detective and I like that she’s incorrigible just because; also, her entire godawful family is like that. Her primary concerns are the welfare of her brother and eventually of her cop-buddy, played by Sandra Bullock, so she is something of a protective mommy-bear. Her character may at first feed the stereotype that fat people are overbearing, belligerent and take up too much space, but the camera doesn’t make her body a joke (with accompanying thunder-thighs music). I like M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” as the song of choice, and they do look pretty believably badass, with a comic overtone.

McCarthy’s character is literally a slob, and I see parts of this character in a lot of her movies—and yet it is her character who is comfortable with her body and sexuality, she couldn’t be bothered with romance (and no make-overs, thank goodness). The mantra in the media and the world in general is, that for a woman to have any substance, fat or otherwise, she has to be considered desirable, doesn’t matter by which demographic. If you really want to be inclusive (and I’m not talking Glee inclusivity—a fat person is either an object of pity or attractive to someone with a sudden, inexplicable fat-fetish), chuck desirability in the grinder. If you’re concerned about representing fat people, it’s time to dispense with the compensatory love interest, or some day someone will come along who loves you just the way you aaah…zzzz….. It’s patronising, and it’s tired storytelling.

Sandra Bullock’s character is a bit of a dweeb and its not the first time she’s played an FBI agent who has trouble winning the respect of her male colleagues. It is her character, of the more acceptable body-type, who feels the need to overcompensate, who wears Spanx and has trouble forming romantic relationships, or any relationship. Not exactly a subtle role reversal, but her reasons for being insecure seem pertinent as she grew up in foster care. Also, it’s not like even models who fit into an acceptable mold of beauty don’t feel insecure.

Now if you’re not used to seeing women in situations of slapstick violence, you might not like this movie. Consider those home videos where kids do ridiculous things and get their nuts hurt. Those are real people getting hurt. Slapstick comedy, on the other hand, is centuries old and a well-practiced art. The women in this movie express pain, stoically take it, and do their jobs. There’s a scene where they’re tied to chairs and McCarthy has to remove a knife lodged in Bullock’s thigh to cut their ropes and then shove it back in before they’re caught. I thought it was evil, comedic genius: Jackass for girls. No rubber super-maidens here. The kind of violence I dislike is eroticised violence and this is how to actually do it without insulting an entire gender.

Also see Jumpin’ Jack Flash, because I told you to.

So this is not a comedy a social critic would be comfortable with. How do you make an offensive comedy inoffensive toward minorities and without being obvious, actually turn the tables? Dan Bakkedahl who plays the albino DEA agent in the film specifically addresses the trope of the evil albino. While not completely off the hook, they tried and made some good decisions. I’m looking forward to a sequel where they might address any other issues.

And Melissa McCarthy…I’m sending you hearts and bouquets from this end of the world.

Rhea Daniel lives in Mumbai. She frequently finds herself in a bind between her love for art and her feminist conscience. She is trying to become a better writer and artist and you can find her at rheadaniel(dot)tumblr(dot)com.

‘Parks and Recreation’: How Fatphobia Is Invisible

I don’t think it would be quite the same barrel of laughs if the motto of Pawnee were “First in Friendship, Fourth in Poverty.” Fat shaming and fat jokes like the People of Walmart photos are often a socially acceptable stand-in for the classist shaming of poor people. Poor people are more likely to be fat, after all. We get paid less and we’re more likely to be fired. Oh, the comedy!

This guest post by Ali Thompson appears as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

I’ve been binge watching Parks and Recreation episodes on Netflix over the past few weeks, and I really wanted to love it. But every time I am about to decide that I do, Parks and Rec makes a fat “joke.” I have to put the word joke in quotes because the punch line seems to be that fat people exist.

It’s weird that a show that is renowned for its kindness and feminism would rely so heavily on fat jokes, but it also isn’t. The discrimination and microaggressions that fat people endure are invisible to the wider culture, and Parks and Rec is a good example of this.

Fatphobia is a consistent presence in the show. In the “Sweetums” episode Ann Perkins says, “Pawnee is the fourth most obese city in America. The kids here are beefy. They’re just beefy, big-boned, chunk monsters. I call ’em like I see ’em.”

This happens in the second season, and apparently the writers found the existence of fat people so hilarious that they never let up after. Pawnee’s motto is “First in Friendship, Fourth in Obesity.” NBC is still selling shirts and bumper stickers featuring it.

There are plenty of times that Amy Poehler will say the word “obesity” as the supposed punch line of a joke, and then smirk at the camera slightly, like—“See? Fatties! Amirite??” The joke here seems to be that just the word “obesity” is funny.

I don’t accept the idea that this mockery is ironic or satirical. The assumption here is that the very existence of fat people is funny. That’s not subversive in any way. It’s “What’s the deal with airplane food” of making fun of what people look like. It is tired and lazy and hacky. And it causes real damage.

The word obesity refers to the mere existence of a fat body as a disease that must be cured. This medicalization of fat bodies has led to an increase in the stigma against fat people. Fat people are constantly confronted with microaggressions related to inaccurate assumptions about our health, even—and especially—at the doctor’s office.

Multiple studies have shown that the majority of medical personnel have negative attitudes about their fat patients and are more likely to see them as lazy and noncompliant.

Parks and Recreation seems to find this stigma hilarious. I don’t. If you had to wade through the never-ending cesspool that is being a fat woman in public and online, you probably wouldn’t either.

Parks and Rec also makes the tired old claim that all fat people have diabetes, which is not only fatphobic but is ableist because it frames diabetes as a punishment for being fat.

In the “Telethon” episode, the telethon is supposedly a fundraiser to end diabetes, but what they really seem to want to get rid of is fat people. The show repeatedly conflates diabetes and fatness and seems to find this incorrect and ableist conflation a source of high hilarity.

“Tonight we’re hoping the people of Pawnee will dip their big chubby hands into their plus size pockets and donate generously… Coming up, a very special video presentation called Even My Tongue is Fat: The Story of Pawnee.”

The existence of the Sweetums factory, which makes high fructose corn syrup, is supposed to be the reason the characters are concerned about diabetes, but here’s the thing: you don’t get diabetes from eating sugar.

Framing diabetes as the punishment fat people get for their laziness and lack of self-control drains the empathy out of any conversation about the disease. It actively harms people with diabetes because everyone, even their doctors, think they have the disease because they did something wrong. It’s hard to get decent health care when even your doctor blames you for being sick.

The “Soda Tax” episode is an example of some of the worst fatphobia and ableism of the show. It uses what Dr. Charlotte Cooper calls “the headless fatty”- images that show fat people as symbols of fear and disgust, removing their humanity so that they can be more easily turned into objects—because bodies without heads are bodies without minds or voices.

“Soda Tax” also continues to conflate fatness and diabetes and to present both as problems to be solved, proposing that a tax on soda could get rid of diabetes, which is wrong and also ableist victim blaming. The reality is that diabetes existed before soda did. It existed before refined sugar did. The idea that getting rid of a source of sugar will get rid of diabetes is profoundly ignorant.

What it does demonstrate is the current trend of the government increasing revenues by targeting taxes at despised groups. We can’t raise taxes on businesses or the wealthy anymore because that option has been removed by anti-tax partisans, but the government needs money, so who can they get it from?

Why not fat people? Or people who smoke or drink? No one will complain about targeting those people. If you really wanted to offset the harm you believe soda manufacturers are doing, why not target them for taxes, at the point of manufacturer? But politicians know they could never challenge large corporations that way. So they pick an easy target.

Fat people are the easiest target. We are framed as deserving of every bad thing. We are always available to scapegoat and target.

And then there’s Jerry—the ultimate target.

Jerry Gergich is fat, and he portrayed as stupid and clumsy. He is constantly the butt of mean jokes around the office, bullied by people he considers friends, but who openly talk about how much they hate him.

He is constantly farting. His pants rip when he bends over. He’s so stupid that he will eat anything placed in front of him, including a bowl of glue substituted for his soup. He lies about being mugged in the park, but he really fell into a creek because he was trying to retrieve a breakfast burrito he dropped.

You know fat people! They go WILD over food. Why, they’ll even try to eat food that fell into a dirty creek! Har har har.

Jerry’s wife Gayle is played by supermodel Christie Brinkley. The “joke” is how could a good-looking person could find something lovable in fat, unattractive Jerry? Fat people are only supposed to be partnered with other fat people. How could someone so low status and of such little value as Jerry be married to a conventionally beautiful woman?

Comedy!

It makes no sense to me that a show that uses imagery like this, and refers to fat children as beefy monsters, can still be lauded as the “comedy of super niceness.”

The perception of Parks and Rec as super nice, which ignores the show’s constant, mean-spirited mockery of fat people and people with diabetes, is consistent with the media’s general unwillingness to engage with actual fat people. Reporters are obsessed with getting the other side on some topics, but when it comes to publishing the most recent press release from the Fat People are Terrible Monsters Think Tank (funded by Weight Watchers and diet pills), they just copy and paste whatever and call it a day.

I am a fat woman and the constant positioning of the existence of my body as a huge problem for the entire world to butt in and have a say in solving is insulting and exhausting. My body is not a disease or a problem.

When was the last time you saw someone advocating for the rights of fat people and fat kids? Probably never. What about our right to not be bullied, discriminated against, and shamed by an entire culture?

Everyone talks about fat people, but no one talks to us.

To be fat is to be invisible. Most of the time, I won’t see anyone who looks like me anywhere in the media. And if I do, that person is the subject of mockery. I believe this contributes to the hatred of fat people and the discrimination against us. We are not considered people. We appear nowhere, except as a mean joke or as a decapitated image of a body—another fat body to be used as an object in the cultural panic that is the Obesity Plague.

The invisible fatphobia of Parks and Recreation is just a symptom of a wider cultural problem. And that problem is that fat people are not treated like people who have feelings and thoughts just like everyone else.

Ali Thompson is an artist, a writer, a fat activist, and an unapologetic weirdo. She is the creator of ok2befat.com.

‘Shallow Hal’: The Unexpected Virtue of Discomfort

Its challenge to fatphobia is covered in fat jokes and gross-out humor, tailored to trigger our prejudices. We can laugh, if prepared to question why. We can sympathize, if braced against an awkwardly half-choked, giggling snort. Humor strikes faster than self-censorship.

"Only a man this shallow could fall in love this deep." — “Only a man this shallow could fall in love this deep.”

Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

We are bad at multitasking empathy. When moved by Colin Firth’s Oscar-winning struggle with his stammer in The King’s Speech, you don’t want to recall cackling at Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda. As you congratulate yourself for noticing the rather obvious sexiness of Emmy-winning Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones, you’d prefer to forget laughing at Verne Troyer in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. It’s more comfortable having your heart warmed by the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind, if you ignore that your ribs were tickled by Me, Myself and Irene. It’s easier to feel good about sympathizing with Jared Leto’s Oscar-winning trans heroine in Dallas Buyers Club, if you blank the comedy stripping of Sean Young’s trans villain in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. The result is that neither gross-out comedy nor award-winning pathos seriously challenges its audience’s comfort; the comedy, because we’re never asked to sympathize, and the Oscar-bait, because we’re never tempted to mock. In 2001’s Shallow Hal, the Farrelly Brothers took Oscar-winning Gwyneth Paltrow, dressed her in a comical fat suit and demanded sympathy. The result was downright uncomfortable, and I loved it.

Shallow Hal comes with no genre cues or award endorsements to aid in compartmentalizing our empathy. Its challenge to fatphobia is covered in fat jokes and gross-out humor, tailored to trigger our prejudices. We can laugh, if prepared to question why. We can sympathize, if braced against an awkwardly half-choked, giggling snort. Humor strikes faster than self-censorship. The film has the boundless bad taste to remind viewers of their shallowness while daring to make them feel bad about it. The result can be a jarring viewing experience, provoking Rolling Stones‘ critic Peter Travers to declare “something condescending, not to mention hypocritical, about asking an audience to laugh uproariously at the spectacle of a fat person being sneered at and dissed as “rhino” or “hippo” or “holy cow,” and then to justify those laughs by saying it’s society’s fault.” Yet, is it truly hypocritical to remind an audience that they’re hypocritical?

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMLZnY2nLcw”]

The moment we see Jack Black’s Hal and Jason Alexander’s Mauricio hitting on “hotties,” the audience’s instinctive reaction is that they are too short and overweight to be justified in their shallowness. Hal is hypnotized into seeing inner beauty, and the hotties in fat suits and ugly cosmetics are utterly transformed into hotties without fat suits and ugly cosmetics. This premise allows Shallow Hal to become a forensic deconstruction of the fat joke. Do crushed chairs and giant meals remain funny, if acted by slim Gwyneth Paltrow? Or is it only the fat body that’s funny?

Many critics have pointed out that Shallow Hal uses tired, conventional fat jokes, without acknowledging how deliberately it targets thin bodies with those jokes. Left to imagine the fat body of Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow) only from bystander reactions and glimpsed body parts, we build a mental image of something hyperbolically monstrous. When Rosemary’s fat self is finally revealed, it is not to be mocked, but to relieve Hal and expose society’s dysmorphia. Of course, the Farrellys can’t control the audience’s response, only confront it. As Katherine Murray says of Chasing Amy and Dollhouse: “the power and relevance of both of these stories comes from the fact that objectifying women is a popular pastime in real life, and not everyone sees the problem with that – the discomfort and uncertainty of these stories comes from the fact that objectifying women is a popular pastime in real life, and not everyone sees the problem with that.”

Paltrow’s sympathetic performance blends spiky defensiveness and vulnerability. Seeing such low self-esteem in a slim, blonde “hottie,” Hal perceives it as “cuckoo.” Of course, it should be equally cuckoo for a fat woman to suffer pointlessly lower quality of life because of irrational stigma. Separating the body and the stigma raises interesting questions. Would it still be a dream to date Paltrow’s slender blonde, if onlookers reacted with the same judging, mocking and disbelieving scrutiny applied to obese girlfriends? Where Louie‘s “So Did The Fat Lady” wallows in the pathos of a fat lady that men won’t hold hands with in public, Shallow Hal questions whether men would feel comfortable publicly holding hands with Gwyneth Paltrow, if she were associated with lower status rather than higher. Or are they, actually, more shallow than Shallow Hal?

Hal progresses through each hurdle of deconstructed shallowness, from defying public judgment to accepting Rosemary’s body in its real form, with “love grows where my Rosemary goes, and nobody knows but me” becoming his anthem of social defiance. Shallow assumptions that short, overweight Hal is ridiculous for chasing girls “out of his league” are equally challenged. Hal can attract conventional “hotties” once his desire is proved more than superficial; it’s just that then he doesn’t want them. Shallow Hal joins gross-out classic There’s Something About Mary, and the non-Farrelly Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, as a romcom that dares to demand of men: “what is it about you that makes you deserve the girl?” It puts its hero through a trial of worth, without the usual, unquestioned entitlement to date whatever hottie the script provides (*cough* Forgetting Sarah Marshall). In There’s Something About Mary, a range of men try to seduce Cameron Diaz’s “hottie” using farcical exaggerations of classic wooing tactics: Matt Dillon’s sleazy Healy eavesdrops to discover and embody all her fantasies, Lee Evans’ emotionally blackmailing Tucker fakes a disability and an English accent to out-vulnerable the most vulnerable Hugh Grant fop, Chris Elliott’s stalking Dom manifests a passion so intense and persistent that it brings him out in hives, and hunky Brett Favre combines athleticism, wealth and fame. But it is only Ben Stiller’s continually humiliated Ted who, while making every technical error imaginable, loves Mary enough to place her happiness above his own desires, meaning he alone passes the film’s trial.

Conversely, the clients of Deuce Bigalow are farcical exaggerations of female anxieties: the narcoleptic fails society’s demand for women to be attentive; Amy Poehler’s Tourette’s violates expectations of ladylike behavior; the giantess is manly and intimidating; Fluisa is obese and unfit. Only by honoring the humanity and femininity of each of these extreme archetypes, and passing the final test of fully accepting his “hottie” girlfriend’s prosthetic limb, can Deuce prove himself worthy to be accepted and loved in his turn, as a flawed being. The shockingly honest self-scrutiny in gross-out comedy is one of the genre’s central pleasures. Farrelly Brothers movies are elevated above mean-spirited imitators (*cough* Norbit) by their dedication to conjuring and confronting anxieties on a path to purification. Though I didn’t include the Farrellys’ crude and absurdist Me, Myself And Irene in my survey of cinematic portraits of psychosis, and though it was slammed by mental health organizations, I must admit the film recognizes the psychosis of Jim Carrey’s Charlie Baileygates as his own responsibility, while allowing him to be a romantic and sexual being, which is as rare as it is refreshing. Since my psychotic break was flamboyant, I appreciate the Farrelly Brothers’ defiance of the respectability politics that plague mental health activism, just as Shallow Hal acknowledges and even exaggerates Rosemary’s overeating, while still challenging her dehumanization.

Crucially, Shallow Hal does not confine itself to the hypothetical thought experiment of imagining conventionally attractive actors as obese or cosmetically ugly, but introduces genuinely nonconforming bodies, including launching the acting career of Rene Kirby in a prominent supporting role. This tactic confronts viewers with the humanity behind the metaphor. Think of the audiences who empathized with Boris Karloff’s cosmetic monster in Frankenstein, but were appalled by the genuinely nonconforming bodies of Tod Browning’s career-destroying Freaks. Shallow Hal dares to sit Frankenstein and the real “freaks” at the same table, where all are celebrated as “one of us.” Does its casual conflation of fatphobia and ableism disturb some fat acceptance activists? The intense identification with nonconforming bodies that gay director James Whale showed in Frankenstein, or Oscar Wilde showed in “The Birthday of the Infanta,” faded from the camp aesthetic as gay rights advanced. The identification with Frankenstein shown by crossdressing director/star Ed Wood in Glen or Glenda, and transgender creator/star Richard O’Brien in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, is fading from today’s trans* rights movement. Is the fat acceptance movement fighting to end body stigma, or merely to separate fat bodies from that stigma? Must every step of progress be accompanied by an act of exclusion?

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G2X8QBt5m4″]

Fat acceptance?

The 1948 “race film” (that is, a Jim Crow era film with an African American cast, targeting African American audiences), Boarding House Blues, opens with Dusty Fletcher bringing a capering monkey into the boarding house to join his act. The monkey claims Dusty’s bed and forces him to sleep on the floor. It also bears a remarkable resemblance to King Louie, who would be talking jive and aping Louis Armstrong as the beloved “King of the Swingers” in Disney’s 1967 The Jungle Book, fully 42 years before 2009’s The Princess and the Frog introduced Disney’s first Black princess (and, despite its jazz-age New Orleans setting, had less of Armstrong’s sound in its Randy Newman score than the ape did in 1967). It is uncomfortable to watch “King Louie” side by side with Dusty Fletcher, as it is uncomfortable to see Gwyneth Paltrow’s fake stigma side by side with Rene Kirby. It becomes even more uncomfortable when “King Louie” removes his head and reveals that he is another African American man, forced into a monkey suit to hustle a living. Good. Let’s be uncomfortable about that.

Erasure is too often the politically correct alternative to discomfort. By cutting blackface and Stepin Fetchit routines from classic films, we retain the sentimentalized self-image of racists, while erasing uncomfortably visible reminders of their racism (and groundbreaking African American stars, as collateral damage). Boarding House Blues also stars Moms Mabley, a middle-aged woman (and the major pioneer of stand-up comedy, whose taboo-busting routines were tamed for film). Today, her role would be played by Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence or Tyler Perry in drag and a rubber fat suit. How would Murphy’s Rasputia hold the screen against Mabley’s real deal? Doesn’t the safety of our laughter at Rasputia depend on Mabley’s substitution? One more star of Boarding House Blues deserves attention: Crip Heard. Crip is a dancer with one arm and one leg. Entering on a crutch, he tosses that crutch aside with a flourish and dances unaided. It is hard to imagine this celebration of Crip’s resilient body appearing in even the blaxploitation film of the 1970s, let alone the modern mainstream. Where could Crip dance today? If you’re honest, you know the answer: in a Farrelly Brothers movie.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qSklDMBnQM”]

There is no question that fatphobia is a vile, irrational and bullying stigma. But the commonly repeated mantra that it is the “last acceptable prejudice” is demonstrably untrue. From physical disability to mental illness to trans* status, there are numerous acceptable prejudices in today’s comedies. As Kathleen LeBesco points out, the Farrelly Brothers have “more than any mainstream moviemakers working today, fought hard against the devices of concealment, cosmetic action, and motivated forgetting, and as a result thrown into question the reassurance that public bodies are flawless bodies.” The runner-up? Jackass, of course. So, are we ready to embrace the anarchic Farrelly vision of squirming confrontation and broad-based solidarity? Or must our body politics become respectability politics?

See also at Bitch Flicks: When It Seems Like The Movie You’re Watching Might Hate You

Brigit McCone admits to having a thing for Jack Black and Rob Schneider. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and terrible dancing in the privacy of her own home.

‘Garfunkel and Oates’ and the Sea Change for Women in Comedy

You probably know Garfunkel and Oates from their funny songs on YouTube, but you might have missed the eight-episode series they had last summer on IFC (I’m guessing most people did, because it got cancelled). But the series is now available on Netflix Streaming, and it is just the right level of quality where you’ll be happy you watched it but not miserable that there won’t be any more episodes.

It’s also an interesting study on some of the issues facing (caps-for-seriousness) “Women in Comedy.”

Kate Micucci and Riki Lindholme are Garfunkel and Oates.

Written by Robin Hitchcock.

You probably know Garfunkel and Oates from their funny songs on YouTube, but you might have missed the eight-episode series they had last summer on IFC. (I’m guessing most people did, because it got cancelled.) But the series is now available on Netflix Streaming, and it is just the right level of quality where you’ll be happy you watched it but not miserable that there won’t be any more episodes.

It’s also an interesting study on some of the issues facing (caps-for-seriousness) “Women in Comedy.” We’re nearly a decade out from Christopher Hitchens mansplaining why women aren’t funny and the tidal wave of backlash it wrought. Today, no one who is relevant doubts that women are funny, at least not out loud. But there are still issues of how women are permitted to be funny, and Garfunkel and Oates illustrates both the limitations and opportunities created by our expectations for female comedians.

1. How much can we talk about “girl stuff”?

Some people have the attitude that truly funny women prove their worth by not “relying on” their gender. (See also: white people praising Black comedians and other funny PoC for not “always talking about race.”) This is a fabulous silencing tactic, telling marginalized groups that their lived experiences are boring and unfunny while reinforcing the white male point of view as universal. The idea that telling jokes about “girl stuff” limits funny ladies to being “funny, for a girl” is predicated on the idea that womanhood is a deviation from the fundamental human experience. Which is sexist bullshit.

From the "Pregnant Women are Smug" video — From the “Pregnant Women Are Smug” video

The good news is that this sexist, silencing notion means a lot of funny material has been under-explored and is ripe for the picking. Garfunkel and Oates is at its best when it deals directly with “girl stuff.” In one episode, a club manager gives Riki and Kate the unsolicited creative note, “Please, no material about your periods.” When he leaves, Riki asks, “Why do guys think we talk about our periods?” and then they immediately start sharing details about their periods. They aren’t even that funny, but I still laughed like crazy, just because NO ONE EVER MAKES JOKES ABOUT THEIR PERIODS. Even though periods are hella funny. And guys are WORRIED about hearing about periods from female comedians. Very, very concerned.

My favorite episodes are the ones about dating (especially the one where they test the “Little Mermaid theory” and see if the guys they date will notice or mind if they don’t say any words, at all), the pressures of “aging” (“29/31“), and family planning (“Sometimes my womb is all like ‘hey girrrl’ and my mind is like ‘shhhhhhhh’ but right now I feel like, ‘yeah, maybe?'”). This perspective separates Garfunkel and Oates from simply being a retread of Flight of the Conchords.

From the "29/31" music video — From the “29/31” music video

Fortunately, I think Garfunkel and Oates is part of a sea change for female comedians where it’s not only okay to tackle female experiences, but applauded, by both women and men (see this interview with writers for Inside Amy Schumer). Of course I don’t think funny women should only cover “women’s issues” (G&O also get great mileage out of weed, awkward social situations, and adult immaturity), but I’m so glad that there is less pressure to shy away from it. Bring on the period jokes, ladies.

2. Is it OK to “use” our sexuality?

Sexy bathtub promo image for 'Garfunkel and Oates' — Sexy bathtub promo image for *Garfunkel and Oates*

If you’ll recall (and I’ll forgive you if you’ve blocked it from your mind), Hitchens’s main argument for the unfunniness of women was that men will have sex with us even if we don’t make them laugh. A corollary to this is that those rare funny women that exist are “making up for” being unattractive in some way. And it also follows that if an attractive woman succeeds in comedy (or in any other field, really) it isn’t on the basis of her talent, but rather her looks.

This is a tricky minefield to navigate, and it gets all the more complicated when you’re telling jokes about sex. Which Garfunkel and Oates do (my all-time fave of their songs is still “I Don’t Understand Job“). And all the bullshit of Hollywood, wherein these skinny, pretty, able-bodied white women would be considered too “weird looking” to be conventionally attractive, it is even more of a mess. Unfortunately, Garfunkel and Oates doesn’t seem to know how to approach these problems, either, yielding some of their flattest material. In the second episode, Riki and Kate meet their porn parody counterparts Garfinger and Butts, who briefly eclipse their fame with their innuendo-laden track “Come on Me.”

Garfinger and Butts (Abby Elliott and Sugar Lyn Beard) spell out the Garfunkel and Oates formula.

Garfinger and Butts crack the G&O formula, but are also portrayed as total idiots. The message is unclear: are Riki and Kate admitting that some of their success is owed to their sex appeal, or bemoaning that they’d be more famous if they landed somewhere else on the hot vs. cute scale.

And the attempts to explore the hot vs. cute spectrum through tall blonde Riki and short brunette Kate also generally fail. In one episode, they “swap hair” with wigs, and blonde Riki is treated nicely by women for the first time, where normally friend-zoned Kate seals the deal for once. It was a little over-the-top for me, as was the episode where Kate is accidentally sent to an audition meant for Riki and looks ridiculous trying to be sexy.

3. Haters gonna hate

I think my biggest disappointment with Garfunkel and Oates was the episode where an anti-fan trolls one of their shows. I thiiiiink the joke with Dennis is that if people did the stuff they do online (shout “make a sandwich”) in the real world it would be more obviously pathetic. Unfortunately, it wasn’t funny, and the cartoonishness of it felt like it was trivializing online harassment, and minimizing the harm of more subtle IRL sexism. The same episode has the “no period talk” manager and a hostile, condescending sound guy, who would have been more pointed characters without the straw man Dennis drawing attention away. And I would have loved to see more about the subtle forms of sexism women in comedy have to deal with (like in the first episode, where a male comedian Riki is seeing tweets her joke as his own, which if he’d done to a male friend would be a sin akin to murdering their mother).

Of course, all of this was of more interest to me because I am a woman who writes and performs comedy, but I think civilians would agree with my “good but not great” take on the Garfunkel and Oates series. Fortunately, one of the benefits of having more female-driven comedy out there is that it isn’t the end of the world when some of it comes out as just OK.

Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh and a member of the all-female comedy troupe Frankly Scarlett. She is on an eternal quest for the perfect tampon joke.

‘Working Girl’ Is ‘White Feminism: The Movie’

‘Working Girl’ is a product of its time, when feminism meant a white lady achieving all the power and success normally reserved for white men. And what’s worse, the antifeminist backlash of the 1980s is paradoxically woven throughout. See, Tess isn’t like the other women who’ve made it in business, she’s a “real woman.”

Written by Robin Hitchcock.

Is there a German word for the discomfort of an adult re-watching something they loved as a child and harshly realizing its flaws?

I felt that watching Working Girl last night. This movie was MY JAM in my youth, paving the way for a lifetime of having “Let the River Run” stuck in my head every time I’m called upon to wear “work clothes” (for someone who writes for the Internet and does comedy, this is not often). My husband, who had never seen it, kept saying “I can see why Baby Robin loved this.” I mean, it’s a feminist twist on Pygmalion where the girl not only remolds HERSELF but chooses high-powered businesslady as her new form. A high-powered businesslady who wears pretty dresses. And gets to screw Harrison Ford. Growing up, Working Girl was my fairytale of choice.

But now, as a grown-up with years of feminist training, I see that Working Girl is essentially White Feminism: The Movie. Chantelle Monique’s previous Bitch Flicks piece on Working Girl hits the nail on the head: “Even though Working Girl seems like a harmless romantic drama, its female representation is firmly rooted in classism and sexism.”

Our hero, Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith, in one of those hypercharismatic undeniably star-making performances), pulls herself up from her working class Staten Island roots to make it in the “man’s world” of business (ambiguous movie-world business, where words like “mergers and acquisitions” and “arbitrage” are thrown around in front of stock tickers and computer monitors but the actual work being done is never clearly illustrated). Working Girl is a product of its time, when feminism meant a white lady achieving all the power and success normally reserved for white men.

And what’s worse, the anti-feminist backlash of the 1980s is paradoxically woven throughout. See, Tess isn’t like the other women who’ve made it in business, she’s a “real woman.” When love interest Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford) first spots her at a corporate mixer where she’s decked out in a sparkly black cocktail dress, he tells her, “You’re the only woman I’ve seen at one of these things who dresses like a woman, not like a woman thinks a man would dress if he was a woman.” Uninhibited by valium and tequila, Tess responds, “I have a head for business and a bod for sin.” It isn’t Tess’s particular brand of lipstick feminism that bothers me so much as it is the putting down of other women who’ve eschewed standards of feminine beauty and sex appeal. It’s another aspect of Working Girl claiming progressivism while reinforcing the status quo.

Tess’s makeover into Business Barbie also involves a lot of unfortunate class issues. She chops off her gloriously teased 80s mullet (“If you want to be taken seriously, you need serious hair”), drops her gaudy costume jewelry, and stops wearing sneakers during her commute. Tess’s transformation comes about while she’s Single White Femaling her high class Wellesley grad boss Katherine (Sigourney Weaver), whose job she’s fraudulently taken on while Katherine recuperates from a skiing accident. Tess also borrows the absent Katherine’s clothes, deluxe apartment, and we eventually find out, boyfriend. She even practices imitating Katherine’s upper class accent while listening to her dictation. Madeover Tess is contrasted against her best friend, Cyn (Joan Cusack), and the rest of the secretarial pool, who keep their teased hair and peacock eyeshadow. Once again, we’re meant to admire Tess for not being like the other girls, advancing the sexist trope of the Exceptional Woman.

Tess is also portrayed as superior to her boss, Katherine, who becomes the villain of the piece by passing off one of Tess’s ideas as her own. This deception makes Katherine a cutthroat bitch who will do anything to get ahead. Meanwhile, the ethics of Tess passing off Katherine’s entire LIFE as her own are barely questioned. And Tess’s questionable moves to get ahead (notably, crashing a wedding to get face time with a business prospect) are just spunk and moxie.

So what makes Katherine the bad guy? Is it her privilege? Then why is Tess celebrated for shedding her working class trappings? Is it Katherine’s ego? How does a purportedly feminist movie justify punishing a woman for being proud of what she’s accomplished? Or is it simply that pitting women against each other is more palatable to Hollywood? Katherine first presents herself as a mentor, and wouldn’t that have been a better feminist message? (This compares unfavorably to another one of my favorite lady-frauds-her-way-to-the-top-of-the-corporate-ladder movies, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, where Joanna Cassidy’s Rose supports Christina Applegate’s secretly teenage assistant from start to finish.)

This piece has pained me to write. I can’t quite let go of my love for Working Girl, even though the problems with its purported feminism are now abundantly clear to me. I guess it will just have to be another one of my problematic faves.

Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh who would totally wear sneakers on her commute to an office job if she had one (potential employers take note!).

‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ Is a Feminist and Comedic Triumph

White men are background players in the world of ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ (and, of those who do appear, there’s scarcely a one who isn’t either comically inept or flat-out evil). As the lyrics of the theme song state, “White dudes hold the record for creepy crimes, but females are strong as hell, unbreakable. They alive, dammit!” The show is fundamentally about the collective trauma of growing up female in a woman-hating world.

Written by Max Thornton.

Like sitcom enthusiasts all across America, I spent my weekend mainlining my latest obsession, Tina Fey’s new show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. NBC’s critical darlings – The Office, 30 Rock, Community, and Parks and Recreation – have all trickled off our screens over the past few years, and Kimmy was to have filled the void; but NBC can’t let itself have anything nice without self-sabotaging, and passed the show on to Netflix. Someone in the network’s upper echelons has presumably spent the whole weekend in bitter self-recrimination for throwing away what would have been NBC’s best new show since 2009.

This poster promises to upend How I Met Your Mother's yellow umbrella and its white, heteropatriarchal norms. — This poster promises an inversion of *How I Met Your Mother*‘s yellow umbrella and the white, heteropatriarchal sitcom norms it represents.

A cynic might suggest that NBC’s cold feet had less to do with the show’s premise (a young woman adjusting to life outside the underground bunker in which she has spent the last 15 years as the captive of an apocalyptic cult) than with its profound lack of interest in the white men who so dominate the television landscape. The opening credits make this abundantly clear: only one white man’s name appears, that of co-creator Robert Carlock. White men are background players in the world of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (and, of those who do appear, there’s scarcely a one who isn’t either comically inept or flat-out evil). As the lyrics of the theme song state, “White dudes hold the record for creepy crimes, but females are strong as hell, unbreakable. They alive, dammit!”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYNbp0u8WjA”]

All of the reviews I’ve seen have lauded the show for handling its dark premise so pitch-perfectly, attributing the comedic transmutation to the showrunners’ biting 30 Rock-honed wit or to Ellie Kemper’s wonderful performance as Kimmy. The real reason it works so well, though, is because the show is fundamentally about womanhood in general. Kimmy’s specific trauma is a reflection of, and metaphor for, the collective trauma of growing up female in a woman-hating world.

The underground bunker, into which Kimmy is forced as a newly pubescent 14-year-old, represents the constraints of heteropatriarchal gender norms, which are most fully embodied in Jon Hamm’s creepy cult leader. He emotionally abuses and manipulates the women he has imprisoned, gets inside their heads, interprets the Bible in a way that supports his lies, and – once he’s on trial – charms and dazzles everyone around him into accepting his nonsense. The bunker-as-patriarchy metaphor is made explicit more than once: in the pilot episode, when Matt Lauer observes, “I’m always amazed at what women will do because they’re afraid of being rude”; when Kimmy realizes her wealthy employer’s loveless marriage is a bunker in its own way; when a certain upscale fitness trend is revealed to be yet another way to keep women in a dark room doing what a man tells them to.

This robot is much more sympathetic than most white men on TV (and off it).

The women of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, who have all been victimized by heteropatriarchy, use an assortment of coping mechanisms. Cyndee exploits her victim status to get free stuff from all the people who feel sorry for her. Donna Maria keeps her skills close to her chest and doesn’t let on that she’s savvier than the rest put together. Gretchen goes deep into denial. Kimmy tries to put her past behind her and get on with life. These different coping mechanisms sometimes bring them into conflict with one another; however, it’s only by working together that they can confront and defang their aggressor. This idea, of people who aren’t white men banding together to pull back the curtain and reveal the patriarchal Wonderful Wizard as a sham, is a major theme of the show. It’s as though Tina Fey took on board certain feminist criticisms of 30 Rock‘s tendency to be male-dominated and decided to do something very different.

The show addresses manhood, too, in a wonderful plot where Kimmy’s magnificently queeny roommate Titus takes classes on how to pass as a straight man. Hilariously, his mentor is Hank from Breaking Bad, a show which was also about the destructiveness of white male patriarchy, but which – because it chose to portray this from the perspective of the said white male patriarch – was dangerously susceptible to misreadings from misogynistic fanboys who found Walter White’s badassery admirable. No such danger with Kimmy, in which the reveal that Entourage 2 will not be happening causes a bar full of strangers to break out into cheering and applause. What Titus learns about heterosexual masculinity is that he possesses the ability to fake it, but it’s aggro, destructive, and (contra the sexist mythos of heteropatriarchy) more artificial than the fabulous femmeyness that comes so naturally to him.

It’s worth mentioning that this show can be read as a metaphor for trans womanhood specifically, an idea suggested by the last line of the theme song: “That’s gonna be, you know, a fascinating transition.” Consider: after many years of being lied to about the world and her place in it, Kimmy moves to the big city, changes her name, and conceals her past for her own safety and peace of mind. She is an adult who is still to some extent an emotional adolescent, temporally out of sync with the world around her, which is not wholly unlike the experience of beginning transition as an adult. Again, it’s not a huge leap to read this as a deliberate correction of some of 30 Rock‘s missteps.

There are also ongoing threads skewering wealth and class, the immigration system, and white supremacy – Titus realizing he is treated far better on the streets of New York as a werewolf than a Black man is on the nose, but it’s timely and it’s very funny. I realize I haven’t said much about the actual comedy aspect of the show, but rest assured that it is absolutely hilarious. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt succeeds as a work of intersectional feminism, and it also succeeds as a comedy. It’s everything I want in my entertainment, and I can’t wait for season two.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and tweets at @RainicornMax. A Buzzfeed quiz pegged him as Kimmy, but he feels like more of a Titus.

Reading Mae West’s ‘Sextette’ as a PUA Manual

Watch and learn, average frustrated chumps

Written by Brigit McCone.

PUA (pick-up artistry) is a strange beast. Its core technique relies on teaching men to dehumanize women as “targets” in order to numb themselves to rejection, making it psychologically easier to approach larger numbers of women and therefore, statistically, to enjoy greater sexual success, though at the cost of emotional connection. PUA thus represents the art of maximizing sexual success by minimizing sexual satisfaction. Mae West’s 1978 film Sextette is also a strange beast, and a fascinating film. When I say that it’s fascinating, I don’t mean to suggest that it’s good. Sextette is a car crash of a film, a head-on collision between a lavish MGM musical and Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. It is a perfect candidate for interactive midnight screenings and ironic appreciation, which should be mandatory at every festival of women’s film.

The usual responses of male reviewers label Mae West as “delusional” and “grotesque” for her iron conviction in her own seductive power at the age of 84 (minimum). West was Billy Wilder’s original inspiration for the aging, predatory narcissist Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd., while reviewer Nathan Rabin says of Sextette, “stick in a coda revealing that the whole thing was a ridiculous fantasy by an impoverished washerwoman nearing death, and the whole film would take on an unmistakably bittersweet, melancholy dimension.” Yes, the guy who invented the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” label, to criticize self-centered male sexism, suggests that female fantasies of lifelong desirability are only valid if they are affirmed to be impossible in real life. The irony. It burns.

Real life, however, differs from such critics’ expectations of “realism.” Far from ending her life as a sex-starved, “impoverished washerwoman,” Mae West actually had a flourishing relationship with the ruggedly handsome wrestler Paul Novak, almost 30 years her junior, who remained devoted to her for 26 years in one of show business’ greatest romances, nursing her at her death but discouraging her from including him in her will.

We may squirm at Sextette, to see an 84-year-old lady claim irresistible attractiveness without the apologetic, self-deprecating irony that we demand of older women’s sexuality, but Mae’s claims are securely grounded in her proven track record of seduction. If you will it, Dude, it is no dream. If Mae had listened to dominant culture’s messages about the female sell-by date, she would never have dared to play a sex-bomb in her late 30s, her age in her Hollywood debut, or selected a much-younger and undiscovered Cary Grant for her co-star. We owe Cary Grant’s career to Mae’s “denial,” while her selection of a young Timothy Dalton for the leading man of Sextette shows a similar eye for star potential, the film prophetically comparing him to 007.

I don’t necessarily recommend Mae West’s narcissistic seductress as a role model for all women, but I strongly recommend her as Laverne Cox’s definition of a “possibility model”; Mae is a reminder that we define our own roles and culture is created partly by our consent. Mae West’s Sextette is the most perfect illustration that the values of dominant culture depend on its male authorship, while female authorship (Mae insisted on writing or co-writing all her films, dictating to directors on set) can just as easily create images of octogenarian vixens commanding the lustful worship of entire “United States athletic teams” of half-naked musclemen, and brokering world peace through their irresistible sexual power (why haven’t you seen this film yet?). Sextette uncomfortably tears down the curtain and reveals the balding wizard behind the Great and Powerful Oz of cinema’s “realism,” just as Singing In The Rain exposed the artificiality of Lina Lamont’s glamour by swapping the sex of the voice behind the curtain. Here lies Sextette‘s true countercultural anarchy, and the reason it deserves midnight screening immortality. But the film also represents, as we shall show with our trusty pualingo.com, a classic PUA manual.

Abundance Mentality

Abundance mentality is defined by PUA lingo as “the belief and life perspective that there is no shortage of hot girls to meet in any man’s lifetime.” This principle is continually reinforced within male-authored culture, from the female disposability fantasy of James Bond to the geriatric desirability dreams of Woody Allen, which influential New York Times critic Vincent Canby might have considered “a poetic, terrifying reminder of how a virtually disembodied ego can survive total physical decay and loss of common sense” if he hadn’t already said that about Sextette. Conversely, our culture constantly depicts narratives of female anxiety over their “biological clocks” and their “last chance for love,” reinforcing a scarcity mentality whose psychological impact is dramatized with wincing accuracy by the desperation romcom of Bridget Jones’s Diary. Mae West, however, modeled an abundance mentality throughout her life, in defiant immunity to cultural pressures. Though acknowledging her life partner, ruggedly handsome Mr. Baltimore, Paul Novak, was a “good guy,” she quipped in her mid-80s “course there’s 40 guys dyin’ for his job!”

The filmmakers originally intended West’s character, Marlo, to weep over Timothy Dalton’s abandonment, while goth-rock legend Alice Cooper (with tangerine tan and poodle perm, naturally. Why haven’t you seen this film?) serenaded her with piano ballad “No Time For Tears,” but Mae insisted that her character would not cry and forced Cooper to perform the jazzy, uptempo “Next, Next” (“he blew his chance with you! Next, next! Lost you to someone new!”), maintaining her character’s positive vibing so that the film’s advocacy of abundance mentality would not be compromised. West and Dalton’s final reconciliation suggests that this was only a soft next on Marlo’s part, however. Male critics interpret such abundance mentality as delusion, in a woman who resembles a macabre apparition and the monster from beyond time, but West’s track record of sexual success suggests that such protests be understood as token resistance.

Midnight screening suggestion: bring a loud buzzer to hit before yelling “next!”

DHV: Demonstration of Higher Value

Marlo's target, acknowledging her higher value — Marlo’s target, acknowledging her higher value

While male sexual value peaks between the ages of 21 and 30 (as clarified by Sextette‘s “happy birthday, 21!” anthem and Mae’s criticism of Tony Curtis as an unsuitably elderly screen lover, only 30 years her junior) and is largely dependent on the man’s rugged looks and muscle-tone, a woman may increase her sexual market value (SMV) at any age by a canned routine of humorous quips, positive vibing, displays of wealth and willingness to walk away or “soft next,” as Mae demonstrates throughout the film. The best technique for a DHV is to avoid direct bragging (which can actually read as desperation, and thus a demonstration of lower value, or DLV), through the use of wings to praise you on your behalf. In Sextette, the role of “Marlo’s wing” is played by Everyone Who Is Not Marlo. Before the central couple arrive, Regis Philbin brands Marlo “the greatest sex symbol the screen has ever known,” while an obliging crowd sings her DHV anthem “Marlo! The female answer to Apollo! As lovely as Venus De Milo! A living dream!” the press corps laugh at her every word and even ex-husband Ringo Starr shows willingness to wing for her: “You know when your wife was my wife? Your wife was some wife!” Such consistent DHV naturally provokes Timothy Dalton’s target into the production of expensive diamonds as well as verbal IOIs, in this clearly approval-seeking ballad (click. I dare you). Claims by male reviewers that this moment is like “gazing upon one of H. P. Lovecraft’s Old Ones, something so momentously and unimaginably monstrous that even perceiving the edges of it threatens one with madness” are best interpreted as manifestations of their bitch shields (BS).

Midnight screening suggestion: wing for Marlo by wolf-whistling and dangle bracelets of sparklers whenever she mentions being turned on.

NLP: Neuro Linguistic Programming

Neuro-linguistic programming is the art of conditioning the target‘s responses through ambiguity and anchoring. In an NLP context, ambiguity is the use of normal, innocuous words that sound like sexual terms, to unconsciously stimulate a man’s sexual senses. Mae West reveals herself a grandmistress of this art, with statements such as “I’m the girl who works at Paramount all day and Fox all night,” referencing her busy schedule as an actress, but subconsciously suggesting sexual stamina to the receptive male mind. “Everything goes up for Marlo!” literally refers to a pink cassette trampolined into a statue’s mouth (don’t ask) but on a deeply subtle and subconscious level could be regarded as sexually suggestive, while “when I’m good, I’m good, but when I’m bad, I’m better” might conceivably be associated with a sexual “bad girl” rather than with theft or arson. After this ingenious technique has made all men uncontrollably aroused by the octogenarian West, she is free to select her targets at will from their superabundance. Next!

Anchoring, meanwhile, is the art of associating gestures with emotional states through their repetition. In Sextette, Mae uses her anchors, such as trademark hair-patting, to elicit Pavlovian arousal by evoking her earlier performances, while groping her own breasts is a classic point to self (PTS) to anchor her feeling of success. A related art is kino, the regular touching and stroking of the target that prevents octogenarian actresses from ending up in his friend zone, which Marlo can be observed demonstrating on Ricky, the 21-year-old team mascot, throughout Sextette‘s gym scene. When male commentators describe the film as “like watching your grandmother at a gangbang,” the key is to reframe that observation, for example by cocking an eyebrow and purring “does that excite you?”

Midnight screening suggestion: Recognize NLP Ambiguity by clicking fingers and barking “you’re under!” in the style of Little Britain’s Kenny Craig, while all PTS maneuvers should be mimicked.

Peacocking

By wearing something showy, like a huge feather headdress or semi-transparent gown, a PUA is able to differentiate herself from her competition. Peacocking is a term derived from the biological behavior of peacocks and from Darwinism, not from the ginormous plumes crowning Mae West like a kooky cockatoo. Peacocking lures the PUA’s targets into starting conversations with her, offering her openings such as “what is that thing on your head? You look like a kooky cockatoo!” By wearing something completely ridiculous, the PUA also opens herself up to shit tests from men, such as New York Times critic Vincent Canby’s claim that Mae resembles “a plump sheep that’s been stood on its hind legs, dressed in a drag-queen’s idea of chic, bewigged and then smeared with pink plaster.” By demonstrating that she can deal with this social pressure, Mae shows her irresistibly alpha characteristics. It must be admitted that, in the striking costumes of legendary, eight-time Oscar-winner Edith Head, Mae looks like a damn chic sheep dressed as sexy lamb.

Midnight screening suggestion: the most ridiculous feather boas and fascinators you can get your hands on, for regular stroking throughout the screening.

So what’s the moral of this study? Should we be inspired by Mae’s conquests of the screen and of ruggedly handsome wrestler, crowned Mr. Baltimore, Paul Novak, to endorse the indomitable positivity of PUA philosophy (go West, young woman)? Or point to the reactions of squirming male viewers to finally prove that PUA is creepy, once and for all? Or does the truth lie somewhere in between, in cultivating a confident independence and immunity to cultural pressure, while still respecting the consent of others? Who knows? Only one moral is certain: never, ever play a drinking game in which you do a shot for every sex pun in this movie. Seriously. You could die. [youtube_sc url=” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH_j-DNJwZA”]

The trailer alone would get you bombed

Brigit McCone over-identifies with Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and making bad puns out of the corner of her mouth.

Vintage Viewing: Alice Guy, Gender-Bending Pioneer

‘Bitch Flicks’ presents Vintage Viewing – a monthly feature for viewing and discussing the films of cinema’s female pioneers. Where better to start than history’s first film director, Alice Guy?

Alice Guy: she's the man — Alice Guy: she’s the man

Written by Brigit McCone, this post is part of Vintage Viewing, our series exploring the work of women filmmaking pioneers.

When discussing opportunities for women and minorities created by new media, Kathleen Wallace highlighted the explosion of female directors at the birth of cinema, later squeezed out by the studio system. The list of vintage female directors is long, varied, and multinational. Yet, theorists like Laura Mulvey define feminist cinema by its resistance to the Male Gaze™, virtually ignoring the precedent of the female gaze. When was the last time we watched vintage female-authored films and discussed their art or meaning? Bitch Flicks presents Vintage Viewing – a monthly feature for viewing and discussing the films of cinema’s female pioneers. Where better to start than history’s first film director, Alice Guy?

Alice Guy may be compared to Ada Lovelace, who published the original computer program and first predicted the wider applications of computing. Like Lovelace, Guy was the pioneer who envisioned the future of her field. Like Lovelace, her legacy is only now being reappraised after decades of neglect. Though Guy’s memoirs indicate she may have directed the world’s first fiction film, her massive output, estimated at almost 1,000 films, is really more remarkable for its overall grasp of film’s potential, both technical (hand-painting color film, pioneering the close-up, synchronized sound, and special effects such as superimposition) and in establishing tropes from melodrama to comedy to action to suspense.

Click here to watch an excellent youtube documentary.

Alfred Hitchcock once cited two thrilling early influences: D. W. Griffith and Alice Guy. But Guy wasn’t simply an influential pioneer who happened to be female; she repeatedly challenged gender stereotypes in her work. Though sexologist John Money only coined the concept of a “gender role” in 1955, Alice Guy’s cross-dressing films were interrogating gender’s socially constructed nature 50 years earlier.

Pierrette’s Escapades – 1900

“We have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic.” – Audre Lorde

Pierrette’s Escapades is one of the hand-painted demonstration films that Alice Guy produced for Gaumont in France, before her move to America. This film is particularly interesting for probably containing cinema’s first lesbian kiss. Guy recognized the power of representation, not only for queer visibility, but with 1912’s affirmative Jewish narrative A Man’s A Man, and cinema’s first Black cast in that same year’s A Fool and His Money, a story of hustling and hard luck inspired by blues narratives. Within a lushly tinted, escapist sensuality, the women of Pierrette’s Escapades play roles from anarchic Commedia dell’Arte and carnival traditions. As such, their flirtations and kisses can be explained by the established relationships between these stock characters, but Guy has taken conventionally heterosexual love scenes and reimagined them with an all-female cast.

The femme Pierrette, in her throbbing pink dress, resembles a coquettish Columbine, the trickster wife of sad clown Pierrot, and mistress of witty Harlequin (the 16th century’s Bugs Bunny). As rivals, Harlequin and Pierrot represent the two faces of love, its triumphs and disappointments. The film opens with Pierrette reveling in her costume and powdering herself for Harlequin. A figure sidles into frame, in the traditional costume of Pierrot. Pierrot’s baggy clothes and white-powdered face make it difficult to identify the figure’s sex, who clumsily moves to embrace Pierrette, while she dodges impatiently, before Pierrot steals a kiss on her bare shoulder. Pierrette angrily orders her husband/wife to bed and primps for Harlequin. In the skintight, checkered costume and hat that identify the character, Harlequin is unmistakably feminine. In contrast to her coerced affection with Pierrot, Pierrette blossoms with female Harlequin, swooning and spinning before melting into her arms. Guy cuts the film at the moment of their kiss, leaving it open-ended and suggestive.

Pierrette’s low-cut bodice and the raising of her skirts mark this film as teasingly erotic for the time. Records indicate that Guy filmed cinema’s first striptease three years before Pierrette’s Escapades. Since the forced hypersexuality of women on film has become an expression of male control, modern feminists often read such images as objectifying. It’s worth remembering that a female director, Lois Weber, filmed the first female full-frontal, while Mae West provoked the paternalist Hays Code with her sexual frankness. The eroticism of Pierrette’s Escapades is a reminder of the liberating power of playful, sexual self-representation. Like the suffragettes, who wore lipstick as a symbol of defiance, it challenges sexless definitions of feminist orthodoxy. Isn’t viewing female bodies only from the imaginary perspective of an objectifying Male Gaze™ itself oppressive? Soundtrack suggestion: Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun“ [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeByzgJFLMs”]

Walk in the sun

The Consequences of Feminism – 1906

“Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.” – Betty Friedan

Alice Guy’s work regularly explored the status of women. She moulded Vinnie Burns into cinema’s first action heroine, and depicted women in traditionally male professions such as magicians and dog-trainers. In 1912’s Making an American, “Ivan Orloff and his unhappy wife” represent a caricature of East-European cultures of wife-beating – Orloff’s wife is yoked to his wagon as a beast of burden. When the couple emigrate to America, Guy shows Americans constantly intervening to correct Orloff’s treatment of his wife, presenting resistance to domestic abuse as an American value fundamental to the “Land of the Free.” 1914’s The Lure was a sympathetic examination of the forces pressuring women into prostitution. Nevertheless, many feminist viewers struggle with Guy’s 1906 farce, The Consequences of Feminism, an apparently reactionary nightmare in which feminism creates a world of “sissified” men, who rebel by reclaiming their clubhouse and toasting the restoration of patriarchy. Discussing Pamela Green’s Guy documentary Be Natural, Kristen Lopez concludes this film depicts “the bad side” of feminism, before apologetically suggesting “the very idea that a woman was exploring social issues in a time when women weren’t allowed to vote is astounding”. Is this really all that can be said? That it’s cool to see a woman having enough of a voice to argue against women having more of a voice?

The Consequences of Feminism does not depict a society on the verge of collapse, it depicts straightforward role reversal. In her lost 1912 film In The Year 2000, Guy also reverses gender roles, with Darwin Karr playing the objectified “Ravishing Robert”. This anticipates later female authors who used sci-fi to interrogate gender, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman with 1915’s Herland, or Ursula LeGuin with 1969 Hugo and Nebula prize-winner The Left Hand of Darkness (off topic: am I the only one shipping the Wachowski siblings to adapt?). Compare “Turnabout Intruder,” the genuinely reactionary 1969 finale of the original Star Trek series, which used role reversal to attempt to discredit second-wave feminism. In “Turnabout Intruder,” Dr. Janice Lester voices feminist grievances: “your world of starship captains doesn’t admit women,” before swapping bodies with Captain Kirk and attempting to command. Kirk shows calm authority in Lester’s body, while Lester is emotionally incapable of handling Kirk’s command and “red-faced with hysteria.” As “Turnabout Intruder” shows, discrediting feminism through role reversal requires a demonstration that women are incapable of performing male roles.

The Consequences of Feminism, by contrast, uses a farcical depiction of feminist rule to demonstrate that, while women thrive in male roles, men could not endure Friedan’s “sexual sell” of trading desirability for loss of power. Male viewers are confronted with a vision of themselves as passive “Ravishing Roberts” who must feign sexual resistance to preserve their reputation, laboring in domestic servitude while women supervise at their leisure. Society’s devaluing of domestic labor is shown by the women ridiculing their clubhouse’s sole washerman and pelting him with linens. If male viewers are relieved by the ending, in which a father revolts against a woman who disowns her child, and leads the men in storming the women’s clubhouse, they must acknowledge that collective rebellion against oppressive female roles is justified. Guy’s tongue-in-cheek film is the opposite of stereotypical, humorless feminism, but it demolishes the illusory power of “feminine mystique” just as effectively, as relevant for today’s MRA as for the chivalry of Guy’s own era. Soundtrack suggestion: Missy Elliott, “Work It”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIPMbkHQO3w”]

Put my thang down, flip it and reverse it

Algie The Miner – 1912

“We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” – Gloria Steinem

As a subversive populist, Guy was a master of the bait-n-switch. In 1913’s Officer Henderson, she offers audiences macho police officers dressing as women to catch crooks, the joke being the ridiculous juxtaposition of their fighting skills and feminine image. Then, at the end of the film, Guy substitutes the police officer with his wife, who reveals equal skill in tackling the crook. Officers watch and laugh at their supposed crony brawling in drag, but Guy’s real joke is revealed to be on the men themselves, for assuming that women are incapable of violence or self-defense.

Algie the Miner‘s IMDb entry lists Guy as “directing supervisor” and producer to Edward Warren’s director, at a time when the distinction between producer and director was ill-defined. Her fingerprints are all over the film, however, which she’s often credited as directing. Algie the Miner offers the joke of a flamboyant “sissy” man, contractually obliged by his future father-in-law to “prove himself a man” in rugged Western pursuits, but this is only the bait-n-switch for Guy’s critique of toxic masculinity and homophobia. Rugged pioneer Big Jim gives Algie directions to a frontier town and Algie kisses him in gratitude, leading to an explosion of violent insecurity from Jim. After discovering how non-threateningly puny Algie’s gun is, Jim thaws and agrees to become his mentor in manhood, settling into a cohabiting relationship whose separate beds recall Sesame Street‘s Bert and Ernie. Despite Algie’s female fiancé/beard, Algie the Miner is celebrated as a milestone in the history of gay cinema. When shown his separate bed in Big Jim’s cabin, Algie appears to lean into Jim suggestively before being rebuffed, giving grounds to view him as bisexual. As such, Algie’s final empowerment is gay-affirmative, as well as vindicating feminine values.

Though the rugged pioneers howl with laughter and ridicule Algie’s tiny gun, his willingness to kiss larger men demonstrates an effortless physical courage greater than that of his sexually insecure cowboy hosts, anticipating Marvel’s Rawhide Kid. Over the course of their relationship, Big Jim will teach Algie manly skills, but Algie will rescue Jim from ruinous machismo, nursing the alcoholic through his delirium tremens, saving Jim’s life from robbers and bravely defying the macho peers who pressure Jim to drink. Algie’s resistance to peer pressure, as well as his self-sacrificing nurturing instinct, vindicate feminine courage in the face of macho weakness. When Algie plans to return and claim his bride, Jim is visibly downcast until offered the chance to accompany him. Every Big Jim needs an Algie. The film ends with Algie “proving himself a man” by forcing his future father-in-law to bless his marriage at gunpoint. Closing with the father-in-law’s terror, the viewer must question whether such stereotypical masculinity is truly superior. In all, Alice Guy’s Algie the Miner offers cinema’s most affirmative portrait of male femininity until Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot. Soundtrack suggestion: Hole, “Be A Man” [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCYYa0WxLXA”]

I’m potent, yeah

After almost single-handedly inventing the language of narrative cinema, Alice Guy mentored director Lois Weber, whose blockbusting success ushered in the golden age of female filmmakers in Hollywood. Next month’s Vintage Viewing: Lois Weber, Blockbusting Boundary-Pusher. Stay tuned!

Brigit McCone may now officially be an Alice Guy fangirl (Guynocentric?) She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and making bad puns.

Political Humor and Humanity in HBO’s ‘VEEP’

She’s a toxic political figure, a creator of monumental gaffes and inappropriate situations who doesn’t even have the excuse of good intentions. Her intentions are always self-serving and she treats her staff atrociously, often assigning them the blame for her mistakes.

This repost by Rachel Redfern appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Foul-mouthed and frazzled, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (eternally known as Elaine from Seinfeld), stars as United States Vice-President, Selina Meyer, in the Emmy Award-winning HBO political satire, VEEP. The show focuses on Dreyfus’ character, a woman who wants power, but resides in a fairly weak place, politically, having to hide in the shadows of the president and worry about her approval ratings.

There are two Hollywood versions of Washington, D.C.–one where the president is Morgan Freeman and he’s strong, but compassionate, and you feel good about being an American. The other version is something out of a John Grisham novel in which the city is one giant 60 Minutes expose of cynicism and conspiracy (the latter version just makes you sad to be alive). VEEP is the second, minus the conspiracy and snipers and with the addition of obsessive BlackBerry use.

Since the show never features the president, VEEP is free to focus on the more trivial aspects of federal politics, like the clean jobs bill Selina tries to put together, only to have the president close it down and give her obesity instead (not that obesity isn’t a big issue, it just offers a few more humorous situations than Guantanamo Bay). VEEP is interesting though, not because the characters surrounding her are ridiculous, but because Selina, the main character, is ridiculous and unlikable herself. She’s a toxic political figure, a creator of monumental gaffes and inappropriate situations who doesn’t even have the excuse of good intentions. Her intentions are always self-serving and she treats her staff atrociously, often assigning them the blame for her mistakes.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer in HBO’s VEEP

Selina’s staff isn’t any bundle of joy either; they’re just as unethical and self-serving as she is. Amy (Anne Chlumsky) is her competent, yet also incompetent chief of staff; Gary (Tony Hale of Arrested Development), is her faithful personal aide who is so loyal he takes a sneeze in the face to save her from being sick, and even breaks up with her boyfriend for her (in a sidenote, this is the second role that has featured him as a mildly obsessed man with an insane devotion to an older woman, a role that is played out as being emasculating and undignified); Sue (Sufe Bradshaw), is her sassy secretary; Mike (Matt Walsh) as the over-the-hill fading director of communications; Dan (Reid Scott) who is politically savvy, but also a social climber of epic proportions; and of course, the weird presidential liaison, Jonah (Timothy Simons), who tries to sleep with Amy.

Selina and her female staff are just as foul-mouthed and unpleasant as their male counterparts, a fact I actually really like about the show. Instead of giving the women a rosy, fictional gloss, they’re painted more as unique players in the political process, rather than just a token show about “Women in Politics.” In that vein, the show does portray the still highly sexualized role of female leaders, which is disturbing, but unfortunately very realistic. Examples of sexual harassment are fairly common on the show, like when Sue is the recipient of some pretty blatant comments from a congressman, which she just shrugs off; the death of a famously lecherous senator is mocked as everyone raves about him publicly, but in private, all the women sarcastically share their stories of his disgusting behavior. It’s sad to think that this situation is probably very common; male political figures lauded as leaders, when in reality they’re abusive perverts. For me though, the most astute and frustrating example of this came when Amy, Selina’s chief of staff, has to negotiate with two congressmen from Arizona; their immediate disdain for her and the patronizing, “sweetheart” she receives when she sits down is so realistic and problematic I wanted her to smack them. And yet, like so many powerful and intelligent women, she just had to take the condescension or risk sounding like an “over-emotional bitch.” This portrayal of randy behavior from the male senators strikes a contrast to the depth of scrutiny that the women on the show receive about their sex life. When Selina has a pregnancy scare, the media goes crazy and many of her interviews after address that very personal topic, rather than larger, national issues.

Humorously though, her cynical staff decide to turn it into a sympathy moment and try publish a story about in a woman’s magazine. It’s one of many instances when Selina’s stance as the loving, but absent mother plays a role in her political success; It’s only when Selina cries on camera about missing her daughter that her approval rating increases. Comedy shines again as the greater revelator of cultural inequality as Selina’s motherhood is constantly called into question (as is her femininity when she’s given the nickname, “Viagra inhibitor”). As is always the case, a male leader’s relationship with his children is less important than his hairline, but a female leader must always appear guilty and remorseful about her position, she must always regret the fact that her ambition has taken her out of the home or risk being perceived as cold-hearted or worse, un-maternal.

In the end, Selina (and even most of her staff) are undeniably unlikable people. Very little (if any) time of the sitcom is spent showing political figures as doing anything to improve the lives of their constituents; rather their days are filled with scheming and backbiting. Despite the fact that the characters aren’t people you would ever want to meet, the show does highlight the selfish and elitist world of the Unites States’ highest political people, and it’s a nice change to have that shown with a female lead.

Aside from the very astute commentary that the show makes about gender and politics, one of it’s greatest strengths is in the area of the gaffe. Oh the political gaffe: Romney and his 47 percent, Akin and his “women have a way to shut that whole thing down,” Vice-President Joe Biden about half the time. While all we see is the unbelievably stupid thing that a public figure has just said on national television, VEEP does an excellent job of leading up to Selina’s gaffes. They give us the background story and the same information that Selina is given so that when the gaffe does occur it’s incredibly funny, but also a bit understandable. It’s an element of the show that serves as a great reminder of the humanity of our politicians; while yes they say stupid things sometimes, we probably would too if we were in their shoes. I mean, I say stupid stuff all the time, I’m just lucky enough that there aren’t any TV cameras around when I say it. At the end of the day, politicians are just people with better hair.

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and its intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

‘The Boxtrolls’: Better Than Its “Man in a Dress” Jokes

In a nice contrast to many children’s films and books, the character at the start who goes against the mob is a girl, Lord Portley-Rind’s daughter, Winnie (voiced by Elle Fanning in a mid-Atlantic accent passing as British). Although Winnie, in her pink ruffled dress and blonde ringlets might look like other storybook heroines, her fits over never being believed or taken seriously by adults and her morbid fascination with the boxtrolls make her more like Daria than Alice in Wonderland. When she asks another character if boxtrolls ate his parents, she adds, “Did they let you, I mean, make you, watch?”

Written by Ren Jender as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

Critics are loath to say out loud that well-made (and even some not-so-well-made) films, like the rest of pop culture, influence us in every way–fashion, language, and politics. But the proof that critics understand the political power of film comes to light in indirect ways: critics aren’t giving much publicity to the racist but groundbreaking and, in its day, critically acclaimed film, The Birth of a Nation in this, the year that marks a full century since its premiere. And since a North Carolina man shot, execution style, his Muslim, charity-minded neighbors (and a rash of anti-Muslim actions have followed) the (mostly male) cadre of critics who previously were singing the praises of American Sniper, a film that depicts Muslims as perfectly appropriate, shoot ’em up targets, stopped doing so.

Deciding what to write about The Boxtrolls (directed by Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi), a film I enjoyed on many levels but which contains some destructively retrograde messages–mixed in with its mostly progressive ones–was difficult. I should make clear that I’m not usually an eager consumer of entertainment designed for children. I don’t have kids of my own and although I liked the one Harry Potter book I’ve read I never felt the need to read the others. But The Boxtrolls is beautiful to look at (and comes from LAIKA, the same folks who gave us Coraline)–stop-motion animation set in a steam-punk version of 19th century England. With a great deal of economy (the clever script by Irena Brignull, Phil Dale, Adam Pava, and Anthony Stacchi is based on the book, Here Be Monsters! by Alan Snow) the film sets up the premise: boxtrolls, small monster-like creatures who get their name from the cardboard boxes they wear and draw themselves into, turtle-like, at the first sign of danger, scavenge the town streets at night for scraps and goods they can take to their underground lair. Archibald Snatcher (played, magnificently, by Ben Kingsley–it’s the best role he’s had since Sexy Beast; he should play villains more often!) is an opportunistic striver who seeks to elevate his station, first by demonizing the harmless boxtrolls and then capturing all of them, making the streets “safe” for the townspeople and collecting his reward from the town’s ruling elite, headed by Lord Portley-Rind (voiced by Jared Harris) who resembles the king in a deck of cards and has about as much depth.

Winnie’s curiosity about the boxtrolls ends up with her encountering them in their own lair–and meeting Eggs, named after the box he wears, (and voiced by Isaac Hempstead Wright) a human boy adopted by the boxtrolls who doesn’t realize he’s not one of them, though he’s twice their height. After he disavows all the ways he is different from his adopted kin he can’t really argue when Winnie suggests, “Then let’s see you fit in your box.”

WinnieEggsBoxtrollsSmall — Winnie and Eggs

The two work together to try to stop the machinations of Snatcher (whose name, manner and appearance seem to be a tribute to the “child catcher” in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) though as in most films, the boy takes on the main role in vanquishing the villain. In spite of how vivid the animators and Fanning make Winnie, this film does not even come close to passing the Bechdel test. One of the few women characters, Winnie’s mother, is played by the great Toni Collette but she barely gets a line in. And the boxtrolls must reproduce by cloning because we never see one who’s female.

But the huge problem at the center of The Boxtrolls are the scenes when the screenwriters, to show how propaganda can influence the actions of otherwise reasonable people, have Snatcher put on a corset and an evening dress and assume an alter-ego, a red-haired, French chanteuse who sexily sings about killing boxtrolls while she charms all the men in town (who don’t seem to see beyond the wig). I’ve written before about the history of murderous trans* women in film but I was particularly surprised to find this trope–along with the one in which a trans* woman hides her identity and the men who were attracted to her are chagrined once she is outed–in a film that aggressively courts a progressive audience.

Not only is The Boxtrolls full of messages about not dehumanizing those who are “different,” and that adoptive families are just as loving as other families, but it also has kind of an Occupy moment when its boy hero tell others, “Stand up for yourselves. Don’t be afraid anymore.” At the end of the film over the credits we hear “The Boxtrolls Song” an explicitly pro-queer-family anthem by Eric Idle (of Monty Python fame) that includes in its laundry list of different kinds of families those with two Moms or two Dads.

I was sad that this otherwise delightful, humorous (some of Kingley’s lines made me laugh like I haven’t since Obvious Child), anti-capitalist film nominated for a Best Animated Feature Oscar had to pollute itself with “man in a dress” jokes, especially considering that these jokes couldn’t be mere throwaways–stop-motion films take years of painstaking effort to create (which could also explain the “Occupy” theme). I wondered if anyone involved in the film knew that a generation ago, making fun of the rest of the queer community would have been considered acceptable children’s entertainment too.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2dFVnp5K0o” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender