David Bowie – Bitch Flicks

“You Have No Power Over Me”: Female Agency and Empowerment in ‘Labyrinth’

So what distinguishes ‘Labyrinth’ from the Hero’s Journey tropes it so closely follows? Its protagonist. Sarah is the hero of the story. She doesn’t need to be saved because she’s the rescuer, and she carries the plot forward with her resourcefulness, tenacity, and self-actualization. …She navigates a tricky tightrope between fantasy and reality, dreams and goals, past and future, and discovers the kind of woman she wants to be.

This guest post written by Kelcie Mattson appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. | Spoilers ahead.

Adolescence is tough, no matter who you are. Your emotions, perspectives, and body are changing, and the prospect of entering the complex, confusing world of adulthood can seem frightening. It’s especially hard for teenage girls. Life is capable of hideous cruelty: society has pre-set expectations it demands women meet, and there will always be those who attempt to control and oppress female agency. But there’s also freedom — the freedom to choose your own path, to explore, to express, and to discover who you are and the power within you.

Those are the major themes behind Jim Henson’s 1986 film Labyrinth. Although it wasn’t popular at the time of its theatrical release, over the past thirty years it’s become a deeply loved cult favorite for its coming-of-age themes, vivacious imagination, and David Bowie’s amazingly outrageous clothes. (Oh, dear David.) But beneath the puffy ball gowns and sparkly technicolor makeup lies a palpably feminist treatise.

On the surface Sarah Williams (Jennifer Connelly)’s story is about her maturation into an adult, but bound inherently to that is the development, and realization, of her personal agency. When we first meet her she’s a clever, imaginative girl who prefers the company of books, stuffed animals, and made-up fantasy lands over the mundane demands of suburban life. To this end Sarah is also an embodiment of the stereotypical characteristics unfairly assigned to teenage girls — immature, petulant, and selfish. She throws a temper tantrum when tasked with babysitting her younger brother Toby so her parents can, gasp, enjoy an evening out by themselves. Why should she be forced to look after a crying baby when she’d much rather dress up in a flowing white gown and play pretend? Sarah’s defense mechanism against her growing responsibilities is to cast herself into a skewed fantasy where she’s an innocent victim terrorized by evil parents.

It’s immature, yes, but so very relatable. Sarah feels isolated, confused, and jealous of her brother, and fueling the core of those frustrations is the desperate desire to do what she wants. “Life isn’t fair,” she cries when things don’t go her way, as I’ll bet most of us have. She’s a normal adolescent girl yearning for the independence to make her own choices. And that first choice happens to be asking the trickster Goblin King from her play to take Toby away.

Enter David Bowie’s Jareth in a shower of glitter, who offers Sarah a decision of his own design. If she solves the mysteries of his labyrinth within a thirteen-hour window, he’ll return Toby to her. If not, Jareth keeps custody of the baby in his goblin kingdom. It’s Sarah’s choice whether or not to rescue her helpless brother.

This is where Labyrinth dovetails nicely into several synonymous identities. It’s a fairy tale homage with modern-day values; it matches beat-for-beat the plot structure of the typical Hero’s Journey; and it’s a tale of internal strength that’s unabashedly, specifically feminine in nature.

As a fairy tale, admittedly it’s nothing too new. It follows in the footsteps of its predecessors (The Brothers Grimm, The Neverending Story, Where the Wild Things Are, The Wizard of Oz) by imparting life lessons through symbolism — the magical alternate reality is a safe place where our conflicted protagonist can decipher the fundamental difficulties of growing up. As a Hero’s Journey it’s nothing revolutionary, either: the “character embarks on a quest, encounters personal trials to stimulate his/her growth, hits their lowest point before rising up stronger” template has become such a commonplace backbone for popular media you can find it almost anywhere you look. Even Sarah reconciling herself to the obligations of adulthood is a commonly explored arc, from 1977’s Star Wars to 2014’s Boyhood.

So what distinguishes Labyrinth from the Hero’s Journey tropes it so closely follows? Its protagonist. Sarah is the hero of the story. She doesn’t need to be saved because she’s the rescuer, and she carries the plot forward with her resourcefulness, tenacity, and self-actualization.

At first glance it’s easy to write her off as a passive character seemingly helpless to Jareth’s erratic whims and elaborate traps. But although Sarah reacts to the obstacles Jareth throws into her path, she actively resists his narrative, twisting the conflicts around to suit her needs until Jareth becomes the one reacting to her. When he tries to disempower her by casting her in the role of a lost princess needing his protection from a horde of masked strangers, Sarah rejects his fantasy by literally breaking it with her fists. She’s not tempted by the pretty trinkets he offers nor quelled into submission by his magnetism; she’s steadfastly resolute in her goal. Of course she gains quirky Muppet allies along the way, but as she tells her newfound friends, “I have to face him alone. It’s the way it’s done.” And, and — she doesn’t win through brute physical strength, but through an emotional, mental acknowledgment of her own power.

Before the labyrinth, the idea of personal power was all fantasy. A book to read, lines to recite. Sarah has to endure practical life experiences, albeit in a fantastical setting, to recognize the full extent of her capability and then apply that knowledge in order to survive in a treacherous, unpredictable world. A man’s world.

“You have no power over me,” she declares to Jareth’s face; thematically, to outside forces at large. Once she claims ownership of herself, she triumphs in her dual goals: rescuing Toby, and finding happiness. A girl declaring what she wants without shame brings down an empire.

When you look closely, even the movie itself emerges from the decision Sarah makes to sacrifice her brother. She regrets her wish immediately, but that doesn’t change the fact she serves as the action’s primary catalyst. That’s rare, in the 1980s and today. Sarah alone directs her destiny by challenging the labyrinth’s infinite parade of decisions, even as she accepts that not all choices are simple, clean, or fair, and all of them have consequences that can’t be neatly resolved.

In that sense Sarah’s Hero’s Journey isn’t treated any differently by the script than if she were a boy — except for the fact her gender identity informs the film’s proceedings. The execution isn’t perfect: her emotional outbursts are treated as juvenile things to leave behind, and her faults (jealously, selfishness) are ones that tend to be assigned only to girls. But Labyrinth’s dramatic tension is centered entirely in a young woman’s mind as she navigates a tricky tightrope between fantasy and reality, dreams and goals, past and future, and discovers the kind of woman she wants to be. Compassionate, quick-witted, and iron-willed, willing to trust others and open to evolution of thought, while also prone to pre-judgment, naivety, and her fear of the unknown — all of which she overcomes. This makes Sarah not a weak token effort at inclusivity but a character who boasts a full, varied emotional life. She’s not there to service a guy’s development, to just be his victim or his love interest.

Which brings us to that pesky Goblin King. My adoration of Bowie aside, my interest in Jareth is in what he represents to Sarah — a deliberately disturbing mix of childishness and sexuality. Arrogant and assured, he first infantilizes Sarah by offering her gifts to win her submission. When charm fails, he tries intimidation, using his age, power, and authority to order her “back to her room” to “play with her toys.” When Sarah’s ingenuity continues to surpass his expectations, he flat-out presents himself as a distraction. Their dynamic becomes (perhaps always was) a choreographed seduction instead of the normal villain-hero relationship. Jareth’s threats read more like flirtations, especially in tandem with Bowie’s preening, charismatic performance and those, err… very tight pants. That blend makes him both a domineering father figure trying to restrict her autonomy and a potential lover.

Sex is mysterious, dark, and completely adult. Playing with lipstick in the bedroom mirror might be the first step of Sarah’s path toward romance (“I’d like it if you had a date,” her stepmother laments, “you should have dates at your age” — somehow I doubt she meant David Bowie), but Jareth personifies the seductive allure of the unknown, that elusive discovery of more. This is a movie with farting rocks and puppet dance parties, though, so the undertones remain subtle. But intentionally or not, Jareth’s both the embodiment of the patriarchy and the loss of Sarah’s innocence — a man dictating to a woman what he deems is the best thing for her, while also introducing an initiation into the sexual world as reward for her coming to heel. Those threats are very real, very relevant ones.

In a normal fairy tale, Sarah’s happy ending would be to marry him. Jareth fits the love interest archetype: rich, powerful, and regal, with control issues to boot. As tempting as his proposal can be from a certain perspective (I do swoon a bit), it’s a tangible power imbalance and unsettling in a way that borders on emotional abuse — of which Sarah is instinctively, if not implicitly, aware. She may have matured in her understanding of how the world works, but her white clothes signify she sees herself as the innocent in a sea of cruel lasciviousness. So despite the reciprocation and recognition of her desire, she knows she isn’t ready for that major step. That could be interpreted as a reinforcement of the damaging notion that a “good” woman must be chaste. But although Sarah rejects Jareth’s advances (and, impressively, his piercing male gaze; the camera never objectifies her), he still functions as the spark to her burgeoning sexual awakening. She’s curious and aware, but it has to happen on her terms at the right time.

For all his, “Fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave,” declarations (cool story, bro, but she’s sixteen), in the end Jareth’s just a privileged, lonely, petty man. He doesn’t get the happy ending he wants. Sad Goblin King is sad.

Of the things Sarah discovers along her labyrinth adventure, above all she learns the power of choice. She chooses between bravely confronting the uncomfortable uncertainties of real life or surrendering her free will to a fantasy. She chooses who she wants to be — a healthy balance somewhere between no longer a child but not yet a grown woman. One of my favorite things about Labyrinth’s message is Sarah doesn’t entirely dismiss her material possessions, but rather finds space for creativity and wonder alongside everything else. She can face her nebulous future with clarity, solid in her convictions and rooted in the understanding of her personhood.

Labyrinth teaches us that women have power. We can say what we want no matter the overwhelming pressures otherwise. We can shape a path for our lives and choose what’s right for us at the right time. We alone determine our self-worth; our stories matter.

We just have to remember the words.

Kelcie Mattson is a multimedia editor by morning, aspiring critic by afternoon, and tea aficionado 24/7. She’s been a fangirl since birth, thanks to reruns of Star Trek and Buffy. In her spare time she does the blogging thing on feminism, genre films, minority representation, comics, and all things cinephile-y at her website. You can follow her on Twitter at @kelciemattson, where she’s usually overanalyzing HGTV’s camerawork and sharing too many cat pictures.

Nine Pretty Great Lesbian Vampire Movies

Almost unfailingly exploitative in its portrayal of queer women, this specific sub-genre of film stands alone in a few ways, not the least of which being that the vampires, while murderous and ultimately doomed, are powerful, lonely women, often living their lives outside of society’s rules.

This guest post by Sara Century appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Vampires. Lesbians. These two things are as intertwined as the stars and the sky, at least in popular fiction. The vampire lesbian sub-genre finds its basis in an unfinished poem by Coleridge 1797-ish, and continuing onward and up to the modern era with entries such as 2010 German film We Are the Night, and beyond. There are hundreds of lesbian vampire stories in the world, and very few of them deviate from the basic plot of the 1872 novella Carmilla by Joseph Le Fanu. You can just read that story and you’ll have the basic gist: lesbian vampire seduces straight woman, is murdered by men. If that sounds like a flimsy plot excuse for violence against women, that’s because that is 1,000 percent what it is. On the other hand, if there’s hundreds of anything, at least a few of them are bound to be good. I personally have a pretty strong love for lesbian vampire films, which, for better or worse, helped me to define my own images of sexuality as a young gay. Almost unfailingly exploitative in its portrayal of queer women, this specific sub-genre of film stands alone in a few ways, not the least of which being that the vampires, while murderous and ultimately doomed, are powerful, lonely women, often living their lives outside of society’s rules. And I love everything about that… except the part where they’re all mass murderers. When there is so little representation of powerful queer women in film, it becomes difficult to fully dismiss the few that exist, even if they are ultimately negative or problematic.

For all these reasons, I felt a need to compile a list of lesbian vampire films that impacted me in some way, or that I found particularly enjoyable to watch. Without further ado, my nine favorite lesbian vampire films.

9. The Moth Diaries – 2011

I liked this one. It’s a little meta, in that the girl is reading and narrating the short story Carmilla while in a movie based on the short story, Carmilla. If you can handle that, you’ll be pretty down with most of this film. There’s no organ music, which is a solid fail on the part of many films, but it’s from a female writer/director team, and I don’t think it gets enough props for being as enjoyable as it is. Lily Cole is impressively creepy as Ernessa, the Carmilla analog of the film. The main character Rebecca is immediately distrustful of Ernessa, but her friend Lucy (yep) falls under Ernessa’s sway. And so on, and so forth. There’s some pretty disturbing stuff in here: suicide features prominently in the story, the general lack of consent during sex scenes that you often see in lesbian vampire movies is definitely in there, and Rebecca makes out with her teacher, which freaks me out more than most of the rest of the movie. My critique would be that, as meta as the story gets, it never really resolves any of the questions it asks itself. There’s little in the way of socially relevent commentary here, which seems odd for a film that immediately opens a gaping hole in the fourth wall and then leaves it there for the entire course of the narrative. That said, I like this film’s self-awareness, and there’s definitely a few creepy moments that are worth the price of admission.

8. Blood and Roses – 1960

This movie makes a lot of “best of” lists, mostly because it was the first lesbian vampire film that explicitly expressed the queerness of its main character in no uncertain terms. We see a lot of what would ultimately become alternately beloved and maligned tropes of the genre: the love triangle, the arty dream sequence in the middle of the narrative, the bizarre similarity of a character to a portrait of a long-dead ancestor, and the sexually confused girlfriend character.

Our vampire Carmilla’s sexual agency, as well as her frustration, are equally compelling. She flirts with her crushes, and is upset by their rejection of her. She feeds on village girls after playing with them like a cat with a mouse. She is clearly doomed from the very moment she first appears onscreen, and yet, for all these reasons, she’s by far the most interesting character in the film.

What Blood and Roses said to me when I watched it as a young queer woman could be a much longer piece of writing, but, briefly, these images were among the first moments of queer visibility in North American cinema. As problematic as they are, they deserve analysis, and they deserve to be considered for their impact on both queer and straight audiences of their time. Besides all that, though, Blood and Roses is a campy and fun horror film from the 1960s, so if that sounds up your alley, definitely check it out.

7. Daughters of Darkness – 1971

In the 1970s, there was a fad in horror films where privileged, angry men with Beatles hair and snappy wardrobes were the main characters of pretty much every single movie. That’s going strong here, where the main character looks exactly like this:

Wowza. Anyway, the real main character is obviously not that guy, but this extremely fictionalized version of Elizabeth Bathory, at this point hundreds of years old, played by the wonderfully over-the-top Delphine Seyrig. Delphine has a respectable history in art house films of the 1970s, and worked with several of the best directors of her day. She seems to have great fun with the hypersexualized Bathory, and the whole film gets much more interesting when she shows up. The beginning of the movie is just the straight couple getting married and talking a lot, so bring on the lesbian vampires, my friends. Can I just say, as messed up as she is, Bathory is just shockingly beautiful through this whole movie. All of her outfits are the best outfits I have ever seen, and she is my style icon from here to eternity. Also perfectly fashionable, her vampire sidekick, whose simple style and bobbed hair are based on the glorious silent film star, Louise Brooks. I’m just letting you know, this movie rules. Persistent themes of the sexually aggressive and sadistic vampire focusing on the confused, flippant blonde woman are in full force here, and I would say this portrayal of the ancient and wicked lesbian vampire character is one of the more fascinating.

6. The Countess – 2009

This film is about Countess Elizabeth Bathory, widely considered to be one of the most sadistic mass murderers of all time. I say “considered to be” because, to be honest, nobody has the slightest damn idea what actually happened there. Was she a mass murderer? Probably? People were not keeping extensive records of this sort of thing in 1610, and, in fact destroyed all evidence of wrongdoing to prevent a scandal. She was of royal blood, and therefore never went to trial. What I’m saying is that all the information currently available surrounding this case is strongly based in rumor. Still, she is the person on whom much of Western World vampire mythology is based on, so if anyone has the right to be on a list about lesbian vampires, it’s the countess. The story follows the legends of what we believe to be true about her life, and carries us all the way through to her bitter end, with the entirely fictional subplot of a doomed affair with a younger man. I wasn’t personally that into the added love story of the film, but it definitely sets up some of the creepiest scenes in the whole movie, so I’ll allow it. This movie was done by Julie Delpy, who both directs and stars as Bathory, like a boss. Honestly, this film is just flat out better made than anything else on the list in concern to production values, budget, and acting skill, so if you’re into watching something less campy and more real, this is the one for you.

5. The Blood Spattered Bride – 1972

This movie starts with one of my least favorite opening scenes of all time, but if you can get through the weird rape fantasy that kicks it off, the feminist commentary actually gets really interesting as the movie goes along. The tale follows two newlyweds, Susan and her nameless husband, who exists not so much as a character, but as a representation of director Vincente Aranda’s perception of the fascist patriarchy. He comes across about as likeable as a fascist patriarchy, too, more or less crying a river every time his wife doesn’t respond to his aggressive sexual advances. A great portion of this film is Susan progressing through the story arc tropes of most major feminist characters of the 1970s: bride, to unhappy bride, to lesbian, to misandrist, to murderer. That said, honestly, I don’t really blame her, because she is literally married to the human embodiment of misogyny. As an audience member, you’ll find yourself rooting for this guy’s death pretty hard I think, so I can’t imagine what it’d be like to be married to him. She literally locks herself in a cage to get away from him, uses quotes from a book to tell him she hates him, and finally flies into a full-out screaming fit that, let’s be real, is not entirely unprovoked. So, when the dreamy and beautiful Carmilla shows up in a totally bizarre scene that I’m not even going to describe right now because you should just watch it, it’s obvious that Susan is about to get straight up seduced. When your options are “man you hate who borderline rapes you a lot” or “ghostly vampire with really pretty eyes that tells you to kill your legitimately terrible husband,” I guess I’d probably go with the latter, too. I mean, let’s be real, the third option of “get the Hell out of there” is the only real option, but if she did that, there’d be no movie, so spree of murder and terror with dreamy girlfriend it is. To the credit of the film, Susan is a very interesting character. She ultimately goes the really wrong direction with it, but her feminist theory begins in a good place. Societal loathing of queer women ultimately causes her to snap when she realizes that, as a lesbian, the world will punish her sexuality and turn her into a pariah. That is a totally legit concerns for 1972. Susan is by far the best and most interesting part of this film, which is otherwise mostly a campy horror film with unsettling moments of sexual violence and the familiar art house dreaminess of most of the films on this list.

4. The Hunger – 1983

The Hunger is one of the more famous entries in the lesbian vampire canon, so, if you’ve seen one movie on this list, the law of averages would imply that it’d be this one. The beginning of this movie finds David Bowie as John Blaylock and Catherine Deneuve as Miriam Blaylock in a goth club watching Bauhaus. They are vampires, swinger vampires. They pick up another Goth couple and kill them with a tiny blade kept inside the ankh (yes, ankh) Miriam keeps around her neck.

It. Is. Nine. Teen. Eighty. Three. As. Fuck. Right. Now.

There’s a lot of cool stuff in this movie. It’s really well shot, Catherine Deneuve is pretty much the greatest actor on the planet, the soundtrack rules, and David Bowie… just, David Bowie. This film also has one of the most famously great lesbian sex scenes in cinema history. Miriam and Susan Sarandon’s character, Dr. Sarah Roberts, hook up for the first time (only time? I don’t know) to the most lesbian song EVER, aka “The Flower Duet” from Léo Delibes’ opera Lakmé. “Sounds like a love song,” says Sarah. “Then I suppose that’s what it is,” says Miriam. You bet it is, Miriam! Moments later, those two are making out. Another slight alteration on the standard lesbian vampire tropes is that Dr. Roberts, the supposed victim of the film, is the one that initiates sex, here, rather than, as we so often see in film, the vampire preying on a human’s naiveté and weakness.

Sticking well within queer tropes, however, Miriam is honestly a real U-Haul vampire, and waits all of 10 seconds after John’s death before she tries to marry Sarah pretty much out of nowhere. We are talking about someone that has an eternity ahead of her that can’t even wait like a month after her husband’s “death” before she starts moving her girlfriend in. Which is cold as Hell, because they were married for something like 300 years. Well, I don’t want to spoil the twists and turns this story takes for y’all, so I guess I’ll cut myself off there, but, more or less, this movie is famous for a reason, and if you’re in the mood to watch a scary film that is just the most ’80s thing you’ve seen in your life, this is likely going to be your best option.

3. Nadja – 1994

I feel like this film gets overlooked by both the vampire crowd as well as the indie crowd, and it’s kind of a shame, since it has all the requirements of being a cult classic. There’s nothing particularly new in this film, but there’s a lot to like about it. The creepy vampire as played by Elina Lowensohn really sells the film. She’s one of my all time faves. The cinematography is really great, and the film looks just stunning in black and white. Especially interesting is the use of a child’s toy camera for some scenes, lending a simple, stylized perspective at key moments. There’s a lot of pretty amusing mid-90s, Generation X style soul-searching from the white, heterosexual couple at the center of the film, as well as some genuinely on point observations on the human condition from the impressively coherent vampires. As many of these films are products of their time, I must say that Nadja is about the most 1994 film you’re liable to watch in your life. Instead of the standard skintight dress fluttering softly in the wind, the female love interest of the vampire is wearing a straight up flannel shirt and jeans, and if she had slight stubble I would definitely mistake her for Kurt Cobain. At certain moments, the film looks and sounds a bit like a music video for a Portishead song, but the aesthetic is pulled off to perfection, and it really works. The overall stylishness of Nadja has only aged for the better in the two decades since its release.

2. Vampyros Lesbos – 1971

This is where I start to get emotional. Vampyros Lesbos features my favorite opening to a film probably ever, with a bizarre shot of the vampire accompanied by noise music as the credits roll, followed immediately by our hero, the vampiric Nadine Carody, doing an erotic dance in a mirror with herself. She kisses herself in the mirror while holding a candlebra, while a blond-haired mannequin watches her. Ultimately, the countess turns, and begins kissing the mannequin, while her future lover Linda Westinghouse looks on, as intrigued as her mustached boyfriend is uncomfortable. The whole time, one of my all-time favorite songs is playing, a dark, dreamy song with an irrestistably basic Hammond organ pre-recorded drumbeat and chilling yet seductive organ sounds. And that is how you start a movie, everyone. You now have my full attention. Vampyros Lesbos is honestly just a flawless victory. It’s over-the-top, set very much with a psychedelic backdrop, and Soledad Miranda is absolutely enchanting as the countess. The comparatively less interesting “girlfriend” character Linda Westinghouse is really great in this movie. Her acting is stilted, but it works perfectly for this agonized and hestitant character, who is as attracted as she is repelled by the beautiful vampire. What I’m getting at here is that Vampyros Lesbos is a great movie (greatest movie?), and well worth your time if you’re a horror fan, a lesbian fan, an art house fan, or basically anyone (who is over the age of 18). Yes, this film is just as exploitative to queer women as any other lesbian vampire movie, but if you just focus on the intriguing, mysterious countess and her compelling monolgues, the brilliant soundtrack, and the beautifully shot and haunting love scenes between Linda and Nadine, you’ll do OK.

1. Fascination – 1979

The No. 1 spot is a tie between Vampyros Lesbos and Fascination, because I definitely love both equally, but loving things equally is not how internet listicles work, so Fascination it is. I’ve seen dozens of lesbian vampire films, but there’s something about this one. It doesn’t just slightly deviate from the tropes, it starts with a weird premise, introduces multiple tropes, and then just goes completely off the rails with them, until it concludes on a note that could only be described as utterly bizarre. To me, adding art house weirdness to horror films just makes a good thing even better, so I find Fascination to be delightful, haunting, and aesthetically beautiful. The movies of Jean Rolin are often about vampires, definitely well within the realm of art house cinema, and always highly eroticized. Fascination in specific has a just bananas plot trajectory: it pretty much starts with a whole lot of lesbian sex, which then becomes straight sex, which then goes back to being lesbian sex. They’re kind of vampires, or not? One of the main characters terrorizes the countryside with a scythe, there’s a coven of witches, someone gets devoured alive… it is goddamned epic. I especially love the characters, despite how weird and evil they all are. I particularly love the character of Eva, who is very much a problematic favorite, in that pretty much every action she takes in the film ends with her committing murder at some point. The scenery is gorgeous, the cinematography is simple and beautiful, the actors seem like they’re having fun… it’s all in all a perfect 1970s horror film.

Sara Century is a multimedia performance artist, and you can follow her work at saracentury.wordpress.com.

What They’re Going Through: The Brat Pack Gave Teens a Voice

Whatever the Brat Pack actors did with their fame in real life does not reflect the impact they ingrained on our culture. They helped put a face and a voice to teen struggles. These talented young actors gave teenagers an identity and platform for their problems that will stand the test of time. We will always thank the Brat Pack for that.

This guest post by Caroline Madden appears as part of our theme week on The Brat Pack.

The Breakfast Club opens with a title card quoting David Bowie’s “Changes”:

The song lyrics express what The Breakfast Club and many of the Brat Pack films were portraying–that teenagers have as much of an understanding, inner conflict, and a place in this world as adults do. Their characters fight the ignorance of their principals, teachers, and parents who don’t bother to listen to what they’re dealing with inside.

David Blum’s 1985 article “The Birth of Hollywood’s Brat Pack” had him acting just like the adults Bowie sang about. He spit upon the young actors of the beloved teen films, and undermined them because they were young. He believed they were not entitled to fame and money and that their talent was not valid, all because of their youth.

The phrase for the group stuck, but Blum was met with scathing criticism from actors and journalists alike. Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, and Rob Lowe were the focus of the article, with mentions of other actors. The who’s who of the Brat Pack varies, but most consider those who star in both The Breakfast Club and/or St. Elmo’s Fire. After the article’s release, the Brat Pack actors were angry and humiliated. Their group refused to hang out together anymore, feeling that their reputation as a group was tarnished. Reading the article, it’s easy to see why they were so mad. It paints all of the young actors in the same brush stroke, making them all out to be shallow and money-hungry narcissists.

John Hughes himself even expressed distaste for the group name in a 1986 Seventeen magazine interview with Molly Ringwald interviewing him.

JH: I think that this clever moniker was slapped on these young actors, and I think it’s unfair. It’s a label.
MR: People my age were just beginning to be respected because of recent films such as yours, and now it’s like someone had to bring them down a peg or two, don’t you think?
JH: There is definitely a little adult envy. The young actors get hit harder because of their age. Because “Rat Pack” – which Brat Pack is clearly a parody of – was not negative. “Brat Pack” is. It suggests unruly, arrogant young people, and that description isn’t true of these people. And the label has been stuck on people who never even spoke to the reporter who coined it.
MR: Such as myself. I’ve been called the Women’s Auxiliary of the Brat Pack.
JH: To label somebody that! It’s harmful to people’s careers. At any rate, young people support the movie business, and its only fair that their stories be told.

David Blum admonishes the actors for their lack of formal training, addressing how they do not idolize or try to live up to famous method actors Pacino and De Niro: “If I were a Hollywood star I would spend more time working on my craft instead of chasing girls as the Hard Rock.” But even the most famous well-crafted actors also occasionally enjoy the perks of fame.

And so what if they’re not method actors? All you have to do is watch the scene in The Breakfast Club where they all describe how they got detention (which was completely improvised by all of them) to see their impressive talent, regardless of training or not. Blum acts as if they were handed everything on a silver platter, as if they didn’t work hard or even care about their profession.

He goes on about their fame and wealth: “They make major movies with big directors and get fat contracts and limousines. They have top agents and protective P.R. people. They have legions of fans who write them letters, buy them drinks, follow them home. And, most important, they sell movie tickets. Their films are often major hits, and the bigger the hit, the more money they make, and the more money they make, the more like stars they become.” Did the young Brat Pack actors enjoy the perks it came with being Hollywood stars? Of course they did, and that’s nothing new. We’ve seen it time and time again with some of the most famous and well-respected stars.

It is overall an ugly article that portrays them in an unflattering light. Most importantly, what David Blum fails to see is why those films were such big hits, why they were selling so many tickets. People have always been fascinated with the celebrity life, but what the fans cared about more than their off-screen lives was the people that they portrayed onscreen. That is why they were drawn to them in the first place. The Brat Pack actors portrayed the types of characters that teenagers of that time could relate to. They were the faces of thousands of all the teens out there, bringing to life the stories that they had all been dying to hear.

Before the 80s, teen movies were often good vs. evil stories, such as Rebel Without A Cause, or nostalgic looks at teenage lives of the past, such as American Graffiti. Films were rarely marketed or made for teens because executives felt that audiences didn’t care about them, and teenagers weren’t taken seriously. John Hughes comments on this in his Seventeen magazine interview: “My generation had to be taken seriously because we were stopping things and burning things. We were able to initiate change, because we had such vast numbers. We were part of the baby boom, and when we moved, everything moved with us. But now, there are fewer teens, and they aren’t taken as seriously as we were.”

80s teen films expressed the plights and anxieties of that Regan-era generation, the ones who grew up after Woodstock and before YouTube; there was a huge lack of respect for their generation. 1980s America was suffering from high divorce rates and economic setbacks and unemployment that led to an obsession with money and a huge divide of class distinctions.

1980s teens were very aware of who had money and who didn’t and how painful that divide can be. That is the crux of Blaine and Andie’s relationship in John Hughes’ Pretty in Pink. She’s poor and he’s a rich yuppie–how could it work? Duckie and Andie drive through a ritzy neighborhood as Andie exclaims about how beautiful a house is: “You know what the really sad thing is? I bet the people that live there don’t think it’s half as pretty as I do.” The Breakfast Club also focuses on that divide, especially between rich girl Claire and rebel Bender over an argument about her earrings. Bender says, “I bet he bought those for you! I bet those are a Christmas gift! Right? You know what I got for Christmas this year? It was a banner fuckin’ year at the old Bender family! I got a carton of cigarettes.”

But for all the statements they made about teenage life in the 80s, these stories are timeless. They changed the world then and remain renowned today. The Breakfast Club is nearly 30 years old and still relatable to teens of this generation. These films had teens that were here to say, “Even though I’m young with my whole life ahead of me, there are things that I have to deal with and I have problems that affect me too.”

These characters talked about how their parents have failed them or hurt them, the pressure to do well in school or have the right friends. Just look at the heartbreaking scene in The Breakfast Club when Bender describes his abusive dad. Or Andrew the jock screaming about how his father so desperately needs him to “Win! Win! Win!” Think of how many kids in that audience could relate to that. They saw the Brat Pack actors up on the screen, speaking aloud something that they were struggling similarly with deep down inside.

Teenagers are often seen as self-centered brats, and it certainly doesn’t help if they’re also rich and famous. David Blum saw them as brats, as most adults see those who are younger than them. So yes, they are a pack of young kids. But the word “brat” doesn’t have to refer to what they are, but what they’re seen as. Call them brats all you want, but that’s not what they are inside.

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Caroline Madden is a recent graduate with a BFA in Acting from Shenandoah Conservatory. She writes about film at Geek Juice, Screenqueens, and her blog. You can usually find her watching movies or listening to Bruce Springsteen.

The Women Both Admired and Ignored in ’20 Feet From Stardom’

The background vocalists are mostly women of color often singing behind white, male leads and the film poses the question of why these white guys (whose voices are not as strong as the women featured) became stars and their backup singers did not. The answer turns out to be more complicated than we might have thought.

When I was in high school, The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” wasn’t new, but it didn’t have the baggage of being associated with Martin Scorcese films, Dexter, or The Simpsons. I remember wondering about the woman whose powerful vocals make up half the song. In those days duets between men and women were a staple on the radio with both artists’ names above the title. But no one ever mentioned this woman. Years later with the advent of the internet and Wikipedia I looked up her name, Merry Clayton, and was surprised I didn’t recognize it. When I had heard the song I was sure I was hearing someone who had gone on to record other hits.

In a way, I had been right. Among many other songs, Merry Clayton sang on Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright,” and Ringo Starr’s “Oh My My,” but because she was a backup singer, her name was buried in the credits and never mentioned on the radio when stations played these songs over and over. So even though many of us have heard her voice throughout our lives and maybe have even bought the songs and albums she sang on, most of us do not know her name.

The Oscar-nominated documentary 20 Feet From Stardom (directed by Morgan Neville) attempts to right this injustice by focusing on Clayton and a number of other backup singers whose voices we know, but whose names we often do not: Judith Hill (though some may recognize her from The Voice), Claudia Lennear, Lisa Fischer, Táta Vega, The Waters, as well as former back-up singers whose names became well-known like Darlene Love, the 60s girl-group singer who is in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Luther Vandross, who went from singing background on and cowriting and arranging hit David Bowie songs to his own successful solo career.

Anyone who has worked in the arts has seen enough examples to know talent is no guarantee of success– which some of the popular artists who have worked with the backup singers featured admit in the film. We see and hear solo performances from Clayton and Fischer and although they’re good (Fischer’s single won a Grammy), the songs they perform are not close to the caliber of “Gimme Shelter.” What makes a song (and its singer) a hit is tricky: sometimes the vocalists’ collaborators are the key (Mick Jagger with Keith Richards–or Bowie with Vandross), sometimes grooming from a powerful recording executive and producer does the trick (like Clive Davis for Whitney Houston) and sometimes artists become successful on the strength of their songwriting skills instead of their vocal prowess (Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, and Bob Dylan among many, many others).

As Darlene Love mentions she and the other girl-group singers modified their sound according to the wishes of producers so, for example, in the background vocals for “The Monster Mash” they changed their style to “sound white.” A singer’s popularity often depends on a distinctive style. Even Aretha Franklin didn’t become the Aretha Franklin we know today until she was allowed to sing and play piano as she had when she had sung gospel. In previous, secular recordings she was backed by an orchestra including plenty of strings, in a effort to try to replicate the success of Sarah Vaughn. The backup singers’ flexibility and skill in creating generic vocals might have also been their downfall in achieving success on their own.

Some backup singers have crossed over to great, popular success under their own names. but Sheryl Crowe and Emmylou Harris are white women, Luther Vandross was a Black man and Leon Russell was a white guy. The door doesn’t seem open to women of color. The film touches on some of what the women have had to deal with, acknowledging the racism in “Sweet Home Alabama,” which Clayton says her now-deceased husband convinced her to take part in, so her voice could be a retort to the song’s lyrics. The opening credits unroll to the sound of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” with its infamous chorus of, “And all the colored girls sing…” When the song was released “colored” wasn’t as strong a slur as it is today, but it also was not a word that most Black people were still using to refer to themselves. Progressive white people didn’t use it then either. The song “Brown Sugar” was rumored to be written about Lennear (who dated Mick Jagger around the time it was written) and its lyrics are also cringe-worthy.

JaggerFischer20Ft — Mick Jagger and Lisa Fischer in the 90s

The women are often in the position of being not just ear candy, but eye candy as well. We see a younger, slender Lisa Fischer in spandex eventually replacing Merry Clayton when the Rolling Stones tour and play “Gimme Shelter”–though Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have become visibly older and more fossil-like in the intervening years. Fischer is now 55, and toured with the Stones in 2013 (as she has in each of their tours for the last 24 years), but the precariousness of these gigs for women as they age makes Lennear’s long-ago decision to quit the business and teach Spanish to kids instead seem like a sensible one.

Now that the music industry is collapsing onto itself, the women who are still singing backup complain “my phone has not rung,” and struggle to make a living. So I’m puzzled why so much of the audience and critics see this film as a “feel-good” experience. At the end I couldn’t help thinking what the future would hold for these women: if this film is the last vestige of an era, the way a stuffed passenger pigeon in a museum is all that remains of the flocks that used to cover the sky.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kgRq_pGN2g” autohide=”0″]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

A Study in Contrasts: ‘The Hunger’

Perhaps for the movie’s purposes, that doesn’t matter: the story seems to be far more driven by the desire to create an artistic film, rather than an intellectually/ethically/scientifically engaging narrative. The scientific aspect for example—the part of the film I found personally most engaging, that it is possible to tamper with the natural life-cycle, halting the aging process in its tracks—is touched upon but it seems, at least to me, to be more of a plot device for bringing Sarah into Miriam’s life than an attempt to explore an ethically challenging issue. The biology behind Miriam’s present state and the fate of her lovers is similarly irrelevant.

John Blaylock in the opening scene, set to music by Bauhaus

This guest post by Amanda Civitello and Rebecca Bennett appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

The Hunger, the 1983 art-house vampire flick by director Tony Scott, is perhaps the definition of “cult film,” with its plot, characterization, soundtrack, and costuming skirting the line between camp and Art. It might not be an especially good movie, despite its all-star cast – Catherine Deneuve stars as the immortal vampire, Miriam; David Bowie plays her centuries-old lover John; Susan Sarandon stars as Sarah, a scientific researcher who becomes Miriam’s new love interest – but it’s frequently beautiful and grotesque, often at the same time. It is, after all, a lavish vampire movie whose vampires are educated, cultured, and well-traveled, but definitely not “vegetarian.” Miriam and John live in a luxurious New York City townhouse decorated with antiquities that serve as a kind of timeline of her existence; she, after all, is an ancient Egyptian. John is a far more recent development (the 18^th century) in her life, for the curse of Miriam’s existence is that those whom she turns enjoy an extraordinarily long lifespan, but are not immortal. Over the course of the film, we realize that John’s accelerated aging has put Miriam on the search for a new lover, so that she will not be alone when he finally expires. Dr. Sarah Roberts, a gerontologist, enters Miriam’s life at the perfect time. Ultimately, The Hunger succeeds as a work of visual art but fails on its narrative: rather than engage with the ethical issues raised by ancient vampires living and hunting in contemporary New York, it often refrains from exploring these complex tensions, privileging the visual over the story, making for a rich picture whose story falls flat. For those looking for a “classy” vampire movie for Halloween, this might be it – but be warned, art-house or not, The Hunger is incredibly bloody.

[RB]: The first thing that strikes me in watching the film is the interesting juxtaposition between the contemporary (1980s) and the classical. You see this in the soundtrack, of course, but also in the costuming and the set design. The Blaylock townhouse, for example, is filled with a seeming hodgepodge of antiquities and yet its inhabitants are thoroughly modern.

[AC]: I think it makes sense to approach the film this way, because it’s most successful as an audio-visual experience; it’s far less successful as a story. Let’s start with the music, because that’s something that almost overwhelms the film itself. The soundtrack is really beautiful in its blending of classical work (Ravel, Délibes, Allegri) with the original soundtrack by Howard Blake, and the occasional contemporary popular work.

[RB]: And this is most effective when there’s more than one kind of contrast. For example, the scene in which the aging John attempts to feed is backed by upbeat hiphop but set within a vintage-looking space, with archways and pillars. Alongside the presence of the beatbox and rollerblades, there’s this fairly antique vampire attempting to murder someone for sustenance. Tony Scott reinforces and even exploits our natural tendency to compare and contrast in the way the scenes are constructed.

[AC]: And there’s the contrast between Miriam and John’s cultured daytime existence and the primal, animalistic nature of their nighttime excursions. I think the soundtrack is used really effectively to that end. Consider the love scene between Miriam and Sarah – which is largely responsible for the film’s cult status. It begins with an impromptu concert in which Miriam plays Délibes’s “The Flower Duet,” from the opera Lakmé, and then, as they go to bed, changes to a vocal performance of the duet. It’s a beautifully romantic, soft love scene, set as it is against such a heady, operatic song. And then Miriam removes the cap from her ankh pendant, and suddenly there’s blood – and through it all, the soundtrack continues with the duet.

[RB]: This is also the case when John murders Alice, one of their music students. She’s playing a beautifully haunting piece of music which continues even as John slits her throat. There seems to be a persistent juxtaposition of the horrific and bloody against the beautiful, such as during the love scene between Sarah and Miriam. The movie’s costuming is similarly effective. As well as simply serving to emphasise just how divine Deneuve truly is, there’s something of a vintage feel to her clothing which reiterates what we already know about her character—that Miriam is a centuries old vampire. I think it’s worth comparing Miriam and Sarah to make this distinction. Sarah is consistently dressed in distinctly modern clothes—androgynous suits and cotton t-shirts. Miriam, on the other hand, though hardly decked out in the eighteenth century garb we see in the flashback to the beginning of Miriam and John’s time together, seems to be somewhat inspired by the elegance of the 1940s.

[AC]: The Hunger is one of those films in which Deneuve was exclusively dressed by Yves Saint Laurent (another is Indochine). Sarandon was not. There’s such a contrast in the design and aesthetics of their clothes; using YSL sets Deneuve apart from everyone else, who wear whatever the wardrobe department rustled up. Miriam’s distinctive look – a big part of what Sarandon’s character deems “European” – is in large part the YSL look. YSL is for the modern, classically elegant, powerful woman – and I think that’s basically Miriam’s character, in a nutshell. That’s important when you’ve got Miriam, dressed to the nines in YSL suits and veiled hats, prowling a nightclub for unsuspecting people to murder. Because she’s wearing clothes that are identifiably YSL – and that don’t exist as “costumes” – the film is able to reinforce that contrast between Miriam’s refinement and animalism while emphasizing her modernity. She might be a glam vampire, but she’s not an Elizabethan caricature.

Classical music — Miriam, John, and their young music student, Alice

[RB]: You learn something new every day! YSL or not, I do still think that Miriam’s costumes serve to emphasise the fact her “otherness” for lack of a better word, as well as the rather dangerous brand of elegance and sensuality which draws people like John and Sarah into her web.

[AC]: I think the film encapsulates that attraction really well, but is confusing on other points. I haven’t read the novel (or its subsequent sequels), but I think part of the reason why the story fails is because it doesn’t elaborate on the novel’s ideas about the nature of vampirism, which takes a sci-fi approach. In the novel, Miriam wasn’t ever human; she’s a different kind of species that resists aging and is very hard to kill. She learns that she can transfer some of her traits, like an extended lifespan, to a lover by sharing blood. This explains why her lovers can’t be turned completely, and why they hover as empty shells. The central premise of the film doesn’t really make sense without this justification. If you approach the film with more traditional vampire lore in mind, you’re searching for a reasonable explanation for why the lovers she turns don’t turn all the way – and moreover, you have to try to work out how Miriam managed to get the way she is. The novel’s reasoning makes far more sense.

Club dudes — The Manhattan nightclub John and Miriam frequent in order to hunt

[RB]: Perhaps for the movie’s purposes, that doesn’t matter: the story seems to be far more driven by the desire to create an artistic film, rather than an intellectually/ethically/scientifically engaging narrative. The scientific aspect for example—the part of the film I found personally most engaging, that it is possible to tamper with the natural life-cycle, halting the aging process in its tracks—is touched upon but it seems, at least to me, to be more of a plot device for bringing Sarah into Miriam’s life than an attempt to explore an ethically challenging issue. The biology behind Miriam’s present state and the fate of her lovers is similarly irrelevant.

[AC]: One thing that I really wish the film had actually addressed is the tension of Miriam’s existence. We know that the fact that she’s condemned a parade of lovers to a miserable half-life, locked away in steel coffins but still “conscious,” tortures her. She actively looks to science to extend John’s life by following Sarah’s research; when it becomes apparent that he has declined beyond all hope, she mourns. And yet, she still turns her attention to someone new. Why?

[RB]: I suppose as distraught as Miriam might be by the loss of John and her many other lovers, loneliness would be worse. She loves her companions, but it would be worse to exist alone rather than remain faithful to the memory of what they once were and mourn perpetually. Or perhaps it simply serves to drive the narrative forward!

[AC]: And what does that say about her as a character? On the one hand, while it isn’t anything new to see a female villain, Miriam has a conscience. It’s almost as if she can’t help herself.

[RB]: I think it’s significant that she’s motivated by that fear of loneliness. After all, her former lovers are all trapped in those steel coffins because she cannot bear to kill them and end their suffering. It’s incredibly selfish – as is her plan to turn Sarah – but incredibly sad as well.

Miriam mourning — Miriam in mourning for John

[AC]: I have to say, I really despise the ending (in which her former lovers extract their revenge on Miriam, helping Sarah to make Miriam like them), because it doesn’t make sense. In the DVD commentary, Sarandon says, “All the rules that we’d spent the entire film delineating, that Miriam lived forever and was indestructible, and all the people that she transformed [eventually] died, and that I killed myself rather than be an addict [were ignored]. Suddenly I was kind of living, she was kind of half dying… Nobody knew what was going on, and I thought that was a shame.” And I think she’s right. Beyond being implausible in a narrative sense, the ending basically rewrites everything we’ve come to know about Sarah. I think it would have been a more satisfying end to the film to have seen Miriam in London, alone at her piano or, alternatively, with a new lover. It would have been a far more powerful statement for Sarah to have killed herself, and for the final scenes to show Miriam facing the prospect of eternity alone.

Amanda Civitello and Rebecca Bennett are the two halves of a very happy couple who became close while collaborating on this review of Sleepy Hollow, which probably makes them the first Bitch Flicks couple. Together they founded and edit Iris | New Fiction, a new, nonprofit literary magazine of fiction, poetry, and visual art for LGBTQ+ teens and their allies. Catch up with Amanda at her site and twitter, and say hi to Rebecca on twitter.