Tag: Domestic Violence

Feminist Survivorship in ’10 Cloverfield Lane’

The protagonist Michelle immediately establishes herself as a survivor of domestic abuse as well as an impressive quick-thinker; she embraces her womanhood both as an essential act of character development and as a means to survive. … Tasha Robinson at ‘The Verge’ posits that the entire film is a metaphor for domestic abuse, as Michelle strategizes, endures, and eventually decides to keep on fighting.

10 Cloverfield Lane

This is a guest post written by Bill Ollayos. | Spoilers ahead. 

[Trigger warning: discussion of domestic abuse and violence]

Dan Trachtenberg’s 2016 directorial debut 10 Cloverfield Lane builds a claustrophobic, apocalyptic narrative from the survival tactics of its three main actors. Tense silences, enclosed spaces, and slow-building suspense artfully construct the piece produced by J. J. Abrams and Lindsey Weber. As the trio works to outlast a mysterious threat that has supposedly overtaken Earth, issues of power and gender simmer throughout the performances of this narrow cast. While I appreciate the overall compactness of the premise, I wonder what footholds exist for feminism in such an intentionally economic work. Can a film of majority male leads and an ensemble of white actors truly receive the “feminist” stamp of approval?

The recent deluge of superhero movies has furthered the critical discourse around sexist tropes in film, a discussion tied closely to the #OscarsSoWhite movement during the 2016 Academy Awards. While Hollywood’s handling of Black Widow throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to fuel and frustrate feminist scholars, 10 Cloverfield Lane strikes me as more akin to the feminism of Buffy Summers: authentic, gritty and unabashedly feminine. The protagonist Michelle immediately establishes herself as a survivor of domestic abuse as well as an impressive quick-thinker; she embraces her womanhood both as an essential act of character development and as a means to survive.

In 10 Cloverfield Lane, Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as Michelle, a young woman fleeing from her fiancé, Ben. While distractedly driving away from their home, Michelle crashes her car and falls unconscious, awakening to find herself imprisoned in the underground bunker by Howard (played by John Goodman). Howard describes a global attack that overwhelmed their planet and how he brought Michelle to the bunker to keep her safe. The audience also meets Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr.), a simple yet endearing man who claims to have witnessed the attack before seeking shelter in Howard’s bunker. Michelle does not buy their tales of an alien invasion, instead believing that Howard ran her off the road and then kidnapped her. The audience watches as Michelle wrestles with her distrust of Howard, her uncertainty about the supposed annihilation of humankind, and her residual trauma from the relationship with her fiancé. Tasha Robinson at The Verge posits that the entire film is a metaphor for domestic abuse, as Michelle strategizes, endures, and eventually decides to keep on fighting.

10 Cloverfield Lane

And so enters the essential question – can we consider Michelle a feminist hero? Her feature film barely passes the Bechdel Test, stars only white actors, and was predominately written, directed, and produced by men. If we do accept Michelle’s portrayal of gender as feminist, then does 10 Cloverfield Lane land more solidly in the realm of “white feminism,” or should the narrowness of its premise exempt it from any broader expectations around diversity?

The first ten minutes of the film simultaneously establish Michelle’s victimhood and survivorship, a multifaceted identity that she builds over the next hour and a half. After Michelle tearfully packs her belongings into her car, we see her abandoned engagement ring and overhear a phone call from Ben. “Michelle, please don’t hang up,” he says, “Look, we had an argument, couples fight, that is no reason to just leave everything behind!” When Michelle awakens in Howard’s bunker with her broken leg chained to the wall, only moments pass before she starts using the metal rod holding her IV to reach for her cell phone. When Howard arrives to give her food and crutches, Michelle sharpens the tip of one crutch to a nasty point, starts a fire in the vent to draw Howard’s attention, and attacks him as soon as he enters the room. When Michelle is cornered, she thinks quickly and acts with the self-reliance of one accustomed to overcoming.

The audience is allowed to understand Michelle’s tenacity before the full breadth of her trauma is clear. After another of her escape attempts, she confides in Emmett about the cycle of abuse that permeates her life. “When my dad got that way,” she recalls in reference to a memory from her childhood, “my brother Collin was always there to take the worst of it for me.” In keeping with the tidy nature of the narrative, Michelle’s experiences with domestic abuse are only alluded to, as the script rarely strays from the apocalyptic circumstances of the film. Indeed, the word abuse is never even used throughout the entire movie, with focus instead staunchly placed on the question of an alien invasion and Howard’s possibly murderous tendencies. However, Ben’s references to a “fight” combined with Michelle’s traumatic memories indicate a history to her character beyond what is featured in this plot.

10 Cloverfield Lane

The tightness of the film prevents an in-depth exploration of Michelle’s past. However, her identity as a survivor of abuse still appears through more subtle methods. Howard himself serves to further the abuse metaphor, as his domineering behavior, sensitivity to perceived slights, and commitment to traditional gender roles all match with documented techniques of an abuser. He states that Michelle will “learn to like cooking” and cries, “No touching!” when Emmett grazes her elbow. Additionally, a series of dark clues planted around the bunker indicate that he may have murdered a young girl from Emmett’s class. Howard’s lumbering stance and propensity for aggressive outbursts exude chauvinistic masculinity. Drawing from her resourcefulness and familiarity with such abusive men, Michelle utilizes aspects of her femininity to ensure her own survival.

Michelle’s gender becomes an essential part of her attempts to survive both literally from the apocalyptic context of the film, as well as metaphorically from partner abuse. At her first meal in the bunker, wherein Howard sternly reminds them to “watch [their] language at table,” she hatches a plan to steal the master keys from his belt. She plays off her experiences with similarly abusive men and, anticipating Howard’s jealousy, begins flirting with Emmett during their meal. She giggles, her demeanor suddenly flirtatious, and caresses Emmett’s hand, triggering an immediate explosion from Howard. As he throws himself into her face, asserting his dominance over Michelle, she covertly pilfers his keys. In demonstrating her most salient identity factor, Michelle’s commitment to survival, she tactically uses gender to manipulate her environment and pursue her freedom.

Michelle’s performance of her femininity actually yields the ultimate escape plan. Howard’s regime of traditional gender roles included badgering Michelle to give him stitches, exemplifying the “angel in the house” stereotype of women who sew, heal, and enact other domestic duties. Michelle embraces certain aspects of this socialized regard for womanhood, proudly admitting to her interest in fashion design and spending much of her time in the bunker drawing sketches of apocalyptically chic attire. Once again merging her gender identity with her commitment to survival, she masterminds a plan to sew a biohazard suit that would allow her to enter the supposedly toxic atmosphere beyond the bunker.

10 Cloverfield Lane

The cinematography of the entire film is arguably bent on giving tools to Michelle. The camera rests on a shot of the shower curtain that she will weave into her biohazard suit. Within the first few frames of the film, we see the bottle of alcohol that she will eventually detonate within the belly of an alien beast during the final battle. 10 Cloverfield Lane builds Michelle into a survivor across several planes: as a woman, a victim of abuse, and an Earthling. In the very last scene of the film, Michelle overhears a radio broadcast asking anyone with combat experience to join the remaining human forces in Houston. The audience watches as she turns her now stolen car around and drives toward the meeting point. Her decision allows the many poles of her identity to intersect. By heading to Houston, she is keeping herself engaged with the alien invasion (a symbol for the daily struggle faced by women survivors of domestic violence even after they escape their houses) and bringing her proven survival skills to the aid of the less powerful.

I find Michelle’s cunning nature and decided embrace of femininity as markers of feminism within 10 Cloverfield Lane. Although she only speaks to another woman for several seconds (when neighbor Leslie appears at the door of the bunker and dies after Michelle does not let her in), I believe that the economy of the narrative, which is so critical to the artistry of the film, excuses the underrepresentation of women. I also argue that Michelle’s repeated performances of her gender endorse an overall positive regard for womanhood and, thus, allow me to consider her a feminist hero.

However, I cannot express the same level of comfort when faced with the hegemonic Whiteness of the film. If we speak in terms of cinematic quizzes, though 10 Cloverfield Lane passes the Bechdel Test, it would certainly fail the DuVernay Test for its complete disregard for characters of color. 10 Cloverfield Lane is the second film in this franchise, and its predecessor Cloverfield undoubtedly features more actors of color. Cloverfield also takes place on a much larger scale (the streets of New York instead of an underground bunker), which allowed for the inclusion of more characters and the increase of racial diversity. While the premise of 10 Cloverfield Lane demanded fewer characters, I am not content with overlooking an all white cast. I also do not want to disparage the film with a label of “white feminism” – I wonder how a piece that so creatively handles gender in an intentionally tight script could have engaged race without losing the wonderful compactness. Besides casting people of color in the roles, of course.

I believe the character of Michelle to be a feminist hero. She renders a positive, complex portrayal of womanhood and survivorship. Roxanne Gay states in her 2014 book Bad Feminist that she “would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.” Although the overall workings of 10 Cloverfield Lane deny intersectionality in feminism, I still want to appreciate the film for what it is: clever, suspenseful, and a smart testament to the trials of domestic abuse.

Bill Ollayos is a current Master’s student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the Translation Studies program. His research focuses on cultural power, gender studies, and critical race theory. Email him at william.ollayos@gmail.com for more information. 

‘Jessica Jones’: A Discomforting Yet Real Portrayal of Abuse

If ever there was a personification of this psychological abuse that goes along with physical abuse, it’s in Kilgrave. … He gaslights Jessica, telling her it’s her fault he uses his powers to make people do things they don’t want to do, namely kill others and themselves.

Jessica Jones

This guest post is written by Scarlett Harris.

[Trigger warning: discussion of intimate partner abuse] | Spoilers ahead.

There’s TV that, when you watch, makes you feel all warm and fuzzy and can be likened to a hug. For me, it’s Grey’s Anatomy. And then there’s TV that doesn’t necessarily fall within this category that I still love, such as Orange Is the New Black, with its focus on crime, drug addiction, broken families and poverty, and that upon marathoning makes you ache to get back to the trials and tribulations of Sophia, Taystee, Poussey, and Red.

Despite binging Jessica Jones over my Christmas and New Year’s break, I almost dreaded sitting down for a few hours every afternoon to check into Jessica’s world. I guess that’s what a series directed so heavily at abuse is wont to do.

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In the six weeks or so since Jessica Jones was released in full on Netflix, the internet has been abuzz with its brilliance. Many feminists asserted that this is what it feels like to watch content created for women, by women, while others marveled (pun intended) at the show’s gritty portrayal of New York City and an actually villainous villain, a departure from some of Marvel’s other offerings.

Jessica Jones’ emphasis on abuse was also heavily discussed. Kia Groom at The Mary Sue wrote about her experience in a similarly abusive relationship as the one central to the TV series. Stassa Edwards at Jezebel wrote:

“If Jessica Jones is a feminist show, as many critics have said that it is, it’s not simply because it presents a complicated woman, but rather because it understands how strength and control play out in the lives of women.”

To return to OITNB, for example, the fellow Netflix offering isn’t necessarily littered with likable characters (*cough* Piper *cough*), but there are enough peripheral characters whose backstories come ‘round every now and then to tide you over while the story pivots back to Piper, Alex and the more boring inmates. Despite a couple of likable characters in Jessica Jones (I can only think of Malcolm and Trish), they weren’t enough to get me excited to come back to the rollercoaster of emotions. This is understandable: pretty much all of the characters are victims of some kind of abuse, whether it be villain Kilgrave’s mind control or otherwise, so if anyone has an excuse to be pissy, it’s them.

Edwards writes:

“…[Jessica Jones’] expression of anger — her inability to contain it — is what makes Jones deeply unlikable. But then, being unlikeable is part and parcel of being a woman on the edge. The emotional expression of anger has always been coded as an indelible marker of trauma and of difference.”

But what even are “likable” characters? Roxane Gay, a couple of years ago almost to the day, wrote about this phenomenon at Buzzfeed, touching on points from unlikable female characters being perceived to be suffering from mental illness, being inconveniences and coming across as having more humanity than likable ones. (Gay, as a survivor of sexual assault herself, has also written about the futility of trigger warnings, however this piece makes the case for them in Jessica Jones.) Jessica Jones works so well because most of its characters reek of humanity, however unflattering.

Jessica Jones_Jessica and Trish

What’s more important than likable characters, though, are relatable ones and Jessica Jones has that in spades. We get impressions of this when Jessica tells Trish she can’t comfort her when she’s tased in an attempt to capture Kilgrave and when Jessica pushes those close to her away.

Perhaps the most human character, despite his villainy, is Kilgrave. We are first introduced to him through Jessica’s perspective as a cold and calculating abuser, which he is. But as the season progresses, we see glimpses of Kilgrave’s humanity and that he himself was embroiled in the cycle of abuse perpetrated by his parents who performed experiments on him as a child in an attempt to understand his mind control powers. While Jessica Jones seems to want us to believe that Kilgrave’s parents were trying to protect him and others from his “gift,” to me it was unclear as to who was abusing whom.

As I started to fathom Kilgrave’s past, I was reminded of an article written in 2014 for White Ribbon, an Australian campaign for the prevention of violence against women (which has its own problems), by Tom Meagher whose wife Jill Meagher was raped and murdered in Melbourne in 2012. He asserted that, despite the attack perpetrated against Jill by a known criminal, rapists, murderers and abusers of women aren’t “monsters” lurking in dark alleyways and behind bushes in the dead of night: they’re most often known to, trusted and/or loved by those they choose to abuse. Meagher wrote:

“By insulating myself with the intellectually evasive dismissal of violent men as psychotic or sociopathic aberrations, I self-comforted by avoiding the more terrifying concept that violent men are socialised by the ingrained sexism and entrenched masculinity that permeates everything from our daily interactions all the way up to our highest institutions… 

“The only thing more disturbing than that paradigm is the fact that most rapists are normal guys, guys we might work beside or socialize with, our neighbors or even members of our family.”

Groom echoes this at The Mary Sue:

“Yes, Kilgrave is a rapist, but his sexual abuse is not of the kind we often see represented on television; he abuses in the context of relationships that seem, to the outside observer, consensual, and it is this — his psychological abuse of his victims, his absolute and total control and manipulation of them, his dominance over their agency and their free will — that make[s] him so utterly terrifying.”

Edwards further expands on this at Jezebel, asserting that Kilgrave is a different kind of villain — and a more terrifying one — from your typical Marvel fare in that:

“…The mundanity of control he exercises over Jones, over nearly every woman who crosses his path, is what makes him so evil, even more menacing than the typical villain. Kilgrave is every woman’s worst nightmare: he is a rapist, an unrepentant stalker, a man who, at any moment, can exercise his power and does.”

This “monster myth” and the cycle of abuse can also be seen in Officer Will Simpson, who begins a relationship with Trish after he tries to kill her whilst brainwashed by Kilgrave. Cate Young at Batty Mamzelle (cross-posted here at Bitch Flicks) explores this in depth. The fact that the actress who plays Trish Walker, Rachael Taylor, also survived abuse by her high profile ex-partner in 2010 adds yet another layer to the series.

As these examples attest, what Jessica Jones arguably has more of than relatable characters is relatable situations.

Jessica Jones

Not everyone can relate to being in an abusive relationship, and thank god. I haven’t personally been abused by a partner, but I grew up in a violent home as well as abuse being a big part of my life in recent years in reading about it, watching it take place on screen and in the news, and working towards changing attitudes about it through my writing and in everyday conversations (though I could be doing more; we all could). One of the more pervasive attitudes surrounding intimate partner violence is asking why the survivor “doesn’t just leave” without paying mind to the isolation from loved ones and external support systems by the abuser; the abuser’s reinforcement of worthlessness in the survivor; the depletion of their resources, such as money and their ability to make a living; and the threatening of children, pets and other loved ones. If ever there was a personification of this psychological abuse that goes along with physical abuse, it’s in Kilgrave.

Kilgrave preyed on a once vibrant and happy young Jessica Jones, glimpses of whom we see in a bar scene with Trish in episode five, “AKA The Sandwich Saved Me,” trauma which caused her to suffer from paranoia and alcoholism. Even after she manages to escape him, her life in tatters and suffering from PTSD, Kilgrave infiltrates himself back into her life, turning even the most tenuously connected people to her into his pawns, such as Malcolm, her — again — once vibrant and now drug-addicted neighbor. In a metaphor for the disbelief domestic violence survivors often face, Kilgrave manipulates Jessica’s allies into helping him, as seen with Jeri Hogarth assisting him in his escape, partly of her own free will but also under his mind control. He gaslights Jessica, telling her it’s her fault he uses his powers to make people do things they don’t want to do, namely kill others and themselves. He tries to win back her affections by buying her childhood home and restoring it to its former glory, another allegory for entrapment and, frankly, is just plain creepy. He tells her he can’t live without her and how much better she makes him, exemplified in their short-lived foray into tandem superheroism in episode eight (“AKA WWJD?”) when they save a family from another, perhaps more archetypal domestic abuser. This is also a pitch perfect portrayal of the hope an intimate partner violence survivor might face in seeing the “good” side of their partner and is transferred onto the audience: maybe Kilgrave can be good, I wondered.

Jessica Jones

Hope is a guiding force in Jessica’s pursuit of Kilgrave, embodied by the character of the same name. Jessica resists the easy way out — killing Kilgrave — for much of the thirteen episode arc as she needs him alive as proof of Hope’s innocence in her parenticide charges, committed under Kilgrave’s control. Proof is also something intimate partner abuse survivors are perpetually demanded to demonstrate — by law enforcement, the criminal justice system, society, even friends and family — even when it’s on their bodies in the form of blood and bruises and, in Hope’s case, in her uterus. Also, as previously stated, not all abuse is physical and society should believe, rather than disregard or dismiss, intimate partner violence survivors.

Despite Kilgrave’s rape of both Jessica and Hope, and his intention to do the same to Trish (and who knows how many others), showrunner Melissa Rosenberg was very conscious of depicting rape and abuse differently from a lot of other media that uses it as a “titillating” plot device, telling The Los Angeles Times:

“With rape, I think we all know what that looks like. We’ve seen plenty of it on television and I didn’t have any need to see it, but I wanted to experience the damage that it does. I wanted the audience to really viscerally feel the scars that it leaves. It was not important to me, on any level, to actually see it. TV has plenty of that, way too often, used as titillation, which is horrifying.”

Despite the influx of shows dealing with abuse, such as Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Game of Thrones and mainstay Law & Order: SVU (which Emily Nussbaum and Lindy West discuss on The New Yorker Radio Hour), how often do we actually hear the confident pronouncement of the word “rape” that Jessica spits at Kilgrave in other media? Jessica Jones succeeds in depicting sexual abuse in a more harrowing and real way than shows that throw it around willy-nilly for shock value and not much else.

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Scarlett Harris is an Australian writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about femin- and other -isms. You can follow her on Twitter here.

How Home Invasion Films Reinforce Gender Stereotypes and Portray Domestic Violence

A woman’s domain is her home – it’s an archaic idea, but it’s one still perpetuated in today’s horror films, especially the subgenre of home invasion horror. These films serve to scare us because they take place in the one setting we’re supposed to feel safe, and their horror is much more realistic than ghosts or monsters. But how does a home invasion affect men and women so differently?

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This is a guest post by Maria Ramos.

A woman’s domain is her home – it’s an archaic idea, but it’s one still perpetuated in today’s horror films, especially the subgenre of home invasion horror. These films serve to scare us because they take place in the one setting we’re supposed to feel safe, and their horror is much more realistic than ghosts or monsters. But how does a home invasion affect men and women so differently? In home invasion films, the female characters are often the ones trapped helplessly in their homes, making them the unlucky prisoners of their own supposed domain.

One of the most suspenseful films of all time, 1967’s Wait Until Dark, was one of the first home invasion films to hit the silver screen. It was also one of the first films to present a heroine who was absolutely helpless, even in her own home. Susy (Audrey Hepburn) is blind after a car accident, making her the perfect vulnerable target for a bunch of criminals trying to find a drug-stuffed doll that Susy’s husband may have. This film prisons Susy in her home to fend off these criminals, keeping her passive while her husband is removed from the drama. But the film’s portrayal of Susy is not negative – in fact, even though she’s vulnerable, Susy manages to outwit the criminals and show her strength when she needs it most.

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In 1997, the famously misanthropic director Michael Haneke made Funny Games, one of the more brutal, violent films in the home invasion genre. Two murderous young men entrap a mother, father, and son in their vacation home to torture and eventually murder them with their sadistic games. Anna is the last surviving victim, forced to watch the brutal slaughter of her husband and son before she herself is killed. Funny Games plays into sexist ideas of women in that it does now allow Anna any agency at the end – she is not allowed to fight for her life at all.

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Sometimes female characters are put into situations that limit their agency, but they end up outwitting the foes in their path to come out on top. This is the case in 2002’s Panic Room. The two main victims are a mother and daughter who are trying to make a life for themselves after a rough divorce. The film initially makes Meg (Jodie Foster) out to be a woman scorned, angry about her failed marriage and trying to win the trust of her daughter (Kristen Stewart), but once the burglars break through their security system and enter the home, she must fight to survive in the titular panic room. This enclosed space offers no communication to the outside, making it both a literal and metaphorical prison for Meg – she’s trapped, and the only way out is through violence.

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In other cases, home invasion films seem to want to keep women in roles lacking agency. In 2008’s The Strangers, a couple on the verge of a breakup must face an intense night battling a group of masked killers who keep finding their way into the house. James, the boyfriend, is the one who consistently takes action while Kristen, his girlfriend, is left screaming and hiding. He’s the one who shoots the gun and calls the shots, and when he can no longer help, Kristen is totally helpless. This is an example of a film that perpetuates the stereotype of the woman who cannot fend for herself.

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Luckily, the past few years have given us horror films with kick-ass heroines who can fend for themselves. In 2011, Sharni Vinson played a survivalist “final girl” in You’re Next who refused to let a group of masked killers assault her in her boyfriend’s country home. Even though the odds were against her, she used her wits and courage to get herself out of trouble, proving that home invasion films don’t always have to trap their heroines in an inescapable situation. However, it’s almost inevitable that the horror genre will continue to perpetuate stereotypes of women and place them in vulnerable roles and in inescapable situations of unnecessary violence. Let’s just hope we’ll see at least some films that go against this outdated trope.

 

Maria Ramos is a writer interested in comic books, cycling, and horror films. Her hobbies include cooking, doodling, and finding local shops around the city. She currently lives in Chicago with her two pet turtles, Franklin and Roy. You can follow her on Twitter @MariaRamos1889.

We Need Harley Quinn

The Joker hit Harley and leaned in and leered at her. She held up a protective hand in front of her and looked up at him with absolute terror. In that moment, The Joker was not the clown, was not the humorous villain poking fun at Batman’s stoicism. In that moment, The Joker was something else, something it hadn’t occurred to me that he, or anyone, could be.

Harley Quinn from Batman: The Animated Series, voiced by Arleen Sorkin

Written by Jackson Adler.

[TRIGGER WARNING: physical, emotional, and psychological domestic abuse]

Though long a star of television and comics, Harley Quinn is finally making her big screen debut. The Suicide Squad (2016) trailer premiered at San Diego Comic Con, and as stated on Episode #41 of geek podcast Take Back The Knight, co-host Tiffany and many others (including myself) are “loving seeing Harley Quinn on the big screen.” On VariantComics, she is accurately described as “one of the most loved characters in all of comic books.” Naturally, every incarnation of Harley is a bit different, such as Mia Sara’s Harley in the 2002’s live action Birds of Prey TV show being much more serious and mellow than how Harley is usually depicted, though still powerfully engaging.

Nevertheless, most incarnations tend to share certain attributes. Harley Quinn is a villain/anti-heroine who is funny, bold, resourceful, clever, adaptable, intelligent (as she was formerly a psychiatrist), and outgoing. She is a marginalized character as a bisexual and mentally ill woman who has often worked in male-dominated fields, whether in psychiatry or villainy. She takes this in stride, making silly faces and bad puns, and has a great time in whatever way she can. She is also a survivor of domestic psychological, emotional, and physical abuse from her on-again-off-again boyfriend, The Joker. Though often tied to The Joker, she is a villain/anti-heroine in her own right, and has succeeded even in outwitting Batman at times.

To ensure the psychological well-being of the actors in Suicide Squad, including Margot Robbie who plays Harley, a therapist was on set. Certainly, the abusive relationship between Harley and Joker will be explored in Suicide Squad, as it should be. Domestic abuse and abusive relationships need to be explored in our culture, especially if the fictional characters are shown to be complex human beings. While The Joker may be the extreme in every way, Harley is a complex character with whom many sympathize and adore.

I remember the first time I ever saw The Joker hit his girlfriend. It was on Batman: The Animated Series, for which Harley was first created by Paul Dini. I must have been around 5 years old. I don’t know which episode it was, as The Joker hurt Harley in a similar way in a number of them, but I remember my shock. The Joker hit Harley and leaned in and leered at her. She held up a protective hand in front of her and looked up at him with absolute terror. In that moment, The Joker was not the clown, was not the humorous villain poking fun at Batman’s stoicism. In that moment, The Joker was something else, something it hadn’t occurred to me that he, or anyone, could be. And he made Harley, who loved him with all her heart, who called him her “puddin,’” look at him like that. And he wanted her to look at him with that fear. In that moment, he did not want her love, but her absolute obedience. He wanted to terrorize her in order to make himself feel more powerful. He wanted his girlfriend, whom he made think he loved, to fear him and to feed his ego. Up until that moment, that first witnessing of this abuse, it had never occurred to me that a person could say or show that they loved someone in one moment, and then intentionally hurt them in another–that someone who said, showed, and even did love you could intentionally hurt you.

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Terribly, the show and much other media featuring Harley victim-blame her, implying she’s too stupid and gullible, and putting all the onus on her to leave The Joker, while hardly offering her any resources to do so. However, the show did at least have the positive message that this sort of relationship is wrong. Domestic abuse needs to be addressed in our culture, and superhero/villain stories are just one way in which that can be done. Because I was introduced to the issue at such a young age, it had more time to sink in and settle in my mind and become real to me, something to be taken seriously. Romantic love had always been put on a pedestal around me – all the Disney movies celebrated it. It was “the happy ending” in so many stories. And yet, Harley Quinn was a remarkable character – clever, outgoing, funny, resourceful, silly, determined, and able to adapt to whatever situation was at hand.

Though in some incarnations, Harley’s relationship with The Joker is romanticized, similar to the abusive relationships in the Twilight Saga and Fifty Shades of Grey; many if not most of the ones I have come across contain the message that the abuse is wrong, not romantic. Besides, Harley, since her debut, has been so much more than just love-sick. And even if The Joker IS the love of her life, she has more to live for than love. Even in the victim-blaming Batman: The Animated Series, when she was out on her own, or teaming up with Poison Ivy, she shone. She was just as enjoyable, and even much more so, to watch when she wasn’t with The Joker. She didn’t NEED him in order to have a story worth telling. Yes, he was a part of her story, but her story was so much more than him.

Batman: The Animated Series and its spinoffs often showed Batman showing her sympathy, patience, and care. He understood that she was mentally ill, and was rarely rough with her. Though he still didn’t treat her perfectly, the hero of the series, through his behavior, still encouraged the audience who worshipped him to treat the traumatized and mentally ill, especially female survivors, with similar respect. Not that she should be reduced to victim-hood and seen as less complex, something that even Batman sometimes forgets (hence her ability to outwit him at times, due to his underestimation of her).

Suicide Squad_Harley Quinn

Suicide Squad will feature Harley’s origin and coming into her own, but hopefully there will be a sequel in which her character can more fully be explored independent of The Joker. Maybe her friendship/romance with Poison Ivy could also be explored in this possible sequel. Goodness knows that we need more Harley, even though she is White, skinny, blonde, and blue-eyed. On that note, goodness knows we need more characters like Harley – complex and female. And here’s hoping that Harley gets many more chances to shine.

‘One Cut, One Life’: Love, Death, and Jealousy

First person documentary filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small are no strangers to letting an audience in on their family “secrets”: Small in ‘My Father, The Genius,’ a film about her own father and their ambivalent relationship, and Pincus in ‘Diaries,’ in which he filmed both his girlfriend and wife in 1970s Cambridge, the latter–in one scene that seems to sum up the post-hippie atmosphere of the time and place–nude and playing a flute.

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The following is a slightly modified repost by Ren Jender.

Artists who use their own lives as the subject matter for their art always have to make a decision about how much revelation is too much. David Rakoff, whom many know from his work on This American Life, wrote frankly and transcendentally about his declining health (including an inability in his last years to use one of his arms) after he was diagnosed with the cancer that would eventually kill him. But Rakoff  didn’t have to worry that his revelations would hurt those closest to him; he lived alone, without a partner or children.

When they reveal “everything,” those artists who are in relationships aren’t just exposing their own lives to the public–they can’t help also exposing intimate details about their loved ones. Author Ayelet Waldman has received criticism for revelations about both her husband (author Michael Chabon) and her kids in her work. Sex writer and essayist Susie Bright swore off using her personal life as fodder for her work years ago and though she seems to be in a successful decades-long relationship (and sometimes collaborates with her now adult daughter), her writing doesn’t have the same spark as it did earlier in her career.

First person documentary filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small are no strangers to letting an audience in on their family “secrets”: Small in My Father, The Genius, a film about her own father and their ambivalent relationship, and Pincus in Diaries,  in which he filmed both his girlfriend and wife in 1970s Cambridge, the latter–in one scene that seems to sum up the post-hippie atmosphere of the time and place–nude and playing a flute.

Near the beginning of their excellent documentary One Cut, One Life (which will be in theaters starting Wednesday, May 13), Small and Pincus, each seeming to take a turn behind the camera, discuss plans to collaborate on their final film together (they had previously worked on the post-Katrina documentary The Axe In The Attic). Ed has been diagnosed with a fatal disease which would eventually turn into leukemia. Lucia is working through her grief over the deaths of two of her close friends, one from a hit-and-run driver, the other murdered by an ex-boyfriend.

Ed and Lucia
Ed and Lucia

 

Ed, who is over 70, has other health issues (he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s some years before and speaks slowly and carefully), but they agree that they can probably work around them. The problem is Ed’s wife, Jane, who is adamant that she doesn’t want them to film what might be the last months of his life. We’re so used to wives being a drag on “great” men in film (Pauline Kael referred to this role as the “‘please don’t go up to break the sound barrier tonight, dear’ type”) that we’re ready to think of Jane as the villain until she tells us, “I have enough to deal with in my life right now. My husband has received a death sentence, and I don’t see why I have to give him over to anybody else.”

Jane, who was filmed over five years in Diaries, is familiar with the intrusion a camera is in one’s day-to-day life and has no desire to relive it. She’s also insecure about Ed’s feelings for Lucia.

Ed documented his and Jane’s open marriage in the 70s, but after Diaries was completed they moved to Vermont to run a flower farm. When they made an appearance at a screening of Diaries in the 90s, with matching glasses and grey hair, their arms around each other, they seemed to have become a more conventional couple.

In the 2000s, Ed’s introduction to Lucia reignited his interest in filmmaking (though he still kept the farm). Lucia tells us that she became close to both Ed and Jane (who was a member of the feminist health collective that wrote the original Our Bodies Ourselves) during the making of Axe, but then they, by mutual agreement, distanced themselves when the film was finished. Lucia tells us that aside from a few “flings” she hasn’t been in a relationship in years and that working together for as many hours as a film takes, mixes up her feelings of love and intimacy, though she clarifies that her relationship with Ed is platonic.

Ed Pincus
Ed Pincus

 

Ed seems less intent on keeping boundaries clear. He tells Lucia he loves her and at one point Jane catches them alone in a situation that sets off alarm bells for her–and like photographers in a war zone, Ed and Lucia immediately pick up their cameras and start shooting the conflict. Whenever we see Lucia talking to the camera, she looks drained; the elements in her life that might distract her from her grief instead serve as reminders. Her big, black dog originally belonged to the woman who was murdered. Her cute New York apartment was the one she shared with the woman who was killed in the hit-and-run. But when Jane looks at Lucia she sees a blonde 25 years younger than she is, whom her husband seems to adore.

Mixed up in all of this drama is Ed’s worsening health. Receiving bad news on camera he simply says, ” Well, that’s sobering.” In stunning cinematography we see the seasons at the farm: fall, winter, spring, summer and then spring again, when a newly cue-ball-bald Ed tells the camera that the doctor had said he probably wouldn’t live past March, so he’s grateful. Ed lived two seasons longer and died in November of 2013. When I saw the film last year as part of the Independent Film Festival of Boston, Small did a poignant Q & A after the screening. One of the first things she told us was Jane had chosen not to attend.

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

The Trauma of ‘Private Violence’

It is absolutely clear that throughout ‘Private Violence,’ Hill allowed Gruelle to take her into a world that she felt compelled to share with the public. That trust, that “wide-eyed curiosity” (as Gruelle said of Hill’s directing technique), created a documentary that not only pays homage to the strength and tragedy of women whose lives are torn apart by male partner violence, but also serves as a wake-up call that the system–law enforcement, news media, medical professionals, local and federal court systems–are not serving victims the way they should. ‘Private Violence’ is a public testament to the horror of domestic assault.

Private Violence, Sundance Film Festival 2014

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Gloria Steinem said,

“The most dangerous place for a woman statistically speaking is not in the street. It’s in her own home. She’s most likely to be attacked by a man with whom she lives. It’s the trauma of it we’re just beginning to realize.”

This “private,” not public, violence, is the subject of the documentary Private Violence, which premiers Oct. 21 on HBO. (Steinem is an executive producer of the film.) Cynthia Hill directs the documentary, which focuses in on Kit Gruelle, an advocate and survivor, and Deanna Walters, a survivor who is navigating the court system. Other women’s stories are woven throughout, but the individual stories of these women offer a stunning, jarring inside look on what goes on behind closed doors and how “Why didn’t she just leave?” is not a question we should ever ask.

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“It’s not your job to fix broken men.”

Statistics surrounding domestic violence in the US are stunning, even to those who are immersed in following women’s issues in the news–perhaps because the news media too often keeps these stories of assault, stalking, and murder in the private sphere. During the University of Missouri – Columbia’s Journalism School and True/False Film Festival collaboration, Based on a True Story: The Intersection of Documentary Film and Journalism last February, Hill and Gruelle participated in a panel discussion entitled “Telling Stories About Trauma.” Gruelle  pointed out that in one of the cases she was advocating for, the local news refused to air graphic photos of a victim, but later that night, “the channel ran TV dramas about violence against women for profit–we can deal with the fantasy.”

The reality is this:

• One in four women (22.3 percent) has been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner
• One in six women (15.2 percent) has been stalked during her lifetime
• Thirty percent of female homicide victims are murdered by their intimate partners
Private Violence does not, as some social-issue documentaries do, continuously slam us in the face with these statistics. Instead, the film takes us inside, takes us behind closed doors, to come face-to-face with victims, families, and advocates. The news media may not show us photos of brutalized women, but Private Violence does. We hear–and see–Walters, as she tries to escape and get some kind of justice (and how difficult it is). In an incredible opening, Candy tries to escape from William (who didn’t even care if they used the scene). The intimate, heartbreaking look into these women’s lives turns a mirror onto a society that has historically been far too complacent about violence against women.
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During the aforementioned panel discussion, Hill said that she was approached by Gruelle, who wanted to work on a project about the history of domestic violence advocacy work. “Her intention wasn’t to be the subject of the film,” Hill said. “I wanted to turn my camera in her direction… she already had access and intimacy. A historical film became a cinema verité film.” Hill’s decision to turn the camera on Gruelle was brilliant. Gruelle is a passionate advocate who works hard and speaks loudly about domestic violence in our culture. Hill invited her to speak up during the panel discussion, and Gruelle pointed out that “It’s never just about the abusers. It’s about patriarchal systems that are quick to blame her.”
Advocate Kit Gruelle.
Advocate Kit Gruelle.
The crux of Gruelle’s message to audiences, to not ask “Why doesn’t she just leave?” is amplified by focusing on these individuals’ stories. It was difficult to hear that when the film was shown at the True/False Film Festival, Candy had gone back to William. Seeing faces somehow makes that knee-jerk reaction of “Just leave!” creep up, even if we know better. “Leaving an abuser isn’t an event,” Gruelle said. “It’s a process.” The process isn’t incredibly fulfilling to watch in Private Violence, nor should it be. The system fails women far too often, and Private Violence shows that in painful detail.
"Why doesn't she just leave?"
“Why doesn’t she just leave?”
Before the film screened at True/False (to an overflowing, sold-out crowd), Hill told the audience that the ultimate goal is “to make women and children safe in their own homes.” Because we know that as it stands, they are not.
It is absolutely clear that throughout Private Violence, Hill allowed Gruelle to take her into a world that she felt compelled to share with the public. That trust, that “wide-eyed curiosity” (as Gruelle said of Hill’s directing technique), created a documentary that not only pays homage to the strength and tragedy of women whose lives are torn apart by male partner violence, but also serves as a wake-up call that the system–law enforcement, news media, medical professionals, local and federal court systems–are not serving victims the way they should. Private Violence is a public testament to the horror of domestic assault.
During the Q&A after the screening, Walters appeared on stage with Hill and Gruelle. She said that her participation in the film–and how she laid herself bare–is “my way of helping people.” Gruelle pleaded with the crowd to “go back to your communities and pop the hood,” ensuring that victims got the justice they deserved (but first we must keep their stories out of the shadows).
Gruelle, left, and Watson.
Kit Gruelle, left, and Deanna Walters.
Hill’s direction is remarkable in its effortlessness; she knows to follow, to absorb, to tell the story. When she was asked during the panel discussion about her decision to include upsetting audio in the film, she said, “Well, this is what happens. People need to know what happens.”
Private Violence shows what does–and doesn’t–happen behind closed doors and within a system we’re taught to trust. May audiences be moved to lift the veil in their own communities, to listen to women’s stories, and to effect change in a patriarchal system that is far too brutal to its female citizens.
Private Violence airs on HBO at 9 p.m. Eastern on Oct. 20. In 2015, Private Violence will be available for educational distribution through Women Make Movies.
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Recommended reading: Interview with Private Violence Director Cynthia Hill, by Danielle Lurie at Filmmaker Magazine; A Brief History of Sexual Violence Activism in the U.S., by Caroline Heldman and Baillee Brown at Ms. blog; Till Death Do Us Part, by Doug Pardue, Glenn Smith, Jennifer Berry Hawes, and Natalie Caula Hauff at The Post and Courier; Prosecutors Claim South Carolina’s Stand Your Ground Law Doesn’t Apply to Domestic Violence Survivors at Ms. blog; Why You Need to Watch this HBO Film on Domestic Abuse, by Hilary White at Pop Sugar; Sundance Film Review: Private Violence, by Dennis Harvey at Variety
Cynthia Hill, left, and Kit Gruelle.
Cynthia Hill, left, and Kit Gruelle.

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

‘Gone Girl’: How to Create the Perfect Female Villain

Seeing a female character like Dunne on screen is fantastic–a word she would deem “a little flippant,” but there has yet to be a female villain quite like her. Fincher draws us into this world, Dunne’s world, where everything is this perfect shade of monochrome with tungsten lighting, where the camera moves in slow and methodical push-ins and pull-outs just as calculating as Dunne is, where things change with such swiftness–a kiss to a tongue swab, just like real life. And as we return to real life, we have to wonder: What will Amy Elliott Dunne do next?

This is a guest post by Alize Emme. 

SPOILER ALERT.

Kudos to the 20th Century Fox exec who decided to market Gone Girl (2014) as a great date movie. This is not a date movie. This is a horror story about the sensationalized pitfalls of a doomed marriage.

As good horror stories go, this one has the perfect villain: Amy Elliott Dunne.

Calculating. Manipulative. Patient. Sinister. Genius. Female.

Dunne (Rosamund Pike) is perhaps one of the greatest female fictional villains portrayed on screen, with bonus points for doing something her male counterparts rarely ever achieve: getting away with it. Dunne, with the help of a highly colored narrative penned by Gillian Flynn, manipulates a vibrant cast of stereotypes as she weaves the perfect crime web and literally gets away with murder.

After feeling like her husband, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), has taken her “pride, dignity, hope, and money,” Dunne sets out with fierce discipline and a detective’s eye for detail to frame her unsuspecting husband for her own murder. She befriends “a local idiot,” tells tall tales about fear and the threat of violence, authors a journal’s worth of history–some true, some false, simulates a pregnancy, lights “a fire in July,” and sets the perfect crime scene. She transforms herself into someone “people will truly mourn.”

The premise of Gone Girl works because it plays off our preconceived notions about loss and tragedy. The Pretty Murdered Wife. We as an audience know this story: she’s missing, feared dead, might be pregnant. The narrative needs no back-story, but we do get a glimpse.

Nick Dunne. He is done. Gone. Finished. We know this about Nick the moment we meet him just by his name as he’s standing in the middle of the street next to garbage bins. He is something to be taken out and disposed of with the trash; he is never getting his life back, and Flynn wants us to be aware. The Nick Dunne we are introduced to is a schlubby, beer drinking, ice cream eating, 5 o’clock shadow kind of guy with a dissatisfied marriage and a concubine on the side.

The Smug Accused Husband
The Smug Accused Husband

 

When Dunne goes missing and morphs into the Pretty Murdered Wife stereotype, Nick Dunne’s general disposition puts him right into the Smug Accused Husband category. He’s too charming; he’s too arrogant; he’s too suspicious. He’s a man with secrets. “He’s being a good guy, so everyone can see him being a good guy,” Officer Gilpin (Patrick Fugit) observes. He’s a man whose marriage has taught him how to fake it, who happens to be surrounded by women. There’s lead detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) who gives him a fair run. A fictionalized Nancy Grace clone, Ellen Abbott, (Missi Pyle) who pulls him apart every night on her nationally syndicated television show, and his twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon) who’s been with him since before they “were even born” and offers a stable voice of reason.

“I am so sick of being picked apart by women,” Nick Dunne says. And he’s right, that’s exactly what’s happening now that he’s been labeled the Smug Accused Husband. This stereotype exists because there are men who do kill their pregnant wives and then go on TV and lie about it, and society remembers them. The case of Laci Peterson was one of the first things that came to my mind. And Affleck is clear to note that Scott Peterson was one of the models for his character. Even the “Missing” photo of Dunne is reminiscent of Laci’s with the bright smile, dangling earrings, and glossy lipstick. Gone Girl is a story that already lives on the edge of our thoughts.

As a couple, Nick and Amy have been pretending from the start. They have a perfect meet-cute, perfect dates, perfect celebratory rituals; they even buy the same sheets. He plays “hot, doting husband,” to her “sweet, loving spouse.” None of it is real; “I forged the man of my dreams,” Dunne says. And in doing so, she herself became the Cool Girl. Another stereotype of how women manipulate themselves to land a man.

Eating cold pizza, drinking beer, remaining “a size 2.” Dunne tailored herself to fit Nick’s taste. But “Nick got lazy.” Not holding up his end of the bargain was never the deal. When she sees that Nick’s sweet romantic gestures were not improvisations made up for her, but rather a well-rehearsed ruse easily tailored to the girl in front of him, Dunne makes a decision. She realizes her husband is no longer the man she married and decides to teach him a lesson he will never forget. “No fucking way,” she says, “He doesn’t get to win. Grown-ups suffer consequences.” She takes charge. She doesn’t let herself be walked on by this man. “Why should I die?” She asks, “I’m not the asshole.”

It’s an easy, cop-out that barely scratches the surface of accurate to diagnose Dunne as a psychopath. To say she’s an overly emotional, crazy woman who can’t handle daily life and descends into a PMS-filled rage, is falling pry to gender stereotypes. Dunne exhibits a perfectly cool demeanor, her emotions are consistently even, she is meticulous and complex. The layers of this character are masterful; she is the opposite of what every gender stereotype says women should be like. She is simply a great villain. “Show me that Darling Nicky smile,” Dunne coos like the Wicked Witch of the West as she stares at a video of her husband on a computer. She’s fascinated by her own work.

Amy Elliott Dunne, the perfect villain
Amy Elliott Dunne, the perfect villain

 

Pike’s performance is mesmerizing; she delivers Dunne’s words in this breathless manner like she’s seductively blowing out a candle. Pike makes us believe from the very beginning that Dunne is both sane and capable of deception. But seeing a female character portrayed so strongly on screen earns Dunne the unfortunate label of “controlling bitch.”

If Dunne were a man, none of these character and sanity accusations would hold true. Male characters that go on rampant murder sprees in movies are never labeled as psychopaths, when clearly they display the same behavior. Dunne is not a psychopath. Crazy people cannot mastermind murders and crimes and not get caught. Even her past acts of “insanity” should be taken with a grain of salt. The ex-boyfriend who calls Dunne a “mind fucker of the first degree,” still keeps a picture of her in his wallet. This woman has allegedly ruined his life, yet he’s still holding her image so close? This calls his authenticity into question while giving Dunne credibility.

Dunne is fiercely intelligent. She has plotted the perfect crime. And while she doesn’t succeed with her original plan, she still sets her husband up for decades of suffering with her pregnancy. For all the betrayed wives out there, Dunne is a hero with the perfect revenge. Her crime is personal, not random, which gets her sanity questioned. Flynn doesn’t touch the subject of Dunne’s mental state. She leaves that up to the audience. David Fincher also helms this story in a nonjudgmental way. He is respectful of Dunne and all the female characters. Dunne is never put on display as a woman, though several male characters make mention of her impressive physical attributes. The supporting female characters, which are all various stereotypes, are never blasted for it; they’re handled with care.

Detective Boney, for example, is the coffee drinking, slick talking lead on Dunne’s missing persons case. She’s an interesting foil to the other female characters that assume Nick Dunne is guilty from the start. Boney gives him the benefit of the doubt, refusing to arrest him because some “blonde dunce” on TV says so. Instead it’s her male partner, Officer Gilpin, who immediately makes up his mind when finding blood splatter in The Dunne’s kitchen that he is guilty.

Through Boney, we are offered the idea that not all women jump to conclusions and hate men. But as the story progresses, we discover that Boney didn’t properly handle her case. “We stained the rug,” she says “with a national spotlight” on her. Had Nick Dunne been left in Boney’s “deeply incompetent hands,” he would be on death row, Dunne conveniently points out. Therefore, Boney’s word is useless in bringing Dunne to justice. Men botch investigations all the time, but for Boney to do so, it’s suggesting a woman can’t properly handle the responsibly of performing a traditionally male job.

Noelle Hawthorne (Casey Wilson) is the wonderfully entertaining suburban mom down the street with triplets and another baby on the way. We know this woman. Everyone has that one inquisitive neighbor that if something were to happen, she would be the first one knocking on the squad car window trying to help the cops. There’s a sense of comedy to this hyperbolic character and her triple-decker stroller, but she is never mocked. We take her seriously. It’s a real feat.

Nick Dunne’s twin, Margo, is a cool girl who’s not the Cool Girl. She drinks bourbon with her brother at ten in the morning, she covers his back with Dunne’s mother, she knows the truth but that doesn’t change her opinion of him. She always speaks the truth with her perfectly snarky comments. “You look like hammered shit,” she tells Nick. He likes her. We like her. She is perhaps the one female character that deviates from a hardened stereotype and could exist in the real world.

Somewhat of a mysterious supporting character, Greta (Lola Kirke) acts as a catalyst for Dunne. She’s complex and calculating just like Dunne; she sees an opportunity, and she seizes it. “Did he put you up to this?” Dunne asks as Greta and her male accomplice rob her blind, “I put him up to it,” she replies. She’s a survivalist and essentially forces Dunne to abort her plan and switch to survival mode herself. Yes, Dunne then murders a man and fakes a sexual assault, but in the world of a villain, she’s just adapting to survive. And as someone who is “skilled in the art of vengeance,” Dunne doesn’t just survive; she thrives.

Dunne, as Nick asks: What are you thinking?
Dunne, as Nick asks: What are you thinking?

 

Seeing a female character like Dunne on screen is fantastic–a word she would deem “a little flippant,” but there has yet to be a female villain quite like her. Fincher draws us into this world, Dunne’s world, where everything is this perfect shade of monochrome with tungsten lighting, where the camera moves in slow and methodical push-ins and pull-outs just as calculating as Dunne is, where things change with such swiftness–a kiss to a tongue swab, just like real life. And as we return to real life, we have to wonder: What will Amy Elliott Dunne do next? We’re left with the image of her head, just where we started, much like a few scenes earlier; we are left with Nick Dunne standing before trash cans, just like we started. So much has happened, but what do we really know? And more important, what will we learn next?

 

Alize Emme is a writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. She holds a B.A. in Film & Television from NYU and tweets at @alizeemme.

‘Gone Girl’: Scathing Gender Commentary While Reinforcing Rape and Domestic Violence Myths

I wish I could say that ‘Gone Girl’ is a subversive feminist film exposing myriad gender biases and generating a much-needed dialogue on rape and domestic violence. Yet it reinforces dangerous myths rather than shattering them.

Gone Girl

Written by Megan Kearns. | Spoilers ahead.

[Trigger Warning: Discussion of rape and intimate partner violence]

Is Gone Girl a misandry fest, a subversive feminist masterpiece, or a misogynistic mess? All of the above?

I loved Gone Girl. It intrigued me with its labyrinthine plot, complex characters and noir motif. It simultaneously enthralled and enraged me. There is so much to unpack regarding gender. While a whodunit mystery revolving around the disappearance of Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), and whether or not her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) is the culprit, the crux of the film is the dissolution and destructive unraveling of a marriage. It begs the question: Do you ever really know the person you marry?

Deftly written by Gillian Flynn (who wrote the novel as well) and expertly directed by David Fincher, it’s an uncomfortable film that boldly examines the underbelly of love and marriage and how the media shapes perception. Told from the perspectives of both Amy (often through her diary) and Nick, Gone Girl cracks wide open and shines a spotlight on the often gendered expectations within a heteronormative marriage. Society pressures women to be flawless, never wavering in an aura of perfection. Gone Girl takes a sledge hammer to that.

In an outstanding and riveting performance by Rosamund Pike, Amy is a fascinating character. She’s brilliant, pragmatic and narcissistic. We watch her shift effortlessly from a devoted and then fearful wife to a calculating and fearlessly manipulative villain. A ruthless, Machiavellian anti-hero, Amy morphs into whatever persona she needs to don to obtain her objective. She wears personalities like a cloak, shrouding her true nature and intentions. Filled with rage, she discards the role of the docile wife. She’s not going to live on her husband’s or any man’s terms. She refuses to fulfill society’s expectations.

Amy uses her femininity to achieve her diabolical goals. She uses her sexuality, wielding it as a weapon. They are tools in her arsenal to ensnare and punish men. But just as she readily adopts stereotypical feminine traits when she needs them, she also utilizes stereotypical masculine traits of anger and violence. Her gender informs her actions and the way she perceives the world. However, Amy despises gender norms and doesn’t want to be constrained by them. She doesn’t want to be a satellite to a man. She wants to do whatever she pleases, regardless of the consequences.

We don’t get to see women as anti-heroes or villains nearly enough. As it is, we suffer a dearth of female protagonists in film. While an abundance of female anti-heroes in film reigned during the 1930s, we suffer a lack of female anti-heroes in film today. We do see more female anti-heroes on television: Patty Hewes (Damages), Olivia Pope (Scandal), Gemma Teller Morrow (Sons of Anarchy), Skyler White (Breaking Bad), Carrie Mathison (Homeland), Elizabeth Jennings (The Americans) and Claire Underwood (House of Cards). But we still see far more men in anti-hero roles on television.

Now, I don’t believe that female protagonists need to be “likable.” There’s a compelling argument by Roxane Gay as to why they shouldn’t be likable. Conventionally unlikable women don’t give a shit about what others think of them. And neither does Amy. That’s what makes Gone Girl somewhat refreshing. Here we see an unapologetically ruthless woman.

I have to applaud Amy’s rage and defiance. Although I’m horrified by her disturbing, sociopathic and misogynist tactics. This is why I relish Amy’s notorious “Cool Girl” speech. “The cool girl. The cool girl is hot. Cool girl doesn’t get angry. … And she presents her mouth for fucking.” This is a scathing commentary on how men see women as objects, as vessels, as accessories, not as entities unto themselves. I couldn’t help but say, “FUCK YEAH,” while Amy recited it. Her speech succinctly encapsulates the Male Gaze and hetero men’s expectations of women, while shattering the illusion that women are never angry and that women merely orbit men, suffocating their own needs and desires. Amy’s speech illustrates that society tells women to contort themselves to seek men’s approval.

As much as I cheer for the astute and searing commentary in the “Cool Girl” speech, Amy also condemns women complicit in this charade. She despises how women fall into their prescribed roles, all for the enjoyment of men. When Amy recites this speech, she’s driving in a car, gazing at myriad women passing by. As David Haglund points out, director David Fincher chose the images, not of men but of women, to coincide with Amy’s words. So while the words condemn men, the corresponding images implicate women, making everyone culpable. It becomes a condemnation of women themselves, that they shouldn’t fall into the trap of pantomiming this performance.

Gone Girl 3

What could have potentially been a feminist manifesto mutates into something ripped out of a misogynist’s or Men’s Rights Activist (MRA)’s warped fantasy.

The biggest problem with Gone Girl lies in the tactics Amy utilizes to punish men — by faking intimate partner violence and rape. Amy ties her wrists with rope, squeezing and tightening them while turning her wrists and she hits her face with a hammer to simulate abuse. She repeatedly shoves a wine bottle up her vagina to simulate the bruising and tearing from rape. Amy falsely accuses men of rape, stalking and abuse, all for her own ends. Amy convincingly plays the role of an abuse survivor. It’s scary because this is the kind of bullshit people believe — that women lie and make shit up to wreak vengeance on men.

Author/screenwriter Gillian Flynn said that Amy “knows all the tropes” and she can “play any role that she wants.” But therein lies the problem. Abuse victims and survivors are not merely “tropes” or “roles.” Amy pretends she is being abused in order to frame Nick by writing in her diary that she fears for her life and worries that her husband might kill her. She says she feels “disposable,” something that could be “jettisoned.” Women murdered at the hands of abusive partners are typically treated as disposable in our society. People tell victims/survivors that they should have known better, they must have provoked their abuse. People question why victims/survivors stay with abusive partners. People put the onus on women to prevent rape. These are the myths that films, TV series and news media reinforce. It’s extremely problematic to equate Amy playing “the role” of an abused rape victim with actual women abused and raped.

As a domestic violence survivor, I find the turn the film takes extremely offensive. This is the narrative too many people already have embedded in their minds — that women exaggerate, fabricate and lie about abuse and rape in order to trick or trap men in their web of lies. This is one of the biggest, most pervasive and most dangerous myths about abuse. Here’s the reality. One in four women in the U.S. report intimate partner violence. One in three women worldwide will experience partner abuse. One in five women report being raped. Yet here is this film (and book) contrasting reality and reifying rape culture.

We also see victim-blaming underscored in the film from Amy’s neighbor Greta. When they first meet, Greta comments on the bruise on Amy’s face saying, “Well, we have the same taste in men.” Yet when the two women are watching a news program on Amy’s disappearance and how the leading cause of death for pregnant women is homicide (it is), Greta calls on-screen Amy (feigning ignorance that the real Amy is right next to her) a “spoiled,” “rich bitch.” She goes on to say, “While she doesn’t deserve it, there are consequences.” While this is a commentary on privilege and Greta has survived abuse too, this also amounts to victim-blaming 101.

But the victim-blaming doesn’t stop there. One of Amy’s exes talks to Nick and tells him how she falsely accused him of rape and had a restraining order placed on him. He tells Nick that when he saw her on the news missing, “I thought there’s Amy. She’s gone from being raped to being murdered.” Again this underscores the myth that women lie about rape and abuse. But the numbers are so low for reports of false rape and domestic violence that they are almost non-existent.

Victim-blaming myths permeate every facet of our society. Janay Rice’s abuse and the resulting #WhyIStayed conversation recently highlighted the myriad myths people believe about intimate partner violence, particularly when it comes to women of color. People feel they need “proof” to verify or corroborate a victim/survivor’s trauma. Society perpetually places the onus on women for their abuse rather than on where it belongs: with the abuser. As we’ve seen with Marissa Alexander, the legal system doesn’t reward but rather punishes domestic violence survivors. This happens again and again, over and over. Women are not believed. And it’s dangerous to keep feeding this narrative.

Rape is “an epidemic.” Violence against women is an epidemic. We live in a rape culture that inculcates the abuse and objectification of women and dismisses violence against women. Society makes every excuse for abusers while it unilaterally shames and blames victims and survivors of intimate partner violence, rape and sexual assault.

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Some might try to assuage Gone Girl’s misogyny by declaring Amy’s misandry or by underscoring that there are two female characters – Detective Rhonda Boney and Margo Dunne – who are onto Amy’s game. But it doesn’t. When you have a protagonist doing despicable things, the film/TV series often straddles a fine line between condemnation and glorification. However, there is a way for a film/TV series to delineate their message: by the comments and perspectives of ancillary characters. Breaking Bad illustrates this beautifully. Despite what many fanboys got wrong, we are NOT supposed to identify with power-hungry, abusive, rapist Walter White. We may be fascinated by Walter’s fierce intelligence. But we are supposed to identify with Jesse and Skyler, both of whom are the heart and conscience of the show. They are the ones telling us the audience, both overtly and covertly, that Walter’s actions are despicable and monstrous.

In Gone Girl, almost every character condemns and despises Amy. They loathe her for her manipulations and how she has framed Nick. But no character comments on how Amy’s actions reinforce rape culture. Not one. Rhonda could have easily mentioned the stats for women reporting rape or domestic abuse, how few rape and abuse cases are brought to trial and even fewer convicted because of victim-blaming biases. Nick’s sister Margo could have said how horrible Amy’s schemes are not only for her brother but the implications for other women too. But everyone in the film only focuses on how Amy’s actions impact Nick. Nick even says at one point in the film, “I’m so sick of being picked apart by women.” (Boo hoo, poor Nick. Isn’t that every misogynist’s anthem??) So when Nick slams Amy’s head into the wall and calls her a “cunt” towards the end of the film — despite his abusive actions and misogynist language — we the audience are supposed to sympathize with him because he just wants to be a good dad, because he’s the one victimized by this manipulative shrew.

I wish I could love this film without reservations. I wish I could say that Gone Girl is a subversive feminist film exposing myriad gender biases and generating a much-needed dialogue on rape and domestic violence. Yet it reinforces dangerous myths rather than shattering them. The embedded “Cool Girl” speech rails against the patriarchal notion that women serve as nothing more than accessories and sexual objects to men. But the film falters by playing into a victim-blaming narrative reinforcing rape culture.

We need more complex female protagonists. We need more female anti-heroes and villains. If only we could have one in a film that doesn’t simultaneously perpetuate the misogynist notion that women lie about rape and abuse.

Megan Kearns is Bitch Flicks’ Social Media Director, a freelance writer and a feminist vegan blogger. She’s a member of the Boston Online Film Critics Association (BOFCA). She tweets at @OpinionessWorld.

‘One Cut, One Life’: Love, Death, and Jealousy

First person documentary filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small are no strangers to letting an audience in on their family “secrets”: Small in ‘My Father, The Genius,’ a film about her own father and their ambivalent relationship, and Pincus in ‘Diaries,’ in which he filmed both his girlfriend and wife in 1970s Cambridge, the latter–in one scene that seems to sum up the post-hippie atmosphere of the time and place–nude and playing a flute.

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Artists who use their own lives as the subject matter for their art always have to make a decision about how much revelation is too much. David Rakoff, whom many know from his work on This American Life, wrote frankly and transcendentally about his declining health (including an inability in his last years to use one of his arms) after he was diagnosed with the cancer that would eventually kill him. But Rakoff  didn’t have to worry that his revelations would hurt those closest to him: he lived alone, without a partner or children.

When they reveal “everything,” those artists who are in relationships aren’t just exposing their own lives to the public–they can’t help also exposing intimate details about their loved ones. Author Ayelet Waldman has received criticism for revelations about both about her husband (author Michael Chabon) and her kids in her work. Sex writer and essayist Susie Bright swore off using her personal life as fodder for her work years ago and though she seems to be in a successful decades-long relationship (and sometimes collaborates with her now adult daughter), her writing doesn’t have the same spark as it did earlier in her career.

First person documentary filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small are no strangers to letting an audience in on their family “secrets”: Small in My Father, The Genius, a film about her own father and their ambivalent relationship, and Pincus in Diaries,  in which he filmed both his girlfriend and wife in 1970s Cambridge, the latter–in one scene that seems to sum up the post-hippie atmosphere of the time and place–nude and playing a flute.

Near the beginning of their excellent documentary One Cut, One Life (which will be shown as part of the Woods Hole Film Festival July 28), Small and Pincus, each seeming to take a turn behind the camera, discuss plans to collaborate on their final film together (they had previously worked on the post-Katrina documentary The Axe In The Attic). Ed has been diagnosed with a fatal disease which would eventually turn into leukemia. Lucia is working through her grief over the deaths of two of her close friends, one from a hit-and-run driver, the other murdered by an ex-boyfriend.

Ed and Lucia
Ed and Lucia

Ed, who is over 70, has other health issues (he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s some years before and speaks slowly and carefully), but they agree that they can probably work around them. The problem is Ed’s wife, Jane, who is adamant that she doesn’t want them to film what might be the last months of his life. We’re so used to wives being a drag on “great” men in film (Pauline Kael referred to this role as the “‘please don’t go up to break the sound barrier tonight, dear’ type”) that we’re ready to think of Jane as the villain until she tells us, “I have enough to deal with in my life right now. My husband has received a death sentence, and I don’t see why I have to give him over to anybody else.”

Jane, who was filmed over five years in Diaries, is familiar with the intrusion a camera is in one’s day-to-day life and has no desire to relive it. She’s also insecure about Ed’s feelings for Lucia.

Ed documented his and Jane’s open marriage in the 70s, but after Diaries was completed they moved to Vermont to run a flower farm. When they made an appearance at a screening of Diaries in the 90s, with matching glasses and grey hair, their arms around each other, they seemed to have become a more conventional couple.

In the 2000s, Ed’s introduction to Lucia reignited his interest in filmmaking (though he still kept the farm). Lucia tells us that she became close to both Ed and Jane (who was a member of the feminist health collective that wrote the original Our Bodies Ourselves) during the making of Axe, but then they, by mutual agreement, distanced themselves when the film was finished. Lucia tells us that aside from a few “flings” she hasn’t been in a relationship in years and that working together for as many hours as a film takes, mixes up her feelings of love and intimacy, though she clarifies that her relationship with Ed is platonic.

Ed Pincus
Ed Pincus

Ed seems less intent on keeping boundaries clear. He tells Lucia he loves her and at one point Jane catches them alone in a situation that sets off alarm bells for her–and like photographers in a war zone, Ed and Lucia immediately pick up their cameras and start shooting the conflict. Whenever we see Lucia talking to the camera, she looks drained; the elements in her life that might distract her from her grief instead serve as reminders. Her big, black dog originally belonged to the woman who was murdered. Her cute New York apartment was the one she shared with the woman who was killed in the hit-and-run. But when Jane looks at Lucia she sees a blonde 25 years younger than she is, whom her husband seems to adore.

Mixed up in all of this drama is Ed’s worsening health. Receiving bad news on camera he simply says, ” Well, that’s sobering.” In stunning cinematography we see the seasons at the farm: fall, winter, spring, summer and then spring again, when a newly cue-ball-bald Ed tells the camera that the doctor had said he probably wouldn’t live past March, so he’s grateful. Ed lived two seasons longer and died this past November. When I saw the film in April as part of the Independent Film Festival of Boston, Small did a poignant Q & A after the screening. One of the first things she told us was Jane had chosen not to attend.

One Cut, One Life Trailer from Lucia Small on Vimeo.

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

Domestic Violence in ‘The Long Goodbye’

During the late 70s and early 80s, the one place on television I did see a serious and unflinching depiction of domestic violence was when the UHF station (that had a “Creature Double Feature” on Saturday afternoons) showed, on a school night, Robert Altman’s 1973 masterpiece ‘The Long Goodbye’ (now streaming on Netflix) based on the novel by Raymond Chandler (also the author of the book adapted into the Humphrey Bogart/ Lauren Bacall vehicle ‘The Big Sleep’). Unlike the film adaptation of ‘Farewell My Lovely,’ another Chandler novel brought to the screen in the 70s (this time with Robert Mitchum in the lead), ‘Goodbye’ wasn’t a period piece but updated to “Me” generation Los Angeles with a slightly scruffy Elliott Gould (who had previously co-starred in Altman’s ‘M*A*S*H’ as Trapper John) playing Phillip Marlowe, the same private detective character Mitchum played in ‘Lovely’ and whom Bogart made famous. The film also shares the same screenwriter with ‘Sleep,’ Leigh Brackett. In the forties as well as the seventies she was one of the few women whose screenplays were actually produced. Brackett also wrote for the series ‘The Rockford Files’ which has the same smart-ass, 70s sensibility and southern California setting.

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When I was growing up in the 70s and early 80s, depictions and references to domestic violence were everywhere on TV–not as cautionary tales or public service announcements, but as incidental and inevitable parts of life. Humorous daytime programming like Bugs Bunny used domestic violence as fodder for jokes as did reruns of That Girl. Dramatic evening fare like Dynasty and special network showings of Gone With The Wind showed “sympathetic” male characters hitting or raping their wives with no personal or legal consequences. Domestic violence was barely against the law in those days. Miles Davis in his autobiography tells of sharing a laugh with the police officer his then-girlfriend, the actress Cicely Tyson had called after Davis beat the shit out of her. The officer left without talking to her or arresting him.

During the late 70s and early 80s, the one place on television I did see a serious and unflinching depiction of domestic violence was when the UHF station (that had a “Creature Double Feature” on Saturday afternoons) showed, on a school night, Robert Altman’s 1973 masterpiece The Long Goodbye (now streaming on Netflix), based on the novel by Raymond Chandler (also the author of the book adapted into the Humphrey Bogart/ Lauren Bacall vehicle The Big Sleep). Unlike the film adaptation of Farewell My Lovely another Chandler novel brought to the screen in the 70s (this time with Robert Mitchum in the lead), Goodbye wasn’t a period piece but updated to “Me” generation Los Angeles with a slightly scruffy Elliott Gould (who had previously starred in Altman’s M*A*S*H as Trapper John) playing Philip Marlowe, the same private detective character Mitchum played in Lovely and whom Bogart made famous. The film also shares the same screenwriter with Sleep, Leigh Brackett. In the 40s as well as the 70s she was one of the few women whose screenplays were actually produced. Brackett also wrote for the series The Rockford Files which has the same smart-ass, 70s sensibility in a southern California setting.

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Philip Marlowe and his neighbors

Instead of Bogart visiting mansions and private greenhouses, Gould’s Marlowe travels from a tacky, dark-paneled dive bar–in which sunshine comes through an open door like an unwelcome intruder–to a client’s Malibu beach house with huge windows framed in white wood around views that are like a coffee table book of artists’ landscapes come to life and then back to the funky apartment building where he lives across the balcony from a group of young women who make candles, get stoned and practice topless yoga. Gould’s Marlowe is handsome and relatively young, but enough years older than the women–and far enough removed from their post-counterculture lifestyle–that they call him “Mr. Marlowe.”

This Marlowe has a touch of the 60s counterculture in him as well (his anti-authoritarian streak is also present in the Marlowe of the novels from the 30s, 40s and 50s), which we see in his non-cooperation when police question him, first at home and then at the station (in a scene marred by a brief reference to blackface when Marlowe uses the ink on his hands leftover from fingerprinting to darken his cheeks and forehead and asks for a banjo). The police inform him that his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton)–who we’ve seen Marlowe give a ride to Tijuana the night before–has beaten his wife, Sylvia, to death. When the police hand Marlowe the photos of her body (which the camera keeps from our eyes), his cool evaporates, but he still doesn’t give the police any information. He tells them his friend couldn’t have possibly committed the crime.

Marlowe is released when the police close the case–because they find out that Lennox is also dead, and left a suicide note confessing to the crime. Marlowe, still unconvinced of Lennox’s guilt, decides to investigate the case himself.

A pre-Star Wars John Williams composed the title song with Johnny Mercer which, in an amusing touch is, in different renditions, the only music (beside a little bit of “Hooray for Hollywood” at the beginning and end) in the film: the guy at the piano in the bar is practicing it, the radio station in the car has a woman singing it, a Muzak version plays in a supermarket and the melody flows from the horns of a Mexican funeral procession.

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Philip Marlowe and Eileen Wade

Domestic violence seems to seep into every corner of the film in a similar vein. Marlowe says to Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt) a client looking for her missing husband, Roger (Sterling Hayden). “Don’t tell me you ran into a door,” about the bruise on her face. We can see she’s afraid of alcoholic, unstable Roger: when Marlowe finds him and brings him back, she cringes as Roger suddenly raises his arm. Roger also doesn’t mind making a scene in public: after a humiliating encounter with his “doctor” at a house party he orders everyone to go home, just a moment after Eileen, always the good hostess, had asked if any of the guests wanted more wine, her pretend-nothing-is-wrong demeanor familiar to those of us who have spent time in abusive households. Their neighbors disperse without checking to see if she will be safe. Marlowe is the only one who stays with her. He suggests that she spend the night at a friend’s. She tells him no, because the last time she did so she came home to see her husband had smashed all her belongings– and was unconscious on the floor.

The cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond, points his camera through windows and captures reflections in scenes all through the film, so picture and window frames become the frames of shots. But Zsigmond’s most exhilarating work comes when Marlowe and Eileen are in her beachfront home after a candlelit dinner and he questions her about Sylvia’s death. While we see and hear their conversation we make out, through the glass behind them, another character–whom Eileen catches sight of at the last minute–stumbling into the surf. Both she and Marlowe dash across the beach into the ocean, but the churning water tosses them like ping pong balls across the frame. They scream the drowned character’s name above the crash of waves, but we can barely hear them over the din as they struggle to keep from being swept away in the tide themselves. Exhausted and defeated, they collapse on the shore. When the police come, they are both wrapped in towels, with wealthy Malibu spectators clustered around, engaged in an impromptu drinking party, which Marlowe, drunk himself, denounces, then leaves.

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Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe

Brackett’s script and particularly Gould’s performance are like a mashup of the best parts of 1930s and 40s screwball comedies and detective movies from the same era with 70s realism thrown in. The gangster, Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell) who comes to Marlowe looking for the money Terry stole from him, is something of a comedian himself, which leaves the audience unprepared for the moment when, without warning, he brutalizes a woman character. This scene isn’t one, like  those in so many films since the standards against violence were first loosened, in the 1960s, where the audience can ignore the humanity of the victim: we hear her screams of agony, not just in this scene but as a backdrop to the ones that follow. We see her struck,  not through the eyes of the perpetrator (as these scenes are usually framed), but through the eyes of outraged and sickened spectators: Marlowe and the gangster’s underlings. After Augustine orders her to be taken away, he says to Marlowe, “Now, that’s someone I love. You, I don’t even like.” The joke makes the violence even harder to stomach. In a later scene Augustine, shirks responsibility for the incident, referring to it as “the night (she) became ill.”

When, as a teenager, I read the book, The Big Sleep (the title of which I hadn’t even realized was a reference to death), I was surprised at how much darker it was than the film I had grown up seeing on TV. Because The Long Goodbye was made in the 70s, its movie version could remain truer to Chandler’s pessimistic vision while using contemporary details and Altman’s trademark overlapping dialogue and improvisation. Altman added to his usual repertory cast of actors (before he became famous for Kung Fu and Kill Bill, David Carradine made an appearance here as the chatty pothead who shares a jail cell with Marlowe) skilled non-actors (Van Pallandt had been a folksinger in Europe, Bouton an ex-pro-baseball player, Rydell a director) to make a world we recognize, in which the men who seem funny and charming abuse women, a woman who has been abused may have other, hidden dimensions and the shaggy-haired, harmless-seeming jokester who declares throughout the film, “It’s OK with me,” is, in the end, the only one who has enough sense of right and wrong to try to get justice for a woman’s senseless murder.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeNyD9UFXHs”]

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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.

Sir Patrick Stewart Fights Domestic Violence, Gives Out Hugs, and Flies a Spaceship

And in a society where male revelations about abuse, physical, emotional, or sexual, are still considered a mark of weakness, it’s fantastic that such a successful figure is willing to set an example. Especially when that person is Captain Jean Luc Picard, a super smart, sexy, sensitive, nerves-of-steel spaceship captain. I have a feminist daydream of Kirk (Shatner), Janeway (Mulgrew), Sisco (Brooks), and Picard (Stewart) doing a women’s rights PSA: I would make it my ringtone forever.

Written by Rachel Redfern as part of our theme week on Male Feminists and Allies.

Sir Patrick Stewart being amazing for Amnesty International.
Sir Patrick Stewart being amazing for Amnesty International.

At a spry 78 years old, Sir Patrick Stewart is just as popular as he was 25 years ago in Star Trek: The Next Generation, perhaps even more so now as his persona has popped from talented dramatic actor to powerful women’s rights activist, and an almost mythic status as an all-around amazing human being.

And part of that love and general good feeling toward Sir Stewart is his vulnerable and very personal campaign to end domestic violence, support battered women, and fight for women’s rights. In a world filled with Alec Baldwins, Todd Akins, and Hunter Moores, perhaps we just expect old white men to be entitled and offensive. Similarly, in a world filled with Katy Perrys and Taylor Swifts who insist on denying the need for feminism (how nice for them as wealthy, successful white women) and insisting that they are NOT feminists, it is inspiring to see a man willing to not only own the label, but wear it.

 

"This is what a feminist looks like" and it looks good.
“This is what a feminist looks like”–and it looks good.

 

And really, it seems mind-boggling that Sir Stewart is seen as an original, groundbreaking human being when in reality he’s fighting for basic human rights. Why is saying, “Stop Hitting Women” such a unique perspective for a male public figure?

But considering the overwhelming response pretty much every time he steps in front of a camera, millions of people are connecting with him in a profound way. It must come from his willingness to share the painful and intimate details of his own past with domestic violence on a global scale, then turn around, listen to someone else’s story, and respond with empathy and sincere compassion. It probably helps that he does all that in a brilliant English accent and fantastic deep, rich voice—that man could read my stereo instructions and I’d breathlessly wait for a plot twist.

And his interest in women’s causes isn’t just a cause-of-the-day as, let’s be honest, most celebrity causes are only to foster a positive public image and distract from that time they hit a pedestrian while doing 90 MPH in their Porsche. As an obviously huge participant in sci-fi conventions where there is a lot of fan interaction, fans are constantly reporting that he is just as committed to spreading awareness when there’s a line of 300 hundred Deanna Trois and William Rikers waiting to get his autograph as when there’s a microphone and a camera in his face.

One blogger tells of the time she got to ask him a question about his fight against domestic violence at an Austin Comic Con convention panel and he was great; then she asked him a similar question when she was standing in line to talk to him and he made a special point of spending extra time with her discussing resources she might be personally interested in.

Sir Stewart’s involvement with Amnesty International has also led him to be the face of a very public campaign, posting his own and his mother’s experiences of domestic abuse at the hands of his father. And on top of that, adding his public criticism of the police’s handling of that situation; at that point, when his mother tried to report what was happening the police would respond, “Well, you must have done something to make him mad.” Or doctors would assert, “Mrs. Stewart it takes two to make a fight.”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPzVUGE3dds”]

The above stories highlight victim blaming at its finest; an unfortunate, but still daily experience for many women who report sexual assault, stalking, abuse, violence, and even the spread of intimate photos online. But I love that while Stewart is harshly critical of such terrible tactics, he’s also a huge proponent of increasing expectations for men and young boys. People are people, some are good and some are bad, but when the expectation is not, “How could you let him do this to you?” but rather, “How could you treat a fellow human being this way?” victims are treated respectfully and the default condition is “Real people don’t treat other people this way.”

And in a society where male revelations about abuse, physical, emotional, or sexual, are still considered a mark of weakness, it’s fantastic that such a successful figure is willing to set an example. Especially when that person is Captain Jean Luc Picard, a super smart, sexy, sensitive, nerves-of-steel spaceship captain. I have a feminist daydream of Kirk (Shatner), Janeway (Mulgrew), Sisco (Brooks), and Picard (Stewart) doing a women’s rights PSA: I would make it my ringtone forever.

And while we wish that things were better for women (and they sort of are), when the response to Rihanna’s own experience is for Chris Brown to get a tattoo of a battered woman on his neck and then sing at the 2013 VMAs, there’s still a long way to go. (Feminist fantasy number two where Stewart eloquently destroys Brown, shaming him so publicly that banks will freeze his bank accounts, give the money to a battered women’s shelter, and Brown won’t be able to find work as a birthday party entertainer in Wyoming.)

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Imagine Chris Brown on the receiving end of this.

The truth of all this is that as much as we love Stewart the actor, we desperately need Stewart the activist as a substantial male proponent of feminism. As with any movement, people need leaders that they can identify with, and as dynamic as Gloria Steinem is, she might not always be the most relatable face for men who are interested in women’s rights.

Sir Patrick Stewart, we salute you (while possibly wearing a Starfleet uniform).

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Network TV is Broken. So How Does Shonda Rhimes Keep Making Hits? by Willa Paskin via The New York Times

Girls on Film: The Danger of the ‘Female Filmmaker’ Label by Monica Bartyzel via The Week 

The Onion Can Go to Hell [Trigger warning: on their “joke” over Chris Brown beating Rihanna to death] by Melissa McEwan via Shakesville

YA Author Takes on Gendered Book Covers with the Coverflip Challenge by Rebecca Pahle via The Mary Sue 

The Gender Coverup by Maureen Johnson via The Huffington Post

This 17-Year-Old Coder Is Saving Twitter from TV Spoilers (Spoiler: She’s a Girl) by Dana Liebelson via Mother Jones

The Women of Mad Men Kick Ass in Season 6 by Nicole Aragi via Buzzfeed

What have you been reading or writing this week?? Tell us in the comments!