Dismembered Women – Bitch Flicks

‘Hannibal’s “Feminist Take on Horror” Still Has a High Female Body Count

Tip to showrunners: WE KNOW you can kill anyone off. We’ve been watching TV the last ten years. It is not that shocking anymore, and not even remotely surprising when it is a woman or person of color on the chopping block. Some cast members are more expendable than others, and it’s easy to guess who you think they are. Please stop sacrificing representation on the altar of high drama.

[Spoilers for all the aired episodes of Hannibal ahoy! Yar!]

Hannibal is a show about serial killers, so it’s no shock there’s a high body count. And it isn’t the usual death parade of butchered women that crime thrillers often present. Sady Doyle wrote that Hannibal “takes on the serial-killer cop procedural—one of the most irredeemably woman-hating genres on TV—from a feminist perspective.” Crime shows so often depict women as victims, and victims as bodies. (I’ve long been fascinated by the concept of struggling actresses getting the “break” of playing a cold, naked corpse on a medical examiner’s table, and their families excitedly tuning in to see her silently horizontal in blue-gray makeup, functioning essentially as a prop.)

Hannibal has flipped this archetype. The vast majority of the nameless victims, often naked, usually incorporated into inventively macabre art installations, have been men.

Equal-opportunity artful display of dead bodies.

But women are certainly not spared from violence on this gruesome show: the twist is that Hannibal‘s female victims have mostly been strongly developed as characters before being dispatched. The most devastating deaths on the show have all been women: last season’s long-time-coming murder of Abigail Hobbes, perhaps the only person we’ve seen Hannibal kill with any reluctance, and this season’s huge loss of FBI Agent Beverly Katz.

Even the one-off characters we’ve seen murdered (or at least victimized) have been given complex characterization over the course of their episode, for example the Cotard delusion-suffering Georgia Madchen (Ellen Muth), or Anna Chulmsky’s Clarice Starling stand-in Miriam Lass (recently revealed to be alive, although deeply damaged).

Because the female victims on Hannibal are well-written, sympathetic, and interesting, the audience grieves for them. They are not merely dramatic beats to generate manpain for the dude heroes. (Will Graham nevertheless suffers epic amounts of manpain. This is his design.)

Hannibal clearly takes the murder of women seriously, and uses it as a source of dramatic pathos, not titillation. But an unfortunate consequence of this pattern is that midway through the second season, only one female character in the regular cast remains: Caroline Dhavernas’s Alana Bloom. And she’s a love interest for both Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter (which is not to say she’s been weakly characterized, but does seem to explain her survival).

Hannibal is also running low on women in the recurring cast. Gillian Anderson’s Bedelia Du Maurier exited early in the second season, and the amoral journalist Freddie Lounds (one of several male characters from Thomas Harris’s novels that series developer Bryan Fuller rewrote as female) has only made brief appearances in two episodes this year.

The loss of Hettienne Park as Beverly Katz is particularly devastating, and not only because she was one of the precious stereotype-defying women of color on network TV. Katz’s sardonic sense of humor provided some much-needed comic relief, and her warm friendship with Will was perhaps one of the only psychologically sound relationships presented in the entire series.

And yes, it is immensely frustrating that when the powers that be decide someone important “needs to die” to up the stakes or prove “anyone is expendable” for that someone to be, yet again, a woman of color. (Tip to showrunners: WE KNOW you can kill anyone off. We’ve been watching TV the last ten years. It is not that shocking anymore, and not even remotely surprising when it is a woman or person of color on the chopping block. Some cast members are more expendable than others, and it’s easy to guess who you think they are. Please stop sacrificing representation on the altar of high drama.)

So while Hannibal has a refreshingly compassionate narrative approach to the murder of women (which is a phrase I never imagined I’d write), they’ve got to cool it with killing off the ladies in the cast. And they need to replenish the ranks with more well-crafted female characters, and they’re going to have to stay alive for a while. Because right now we’ve got too many dicks on the dance floor.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer who is now afraid of mushrooms in the wild.

From the Archive: Disembodied Women: Take Five

This post previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on January 12, 2011.

According to the following posters, women have bright red mouths. Wide open mouths with perfect white teeth. That they can put things inside of. See, women often have objects inside their bright red mouths, like golf balls or strawberries, that they’re usually biting. And if they aren’t visibly biting anything, it’s implied that they’ve recently bitten something, what with them all sexy-licking the dripping blood off their–in case you forgot–bright red mouths. Or maybe they’re just biting their own mouths. Or maybe their mouths actually become food (bright red food, even). But if they aren’t biting anything, then the least those bright red mouths can do is stay silent. In fact, looking at the posters in succession, one could even argue that all those bright red mouths (oh yeah, and the completely erased mouths) represent the silencing of women. Who can talk while wearing an implied ball gag? Or while eating? Or when you don’t have a mouth? Or when your mouth is, you know, really just a pair of red chili peppers? Or if you’ve got a bloody knife pressed against it? Or if that shit is zipped shut?

As discussed in the other parts of this series, separating women from their body parts in media images subtly reinforces women’s status as commodities, or pleasure-objects, or victims, who aren’t valued as whole, and who are, as a result, denied their humanity. And we all know, because we live in This Society and it’s 100% inescapable, that the representation of women’s mouths is all kinds of tied up in the mouth-as-vagina metaphor–with the accompanying requisite phallic cigarette and lipstick images apparently never getting old. (And I’d be thrilled to never have to hear the phrase “dick-sucking lips” ever. again.) But if the mouth isn’t a vagina, then it’s a nonstop, life-ruining motormouth (ever hear someone call a man a motormouth?) that even Mr. Potato Head wants to slap the shit out of. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, have a look at the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head commercial that ran during the Superbowl.)

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Molly Ringwald putting her lipstick on with her cleavage in The Breakfast Club is one of the most famous scenes in all of 80s film. We’ve come a long way, baby!

Top 10 of 2011: On Rape, the Media, and the New York Times Clusterfuck

Coming in at #5 of 2011 is Stephanie Rogers’ reaction to media coverage of two heinous rape cases, and the similar way both outlets further victimized the victim. Media, whether in the form of a newspaper or a movie, contributes to the pervasive rape culture in which we live. Her piece was quoted in the Huffington Post and cross-posted by other bloggers.
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On Tuesday, March 8, the New York Times published an article by James C. McKinley Jr. titled, “Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town.” Eighteen men held down an 11-year-old girl and repeatedly raped her in an abandoned trailer while recording the rape with cell phones. Much has been written about McKinley’s—and the New York Times’—irresponsible, victim-blaming, rape culture-enforcing report of the rape. Or should I saylack of report of the rape. While the entire article is a catastrophic joke, this paragraph warrants specific mention:

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands—known as the Quarters—said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

The creator of the petition, Shelby Knox, writes, “1 in 4 American women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. A culture that blames victims for being raped—for what they were wearing, where they were, and who they were with—rather than blaming the rapist, is a culture that tacitly condones rape.” As of now 43,820 people have signed the petition, and Arthur S. Brisbane of the New York Times has issued an apology—not without its flaws—regarding the lack of balance in the piece.

Click here to read the full post.

See also: #10 in 2011, #9 in 2011, #8 in 2011, #7 in 2011, and #6 in 2011.

Top 10 of 2011: Seriously? These Are the 40 Greatest Movie Posters?

Back in April of last year, Stephanie Rogers took issue with the way women are discussed in Total Film‘s selection of the “best” movie posters. Not only are women rarely present in the posters, but when they are featured…well, we’ll let you read what she had to say.

Here’s #7 of 2011.

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Look, it’s not like I want to keep sending traffic to the Total Film site. Especially after they treated us to their list of the 100 Greatest Female Characters. But last Wednesday, they published another list of greatness, this one involving movie posters. Well, I love movie posters, and I understand that my Greatest Ever list won’t match Amber’s Greatest Ever list, or anyone else’s Greatest Ever list, and that one’s reaction to and appreciation of all forms of art is subjective and often deeply personal. So I’m not here to discuss whether these are, in fact, the 40 Greatest Movie Posters. I’m here to talk about how Total Film talks about the posters that feature women.

[…]

I take it back. I am going to talk about the offensiveness of these shitty selections. Out of the nineteen posters above–and that’s nineteen out of Total Film‘s forty that actually contain some semblance of a woman’s image–most either sexually objectify the woman or show her getting attacked. Or she’s dead or dismembered. I mean fuck, out of Total Film’s list of 40 Greatest Movie Posters, Bitch Flicks has previously criticized the posters of American Beauty, Choke, The Silence of the Lambs, and Secretary for showcasing dismembered women. That’s bad enough. But the way the Total Film writer, George Wales, talks about the women/characters in these posters is just … problematic at best.

Click here to read the full post, which includes images.

See also: #10 in 2011, #9 in 2011, and #8 in 2011

Horror Week 2011: The Sexiness of Slaughter: The Sexualization of Women in Slasher Films

The whores in horror are the signature flesh of the slasher flick. Women in this genre have long been given the cold shoulder: cold in as much as they are often lacking for clothing. Often a female character’s dearth of apparel becomes prominent at the pivotal point of slaughter: in cinema, women dress down to be killed. Filmmakers pair scopophilia with the gratuitous gore of killing–leaving viewers to male gaze their way into a media conundrum: When did sexual arousal and brutality towards women pair to become the penultimate money shot?

Doctors Barry Sapolsky and Fred Molitor, in their article “Sex and Violence in Slasher Films” write “Unlike the original horror films, slasher films use graphic violence and sexual titillation to attract audiences.” This formula has proven to be successful at the box office and keeps these films churning out at a remarkable rate. The desire to be the next scream siren crossed media paths in the form of the short-lived Vh1 reality show Scream Queens. This reality TV gem promised that:

Over the course of the series’ eight one-hour episodes, those skilled and sexy enough to command the screen survive. Those who don’t will “get the axe” until only one strong, seductive and stellar actress remains, earning the break-out role in “Saw VI” and the title of Scream Queen.

The season 1 winner, Tanedra Howard, won the chance to show audiences just how seductive and stellar she could look while being tortured.

Cue the Maxim spread.

In a heavily media saturated world, audiences have become overall harder to shock and please. Sapolsky and Molitor write:

As years passed, young audiences required that gruesome images become more intense and explicit for them to become scared…In 1978, a movie called Halloween not only sold more tickets than any other horror film, it broke all previous box-office records for any type of film made by an independent production company. Hollywood immediately tried to tap into the success of Halloween. Films such as Friday the 13th, Don’t Go In the House, Prom Night, Terror Train, He Knows You’re Alone, and Don’t Answer the Phone were all released in 1980. These movies, which are some of the first slasher films, were extremely successful. However, with their increasing popularity came strong criticism. Slasher films were condemned for frequently portraying vicious attacks against mostly females and for mixing sex scenes with violent acts.

A prime example of this type of gore porn occurs in Jason Goes to Hell. In one of many kill scenes, a man and two topless women are shown camping, though frolicking in the woods may be the more appropriate scene description. While the man and one of the women return to their tent to get it on, lonely naked girl #1 goes and gets herself killed. Cut to the tent couple where, naturally, they begin having sex. There is a brief bit about whether or not to use a condom, ending in the decision that this time they can get freaky sans protection. This, itself, is foreshadowing the fate of these fornicators. Nudity abounds as Deborah straddles her man, moaning with pleasure and close to orgasm, when, bam, she is sliced from breast to collar bone. This sneak slaughter attack first arouses and excites with the feel of cheesy porn and then ends with the kill you know is bound to come: a woman cut almost cleanly in half. What a bummer to the audience’s boner.

Maxim Magazine, known for its portrayal of scantily clad women, picked the following clip as its number one horror movie kill.

This popular kill from Jason X involves scientist Andrea getting her face dunked in liquid nitrogen. While struggling with Jason, Andrea’s shit (half of what could be a sexy scientist Halloween costume) rides up revealing to the audience the bottom of her full breasts. While this small glimpse does not equate itself to the arousal of an all-out sex scene, it is intentional. From costuming to blocking, every aspect of the character’s femininity in this scene was meticulously plotted. The fact that filmmakers, audiences, and Maxim find a kill scene more enticing if the woman is sexy and almost shirtless speaks to the fact that modern horror films sexualize slaughter.

The Scream franchise, produced by Wes Craven, poked fun at the overarching tropes common in horror films–particularly the fact that women who have sex will die. Don Summer’s book Horror Movie Freak writes explicitly on the rules of survival in a horror movie. Making the cut at number 1 is: Don’t have sex. Sex = death. This is especially true for women. Women’s sexuality is often exploited in horror with the knowledge that the bad girl will more than likely die. It is a throwback to the most popular book ever published, The Bible.

Within this trope lies a distinctive problem: the pairing of violence and sexuality in a fetishistic binary. Sapolsky and Molitor write:

Social scientists have expressed concern over the negative effects that slasher films may have on audiences. In particular, exposure to scenes that mix sex and violence is believed to dull males’ emotional reactions to filmed violence, and males are less disturbed by images of extreme violence aimed at women (Linz, Donnerstein & Adams, 1989). These effects on male viewers are said to derive from “classical conditioning”.

Sapolsky and Molitor rebuff this idea, believing that the pairing of sex and violence does not occur often enough for classical condition to occur. However, they further state:

The concern over potential negative effects of exposure to slasher films remains. Possibly, depictions of violence directed at women as well as the substantial amount of screen time in which women are shown in terror may reduce male viewers’ anxiety. Lowered anxiety reduces males’ responses to subsequently-viewed violence, including violence directed at women. Accordingly, the desensitizing effects of slasher films may result from a form of “extinction” and not from classical conditioning.”

It appears that no matter how you slice it, this pairing, on unconscious level, does not leave viewers unaffected.

Slasher films thrive on their gratuitous gore. Adding sex is a natural way to titillate the audience and bring in viewers hoping to catch a glimpse of their favorite actress’s nipple. A question that must be asked of this pairing is what comes next? When it is no longer enough to simply have naked women and gory kills in our films, how will filmmakers reinvent the horror genre? One thing I know for sure, whenever I’m on a date that is leading to sex, I’m going to be little black dressed to kill.

Cali Loria is a thug and the mother of a King. She tweets as @realcaliloria.

Seriously? These Are the 40 Greatest Movie Posters?

Look, it’s not like I want to keep sending traffic to the Total Film site. Especially after they treated us to their list of the 100 Greatest Female Characters. But last Wednesday, they published another list of greatness, this one involving movie posters. Well, I love movie posters, and I understand that my Greatest Ever list won’t match Amber’s Greatest Ever list, or anyone else’s Greatest Ever list, and that one’s reaction to and appreciation of all forms of art is subjective and often deeply personal. So I’m not here to discuss whether these are, in fact, the 40 Greatest Movie Posters. I’m here to talk about how Total Film talks about the posters that feature women. (I’m using the word “feature” here loosely, as most of the posters that dare include a woman often objectify, obscure, and/or dismember her.) Feel free to look at their list of all 40 posters, but I’m including only the posters that “feature” women below.

I take it back. I am going to talk about the offensiveness of these shitty selections. Out of the nineteen posters above–and that’s nineteen out of Total Film’s forty that actually contain some semblance of a woman’s image–most either sexually objectify the woman or show her getting attacked. Or she’s dead or dismembered. I mean fuck, out of Total Film’s list of 40 Greatest Movie Posters, Bitch Flicks has previously criticized the posters of American Beauty, Choke, The Silence of the Lambs, and Secretary for showcasing dismembered women. That’s bad enough. But the way the Total Film writer, George Wales, talks about the women/characters in these posters is just … problematic at best.

Jaws: “Nubile young swimmer versus hungry giant shark. We know who our money’s on …” Um, nubile? Really?

Rosemary’s Baby: “They should stick one on the wall of every Boots. Sales of contraception would skyrocket!” Why even bother selling contraception anymore? Just force doctors to make every girl, immediately when she begins menstruating, sit in an an empty room alone with this poster. I’m sure we can get some legislation passed on that if we just casually mention it to a nearby Republican.

The Silence of the Lambs: “The presence of the moth over the girl’s mouth …” The girl’s mouth? She’s not five.

Pulp Fiction: “Uma Thurman practices her best come-to-bed expression …” Is that what she’s doing? Practicing? That’s a thing she sits around practicing? Like learning to play an instrument?

Secretary: “Okay, so it’s more than a little pervy, but given the subject matter, that’s probably fairly appropriate. And there’s a wonderful symmetry to the image … oh who are we kidding?” I don’t even know what this means. What’s pervy? The poster? The film’s exploration of fetish and S & M? The writer of this article?

Hard Candy: “Every parent should mount one of these in their child’s bedroom to ward off sexual predators …” Look, George Wales. You can’t tell from the poster that this is a film about sexual predators. And even if you could, you’re basically implying that it’s the responsibility of the victim to ward off a potential attack. A child has no responsibility in warding off sexual predators, okay? A child abducted and abused by a sexual predator is a victim of kidnapping and sexual abuse. End. Of. Story.

Brick: “The more hard-boiled elements aren’t on display, but the amount of fragile beauty conjured up by a single wrist is most impressive.” Yeah, when I look at a dead woman’s hand floating in the water, I’m all, “OMG the gorgeous subtlety of a woman’s probable murder.”

Being John Malkovich: “Cameron Diaz’s make-under is also on full display.” Because that’s important to note.

Choke: “It certainly captures the off-kilter mood, although we must clarify that Sam Rockwell doesn’t actually eat any women in the film.” He doesn’t?!! What a misleading rip-off. Reminds me of the title of an article I just read at Total Film called, “The 40 Greatest Movie Posters.”

On Rape, the Media, and the ‘New York Times’ Clusterfuck

On Tuesday, March 8, The New York Times published an article by James C. McKinley Jr. titled, “Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town.” Eighteen men held down an 11-year-old girl and repeatedly raped her in an abandoned trailer while recording the rape with cell phones. Much has been written about McKinley’s—and the New York Times’—irresponsible, victim-blaming, rape culture-enforcing report of the rape. Or should I say lack of report of the rape. While the entire article is a catastrophic joke, this paragraph warrants specific mention:

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands—known as the Quarters—said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

Shakesville breaks down the story, and it’s a must-read piece. The writer points out, “Nowhere in this story is the following made clear: … that our compassion and care should be directed first and foremost toward the victim rather than the boys, the school, the community, or anyone else.” The NYT piece is such an obvious case of victim-blaming, and terrifyingly unapologetic, that it wasn’t surprising to see an immediate petition go up at change.org, “Tell the New York Times to Apologize for Blaming a Child for Her Gang Rape.” The creator of the petition, Shelby Knox, writes, “1 in 4 American women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. A culture that blames victims for being raped—for what they were wearing, where they were, and who they were with—rather than blaming the rapist, is a culture that tacitly condones rape.” As of now 43,820 people have signed the petition, and Arthur S. Brisbane of the New York Times has issued an apology—not without its flaws—regarding the lack of balance in the piece.

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That apology should’ve felt good to read. But about an hour before it was issued, I’d posted the petition on my Facebook wall, urging friends to sign it. And this was one of the first responses:

Actually…no. I just read the “offending” comments of Mr. McKinley. The complaint is that he “gave ink” to the opinions of some idiots from Texas? He’s a reporter for Christ’s sake. He’s SUPPOSED to present all angles of the story. Looks like responsible journalism to me. Attack the idiots in Texas for this. Attack the wretched perpetrators. Why in the world is anyone mad at The New York Times for telling the whole story? If anything its GOOD that they reported on those folks as well. Its important for people to know that there are idiots like that everywhere. This is wildly misplaced rage here. Wasting time on things like this is why no real problems ever get solved in this damn country. Let the public burning commence. I’ll be tied to the stake willingly. =)

Another person immediately agreed. Thankfully, others jumped in to defend the petition, but I didn’t walk away from the thread feeling good about it. I felt defeated. Exhausted. Like I might burst into tears. So when the NYT finally got around to “apologizing” for publishing an article that never should’ve seen the light of day to begin with, I wanted to revel in the success of a group of people coming together to affect change. I couldn’t, though. And I started to think about why I couldn’t.

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The same day the New York Times published its story, the newspaper in my hometown published a report of another young girl’s rape, “Man accused of raping 12-year-old girl.” I read the opening paragraph: “A Middletown man has been charged with rape and intimidation of a witness after allegedly conducting a sexual relationship with a 12-year-old girl.” I read it again … “a sexual relationship” … “with a 12-year-old girl.” I kept reading … “accused of having sex with a child younger than the age of 12” … “alleged abuse of the female juvenile.”What the hell? A child cannot consent to sex. Ever. Under any circumstance. So how does a man conduct a sexual relationship with her? How does a man have sex with her? And why does “the girl” suddenly become “the female juvenile”? If I’d ever gone a moment without thinking about Rape Culture (and it’s hard to do), two newspaper articles published back to back—discussing the rapes of two girls as if one girl could consent to having sex with a man, while another could facilitate her own fucking gang rape—would make sure I spent a good few days and nights obsessing about the most recent media onslaught of violence against women.

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Three years ago, on March 28, 2008, Amber and I started Bitch Flicks. We respected blogs like Women and Hollywood that focus on women in film and explore how difficult it is for women to navigate the sexist terrain of Hollywood. And we wanted to be a part of that conversation, by looking closely at how popular films, television, music videos, movie posters, and other forms of media contribute to misogyny, violence against women, and unattainable beauty ideals. Because more than anything, we believe the blind and uncritical consumption of media portrayals of women contributes to furthering women’s inequality in all areas of life.

And we’ve noticed a few things here and there: rape being played for laughs in Observe and Report; the sexual trafficking of women used as a plot device in Taken; the constant dismemberment of women in movie posters; the damaging caricatures of women as sex objects in Black Snake Moan and The Social Network; and we’ve often pointed to discussions of sexism and misogyny around the net, like the sexual violence in Antichrist and, most recently, the sexualized corpses of women in Kanye West’s Monster video. It barely grazes the surface. I mean, it barely grazes the fucking surface of what a viewer sees during the commercial breaks of a 30-minute sitcom.

Yet, this constant, unchecked barrage of endless and obvious woman-hating undoubtedly contributes to the rape of women and girls.

The sudden idealization of Charlie Sheen as some bad boy to be envied, even though he has a violent history of beating up women, contributes to the rape of women and girls. Bills like H. R. 3 that seek to redefine rape and further the attack on women’s reproductive rights contributes to the rape of women and girls. Supposed liberal media personalities like Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann showing their support for Julian Assange by denigrating Assange’s alleged rape victims contributes to the rape of women and girls. The sexist commercials that advertisers pay millions of dollars to air on Super Bowl Sunday contribute to the rape of women and girls. And blaming Lara Logan for her gang rape by suggesting her attractiveness caused it, or the job was too dangerous for her, or she shouldn’t have been there in the first place, contributes to the rape of women and girls.

It contributes to rape because it normalizes violence against women. Men rape to control, to overpower, to humiliate, to reinforce the patriarchal structure. And the media, which is vastly controlled by men, participates in reproducing already existing prejudices and inequalities, rather than seeking to transform them.

And it pisses me off.

*****

“This is wildly misplaced rage here. Wasting time on things like this is why no real problems ever get solved in this damn country.” I decided to respond to that portion of my friend’s Facebook comment by quoting a passage from a piece on Shakesville called, “Feminism 101: ‘Feminists Look for Stuff to Get Mad About,'” in which Melissa McEwan makes the following argument:

… in a very real way, ignoring “the little things” in favor of “the big stuff” makes the big stuff that much harder to eradicate, because it is the pervasive, ubiquitous, inescapable little things that create the foundation of a sexist culture on which the big stuff is dependent for its survival. It’s the little things, the constant drumbeat of inequality and objectification, that inure us to increasingly horrible acts and attitudes toward women.

People can argue that “the little things” are less important to point out than “the big things” all they want to. They can accuse feminists of misplaced anger, irrationality, man-hating, overreaction. But the reality is that violence against women has become so commonplace in film and television, in advertising, in stand-up fucking “comedy,” in video games, that it’s the absolute default treatment of women in media, and we can’t pretend that doesn’t extend to how women are treated in the rest of society. It contributes to rape. And it certainly contributes to a “liberal” newspaper’s inability to effectively report an 11-year-old girl’s gang rape without victim-blaming and slut-shaming, which, incidentally, also contributes to rape.

So. I gave myself a break. I let myself feel shitty and helpless for a minute. I’m over it now and ready to fight back. Stay tuned for our regularly scheduled programming …

Disembodied Women Take Five: Mouthing Off

Disembodied Women Take Four: … Look Closer

The first installments of Disembodied Women focused on film posters that use close-ups of women’s backsides and bare legs to promote movies, and one that illustrated the removal of the woman’s head entirely. This post gives examples of film advertising that uses women’s airbrushed stomachs, and in several instances, divorces pregnant women from the rest of their bodies. (Because we all know, once a women becomes pregnant, she ceases to exist.)

As if reducing women to a collection of nothing more than unrealistically portrayed body parts weren’t enough, the accompanying taglines of these particular film posters also caught my attention.

The Women and 27 Dresses don’t use a catchy tagline on the posters shown below. Maybe the designers of the posters felt that random words shaped into a woman’s torso would suffice, considering these two films exclusively target women audiences. And what do audiences comprised of women want to see in The Women? Nouns, apparently: Bonding Joy Jealous Kids Tears Struggles Laughter Thighs Balance Intuition Fighters Passion Elegance Shoes …

With the 27 Dresses poster, what else could we possibly need? She’s already been made into a fucking dress. (Get it? The movie is called 27 Dresses, so Katherine Heigl’s body is like totally a dress. Neat! Way to objectify a woman by turning her into an actual object.)

Juno’s “Due this holiday season” is the least offensive of the remaining taglines, again because the advertisers perceive no marketing bonus in sexualizing her … she’s a cute little indie hipster weirdo. Still, the fact that the poster emphasizes the pregnancy, rather than the woman who’s actually pregnant (except for the nametag, ha), sends the message that the pregnant woman is no longer as important as Her Pregnancy. (Think Hollywood starlets and the constant Baby Bump Watch.)

The other two posters depicting a pregnant woman each emphasize two men, the first one showing two men in a photo, and the other showing two men smiling ridiculously while cradling the woman’s stomach. Also note the … what, shaving cream smiley face? … painted on her stomach.

Then the taglines.

In Misconceptions, we get: “Good things come in other people’s packages.” Um, okay. Whose “package” are they referring to here exactly? The woman-as-baby-making-machine who will deliver a package in nine months? Or one of the two men apparently involved in providing sperm? With his … package? What the hell is happening here.

In the poster for The Brothers Solomon, they just come out and say it: “They want to put a baby in you.” Great! A film about a woman’s pregnancy that’s actually somehow about two men. Thanks, Hollywood.

The remaining posters that incorporate taglines:

Tomcats: “The last man standing gets the kitty.”

Swimming Pool: “On the surface, all is calm.”

Threads: “The fashion world … unzipped.”

American Beauty: ” … look closer”

The Babysitters: “These girls mean business.”

A couple of them might not be so terrible if they weren’t accompanied by the image of a woman’s bare stomach. But since they are, what differentiates the descriptions of these Hollywood films from the descriptions of soft-core porn?

Disembodied Women Take Three: Leggy Perfection

In 1978, Hustler magazine depicted a headless woman shoved into a meat grinder on their June cover. Thirty two years later, Spike TV chose virtually the same image to promote their television show Blue Mountain State. Also, note the poster image for the film Choke, pictured below. This installment of “Disembodied Women” focuses on the continued use of dismemberment, in this case exposing women’s bare legs, to advertise films. The posters vary considerably, promoting horror films and romantic comedies, as well as foreign films and period pieces. The problem with such advertisements, as media activist Jean Kilbourne argues in her book Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel, is that this perpetual sexual objectification of women encourages men to think of women as inferior. Additionally, women begin to view themselves as a collection of body parts, where a perceived flaw in only one area of the body leads to an obsessive desire to perfect the whole. For more disturbing evidence, check out our first and second installments, The Rear View and The Headless Woman, and feel free to add to our growing list of offending films in the comments section.