Cultural Commentary – Page 2

‘Days of Our Lives’: Soap Operas and Social Norms

“Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”

(Slow, repetitive, and mesmerizing.)

While soap operas are often ignored (or recognized with an emphatic eye roll) by critics, one can look to them for the state of social norms in America.

Days of Our Lives, an NBC soap opera that has been on the air since 1965, has recently had two intertwining story arcs about homosexuality and abortion that mirror many current social conversations and “concerns.”

Will Horton’s gradual coming out as gay over the last couple of years was refreshing, since Days hadn’t been a bastion of realistic progressive tolerance over the years. It was difficult for him, and his parents (Sami and Lucas) reacted with shock and worked through their emotions on screen. I imagined mothers watching and commiserating with Sami’s fumbles, and listening to Will’s struggles as they experienced their own sons and daughters coming out.

I also imagine that this normalization of homosexuality–not just in media, but more importantly, in people’s personal lives (as they personally know people who come out)–is the reason that support for gay marriage is at an all-time high. People’s stories help drive policy, and when those stories are in the form of fictional “stories,” mass audiences are introduced to progressive ideas.

During Nov. 14’s episode, I watched with awe as Will and Sonny Kiriakis slept together. I again imagined audiences of moderate/conservative women being shocked (and maybe disturbed not by the scene itself, but by the fact that they might have found it really sexy).

Will, left, and Sonny.

At the same time, though, Gabi Hernandez is finding out that she is pregnant. Gabi and Will had been a couple before he fully realized his sexuality, and they’d had a one-night stand after a particularly traumatic event. Will is the father.

Gabi and Will decide, after much discussion, to terminate the pregnancy. I was nervous as the arc played out, because when Mimi Lockhart had chosen to get an abortion in 2004, she was rendered infertile and her boyfriend left her, clearly leaving the viewer with a message about abortion.

Gabi interrupts Will and Sonny to tell Will about her pregnancy.

However, for the most part, the conversations that Gabi had during her decision process were reassuring, in regard to making reasonable, logical claims about wanting to finish school and be a mom someday, but not now. Will took a bit more convincing, but the subject was dealt with without judgment.

When he challenges her decision, she says, “Look, I told you I spent all night thinking about this–I’m straight, you’re gay, we’re students, I’m a waitress… What kind of life could we even give this baby?”

At one point, Will does ask about adoption. He asks if she’s thought about it and she says that she has, but her older brother, Rafe, and mother would want her to keep the baby. Will agreed that his parents would, too.

Gabi says, “I feel like the world would be a better place if it was filled with wanted children.”

Gabi’s decision-making process is mature and tempered. However, there is a backdrop of scheming knights-in-shining armor thinking they need to protect her. Sami tells Rafe and Nick (who they all believe to be the father), and the three manage to get into Gabi’s apartment, look at her computer and see the family planning website, do investigative work and even dig in her trash to find the clinic’s number. This contrast to Gabi’s independence is stark and troublesome.

Meanwhile, Gabi and Will are at the clinic together–it’s clean, and the nurses and doctor are kind and professional.

The audience isn’t shown the sonogram, or anything to make us feel a certain way about what’s happening.

Gabi, waiting for the doctor to perform the abortion.

While the procedure is supposedly taking place, Will starts to become unhinged in the waiting room, and Rafe, Sami and Nick show up. Gabi comes out of the exam room crying, and admits that she couldn’t go through with it.

Thankfully, none of the men’s temper-fueled pressuring of the nurse to let them back to see Gabi and stop her worked. She came to the decision herself.

When Will tells her he’d tried to get in there to stop it, Sami cuts in and says, “It’s not your place–it’s Gabi’s decision to make.” Throughout this entire story line, Sami has provided a voice of dissent to the men who are trying to make decisions for Gabi and treat her like she’s a child. (One could also point out that Sami was the reason they were meddling in the first place–but it’s also Sami.)

Gabi says, “I didn’t do it–you don’t understand–I tried to convince myself it was the best thing and I totally realized I was being horribly selfish.”

While no one would want her to have had an abortion against her will, she sounds like a different person than she did just a few episodes prior.

Rafe feels the need to protect her.

As of Monday’s episode, Nick has proposed marriage to Gabi (he wants them to raise the baby together), and Will and Sonny are in bed again (although Sonny doesn’t know about the pregnancy yet).

On one hand, we can see this daytime TV story arc as a positive development in expanding the discussion of reproductive choice. Almost. Rafe and Nick’s (and Sami’s) outright invasion into Gabi’s privacy was abhorrent and not dealt with as such, and the post-clinic rhetoric about abortion was nowhere near as even-handed as the conversations prior, or the scenes with the clinic staff. However, the original conversations about raising wanted children and the positive portrayal of the clinic were refreshing. Gabi’s choice was Gabi’s choice; however, I’m not sure that point was actually made to the viewer who wasn’t desperately looking for it.

While support for gay rights has surged in recent years, support for abortion rights has stalled and in some polls, slid backward. I imagine that Gabi’s story is an analogy of that confusion of support and disdain, largely because unlike coming out as gay, women do not have the equivalent of “coming out” after choosing abortion. The stories–real and fictional–are essential to public perception.

Soap operas–although they are much maligned by audiences and critics–have long had an important role in social conversations. In 1964, NBC’s Another World introduced TV’s first abortion story. Their portrayals of gay sexuality have been remarkable in recent years. This genre of storytelling, though, gets very little attention on a critical scale. As the Museum of Broadcast Communication notes:

“Particularly in the United States, the connotation of ‘soap opera’ as a degraded cultural and aesthetic form is inextricably bound to the gendered nature of its appeals and of its target audience. The soap opera always has been a ‘woman’s’ genre, and, it has frequently been assumed (mainly by those who have never watched soap operas), of interest primarily or exclusively to uncultured working-class women with simple tastes and limited capacities. Thus the soap opera has been the most easily parodied of all broadcasting genres, and its presumed audience most easily stereotyped as the working-class ‘housewife’ who allows the dishes to pile up and the children to run amuck because of her ‘addiction’ to soap operas. Despite the fact that the soap opera is demonstrably one of the most narratively complex genres of television drama whose enjoyment requires considerable knowledge by its viewers, and despite the fact that its appeals for half a century have cut across social and demographic categories, the term continues to carry this sexist and classist baggage.”

These stories have weight, and our dismissal of them does reek of sexism and classicism. As Ebony Utley says in a Ms. Magazine blog post:

“As a feminist and proud soap-watcher, I’d argue that soaps are too often wrongly dismissed as sex-filled drivel. Feminists, in particular, should support the feminine values, diverse representations of women, social issues and global community promoted by daytime television’s fantasy worlds.Soap operas celebrate a private sphere controlled primarily by women who have agency. In it, intimacy, forgiveness, redemption, family, and community are honored.”

These “stories” are important to our sense of self as a culture. Portraying two gay men having sex on network television in the middle of the day changes our conversations. Having characters discuss, at length, the pros and cons of choosing abortion and visiting an abortion clinic on network television in the middle of the day changes our conversations.

If we look closer at this genre, we see American culture and changing norms reflecting back at us.

(Alright, maybe American culture has fewer exorcisms, resurrections, body doubles and less baby-switching, amnesia and brainwashing. Maybe.)

—

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

Why We Need Leslie Knope and What Her Election on ‘Parks and Rec’ Means for Women and Girls

Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) in Parks and Recreation

Written by Megan Kearns.

When I grow up, I want to be Leslie Knope. It’s no secret I love Parks and Recreation. A female-fronted series with a hilarious ensemble cast that’s the most feminist show on TV? C’mon, how could I not? It’s easy to write off Parks and Rec as a quirky and brilliant comedy. Yet it’s so much more than that. It broke ground revealing the highs and lows of political office and showing an intelligent, upbeat, passionate woman can not only run for office but win.

Inspired by The Wire’s portrayal of politics (another reason to love it even more!), it depicts local government in the small town Pawnee, revolving around the indomitable Leslie Knope. Amy Poehler (who happens to be one of my fave feminist celebs) anchors the show with her fantastic portrayal of the waffles-loving leader.With Leslie Knope’s win, women and girls see that women can become leaders. She helps normalize the image of female politicians, showing us that it’s not strange — rather it’s routine — for a woman to strive for political office. She allows us to dream of impacting change through politics. She tells us that it’s okay for women to be powerful.

Not only do we see a female politician. We see a FEMINIST female politician. And I can’t think of a more overtly feminist character on TV. Period.

Always striving to empower women and girls, Leslie started Camp Athena, a program for teen girls and the gender-bending Pawnee Goddesses, an originally all-girls (and later co-ed) girl scouts-esque group. When judging a beauty pageant, Leslie brilliantly brought “her own laminated scorecard with categories including “Knowledge of herstory” and “The Naomi Wolf factor.” She started “Galentine’s Day” for her lady friends to celebrate each other and how they don’t need men. Forever dreaming of running for office, Leslie idolizes strong women leaders posting pictures of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Madeline Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Janet Reno, and Nancy Pelosi. Leslie aspires to become the first female president of the United States. Did I mention she constructed a Geraldine Ferraro action figure? From a popsicle stick?? Priceless.

Parks and Rec continues the lady power by revolving around a female friendship. Creators Greg Daniels and Michael Schur conceived the show to focus on Leslie and Ann Perkins’ friendship. Fitting as Amy Poehler and Rashida Jones are real-life friends. In an age where you see women catty and backbiting towards one another or the Smurfette principle with only one woman in the cast, it’s great to see several women who not only get along but support one another’s goals.

But Parks and Rec skyrocketed into the feminist stratosphere when it featured Leslie’s decision to run for city council, her campaign and her win.

In “I’m Leslie Knope,” Leslie declares, “I’ve been dreaming of running for public office my whole life.” While other girls played with Barbies, Leslie had her trusty Geraldine Ferraro action figure (I cannot express just how much I love this). Leslie makes campaign speeches in her sleep and declares her campaign slogan “Knope We Can’t Not,” a hilarious riffs on President Obama’s slogan. We see Leslie participate in the usual campaign tasks such as field and GOTV (get out the vote), fundraising and debating. And her position on Egyptian debt relief.

Leslie chooses her career over a man…twice. In season 2, when she’s dating Louis C.K., he asks Leslie to move with him but she decides to stay in Pawnee for her career. Then in season 4’s premiere, Leslie must choose whether or not to break up with adorbs Ben in order to pursue her dream of running for office. And she chooses her career. We so rarely see this on TV. It’s so refreshing for a woman to put her work and herself first instead of a man.

During Leslie’s debates, not only is abortion mentioned (“I think we should all just have a good time”…thanks Bobby Newport!) but a commentary on sexism in politics arises too. Brandy, a city council candidate and former porn star, looks eerily similar to Leslie from her hairstyle to her clothes. She continuously compares herself to Leslie. Then the moderator even says they really are the same. It’s a funny commentary on how some people lump women candidates together as a monolithic force. You know, that we women are all the same because of our gender.

Leslie had to contend with her campaign manager leaving after she came forward with her relationship with Ben Wyatt, dirty spin tactics and even a smear campaign as she was accused of killing puppies (???) when the animal shelter closed due to her negotiation reallocating funds for the Parks Department. Each of these issues is dealt with humorously (duh). What’s surprising is that in a strange way — with its illustration of the hurdles women face and can overcome — Parks and Rec’s portrayal of Leslie Knope’s campaign might just be the most honest depiction of a campaign ever.

When Leslie responds to the lewd photos sent to all the female city hall workers, she tells reporter Perd Hapley, “When men in government behave this way, they betray the public’s trust. Maybe it’s time for more women to be in charge.”

Yes, yes it is time.

President Allison Taylor in 24, President Mac Allen in Commander in Chief, President Laura Roslin in Battlestar Galactica — we’ve never had a female president yet TV shows have imagined its reality. Currently, Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Vice President Selena Meyer in the female-fronted political satire Veep. While we’ve seen a handful of women as elected leaders on-screen, we’ve never seen a female candidate’s political campaign from start to finish. Until now. This season, audiences witnessed the campaigns of Modern Family’s Claire Dunphy and Parks and Rec’s Leslie Knope, both running for city council.

I was thrilled we had not one but two women running for office! Claire’s campaign for city council mostly took a back seat, only appearing in 3 episodes. And she lost. Although it was great to see her run at all. But Leslie’s campaign remained the crux of the 4th season.Hopefully, when we see more women leaders run for elected office on-screen, we’ll see more women running for off-screen.

There is a chasm, a massive gender gap in politics. Far less women run for office far less than men. In 2011, only 16.6% of women serve in the House and only 17% of women in the Senate. At the state level, only 23.5% of legislators are women and only 21.8% of women hold elective executive positions, including only 6 female governors. When you look at the numbers for women of color, only 27% of the 16.6% who serve in Congress are women of color with no women of color in the Senate. Amongst statewide politicians, 20% of the women serving as state legislators and 15.9% of those serving in statewide elective executive positions are women of color.

For several years, I worked at a women’s center at Harvard University, coordinating a political training program for female grad students. Female political candidates face unique challenges and obstacles. Some women are reticent to run because they worry about fundraising (many women have no problem asking for money as activists yet have trouble when it comes to asking for money for themselves) and facing sexism in the media and the ridiculous scrutiny on their appearance. Women often have to be asked to run for office whereas men just run. Women often perceive that they need more training, more experience, regardless of their actual qualifications.

But I think there’s another reason women don’t run.

You can’t be what you can’t see. If little girls don’t see any female politicians in the media — in books, film and TV — it becomes that much harder for them to envision themselves as leaders or even knowing that politics is a potential path. If no politicians look like you — although having Hillary Clinton run for president and Sarah Palin as a Vice Presidential candidate certainly helped — it’s extremely difficult to imagine you can lead.

We need even more women to run for office, advocating for greater equity. Women must fight harder to prove themselves and their worth, due to their small numbers and societal expectations. Female politicians often submit more legislation and tend to advocate more for abortion, education and healthcare. They see the world from a different vantage point than men. When women sit at the table of the decision-making process, a greater diversity of voices and perspectives are heard.

Women overwhelmingly won this record-breaking election. With 20 women in the Senate and at least 77 women in the House, a historic number of women will serve in Congress. It will be the most diverse Congress in history. Additionally, with President Obama’s re-election, gay marriage passed in 4 states, and an anti-abortion amendment failing in Florida — all these successes struck a massive blow to the GOP’s onslaught of attacks against women, gay rights and reproductive rights.And I think feminist humor played a small yet vital role in the 2012 elections, spreading awareness about inequality.

As we’ve already seen in her brief term as City Councillor, Leslie has advocated for clean parks, passed a soda tax and fought back against abstinence-only education. As Diane Shipley points out in her must-read Bitch Flicks article on Leslie Knope:

“Leslie Knope *is* amazing. Over the course of three seasons, she’s gone from a small-time, small-town government employee with delusions of grandeur to someone it’s easy to believe could make a big splash on the larger political stage one day. I hope she does, and I hope we get to see it. What’s more, the popularity of her character signals an important change, a backlash against the backlash: the mainstream acceptance of a heroine who lives by feminist values and encourages others to do the same.”

Looking at the two comedies featuring women in political office on right now, Veep satirizes government, mocking politicians and their staff’s incompetency. While Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the rest of the ensemble are hilarious, I sometimes cringe as I want to see a woman in a position of power succeed. But with Leslie, you never doubt for one moment she can’t do exactly what she sets out to accomplish. And you never doubt she will stand up for women everywhere.

We need to see more depictions of women politicians. With Parks and Rec, not only do we see that women can and do run for office, but they can win. Leslie shows us that women can confidently follow their dreams and turn them into reality. As my friend and fellow writer Molly McCaffrey said to me:

“Watching Leslie win felt like a victory for not only women but people who care about the world.”

Now if only we had more Leslie Knopes in the world. With women and girls watching, we just might.

Megan Kearns is a Bitch Flicks Staff Writer, a freelance writer and a feminist vegan blogger. She tweets at @OpinionessWorld.

10 Statements ‘Shakespeare In Love’ Makes About Women’s Rights

Shakespeare In Love Poster

Shakespeare In Love is one of those films that gets a lot of hate from critics and movie buffs. Its crime? Beating Saving Private Ryan for the Best Picture Academy Award. Funny, I didn’t know that when the Academy makes a decision you disagree with, it somehow instantly makes the winning film terrible. The Academy makes terrible decisions all the time – but that’s a problem with the voters, not the films they choose. At any rate, I think another reason why this film gets an enormous amount of hate is because it’s a romantic comedy. A CHICK FLICK, OH MY GOD! And yet, this supposed ‘Chick Flick’ was directed by a man, written by men (including Tom Stoppard, a playwright most famous for Rozencrantz & Gildenstern Are Dead) and with a cast (for historical reasons) mostly populated by men.

And yet, oddly enough, this film is pretty feminist. The rights and roles of women have come a very, very long way since the 1590s, and yet this film shows us the major societal problems that occur when women are denied agency. The lack of rights given to the film’s heroine, Viola DeLesseps, seem needlessly cruel and puritanical to modern standards. However, Queen Elizabeth I’s reign should be seen as an important time in feminist history. Not only did she prove to England, and the world, that a woman could rule and be a highly capable leader on her own without a husband, she brought England into a Golden Age. Elizabeth I is thus used in this film as a symbol of the kinds of heights women can achieve if they are only given the opportunity.

What this shows me is that if feminists keep fighting for women’s (and LGBTQ, and POC) rights, future generations will also look back on our era and see our as of yet denied rights the same way we view the rights denied women in the Renaissance era. The things we have been fighting for will be considered a given. Progress is only a future away.

By showing the major societal flaws that occur when women are denied agency, here are 10 statements that Shakespeare In Love makes on Women’s Rights:

Shakespeare kisses Viola as Thomas Kent

1. Women were not allowed to be actors: The first major conflict of the film is Viola’s longing to be an actor. She adores Shakespeare’s plays and reveres poetry above all. But it was the law that only men can appear on stage as actors in plays; it was seen as lewd and obscene for women to act. This is one of those aspects of Elizabethan society that seem positively absurd by modern standards. Could you imagine our movie industry today if every female character was played by crossdressing men and prepubescent boys? And yet, some vestiges of this type of law still remain – women are still seen as the gatekeepers of morality. It is still a fact that some things are seen as okay for men to do, but obscene and disgusting for women to emulate. Slut vs. stud, anyone? At any rate, there is a blatant women’s rights violation here in that Viola’s true ambition – just to act – is seen as illegal and immoral.

2. Fathers control their daughters’ destinies. As the beautiful daughter of a social climbing merchant, Viola DeLesseps is seen by her father as a mere asset, not his child. He does not even ask her if she desires to be married, nor does he tell her that he has decided her future for her behind her back. He is even contemptuous of her when speaking to her future husband, and blatantly bribes the Earl of Wessex to marry her: “Is she obedient?” “As any mule in Christendom. But if you are the man to ride her, there are rubies in the saddlebag.” Marriage at this time, at least for nobility/aristocracy was seen more as a business or political transaction, and love is never considered.

3. Husbands control their wives even before they’re married. Lord Wessex is not a nice guy. At the DeLesseps’ party, Wessex refers to Viola as “my property” before their engagement is even official. He threatens Shakespeare’s life for admiring Viola – he is extremely possessive of her, and Viola does not even know yet that she is to marry him. He later starts ordering Viola around, throwing screaming fits if she dares to be late. Viola’s unguarded contempt of Wessex, and her later escape from their wedding carriage to see the play, show that she is strong-willed, and not at all likely to be the submissive bride he was hoping for. Viola is thus pushing the limits of freedom that are available to her in defiance of the arranged marriage.

4. Women are not allowed to make their own choices of marriage. The pain that Viola’s arranged marriage causes serves as the other major conflict of the film. Viola can never marry Shakespeare. Even if he were not married with children, he is poor, and playwrights/actors are seen as the amongst the lowest class people in London. As the daughter of a rich merchant, she would never be allowed to marry so far beneath her station. Her father has bought the Earl of Wessex so his grandchildren will be nobility – she is not even given the choice as to whether she may have children or not. It is Viola’s duty to follow her father’s wishes – she does not get any choice at all. She also knows that were she to defy Wessex, Queen Elizabeth would know the cause, and execute Shakespeare for it, as Elizabeth has given her official consent to the marriage.

5. Women are expected to be submissive and humble. The Earl of Wessex must get the Queen’s consent to marry, so Viola is to appear at court before her. Wessex thus demands that she be “submissive, modest, grateful and brief” when she is presented to the Queen. He is in effect asking Viola to defy everything that she feels inside just so Lord Wessex can increase his personal fortune. Because she is an actor, she initially behaves as he requests, but when she impulsively defends the ability of plays/poetry to represent the truth and nature of love, she actually impresses Elizabeth enough for her to officiate a wager between Lord Wessex (who denies that plays have this power) and a disguised Shakespeare. The ironic subtext of Wessex’s demands is that he is expecting Viola to behave as would please a man of that time, forgetting that Elizabeth is first and foremost a woman.

Viola and Shakespeare as Romeo & Juliet

6. Women are seen as possessions. As mentioned earlier, Lord Wessex refers to Viola as “my property” before their engagement has even become official. Her father compares her to a mule, and vulgarly makes a double entendre about “riding” her to Lord Wessex. Lord Wessex also goes into a murderous rage and is intensely jealous that William Shakespeare has won Viola’s love. The only thing that he shows pleasure in is when he believes that Shakespeare (who he thinks is Christopher Marlowe) has died. His power is such that he can threaten Shakespeare’s life, in public, in front of multiple witnesses who are friends of his, without fear of repercussion – Shakespeare covets that which belongs to Wessex. But the women in this story know better. On Viola’s wedding day, both her Nurse and her mother are weeping – not for joy, but for knowing that the men of the age control Viola’s destiny.

7. Consent is seen as optional. There is a very strong contrast between Lord Wessex and William Shakespeare in how they approach Viola as a lover. When Wessex informs Viola that they are to be married, he tells her, “You are allowed to show your pleasure.” He then informs her that he chose her because he was attracted to her lips, and then forces a kiss on her. When she slaps him, he reminds her that she cannot defy her father nor her Queen. In contrast, when Shakespeare and Viola prepare to make love for the first time, he interrupts her to make sure that she truly does consent to sex with him: “Wait! You’re still a maid, and perhaps as mistook in me as I was mistook in Thomas Kent.” “Are you the author of the plays of William Shakespeare?” “I am.” “Then kiss me again, for I am not mistook.” The true and ideal nature of love is for both parties to enthusiastically consent to physical pleasure – it is quite telling that the poor playwright respects the agency of women far more than the rich Earl does.

8. Virginity is seen as a prize to be won. When Viola is presented to Queen Elizabeth, she detects that something is different about her, and correctly surmises that she has fallen in love and lost her virginity since the last time she saw her. She tells Lord Wessex: “Have her, then. But you are a lordly fool. She’s been plucked since I saw her last, and not by you. It takes a woman to know it.” Notably, she is not implying that Wessex is a fool for marrying a non-virgin, but for marrying a woman that will never love him. This above all makes Wessex murderously jealous. And yet, Viola too sees her lost virginity as something that was precious: “I loved the writer and gave up the prize for a sonnet.” She has no regrets about her love affair with Shakespeare, but also knows that Lord Wessex is not likely to forgive her for emotionally and physically loving anyone but him.

9. Elizabeth I is sympathetic to Viola’s situation. Viola was recruited to play Juliet when the teenage boy actor’s voice had suddenly broken, and the Master of the Revels was intending to arrest all of the actors for knowingly allowing a woman to act onstage. Elizabeth I was watching the play in disguise. She comes to Viola’s rescue, and decides to pass her off as her pseudonym, Thomas Kent: “The Queen of England does not attend exhibitions of public lewdness. So something is out of joint. Come here, Master Kent. Let me look at you. … Yes, the illusion is remarkable. And your error, Mr. Tilney, is easily forgiven. But I know something of a woman in a man’s profession. Yes, by God, I do know about that.” Her last statement is incredibly powerful when related to how this film interprets women’s rights. She, more than anyone else in that era, knows what it is like to be someone who has all the power in the world, and yet none of it at the same time. She later reflects on the powers she does not have: “Why, Lord Wessex. Lost your wife so soon?” “Indeed, I am a bride short, and my ship sails for the new world on the evening tide. How is this to end?” “As stories must when love’s denied — with tears, and a journey. Those whom God has joined in marriage, not even I can put asunder. Master Kent. Lord Wessex, as I foretold, has lost his wife in the playhouse. Go make your farewells, and send her out. It’s time to settle accounts.”

10. Gender is but a performance. One of the more interesting subtextual elements of this film is how it chooses to approach gender. Most obviously, Viola convincingly played two male parts at the same time – that of her pseudonym, Thomas Kent, and as Romeo Montague. She would never have been discovered if she had not made love with Shakespeare in a place where they could be spied on. She binds her breasts when playing Thomas, which is a common practice used by transgender men. The laws requiring that only men can be actors cause another layer of representation of gender – older men must play older women, and prepubescent boys play young women. They do not show shame or discomfort at being made to crossdress – it is a just part to play, just like all gender is an instinctive societal role that is played. In the end, when Shakespeare immortalizes Viola as the heroine of his next play, Twelfth Night, that play eventually becomes famous for its metacommentary on the nature of gender and theatre itself: Viola is a female character who masquerades as a man, but is played by a young man masquerading as a woman. A man plays a woman playing a man. The lines of gender are blurred – even in Shakespeare’s time he knew that there’s no such thing as the gender binary.

This film deserves to be loved again. Its producers may have bought its many Academy Awards (though I don’t think anyone is going to argue about Judi Dench’s win) but that does not invalidate the film’s greatness. It is one of the few comedies to win Best Picture, and though it is bittersweet, it is a film that fills me with joy every time I watch it. And anyway, I’m an English major. Loving Shakespeare comes with the territory.

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

Female Literacy as a Historical Framework for Hollywood Misogyny

Literacy has long been a powerful tool. For a subjugated group to become literate, freedom, power and representation were surely close to follow.

On the other hand, if those subjugated groups remained illiterate–by force or lack of access–hegemony could be kept intact.

Women have had to fight religious, social, political and even medical institutions that tried to keep them from comprehensive eduction and broad literacy. (Of course, women’s literacy and access to education is still restricted in many fundamentalist religious cultures worldwide–from the extreme of the Taliban attempting to assassinate a 14-year-old Pakistani girl who blogged and pushed for an education, to the more subtle Christian Patriarchy Movement in the US, which advocates young women eschew college to be “stay-at-home daughters.”)

Historically, women’s literature was often relegated to spiritual diaries, letters and personal reflections on the feminine sphere. As literacy became more widespread in the 19th century, women began entering the publishing world in earnest (usually with male or androgynous pen names), although they were often met with scorn, as the female author George Eliot satirizes in “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists” (from which TV Tropes gleaned numerous modern tropes).

In her New Yorker review of the book A Woman Reader, Joan Acocella writes:

“In thinking about wisdom, it helps to read about wisdom—about Solomon or Socrates or whomever … Likewise, goodness and happiness and love. To decide whether you have them, or want to make the sacrifices necessary to get them, it is useful to read about them. Without such introspection, women seemed stupid; therefore, they were considered unfit for education; therefore, they weren’t given an education; therefore they seemed stupid.”

This cycle of restricting and then denigrating women’s literacy and women’s writing can be seen today not only in the marginalization of women writers, but also in Hollywood. When women finally break through and are able to tell their stories, those stories are immediately dismissed as silly and trivial.

Mark Twain, who despised Jane Austen’s silly novels, said,

“Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

The Slate article “A Brief History of the Beef Against Women Reading,” notes:

“As the marketplace for words increasingly skewed female, men started trolling, claiming that women’s novels were sexually corruptive, dangerously distracting, and hopelessly unrealistic, or even damaging to women’s mental health. (One 19th-century doctor, faced with a novel-reading woman, prescribed a book on beekeeping instead.) Male authors adapted by publishing helpful advice for women targeted at keeping them in their place.”

It is no wonder, then, that Hollywood tends to symbolically annihilate women’s stories, and that some film audiences push back against powerful female characters or scoff at the “chick flick” genre. All of this recorded history about women reading and writing (and why they were kept illiterate to keep them subjugated, and why their eventual published writings were met with scorn) provides a framework for the difficulties that female screenwriters and directors face in cinema.

On The Hathor Legacy, Jennifer Kesler documents that during her film courses at ULCA, she was routinely reminded to essentially not write screenplays that pass the Bechdel Test. One industry professional told her, “The audience doesn’t want to listen to a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about.”

This is typically the excuse given in regard to why women’s stories are not universal, and why they won’t “sell.” Tradition is hard to break. Male audiences won’t go see stories revolving around women, right?

Perhaps this bleak, largely anti-feminist landscape in Hollywood is more deliberate. If we acknowledge women’s long history of being neglected education and literacy, and that women have been repeatedly told (or observed) that their stories lack action and intrigue for a broad audience, how can this not have larger social effects? And at some point, do we come to the conclusion that these messages are what the dominant group wants?

Women’s stories are women’s stories and many have common themes that support cultural stereotypes and show women how they are supposed to be. Even if a film breaks stereotypes, the viewership is expected to just be female. Ask Men has a “Top Ten Chick Flicks We Can Stomach” guide, to save men from “too much pain” on date night.

Women are not a minority. They are more than 50 percent of the population in the US, and have met and surpassed men in undergraduate and graduate degrees.

However, according to the Women’s Media Center:

– Of the top 250 domestic grossing films, women were 5% of the directors, 14% of the writers, 18% of the executive producers, 25% of the producers, 20% of the editors, and 4% of the cinematographers.

– In the key behind-the-scenes role in entertainment television, women were 18% of the creators, 22% of the executive producers, 37% of the producers, 15% of the writers, 11% of the directors, 20% of the editors, and 4% of the directors of photography.

The documentary Miss Representation points out that only 16 percent of films feature female protagonists.

Social change is slow; this is not news. Films, however, are a reflection of society–our norms and our fears.

And fear of female power, of female dominance, is real.

Roger Ebert recently published a guest blog post by a film reviewer who experienced censorship by a misogynist publisher. In an e-mail to the columnist, the publisher said:

“I don’t want to publish reviews of films where women are alpha and men are beta.
where women are heroes and villains and men are just lesser versions or shadows of females.

i believe in manliness.” [sic]

This isn’t an isolated opinion. If women in power upset the masculine trajectory of dominance in the real world (see: legislation on reproductive rights, religious hierarchies, the lack of equal representation of women in government) and incite fear in “traditional America,” of course powerful women on the big screen are a threat to the patriarchy. Our media, then, is a powerful hegemonic tool.

In my Women’s Literature class this week, I had assigned a few graphic and difficult pieces that dealt with birth and abortion. I asked my students, “How many stories and poems about men in war have you read in literature classes?” They nodded, and responded that there had been many. None, however, had read stories by women about birth or abortion.

This disconnect in the stories we hear and see and the actual stories we live is stark. And if women’s stories are continually pushed aside in scriptwriting courses or passed over for stories by and about men’s experiences, then women will undoubtedly continue to be subjugated outside of novels and movie theaters, and their realities will seem less like reality, and more like a marginalized sub-plot.

—

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

‘Boardwalk Empire’: Margaret Thompson, Margaret Sanger, and the Cultural Commentary of Historical Fiction

In 1923, Margaret Sanger opened the first legal birth control clinic in America.

Almost 90 years later, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire is reminding audiences of those early struggles for women’s reproductive health and education, which don’t seem as foreign as they should.

In the premiere episode of season 3, Margaret (Schroeder) Thompson hears a radio story about Carrie Duncan, a woman who is about to take off as the first aviator to attempt a cross-continental flight.

Later in the episode, she takes a private tour of the Enoch and Margaret Thompson Pediatric Annex in St. Theresa’s Hospital, as she and her husband (“Nucky”) are its benefactors. As she tours the halls, a pregnant woman comes in and collapses, and she’s obviously miscarrying. The doctors whisk her away and Dr. Mason later tells Margaret that the loss could have been prevented, but the woman (her name is later revealed as Edwina Shearer) drank raw milk that was infected with E.coli. He goes on to explain that pregnant women are not given any instruction about nutrition or hygiene. Margaret, horrified, wants to use her benefactor status to change this.

Edwina Shearer has a miscarriage in the first episode of season 3.

At her and Nucky’s New Year’s celebration–they are ringing in 1923–she approaches Dr. Landau (St. Theresa’s medical director) about the inadequate prenatal care at the hospital. He is insulted and condescending, and Nucky chastises her.

However, as her determination and tenacity in the last two seasons has proven, Margaret will not stand down.

At the end of the episode, Margaret gets up at dawn to witness Duncan fly over the coast. She smiles as she sees Duncan’s plane.

Margaret watches Carrie Duncan fly overhead.

While Margaret’s feminist activism is a sub-plot–in fact, it doesn’t even appear in every episode–the establishment of a prenatal education program (and evolving views on birth control) is an important, sobering reminder of our history and provides context for much of what propels current conversations on reproduction and women’s health.

Margaret manages to open the St. Theresa’s Women’s Clinic after going above the director’s head to appeal directly to the bishop (although he warns her that “delicate topics would have to be avoided”). Margaret has become a power player in season 3. Certainly it’s worth noting that the hospital’s namesake could either be found in St. Therese of Lisieux, who went directly to the Pope to beg to become a nun after priests and bishops had turned her away, or St. Teresa of Avila, who was forced into the convent by her father and then became a reformer and was posthumously declared a Doctor of the Church.

Margaret, also, has been dually wedged into circumstances by her own stubborn motivations and by the men in her life. In previous seasons, she has deftly navigated her world to provide better circumstances for her children and her community, but this season she is securing her place as more than just an activist–she is a leader.

In episode 4, she and Dr. Mason set up the women’s clinic and are met with resistance by the nuns. As they discuss the mission statement, a nun says, “This is rather infelicitous language, isn’t it?” “Vagina?” Margaret asks. The doctor says that it’s a medical term, and the nun replies, “I’ve never enjoyed the sound of it.” Dr. Mason says, “I’ve never liked brussels sprouts, but I don’t deny they exist.”

Dr. Mason, left, and Margaret prep for their evening women’s health class (they are holding boxes of Kotex, and the nun in the background disapproves).

“The entire area is problematic,” the nun scoffs, adding that she doesn’t approve of the term “pregnant.”

“You are at odds with ‘menstruation’?” Margaret asks.

The nun finally storms off after seeing brown packages that Margaret tells her are Kotex–a relatively new product–which are gifts for the women in the class. “Let’s hope our evening students aren’t quite so sensitive,” Margaret quips.

As she passes out fliers for the new class on the boardwalk, she runs in to Mrs. Shearer–the woman who inspired the clinic. She seems uncomfortable, and her husband interjects, “When she’s feeling better, we’ll try again.”

Margaret passes out flyers on the boardwalk.

At the end of the episode, Margaret is reading the newspaper. Wreckage of Carrie Duncan’s plane was found, and the headline reads “Aviatrix Presumed Killed During Ill-Fated Journey.” Duncan’s trip, which clearly was inspirational to Margaret, was unsuccessful.

This moment in American history–the 1920s–was a promising time for women. The 19th amendment granted women the right to vote in 1920, and Margaret Sanger was making headway (and finding loopholes) to help women plan their reproduction.

However, there were no figurative cross-country flights completed during this era. It would be decades before the Pill was legalized and first-trimester abortion de-criminalized. Still in 2012, contraception is a divisive issue in America.

But women kept fighting, as does Margaret.

In the beginning of the next episode, she’s looking over a class flyer with a friend. “Do you wish for more knowledge? sounds mystical,” her friend teased.

Margaret responds, “I can’t very well say Let’s talk about your vagina.”

Later in the episode, Dr. Mason is wrapping up their evening women’s education class (a crucifix looms above him), and one of the few women in the class says, “I wish someone would have told me all of this when I was 13–I wouldn’t have thought I was dying!”

The need for comprehensive education was clear, and for the few women who came to the first classes, Margaret and Dr. Mason were making a difference.

When Dr. Mason is called into an emergency surgery during their next class, Margaret steps to the front of the room and smiles. “We have our book, we have our chart, we have ourselves–what else is needed?”

She’s gotten the permission she needed to open the clinic and fly under the radar of the conservative leadership, and she is comfortable taking the lead.

At the beginning of episode 6, Margaret opens the mail and pulls out a copy of the Birth Control Review (along with a letter signed by Margaret Sanger).

Margaret receives a copy of Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Review in the mail,.

This isn’t the first time that Sanger has appeared in Boardwalk Empire. In season 1, the episode “Family Limitation” (named after a brochure of the same name that Sanger produced in the early 1900s) showed Margaret douching with Lysol to prevent another pregnancy (a method that was touted as a method of birth control). Season 1–with its focus on temperance leagues, suffrage and reproductive issues–offered a preview to the show’s complex sub-plots that focus on women’s issues.

Throughout the series, men’s reactions to birth control and family planning have been venemous (Nucky referred to Margaret as a “common whore” when he discovered she’d been trying to prevent pregnancy, and Mr. Shearer insists that he and his wife will continue to procreate). Dr. Mason is the exception thus far in his progressive attitudes about women’s health.

In episode 8, Mrs. Shearer comes to Margaret, pleading. “My husband won’t keep off me,” she says, and wants to know how to not get pregnant.

She says, “I don’t need a pamphlet, or some man to tell me what I already know.”

She hesitates, and says, “I wasn’t–I stored the milk, I waited. It wasn’t an accident, you understand? I drank it on purpose to lose the baby–I won’t go through that again.”

The E.coli was self-inflicted, because she refused to have another child. This example of self-induced abortion was nothing new or rare for the time, and it was one of the reasons Sanger pushed for education and birth control.

Without judgment, Margaret simply asks, “What do you need?”

“One of those Dutch caps, that go up here,” she answers (indicating a diaphragm).

When Margaret says that those need to come from a doctor, Mrs. Shearer says, “Doctors only listen to ladies like you.”

Wealthy women of privilege generally have always had access to family planning. Mrs. Shearer knows that, and finally trusts Margaret enough to be a connection between working class exclusion and upper class privilege.

Margaret waits for Dr. Mason outside of the hospital, and tells him directly, “I need your help with something and it’s rather delicate… I would like to ask you to help me obtain a diaphragm.” He understands that that is what Mrs. Shearer wanted. “Actually,” Margaret adds, “I suppose I need two–one for her, and one for me.” (Margaret’s need for a diaphragm isn’t because of her relationship with Nucky; Nucky has had a mistress in the city, and Margaret picks up her affair with his driver, Owen.)

The issues surrounding the female characters of Boardwalk Empire are instrumental in the male characters’ lives (the late Angela Darmondy and her lesbian relationship, Gillian Darmondy’s brothel the Artemis Club, Chalky White’s daughter’s resistance to marriage, Assistant Attorney General Esther Randolph–based off Mabel Walker Willebrandt, Nucky’s late lover Billie Kent’s desire for independence and of course, Margaret), and they also serve as history lessons for the audience.

Boardwalk Empire is, essentially, a boys club. So is American history. While Nucky’s world of politics, power, alcohol smuggling and bloody violence is central to the entire plot of the show, the women’s stories underneath the surface are integral to their stories and to the audience.

In 2012 America, a female legislator was punished for using the word “vagina” in a debate about reproductive choice. Religious groups are fighting the Affordable Care Act’s provision that contraception be covered by insurance as preventative medicine. States are attempting to close women’s health clinics that don’t even provide abortion, but provide women’s health services. Abstinence-only education is pushed nationwide. The same resistance that Margaret faces in Boardwalk Empire is the same resistance faced by activists and leaders in today’s fights to prioritize reproductive education, health and choice.

By showing these struggles in an award-winning, critically acclaimed HBO drama, audiences are able to hold a mirror up to the failures of not only prohibition, but also limiting women’s reproductive choices. Boardwalk Empire serves as a reminder that when women’s options are limited, they will fight back–even if it means risking their lives. With only three episodes left in season 3, we can hope that Margaret will remain steadfast in her fight for women’s reproductive education and choice.

—

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

Sexism Leading Up to the Elections

The big day is coming up. Pundits, politicians and trolls have a lot to say about it.

The race is so close, that the candidates and their parties have gone beyond the mudslinging phase into a spastic political dance. We’ve moved beyond a two-step and are now doing a politicking polka.

Democrats obnoxiously pander to women, but the GOP manages to surpass them all with outright ignorance and embarrassing insensitivity. Here are some of the more recent things that conservative leaders have been saying about women the weeks leading up to the election.

Newt Gingrich realized the problem that Republicans have been having with outrageous rape comments! It’s not that conservatives are holding too tightly to antiquated and harmful assumptions about sexual assault. It’s that women are not responding well. Regarding ignorant comments; Gingrich said people need to “get over it.” In response, women all over the country sigh a breath of relief, and realize they don’t have to get worked up over assault any more.

If you have come late to the political party and weren’t ambivalent about the Republican’s stance on women’s health, Richard Mourdok is here to clarify. He said that pregnancy resulting from rape is something “God intended.” He followed that up with a shrug-it-off comment that “you can’t put toothpaste back in the tube.” That seems to indicate that the toothpaste – which here would probably represent the GOP’s real stance on rape and abortion – is no longer within the tube – or the presentation of the GOP’s position on women’s health in a way that is palatable to the general public.

Mitt Romney did not withdraw his endorsement of Mourdok.

Candy Crowley moderatedthe second presidential debate largely because of a petition started by three teenage girls. These girls wanted to see a female moderator since there hadn’t been one at a presidential debate for 20 years. Crowley got mixed reviews for how she managed the debates – some saying her correction of Romney was good journalism, while others said it was an inappropriate intervention. Unfortunately, the reaction to a woman playing such an important role in this fundamental part of the political process was all-too-predictably sexist.

#Irrelevant&Sexist

The Twitterverse was lighting up with live tweeting coverage of whatever Obama and Romney threw at each other. Tweets trying to catch and ride the next meme latched on to Crowley’s weight.Tweeters managed the internet-version of heckling by all-capsing their disapproval of Crowley’s shape and size. Crowley is the chief political correspondent at CNN. She’s covered war, natural disasters and elections. How she looks is totally inconsequential, and we can make a pretty good guess that the reason her looks were an issue was because of her gender.

There are four days left until the election. Who wants to bet we will have to deal with yet another sound bite or internetstorm of sexism before November 6?

The Terror of Little Girls: Social Anxiety About Women in Horrifying Girlhood

Horror films have a long-standing tradition of commenting on the social fears and anxieties of their time.

Another universally recognized truth of horror is that scary children are terrifying–especially little girls.

While an analysis of “creepy children” in horror films usually proclaims that they are providing commentary on a loss of innocence, and it would make sense that a little girl is the “ultimate” in innocence, it can’t be that simple. We wouldn’t be so shaken to the core by possessed, haunted, violent little girls if we were simply supposed to be longing for innocent times of yesteryear.

Instead, these little girls embody society’s growing fears of female power and independence. Fearing a young girl is the antithesis of what we are taught–stories of missing, kidnapped or sexually abused girls (at least white girls) get far more news coverage and mass sympathy than stories of boy victims. Little girls are innocent victims and need protection.

In the Victorian era, the ideal female was supposed to be pale, fainting-prone and home-bound. Feminist literary icons Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar write about this nineteenth-century ideal in The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women:

“At its most extreme, this nineteenth-century ideal of the frail, even sickly female ultimately led to the glorification of the dead or dying woman. The most fruitful subject for literature, announced the American romancer Edgar Allan Poe in 1846, is ‘the death… of a beautiful woman’… But while dead women were fascinating, dying girl-children were even more enthralling… These episodes seem to bring to the surface an extraordinary imperative that underlay much of the nineteenth-century ideology of femininity: in one way or another, woman must be ‘killed’ into passivity for her to acquiesce in what Rousseau and others considered her duty of self-abnegation ‘relative to men.'”

The feminine “ideal” (and its relation to literature) coincided with women beginning the long fight for suffrage and individual rights. It’s no surprise, then, that men wanted to symbolically kill off the woman so she could fulfill her ultimate passive role. There was something comforting about this to audiences.

Rhoda Penmark will not lose to a boy. Or anyone else.

Fast forward to the 1950s and 60s, and the modern horror genre as we know it emerged and began evolving into something that provided social commentary while playing on audiences’ deepest fears (the “other,” invasion, demonic possession, nuclear mutations and the end of the world).

We know that horror films have always been rife with puritanical punishment/reward for promiscuous women/virgins (the “Final Girl” trope), and violence toward women or women needing to be rescued are common themes. These themes comfort audiences, and confirm their need to keep women subjugated in their proper place. It’s no coincidence that the 50s and 60s were seeing sweeping social change in America (the Pill, changing divorce laws, resurgence of the ERA, a lead-up to Roe v. Wade).

Terrifying little girls also make their debut in this era. Their mere presence in these films spoke not only to audiences’ fears of children losing innocence, but also the intense fear that little girls–not yet even women–would have the power to overthrow men. These girl children of a generation of women beginning a new fight for rights were terrifying–these girls would grow up knowing they could have power.

The Bad Seed‘s Rhoda Penmark (played by Patty McCormack in the 1956 film), genetically predisposed to be a sociopath, murders a classmate and the janitor who suspects her. Her classmate–a boy–beats her in a penmanship contest, and she beats him to death with her tap shoes. A little girl, in competition with a boy, loses, and kills. While in the novel Rhoda gets away with her crimes, the Hays Code commanded that the film version “punished” her for her crimes and she’s struck by lightning. It’s revealed that Rhoda’s sociopathic tendencies come from her maternal grandmother, a serial killer. This notion of female murderous rage, passed down through generations and claiming boys/men as its victim, certainly reflects social fear at the time.

In 1968, Night of the Living Dead premiered on big screens and has been seen as commenting on racism/the Civil Rights movement, Cold War-era politics and critiquing America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. However, little Karen Cooper’s (Kyra Schon) iconic scene has long disturbed audiences the most. Infected by zombies, she eats her father and impales her mother with a trowel. A horror twist to an Oedipal tale, one could see Karen as living out the gravest fears of those against the women’s movement/second-wave feminism. Possessed by a demon, she eats her father (consumes the patriarchy) and kills her mother (overtaking her mother’s generation with masculine force).

Little Karen Cooper consumes patriarchy and overtakes her mother.

Five years later, Roe v. Wade had been decided (giving women the right to legal first-trimester abortions), the Pill was legal, no-fault divorce was more acceptable and women began flooding the workforce.

Meanwhile, on the big screen, sweet little Regan MacNeil–the daughter of an over-worked, atheist mother–becomes possessed by the devil.

The Exorcist was based on a novel, which itself was based on the exorcism case of a little boy. Of course, the novelist and filmmakers wanted audiences to be disturbed and terrified, so the sex of the possessed protagonist changed (would it be as unsettling if it was a little boy?).

Chris MacNeil, Regan’s mother, goes to great lengths to help her daughter, and resorts to Catholicism when all else has failed. Regan reacts violently to religious symbols, lashes out and kills priests, speaks in a masculine voice and masturbates with a crucifix. This certainly isn’t simply a “demonic possession” horror film, especially since it was written and made into a film at the height of the fight for women’s rights (the Catholic church being an adamant foe to reproductive rights). Only after Regan releases her demon, which possesses a priest (who flings himself out of a window to commit suicide), does she regain her innocence and girlhood.

Tied and bound, Regan haunts and kills men, and reacts violently to religious images.

What her mother and her culture are embracing–atheism, working women, reproductive rights, sexual aggressiveness–can be seen as the “demons” that overcome the innocent girl and kill men (and traditional religion).

These films are have terrified audiences for decades, and for good reason. The musical scores, the direction, the jarring and shocking images–however, they also play to society’s deepest fears about women and feminism. For little girls to be possessed is the ultimate fall.

In 1980, The Shining was released. Yet another film adaptation of a novel (Stanley Kubrick’s treatment of Stephen King’s novel), this film contains two of the creepiest little girls in film history–the Grady girls. The Shining shines a light on crises of masculinity. Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, is a recovering alcoholic who has hurt his son, Danny, in the past. When he takes his wife, Wendy, and son with him to be caretakers of a hotel over a winter, his descent into madness quickly begins. Danny has telepathic abilities, and sees and experiences the hotel’s violent past. As he rides his Big Wheel through the hotel, he stops when he sees two little girls begging him to “Come play with us Danny. Forever.” These girls–dead daughters of Grady, a previous caretaker who killed his family and himself–are trying to pull Danny into their world. Danny sees images of them murdered brutally, and flees in fear. Meanwhile, Jack is struggling with his alcoholism, violence and lack of control of himself and his sensitive wife and child. When he sees Grady, Grady advises him:

“My girls, sir, they didn’t care for the Overlook at first. One of them actually stole a pack of matches, and tried to burn it down. But I ‘corrected’ them sir. And when my wife tried to prevent me from doing my duty, I ‘corrected’ her.”

Danny is confronted with the horror of what men are capable of.

In this aftermath of the women’s movement, Jack (a weak man, resistant to authority) is being haunted and guided by a forceful, dominating masculinity of the past. He’s stuck between the two worlds, and succumbs to violent, domineering alcoholism.

But he loses. Wendy and Danny win.

While his predecessor succeeded in “correcting” his wife and daughters, that time has past.

Here, the flashing memories of the ghosts of the past are terrifying. The Grady girls provide a look into what it is to be “corrected” and dominated.

“Come play with us Danny,” the girls beg, haunting him with the realities of masculine force and dominance.

Starting with the late-70s and 80s slasher films (and the growing Religious Right/Moral Majority in politics), the “Final Girl” reigned supreme, and the promiscuous young woman would perish first. Masculinity (characterized with “monstrous” violence and strength) and femininity became natural enemies. These fights on the big screen mirrored the fights in reality. The Equal Rights Amendment was pushed out of favor and was never ratified, and a growing surge of conservatism and family values began dominating American rhetoric.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, we see a resurgence of the terrifying little girl. This time, she is serving as a warning to single/working/independent/adoptive mothers.

In The Ring (the 2002 American adaptation of a 1998 Japanese film), Rachel Keller (played by Naomi Watts) is a journalist and a single mother. She unknowingly risks her son and his father’s lives by showing them a cursed videotape. A critic noted:

“If she had never entered the public sphere and viewed the cassette in the first place, she would not have inadvertently caused Noah’s death, nor would she have to potentially cause the death of another. Rachel would, perhaps, have been better off staying at home.”

Single motherhood has often been the driving force behind horror plots.

In her investigation into the video, she discovers the twisted, dark past of the video’s subject, Samara, a young girl who started life troubled (her birthmother tried to drown her). She was adopted by a couple, but her adoptive mother suffered from visions and haunting events due to Samara’s powers. They attempted to institutionalize Samara, but eventually the adoptive mother drowns her in a well after Samara cannot be cured of her psychosis. Her adoptive father, Rachel finds, locked Samara in an attic of their barn, and Samara left a clue of the well’s location behind wallpaper. (Bitch Flicks ran an excellent analysis of the yellow wallpaper and the themes of women’s stories in The Ring.)

Samara’s life was punctuated by drowning, which has throughout history been a way for women to commit suicide or be killed (symbolizing both the suffocation of women’s roles and the return to the life-giving waters that women are often associated with). While Rachel “saves” Samara’s corpse and gives her a proper burial, Samara didn’t want that. She rejected Rachel’s motherhood and infects Rachel’s son. Rachel–in her attempts to mother–cannot seem to win.

Rachel “saves” Samara from her watery grave, but she still cannot succeed.

The ambiguous ending suggests that Rachel may indeed save her son, but will have to harm another to do so. This idea of motherly self-sacrifice portrays the one way that Rachel–single, working mother Rachel–can redeem herself. However, the parallel narrative of the dangers of silencing and “locking up” women is loud and clear.

And in 2009’s Orphan, Esther is a violent, overtly sexual orphan from Russia who is adopted by an American family. Esther is “not nearly as innocent as she claims to be,” says the IMDB description. This story certainly plays on the fear of the “other” in adopted little girls (much like The Ring) and how that is realized in the mothers. In this film, Esther is actually an adult “trapped” in a child’s body. The clash of a childish yet adult female (as culturally, little girls are somehow expected to embody adult sexuality and yet be innocent and naïve) again reiterates this fear of little girls with unnatural and unnerving power. The drowning death of Esther, as her adoptive mother and sister flee, shows that Esther must be killed to be subdued. The power of mother is highlighted, yet the film still plays on cultural fears of mothering through international adoptions and the deep, disturbing duality of childhood and adulthood that girls are supposed to embody.

Like Samara, Esther is a deeply disturbed daughter, capable of demonic violence.

In the last 60 years, American culture has seen remarkable change and resistance to that change. Horror films–which portray the very core of society’s fears and anxieties–have reflected the fears of women’s social movements through the faces of terrifying little girls.

While nineteenth-century literature comforted audiences with the trope of a dead, beautiful woman, thus making her passive and frail (of course, we still do this), twentieth and twenty-first century horror films force audiences to come face to face with murderous, demonic, murdered and psychotic little girls to parallel fears of women having economic, reproductive, parenting and marital (or single) power.

Little girls are supposed to be the epitome of all we hold dear–innocent, sweet, submissive and gentle. The Victorian Cult of Girlhood and Womanhood bleeds into the twenty-first century anti-feminist movements, and these qualities are still revered.

Horror films hold a mirror up to these ideals, distorting the images and terrifying viewers in the process. The terror that society feels while looking at these little girls echoes the terror it feels when confronted with changing gender norms and female power.

—

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

Horror Week 2012: A Brief Feministory of Zombie Cinema

I spent my teen years hopelessly addicted to zombie movies. No matter how poorly made, no matter how artistically worthless, no matter how nasty and exploitative, if the movie had zombies in it, I would watch. The first thing I bought with the first paycheck from my first job at seventeen was Jamie Russell’s Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema.

In 2006, it was indeed more or less complete, but a LOT of zombie movies have been made since then.

I should state upfront that I hold no truck with narrow, exclusionary definitions of “zombie.” To me, the zombie is a very broad church: if somebody has ever called it a zombie, it’s a zombie. The Deadites of Evil Dead? Zombies. The Somnambulist in The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari? A zombie. The Dead Men of Dunharrow? Zombies. (Don’t even try that 28 Days Later “infected” crap with me. Those are most definitely zombies, and you should trust me on this because I probably know more about zombie cinema than you.) (Unless you’re Jamie Russell, in which case thank you for stopping by, sir, and I love your book, and I wrote a paper about Zombie Jesus if you’d like to read it?)

As well as being a zombie aficionado, I spent my teen years deep in confusion and denial about sexuality and gender – and these two things are perhaps not unrelated. Vampires and werewolves are explicitly sexual and very gendered, but my movie monster of choice erases sex and gender entirely by its very nature. There are no alluring seductions, no monthly cycles, no explosions of pent-up masculine rage in the zombie: only a creeping sameness and inevitability, all social categories dissolved into nothingness, all physical difference literally consumed in the nightmarish Eucharist of undead cannibalism.

Of course, this erasure of sex and gender does not mean that sex and gender are not explored in zombie films. On the contrary, there are some very interesting things going on, as we shall see in our whirlwind tour of the Three Eras of Zombie Cinema.

Stage One: The Pre-Romero Era

The early stage of zombie cinema is the least popular (and it is also my strongest ammunition in the fight against the purists who insist that only the Romero flavor of zombie – the dead, resurrected, flesh-eating variety – counts as a true zombie). For the first 35 years of its onscreen existence, the zombie didn’t eat anybody’s flesh. Instead, a zombie – first seen in 1932 Bela Lugosi vehicle White Zombie – was a mindless slave resuscitated by voodoo.

The words “voodoo,” “1932,” and “slave” all in the same sentence like that has probably alerted you to the most striking fact about these early zombie films, which is that they are hella racist. In White Zombie, Bela Lugosi plays a Haitian voodoo master who conspires with a plantation owner to zombify a white woman. I Walked With A Zombie (1943) and Hammer’s The Plague of the Zombies (1966) also draw on Haitian voodoo and slave plantations. Per Russell’s thoughtful postcolonial reading of these films, they play on colonial fears of white enslavement and Afro-Caribbean magical powers. In all three movies, the great threat posed by the zombies and their voodoo master is the enslavement of a young white woman.

I Walked With A Zombie: SO MUCH horrendous racial and sexual imagery in one little screencap.

In these early films, white women exist primarily to be threatened by a monster with a subtext of sexual violence, suggesting the racist narrative of predatory, animalistic black men preying on lily-white women. It’s pretty stomach-churning to watch, even if it’s fascinating fodder for students of gender, race, colonialism, and the cinema. Luckily, in 1968 zombies were revitalized, and their race and gender aspects completely transformed, by one remarkable movie.

Stage Two: The Golden Age

In Night of the Living Dead, George Romero’s most obvious innovation was actually cribbed from the Richard Matheson novella I Am Legend (in which the undead bloodsuckers are actually identified as vampires, though often read as zombies). Like their literary predecessors, Romero’s shuffling reanimated corpses fed on the living. The association of zombies with Haitian voodoo, slavery, and colonialism was jettisoned, and pop culture hasn’t looked back.

Calling this period the golden age is almost entirely a matter of personal preference, but good lord are there some terrific zombie films from the 1970s. Romero’s own Dawn of the Dead is the undisputed masterpiece of the era, but there are some wonderful movies from all across Europe: the Spanish Blind Dead series, Lucio Fulci‘s giallo gorefests in Italy (especially the splendid The Beyond), French film The Grapes of Death, the underrated and transnational The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue…

But it was Night of the Living Dead that set the tone for these movies, both in terms of the unremitting bleakness and in the heightened consciousness of social issues. Romero has always claimed that his choice of African-American actor Duane Jones for protagonist Ben was color-blind casting, but his own subsequent filmography displays a clear concern for class and race issues. The role of gender in golden-age zombie films is subtler, but no less present. One of the more shocking moments in NotLD is the reveal of the little zombie girl chomping on her dead father and murdering her own mother. The message is clear: the zombie apocalypse breaks down all social categories. The mother-child bond, so often inviolable in Hollywood, is broken in the most violent way imaginable. A little girl, the archetype of innocence, enacts the violence. Social roles cannot possibly hold in the face of the undead threat; in the end, the zombie makes equals of us all.

No wonder I am terrified of preteens.

Stage Three: The Great Comeback

The eighties and nineties saw a proliferation of slasher flicks, while the zombie fell out of favor. Russell ascribes the zombie resurgence of the past decade to the 2002 double-whammy of 28 Days Later and the video game Resident Evil. Before long, Dawn of the Dead was remade, while Shaun of the Dead gave the genre a simultaneous shot in the arm as the first self-styled “RomZomCom.” By the middle of the decade, zombies were well and truly mainstream.

It’s a curious fact, explored by Carol J. Clover in Men, Women, and Chain Saws, that lowbrow genre fare can sometimes push the boundaries of what’s socially acceptable by mainstream Hollywood standards. Arguably, the mainstreaming of zombies has actually defanged some of their ability to make interesting commentary on gender.

For example, the largely entertaining and in some ways surprisingly innovative 2009 zom-com Zombielandends with its previously strong, capable female characters screaming on an amusement park ride, needing to be rescued by the male protagonist. While 1970s zombie films didn’t exactly lack delicate fainting ladies, there was an overall thematic sense that the rising of the dead renders categories such as gender roles ontologically insignificant. A film like Zombieland manages to use the zombie apocalypse to actually enforce gender stereotypes. Similarly, I rage-quit AMC’s The Walking Dead after one season, in part based on a scene where the female characters had a discussion along the lines of, “Well, the apocalypse has hit; better revert to traditional gender roles, ’cause cavemen!!”

I still love zombies deeply. I love the wish-fulfillment aspect of imagining yourself as the last brave outpost of survival against the onslaught, creating your own beleaguered little society when this one collapses. I love the multiplicity of symbolic potential in the zombie, the seemingly endless variety of fears for which it can stand: the inevitability of death; infiltration of human-seeming replicants or pod people; fear of brainwashing or enslavement; loss of all particularity or individuality; uprising of the faceless proletariat; the revenge of Gaia; communism; enforced conformity; being overwhelmed by whatever force it is that you fear most (feminism or kyriarchy or theocracy or secularism or or or…).

But I’m experiencing burnout. I don’t enjoy seeing such a rich, challenging, bleak, existential symbol stripped of all its nuance to cater to the same old reductive Hollywood tropes and narratives. I’m sick of the mainstream cultural attitude toward gender and social roles, and I am very sick of seeing things I love harnessed to serve this attitude.

It makes me want to eat somebody’s brains! Which is a thing invented in Return of the Living Dead in 1985.

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

‘Pitch Perfect’ and Third-Wave Feminism

Written by Leigh Kolb

Social movements are not without their problems. America’s second- and third-wave feminists (the mothers from the 60s and 70s and their literal and figurative daughters, who have come to age in the 80s, 90s and 2000s) have often appeared to be at odds with one another, and even within themselves. Even though the “women’s movement” is often marketed as a monolith in our culture, it is far from that.

Pitch Perfect, a new musical comedy, is about the all-female a cappella group the Barden Bellas, who are vying for respect among their peers and for the title of best college a cappella group in the nation at the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella. The core problem for them (besides the vomiting–we’ll get to that in a minute) is that they are stuck in the past. While other groups are showing off creative arrangements and flashy dance choreography, the Bellas have rigid movements, dress like stewardesses and only sing “classics” from the 80s and 90s (“The Sign,” “Eternal Flame,” and “Turn the Beat Around” is their standard set list). The Bellas are also uniform in their looks and body types–light-skinned and thin.

The original Bellas are uniform in appearance and skin tone.

As the two matriarchs of the group–Chloe (Brittany Snow) and Aubrey (Anna Camp)–recruit young women to audition at the back-to-school activities fair, Aubrey makes it clear that they are looking for women with “bikini-perfect bodies.” Chloe responds quietly with “How about we just get good singers?” Thus begins the Bellas’ journey into a new world filled with women of color, overweight women, “alternative” brunettes with lots of eyeliner and lesbians.

Aubrey remains steadfast in her traditionalism until almost the bitter end. Her insistence on the value of tradition, and how it’s always been and how they’ve always looked, could represent second-wave feminism, which was criticized for its lack of inclusion for women of color and lesbians.

The protagonist in the film, Beca (Anna Kendrick), desperately wants to be in LA to be a DJ, but is stuck at Barden University because her father is a professor there and she has a free ride (we’ll get to that in a minute, too). She represents third-wave feminism, which has been criticized for a lack of female camaraderie and a disregard for the past.

Beca as the “alternative” girl (black nail polish is a dead giveaway).

Pitch Perfect, on its surface (and even mostly below the surface), is a fun female-centered comedy with good music. It’s clearly co-produced by a woman (Hollywood feminist Elizabeth Banks) and written by a woman (30 Rock and The New Girl’s Kay Cannon). However, a feminist reading of the film suggests that far below the surface, viewers can take the plot of the film as an allegory of second- and third-wave feminism in America.

The new members of the Bellas see early on that they have no chance of winning with their old routine. They learn it, they go through the motions, but it simply doesn’t work. Aubrey stands firm in the old choreography–she becomes more and more uncomfortable with the concept of changing their form, no matter how “tired” it is.

When the group arrives at their first competition of the season, the commentators (Gail, played by Banks, and John, played by John Michael Higgins) comment on their looks. “This does not look like the fresh-faced nubile Bellas…” John says. They are “refreshing, yet displeasing to the eye,”says Gail. (The interplay between these two judges provides some great one-liners throughout the film.)

John and Gail provide funny, and poignant, Christopher Guest-style play-by-plays.

The Bellas get on stage and perform the same, tired routine. Toward the end, however, Fat Amy (yes, we’ll get to that in a minute) shakes things up during her “Turn the Beat Around” solo, ripping off her jacket and growl-singing the once demure lines. The audiences and the judges love it, and they manage to place. At regionals, Beca sees the audience getting bored and injects some mash-up vocals toward the end of their set (“Titanium,” a bullet-proof anthem that weaves its way throughout the film). The audience enjoys it, but Aubrey is enraged and kicks her out.

The group suffers, but they have to pull it together because they need to perform at nationals after another team was disqualified. Beca comes back, and tells the fractured group, “I’ve never been one of those girls who had a lot of friends who were girls–now I do, and it’s pretty cool.” Aubrey hands Beca the reigns, and they perform Beca’s own mash-up of modern and older songs. She has been turned on, at first reluctantly, to The Breakfast Club by her love interest, Jesse, and includes “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” by Simple Minds, and also includes tween anthem “Party in the U.S.A.” Notably, Fat Amy interjects a line from “Turn the Beat Around” at the climax of their set.

The women have collaborated, and evolved. They’ve kept their individualism, and been frank about their desires and motivations. They dress differently, and they sing new music. However, they don’t leave the past in the dark, and become better and closer when they decide to move forward. At the end, they’re not dressed like one another, they don’t look the same, and they win (on stage and off).

As with the social movement, the film isn’t without its problematic aspects, which ultimately speak to the current state of feminism in our culture.

Gross-out humor: The Bellas are humiliated on the national stage at the beginning of the film when Aubrey projectile vomits on the stage and audience. Later, during the Bellas’ “let it all out” moment that brought them back together, Aubrey does it again. One member gets pushed into it, and makes a snow angel in it. Is this necessary? Was there no other way to symbolize Aubrey’s anal, yet out of control, nature? These scenes felt exactly like the gross-out scenes in Bridesmaids, which were written in by Judd Apatow to appeal to the male viewer. Women, at this point, surely have proven that they’re funny, and that women’s stories can be universally entertaining. OK, maybe we’re not there yet, but the only way into the boys’ club doesn’t have to be to play exactly like them. It’s not a matter of being prude, it’s simply a matter of these scenes–Pitch Perfect‘s vomit or Bridesmaids‘s diarrhea–feeling utterly out of place in the films. What could be more appropriate, and Pitch Perfect does enter into this territory, are jokes about gynecological visits or Gail’s college group, which was called the “Menstrual Cycles.”

Fathers as idols: Yet again, we have multiple narratives of influential fathers and absent mothers. Beca’s father is the most prominent, as he is a literature professor at BU. Beca is surly and angsty toward him, and references her “stepmonster” and his divorce from her mother, yet doesn’t talk about her mother. Even when she goes to her father during spring break and they bond over tea, it’s all about him. He visits her in her dorm room more than once, which feels awkward, and clearly controls her future (bargaining with her that he’ll send her to LA after one year at BU). Aubrey, in the transformative scene where the Bellas bond, says that “My father always said, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, pack your bags.'” The two characters who most clearly represent the old and the new, in regard to the feminist movement allegory, are driven and inspired/controlled by their fathers. This trope is relentless with female protagonists–fathers are almost always more visible and more important than the characters’ mothers. This consistent story line makes sense if we examine opportunities for men and women in the decades leading up to these young women’s formative years. Girls are taught they can be anything, and too often it’s the man of the house who is represented as powerful, in work and at play. They are who are to be emulated in this culture.

Fat Amy is a star performer on stage and off.

Fat acceptance: Fat Amy (played by the the amazing Rebel Wilson) introduces herself as Fat Amy to Chloe and Aubrey at the activities fair so “twig bitches like you don’t do it behind my back.” Although jokes are made about her size (by her and by others), Amy has solos, sex and friends. Her body is used for comedy, as is the fat body of the male sidekick of the college’s a cappella organizer. It’s still acceptable in our culture to demonize and discriminate against people who are overweight (or use them as comic relief). Amy’s character skewered that with humor (while also reaffirming it), but audiences seem really happy to see a woman of size on screen. While these casting decisions provide great fodder for entertainment writers (and who doesn’t love clever word play: “In a sea of size-0 starlets, Wilson has the confidence of a performer twice her age and half her size”). While some coverage is obviously cringe-worthy at best and fat-shaming at worst, reviewers (and certainly feminists) are embracing this representation. Even if representation is problematic, or has “mixed messages,” it’s representing reality. Would it be believable to have a fat woman on screen and no one comment on it? Unfortunately, we’re not at that point yet.

Race issues: From early on in the film, the portrayal of Asian women is problematic. Beca’s roommate is Korean, and tinkers with a bonsai tree while quietly, solemnly glaring at Beca. She only opens up when around her Korean peers (although she does seem to warm to Beca toward the end of the film). She scowls one evening, “The white girl is back,” when Beca gets back to her room. The Bellas also have a Korean member, who is awkward, speaks in a muted whisper (and when she is audible she’s saying strange things) and only really opens up during their last number. There’s no clear defense for these character portrayals, but they do seem to line up with what’s happening in the greater world of entertainment and feminist conversations even in 2012. Visit the comments section on a feminist blog defending Girls (or simply read about the show’s problematic history). Too often the face of third-wave feminism–especially the early 20s crowd–is white and privileged. This is in lock step with second-wave feminism, which caused a rift with women of color (Alice Walker claimed the title “womanism” because of this), and even first-wave feminism, when early suffragists used racism to further their cause. It was a problem then, and it’s a problem now.

Sex and sexuality: When Beca first arrives on campus, she’s handed an “official BU rape whistle” by a perky upperclassman. She warns, “Don’t blow it unless it’s actually happening!” While many reviewers found this joke tasteless, the audience can’t help but think that it’s supposed to be startling and tasteless. We’re supposed to think, “That’s insane,” and then immediately think about how “legitimate rape” has been a talking point and male legislators have had to re-write laws to change “rape” to “forcible rape.” Instead of just being offensive, that joke has the possibility of satirizing how we are discussing rape on a wide scale.

The “original” Bellas have a rule that no Bella can be romantically involved with a Treblemaker (their all-male rival group). This strict sexual gatekeeping causes them to lose members at the beginning, but Beca speaks out against the rules and continues to fraternize with Jesse (a Treblemaker). The two don’t embrace and kiss until the end, but it’s another traditional rule broken. Women don’t want male legislators policing their bodies, but they also don’t want other women doing so either (in the name of tradition and virtue, or competition with men).

The group has one member who frequently makes jokes about her sexual exploits (“dude’s a hunter,” she says of her vagina, adapting to the double standard of being a stud) and wears revealing clothing and dances provocatively. She is not punished for this, and doesn’t have to change. Even Chloe is seen showering with a young man at the beginning of the film, with no judgment.

The Bellas’ token lesbian, a black woman, is whispered about and assumed to be gay. When they are all bonding toward the end of the film, they have a moment of honesty, when the members admit to secrets about themselves. Her secret isn’t that she’s gay, but that she has a gambling problem (that started after she and her girlfriend broke up, she says cavalierly, as it’s revealed that this ex-girlfriend is also a Bella). No big deal. Even if there were whispers at first, she didn’t find that to be part of her identity worth hiding. The joke about her sexuality was ultimately on the rest of the women.

As the Bellas wow the crowd at the finals, John says, surprised, “I would never expect it from an all-female group!” Gail responds, “Well, you are a misogynist at heart.” Even with its problems, Pitch Perfect ends on a note of women’s power. John gets put in his place, and while the all-male Treblemakers don’t win, they’re all working together at the beginning of the next school year.

There are always tensions between generations, and when these generations are women who have essentially been at battle for rights and representation for hundreds–really thousands–of years, there are not going to be perfect transitions and easy paths.

Eight years ago, Bitch magazine co-founder Lisa Jarvis wrote a piece for Ms. entitled, “The End of Feminism’s Third Wave” (adapted from a speech she’d given to the National Women’s Studies Association). She adeptly breaks down the dichotomy of second- and third-wave, and argues that the “master narratives” are largely false, and no one can seem to focus on the similarities. She says:

The rap goes something like this: Older women drained their movement of sexuality; younger women are uncritically sexualized. Older women won’t recognize the importance of pop culture; younger women are obsessed with media representation. Older women have too narrow a definition of what makes a feminist issue; younger women are scattered and don’t know what’s important.Stodgy versus frivolous. Won’t share power versus spoiled and ignorant.

The Bellas at the end break out and win.

There are many similarities, though. And while Pitch Perfect isn’t perfect, it is not tone-deaf to feminism’s struggles, problems and potential. It passes the Bechdel Test with flying colors, and even challenges the idea of masculinity (Jesse’s roommate gushes about the Treblemakers, “That’s what being a man is all about”). The Bellas ultimately win because they blend the old with the new, and allow themselves to move past their guarded individualism and work together. At the end, the women of color get a strong voice, and Aubrey embraces the changes (and Fat Amy proudly sings, “Can you feel the passion?”).

Jarvis goes on:

We may not all agree on exactly what it looks like or how to get it. We should never expect to agree. Feminism has always thrived on and grown from internal discussions and disagreements. Our many different and often opposing perspectives are what push us forward… I want to see these internal disagreements continue. I want to see as much wrangling over them as ever. But I want them articulated accurately. And that means recognizing the generational divide for what it is — an illusion.

Jarvis’s words ring true for the larger feminist movement in 2012, and for what allows the Bellas to win the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella at Lincoln Center.

What feminism needs now is for everyone to get on stage.

—

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

Counterreading ‘Here Comes Honey Boo Boo’

Reality television has never held much appeal for me. I get plenty of reality in reality, thanks – I like my TV fictional. Besides, hasn’t the last decade or more of respectable journalism assured me, in the shrillest possible tones, that reality TV is the very lowest form of entertainment, positively reveling in the filth of humanity’s worst, most voyeuristic excesses: a Coliseum for the digital age?

SATIRE!!!1111!1

Even without watching it myself, I’ve become less and less comfortable with the traditional critiques of reality TV as I’ve sharpened my critical apparatus. For a start, it seems predicated on the notion of a hierarchy of art, the assumption that some forms of entertainment are somehow innately higher or better than others. It’s a terribly condescending form of knee-jerk moralizing.And if you don’t ever watch it, it’s a bit presumptuous to be judgmental about the whole genre.

I’ve tried to stay in the moral middle ground, having no real opinion on reality TV other than that it’s not for me. I’d likely have continued my reality-TV-free existence, had it not been for this excellent piece at the incomparable Womanist Musings.

Renee and Sparky watched TLC’s infamous Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, the reality show about six-year-old beauty pageant contestant Alana and her working-class Georgia family, and their reaction was not necessarily what you’d expect. They make many terrific points about how repugnant the show is as a piece of television, how it “other[s the family] at every turn,” but they also offer an invaluable counterreading. They like this family – the four daughters aged between six and seventeen, the quiet father figure, and heroic matriarch June – and they’ll continue to like them, no matter what the show’s structure seems to want us to think.

I love them all, but “Pumpkin” is my favorite.

If you consume entertainment and have any conscience at all, you are a practiced counterreader. You have to be, if you’re going to stand up to the hateful kyriarchal bullshit with which 21st-century westerners are bombarded every minute of the day. All responsible entertainment consumption requires a risk assessment, weighing the potential value to be gained against the potential harm to be done, and everybody’s evaluation is slightly different. For one person, well-rounded white female characters but no characters of color is worth the trade-off; for another, it simply isn’t. And sometimes performing an adequate counterreading requires you to marshal all your critical resources.

Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is not a text that welcomes counterreadings with open arms. Operating well within the established format of reality television, it utilizes an arsenal of techniques – both subtle and not so much – to impel voyeurism. TLC makes it very, very easy to sneer at and judge Honey Boo Boo and her family. You have to work quite hard to counteract this compulsion. You really have to be on the critical ball the whole time. And is that okay?

All summer the debate has raged as to whether, or to what extent, the show is exploitative. Having watched all of it inside of a week, I’m still undecided. There are moments when June and the girls express a self-awareness and a confidence that has me cheering them to the skies, sure that their assertions of not caring what people think of them are sincere. At times, though – especially when outsiders arebrought in to interact with the family, an etiquette teacher or a pedicurist, and get all flustered and shocked by them – the whole thing seems enormously exploitative and gross.

It’s this indeterminacy, this openness to a multiplicity of different interpretations, that has the national conversation about Honey Boo Boo going so fiercely. As Time’s James Poniewozik observes:

…overall, she has a kind of sassy sweetness to her. In the second episode, she gets a pet teacup pig as consolation for losing a pageant and decides to dress him as a girl, which she says will make him gay. The ensuing argument with her older sister is both ridiculous and oddly wise in a 6-year-old way: “It’s not gonna be gay.” “Yes it is, because we’re making it a girl pig! And it’s actually a boy pig!” “O.K., but it’s not gonna be gay.” “It can if it wants to. You can’t tell that pig what to do.”

You can’t tell that pig what to do. See, you can look at that scene, like you can most of Honey Boo Boo, several ways. You can laugh at the intensity of Alana’s conviction that she’s right. You can tut-tut at the gender-role signals this pageant girl must be getting to conclude that you can “make” someone or something gay by dressing it in girl clothes. But you can also see something kind of remarkable in it: a little country girl, whatever confusion and misinformation she has in her mind, fervently arguing a teacup pig’s right to determine its own sexual identity.

AWWW

There are plenty of other interesting aspects of this show (Salon considers the race angle; Slate tackles the class issue), but the two that can’t be ignored are the gender dynamic and the class factor. The gender dynamic is pretty glorious: five strong, opinionated women who love each other deeply and don’t take anyone’s shit. They do what they want to do, they look how they want to look, and they are happy. Dare I suggest that one of the reasons the country’s spent its summer in thrall to these people is that we just don’t see women like this in our scripted entertainment?

Of course, it’s rare to see poor white people portrayed sympathetically on US TV at all. My understanding of class in the US is much less nuanced than my understanding of the British class system, but I’m aware of this country’s distaste for its own working poor. “Rednecks” appear in the media as rapists, as racists, as the butt of jokes and the object of revulsion. Voyeurism and disgust motivate hate-watching in our culture to an obscene degree, and that is why I think it’s important to perform a counterreading, to celebrate this family and refuse to let your responses be dictated by classism and hatred. If you want to be truly horrified by your fellow humans, check outthe comments on this Gawker article (I hope you have a strong stomach). To me, this is the aspect of Honey Boo Boo that’s truly awful – not a happy family letting a camera crew into their lives in exchange for some money they surely need, but the legions of haters who judge Honey Boo Boo and her family to be less human, less worthy of dignity and respect for their life choices, than themselves.

The family certainly does not reciprocate that sentiment. Even in the throes of labor agony, when asked, “Do you recommend to anybody else to get pregnant at 17?”, oldest daughter Anna replies, “Do whatever you want to do.” She just refuses to tell anyone else what to do with their body or their life. The rest of America – from legislators to judgmental internet commenters – could learn something from her.

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

Presidential Debate Update: Where Are the Women(‘s Issues)?

The first presidential debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama

The first presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney was much less intriguing than every pundit and media ogler alike was hoping for. We wanted zingers and gaffes, but had to settle for the mildly miffed, but embarrassingly unassertive, Jim Lehrer. The NewsHour host may have gotten memed even more than the candidates since the debate. But, sorry Big Bird, even an outraged PBS isn’t that interesting.

Yes, many media followers, long for the days of primary debates when tom-foolery and missteps abounded. Those were the days when follow-up commentary was bountiful and hilarious. The Ricks, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich may have outraged feminists, but damn they made our job of dissecting dickery easy.

Yes, the debate was “wonky” but all three men involved didn’t seem keen on bringing up the social issues that have been driving political discourse this year.

So, we feminist bloggers have to talk about what wasn’t talked about. And, frankly, there’s only so much fascination I can draw up from between the lines. Women’s health was not just glanced over, but completely ignored. And that was a disappointment – not for gossip’s sake, but because our candidates should be representing these issues as valuable. No, women’s health and reproductive rights should not be categorized as a distracting issue, but should be recognized as fundamentally intertwined with the issues determining the health of our country.

See, our candidates seem to consider economic and health care issues separate from social issues. But, marginalized folks understand via experience that they are not. Moderate Romney and Moderate Obama both stuck to taxes and the role of government while referencing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Dodd-Frank but not addressing how social issues are connected.

Discounting social issues and focusing on the “real” issues like the economy misses the point that these issues are not exclusive. No, the economy is not more real than women trying to cover the costs of their health insurance while looking for work in a bad economy.

The ACA makes it illegal for insurance companies to discriminate among genders when providing coverage. And it makes contraception more easily accessible. It basically stops allowing the practice of treating men as the generic sex – as in; people should get good coverage for the same costs regardless of gender and/or sex. This is a pretty important aspect of the ACA that was not looked at during the debate.

So we can hope that we see these discussions happen in upcoming debates. Hopefully our candidates and moderators don’t shy away from these issues. Candy Crowley, we’re looking to you.

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and the Pitchfork of Puritanism

The lips in the opening sequence–the biting action has sexual and fearful connotations.

The cult classic film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which was based off a British play of the same name, was released in 1975. At that point in American history, audiences (young audiences especially) were eager to have their boundaries pushed and revel in the debauchery that Rocky Horror provided. Whether it was the after-glow of the sexual revolution of the 60s and early 70s or a preemptive strike back to still-noisy social conservativism, Rocky Horror dealt with issues of gender and sexuality in a way that can resonate with viewers almost 40 years later. Buried beneath the campy music and bustiers is strong commentary on religion, gender and sexual norms, social customs and puritanical morality.

After the opening sequence (in which the famous red lips–belonging to Patricia Quinn, who plays Magenta–lip sync to Richard O’Brien, who plays Riff Raff and wrote the original play and screenplay, singing “Science Fiction/Double Feature”), the first shot of the movie is a cross atop a church steeple. The camera pauses, making the audience absorb the contrast between a clearly sexual (and even fearful), disembodied mouth and Christianity.

As the camera pans down, a wedding party and guests burst through the doors of the church. Outside of the church doors, a solemn-looking Tim Curry appears as the pastor, and Quinn and O’Brien flank him in the style of the American Gothic painting by Grant Wood.

We will see this image again. It will never really leave us.

The actors who will appear later as Magenta and Riff Raff play American Gothic in the first scene at the church.

According to the Art Institute of Chicago, “American Gothic is an image that epitomizes the Puritan ethic and virtues that he [Wood] believed dignified the Midwestern character.” Puritanical “virtues” are on display in this opening sequence.

As American culture reminds us, when these virtues are imbedded in a society, often the only option for sexual expression is at the extremes of the virgin/whore dichotomy. Suppression and purity on one end of the spectrum, complete surrender to earthly pleasure, no matter the cost, on the other. These extremes are shown throughout the film.

As the wedding comes to an end (and after Janet, played by Susan Sarandon, has caught the bouquet), a car pulls up to take away the bride and groom. Sloppily written on the side of the car is, “Wait till tonight, she got hers now he’ll get his.” The heteronormativity of this scene is clear. Women (including Janet) are eager for marriage, men want to “get theirs” after the wedding is over. Janet’s boyfriend, Brad (Barry Bostwick), does quickly propose to her after they discuss marriage in the church cemetery as a storm brews overhead. A billboard with a heart and the motto “Denton – The Home of Happiness” looms above them. The marriage ritual and social expectations surrounding it are, on the surface, celebrated in this scene (“Dammit, Janet, I love you!” sings Brad as they rollick around the church). However, the symbolism of the cemetery, the pending storm, and the fact that the American Gothic characters are preparing the church for a funeral as they wheel in a casket is not lost on the discerning viewer.

The two set off on a road trip to announce their engagement to a professor they’d had in college (they met and fell in love in his class). On the way, as they drive through a thunderstorm while listening to Nixon’s resignation speech on the radio (perhaps a nod to moral failure), they blow a tire. They end up at a foreboding castle (one used in many “Hammer Horror” movies that Rocky Horror parodies), and motorcycles pass them on the road going to the same destination. Brad says of the biker with judgment, “Life’s pretty cheap for that type.” An “Enter at Your Own Risk” sign invites the couple into the castle grounds, and they do.

After Riff Raff lets them in, they’re quickly initiated into the party that’s being held–the “Annual Transylvanian Convention.” They stand, innocent and wide-eyed, as guests (all dressed in gender-neutral tuxedos) dance the “Time Warp” and thrust their pelvises. The American Gothic painting, as well as the Mona Lisa, both appear on the walls of the castle.

Riff Raff welcomes Brad and Janet to the castle; the American Gothic painting looms behind him.

PBS art commentator Sister Wendy Beckett says, “You can recycle the Mona Lisa any way you like. Back to front, upside down, it remains instantly recognizable. That’s the ultimate compliment and it’s been paid to Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Somehow it seems to speak to the American psyche, though what it actually says isn’t as simple as it might seem.” The coyness of these particular works of art mirror what lies beneath The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Brad and Janet are visibly uncomfortable in this world (it seems “unhealthy,” Janet says). They, and the audience, which has seen the action from their naïve perspective, are then introduced to Dr. Frank-N-Furter, played by Curry. The camera pans up his fishnet-clad legs, reminiscent of the gratuitous male gaze present in so many other films. However, this time the object of that gaze is a “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania,” as he introduces himself in song.

Dr. Frank-N-Furter introduces himself to Brad and Janet.

He invites the couple up to his lab to “see what’s on the slab.” They are stripped to their underwear by Riff Raff and Magenta (“We’ll play along for now,” says Brad). On their way up to the lab, Janet asks Magenta if Frank-N-Furter is her husband. She laughs, and Riff Raff exclaims that he’ll probably never marry (again, marriage is slighted). Frank-N-Furter has changed into a scrubs-style dress (with a pink triangle on the chest) in the lab. He flirts with Brad, calling him a “force of manhood, so dominant,” and Janet begins to giggle and seem less uncomfortable in this new setting. Being stripped of their clothes leaves them almost naked and vulnerable, yet opens them up to sexual possibilities that explore gender and dominance.

Frank-N-Furter, seated, flanked by (from left) Columbia, Magenta and Riff Raff–all of whom he as used for his gain.

Frank-N-Furter announces that “My beautiful creature is destined to be born!” and the references to Frankenstein throughout the film thus far are fully realized. He climbs above the tank that is holding his “creature,” and drops in rainbow-colored liquid, leaving the creature awash in the rainbow. (In 1975, the rainbow flag had not yet been formally adopted as the LGBT banner, but rainbow flags were commonly used for similar liberal causes starting as early as the late 1960s.)

After his creature is born–a muscular, blonde, tan god–Frank-N-Furter ogles and gawks at his creation, chasing and crawling after him, scrambling to even kiss his foot. Rocky (his creature) doesn’t seem interested at all, as he sings about feeling the sword of Damocles above him. As history (and science fiction, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) has repeatedly shown us, when we create a system in which others are to be subservient–whether via imperialism, slavery or patriarchy–the outcome is only good for those in power, and even then the reward is short-lived.

But for now, Frank-N-Furter appears to be getting his way (after ridding himself of Eddie, played by Meat Loaf, who we find out was an ex-lover of Frank-N-Furter and Columbia, played by Little Nell). Masculinity is magnified in this scene as Frank-N-Furter sings about making Rocky a “man” through intense physical workouts and bodybuilding routines, and Eddie’s display of hyped-up violent masculinity (motorcycle, leather jacket, rock and roll). But who is the dominant one in these relationships? Frank-N-Furter, in his fishnets and heels. As heteronormative as the opening scene of the film was, at this point almost all of the lines have been or are beginning to be subverted and blurred.

Frank-N-Furter and Rocky walk out of the lab arm in arm as the wedding march plays and his guests shower them with confetti. The curtain is drawn as they embrace, and the audience expects that they will consummate this “marriage” immediately.

In the middle of the night, Rocky escapes the wrath of Riff Raff and Magenta (he has chains on his ankles as he attempts to flee).

Janet and Brad have been put in separate rooms, of course, so they may retain their pre-marital chastity.

While his creation attempts to escape, Frank-N-Furter visits Janet. He acts like he’s Brad, and she welcomes his embrace and sexual advances. When she figures out it is Frank-N-Furter, she kicks him off: “I was saving myself!” she cried out. After a moment of rough persuasion, she lies back. “Promise you won’t tell Brad?” she says, and laughs as Frank-N-Furter descends upon her.

Afterward, “Janet” visits Brad, and he also welcomes the embrace until he realizes it’s Frank-N-Furter. The scene plays out exactly as it does with Janet–persistent refusal and then “You promise you won’t tell?” Again, Frank-N-Furter moves downward on Brad.

These scenes are poignant in that they are exactly the same–from the strict puritanical refusal to the “secretive” consent to the oral sex act itself–yet the sex of the participants is fluid. Frank-N-Furter is on top, but he’s adamant that the two give themselves “over to pleasure,” which he delivers.

(It’s also worth noting that during the sex scenes others in the house–Riff Raff, Magenta and Columbia–can watch via monitors that display live feed from the rooms. Voyeurism isn’t off-limits, either. Like most issues in this film, there is vast gray area in regard to consent that we are challenged to think about.)

By the next morning, Janet is crying and feeling immense guilt about betraying Brad. However, she happens upon a monitor showing him smoking a cigarette on the edge of his bed, which Frank-N-Furter is lying in. She then spots the injured Rocky, and tends to him. He touches her hand, and she smiles a smile that indicates she has found within herself power and passion.

Janet then bursts into her climactic song, “Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me,” a sex-positive female power anthem if there ever was one. She decries her years of avoiding “heavy petting,” since she thought it would only lead to “trouble and seat wetting.” While the narrator says that Janet was “its slave,” it’s more clear that she is sexually dominant in this scene.

After a lustful night with Frank-N-Furter, Janet embraces her sexuality with Rocky (she places his hands on her breasts).

Even in her critique of the woman’s stray curl in American Gothic, Sister Wendy senses something beyond the surface: “Some see the stray curl at the nape of her neck as related to the snake plant in the background, each one symbolizing a sharp-tongued ‘old maid.’ Sister Wendy sees in the curl, however, a sign that she is not as repressed as her buttoned-up exterior might indicate.” Nothing is quite as it seems.

After a cannibalistic dinner (insert corny pun about Meat Loaf here), everything seems to be falling apart. Eddie’s uncle–the Dr. Scott who Janet and Brad were trying to visit in the first place–comes to the castle (he’s both looking for his nephew and doing research on alien life forms). Dr. Frank-N-Furter, seeing everything he’s built to serve himself revolt (Riff Raff, the “handyman,” and Magenta, the “domestic,” are getting antsy to leave to go home to Transsexual; Columbia screams at him for just taking from people–first her, then Eddie, then Rocky, etc.–and Rocky isn’t working out as he planned), clings on to whatever power he can. He mocks Janet and her sexual inadequacy–“Your apple pie don’t taste too nice”–and turns all except for Riff Raff and Magenta into stone via his Medusa switch (the mythology echoing that of Damocles’s sword and what happens when one demands too much).

“It’s not easy having a good time,” Frank-N-Furter laments.

The floor show that follows is a spectacle of gender and sexuality. The stone figures are “de-Medusafied” one by one, and all are wearing kabuki face makeup and Frank-N-Furter-style fishnets, heels, garters and bustiers. They each sing a stanza exploring their current state of drug dependence, uncontrolled libido and freedom in “Rose Tint My World.”

Columbia, Rocky, Janet and Brad have all reawakened in Frank-N-Furter’s gender-bending image for the floor show.

As Frank-N-Furter begins “Don’t Dream It, Be It,” he asks, “Whatever happened to Fay Wray? / That delicate satin draped frame / As it clung to her thigh, how I started to cry / Cause I wanted to be dressed just the same…” Here we see him stripped of his over-exaggerated power as he indicates that he struggled with gender, presumably when he was young. He’s been searching for how and where he fits, and “absolute pleasure” and “sins of the flesh” have been where he looked for fulfillment.

Frank-N-Furter jumps into an on-stage pool, and shot from above he’s floating on a life saver between God and man in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. The religious imagery present in the opening scenes is re-visited here, inviting the audience to consider the juxtaposition of “giving in to absolute pleasure” and the church, which is the very institution that dictates much of what we consider gender and sexual norms.

Frank-N-Furter floats in the pool, meticulously placed above Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam.

Janet, Brad, Rocky and Columbia all jump into the pool, and as they lustfully sing “Don’t dream it, be it,” there is a wet conglomeration of fishnets, limbs, tongues and strokes in the pool over the image of the Creation. Janet breathlessly sings, “God bless Lili St. Cyr.” She’s embracing her newfound sexuality by referencing a burlesque dancer/stripper/lingerie designer from the 1940s and 50s.

In the midst of this dream-like pseudo-orgy, Magenta and Riff Raff violently storm into the room. Dressed in other-worldly attire (yet gender-neutral), Riff Raff is holding a pitchfork-like weapon (American Gothic, of course), and threatens Frank-N-Furter and the group. “Your lifestyle is too extreme,” Riff Raff scolds, and says he’s subverting the power and will now be the master. For all of this time, Riff Raff and Magenta have been the “help,” and saw the need for an uprising. This also supports the subversive power roles within the film. Also worth noting is that Riff Raff and Magenta are lovers and brother and sister (the American Gothic painting is said to feature a brother and sister or father and daughter, not a husband and wife like many viewers imagine). Relationships, and our expectations and discomfort levels throughout, are meant to be examined.

Riff Raff and Magenta appear again as a futuristic American Gothic; his laser pitchfork will kill those whose “lifestyle” is too extreme.

Riff Raff proceeds to kill Columbia and Frank-N-Furter with his laser pitchfork. Rocky is more difficult to kill, and while he cries and mourns over Frank-N-Furter, he throws him on his back and tries to climb the RKO radio tower on stage. Frank-N-Furter so badly wanted to feel like Fay Wray in his life, and he finally got to after he died. However, Rocky’s plan doesn’t work and the two fall backward into the pool, buried in the very source of life.

The midwestern, puritanical values that American Gothic seems to represent so well win at the end of the film, and quite literally kill difference and sexual and gender subversion. While Riff Raff and Magenta go back to their home planet Transsexual, in the galaxy of Transylvania, Brad, Janet and Dr. Scott are left on the cold ground, crawling and writhing in their fishnets.

The narrator closes the film with the words: “And crawling, on the planet’s face, some insects, called the human race. Lost in time, and lost in space… and meaning.”

We are, the narrator suggests, quite meaningless in our earthly struggles. We blindly grasp on to expectations and norms, whether it be social constructs, gender or sexuality, and if we wander outside of those norms it will very well ruin us because of the deeply ingrained expectations we have in regard to these issues of morality.

Of course, we aren’t supposed to walk away from a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show feeling utterly meaningless. O’Brien himself self-identifies as transgender, and has been outspoken about how society should not “dictate” gender roles. He said in a recent interview, “If society allowed you to grow up feeling it was normal to be what you are, there wouldn’t be a problem. I don’t think the term ‘transvestite’ or ‘transsexual’ would exist: you’d just be another human being.” He also has said, in terms of Rocky Horror’s significance, “Well in our western world, England, Australia and the United States etc, there are still strongholds of dinosaur thinking. But, you know, I am a trans myself and I know it’s easier for me now. I can be wherever I want, whatever I want and however I want. And I suppose to some extent, a very small extent, my attitudes in Rocky Horror have helped make the climate a little warmer for people who have been marginalised, so that’s definitely not a bad thing.”

No it’s not. And for all its campy fun, great music and dance moves (and how ironic that the Time Warp lives on at wedding receptions across America), The Rocky Horror Picture Show also provides forceful commentary on religion, gender roles, sexual agency, control and the foreboding power that the pitchfork of puritanism holds over us all still.