Drama – Page 36 – Bitch Flicks

Guest Writer Wednesday: Where Do We Go Now?

Arabic movie poster for Where Do We Go Now?

This is a guest post by Kyna Morgan.

Nadine Labaki is a pretty big deal. Following up her directorial debut, the 2007 film Caramel (which she also wrote and starred in), she brought her sophomore directorial effort, Where Do We Go Now? back to the Toronto International Film Festival as co-writer, producer, director and star. I was lucky enough to snag tickets to a 9:45AM showing. While normally I wouldn’t be caught watching films at that ungodly hour of the morning, I couldn’t resist seeing this film. It turns out I hit the mother lode as a movie-lover. In fact, it was evident from the laughs and the sniffles from my fellow movie goers that Labaki’s film affected everyone. It’s a comedy, a drama, a musical, a social commentary! It’s quite simple yet extraordinarily complex at the same time. At the end of the festival it received the Cadillac People’s Choice Award, one of the few awards actually given out at Toronto (a non-competitive festival), and has since gone on to snag a U.S. distribution deal with Sony Pictures Classics and break box office records in Lebanon. Earlier in the year, it was an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival in the “Un Certain Regard” category. I didn’t know what to expect from the film, since I’m often misdirected by film synopses and I hadn’t even heard of it prior to September, but not knowing is one of the most exciting parts for me. Here’s what I found.

The story is set in a small town in Lebanon whose population is divided between Muslims and Christians. They have a mosque. They have a church. They eat together, live beside each other, celebrate together, mourn together, and they have spent many generations in peaceful existence with each other. Religious differences seem to be the least of their concerns when it comes to functioning as a community. The film begins with a group of women dressed in black walking together in a close group, moving in unison with the beat of the music over the opening credits, surrounded by the dry, mountainous land where they live. It appears as if they might almost break out in dance, but in a close shot, we see that they are sad, even grief-stricken, clutching rosaries, bouquets and photos. As the music dies down, they break into two groups. They are in a cemetery and each moves to one side of it, then scatters amongst the graves which they are there to tend. We see that one side of the cemetery is Christian, the other Muslim.

While Where Do We Go Now? has an incredibly strong ensemble cast – actresses as the leads with actors as supporting characters – director Nadine Labaki could be considered the main star. She plays “Amale,” the owner of a small café which serves as the heart of the town where people gather, both Muslim and Christian alike. Her secret love, the painter “Rabih” (played by Julian Farhat) who is there to renovate her café, also secretly loves her. Toward the beginning of the film, this is played out in a scene in which they dance closely and confess their love through song, all of which is Amale’s daydream as she washes dishes while Rabih looks good standing on his ladder stealing glimpses of her in the kitchen. I’ve heard the film called a musical, but this isn’t really the case. The characters don’t really break into song to replace dialogue, but rather it’s used to enhance the dialogue, and there are only about three short “musical” sequences in the film.

Everything seems to be going well for the townspeople. They have a television set up by a group of young men and the mayor, and once they’re able to get reception (they’re very far away from the nearest big town), the whole town gathers to watch a program. The mayor makes a speech, obviously very proud that this group of young men was able to make this special event happen. He comments on the happiness he feels at having so many years pass living harmoniously with his Muslim friends and neighbors (he is Christian), but then the television program turns to news and the violence that’s occurring elsewhere in Lebanon between rival groups of people. Desperate to preserve their peaceful way of life and ignorance about the outside world full of conflict, the women of the town begin to shout and complain at their husbands and their male neighbors, about whatever they can think of, in an attempt to drown out the noise of the awful news. This is where the story really begins. This film is about a group of women who go to hilarious lengths to prevent the problems of the outside world from entering their own town.

The comedy and the humorous grotesques which Labaki creates are tempered with drama. The turning point in the film comes when several Muslim men find that the door to the mosque has been left ajar and animals have come in, soiling the prayer rugs. No one takes the blame. In fact, it seems as if no one is to blame. It’s an accident, but a few of the men are determined to find who did it and start blaming their Christian neighbors and friends. Later, it is found that someone has retaliated by vandalizing the church, breaking a statue of the Virgin Mary. Something must be done, and the men seem too concerned about who did what that the women must take over. A series of schemes is put into action to distract the men from the problems in the town: a fake miracle experienced by Madame Yvonne (the mayor’s wife) when she hears the Virgin Mary call out various men of the town for their transgressions (including her own neighbor for things she doesn’t like him doing, as well as her husband), hiring a troupe of exotic Russian dancers to pretend to have a bus breakdown so they have to stay in the town for several days (including being relocated to the homes of many of the men and young boys, who couldn’t be happier), and drugging the men of the town by cooking hashish into breads, cookies and cakes which they are served in Amale’s café as they watch a belly dancing show put on by the Russian dancers. It is this final plan that allows the women to use intelligence gathered by one of the Russian dancers to find where the guns are buried which some of the men have been talking about using. Now, in the height of the enjoyment of the hashish-laced baked goods, drink and dancing women, the men’s desire to kill each other is the furthest thing from their minds. The women sneak out of the café to find the spot where the guns are buried, measuring by counting steps from a landmark, fussing over whose feet are bigger and can calculate properly. Eventually they find the stash and carry it to another place in the town to bury, swearing to each other that they will never speak of this to the men.

Labaki brilliantly captures how women speak to each other and treat each other and, what’s more, what they’re willing to do for one another. These are not women who compete with each other for men – most of them are married, anyway – nor compete for attention or status. They are not only neighbors, they are friends, and despite the difference in their religion, they seem to identify first and foremost as members – and even better yet, the leaders – of the community. They don’t let each other get away with anything, and make it clear what they want. They are self-actualized women who know who they are. They are the heart of the community. And they’re funny as hell. They’re a smart, scheming group of women who want to live in peace and are willing to do almost anything to secure it. Labaki shows women apart from men, outside of the definition of these women as wives or mothers, even potential brides (like Amale might be considered by Rabih). There is a strength in this as a storytelling device as well because it allows the women to be women without the constant presence of men to remind us as viewers that these women somehow belong to someone. Yes, they are trying to solve the problems being played out by the men, but it is simply because they know how to solve them and they know they have the power to do so. They are just more than half of humanity, and they act like it!

What drives the drugging of the male population of the town, though, is what happens a bit earlier. All of the hilarity of the schemes and misdirection that the women attempt is tempered with a dramatic scene so beautifully written, acted and shot, it becomes the film’s reality check. While the town is sleeping in the wee hours one morning, Takla’s (one of the main women, played by Claude Baz Moussawbaa) nephew returns on his motorbike with Takla’s son, Nassim. They had gone the day before to a nearby city and spent the night so they could sell the load of goods they had carried on the bike. But Takla finds her son is dead, having been shot by a stray bullet as he and his cousin tried to escape an area where there was a violent conflict. Labaki does not shy away or use some type of cinematographic cop out to avoid the pain this woman feels at realizing her son is dead. She puts the camera on her and lets the woman tell her own story, pulling her son off of the motorbike, cradling him in her arms, rocking him back and forth, wailing. It’s a stunning performance and a sobering moment in the film where the reality that exists outside of the town is dumped right onto Takla’s doorstep. She hides her son’s body in the well. She is determined to not let his death destroy the town and destroy the future she undoubtedly was determined for him to have: peace. Only days later do her closest friends demand to know what has happened (she is sad, reclusive, and they know something is wrong), so she tells them. They all swear not to say a word, and they begin to hatch a plan.

When both the priest and the imam of the town announce on the town’s speaker that all men are required to show up for a meeting at Amale’s café, it is then that the women put their hashish plan into action. Persevering to recover the way of life that existed before the men’s Muslim-Christian hatred came to a boil, one morning their husbands and children find them to have switched religions. The Christian women are now Muslim, the Muslim women now Christian. The mayor wakes to find that there are wall hangings in Arabic and his wife wearing a hijab and praying on her prayer rug, uttering “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is great) over and over until he demands to know what’s going on. Takla, whose older son Issam tried to find a gun in Takla’s house so he could find who killed his brother, Nassim, wakes to his convert mother as well (while he is tied up in bed after Takla grazed him with a shotgun to prevent him from trying to kill anyone, then restrained him from trying it again). All of the women of the town convert this morning as they plan for the funeral of Nassim. In the cemetery, with the Muslim and Christian sides separated by a narrow path, the women all dressed in black follow the pallbearers who walk to the end of the path and turn around to face them, still holding Nassim’s coffin. “What?” asks one of the women. One of the pallbearers, knowing each woman is now of the other religion, responds “Where do we go now?”

This is a gorgeous film with a grace and respect for humanity; Nadine Labaki is a tremendous talent. This film is Lebanon’s entry for the 2012 Academy Awards and it deserves to be. Not only does it paint a picture of the world in which we could live, but one in which she should. The leadership role of women is essential not just in this film but in any possible scenario for peace, conflict resolution and sustainable pluralism. It’s just in Where Do We Go Now? the work to solve the world’s problems seems a lot more fun!

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Kyna Morgan is the founder and author of Her Film, a blog and global project to build audiences for films by, for and about women, and is a published researcher on the topic of African American women filmmakers of the silent and early sound eras of cinema. She has a background in film studies, entertainment administration and publicity, and spends her free time seeking out the world’s best vegan food while sharing her love of Canada.

Horror Week 2011: Rosemary’s Baby: Marriage Can Be Terrifying

This is a guest post by Stephanie Brown.

Rosemary’s Baby is one scary movie. It’s about a woman’s lot in a hostile world. It is about a terrible marriage to a narcissistic and selfish person. It is about the fear of motherhood and giving birth. It is convincing as a terrifying movie about the supernatural, and as a life lesson about selling your soul to a metaphorical devil. I like horror to convince me that I have learned something about the dark side of human nature…not just play with gore, or supernatural themes, or catastrophic nightmares. It has to name a fear that we really have, or a truth we find hard to believe, and the best horror enlightens us by showing us the darkness that haunts our lives.

The film, directed by Roman Polanski and released in 1968, has been written about at length, for its link to the era’s zeitgeist, its use of everyday people as agents of evil, even its shooting locations. Urban legends have been told about it; real-life events surrounding and following the film have been scrutinized. Rosemary’s Baby is essentially a fable about marriage and motherhood, and its magic is in the sleight of hand that all effective horror movies use: we focus on the scary yarn and are fascinated by it, so that the truth told (in this case, domestic unhappiness) goes down entertainingly. If it were told in a straight narrative arc, it would be kitchen-sink-drama depressing. Ira Levin, who wrote the novel the movie is based on, also wrote The Stepford Wives. How did we ever function without the phrase “Stepford Wife,” such a useful pejorative that has entered our lexicon? We all understand this shorthand phrase to describe a certain kind of too-perfect woman who seems to have lost the ability to articulate thoughts of her own. In Levin’s upper-middle class America of the 1960s, a male-controlled, male-centered marriage meant a slow death for a wife, as she loses control of her mind, her choices, and especially her body. In both novels, the husbands are able to transform the women’s bodies against their will—this is what marriage amounts to. Levin was acutely tuned-in to embarrassing truths about self-centeredness—the man who programs his robot wife to yell, “You’re the champ!” while having sex in the Stepford Wives; Guy Woodhouse, Rosemary’s husband in Rosemary’s Baby, eager to sacrifice his wife for his acting career. And while we all know a Stepford Wife, we probably have met these husbands as well. I find them recognizable. Levin’s characters found themselves in predicaments that were hard to imagine coming true—but the motivations for their behavior (wanting a pliant spouse, selfish ambition) were not hard to imagine at all. These human foibles are at the heart of the matter.

In the film, Mia Farrow is Rosemary Woodhouse, and John Cassavetes is her husband, Guy, an actor whose career is stalled and going nowhere. The two of them move into a spacious apartment in the Bramford building (shot on location at the Dakota building) in Manhattan. Rosemary meets a neighbor in the laundry room, a young woman who speaks highly of the people she lives with, Minnie and Roman Castavet whom, she says, took her in off the streets and saved her life. Just a few days later she is found dead on the sidewalk outside the building, a suicide. Rosemary and Guy meet Minnie and Roman that night; they are both strolling home to the building and arrive at the same time. Minnie and Roman are an older couple, in their late 60s or 70s, played by Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer. They soon insinuate themselves into the younger couple’s lives, forcing themselves onto the couple, who are too polite to reject them, but soon Guy is seduced by them. You don’t see it happen but later you come to understand that Roman has proposed a deal to Guy and Guy has accepted it. Guy has sold his soul to the devil so that he can have success in his career, and it works. The man playing the role he covets suddenly goes blind, and Guy gets the part.

The price for his success? His wife will be impregnated by the devil and bear his child. The young woman who has fallen to her death was supposed to bear the child, but maybe killed herself or was killed when she realized what she was involved in. In a terrifying scene, Rosemary, surrounded by the coven that includes Minnie and Roman, is held down and raped. She is hallucinating as this happens but some of the action she sees is taking place, and eventually she screams what has become a signature line from the film, “This is not a dream! This is really happening!” The next day, Rosemary discovers long claw marks on her back, and Guy tries to pretend that he made the marks during sex with her the night before. Rosemary looks at him differently than she has; she had seemed to adore him and now she looks at him with confusion and fear. If he scratched her like that, it’s very strange; if he is lying, it’s worse still. Much of the rest of the movie is about Rosemary trying to figure out what is happening to her, understanding what is happening, and trying to convince others that it is “really happening.” After she gives birth, the coven members tell her that her baby has died, and Guy expects her to move on and forget about it. The baby hasn’t really died, and the ambiguous ending makes it clear that the coven will use the baby to gain power and wreak havoc.

One of the reasons the film is so effective is because of the fine performances by all of the actors, even those in small roles such as Patsy Kelly as Minnie’s dim-witted friend, and Ralph Bellamy as a bellicose doctor. Ruth Gordon’s Academy Award winning performance, however, is a stand-out. She makes the conceit of devil-worshippers-who-look-like-your-grandma work, and it works beautifully. Her Minnie seems to be a batty old lady, kind of nosy but endearing and well-meaning, eccentric but not dangerous, and most importantly, harmless. It is hard to believe—nearly impossible to believe—that this old woman with her badly applied lipstick, gaping handbags and herbs from her herb garden, is sinister and evil. Gordon is entirely convincing as someone who is a skilled liar and con artist. She wiles her way into their lives because a person like Rosemary is too polite to refuse her. By the time she is sick of the Castavets and is ready to politely refuse them, Guy has been seduced and will not hear of her rejecting them.

If you take away the supernatural element, Guy could be any man who is seduced by his neighbors—wanting to keep up with the Joneses, wanting to get in on the deal, wanting to be famous, wanting to impress the others, whether it be in the building, on the job, or to the world. These people are a ticket to a bigger life and more success, money, and fame. He is willing to use his wife’s body to make it happen. Surely this is a metaphor for a person who sells his soul for success. The wife in this situation can be sacrificed in many ways to make it happen: to work hard while he pursues his dream, to be ignored or be ashamed of when he realizes he wants another kind of life than the one she can offer, to help him become a success until he is successful enough for a trophy wife. One of the tenets of a religious marriage vow is the promise to keep sexually faithful and even, in some vows, to “worship” each other’s bodies, perhaps in a holy sense of worship; what happens in the Woodhouse marriage is a complete blasphemy of this idea. A selfish person puts his or her own desires ahead of the other—with that person, there can really be no union. Stories of the “black mass” and Satanic stories may even reinforce the validity of the religious idea that they purport to trample, as may Satanic fables reinforce our most basic values: when you think about it, there could be nothing more appalling than betraying your spouse, and when it happens to you it feels horrific, like being fucked by the devil.

I’ve watched Rosemary’s Baby at different points in my life, and when I watched it after giving birth, it resonated with me about the experience of childbearing. Rosemary finds herself craving raw meat and having terrible pains—due to the fact that she is birthing a devil baby. However, cravings, pains, sickness—these are real and miserable parts of pregnancy. Having had my pregnancy nausea and sickness start around Valentine’s Day, I only have to think of Valentine’s Day to feel nauseous, and that happened to me nearly twenty years ago! I remember the fear and mixed feelings I had about having a baby, and I wanted to have a baby, and so did my husband. But I had sensitivity to smells, felt dizzy, threw up every day, and felt completely out of control of my body; I felt invaded as well as afraid, in the first part of my first pregnancy. That changed; I felt happy and calm as time progressed. But having a baby is a change that marks your life forever, and there is no turning back once it happens. It’s something that is seldom talked about or admitted to; we are annoyed or disgusted by women who feel that their pregnancy is less than ideal, or that their passage into motherhood was not easy. We do not talk about how we fear that we could be bearing a monster or a “bad seed,” how we may not know what to do, that we fear we may not have enough love or patience or mothering instinct. We do not want to hear about those fears, and we do not want to hear about how pregnancy changes a man and woman’s relationship, maybe for the worse. In Rosemary’s Baby, Guy is shown as not caring much about the baby; he knows that it will be taken away and given to the coven. How many women have found that their husband is not really interested in their pregnancy, or feels it interferes with the attention given to them, to their needs? Guy is really only interested in his burgeoning career. The knowledge that one has made a mistake, that the person one is tied now to is not the person you thought you married—Rosemary’s Baby reveals that bleak, depressing, and real-life scary story. Rosemary realizes it when she sees the scratches on her back, and she never feels the same way about him again. When Guy sees what is waiting for him in a glittering future, he realizes he’s set his sights too low in a life with Rosemary. He is no longer an understudy and is ready for more.

Horror stories like Rosemary’s Baby tell the truth about our darker natures. We can look at our bad feelings, hatreds, misgivings and betrayals without knowing too well what the story really reveals about our feelings—it’s displaced onto a monster, a Thing, a killer, a mist, a contagion. We can see the truth and the horror refracted, like looking at a Medusa head in reflection so that we do not turn to stone. We can look at our darker natures, and accept that they exist somewhere, displaced into a place we call the supernatural.

Stephanie Brown is the author of two collections of poetry, Domestic Interior and Allegory of the Supermarket. She’s published work in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares and The Best American Poetry series. She was awarded an NEA Fellowship in 2001 and a Breadloaf Fellowship in 2009. She has taught at UC Irvine and the University of Redlands and is a regional branch manager for OC Public Libraries in southern California.

Horror Week 2011: Let This Feminist Vampire In

This piece by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on October 13, 2010.

Cross-posted at Ms. Magazine

Warning: spoilers

Vampires have become so common in contemporary texts that they have lost some of their bite. With most of them falling into the emo, brooding, love-struck and angst-ridden variety (Edward of Twilight, Damon of The Vampire Diaries and Bill of True Blood), the female vampire featured in Let Me In (the U.S. remake of the Swedish film Let the Right One In) presents a refreshing change. Abby (Chloe Moretz), the 12-year-old lonely-yet-resilient vampire in a world populated by male violence, is a feminist vampire worth rooting for.

While the original film was also excellent, it lacked some of the more overt gendered analysis of the U.S. version. Though this may be due to discrepancies in translation (I saw the film both in Swedish with English subtitles and dubbed in English), the bullying theme running throughout the narrative was framed very differently in the Swedish version. In it, the young male protagonist, Oskar, was repeatedly told to “squeal like a pig” by his tormentors. In contrast, the male protagonist in the U.S. version, now named Owen (played by Kodi Smit-McPhee), is attacked by bullies with taunts such as “Hey, little girl” and “Are you a little girl?”

Owen’s burgeoning friendship with the young vampire Abby (named Eli in the original) furthers this gendered meme when she advises him “You have to hit back … hit them back harder than you dare.” When she promises to help him, he says “But you’re a girl,” exhibiting the belief the bullies have instilled in him that girls are scared and weak. Even though an earlier scene showed Owen smiling as he views a girl punching the lead bully in the arm, this approval of female resistance has not erased the anti-girl taunts the bullies have polluted his brain with.

With an existence shrouded by his parents’ ugly divorce, the film suggests Owen has turned to voyeurism as an escape from his prison-like existence at both home and school. As Owen watches the world from his bedroom telescope and from behind his wide-eyed gaze, we see the daily injustices humans enact upon one another: bedroom fights, schoolyard torture, sibling abuse, interpersonal violence. Much of this violence is linked to codes of masculinity, including the muscling-up men do to create bodies capable of violence.

In comparison, vampire Abby’s thirst for blood becomes less violent and a lesser evil: Killing is something she resorts to in order to survive, in contrast to it being a sport (as with the bullies) or a means to secure and keep a mate (as with her “father” figure). The everyday violence in the film is more horrific and has more lasting effects than Abby’s monstrous thirst.

Unfortunately, the opportunity to further the suggestion that “average humans” are plenty monstrous is rendered less horrific in the American version by removing the references/suggestions of pedophilia in the original novel and film. Nevertheless, the remake provocatively suggests that our cultural proclivity to focus on exceptionally violent crimes of the “stranger danger” variety allows enduring, daily acts of violence to go comparatively unnoticed. Owen has adopted this view as well–he never mentions evil until he learns Abby is a vampire, failing to see that what the bullies do to him is actually more evil.

Though the film drips with gendered representations (although ones not as graphic, nor as queer as the original novel, as discussed here), reviews such as those in The New York Times and at MovieFone offer no gender analysis–an omission that seems particularly odd given the misogynistic bullying the film depicts as well as its focus on a girl vampire, a rarity in our male-dominated vampire tales of late.

To find such analysis, one most go back to reviews of the original film, including here at Feminist Review. Noting the tendency for a “queer sensibility about female vampires in film, whether explicit or subtextual,” Loren Krywanczyk argues the “gender non-normativity” of the two young protagonists presents us with a queering of gender as well as of childhood sexuality. Such queer readings are even more apt if Abby/Eli’s centuries-earlier castration (cut in the American film and only alluded to in the Swedish version) is taken into account.

While there has been much rallying against the necessity of remaking the film to appease Americans subtitle-avoidance (as here), I feel this new version offers yet another useful spin on a very complex tale–one a bit less queer but also one that links the cultural disdain for femininity to the ubiquity of horrific daily acts of violence. If only our mainstream news media would similarly let that argument in.

Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in the areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if…? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. She previously contributed posts to Bitch Flicks about The United States of Tara, Nurse Jackie, and Lost.

Horror Week 2011: The Silence of the Lambs

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

This post by Jeff Vorndam is republished with permission.

The horror movie genre has historically exalted the objectification of women. In slasher movies, teen exploitation flicks, and even seemingly innocuous thrillers, women are cast for the purposes of screaming and disrobing. The antithesis within the horror/thriller genre is the 1991 Academy Award winning film The Silence of the Lambs. Although not thought of as a “women’s movie,” a feminist undercurrent is present in the film through its protagonist, a strong female character who contradicts previous genre stereotypes. Her scenes impart an objection to the objectification of women and depict the difficulty of working in a male-dominated institution. Furthermore, her character’s success in the movie is her own doing; there are no male rescuers or helpers.

Jodie Foster plays Special Agent Clarice Starling, the protagonist of The Silence of the Lambs. Starling is an autonomous woman; her mother died at childbirth, and her father was killed in the line of duty when she was ten. She is intelligent (graduated magna cum laude), skilled at her work, and intrepid. Significantly, the film opens with a shot of Starling running alone in the woods, completing an obstacle course in the type of dark sodden forest where one might expect to find a naked dead body. The viewer’s attention is immediately drawn to Starling, and we already sense that she will be in danger. It is the movie’s triumph that it sets our expectation to see her as a doomed victim, and then subverts it by establishing her as a multi-dimensional person in the following scenes.

Roger Ebert wrote about The Silence of the Lambs, “Never before in a movie have I been made more aware of the subtle sexual pressures placed upon women by men.” Ebert refers to the numerous scenes which, taken collectively, give viewers the uncomfortable knowledge that Starling is constantly subjected to stares, condescension, and harassment. By depicting Starling as an object rather than a person in certain scenes, the audience is transposed with her, and feels her apprehension. The first such scene occurs after she is pulled off the obstacle course to meet her superior. There is no dialogue, just a simple shot of Starling, standing 5 feet 2 inches tall in a blue jogging suit, dwarfed and surrounded in an elevator full of burly men over a foot taller than her. Starling stands out even further as an object because her blue sweat suit contrasts with the loud red outfits that each of the men are wearing. It is a situation that any of us would be nervous in, but Starling shows little trepidation. She copes well with the uneasy feeling of the men looming over her. The movie’s self-conscious attempt to display Starling as an object works, though. As an audience, we do feel trepidation.

The same concept applies to a scene in which Starling is holding a punching bag and must withstand the blows of her larger co-workers. The camera’s vantage point is that of the large man delivering the blows. The angle is shot downward so that Starling appears smaller and more vulnerable. Quickly, the viewer sees her as an object–as her male co-workers do as well. It is uncomfortable to watch Starling get hit, and we realize she is objectified this way all the time.

Starling must unfortunately endure many such difficulties because she works in the male-dominated institution of the FBI. As an attractive woman, Starling receives lascivious looks from nearly every male in the movie. When she and her roommate go jogging in one scene, a group of men jogging the other way turn around to ogle the women’s behinds. Earlier, when Starling is looking for Agent Crawford’s (her boss) office, the men gaze at her as if she were an exotic delicacy. Hannibal Lecter’s psychiatrist Dr. Chilton tries to pick her up initially, “Are you familiar with the Baltimore area? I could show you around.” When she explains she has a job to do, Chilton becomes angry, “Crawford sent you here for your looks–as bait.” Lecter surmises that Crawford fantasizes about Starling and that is why she was selected for the assignment. Even the bespectacled etymologist asks her out. In fact, it is only Lecter who is more interested in getting in her head than her pants.

Starling does not simply accept the oppression of her job. Upon arriving at a small town where one of the murder victims has washed up, Starling and Crawford are waiting in a room full of local deputies to see the dead body. The deputies are all staring at Starling, wondering why a woman is with the FBI. Crawford announces it’s time to inspect the body, but adds that Starling may want to stay outside because it’s something that a lady shouldn’t see. Afterwards, in the car on the ride home, Crawford says he didn’t want to offend the local authorities. Starling excoriates him for not setting a better example. By reprimanding her superior officer (while still only a trainee), Starling exhibits her strong personality and stands up for herself. Not only does she rebuff her sexist colleagues though, she is victorious over them.

In most thriller or horror movies (Terminator 2, for example), even if the hero of the story is female, she frequently still requires assistance from males to succeed. In The Silence of the Lambs, Starling succeeds on her own, despite various male interlopers. She cracks the vital points of the case, locates and defeats the killer–with no help save from Lecter. It is arguable what type of “help” Lecter gives her. In exchange for clues to the murderer’s identity, Starling provides Lecter with personal information. Lecter only cooperates with Starling because she is the only person who has treated him with any respect. In fact, as Lecter learns more about Starling’s tragic personal history, he becomes even more impressed with her. In their first meeting he calls her a “rube–one generation up from white trash.” Starling admits that he is perceptive and responds, “…but can you turn that high-powered perception of yours inward on yourself, Dr. Lecter?” At this point, Lecter realizes that he is not dealing with just another suit who’s out to use him–Starling is trying to communicate with him on a personal level. Lecter now sees Starling as a person, and is ironically the only male who does. This is emphasized overtly when Starling finishes talking to Lecter. As she exits the prison, an inmate named Miggs two cells down from Lecter throws his semen at her. Earlier, as Starling makes her way to Lecter’s cell, Miggs screams, “I can smell your cunt!” By framing Starling’s first visit to Lecter with two grotesque symbols of male objectification of women, Lecter stands out further as an asexual mentor.

Critics still point out, however, that without Lecter’s cryptic clues Starling could not have solved the case. Moreover, Lecter uses Starling’s investigation to get himself out of jail. Most damning to the notion that Starling is wholly responsible for her success is the charge that Lecter was sexually attracted to her, and aided her out of lust. These claims are spurious. Recall that Lecter appears to be asexual, especially in comparison with Miggs and Dr. Chilton. Symbolically, Lecter is neither male nor female. He is death incarnate. Director Jonathan Demme always photographs Lecter with a harsh white light on his forehead, the rest of his body ensconsed in shadows. The effect is to give Lecter the appearance of a ghoul. In the only camera shot in which Starling and Lecter are shown together, Lecter’s wraithlike apparition grins like a skeleton next to Starling’s determined composure. When their fingers touch seductively at their last meeting, it is not a sexual advance on Lecter’s part, but the film’s chilling reminder that death’s icy grip is stalking Starling. The movie would not be as frightening without Lector’s embodiment of death.

The victim is the daughter of a female Senator, and, because she fights back against the killer, she is portrayed as strong and independent. In an earlier scene, the victim’s mother makes an announcement on television in which she keeps repeating her daughter’s name–Catherine. After watching the plea, Starling comments that it is good that the Senator kept repeating her daughter’s name, “If he sees her as a person and not an object, it will be harder to tear her up.” Unfortunately, as we see in the next scene, Buffalo Bill refers to Catherine as “it” at all times, even when talking to her: “It places the lotion on its skin.” His goal is to make a woman-suit out of women–the ultimate in objectification.

In the end, Starling purges herself of her inner demons and is victorious. The story vindicates Starling and punishes those who have wronged her. Shortly after Starling’s first visit with Lecter, Miggs chokes on his own tongue and dies. Starling shoots and kills Buffalo Bill. At the end of the film, after Lecter has escaped, he calls Starling to congratulate her. He implies that he is going to eat the sexist Dr. Chilton, “I’m having an old friend for dinner.” Because the “bad sexist” people meet grisly deaths, and Starling is rewarded, The Silence of the Lambs takes a clear stand on the evils of sexism in its denouement.

Jeff Vorndam is a film buff living in the Bay Area. In the past he has reviewed movies for AboutFilm and Cinemarati, but he just watches for fun now. His favorite horror movies include Rosemary’s Baby, Kwaidan, and Martin.

Guest Writer Wednesday: ‘The Help’: Same Script, Different Cast

This guest post by elle previously appeared at Shakesville.

A caveat: I have not seen The Help. I do not plan to see The Help, yet I feel pretty confident that I have The Help all figured out. If you don’t know about this film, please see this post. I’m going to ground my thoughts about The Help in two other documents I will link: Valerie Boyd’s review entitled, “‘The Help,’ a feel-good movie for white people” and “An Open Statement to the Fans of ‘The Help’” from the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH). A brief description from Boyd:

“The Help”—the film adaptation of the best-selling novel by Atlanta author Kathryn Stockett—is a feel-good movie for a cowardly [wrt to the ways we deal (or don’t deal) with issues of race] nation.

Despite its title, the film is not so much about the help—the black maids who kept many white Southern homes running before the civil rights movement gave them broader opportunities—as it is about the white women who employed and sometimes terrorized them.

And there you have it, the problem at the heart of works like The Help that blossoms into myriad other problems—the centering of white women in a story that is supposed to be about women of color, the positioning of white women as saviors who give WoC voice. As my colleagues in the ABWH note:

Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers.

I want to meld these critiques of The Help with my own critique of phenomena that make movies like this possible. My critique is rooted in who I am: My name is elle, and I am a granddaughter of The Help. And while I can never begin (and would never want) to imagine myself as the voice of black domestic workers, I can at least share some of their own words with you and tell you some places you can find more of their words and thoughts.

I. The Help’s representation of [black domestic workers] is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy… [p]ortrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites… —ABWH

Early on in “The Help,” we hear the maids complain that they’ve spent decades raising little white girls who grow up to become racists, just like their mothers. But this doesn’t stop Aibileen from unambiguously loving the little white girl she’s paid to care for. —Boyd

When you put white women at the center of a story allegedly about black women, then the relationships between those two groups of women is filtered through the lens and desires of white women, many of whom want to believe themselves “good” to black people. That goodness will result in the unconditional love, trust and loyalty of the black people closest to them. They can remember the relationships fondly and get teary-eyed when they think of “the black woman who raised me and taught me everything.” They fancy themselves as their black nanny’s “other children” and privilege makes them demand the attention and affection such children would be showed.

From a post I wrote some time ago:

I hated, hated, hated that my grandmother and her sister were domestics.

Not because I was ashamed, but because of the way white people treated them and us.

Like… coming to their funerals and sitting on the front row with the immediate family because they had notions of their own importance. “Nanny raised us!” one of my aunt’s “white children” exclaimed, then stood there regally as the family cooed and comforted her.

But, as the granddaughter of the help, I learned that the woman my grandmother’s employers and their children saw was not my “real” grandmother. Forced to follow the rules of racial etiquette, to grin and bear it, she had a whole other persona around white people. It could be dangerous, after all, to be one’s real self, so black women learned “what to say, how to say it, and sometimes, not to say anything, don’t show any emotion at all, because even just your expression could cause you a lot of trouble.”** They wore the mask that Paul Laurence Dunbar and so many other black authors have written about. It is at once protective and pleasant, reflective of the fact that black women knew “their white people” in ways white people could never be bothered to know them. These were not equal relationships in which love and respect were allowed to flourish.

Indeed, with regard to the white children for whom they cared, black women often felt levels of “ambiguity and complexity” with which our “cowardly nation” is uncomfortable. Yes, my grandmother had a type of love for the children for whom she cared, but I knew it was not the same love she had for us. I think August Boatwright in the film adaptation of The Secret Life of Bees (another film about relationships between black and white women during the Civil Rights Era that centers a white girl) voiced this ambiguity and complexity much better. When her newest white charge, Lily, asks August if she loved Lily’s mother, for whom August had also cared, August is unable to give an immediate, glowing response. Instead, she explains how the situation was complicated and the fragility of a love that grows in such problematic circumstances.

Bernestine Singley, whose mother worked for a white family, was a bit more blunt when the daughter of that family claimed that Singley’s mother loved her:

I’m thinking the maid might’ve been several steps removed from thoughts of love so busy was she slinging suds, pushing a mop, vacuuming the drapes, ironing and starching load after load of laundry. Plus, I know what Mama told us when she, my sister, and I reported on our day over dinner each night and not once did Mama’s love for the [white child for whom she cared] find its way into that conversation: She cleaned up behind, but she did not love those white children.

II. The caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them. Furthermore, African American domestic workers often suffered sexual harassment as well as physical and verbal abuse in the homes of white employers. —ABWH

From films like The Help, we can’t know what life for black domestic workers is/was really like because, despite claims to the contrary, it’s not black domestic workers talking! The ABWH letter gives some good sources at the end, and I routinely assign readings about situations like the “Bronx Slave Market” in which black women had to sell their labor for pennies during the Depression. The nature of domestic labor is grueling, yet somehow that is always danced over in films like this.

As is the reality of dealing with poorly-paid work. In her autobiographical account, “I Am a Domestic,” Naomi Ward describes white employers’ efforts to pay the least money and extract the most work as “a matter of inconsiderateness, downright selfishness.” “We usually work twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week,” she continues, “Our wages are pitifully small.” Sometimes, there were no wages, as another former domestic worker explains: “I cleaned house and cooked. That’s all I ever did around white folks, clean house and cook. They didn’t pay any money. No money, period. No money, period.”**

Additionally, the job came with few to no recognizable benefits. The federal government purposely left work like domestic labor out of the (pathetic) safety net of social security, a gift to southerners who wanted to keep domestic and agricultural workers under their thumbs. After a lifetime of share-cropping and nanny-ing, my grandmother, upon becoming unable to work, found that she was not eligible for any work-based benefit/pension program. Instead, she received benefits from the “old age” “welfare” program, disappearing her work and feeding the stereotype of black women as non-working and in search of a handout. (I want to make clear that I am a supporter of social services programs, believe women do valuable work that is un- or poorly-remunerated and ignored/devalued. So, my issue is not that she benefited from a “welfare” program but how participation in such programs has been used as a weapon against black women in a country that tends to value, above all else, men’s paid work.)

The control of black people’s income also paid a psychological wage to white southerners:

[Their white employers gave] my grandmother and aunt money, long after they’d retired, not because they didn’t pay taxes for domestic help or because they objected to the fact that our government excluded domestic work from social insurance or because they appreciated the sacrifices my grandmother and her sister made. No, that money was proof that, just as their slaveholding ancestors argued, they took care of their negroes even after retirement!

The various forms of verbal and emotional abuse suffered are also glossed over to emphasize how black and white women formed unshakeable bonds. By contrast, Naomi Ward described the conflicted nature of her relationships with white women and being treated as if she were “completely lacking in human dignity and respect.” In Coming of Age in Mississippi, Anne Moody says of her contentious relationship with her employer, Mrs. Burke, “Mrs. Burke had made me feel like rotten garbage. Many times she had tried to instill fear within me and subdue me…” Here, I wrote a bit about the participation, by white women, in the subjugation of women of color domestic workers.

And what of abuse by white men? “‘The Help’s’ focus on women leaves white men blameless for any of Mississippi’s ills,” writes Boyd:

White male bigots have been terrorizing black people in the South for generations. But the movie relegates Jackson’s white men to the background, never linking any of its affable husbands to such menacing and well-documented behavior. We never see a white male character donning a Klansman’s robe, for example, or making unwanted sexual advances (or worse) toward a black maid.

This is a serious exclusion according to the ABWH, “Portraying the most dangerous racists in 1960s Mississippi as a group of attractive, well dressed, society women, while ignoring the reign of terror perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council, limits racial injustice to individual acts of meanness.”

Why the silence? Well, aside from the fact that this is supposed to be a “feel good movie,” when you idolize black women as asexual mammies in a culture where rape and sexual harassment are often portrayed as compliments/acknowledgements of physical beauty (who would want to rape a fat, brown-skinned woman?!), then the constant threat of sexual abuse under which many of them labored and still labor vanishes. But black women themselves have long written about and protested this form of abuse. My own grandmother told me to be careful of white boys who would try to make me “sneak around” with them and an older southern man who was a fellow grad student told me that he and other southern men believed it was “good luck” to sleep with a black woman. Here, in the words of black women, are acknowledgements of how pervasive the problem was (is):

“I remember very well the first and last work place from which I was dismissed. I lost my place because I refused to let the madam’s husband kiss me… I believe nearly all white men take, and expect to take, undue liberties with their colored female servants.”*

“The color of her face alone is sufficient invitation to the southern white man… [f]ew colored girls reach the age of sixteen without receiving advances from them.”*

“I learned very early about abuse from white men. It was terrible at one time and there wasn’t anybody to tell.”**

These stories abound in works like Stephanie Shaw’s What a Woman Ought to Be and Do, Paula Giddings’s When and Where I Enter, Deborah Gray-White’s Too Heavy a Load, and other books where black women are truly at the center of the story. Black women’s concern over sexual abuse is serious and readily evident, but The Help, according to the ABWH, “makes light of black women’s fears and vulnerabilities turning them into moments of comic relief.”

III. The popularity of this most recent iteration [of the mammy] is troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it. —ABWH

This mention of the White House is not casual (Boyd opens her review with an Obama-era reference, as well). I’m currently working on a manuscript that examines portrayals of black women and issues of our “desirability,” success, and femininity in media. To sum it up, we, apparently, are not desirable or feminine and our success is a threat to the world at large. Many black women are trying to figure out why so much is vested in this re-birthed image of us (because it’s not new). One conclusion is that it is a counter to the image of Michelle Obama. By all appearances successful, self-confident, happily married and a devoted mother, she’s too much for our mammy/sapphire/jezebel-loving society to take. And so, the nostalgia the ABWH mentions comes into play. It’s a way to keep us “in our place.”

It happens every day on a smaller scale to black women. I remember someone congratulating me in high school on achieving a 4.0 and saying that maybe my parents would take it easy on me for one-six weeks chore-wise. The white girl standing with us, who always had a snide comment on my academic success, quickly turned the conversation into one about how she hated her chores and how she so hoped the black lady who worked for them, whom she absolutely adored, would clean her room.

Even now, one of my black female colleagues and I talk about how some of our students “miss mammy” and it shows in how they approach us, both plus-sized, brown-skinned black women with faces described as “kind.” I do not need to know about the black woman who was just like your grandmother, nor will I over-sympathize with this way-too-detailed life story you feel compelled to come to my office and (over)share.

IV. [T]he film is woefully silent on the rich and vibrant history of black Civil Rights activists in Mississippi. Granted, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the first Mississippi based field secretary of the NAACP, gets some attention. However, Evers’ assassination sends Jackson’s black community frantically scurrying into the streets in utter chaos and disorganized confusion—a far cry from the courage demonstrated by the black men and women who continued his fight. —ABWH

Embedded in this is perhaps the clearest evidence of the cowardliness of our nation. First, we cannot dwell too long on racism, in this case as exemplified in the Jim Crow Era and by its very clear effects. “Scenes like that would have been too heavy for the film’s persistently sunny message,” suggests Boyd. I’d go further to suggest that scenes like that are too heavy for our country’s persistently sunny message of equal opportunity and dreams undeferred.

Second, when we do have discussions on the Jim Crow Era, we have to centralize white people who want to be on what most now see as the “right” side of history. They weren’t just allies, they did stuff and saved us! And so, you get stories like The Help premised on the notion that “the black maids would trust Skeeter with their stories, and that she would have the ability, despite her privileged upbringing, to give them voice.” Or like The Long Walk Home, (another film about relationships between black and white women during the Civil Rights Era that centers… well, you get it) in which you walk away with the feeling that, yeah black people took risks during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, but the person who had the most to lose, who was bravest, was the white woman employer who initially intervened only because she wanted to keep her “help.”

These stories perpetuate racism because they imply that it is right and rightful that white people take the lead and speak for us. (On another note, how old is this storyline? Skeeter’s appropriation of black women’s stories and voices, coupled with the fact that “Skeeter, who is simply taking dictation, gets the credit, the byline and the paycheck” reminded me so much of Imitation of Life, when Bea helps herself to Delilah’s pancake recipe, makes millions from it, keeps most for herself and Delilah is… grateful?!) The moral of these stories is, where would we have been without the guidance and fearlessness of white people?

I know this moral. That’s why I have no plans to see The Help.

_______________________

*From Gerda Lerner, Black Women in White America.

**From Anne Valk and Leslie Brown, Living with Jim Crow.

elle is an assistant professor who does a little of this an a little of that—primarily social history courses, some Women’s Studies and African American Studies classes, and seminars on the historical construction of race, gender, and class with a focus on how those constructions influence and are reinforced by popular media. She writes about the South and about black women’s paid and unpaid labor. She’s also a single mama to a teenaged boy that would test the patience of Mother Teresa, has an unhealthy love for TV shows with “forensic” and/or “crime” in the title, and is an amateur caterer.

Ripley’s Pick: Meek’s Cutoff

Meek’s Cutoff (2010)

Meek’s Cutoff is the kind of quiet movie that doesn’t get a lot of attention–or box office dollars–but should.

Set in 1845 on the Oregon Trail (insert obligatory joke about the Oregon Trail computer game), three families make their way west with the help of Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), but soon realize that his ‘shortcut’ has left them lost and quickly running out of water. When they encounter and capture a Native American man, they ultimately decide that he must know the land better, and they choose him to lead them, despite political differences they perceive as “natural” and a language barrier. Whether he will lead them to water or to destruction is the question.

When I say quiet, I mean it. More than seven minutes pass before a word is uttered, during which time we see the families cross a deep river, one of the women holding a bright little caged canary aloft, and one of the men scratch the word LOST into a fallen tree. No words need to be spoken to read the situation these settlers find themselves in, and when words are finally spoken, they come from a child reading from the Bible.

The poster above connects Meek’s Cutoff with another contemporary (although it is a remake) Western– True Grit. While the films share female characters as the ones with the real grit, I’m actually reminded more of There Will Be Blood, in terms of tone and subject (more on this later). I wrote about Meek’s Cutoff when it was opening in theatres, and said the following about Westerns:

The Western genre is traditionally tied up in all kinds of rugged masculinity, and of all film genres, maybe best exemplifies the dominant way the United States collectively imagines itself: sturdy, adventurous, self sufficient, brave, and, well, pretty butch. The problem is, however, that this narrative leaves out a significant number of people, and a significant portion of the story. The Western (and the story of the U.S. West) tries to be the story of the United States itself, and reveals ideology so clearly where it fails–namely, in its depiction of women, indigenous peoples, immigrants, and African-Americans. The genre is, in other words, ripe for retellings and allegory.

Rugged masculinity is not lauded in Meek’s Cutoff, but depicted as dangerous and violent. Meek is not trustworthy, and is not even the central character in this Western. The quiet power here lies in the women, who are often depicted working–collecting firewood, washing, walking alongside the wagons–and discussing their situation, relying less than the men on divine providence and the violent tales of vicious Indians from a rebel cowboy. Emily (Michelle Williams) is the boldest of the women, though Millie and Glory (who is very pregnant) show strength and critical thought about their situation. While ideas about race and gender roles fit squarely in the 19th century (the women don’t even ask to vote when the men are choosing their path, and are quick and easy with racial epithets), the critique of the American mythos rings clearly.

In her review of There Will Be Blood for this site, Lesley Jenike succinctly explains the dominance of white men in Serious, Important Films made in the U.S.:

If we consider some of our American cinematic “masterpieces,” we often find them absent vibrant female characters, for example (think The Godfather, Citizen Kane, and Chinatown to name just three). As much as I desperately want to see my gender portrayed with respect, honesty, and integrity, many films that deal with the great American mythos don’t have much room for female characters, simply because women haven’t been a part of, and are often still excluded from, the creation story we tell ourselves—a story of brutal boots-on-the-ground capitalism and, negatively speaking, punishing exploitation. It’s a Judeo-Christian story in which the individual male forges his path through the wilderness, an anti-hero who, despite his great wealth and power, can’t overcome his subsequent moral corruption. What’s important to recognize is that the marked absence of “the other” in these films is a comment on an institutionalized patriarchy that extends beyond our everyday interactions to the very heart of our cultural mythos. There Will Be Blood is yet another film that further cements a white male-dominated American story of origin.

Meek’s Cutoff, directed by Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy, Wendy & Lucy), explores the great American mythos without telling a story centered on a male protagonist. Families that went west were just that–families, consisting of men, women, and children. It’s possible to comment on institutionalized patriarchy and the American story of origin without entirely excluding women or revising history to make it less ugly, less cruel, or more inclusive. Women are part of the story, and maybe it takes more women to step up and tell the stories, lest we be excised completely.

There is much to say about this film, which is visually gorgeous and tense enough to keep you on the edge of your seat, but rather than go into intricate analyses of the imagery and possible political interpretations, I’m going to just recommend you rent (or buy) the film and do your own analysis.

Have you seen Meek’s Cutoff? If so, what did you think?

Beware ‘The Ides of March’

How many times will that title be used when discussing The Ides of March? I couldn’t resist.

Directed by George Clooney and opening this weekend, Ides is a political thriller centered on a presidential candidate’s press secretary. And SCANDAL.

This is the kind of movie that gets Oscar buzz. What kind of movie? Clooney-directed political statement? Story about power and political corruptions? Sure, maybe. There’s precedent for that. White-male directed movie about powerful white men, and politics, with a dash of sexy lady and serious lady? Definitely.

Watch for yourself:

Now, as I haven’t seen The Ides of March, or read much about it yet, I could be totally wrong. Marisa Tomei as Black Glasses Serious Reporter could be the center of the film, the only person in Ohio (or the national press) with enough smarts and courage to investigate the SCANDAL. The movie could completely center around her work to uncover and expose the SCANDAL (although she gets one or possibly two lines in the trailer). My snarky “sexy lady” comment could also be completely off base; Evan Rachel Wood’s character in the trailer might claim to not be able to tie a tie, and might joke about being a “lowly intern” just to cover up her power. Right? RIGHT?!

You might scoff at my annoyance specifically with this movie, because politics in the United States is dominated by white men, and women don’t have much power in the political game, so in that sense, the movie is “realistic.” But you can’t look at this movie (or any movie) in isolation. Judging from the trailer, Ides follows a well-established pattern for Serious Movies That Become Oscar-Nominated Films (see our reviews of Oscar-nominated movies from 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 for some examples), or, Important Movies About Important Things (read: not things that particularly involve women).

Instead of seeing Ides of March this weekend, I want to watch a political thriller in which women take center stage. Give me some ideas.

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: Milk

I Need a Hero: Gus Van Sant’s Milk (2008)

“My name is Harvey Milk, and I’m here to recruit you,” yells a nearly unrecognizable Sean Penn in a pivotal scene in Gus Van Sant’s biopic Milk (2008). Wearing a tight red and white shirt and form-fitting slacks highlighting a noticeable bulge, Penn unnervingly inhabits the body of a man who was never handsome, never pretty, but who exuded an eye-twinkling sexiness which led numbers of attractive young men into his bed. It’s a transformation that is not merely surface, not merely costume and hairstyle and what appears to be a slight prosthesis on the nose: like Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours, this is a full-bodied immersion in a character. Penn, always something of a chameleon in recent years, loses all traces of his own physicality, and portrays Harvey Milk with a buoyancy, a loose-limbed lightness that I’ve never seen in him before. The process seems to have liberated him as an actor—he’s behaving with an unbridled exuberance. His co-star, James Franco, reported that after their first kissing scene, Penn called up ex-wife Madonna and said, “I’ve just kissed my first man,” to which Madonna replied, “Honey, I’m so proud of you.” So are we.

In a recent piece on the Criterion Collection edition of the Oscar-winning 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (directed by Rob Epstein, later to direct The Celluloid Closet and Paragraph 175), photographer Daniel Nicoletta calls the documentary “Harvey Milk 101.” It would be fair to call Van Sant’s Milk “Harvey Milk 102”—the two films, viewed in order, represent a progression in the course sequence, but they’re primers, neither qualifying you for an advanced degree in the subject. For that, one must turn to the late Randy Shilts’s book The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1983), which, to my mind, remains the definitive work on the man’s life and legacy. The Epstein documentary is primarily concerned with Milk’s political career; the Van Sant biopic fills in many of the biographical holes in the documentary and concentrates more on Milk’s personal life and relationships. My suggestion is that viewers watch both films—Times first, Milk second—and, if they yearn for more, to then turn to the Shilts book.

Milk begins with archival footage of police raids on gay bars in the 1950s and 60s, and is followed by Milk in 1977 reading his will into a tape recorder: he was convinced that he would soon be assassinated, a prediction that would shortly come true. Flash back to 1970, and Milk’s meeting with Scott Smith (Franco) in a New York subway, and the beginning of an on-again, off-again romance that would last the rest of Milk’s life. Dissatisfied with his grinding corporate-America job in New York, Milk moves with Smith to San Francisco in search of liberation and meaning. He opens a camera shop, becomes an exceedingly groovy bohemian, and ultimately becomes involved with gay rights and local politics, culminating in his election as a city supervisor—the first openly gay elected official in the United States. He is helped along the way by Smith and a band of friends and lovers who operate out of his camera store: Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch), Jack Lira (Diego Luna), Anne Kronenberg (Alison Pill), and Dick Pabich (Joseph Cross). Once elected, he finds a staunch ally in Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) and a nemesis in Supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin). White, after a series of public humiliations, assassinates Milk and Moscone in City Hall (Dianne Feinstein’s famous announcement of the event appears in the film), and later pleads insanity by using the notorious “Twinkie defense.”

More than a mere summary of events, Milk seeks to illuminate some of the depths of Milk’s character, which are left mostly untouched by The Times of Harvey Milk. And Penn’s performance is a marvel. But I’m left at the end of the film still not entirely knowing what made this man tick. I’m slightly in awe of him, I’m humbled by his passion, I’m drawn to his politics, I’m certainly attracted to him and can easily see myself getting talked into bed by him without much effort, but I still feel separate from him, as though his core has not been exposed. Perhaps this is more than a biopic can do, but my sense is that this is the film’s goal, and on that count it doesn’t quite deliver. The fault is neither Penn’s nor Van Sant’s nor the script’s—my guess is that capturing someone as mercurial as Harvey Milk on film is an impossibility.

Lest this sound as though I didn’t enjoy the film, let me hasten to add that Milk brilliantly recreates a period when gay sex was fun and free and easy and the specter of AIDS was a few years in the future. The cast looks resplendent in its period costumes; it’s alarming that clothes I once wore as a child now constitute “period attire.” And, apart from Penn, the cast is uniformly superb, as we might expect from Van Sant, who, after all, delivered amazing performances from the non-acting teens in 2003’s Elephant. James Franco demonstrates the fearlessness that led him shortly thereafter to take on the role of poet Allen Ginsberg in Howl, and proves why he’s one of his generation’s most interesting actors; his Scott Smith is sweet, sexy, charming, and loyal. Josh Brolin has the incredibly tough job of making Dan White a human being rather than the boogeyman of the piece. He looks uncannily like the real man, and he manages to imbue White with enough pathos that I was unable to hate him, or not entirely. Victor Garber is reliable as always as Moscone, and Diego Luna and Joseph Cross (the little boy from Northern Lights, with Diane Keaton) excel as bits of eye candy on the fringes of Milk’s world. Emile Hirsch has the gravitas to play the great Cleve Jones, whose activism continues to inspire today, and Alison Pill holds her own as the sole woman in this sea of gay men.

What struck me most about Milk at the time of its release was its celebration of the writer. The trailer proudly announced “Written by Dustin Lance Black” in huge blue letters, and the very fetching Mr. Black won a well-deserved Oscar for his efforts. His Academy Award speech, in which he pleaded for the acceptance of young gay men like himself, is already legendary, and in interviews with magazines like The Advocate, he chronicled his difficulties in getting the script written and his exhaustive research. Perhaps the best thing about his script is that it doesn’t venerate its subject: it would have been all too easy to turn Harvey Milk into a saintly angel in America, but he is instead presented by turns as charming and irritating, pleasant and cantankerous, open-minded and bull-headed. And despite the opening which announces his death, the film doesn’t belabor this inevitable trajectory: the focus of both the film and the characters is on the moment, or on a rosy future. Again, the film’s only flaw, to my mind, is that Milk still seems at arm’s length from me, and I craved a more intimate relationship with him. But perhaps this is the point.

I’m bothered by one last thing, completely apart from the film itself. In his bravura acceptance speech for Best Actor at the Oscars, Sean Penn drolly called the audience “You Commie, homo-loving sons of guns.” Perhaps, but we’re still dealing here with a film with a gay hero who dies. Is it significant that two other actors to have won Best Actor Oscars for playing gay men—William Hurt in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) and Tom Hanks in Philadelphia (1993)—were killed off by gunfire and AIDS? As producer Jan Oxenberg remarks in Rob Epstein’s The Celluloid Closet, it remains to be seen whether or not Hollywood will embrace—and indeed, deem worthy of an Oscar—a gay character who lives.

Drew Patrick Shannon received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Cincinnati, and currently teaches 19th and 20th century British literature at the College of Mount St. Joseph. He is at work on a novel and on a non-fiction book examining the diary of Virginia Woolf. He contributed a review of the 1986 film, Working Girls, to Bitch Flicks, which appeared in a previous version on his blog, atleswoolf.

Emmy Week 2011: Why Steely Homicide Detective Sarah Linden Is So Refreshing

Mireille Enos as Sarah Linden in The Killing

Guest post by Megan Kearns.

Who killed Rosie Larsen? This is the pivotal question that motivates The Killing. While a murder mystery, the true catalyst of the show resides in the nuanced characters, particularly steely homicide detective Sarah Linden.

Often I lament the gender inequity in films and TV shows, bemoaning their flagrant displays of sexism. Many gendered problems could be solved if movies and series employed more female writers, directors or producers. Too often, when you have a staff of all white males, that’s what you see on-screen: all white male characters. That’s what’s so exhilarating about The Killing. Not only does the show boast a predominantly female crew, numerous female characters exist individual and distinct from one another. We see the plot told from a female perspective.

Based on the Danish TV series Forbrydelsen (The Crime), the gritty series premieres with Linden, played superbly by Emmy-nominated Mireille Enos, jogging in the woods. It’s her last day in the Seattle police department as she’s moving with her son, Jack, to marry her fiancé in California. But she gets pulled back in to her work in homicide by the murder of teenager Rosie Larsen.

Unlike many other crime shows, the plot continually shifts from the murder investigation to Detective Linden’s home life to how Rosie’s family handles their grief to a local mayoral campaign. Through the unfolding case, we see how grief affects each of the characters differently. Raising themes of misogyny, racism and xenophobia, the show uniquely focuses on how a tragedy affects a family and ultimately how those ripples affect a community.

Linden’s stoic and quiet reserve yields a driven detective. She pensively surveys crime scenes, taking it all in, absorbing every detail. When questioning witnesses, she isn’t typically brash or bold, preferring a subtle approach. When her partner Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman) brags about finding the potential crime scene “the cage,” Linden warns him, “Assumptions are your enemy.” Holder acts impulsively, while Linden remains cool and clear-headed. Yet we learn she possesses a tendency to compulsively obsess over cases, letting them consume and unhinge her life, even to the point of jeopardizing custody of her son.

While I revere clever dialogue in a film or TV show, an adept actor reveals a character’s inner thoughts and emotions through their body language and facial expressions; never having to utter a word. Enos does this superbly, a testament to her acting abilities. She revealed in an AMC interview that her character’s silence is what she enjoys most:

It’s kind of my favorite part of this role — how much of this story is told just through Sarah thinking and letting the audience sit with her in her thoughts.

Seeing the case unfold from Linden’s perspective is a welcome change. When asked if there’s a difference stylistically in the shows that are run by women, Emmy-nominated Veena Sud, executive producer, writer and showrunner of The Killing, said:

The female leads are very human and very real and very flawed, yet are good cops. Maybe that’s the difference: women are interested in creating real female leads.

I’m thrilled to see a fully formed, realistic female role. The role isn’t groundbreaking, following in the footsteps of the stellar Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect, The Closer, Saving Grace, Cold Case, Rizzoli & Isles, Cagney & Lacey. All of these shows’ characters face difficulties: sexism, hostile work environments, alcoholism, strained personal relationships due to their demanding careers. But Linden is unique in that she’s a single mother.

Throughout the series, we witness Linden struggling to juggle her consuming career with her role as a mom. In one scene, Linden has to leave a crime scene to fetch Jack from school after he’s kicked out for smoking. In another scene, Linden looks crushed when Jack complains that she cares more about the murdered victims than him. In another episode, she talks about how she yearns for him to be happy again, hoping the remedy lies in a “better life” in California. We alternately see her disciplining and guiding him, all with a rough tenderness.

In the fantastic episode, “The Missing,” we see Linden’s insecurities about how her troubled childhood might affect her parenting abilities when her son goes missing. Actor Enos drew on her own experiences as a mother to enhance her character’s role, particularly her character’s empathy for Mitch Larsen, Rosie’s grief-stricken mother, played by the perpetually badass Michelle Forbes, in a devastating performance.

Single mothers are common in TV shows: Gilmore Girls, Murphy Brown, Sex and the City, New Adventures of Old Christine. While many laud the sacrifices single mothers make, they simultaneously face criticism in our society. Asshats Bill O’Reilly and Mike Huckabee condemned celebs Jennifer Anniston, for saying women don’t need a man to be a parent (damn right they don’t), and Natalie Portman, for getting pregnant out of wedlock (oh gasp, the horror!). Several months ago, two single African-American moms were arrested for sending their children to school districts they didn’t live in to have a better education.

Many single mothers are blamed at best, vilified at worst. So it’s refreshing to watch a TV show, particularly a crime drama, where the lead character is an accomplished single mom striving to keep her son out of trouble all while maintaining her demanding career.

Linden’s unyielding dedication to her job strains her romantic relationship as well. Initially, her fiancé Rick doesn’t make her choose between her job and their relationship. Exasperated, he waits for her to wrap up the case as she’s supposed to have already joined him in California. SPOILER!! -> As their relationship begins to crumble, Rick eventually returns to California without her after Linden chooses to stay in Seattle. <-END SPOILER!! It kind of pissed me off because men never seem forced to make this choice. It’s always the woman expected to follow a man, uprooting her life.

For those of us who lament the lack of female actors, writers and directors and stories told from women’s perspectives, here’s a show containing all those traits. Many reviewers spewed vitriol after the season 1 finale, outraged that we didn’t find out who killed Rosie Larsen. But they’re missing the whole point. Yes, it’s a whodunit. But that’s not the crux of the show; it’s merely the vehicle in which to reveal the characters’ compelling stories. The Killing depicts subtle portrayals of real, flawed women (and men), haunted by their past pain. While interesting male characters exist, the show doesn’t merely revolve around them. Rather it orbits a determined and resolute woman, unrelenting in her pursuit of justice.

Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World, where she writes about gender in pop culture, sexism in the media, reproductive justice and living vegan. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston with her diva cat and more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime.

Megan contributed reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed, !Women Art Revolution, The Kids Are All Right (for our 2011 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), The Reader (for our 2009 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), and Game of Thrones (for our Emmy Week 2011). She was the first writer featured as a Monthly Guest Contributor.

Emmy Week 2011: Tami Taylor, My Hero

Connie Britton as “Tami Taylor” in Friday Night Lights

If there is one woman in Dillon who stands head and shoulders above them all, it’s Tami Taylor. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem too hard to do. Mothers in Dillon have not been the most successful characters; they were either drunk/druggies (Mama Collette, Vince’s mother, Becky’s mother), absent (Jess’ mother, Mama Riggins, Matt Saracen’s mother), or one-dimensional (abuse victim, religious nut, etc). Is it any wonder, then, that Tami Taylor becomes the go-to woman for many of the “lost children” of Dillon?

But let’s take a step back. Even if she is a three-dimensional beacon in a sea of sub-par parenting, she is not without her faults…I just can’t think of any right now. She yelled at Julie a few times, right? And there was that one time she humiliated her daughter by showing up at the pool, pregnant to the point of bursting…Did she pressure Julie to consider a university far, far away from their home in Texas, just because Tami had gone there?

What we get to see in Tami that we don’t get to see in other “mother” characters (except maybe Mindy Riggins) is the conflict that she feels when deciding on the best course of parenting action. And this conflict is rarely ever expressed in words; instead, it is played out on Tami’s face, which can go from anger, to disappointment, to sympathy and love in the course of one short scene. Tami, from the outside, might seem like the perfect mother, making the job look easy, but Connie Britton conveys to us the difficulty her character faces in her decisions as a parent.

This final season, Tami was put through the ringer. She found out her daughter had been sleeping with her TA (the wordless confrontation between the two of them alone should win her the Emmy). She was confronted with the reality of working at an under-funded, under-privileged high school (sometimes that Southern Charm can only go so far), almost moved to Florida because of a college coaching gig for her husband, and, most importantly, she was confronted with a true and possibly devastating conflict in her marriage. At the same time Eric Taylor was contemplating coaching the united Dillon football team, Tami was offered a job as Dean of Admissions at a fictional college in Philadelphia.

The tension between husband and wife is oftentimes unbearable during the last few episodes of the season. When Tami spits at Eric, “I’m going to say to you what you haven’t had the grace to say to me:

congratulations, Eric” and takes her boots and storms off, my heart was breaking. Here is a woman who for 18 years gave up pieces of herself in the name of their marriage, their family, and her husband’s coaching career. The sacrifices that seemed so effortless throughout our time watching the show finally burst through.

Tami seemed to have limited herself. But, when a new opportunity, an unimagined opportunity presents itself, she allows herself to dream. Eric’s unwillingness to even entertain the dream is all the more insulting because of Tami’s willingness to up and move to Florida if Eric decided to take the college coaching job. When the tables are turned, Eric cannot extend to his wife the same level of respect.

At least not at first. By the end of Eric’s own trials, he sees that, on one hand, he owes it to his wife, and on the other, he loves his wife so much that he ultimately wants to do what will make her happy. It takes their daughter getting engaged–and telling her parents that they are her model–for him to realize that he would never want his daughter to give up her dreams, nor sacrifice as much for her future husband as Tami sacrificed for him (or, at least, that’s how I’d like to read it; maybe it was just all about telling Dillon to F-off). Either way, Tami is seen confidently walking across her new campus, cheerily throwing out her trademark “y’all” to those in the City of Brotherly Love.

Lee Skallerup Bessette has a PhD in Comparative Literature and currently teaches writing in Kentucky. She also blogs at College Ready Writing and the University of Venus. She has two kids, and TV and movies are just about the only thing she has time for outside of her work and family. She also contributed a piece for Mad Men Week at Bitch Flicks called, “Things They Haven’t Seen: Women and Class in Mad Men” and a review of Friday Night Lights for Emmy Week 2011.

Emmy Week 2011: Friday Night Lights: Deep in the Heart of Texas

Cast of Friday Night Lights

Each woman in Friday Night Lights, like each man in the show, is defined by their relationship to football. Or rather, the town tries to define them by their relationship to the featured football team (either the Dillon Panthers during the first seasons or the East Dillon Lions during the last two). What is and remains fascinating to me is how in the face of this identity pressure, the women are often more successful in redefining themselves than the men.

(I’d have included pictures, but I defy you to find a picture of any of these women on the Internet that doesn’t put them in some sort of come-hither pose that exposes a whole lot of skin. Sigh. These ladies deserve better.)

One of my favorite characters over the final two seasons of Friday Night Lights is Jess Merriweather. She is the eldest daughter of a former football player-turned-restaurant owner, older sister and surrogate mother to two younger brothers, and football lover. When we first meet her, she is a cheerleader for the new East Dillon Lions (and that image of her remains during the final season’s opening credits); one could wonder why we never saw her as a Dillon Panther cheerleader, but it becomes clear that she probably would never have fit in with the Lyla Garrity-types at the old high school.

No, it becomes clear that Jess is only a cheerleader because it is the only legitimate way for her, a girl, to be close to the game she adores. We see her coaching her younger brother, watching the games not in order to find a potential mate but to dissect plays and increase her football IQ. She is a smart, driven young Black woman, trapped between her love of football and the very gendered expectations of the town. When she is given the opportunity to “coach” star quarterback/boyfriend Vince over the summer, she finds her outlet. Unfortunately, once school and the season start up again, she is relegated to the demeaning role of “rally girl.”

The rally girl is a problematic, but all too realistic, role for Jess. She views herself as Vince’s equal, not his servant. The typical role of the rally girl is to do whatever she can to “motivate” the football players to play at their best on Fridays. In fact, the rally girls wear their respective player’s jersey, essentially owned by the player. It also should be noted that the girls get no say in who their player is; the girls randomly pull jerseys out of a box, and the player can barter and trade girls if the price is right (in one case, it’s a prized pig – do with that what you will). For most of the girls, it is an honor to be a rally girl, to be associated with the “star” football players. But that is not what Jess wants anymore from football; residual fame and greatness is no longer enough.

Jess, instead, becomes the equipment manager for the team. She gets a respectable uniform (versus the scantily-clad cheerleaders), access to the locker room, the coach, the sidelines, and the game. Her job is far from glamorous; she cleans jock straps, washes towels, works to prevent staph infections. Of course, this role strains her relationship with Vince; Vince tries to protect her from the ribbing the team subjects her to, while Jess wants to prove she can hold her own, on her own. In fact, it is Coach Taylor, and not the players, who has the most difficulty accepting Jess in her new role.

Jess fights for the respect of the players and Coach Taylor, working hard to be the best equipment manager/future coach she can be. She presents Coach Taylor with a profile of a female high school football coach to prove to him that it can be done. He tries to scare her by laying out her odds for success. Jess’ confidence never wavers, and Coach Taylor, champion of lost causes (see Vince, as well as Tim Riggins and Matt Saracen), is won over. We last see Jess as an equipment manager at her new school in Dallas.

Jess is just one example of the type of strong, well-developed female characters Friday Night Lights has created. The final two seasons also allowed us to get to know Mindy Riggins: older sister to former cast member Tyra Collette, stripper, mother, and wife to Billy Riggins (who was a former Panther star). In the early seasons, Mindy was simply an excuse for Tyra (and the rest of the cast) to visit The Landing Strip, Dillon’s local strip club. Mindy and their pill-popping, boozy mother Angela, were representative of everything Tyra wished to escape. Tyra did, in fact, successfully make it out, attending UT Austin. But what about those who are left behind in the small town of limited possibilities?

Mindy follows what might be seen as a stereotypical small-town girl path: she gets pregnant and gets married. Both she and Billy struggle with paying their bills and finding meaningful employment. But in what could easily have become a caricature of “white trash” existence (drinking, fighting, divorce, abuse) becomes a very real picture of two people trying to make it work in tough economic times. Mindy also steps up and takes Becky under her wing, a girl in whom she sees much of herself. Mindy also has a boozy mother, an absent father, and is left on her own to navigate through life (but more on her in a moment). When Mindy witnesses Becky being abused by her father and step-mother, she steps in (forcing Billy to do the same) and defends Becky. This is an incredible act from someone who, up until this point, saw Becky as competition rather than a sister. Mindy was perhaps the first person who ever stood up for Becky, acting as the advocate she herself probably never had.

This relationship, of course, is not without its problems; Mindy takes Becky and her son to The Landing Strip and even allows Becky to waitress at the club. Stripping (and as an extension, the strippers themselves) are neither glorified nor vilified by the show. In a town where economic opportunities are limited regardless of gender, these women make money the best way they can, using their bodies to pay the rent. There is nothing glamorous or liberating about their jobs, besides the “easy money” that can be made. But that money isn’t as easy as Becky thinks it is. We see Mindy furiously working out in order to get her body back into shape for the job, and even then, she is relegated to the humiliating “lunch shift.” But the women are also treated with dignity, at least within their group. They are far from being victims or victimized; initially, the show seemed to be saying that Mindy was a stripper because she didn’t have a father and her mother was lacking. But during the last two seasons, the strippers move from being symbols of failure to symbols of survival.

Mindy finds a community with the women of The Landing Strip, and a support system that she never had before, finding a place where she can be honest about her past abortion and how it is still impacting her relationships. The ladies from the strip club also take Becky to participate in one of her pageants; when one of the judges criticizes Becky’s choice of “supporters,” Becky clearly chooses her new family over her dreams of winning pageants. I’ll admit that I bawled like a baby during the final episode when Mindy and Becky say goodbye to each other when Becky moves out to live with her mom again. Family, in this show, is who sticks with us through the hard times.

Which brings us to the issue of the abortion. Becky gets pregnant during the fourth season (by a football player, no less), and she does, indeed, go through with having an abortion (some would argue at her mother’s insistence). Initially, the abortion more immediately impacts another character, Tami Taylor, who was at that time vice-principal at Dillon High School (Becky goes to East Dillon). Tami was brought in to counsel Becky when she had no one else to turn to. But while Becky seems to have come through the abortion okay, we learn in the fifth season that she still carries some unresolved feelings about the boy who got her pregnant.

This portrayal of a young girl feeling trapped by a bad situation is handled, to my mind, sensitively and realistically. Becky is not left unaffected by the procedure, nor does she seem permanently and disastrously scarred. Those around her (her mother, the mother of the baby’s father, the community) seem more upset and emotionally reactionary than Becky herself. It also seems that the extreme reactions of those around her affect her more than the abortion itself; it is again only when she confides in the strippers that she gets the level-headed and unconditional support she needs to move past the event. Abortion, it would seem, is not the issue; the hysteria surrounding it is.

These are just three of the complex women of Friday Night Lights. I’ve focused on the final two seasons, as this is the season that is up for an Emmy. One could look at the evolution of Lyla, Julie, Tyra, and other early-season characters, as well as the myriad of “minor” characters who have populated the edges of the show (Maura the rally girl, Epyk the problem child, Vince’s mother, and Devin the lesbian spring to mind). Each one deserves her own essay, devoted to all the ways the show did (and didn’t) do the characters justice.

Emmy Week 2011: Mags Bennett: As Wholesome As Apple Pie

Mags Bennett, played by Margo Martindale

After watching the first couple episodes of Justified with me, my good friend asked the question that I ask myself, “Why do you like this show?” See, she knows me and my general dislike of the Western aesthetic: all wide shots and swagger. Add in that it is “inspired” by an Elmore Leonard story, inhabited by his brand of players—full of quirky and amusing dialogue, sure, but too often stuck in caricature—and I should hate this show. But I don’t. This show allows what so few shows do: a full sense of place and the people who inhabit that place. Justified gives us Harlan County, Kentucky in the way that The Wire gave us Baltimore: unflinching, unsentimental, and unapologetic.

That said, it is a male-centric show, depicting a male-centric world. In the first season, our main character, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant, also nominated for an Emmy), spends his time fighting, shooting, justifying his fighting and shooting to his boss, and protecting and bedding pretty blonds. He also spends an entire episode getting back his cowboy hat. The criminal family he battles is Bo Crowder and his boys, and much is made of the complicated power dynamics between men, particularly fathers and sons. One might get weary from all the testosterone (as the one female marshal acknowledges in an early episode).

But in season two, the show gives us Mags Bennett, head of the Bennett clan, a matriarch wielding absolute power (and a ball-peen hammer) over her territory. She sets herself apart from both the women and the men in the show and their prescribed gender roles, inhabiting both enforcer and nurturer, often at the same time. Margo Martindale, a well-lauded stage actor, too often is relegated to the screen margin, playing the supporting roles of gruff nurse (Mercy), sassy neighbor (The Riches) or kindly old friend (Dexter). Martindale admits in a recent interview that a role like “Mags Bennett comes along maybe just once in a lifetime.” But roles like this—multi-faceted, problematic, and compelling—are what we need to see more of on television.

I don’t know what episode was submitted for the Emmy voters (there are plenty to choose from), but let me make my pitch for the first episode. It doesn’t have the flash of her stirring, but duplicitous, speech to the coal mining company trying to buy the town away from the people, or the shock value of her smashing one son’s hand to bits while blaming the other for her actions, or even the tragedy of the final episode. But it does provide the roundest view of the character, an incredible feat for an initial introduction.

In “The Moonshine War,” the audience is first introduced to Mags Bennett and her family’s marijuana empire. We learn of the family feud between the Bennetts and the Givenses, and we see her deal with the widower McCready, who has been stealing small amounts of their stash. We also see Mags’ gentle approach to McCready’s daughter Loretta, who is accosted and abducted by a man working for the Bennetts.

Apple Pie: the symbol of American domesticity, of homegrown goodness, warm and comforting. Mags makes “apple pie” that the entire county admires, but this apple pie is more than it appears to be. It is a symbol of Mags herself. It appears in three distinct scenes, each giving us a glimpse into the complexity of Mags.

Sharing a Slice of History

When she offers it to Raylan, the audience sees it as a peace offering, a moment of communion between two feuding families. As the two recount their shared history, Raylan’s deference to her in the scene is a stark contrast to his interactions with the Crowders. With the Crowders, when Raylan acted with restraint, it was clear that it was out of fear, out of the knowledge that he didn’t hold the power in a given situation. But that didn’t stop him from spouting snarky one-liners. With Mags, Raylan acts not just of out pragmatism, but out of respect. Even as he takes her measure, he addresses her, not as Mags, but as Mrs. Bennett, and is, frankly, polite; it smacks of the Southern gentility that surfaces whenever he interacts with a woman. His gracious acceptance of her apple pie signals to the audience that Mags is a crime-lord of a different sort. When she pulls out the jar, we see her apple pie for what it is: a home-brewed moonshine, and a tasty one at that. But like Mags’ weed, a moonshine named “apple pie” seems innocuous, not the meth or oxycotin that the Crowders dealt.

Pie as Retribution

The apple pie moonshine makes its second appearance in her sit down with McCready (Chris Mulkey), after he has been shot by her boys for stealing and Loretta has made it home safely from her abduction. Again, the moonshine appears to be a communion of sorts, a way for Mags and McCready to admit their sins, ask for each other’s forgiveness, and return to the status quo. And Mags’ speech follows that path, asking after Loretta. She forgives McCready for his stealing, and insists that her son apologize for shooting him and forcing his foot into a trap. Sure, she continues to draw information out of McCready about what he has told the police and what risk he might still pose, but she does so as a benevolent leader. As McCready says all the right things, we watch as both McCready and Mags try to assess the situation and determine what will happen next. Unlike the scene with Raylan, there is no subtle jockeying for power; it is clear that Mags is in control. And it is through her apple pie that she exerts her control. Having poisoned McCready’s glass, she calmly explains to him that his real crime was going outside the family by calling the cops about Loretta’s abductor. She is both terrifying and comforting as she grips his hand as he dies, talking him through the pain and pledging to raise Loretta as her own. She is not a benevolent leader, and her apple pie can longer be seen as innocuous. From this scene on, every time she reaches for a mason jar to pour someone a drink, we question her motives.

Too Young for Pie

Mags and Loretta McCready (the fabulous Kaitlyn Dever) also share a drink in opening scenes of the next episode, and coming on the heels of the apple pie murder, perhaps the audience is supposed to assume that Loretta is a goner too. But, ultimately we know Mags will not kill the girl. Not because she is too kindly or motherly to do so (the season gives us plenty of evidence that Mags can be just as ruthless to her kin as she is to outsiders), but because she longs for something she gave up when she took over the family business. Mags lives in the world of men, and to survive in that world she does what so many strong female characters do—she becomes masculine. Such figures maintain control through fear and violence, they wield weapons and talk of war, and they protect their own at the expense of others. Mags sees Loretta as a possibility for a different way. Having lost her feminine side so long ago, she mistakenly equates femininity with innocence, and struggles to keep Loretta away from the ugly truths.

The audience gets the first glimpse of Mags in this light in “The Moonshine War,” after Loretta comes to see her to atone for her father’s theft. Mags shows real concern for the girl and promises to protect her from the pervert who has accosted her. But she seems even more worried with how Loretta is managing at home, asking her about her father’s ability to take care of her. Mags is upset that Loretta felt that she needed to take control of the household, to grow up before she should have to. As she hands Loretta a handful of candy, she makes it clear that Loretta should relinquish that kind of responsibility to Mags.

In the next episode, the two share a similar, though more emotionally loaded, moment. She pours Loretta a glass of apple cider, explaining that she is a few years away from being able to have Mags’ apple pie. In part this reads as a warning; Loretta might one day need killing. But mostly, this sentiment is Mags shielding the girl from the poison of her world. As Mags fiddles with Loretta’s jewelry and strokes her hair, she lies to Loretta about her father and confesses her desire to have a daughter instead of being stuck with “just those damn boys.” This scene is replayed later in the season as Mags helps Loretta get dressed up for a picnic, explaining to her that there is nothing wrong in looking pretty and that her [Mags’] time for that is long past. It is in her scenes with Loretta that we most clearly see the regret Mags has for what she has had to become, and what she has had to give up to do so.

Molly Brayman studied poetry at the University of Alabama, and teaches composition at the University of Cincinnati. She watches more television than is good for most people, but rationalizes it by presenting regularly at the National Popular Culture Association Conference.