Diane Shipley – Bitch Flicks

‘Young Adult’s Mavis Gary Is “Crazy” Unlikable

Mavis is truly transgressive. Not only is her plan against most people’s moral code, it shows no solidarity for the sisterhood and no respect for the institutions women are most conditioned to aspire to: marriage and motherhood. Mavis alienates feminists and traditionalists alike. Not that she cares–she only wants to appeal to men. And she has done so, seemingly effortlessly, for a long time.

This guest post by Diane Shipley appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

When the 2011 film Young Adult opens, things aren’t looking good for 37-year-old Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron). She’s divorced, her long-running gig ghost-writing the cheesy YA series Waverley Prep is coming to an end, and she spends her days asleep in front of the TV and her nights drinking herself into oblivion. So, naturally, when her high school boyfriend Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) includes her on a mass birth announcement email, she heads back to small town Mercury from Minneapolis in a misguided attempt to win him back.

Now her marriage is over and her future employment looks uncertain, she isn’t facing up to her problems – she’s exacerbating them. She’s been using everything from alcohol to junk food to sex to try to feel better, but nothing’s worked. Her reasoning is that the time she felt best was in high school with Buddy, so trying to relive those days is the only logical solution.

When women in movies are unlikable, it’s usually in specific, gender-coded ways. The only acceptable imperfections for the female lead in a romantic comedy are clumsiness and occasionally, bossiness (as long as she gets her comeuppance). Women who are unabashedly lusty are either killed off (Fatal Attraction) or tolerated so long as they make fun of their looks and sexuality (Rebel Wilson in Pitch Perfect, Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids). When they’re trying to steal someone else’s husband, usually they’re superficial and two-dimensional, like Sarah Jessica Parker in The First Wives’ Club. A male character, meanwhile, can be shlubby, make fun of his friends, ignore his family, and still be the hero of the story.

Young Adult gives us a woman as immature as any Judd Apatow avatar, who is unapologetic about being outspoken, and refuses to be coy about either the fact that she’s beautiful or that she’s intent on getting Buddy back. She’s refreshingly and entirely unconcerned with being nice. She says things like, “Babies are boring,” and “I like your décor… is it shabby chic?” When her former classmate Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt) refers to the assault that left him with a bent penis, neurological damage, and difficulty walking, she enthuses, “Oh, you’re hate crime guy!” And after Buddy tells her they can’t be together because he’s married, her sincere response is, “I know, we can beat this thing together.”

“What do you mean, 'grow up'?” — “What do you mean, ‘grow up’?”

Roxane Gay mentioned Young Adult in an insightful essay on unlikable characters, saying, “Some reviews go so far as to suggest that Mavis is mentally ill because there’s nothing more reliable than armchair diagnosis by disapproving critics… The simplest explanation, of Mavis as human, will not suffice.” She’s right to imply that we shouldn’t pathologize women for being complicated or unkind. Yet it’s not that much of a leap to conclude that Mavis is mentally ill.

She not only telegraphs this, she tells us. We see her pulling out her hair when she’s alone, lining it up in strands. Later, at her parents’ house, when she moves a hand to the back of her head, her dad says, “You’re not still pulling it out, are you?” signaling that this is a chronic issue. During an impromptu drinking session with Matt, she blurts out, “I have depression.” But the moment that’s key to understanding Mavis’s state of mind is when Buddy’s wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser) explains that she teaches the “special needs” children she works with about emotions using a chart to illustrate the facial expressions that accompany each one. Mavis stares at it blankly before asking, “What about neutral? What if you don’t feel anything?”

Roger Ebert’s otherwise excellent review of the film said that if Mavis weren’t an alcoholic, she “would simply be insane.” The Guardian called her “ever so slightly bonkers.” And while YA author Maureen Johnson recognised that Mavis has serious mental health problems, she also went on to say that she’s “insane.” She isn’t, because that isn’t a thing: “insanity” is a legal defence, not a diagnosis. When someone wants to belittle a woman, they often call her “crazy,” say she’s “nuts” or “insane.” Whether the person in question is mentally ill or not, this helps stigmatise mental illness, drawing an artificial line between “them” and “us,” as if mental health isn’t a spectrum. As if millions of people don’t experience mental health problems all the time. For many of us, it’s something that makes a character more relatable, not less.

Yes, Mavis is either in deep denial or experiencing delusions about how her ex feels about her, and she needs to take responsibility for her appalling behavior. Plus, as she acknowledges twice, she’s showing all the signs of alcoholism. But she’s also survived on her own for years without a real support system, living in a major city and succeeding in a competitive field, as shallow as her writing might be. She’s even retained a girlfriend from high school. Considering how hard depression makes it to just get out of bed, she’s a fucking champion.

It’s plausible that depression is the reason for much of Mavis’ conduct, including her drinking. But it’s hard to tease out how much of her temperament is due to mental illness, and how much is her core personality. From what we hear about her time in high school (including that she called Matt “theatre fag”), she’s always been lacking in empathy, but maybe her mean girl act was a protective mechanism. We don’t know, and the fact that writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman don’t spell this out is a gift. Mavis being cruel and self-centred makes Young Adult more complex than many portrayals of mental illness. Too often, it’s either the basis for a “psycho” horror movie or an “inspiring” story where someone turns out to be sweet, charming, and boring as soon as they’re medicated.

A lot of the reviews I’ve seen suggest that Mavis has no character arc, that she isn’t changed by the events of the movie. But she is. When she has sex with Matt, she’s in a stick-on bra and tights, her hair limp, dress stained, and make-up smeared. It’s a stark contrast to the start of the film, where she gets dolled up to go to bed with a man she’s never met before. The next morning, she offers the coffee pot to Matt’s sister Sandra before pouring herself a cup. She even admits to Sandra that she’s not as successful as she’s making out, that she doesn’t know how to be happy. It seems like she might be about to make some major changes, but then Sandra blows smoke up her ass, enables her, and says she doesn’t need to change a thing.

Mavis accepts this, agreeing that she’s probably OK after all. But she still goes back to her hotel room, shows her dog some affection for the first time in the film, and throws Buddy’s old sweatshirt into the trash. More significantly, as she finally finishes the last Waverley Prep in a diner on the way home, she has her lead character waving goodbye to high school and never looking back.

Things aren’t wrapped up neatly, it’s true; we don’t know if Mavis will actually seek psychological help, if she’ll go to AA, or if she’ll just slump back onto her sofa and carry on falling asleep to the dulcet tones of early-2000s reality shows for the next 20 years. Here’s a movie that acknowledges that change is hard and often infinitesimal; that credits us with the intelligence to draw our own conclusions about the lead character’s fate. Personally, I hope that 57-year-old Mavis is sober, I hope she has a luscious head of hair, and I hope she’s found a job that fulfills her. She might not ever be a “people person,” and she’ll certainly never be perfect. But she’ll at least always be interesting.

Diane Shipley is a journalist, feminist, and fan of photos of miniature dachshunds. Find her on Twitter @dianeshipley, on Tumblr, or in the UK, where she lives, for some reason.

Women of Color in Film and TV: Talk About a ‘Scandal’: ‘Bunheads,’ the Whitey-Whiteness of TV, and Why Shonda Rhimes Is a Goddamn Hero

This guest review by Diane Shipley previously appeared at Bea Magazine and is cross-posted with permission.

I love Scandal. Halfway through the second season, it’s still some of the most sharp, fast-paced, thrilling TV I’ve ever sat through. Sure, it’s often improbable and features silly banter, but it’s never predictable, and Kerry Washington shines like the star she is as clever, controlled, morally ambiguous “crisis manager” Olivia Pope. (Yes, she’s the Pope.) (Oh, if only.)

What I don’t love is the fact that Kerry Washington is the first black woman to have the lead in a network drama in my lifetime.

Shonda Rhimes’ Scandal

I’m in my thirties! And since five years before I was born there hasn’t been a black female lead in an American network drama. (That was one called Get Christie Love!, inspired by the blaxploitation films of the ’70s.) And while there have been Asian and Latina leading ladies in that time, let’s not pretend that TV has ever been full of diversity. It’s a white person’s playground.

So it’s maybe not surprising that when Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino’s new show Bunheads first aired, Shonda Rhimes, who created Scandal as well as Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice, felt a little fed up.

She tweeted ABC Family:

“Really? You couldn’t cast even ONE young dancer of color so I could feel good about my kid watching this show? NOT ONE?”

Which seems like a fair comment, as Bunheads‘ lack of diversity is a glaring omission.

It’s great to see a show that’s unabashedly female-centric and more concerned with telling stories than trying to be gimmicky (and which portrays performers with far more subtlety than Smash could ever manage). There are enough shows where women are nothing more than set dressing for it not to be an issue that all six leads in Bunheads are ladies.

But it is an issue that all six leads are white.

It would have been nice if Rhimes’ tweet had launched a respectful debate about the underrepresentation of women of color on TV. Instead, it sent Sherman-Palladino on a self-justifying rant in a horrible interview with Media Mayhem, which was notable for the fact that neither she nor the journalist who questioned her actually stuck to the point. That journalist, Allison Hope Weiner, said that what she took from the incident was that it was “inappropriate” for a woman to criticise another female showrunner, when there are so few of them.

Sherman-Palladino agreed, saying she would never “go after” another woman and that women in TV are not as supportive as they should be. She also pointed out that she only had a week and a half to cast four girls who could act and dance on pointe. Then she said that she doesn’t do “issues shows.”

It’s hard to know where to start with this clusterbleep of wrongness, but how about we begin with the idea that women should always support each other, no matter what?

Rebecca Paller of the Paley Center posted a blog post about the fracas, “Bunheads and Women: Why Can’t We Just Get Along?” in which she supports Sherman-Palladino and scolds Rhimes for her criticism, saying:

“You should have been more supportive of another female showrunner especially in this day and age when it’s so difficult to get a new dramatic series on the air.”

(Excuse me while I scream into a pillow until I throw up.)

Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope in Scandal

Here’s the thing: if anyone, regardless of gender, makes a mistake in their professional life, you have the right to call them out on it. Sure, Shonda Rimes could have been more deferential, but why the hell should she be?

Saying that women have to be nice to each other at all times because there are so few of us in top jobs only promotes the idea that we’re special snowflakes who have to be treated like precious cargo. While there are men whose shows are similarly lacking in diversity, female solidarity doesn’t preclude valid criticism. And the competitiveness among women that Sherman-Palladino alludes to is surely a symptom of the patriarchy and the fact that it’s so hard for women to get ahead rather than a case of “bitches be loco.”

Even worse, for white women like Sherman-Palladino, Hope Weiner, and Paller to ignore the context of Rhimes’ remark is breathtakingly ignorant. As you might have noticed, America has a history of oppressing both women and people of color and of stereotyping them in popular culture (the Academy is still rarely more impressed than when a black women plays a maid). And yet Paller mentions a possible Asian extra as proof that Bunheads is diverse, and says she’s “still not certain” why Rhimes saw fit to criticise Sherman-Palladino.

Shonda Rhimes is one of very few TV writers creating interesting black female characters. And she’s a black woman. That’s probably not coincidental. Sure, white men could be doing the same thing. But they’re not.

The most disappointing thing about Girls is that Lena Dunham appeared to not even consider that her show could include a main character who was black, or working class, or disabled, or transgender, and that viewers could still relate to that person. Because some of them are that person. Perhaps she was reluctant to make what Sherman-Palladino so charmingly dubs an “issues show,” but Scandal proves that a black character’s race doesn’t have to be her defining characteristic.

Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope in Scandal

A few months ago, Vulture ran a round table discussion with female showrunners to acknowledge that there have historically been so few women in charge of TV shows, and to celebrate the fact that things are starting to change. When talk turned to criticisms of Girls, this exchange actually happened:

E.K.: I think the lack of diversity on Girls probably has something to do with HBO’s willingness to let her be very specific, and tell her story. Whereas with network shows, there’s always a mandate. It becomes, “How are we gonna include this group of people?” or “We have to have some diversity.”

W.C.: And then every doctor is black.

E.K.: It becomes a token gesture. It doesn’t come from a place of sincere storytelling, or anything organic to the world.

It’s true; there’s been a lot of tokenism in TV over the years, with black doctors and lawyers and police officers clumsily slotted into the background of shows like politically correct afterthoughts since at least the early ’70s. But this was still progress, because before that television was so white-dominated that only by networks making a concerted effort to seek out non-white actors could things start to change. Even now, a lack of diversity is more often an oversight than some kind of brave creative choice.

And sure, we’re talking television here, and not real life. But TV shows matter. They’re probably our biggest shared cultural experience, and how they portray (or ignore) members of historically marginalised groups can reflect and reinforce stereotypes in an insidious way. Helena Andrews wrote a great piece for xoJane about Bunheads and the fact that, had her own ballet teacher not been black, she might not have realized that the white-dominated world of dance was something she could take part in, let alone enjoy:

“In a world that was looking less and less like me just as I was beginning to actually take a look at myself (oh, hey, there puberty) seeing an impossibly elegant (and forgive me) strong black woman every week was more than just a drop in the bucket of my confidence. It was a monsoon.”

Not seeing anyone like yourself on TV, over and over again, is profoundly alienating, and yet Sherman-Palladino and Dunham seem to shrug off the idea that this matters, as if their life’s work has no effect on people.

Shonda Rhimes knows it does.

———-

Diane Shipley is a freelance journalist specialising in women/feminism, books, and wonderful, wonderful television. She also blogs at No Humiliation Wasted and tweets (a lot).

Women of Color in Film and TV: Talk About a "Scandal": ‘Bunheads,’ the Whitey-Whiteness of TV, and Why Shonda Rhimes Is a Goddamn Hero

This guest review by Diane Shipley previously appeared at Bea Magazine and is cross-posted with permission.

What I don’t love is the fact that Kerry Washington is the first black woman to have the lead in a network drama in my lifetime.

Shonda Rhimes’ Scandal

She tweeted ABC Family:

“Really? You couldn’t cast even ONE young dancer of color so I could feel good about my kid watching this show? NOT ONE?”

Which seems like a fair comment, as Bunheads‘ lack of diversity is a glaring omission.

But it is an issue that all six leads are white.

It’s hard to know where to start with this clusterbleep of wrongness, but how about we begin with the idea that women should always support each other, no matter what?

“You should have been more supportive of another female showrunner especially in this day and age when it’s so difficult to get a new dramatic series on the air.”

(Excuse me while I scream into a pillow until I throw up.)

Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope in Scandal

E.K.: I think the lack of diversity on Girls probably has something to do with HBO’s willingness to let her be very specific, and tell her story. Whereas with network shows, there’s always a mandate. It becomes, “How are we gonna include this group of people?” or “We have to have some diversity.”

W.C.: And then every doctor is black.

E.K.: It becomes a token gesture. It doesn’t come from a place of sincere storytelling, or anything organic to the world.

“In a world that was looking less and less like me just as I was beginning to actually take a look at myself (oh, hey, there puberty) seeing an impossibly elegant (and forgive me) strong black woman every week was more than just a drop in the bucket of my confidence. It was a monsoon.”

Shonda Rhimes knows it does.

———-

Diane Shipley is a freelance journalist specialising in women/feminism, books, and wonderful, wonderful television. She also blogs at No Humiliation Wasted and tweets (a lot).

Emmy Week 2011: Leslie Knope

Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope

“It’s a great time to be a woman in politics… Get on board and buckle up, ‘cos my ride’s gonna be a big one.”

In the Parks and Recreation pilot, Leslie Knope made clear the extent of her political ambitions. But it was also clear that she was deluded. The Deputy Director of a tiny government department in the fictional small town of Pawnee, Indiana, she earnestly compared herself to Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. She forged ahead with a plan to build a park in a lot abandoned by a developer, against the advice of her senior colleagues, and when investigating a dangerous pit in the middle of that lot, she fell in. “She’s a little doofy,” Rashida Jones’ Ann spelled out, just in case we hadn’t got the message.

There were few clues back then that Leslie would become one of the most endearing sitcom characters of all time, let alone a feminist icon. In fact, the character TV critics drew the most comparisons with was Michael Scott from The Office. This was understandable, given that, like The Office, Parks and Rec was created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, is filmed in a “mockumentary” style, and in season one, had a dry humor that encouraged us to laugh at, not with, its characters. It got a lukewarm reception, perhaps because no one wanted yet another cynical sitcom.

Thank goodness then, that in season two the Leslie we know and love emerged. Still an idealist, but with a strong practical streak and the ability to get things done. No longer mooning over a long-ago office-mate tryst, but having an actual love life. She’s not optimistic because she doesn’t know better, but because she chooses to be, as a survival mechanism. Instead of considering her an affable fool, her now-best friend Ann tells her she’s, “Cool, sexy, funny, and smart.”

She’s also competent: she not only gets that park built, she re-instates Pawnee’s harvest festival, bringing in thousands of dollars in tourism and new business, and saving her department in the process. We start to see that maybe her earlier pronouncements were prescient: why *shouldn’t* Leslie Knope be the first female president?

Yet (for what the term is worth) she’s no Mary Sue: Leslie has flaws, including an obscenely messy house, a horrific dating history (“A guy invited me to a beautiful picnic with wine and flowers and when I tried to sit down, he said ‘Don’t eat anything, Rebecca’s coming.’ And then he broke up with me.”) and a dorky past, which only make her more appealing. It’s a credit to both the writers and Amy Poehler’s acting skill that Leslie is a believable character, not just a caricature. Which is why the comparison of Leslie to Liz Lemon is so ridiculous.

On one level, it’s understandable, of course. In real life, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey are friends, former SNL cast mates and movie co-stars, and both identify as feminists. They’re also in the same age and race demographic and both play female leads on NBC sitcoms. When Parks and Rec started, some articles even implied that Amy Poehler’s success was a threat to Tina Fey’s, as if there could only be one funny woman on a network at a time.

Tina Fey as Liz Lemon

But where Leslie Knope leads her department with skill and good humour despite the petty bureaucracy she often has to negotiate, Liz Lemon is a stress-eating, approval-seeking, baby-stealing mess who dates men who hate her, wears plastic bags as underwear, and is waiting for her real life (the one where she’s married and therefore happy) to start. Tina Fey is charming enough to be entertaining while she portrays this nightmare of modern womanhood, and no doubt she makes a lot of Slanket-wearing insomniacs feel better about themselves. But Fey isn’t just the star of this show, she’s also its showrunner, and it’s not clear what message she’s trying to convey by turning one of the few overtly feminist characters on TV into a self-interested workaholic who always looks to her male boss for guidance. Like Community’s insufferable do-gooder Brita Perry, Lemon’s altruistic and sisterly impulses are often shown to be misguided, undermining not just the character, but feminism as a whole. Perhaps Fey is only trying to puncture the self-righteousness of the movement, but it seems like a weak target when there’s so much misogyny she could be mocking.

Unlike Liz Lemon, Leslie doesn’t just pay lip service to feminist ideals, or spout them in support of her own work goals, she sees political activism on behalf of the women of Pawnee as part of her mandate, and has set up a camp for underprivileged teen girls. And who else, when reluctantly roped in to judge a beauty pageant, would bring her own laminated scorecard with categories including “Knowledge of herstory” and “The Naomi Wolf factor”? (One of the most stealthy and brilliant moments in feminist TV history.) While both Liz and Leslie look to their male bosses for validation, Liz is unable to function without Jack’s help, whereas Leslie is capable of managing the department without Ron’s input, and usually does.

30 Rock frequently employs farce to make us laugh, but Parks and Rec is more lovable because it avoids the obvious and the outsized, creating funny moments by building on what we know about these characters and their relationships. From the second season onward, its lack of cynicism has been refreshing. Tina Fey is great at what she does, but doesn’t have much scope, and doesn’t do vulnerable well. Leslie Knope is unquestionably Amy Poehler’s best role, and it’s because she’s restrained her silly side and concentrated on creating a character we can relate to.

Leslie (Poehler) and Ann (Jones)

One of the most overt ways Leslie’s feminism is displayed is in her friendship with Ann, one of her most significant relationships. The two women clearly care about and admire each other and are there for each other’s freak-outs. I realized about halfway through season two that I was often clenched when I watched them together, willing them not to fall out. I was sad and shocked to recognize that there’s an undercurrent of bitchiness in so many on-screen female friendships that I’ve started to expect it as standard. Portraying two women who like each other might be the most radical thing a sitcom can do.

I don’t think there’s been such a feminist TV character since the ‘80s, when, at different ends of the class and race spectrum, women like Clair Huxtable and Roseanne Conner challenged sexist expectations through the use of confrontation and sarcasm. The ‘90s saw some backpedalling among feminist characters: Seinfeld’s Elaine Benes struck blows for equality by openly discussing periods and birth control and dumping a man who was anti-abortion, but she mostly showed contempt for her female friends and still bought into outdated gender expectations, like that a man should make the first move on a date. Murphy Brown was a strong, intelligent woman, and in her decision to be a single mother, became the inadvertent enemy of conservative America. But she ended up laughing off her early feminist activism as mere youthful over-exuberance.

Meanwhile, the Friends women valued their independence — Monica was the strongest proponent of the idea that Rachel should cut up her father-funded credit cards — but embodied a very Cosmo, “it’s all up to the individual” post-feminist vision which presents issues of female empowerment (like standing up to sexist bosses and self-defence when your bestie’s boyfriend gets handsy) as individual struggles, rather than the symptoms of the kyriarchy they really are. But these women were paragons of feminist ideals compared to most sitcom women of the ‘90s and ‘00s, who re-created retrograde gender roles with husbands they disdained, nagging all the way, as on King of Queens, Still Standing, Everybody Loves Raymond, and many others.

Sexist tropes these downtrodden wives may have been, but at least they had voices. They’ve since given way to anemic characters like the women of How I Met Your Mother, where Alyson Hannigan’s baby-voiced Lily sighs about the importance of everyone getting married and supports her husband in his dream of becoming an environmental lawyer, while her own ambition to be an artist is played for laughs. Worse, her friend Robin, a news presenter who loves hockey and beer, has her “unfeminine” interests explained by the back-story that her father wanted her to be a boy. HIMYM further plays on gender (and sometimes racial) stereotyping and employs sexist, sexually charged humor as Barney discusses his frequent conquests, saying debasing things which the audience is expected to forgive because Neil Patrick Harris is gay in real life and to complain would mean we didn’t understand post-feminist irony. The same claims can be made by Two and a Half Men, where the (un)importance of autonomous female characters is telegraphed by the title, and The Big Bang Theory, where pretty blonde Penny is just a stereotypically sexy comic foil for a group of clever boys.

It’s notable then, that not only is Leslie Knope an intelligent and capable character, but that these are qualities admired by her colleagues, friends, and boyfriends. “Flu Season,” the episode for which Poehler is Emmy-nominated, is one of Amy’s, and Leslie’s, finest moments. Charged with making a presentation to local businesses to sell them on the idea of the harvest festival, Leslie refuses to pass the responsibility to her colleague (and soon-to-be love interest) Ben, even though she’s been badly hit by a flu virus. “It’s not that I don’t trust Ben,” she explains. “It’s that I don’t have faith in Ben. And also I’m starting to forget who Ben is.” She escapes from hospital, stealing flu meds from other patients on the way, makes a convincing presentation despite being dizzy and barely able to see her notes, and then collapses into a chair. “That was amazing…” says Ben, his face conveying his admiration. “That was Leslie Knope.”

He’s right: 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. But she’s just one woman, and a white, able-bodied, cisgender, middle class woman at that. We’re still in need of more diversity: in politics, and more importantly, on TV.

Diane Shipley is a freelance journalist and inveterate blogger with a special interest in social justice as it pertains to TV, books, and actual real life. Her website is www.dianeshipley.com, she tweets as @dianeshipley and she wants Amy Poehler for a BFF.