Domestic Violence – Page 2

Panmela Castro Graffiti Art: A Feminist Statement?

Panmela Castro

Written by Amanda Rodriguez

“I was able to survive through the art of graffiti.” – Panmela Castro

Heloisa Passo’s short documentary Panmela Castro about the eponymous Brazilian graffiti artist and women’s rights activist is included as part of the Focus Forward: Food for Thought installment of the Tribeca Online Film Festival. In around three minutes, Castro manages to be inspiring and recontextualize graffiti art. Castro views grafitti as an act of expression that seizes women’s rights. She sees her art as a way to bring women together through the hosting of graffiti workshops for women where they make art while talking about women’s issues like domestic violence, the cycle of violence, and gender equality. In Castro’s vision, the movement of female-centric graffiti spreads from country to country as women share it among their communities.

I was also struck by what a male dominant artform graffiti traditionally is and how moving it is to see a group of women gathered around a building creating graffiti in a style that I’ve rarely seen, as it is a unique expression of the experience of being female in an oppressive patriarchal world.

Part of Castro’s Bob Bar solo exhibition “The Myth”

Though graffiti is typically a masculine artform, it is also typically the expression of the oppressed. Graffiti has its roots in underprivileged, urban youth of color. Not only was graffiti a method with which these young men could articulate their individuality and their sense of repression, but it is also an anti-authoritarian type of protest. When considering Castro’s grafitti, this art-as-protest theme becomes particularly prominent because public spaces are so often unwelcoming for women, if not downright unsafe for them. This idea of reappropriating public space, of claiming space by marking it, customizing it, turning it into a reflection of the female self…is awesomely powerful.

Panmela Castro signs her work Anarkia Boladona

The short film lists some of the international accolades that have been bestowed upon Castro for her important work. In the end, Castro calls herself a “dreamer” and draws inspiration from one of her recurring character creations, Liberthé, who is “free in such an ample way that we can’t even imagine.” Castro’s artistic vision coupled with her vision for the global unity of women through grafitti art is subversive, beautiful, and just what we need. The idea that one woman acting out her dream can have a butterfly effect, causing revolution in the lives of other women around the world gives me hope. Castro brushes away the cobwebs of apathy and shows us that maybe we can make a meaningful change in our own lives and in the lives of other women, too, by just doing what we love.

Dating Violence and Sexual Abuse in ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’

Logan Lerman and Emma Watson in The Perks of Being a Wallflower

[This post is very spoilery for the plot of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.]

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”

This line is spoken twice in The Perks of Being a Wallflower. First, Charlie (Logan Lerman) asks his teacher, Bill (Paul Rudd), why his friends and family choose to be with people who treat them badly. Later in the film, Sam (Emma Watson) poses Charlie the same question. The response is the same both times, echoing a theme that resonates throughout the movie.

Charlie’s sister Candace (Nina Dobrev) excuses the violence she receives from her boyfriend (nicknamed Ponytail Derek), who slaps her in the face. She defends her boyfriend to her brother, giving a list of excuses that seem all too familiar: he’s not usually like that, she was egging him on, he’s a sweet guy most of the time.

Charlie’s friend Patrick (Ezra Miller) is in a secret relationship with a closeted gay student Brad (Johnny Simmons). Brad doesn’t want to make the relationship public because he fears losing his social position, and fears a violent backlash from his father – but he no longer has to get himself drunk before being intimate with Patrick. Patrick accepts the terms of the relationship because it’s still an improvement from what it used to be.


Charlie and Patrick (Ezra Miller) in shop class

Charlie’s friend Sam is in a relationship with a guy who cheats on her, disrespects her, and doesn’t value her opinion. She doesn’t end the relationship until she finds out about his cheating. Before then, she makes excuses for him, and even halfway admits that he’s no good for her, but she still continues the relationship for longer than she should.

Charlie himself enters a relationship with Mary Elizabeth (Mae Whitman) almost by accident. He doesn’t really want to be with her, is turned off by her aggressive personality, and has lingering romantic feelings for Sam, but he continues to date Mary Elizabeth because he doesn’t want to hurt her feelings by breaking it off. Mary Elizabeth, in turn, doesn’t seem to be getting much from her relationship with Charlie, but his appeal to her seems obvious – he’s nice, he’s her friend, and he won’t disrespect her.

Charlie after a date with Mary Elizabeth (Mae Whitman)

All of the characters accept less than they deserve, and the consequences are humiliating and/or catastrophic, as we see them experience behaviors that range from normal teenage insensitivity to violent assault.

Candace has the easiest time getting away from Ponytail Derek’s violent behavior; she breaks up with him off-screen and attends her senior prom with her girlfriends. The rest of the characters aren’t as lucky.

Charlie kisses Sam in a game of Truth or Dare, hurting Mary Elizabeth’s feelings and throwing a wrench into her friendship with Sam. He is forced to keep his distance from his new friends for several weeks and some of his bad episodes return.

Brad’s father finds out about his son’s relationship with Patrick, and violently beats Brad. Brad’s friends jump Patrick in the middle of the cafeteria after calling him a faggot, and he’s at risk of serious injury until Charlie steps in and saves him – but the moment is less than triumphant, as Charlie blacks out during the fight and doesn’t remember knocking out two strong athletes. The fight indicates something troubling about Charlie’s past, and Patrick has to live with his anger at Brad and his guilt for what Brad’s father did to him.

Sam finds out that her boyfriend Craig has been cheating on her, and she breaks up with him. We learn that Sam received her first kiss from her father’s co-worker at the age of seven, which goes a long way to explain her attitudes towards men. Cheating is a drop in the bucket compared to what happened to her as a child.


Sam has a tearful conversation with Charlie

Shortly after that, Sam and Charlie kiss and become intimate. It’s a beautiful moment between two friends who love each other, but the result is near calamitous. A flood of repressed memories washes over Charlie as he realizes that his beloved aunt, the one member of his family who he felt close to and understood him, molested him when he was young, and he has a mental breakdown.

The characters in The Perks of Being a Wallflower make excuses for the way their partners treat them – “He’s not usually like that,” “At least he doesn’t have to be drunk to love me anymore” – but the most telling excuse of all is the reason why Charlie ultimately forgives his late aunt: he knows that she, too, was sexually abused as a child.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. The Perks of Being a Wallflower premiered in September, but its themes resonate in a month dedicated to understanding and stopping domestic violence and sexual abuse. The characters in the film show us how the cycle of abuse repeats itself, how abuse victims often blame themselves or make excuses for the people who hurt them.

But the film still ends on a note of hope, as Charlie begins to recover in therapy and his friends and siblings visit him in his institution. It shows that empathy and strong ties of friendship and family can help heal old wounds, and how survivors can help each other cope through trauma with love and understanding.

‘Carousel’: A Fairytale Screen Adaptation of the 2012 Republican Anti-Woman Agenda

Movie poster for Carousel

I loved this film. When I was 13 or so.

Re-watching it this week—for the purpose of writing about how much I admired the way it handled domestic violence issues (in 1956, no less)—I realized my 13-year-old self understood jack shit about misogyny in film, and she certainly didn’t understand what constitutes successfully raising awareness about violence against women.

The only thing I can think to say about Carousel now, as a 34-year-old woman who’s been both a witness to and a victim of physical abuse at the hands of men, isn’t just that I’m appalled by its sexism or the blasé nature in which it deals with physical abuse (I am), but that I’m seriously freaked out by how a movie musical from sixty years ago manages to feel like a fairytale screen adaptation of the 2012 Republican anti-woman agenda.

A film written, directed, and produced in 1956 will obviously echo the cultural climate of the 1950s, and during that time, rigid gender roles permeated; primarily, men were the breadwinners, and women were the homemakers. And advertisements like this existed:

Women can work outside the home now without the universe exploding (thanks, bros!), but that doesn’t mean we don’t still regularly deal with nonsense I mean gang rape fantasy advertisements like this:

We’ve come a long way, baby? I don’t fucking think so. But I’ll get back to that.

First of all, the plot: Billy Bigelow is a barker (a person who tries to attract patrons) at a carousel, and all the ladies love him, including Mrs. Mullin, the carousel owner. Billy catches the eye of the young, pretty Julie Jordan and helps her onto the carousel like she’s a child, and then stands next to her the whole time, staring at her like a fucking serial killer. The jealous Mrs. Mullin kicks out Julie and her friend Carrie, and when Julie argues about being treated unfairly, Mrs. Mullin slut-shames her for a supposed indiscretion with Billy. The indiscretion? Julie let Billy put his arm around her waist. Floozy!

Billy and Julie in Carousel

Billy appears out of nowhere to defend Julie, and as a result, Mrs. Mullin fires him. In one of the most offensive moments in the film, Billy smacks Mrs. Mullin on the ass and says, “Go on, then, git,” as if she were an animal.

Carrie decides to go home (they have a curfew because apparently being a woman and being a child are the same thing in 1956), but Julie refuses—even though she knows it’ll mean getting fired from her job as a mill worker—because she wants to spend time with this older man whom she knows nothing about, except that he wants to bum money from her; that he’s a womanizer; and that he keeps asking “aren’t you scared of me?” like he’s offended that she isn’t. (Man up, Bigelow!)

This is a movie musical, though, so within the next five seconds Julie and Billy sing a song about love. I’m not going to pretend I don’t love this song.

They get married. Billy can’t (or won’t) find work, so they live off Julie’s aunt. Billy—because he’s so distraught and self-loathing about his inability to find employment—physically abuses Julie (off-screen), but he admits he did it because “we would argue, and she’d be right.” Well then!

Billy basically ignores her for the entire rest of the film in favor of hanging out with his criminal friend Jigger (WTF) until Julie tells Billy she’s pregnant, at which point he caresses her arms and stomach as he helps her walk up like five steps because oh my god delicate flower carrying his spawn.

I laughed in horror at the spawn-song soliloquy that follows; it perfectly encapsulates the creepy gender constraints of 2012 I mean 1956:

“His mother can teach him the way to behave, but she won’t make a sissy out of him. Not him! Not my boy! Not Bill! Bill … my boy Bill; I will see that he’s named after me, I will. My boy, Bill! He’ll be tall and tough as a tree, will Bill!”

The song continues in the same ridiculous fashion, with Billy listing off all the shit His Boy Bill might do when he gets older (e.g. hammering spikes, ferrying a boat, hauling a scow along a canal, becoming a heavyweight champ, or, if that doesn’t work out, maybe becoming the President of the United States, duh). But then, Billy’s all—“Wait a minute! Could it be? What the hell! What if he is a girl?” Actual lyrics.

Let the horror get more horrifying.

Listen. “You can have fun with a son, but you gotta be a father to a girl.” Got it? And this girl, she’ll have ribbons in her hair, and she’ll be pink and white as peaches and cream! We don’t experience the pleasure of hearing about what Peaches and Cream Girl will do with her life, but we definitely get an earful about 1) her looks and 2) all the things Daddy needs to do before her arrival. Suddenly—at the mere prospect of raising a girl child instead of a boy child—Daddy goes all Male Provider on our asses.

Let me not forget to mention this end of the song creep-out moment: “Dozens of boys pursue her. Many a likely lad does what he can to woo her from her faithful dad. She has a few pink and white young fellers of two or three, but my little girl gets hungry every night, and she comes home to me!” What is this—a song from one of those 100% unacceptable for obvious reasons father-daughter purity balls? (That lovely little tradition started as recently as 1998, by the way.)

In the end, Billy dies by falling on his own knife (seriously, fail) when he and Jigger try to steal money from a rich dude. After his death, he passes on to some makeshift Heaven-type situation where he polishes fake plastic stars for all of eternity, and for some reason, the owners of Heaven allow him to return to Earth for a day in order to help Julie and his daughter feel less horrible about him having been an overall shitty husband and criminal. Yay.

By this point, his daughter Louise is fifteen years old. Upon his return to Earth, Billy finds Louise dancing on the beach and, after he realizes everyone keeps making fun of her because of his robbery attempt, he tries to cheer her up—by giving her one of the fake plastic stars he stole (ha ha ha theft again) from Heaven.

But Louise refuses to take it! Because who the fuck is this dude!

And what does she get for refusing a gift from a random man who showed up out of nowhere? A slap on the hand. Literally. The same man who physically abused his wife when he was alive somehow walks out of Heaven and slaps the shit out of his daughter within the first ten minutes of meeting her for the first time. That isn’t even the worst of it.

The worst of it?

She runs inside to tell her mother that a strange man on the beach slapped her—but—but—it didn’t feel like a slap, she says; it felt like a kiss.

Awwwww, that’s sweet, right? Nope! Not for a fucking second. Let me tell you why.

I started this piece by talking about how my thirteen-year-old girl self remembered Carousel as a happy musical that shed light on a bad man who hit his wife. I remembered, too, that he died, but I remembered it as a punishment of sorts, a repercussion caused by living life as an abusive dickface who treated women like absolute shit. I didn’t care about his death. His death felt like a consequence of bad behavior to me, and in a way, it is—stealing money from someone at knifepoint is probably wrong, for the most part, heh. But the ultimate message of Carousel (that I somehow glommed onto as a teenager) isn’t saying to men: “Don’t abuse women, or else.” It’s saying something closer to: “SEE WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON’T MAN UP AND SUPPORT YOUR WOMEN, YOU LAZY BUMS?”

It’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of “failing” as a man. It’s oh-so-1956. It’s oh-so-2012.

We’re living in an age in which women’s basic rights—specifically the right to bodily autonomy, including safe and legal access to abortion—keep coming under fire by conservative Republicans and unfortunately aren’t more than half-assedly defended by supposed “progressive” Democrats, either. Further, the arguments against abortion and reproductive rights center around this lie that it’s all about Stopping the Murder of Innocent, Yet-To-Be Born Infants.

Bullshit.

The abortion debate (and now the access to birth control debate—for fuck’s sake!) exists because we live in a culture that time warped to, or possibly never actually left, 1956. Women are still fighting for basic human rights—in 2012—because power-hungry, neo-conservative bullies can’t stop jerking off to the fantasy of living out the rest of their lives in Carousel-Land.

That’s why re-watching this harmless little musical made me absolutely cringe.

It’s a film with dizzying dance sequences and well-known musical numbers to be sure, but it’s also a film in which women are valued and treated with respect only while pregnant, and who are otherwise disregarded, objectified, slut-shamed, abused, or infantilized, and who are expected to accept the actions of the men around them without judgment, regardless of the harm those actions may cause. And there you have it, readers: the 2012 G.O.P. Platform.

Now let’s all cry together:

Quote of the Day: Clementine Ford Calls Out Hollywood’s Excusing Of Domestic Abuse

Trigger Warning: Domestic Abuse

Chris Brown scowling

We all know what Chris Brown did. His brutal beating of then-girlfriend Rihanna has made a permanent mark on his career. On Twitter, it’s easy to see how divisive the situation has gotten. Most people are disgusted with Brown, and often tweet taunts to him about his violent temper. His devoted fans, known as “Team Breezy,” blame Rihanna for starting the altercation, and even worse, claim that it would be worth enduring physical assault in order to be Brown’s girlfriend. Brown was unrepentant and still has an explosive temper. And yet he won Grammys, and was allowed to perform twice at this year’s ceremony. It’s obvious that, in Hollywood, domestic abuse isn’t that big a deal. Chris Brown’s career continued, and even flourished after the incident. And other domestic abusers continue to get work in Hollywood too. Mel Gibson. Michael Fassbender. Gary Oldman. Tommy Lee. Josh Brolin. I bet you didn’t even know some of these men are abusers, and these are just a few examples.

This leads to my quote of the day, which has been making the rounds on Tumblr this week. This is excerpted from Clementine Ford’s excellent article, Chris Brown isn’t the only one:

And then there’s Charlie Sheen. Sheen’s sordid history includes shooting Kelly Preston with a .22 calibre pistol, throwing chairs at his then wife Denise Richards, being sued by a UCLA student for allegedly hitting her in the head after she refused to have sex with him, allegedly strangling at least two of his former girlfriends and just generally being a god-awful d-ckmonger. Yet none of that mattered to Chuck Lorre and the other people making squillions of dollars from the long running Two and a Half Men, a televisual fart that didn’t just succeed in offending the tastes of thinking people everywhere but also legitimised Sheen as some kind of raffish japester. In the end, Sheen was fired not because he’s a disgusting human being with a gross history of violence against women but because he had a drug problem and was publicly rude to his boss.

Charlie Sheen’s meltdown didn’t ruin his career. It fueled it. “Winning” and “Tiger Blood” became memes, his solo shows sold out, his Twitter feed got millions of followers within days. And now he’ll be getting another sitcom, Anger Management, which is apparently already breaking ratings records. It begs the question – how much worse can a person get before Hollywood finally gives up on them? Why are we predicting the ruin of Kristen Stewart’s career for a cheating scandal, when Charlie Sheen gets new opportunities after repeatedly committing attempted murder?

Unfortunately, I think we all know the answer.

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