Drama – Page 7 – Bitch Flicks

The Women Men Rescue (or Choose Not To): ‘The Witness’ and ‘Disorder’

Saving a beautiful woman from danger is such a pervasive male fantasy that right now, no matter where you are you could probably see an example of this trope by randomly flipping through channels or wandering into a multiplex. But what if the man was never able to save the woman? Or what if he has problems of his own that keep him from being a stereotypical hero?

Written by Ren Jender.

[Trigger Warning: discussion of explicit, fatal violence against women and rape]

You’d never know from watching movies that statistically men are much more likely to harm women than rescue them. Saving a beautiful woman from danger is such a pervasive male fantasy that right now, no matter where you are, you could probably see an example of this trope by randomly flipping through channels or wandering into a multiplex. But what if the man was never able to save the woman? Or what if he has problems of his own that keep him from being a stereotypical hero? Two new films, respectively James D. Solomon’s documentary The Witness and Alice Winocour’s French thriller Disorder, attempt to answer these questions.

The Witness tracks Bill Genovese, a Vietnam veteran and a person with an amputation who uses a wheelchair, as he tries to find out 40 to 50 years later (the film took a decade to make) what really happened the night his older sister, Kitty Genovese, was stabbed to death (and although it’s not included in the film also raped by her murderer) in front of her own Queens apartment building in 1964. Kitty Genovese’s killing became the stuff of front page headlines and sociology classes when an apocryphal story in The New York Times stated that 37 (the number was later amended to 38) of her neighbors, awakened by her screams, saw her being stabbed from their bedroom windows but none called the police or offered any other help which might have saved her life.

The truth, uncovered in more recent articles is: although neighbors heard her screams, nearly none of them knew what was going on (some thought she and her killer were a drunk married couple having an argument) especially since the scene was quiet and Kitty was out of sight for some time between her murderer’s initial attack (interrupted when a neighbor shouted at him through the window to get away from her) and when he fatally wounded her (after which a woman neighbor and friend of Kitty’s held her in her arms as she was dying).

The original news story was a manipulation of facts that made a compelling resume builder: Abe Rosenthal, who later became the long-reigning executive editor at The New York Times wrote a sensationalistic book based on the fabricated story. When Bill interviews Rosenthal, he still insists the original account was the correct one. Some other journalists who covered the story when it was still new, like the late Mike Wallace, are more philosophical. “It was a fascinating story,” he says, one that was apparently too good to let the facts get in the way.

What actually happened is more complex. One surviving neighbor Bill interviews on camera says, “I heard someone yelling, ‘Help, help,’ and I called the police,” though no records of her call are on police logs. As Bill explains to us in his narration, we don’t know if the station neglected to write down the call or if the woman is telling this story to make herself feel better about her own actions (or inaction) that night.

We also see, unlike in most narrative films, how uninterested some people are in the truth. Kitty’s killer, Winston Moseley (he has since died) who raped and killed at least one other woman and later, in an escape from prison, raped another and held hostages at gunpoint, refuses to meet with Bill and instead offers in a letter an obviously fictitious story about being framed. Moseley’s son, who was 7 at the time of the murder, is a minister who wears a shiny cross, but seems to believe another of his father’s stories (that contradicts everything we know about the case): that Kitty called him a racial slur and he snapped. The son also seems unwilling to accept that his father was responsible for the other murder (which, like Kitty’s, he confessed to after he was arrested for stealing a television) in which he set fire to his victim while she was still alive. Instead, the son states that, for years, he and the rest of family had believed that Kitty was related to the infamous New York Mafia Genoveses (she was not).

Because most of the memories of Kitty and the analysis of her death come from men, we feel a little removed from her. When one man talks about how his mother (the woman who held Kitty in her arms as she died in the hallway) often had coffee with Kitty and would “talk about whatever women talk about,” it’s as emblematic of the film’s distanced viewpoint, as the blurry, nearly faceless image we see of Kitty in clips from an old home movie which are interspersed throughout the film.

Bill is in nearly every frame of the film’s live action — most of the recreated scenes are rendered in the delicate, evocative animation of The Moth Collective. Even as we see him moving in and out of his wheelchair, wearing gloves to pull himself up the stairs to an otherwise inaccessible apartment and narrating the film, he remains something of a mystery. Why does he wait to find out the real story until 40 years after his sister died? By the time he tracks down the witnesses who testified at the trial, most are long dead. One of the only insights into his mindset comes from his wife: “The choices that he made in his life were all related to the fact that no one helped his sister.”

Bill also has a willful obtuseness when he wonders why Kitty, whom he was close to, never came out to him at a time (she died five years before Stonewall) when people who told their families they were queer were disowned. Kitty being a fairly out queer person (in a highlight, after her partner, Mary Ann Zielonko, tells Bill that the patrons at the bar where she worked didn’t know Kitty was queer, two of them tell Bill everyone at the bar knew and considered her “one of the boys”) makes me wonder if Karl Ross, one of the only witnesses who did see what was happening and was close enough to halt the murder, failed to do so because of homophobia — or a fear of police since he too may have been gay. Mary Ann says of Ross, “He knew us.” He owned the pet shop where Kitty bought a poodle for Mary Ann as an apology after an argument.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4irXjYt_LM”]

In Disorder, co-written and directed by Alice Winocour (the co-writer of Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Oscar-nominated Mustang), the woman in peril is Jessie (Diane Kruger), the wife of a shady and very wealthy businessman, and her protector is a paid bodyguard, Vincent (Matthias Schoenaerts) back from a stint in Afghanistan and suffering from PTSD (as well as some hearing loss, the doctor at the beginning tells him — and us).

We see Vincent try to do work as he deals with the sounds (all the electronic beeps and boops of modern life) and sights that trigger him. Wariness is actually part of his job description, but at first we’re unsure if Vincent’s has more to do with his internal struggles than it does with anything going on around him. Silly us: this film is a thriller. Of course the main guy’s paranoia is justified.

The film manages to squeeze a surprising amount of tension out of a not-terribly-original situation before its first violent incident (which is punctuated, stunningly, by a cracked windshield and a brief blackout) but falls apart soon afterward. The film has lots of overheard conversations and pieces of information that never really come together in coherent form, which might reflect what a paid protector would overhear and understand but doesn’t really engage the audience. The violent aggressors are the opposite of a menace in their cute, black, ninja outfits and masks. No matter what Vincent’s skills as a fighter (never impaired by psychological problems so obvious that Jessie asks his coworker directly, “What’s wrong with him?”) always flatten them, so the action becomes monotonous.

Winocour’s film was apparently influenced by her suffering PTSD from a traumatic childbirth experience (she and her daughter are fine now), a phenomenon women I’ve known have also experienced, but something I have never seen captured on film. I desperately wished Disorder was about women’s trauma instead of the tired cliché of a male soldier’s suffering. The film also doesn’t give us any insight into Jessie’s point of view. She looks great in the backless floral evening dress she wears to a party early in the film, but in every scene she is so much an object she might as well be tied in pink ribbon. This lack of attention to the character is especially shocking and disappointing because Winocour co-wrote Mustang, an instant feminist classic that is flawlessly attuned to its girl protagonists.

Additionally the husband and his cohorts are all from the Middle East: the only person of Middle-Eastern descent who doesn’t seem sinister is Ali, Jessie’s Keane-eyed, curly-haired, young son. France’s traditional anti-Arab sentiment and more recent anti-Muslim policies (on the same beaches where Jessie and Ali frolic) make the ethnicity of the bad guys seem not strictly coincidental and more than a little racist. Skip this film and see Mustang (again) instead.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMThvaCTAm0″]

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

‘Gorillas In the Mist’, Dian Fossey, and Female Ambition in the Wild

This guest post written by Jessica Quiroli appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists.

When we first see Dian Fossey — portrayed by Sigourney Weaver, nominated for an Oscar for her performance — in the biopic Gorillas in the Mist, she’s briskly walking up stairs at a sprawling college campus in Louisville, Kentucky. She looks pristine, as do her surroundings. She’s well-dressed, her hair perfectly coiffed, her eyes glowing with hope and curiosity. She’s the image of health, intelligence, cleanliness, and acceptable American womanhood in the 1960s.

That will not last.

Dian Fossey, a zoologist, primatologist, and anthropologist, was a controversial figure because she approached her work with primates in their natural habitat in a radical and unconventional way. But it was, of course, also because she was a woman in the wild. Before Cheryl Strayed wrote her book Wild about hiking the Pacific Coast Trail, and Reese Witherspoon made a feminist masterpiece of it on the big screen, there was Gorillas in the Mist: a film that tells Fossey’s complicated story, three years after she was murdered in 1985 in her cabin in Rwanda.

The film celebrates the beautiful creatures Dian was sent to track by famed anthropologist Louis Leakey and her profound connection to them, which led to her living on a mountain, endangering her life in the process. She ultimately positioned herself to battle frustrated poachers protecting their way of life, despite the illegal killing of gorillas.

Dian’s arrival in the Republic of the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in Africa illustrates a rejection of all that was traditionally feminine in her previous life — an engagement to a man, not to mention her blow dryer, which she insists on having in the early part of her journey. By the end, she’s stripped herself of all those aesthetic concerns, at least outwardly.

Fossey established her own site in 1967, named the Karisoke Research Center, in a rainforest camp in Rwanda, where much of the film’s story focuses. Throughout the film, as she journeys away from that woman in the first frame, we watch her fall in love not just with her African surroundings and gorilla subjects, but with her own power. At one point Dian bellows, “Get off my mountain!” — which could be viewed as a problematic or colonial statement as she is a white woman claiming ownership of a land not hers. In that moment, she perhaps reveals a deeper desire to detach from people whom she felt controlled or judged her. In Africa, she’s hated by poachers, but she’s unapologetically claimed her agency.

The film also explores Dian’s relationship with photographer Bob Campbell (Bryan Brown). The two begin an affair after he becomes the sole photographer of her work with the gorillas. The photos serve as documentation of the emotional bond that Dian developed with them. But the images are also a foreshadowing; Dian long ago gave up notions of being a traditional woman or wife, a decision that ultimately impacts their relationship. Fossey’s friend Rosamund Carr (portrayed by Julie Harris) confirms that her heartbreak over the end of her relationship profoundly affected her, confirming the film’s accuracy as well.

At times it seems so clear that Dian should leave, where she looks worn out and miserable, as well as genuinely sick (Fossey had asthma, and was also a smoker). The inspiration that made her eyes glow in the first few scenes is gone, replaced by a determination to not surrender and a desire to control her environment. Her fearlessness, however, is admirable; her drive, awe-inspiring. She spent years sacrificing her own needs to do work that had never done before, work that would have long-term impacts. Weaver shows not only that Fossey was devoted to studying her creatures, but that, at a certain point, they were her true love, for better or worse.

In 1967 women were on the verge of a revolution, forging their path by demanding equal respect and opportunities. Fossey didn’t fight that battle in everyday society, but she lived and died as a symbol of defiance of the expectations put on women. Just by doing work that she loved and believed in, Fossey made a statement about women’s value in the world.

Gorillas in the Mist doesn’t rob you of mourning. But it also doesn’t paint Fossey as a fool or victim. Her death was a horrific tragedy. But the movie shows you her fearless leadership, as she faced peril. She had every opportunity to jump off the track and move far from her mountain. But she refused.

Adapted from the screenplay from Fossey’s autobiography, screenwriter Anna Hamilton Phelan offers insight into Fossey’s mentality. Phelan recalled her visit to Fossey’s cabin, in Linda Seger’s screenwriting book Creating Unforgettable Characters. The visit occurred just weeks after Fossey’s death. With police tape everywhere, Phelan was unable to go inside. However, she peeked in her closet from a window. Hanging in the closet, she saw a ball gown, which she later learned was from the department store Bonwitt and Teller. That moment inspired Phelan to write the screenplay. Why was Fossey holding on to a ball gown in the middle of the wild? Phelan and Weaver’s performance show that Fossey lived by her own standards and didn’t care to be desired or liked. Perhaps she looked at that fancy gown in her closet and recalled her past life; perhaps she even longed for her former life. But she never fully returned to it.

As risky as her decision was, she stayed the course, refusing to be any other kind of woman than the one she became with the gorillas on that mountain.

The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International carried on Fossey’s work in the Karisoke Research Center, “dedicated to the conservation and protection of gorillas and their habitats in Africa.”

See also at Bitch Flicks: Biopic and Documentary Week: ‘Gorillas in the Mist’

Jessica Quiroli is a minor league baseball writer for Baseball Prospectus and the creator of Heels on the Field: A MiLB Blog. She’s also written extensively about domestic violence in baseball. She’s a DV survivor. You can follow her on Twitter @heelsonthefield.

1950s B-Movie Women Scientists: Smart, Strong, but Still Marriageable

While the happily ever after scenario in these 1950s B-movies comes with an expectation that women give up their careers in science to become wives and mothers once the appropriate suitor is identified, it seems there are women in B-movies who do have it all — they maintain the respect afforded to them as scientists and also win romantic partners, without having to sacrifice their professional interests to assume domestic roles instead.

This guest post written by Linda Levitt appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists.

A study published by the University of Denver in 2012 shows that less than one third of women completing degrees in STEM fields end up pursuing careers in the disciplines they studied. In fact, one in three women leaves the technology workforce within the first two years. Since the number of women pursuing and succeeding in careers as scientists remains quite small, it is surprising to find a particular characterization of women as scientists in 1950s science fiction B-movies. The abundance of female scientists in these films does not reflect the reality of women in the sciences at the time. We could argue that including female scientists enhances the moviegoing experience by creating “eye candy” for male audience members. If the moviegoer identifies with the heroic male lead, as film theorist Laura Mulvey and others would assume, then the film’s satisfying conclusion includes winning the heart of the “leading lady” and enabling the “happily ever after” for the heroic male scientist who saves civilization from deadly creatures, nuclear meltdown, or another apocalyptic scenario.

Science fiction routinely offers an alternative present or a possible future: some of these realities are promising, and some are apocalyptic. The possibility of gender equality in the workplace is not far-fetched for an alternative reality, especially in light of a long history of women working quietly in the background in the sciences. Thus another perspective would be to argue that the inclusion of female scientists in B-movies allowed young women in the audience to see the possibility for an intellectual career for themselves.

In the decades since these films first played in theaters and drive-ins, it has become relatively commonplace for women to have fulfilling careers, although gender equality remains a daunting challenge across all professions. The recent proliferation of discussions about “work-life balance” indicates this inequality: the need to find a balance between professional and personal lives is addressed almost exclusively to women. While the happily ever after scenario in these 1950s B-movies comes with an expectation that women give up their careers in science to become wives and mothers once the appropriate suitor is identified, it seems there are women in B-movies who do have it all — they maintain the respect afforded to them as scientists and also win romantic partners, without having to sacrifice their professional interests to assume domestic roles instead.

Women scientists featured in 1950s B-movies span a broad variety of expertise: paleontologist Lee Hunter in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Dr. Patricia Medford, an etymologist in Them! (1954), biologist Stephanie Clayton in Tarantula (1955), and three scientists — Joanna Merritt, Marna Roberts, and Madame Elzevir (truly, she was not afforded a first name), wife of the esteemed Dr. Pierre Elzevir — in Gog (1954). These women often have the answers to save civilization, or willingly brave deadly encounters with the unknown, but many of the depictions of female scientists also reify gender stereotypes about women, regardless of their intellectual prowess and independence.

The 1954 Cold War sci-fi thriller Gog offers several good examples. A feminist critique would address some of the blatantly sexist events, such as the research assistant who weeps hysterically when the scientist she works with dies suddenly, only to be slapped across the face by another male scientist who implores her to “get some men up here and restore order.” Just the same, three women scientists are at work in this underground laboratory where a space station is being built. One of the scientists, Joanna Merritt (Constance Dowling), is portrayed as serious, intellectual, and devoid of much emotion. She does, however, have a quick wit.

Merritt and Dr. Van Ness (Herbert Marshall), the lab supervisor, take security agent David Sheppard (Richard Egan) on a tour of the facility. They observe an experiment in weightlessness, where a man and woman are training for a zero-gravity environment in space. After watching them for awhile, Sheppard asks: “Why the girl?” Merritt replies: “We think women are better suited for space travel than men.” Lest she have the opportunity to make an argument favoring women over men, Van Ness quickly adds, “For one thing, they take up less space in a rocket.”

Sheppard objectifies the female astronaut in training, referring to her as “the girl” and questioning the appropriateness of her place in the space program. Then Van Ness adds that women are better because they are smaller, providing an idealized stereotype of the petite, fit woman. Nonetheless, there is still an opportunity for Merritt to offer what rhetorically sounds like a scientific truth: “We think women are better suited for space travel than men.” She has a strong and present personality, and the perspective she voices is not easily dismissed. Spoiler alert: There have already been hints that David Sheppard and Joanna Merritt are… well… romantically acquainted, and by film’s end, they appear destined for the happily ever after. Still, her position as a scientist of regard does not seem diminished. The presence of women in positions of intellectual power seems tacitly accepted here, in a filmic world where imagination is boundless.

Merritt has no internal conflict — she is not concerned about making choices about her life. Yet the taken-for-granted nature of female scientists in these films differs markedly from recent films: for characters like Dr. Ellie Sattler in Jurassic Park (1993) or Dr. Eleanor Alloway in Contact (1997), their choice of careers leads others to question their scientific authority and personal motivation.

Women’s studies scholar J. Kasi Jackson points out that “in addition to negotiating between detachment and empathy, the female scientist must balance professionalism with femininity.” The woman scientist is an outsider both in science, where her “feminine” empathy is not objective, and in society, where scientific rationality conflicts with assumed “feminine” traits. Jackson’s observations relate well to Lee Hunter (Paula Raymond), a paleontologist in the 1953 giant creature movie The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Hunter is a social outcast: as a woman, she doesn’t comfortably fit in with her male colleagues, nor does she seem to connect with any other women. She is, in fact the only woman with any substance in the film, and no one doubts her place on the scene or the veracity of her research and observations. The other female characters are empty stereotypes: a nurse, a nun, a telephone operator, a screaming mother, and a bank of phone operators handling calls in the monster-created emergency. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms fails the Bechdel Test, since it does not have: (1) at least two women in it, who (2) talk to each other, about (3) something other than a man.

Although it is unlikely that a 1950s science fiction B-movie would pass the Bechdel Test, it is employed here to draw attention to the strength of the female scientist in this film. Like Joanna Merritt, Lee Hunter is poised, confident, and smart. She is the assistant to Dr. Thurgood Elson (Cecil Kellaway), who is visited by a physicist named Thomas Nesbitt (Paul Hubschmid), who believes he has seen a dinosaur. No one takes Nesbitt very seriously, but Hunter does. She establishes both her scientific prowess and her compassion after Nesbitt leaves Elson’s laboratory. Of Nesbitt, she tells Elson, “When he first came to this country, I attended his lectures on the curative properties of radioactive isotopes. He’s a brilliant man. Isn’t his story in any way feasible?” Despite Elson’s refusal, Hunter decided to visit Nesbitt’s office to offer her support.

Nesbitt’s secretary informs him of Lee’s arrival: “There’s a Lee Hunter waiting for you. She’s very pretty.” In this moment, the narrative privileges Lee’s femininity and sexuality over her intellect. Yet when Nesbitt later asks why she would believe his claims, she says, “I have a deep abiding faith in the work of scientists. Otherwise I wouldn’t be one myself.” Hunter ties her identity to science, a theme which is repeated throughout the film.

Science fiction B-movies from the 1950s are rife with female characters who do not have the independence or determination of Joanna Merritt and Lee Hunter. Some female characters are primarily sexualized and seductive, where others are hyper-emotional and present themselves as weak and needy. Despite the depiction of some women scientists, these films still reflect the gendered reality of their time: the cultural framework in which these films are set is undeniably sexist. Teresa De Lauretis argued that female characters are made to conform to the ideal image that the male protagonist has for them. Regardless of their intellect or achievements, these characters are the object of the male gaze.

Writing in 1971, political scientist Jo Freeman argued that one of the core concepts of sexism is that “women are here for the pleasure and assistance of men.” Freeman goes on to say that:

“It is this attitude which stigmatizes those women who do not marry or who do not devote their primary energies to the care of men and their children. Association with a man is the basic criterion for participation by women in this society and one who does not seek her identity through a man is a threat to the social values.”

Identity formation is a complex process, and every person forms and performs their identity in the context of their interpersonal relationships. In other words, self-identity reflects, but is not dependent upon, the presence of others. Freeman’s claim, then, has validity, especially when viewed with contingency. For women scientists in the 1950s, “association with a man” was “the basic criterion for participation by women” in society: science has been and remains patriarchal. As previously noted, women tend to abandon or simply not pursue professional life in the sciences; the lack of a welcoming, balanced space for women is one reason. With this in mind, it is noteworthy that B-movie women scientists seem undaunted by the patriarchal cultures in which they choose to work.

Although men significantly outnumber women in the B-movies discussed here, women were frequently featured in significant scientific roles, battling aliens, mutant forces, or giant bugs. A survey of these films indicates a spectrum of reception in which female scientists may be welcome or othered, depending on their circumstances and relationships to men within the patriarchal culture of a scientific organization.

Linda Levitt’s research focuses on gender studies, media, and cultural memory. Her work is often situated at the intersection of these ideas.

‘Contact’: The Power of Feminist Representation

‘Contact’ remains a singularly astute portrayal of a woman combating the oppressive confines of institutional sexism, as well as a reminder of how deeply mainstream cinema still needs progressive feminist portrayals that contradict gender clichés. … How refreshing that a woman’s personal arc is considered important enough to be entwined alongside the movie’s core theme of discovering meaning in our seemingly meaningless universe.

This guest post written by Kelcie Mattson appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists.

For half my life I planned to be an astrophysicist.

You can credit the mental implantation of that idea to the 1997 film Contact. I was eight years old, and recognition clicked when I saw Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway. Her love for space exploration coalesced with my own in a way I hadn’t known was possible, and I thought, clear as a pinpoint — I want to be that.

Ultimately, that passion translated into writing stories about science rather than living them myself, so I’m not a successful case study. But Contact remains a singularly astute portrayal of a woman combating the oppressive confines of institutional sexism, as well as a reminder of how deeply mainstream cinema still needs progressive feminist portrayals that contradict gender clichés.

Based on the novel by the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan, Contact follows Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), a leading member of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program, as she strives to prove the existence of alien life. After she discovers a radio signal transmitting from a seemingly uninhabited star system, the governments of the world unite with NASA to decode what the mystery alien message means for the future of humanity.

Contact makes waves just by existing. Although the science fiction genre is peppered with extraordinary portrayals of pioneering women, it’s rare for them to actively serve as the protagonists of any major motion picture, let alone a multi-million dollar sci-fi blockbuster. Instead of maximizing the endless possibilities inherent in the genre to their fullest potential by liberating and diversifying, the majority of women take a narrative backseat to a revolving door series of leading white men. They’re lucky to do something other than fulfill the tired role of token love interest. Dr. Martha Lauzen’s “Celluloid Ceiling” report for 2015 confirms this: women comprised only 22% of movie protagonists in the top 100 highest grossing films of last year.

Contact breaks down common cinema barriers by not only featuring a complex, layered female protagonist, but a brilliantly capable, talented female scientist — a concept still lacking adequate female personification and normalization within modern narratives.

As a woman in a male-dominated profession, Ellie Arroway endures a belligerent stream of ingrained sexism. She is overruled, questioned, ignored, and derided by the men surrounding her, particularly by David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt), the Scientific Advisor to the President and quasi-antagonist. He removes the funding from Ellie’s SETI research site in Puerto Rico and threatens to do the same four years later at an observatory in New Mexico because he’s convinced the effort is a waste of resources — NASA’s and Ellie’s. Not only is “looking for E.T.” a laughable venture, he argues Ellie’s squandering her talents in the department and won’t accomplish anything of note with her career. If she’s going to be a scientist, she should at least be the kind he approves of. It’s an example of paternalistic control masquerading as concern that Ellie is quick to challenge.

During a White House press briefing about the contents of the alien message, Ellie is scheduled to speak but government officials pass her over without warning in favor of Drumlin — despite the fact Ellie leads the project responsible for discovering the extraterrestrial communique. He even surpasses her by committee vote (and exploitative manipulation) to become humanity’s ambassador to the alien race, again in spite of Ellie’s enormous qualifications.

There’s also Ellie’s on/off again love interest Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), a religious philosopher who condemns her on national television for her lack of belief in a Christian God. Most damning of all, when Ellie can provide no proof of her successful meeting with the alien race, National Security Advisor Michael Kitz (James Woods) interrogates her to the point of gaslighting. She’s a delusional, hysterical woman; how can they believe a word she says? How can she believe herself?

While the pushback against Ellie’s stalwart belief in extraterrestrial life isn’t necessarily gender specific (think the mockery Fox Mulder faces in The X-Files for a male equivalent), Ellie is still infantilized and dismissed in a frighteningly recognizable way. Drumlin, Kitz, and Joss make decisions “for” her, without her, and against her, even going so far as to steal credit for her work to amplify their professional status. Despite her contributions (she discovers alien life, people), she’s summarily overlooked without question or hesitation. There are no explicit declarations of hatred, belief in female inferiority, or use of gendered slurs — just a reactionary, bone-deep confidence in their own authority as men. It’s a quieter, more insidious form of misogyny permeating all sections of society.

Because of this constant litany of sabotage, Ellie is forced to move through the world by working around the biased structural institutions. The only way Ellie can overcome those limitations, however, is through the aid of men. Reclusive billionaire S. R. Hadden (John Hurt) funds not only Ellie’s research after all other prominent institutions have rejected her, but reveals the existence of a backup spacecraft after the first is destroyed by a suicide bomber. Interestingly, Ellie is both active instigator and passive reactor in these scenarios — Hadden provides financial backing because she implores it from his company, and he’s impressed by her fiery determination. The revelation of the secondary spacecraft, though, as well as a clue that solves the coded alien message, come from Hadden’s goodwill, not an intellectual triumph of Ellie’s. Without Hadden’s money and influence, Ellie would be helpless to progress. One can even argue the suicide bomber (Jake Busey), a disgusting, religious radical responsible for innocent deaths, makes Ellie’s journey in the machine possible by causing Drumlin’s death in the explosion.

It doesn’t matter how unquestionably skilled Ellie is or how vocally she protests — her talents aren’t enough to break past the systematic barriers imposed by powerful men and the society that implicitly favors them. Her avenue for advancement isn’t dismantling the system, but sneaking through the cracks. Aliens exist; equality does not.

It’s a disappointing view of the STEM field, but not an inaccurate one. Case studies have found many women face hostility, harassment, and sexual assault from male colleagues. The script’s co-writer, Ann Druyan, experienced “huge amounts of sexism” during her career with NASA:

“I remember routinely being dismissed, interrupted — I’d say something and people at a meeting would turn to Carl [Sagan] or someone else and say, that was a really great idea you had.”

Although Ellie’s experiences occur within the framework of a semi-fantastical context, the messy convergence of religion, science, and gender serves as a reflection of the oppressive situations real women experience. She is no fainting damsel weakened by conflict, but a symbol of female resistance, her personhood achieved in non-traditional ways that challenge the status quo of masculine privilege and assumed gender divisions. She pursues her chosen scientific track to the disapproval of her colleagues. She raises her voice. She’s compassionate and filled with ideological wanderlust, as well as career-driven, aggressive, and angry. She’s lonely but rejects romance in favor of a one-night stand without considering it a sacrifice to the altar of her career, and when she does choose a relationship, it’s not a corrective act that fulfills her life. She’s an independent, sexual being who fits within the heteronormative standards of female beauty without being sexualized, yet can still wear a “really great dress” to a party. Ellie’s absolute disregard for prescribed stereotypical characteristics coded as “male” and “female” frees her to be a whole, multi-layered character in pursuit of her own kind of individuality.

Ellie even breaks the known limitations of the universe. From a narrative standpoint, she grapples with the biggest philosophical questions plaguing our existence: are we alone? What’s our purpose? Her desperation to make first contact mirrors a psychological need to cure her loneliness, an echo of the themes seen in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Interstellar, and more. How refreshing that a woman’s personal arc is considered important enough to be entwined alongside the movie’s core theme of discovering meaning in our seemingly meaningless universe.

The fact there are no other on-screen female scientists seems a deliberate choice to further highlight Ellie’s isolation, but it’s still an unfortunate oversight by the writers. (Ellie’s mother in particular is a presence sorely lacking; she’s barely mentioned except to note she passed away during childbirth.) Given that Ellie is only one of two women with an on-screen speaking part, all of her major interactions are with men. If Drumlin and his ilk represent the sexist hegemony, the handful who support her can be classified as male allies. This is especially true of Ellie’s father, who fully encouraged his daughter’s interest in astronomy and helped advance her curiosity, rather than shut it down in its infancy as something inappropriate for a young girl. Ellie and her fellow SETI scientist Kent Clark (William Fichtner), who is blind, share a passion for their study as well being overlooked minorities. By the film’s end, even Palmer Joss overcomes his biases to accept Ellie’s differences and proclaim his belief in her story to the world; he doesn’t speak for her, but uses his influence to support her voice.

It’s worth mentioning the alien emissary that Ellie meets assumes the form of her father in order to “comfort” her. It’s a pretty blatant example of the daddy issues cliché, and compounds the realization that in addition to another species, Ellie spent her entire life searching for a paternalistic replacement (she sleeps with Joss after he unintentionally quotes Ellie’s father, a move that’s way too Oedipal for me). Although the reliance on a lost-father trope in order to give Ellie depth is irritating, it doesn’t undermine her progression or strengths as a character. Her interests weren’t defined by her father, and neither is she diminished or restricted by her grief over his loss. She’s allowed to weep at the sight of “him,” even if the alien’s attitude is infantilizing.

Ultimately, Ellie triumphs over the sociopolitical forces conspiring against her. The secure knowledge of Ellie’s own truth is what matters more than the government’s approval, and thousands of strangers stand in solidarity of belief with her. She achieves her goal of advancing scientific understanding by initiating first contact, as well as finding personal peace, without compromising her autonomy or personality. Radios, telescopes, space, math, physics — these passions were born entirely from herself, and they flourished because of her drive. There’s no question of how or why or she’s an exception. Ellie just is. She’s passionate, level-headed, exacting, devoted, optimistic, courageous, unapologetic, and full of glorious wonder.

That’s what girls need to see: the normalization of women as protagonists, as professionals, as figureheads of heroism. Viable, easily seen examples that women belong in the worlds of science and technology, that the fields aren’t exclusive boys’ clubs. A woman can achieve breakthroughs in math and physics. A woman can raise her voice and fight for her beliefs. A woman can serve as representative for the best of humanity.

More than anything, she can succeed in the face of overwhelming societal pressures trying to undermine her choices — just like social norms dictate what young women can and can’t do. Pink is for girls, blue is for boys; you play with dolls, not trucks. It’s impractical to be a scientist, or an engineer, or a radio astronomer.

Contact shows women can be protagonists, women can be scientific geniuses, and women can inspire. It compounds the deep-seated necessity for identification through representation, if nothing else than through my own experience as a young girl looking for confirmation that I wasn’t abnormal at the same time I was looking up at the stars.

If Ellie Arroway can do those things, so can we.

Kelcie Mattson is a multimedia editor by morning, aspiring critic by afternoon, and tea aficionado 24/7. She’s been a fangirl since birth, thanks to reruns of Star Trek and Buffy. In her spare time she does the blogging thing on feminism, genre films, minority representation, comics, and all things cinephile-y at her website. You can follow her on Twitter at @kelciemattson, where she’s usually overanalyzing HGTV’s camerawork and sharing too many cat pictures.

‘Splice’: The Horror of Having It All

…’Splice’ could very well be a cautionary tale for the career woman considering motherhood. From the outset, the film shows Elsa as an ambitious scientist who loves her job – and who loves her life exactly the way it is. … This presents the central conflict of Elsa’s character: her repressed desire to be a mother, and her larger desire to remain in control of her own life, body, and career.

This guest post written by Claire Holland appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists. | Spoilers ahead.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape]

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

That’s the question Clive (Adrien Brody), a genetic engineer, poses to his partner in both work and life, Elsa (Sarah Polley), regarding the possibility of having a child together. The rest of Splice goes on to answer that question, and the perspective is not an optimistic one.

While sporadically debating the pros and cons of making a baby the old-fashioned way, the two scientists create a creature, eventually named “Dren,” by splicing genetic material from different animals – including human genes from Elsa, who becomes a de facto mother. Splice explores a number of fraught topics, including the politics of male-female relationships, the nature of motherhood, and the ethics of genetic engineering and abortion. One of the less explored topics, however, is what the film says about the working mother, specifically. While the waters are a bit murky on the subject, look at it in the right light and Splice could very well be a cautionary tale for the career woman considering motherhood.

From the outset, the film shows Elsa as an ambitious scientist who loves her job – and who loves her life exactly the way it is. Her boyfriend Clive is the one who wants to change things, gently but insistently prodding Elsa about altering their lives to make room for a baby. Elsa makes it clear that she’s not interested in doing so, stating, “I don’t want to bend my life to suit some third party that doesn’t even exist yet.” She also suggests they wait until they “crack male pregnancy,” suggesting that she may never be interested, for a variety of reasons. However, Clive continues to pester Elsa to change her mind. It’s apparent that Clive represents the good, “normal” man who wants expected things like a nuclear family, blissfully unaware of the lasting effects a child would have on his female partner’s body and career. Elsa represents the abnormal, and implicitly wrong, approach to living as a woman: putting herself before her womb.

Elsa takes the ultimate gamble when she inserts her own genetic material into the amalgam that is Dren. This presents the central conflict of Elsa’s character: her repressed desire to be a mother, and her larger desire to remain in control of her own life, body, and career. Splice goes on to suggest that these two desires are inherently incompatible, and further, that attempting to “have it all” is a punishable offense.

When it comes to pseudo-motherhood, Elsa can’t do anything right, at least in Clive’s opinion. At the beginning, he reprimands her for treating Dren “like a pet” rather than a specimen. Clive’s fear illustrates how stereotypically female attributes, such as the ability to nurture, are considered weaknesses in a male-dominated profession like science, and the working world in general. Elsa sees potential in Dren that reaches far beyond the original goals of the experiment, but the film only presents this new facet of her character as a negative. It makes Elsa emotional, and therefore a danger to the sterile work world she inhabits.

As Dren (Delphine Chanéac) matures and becomes more volatile, she grows closer to Clive, who she begins to see as a potential mate (and, disturbingly, vice versa), and becomes resentful of Elsa’s restrictive presence. Clive remains critical of Elsa’s reactions to parenthood as she begins to shift from doting mother to controlling mother, suddenly finding her not maternal enough for his liking. Although we discover that Elsa has deep-seated issues with her own mother that hinder her ability to parent effectively, we also see that as the only parental figure left in the equation, she is obliged to become more and more domineering in order to keep their unauthorized experiment under wraps.

It’s at this point that Elsa becomes fundamentally unable to reconcile her roles as mother and scientist. Faced with a wild, fully grown Dren who doesn’t want to be told what to do, Elsa reestablishes control the only way she knows how: by force. She knocks Dren unconscious, ties her down, and surgically removes the stinger she has on her tail. Elsa then uses the stinger to synthesize the protein her team has been attempting to make all along. It is her greatest accomplishment, and also her coldest, most calculating moment, divorcing her entirely from the mother figure she once represented to Dren. It seems that in order to find success in her job, Elsa has to renounce her maternal side completely.

In the final act of Splice, Dren transitions from female to male (the final part of her life cycle, foreshadowed earlier in the film). Dren then rapes Elsa, for reasons left unexplained. Perhaps it’s simply Dren’s animal instinct, but it comes across as punishment; punishment for being too ambitious in realms not traditionally female (Elsa’s career, science), or punishment for not finding fulfillment in the roles women are “supposed” to find fulfillment (motherhood and wifedom). No matter how you splice it, the film does not treat Elsa’s non-conformance with much kindness or sympathy, and for better or worse it reads as a blaring warning sign to women like her: attempting to “have it all” can be deadly.

See also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Splice’: Womb Horror and the Mother Scientist

Claire Holland is a freelance writer and author of Razor Apple, a blog devoted to horror movies and horror culture with a feminist bent. Claire has a BA in English and creative writing, but she insists on writing about “trashy” genre movies nonetheless. You can follow her on Twitter @ClaireCWrites.

When Will Black Women Play Leading Scientists More Often?

In movies and on television, the absence of Black women as scientists is glaringly obvious. …The response on social media to the vocation of Leslie Jones’ character in ‘Ghostbusters’ offers an opportunity to ponder: When have Black women been cast as scientists in laboratories, creating and inventing significant and outlandish developments, and leading investigations? …Where are the Black women playing scientists in films in the 21st century?

This guest post written by Tara Betts appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists.

In movies and on television, the absence of Black women as scientists is glaringly obvious. This became more obvious when the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot caused an outcry around Leslie Jones — the only Black Ghostbuster — being cast as a municipal worker, rather than a scientist like her white women costars. Even though Jones’ occupation is identical to Ernie Hudson’s role as Winston in the 1984 original, the response on social media to the vocation of Jones’ character offers an opportunity to ponder: When have Black women been cast as scientists in laboratories, creating and inventing significant and outlandish developments, and leading investigations? Black women have been stereotypically cast as servants and sex workers in too many films to name here, but we should be asking: Where are the Black women playing scientists in films in the 21^st century?

Some of the smaller, less central scientist roles played by Black actresses include Kerry Washington as Medical Officer Marissa Brau in 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea (2007), Alfre Woodard as Lily Sloane as Zefram Cochrane’s (played by James Cromwell) assistant in Star Trek: First Contact (1996), N’Bushe Wright as hematologist Dr. Karen Jenson in Blade (1998), and Dr. Billie Worth (Rosalind Cash) seeking the cure to cirrhosis with Dr. Henry Pride (Bernie Casey) in Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde, the 1976 blaxploitation version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Most recently, Viola Davis seems to have cornered the most roles as a Black female scientist. Davis played Dr. Helen Gordon in Solaris (2002) and as Major Gwen Anderson, a psychologist in Enders Game (2013). Davis also plays Amanda Waller in the recently completed Suicide Squad movie. Angela Bassett portrayed the same role in Green Lantern (2011) but this version of the character was a scientist, rather than a government official.

The upcoming 2017 Hidden Figures (starring Taraji P. Henson, Janelle Monáe, Octavia Spencer), Sanaa Lathan in the 2004 film AVP: Alien vs. Predator, and Janet Jackson in the 2000 comedy The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps approach representations of Black women as scientists in ways that have yet to be replicated more often. But there is also room for more believable portrayals across STEM-related disciplines. These roles are some of the only leading roles where Black women scientists received top billing, rather than as supporting characters who assist other scientists.

In AVP: Alien vs. Predator, Lathan portrays Alexa Woods, an environmental technician and expedition leader for a group of archaeologists, which makes her more than a scientist. She leads her fellow scientists and eventually prevails against two nearly unstoppable adversaries. Throughout this film, Alexa is a quick-thinking, resourceful heroine in escalating crises. Her final challenge lies in preventing any aliens from rising to Earth’s surface. Otherwise, the Predators and humans know that life on the planet will be completely destroyed.

Alexa’s first scene displays her endurance as she climbs the Lho La icefall in Nepal. In the middle of ascent, her ringing cell phone startles her, but she calmly and quickly secures herself in order to answer the call via the ear piece tucked beneath her cap. She, along with a team of experts, is flown in directly from the mountaintop via helicopter to meet with Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) to hear a description of the mission. Weyland’s satellites have discovered an unusual heat signature in Antarctica, and thermal imaging reveals a massive structure with hundreds of rooms built around a central core beneath the edifice. The pyramid itself displays characteristics from structures from Aztec, Cambodian, and Egyptian structures. Woods’ doubt about the safety of the mission leads her to turn it down. But Sebastian de Rosa (Raoul Bova) and Graeme Miller (Ewen Bremner) convince her to take the mission by asking if they have a better chance of surviving with her. The lack of experience of other scientists in her hazardous field and de Rosa’s gentle request convinces Alexa that she can work toward keeping the crew safe. Inevitably, Alexa is the only expert who can take on the mission with Weyland Industries to find what may be the earliest pyramid, 2,000 feet below Bogataya Island.

The team arrives at the abandoned whaling station on the Antarctic island. They discover that some sort of advanced thermal equipment has cut a perfectly angled tunnel straight toward the pyramid just before their arrival. As they begin to descend into the tunnel, Weyland loses his grip and starts plummeting toward a possible collision with the rocks and pyramid below. Alexa clearly notes his sliding body and lowers an ice hatchet onto the loose, unused hood of Weyland’s parka. In doing so, she saves the wealthy initiator of the project who, at times, sounds like a fatherly/great white benefactor standing in for Alexa’s late father, who died from complications related to a mountain climbing injury.

After losing Sebastian, the last member of her team who helped her figure out some of the written hieroglyphs, Alexa undergoes a significant hunting ritual of the Predators. She surrenders one of the artifacts, approaches a surviving Predator peacefully, and kills one of the aliens. This unlikely alliance places a Black woman in a role that is nearly nonexistent in U.S. cinema: a leader who survives an animal-like alien onslaught and a technologically-advanced hunter who could easily eliminate human life. Lathan could have reprised her role as Alexa Woods in the 2007 sequel Alien vs. Predator: Requiem or in other films, much like Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in the Alien franchise. But that opportunity never arose.

Before the release of the suspense-filled sci-fi action film AVP: Alien Versus Predator, Eddie Murphy starred as the lead in the 1996 remake of The Nutty Professor, which was originally a Jerry Lewis film made in 1963. Unlike the chemistry student Carla Purty (Jada Pinkett Smith) in Murphy’s first Nutty Professor, Denise Gaines (Janet Jackson) is Sherman Klump’s colleague in the sequel The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps. In her opening scene, Jackson dons wire-framed glasses and a blazer. Throughout the entire film, Jackson is covered in long sleeves and long skirts, like a modest academic who would rather downplay her physical attributes and draw attention to her intellect. Sherman wedges his way into a crowded lecture to listen to Denise explain her research as she points to an overhead projection featuring illustrations of DNA chains. Her research is related to a potential process for genomic extraction. An extraction such as this would remove risk factors from an individual’s DNA in order to prevent genetic health problems in the future.

In the next scene, Denise enters Sherman’s lab to pull him aside and talk to him one on one. As they walk under wide collegiate arches together, Denise tells him that she’s been invited to take a position at University of Maine, but she’s not sure if she wants to take it since she wants to stay because of her feelings for Sherman. In some ways, this reflects the difficulty that women faculty, including women of color STEM faculty often face, the challenge of finding a spouse. “Sherman, I’m not talking about research. Sherman, you’re very special to me. You are kind and decent. You are the most brilliant man I’ve ever known.” When Gaines says this and disregards Sherman’s size, the implication is that she loves him, not some conventionally attractive appearance he could have. Gaines’ perception of Sherman is reinforced after an outburst from Buddy Love, his bullying, overtly macho Jekyll-like, alter-ego. When Sherman proposes to Denise, he impresses her by writing/spraying “Marry Me” in the sky with a simulated hormone. It is his decency and intellectual prowess that leads to Denise accepting his proposal. They celebrate this happy moment after class in a lecture hall while they sip champagne out of beakers, and Chaka Khan’s “Tell Me Something Good” plays in the background. Their giggles and sips are followed by a major professional success when the boss of both Sherman and Denise, Dean Richmond (Larry Miller), notifies them that their research led to receiving a multi-million-dollar research grant from a fictional pharmaceutical company.

Although Denise is Sherman’s peer, not just his fiancée, her role is downplayed to emphasize the scenes where she participates in wedding festivities for her plans, including dinner with both sets of parents, trying on Sherman’s mother’s wedding dress, picking up an altered dress, and attending a bachelorette party complete with a fireman stripper dancing to Sisqo’s “Thong Song.”

Although there are some thoughtful moments that portray masculinity as a scholarly, sensitive man like Sherman Klump or his loving father Cletus, who can be tender with the wife he desperately wants to please, they are caricatures of Black people that stereotype plus-size people and older Black women by Murphy dressing in drag. When he plays Mama Klump and the hyper-sexual Granny Klump, the humor resides in creating a plus-size, undersexed mother and a representation of an older, lascivious Black woman with oversized, flapping breasts and bad dental health. This reliance on Granny Klump’s appetites as an ageist source of humor makes the sexuality of older women look absurd and completely undesirable. The women in the film (who aren’t Murphy in drag) are Denise, a couple of women that Sherman briefly greets on campus, and a few women of various ages in a club where Cletus tests out Sherman’s youth formula during a night out. In fact, Sherman’s nephew Ernie Klump, Jr. (played by Jamal Mixon) is the only person in the Klump family who is actually plus-size, and he has the least to say in the film. When he does speak, it is often to punctuate a moment of comic relief.

Aside from these shallow sizeist and stereotypical portrayals of Black people (especially Black women and Black families), one of the underlying messages is that a good woman can help save you. After convincing Dean Richmond that he can fix his declining intelligence and secure the pharmaceutical contract, Sherman takes a small amount of the youth formula and checks his computer to check the details of his rapidly progressing brain damage, which will only be reversed by ingesting some of the genetic material of Buddy Love. This isn’t necessarily consistent with science, but it offers a simple plot point.

After Dean Richmond and Sherman hurriedly leave to capture Buddy Love, Denise enters the laboratory to leave a note for Sherman. She understands the life-altering results of the file that Sherman carelessly left open. The details of the file reveal the genetic extraction that Sherman performed on himself without telling her, and she follows them to save Sherman. When she finds Sherman, he is barely able to speak, and they discover that some of Buddy Love’s genetic material has been absorbed into a water fountain. Denise forces Sherman to drink from it to restore his deteriorating intelligence. Even though she has access to the laboratory and she understands the file, Denise’s intellectual and scientific talents are primarily showcased in that first classroom scene where she is teaching, not necessarily in applied sciences, like Sherman.

Lastly, in Margot Lee Shetterly’s upcoming book Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (William Morrow, 2016), she focuses on the “women computers” of the Langley Research Center, of what would become NASA, who performed calculations that led to John Glenn’s walk on the moon. These women included Katherine G. Johnson, Mary Jackson, Dorothy Vaughan, Kathryn Peddrew, Sue Wilder, Eunice Smith, and Barbara Holley. In 2014, two years before the book’s publication, the book rights were sold and plans to launch the new film Hidden Figures began.

As more Black women assume the roles of scientists in major motion pictures, a better job can be done to make them instrumental, rather than ancillary, to the plots of such films.

See also at Bitch Flicks: 5 Women Scientists Who Need Their Own Movie ASAP

Tara Betts is the author of two full-length poetry collections Break the Habit and Arc & Hue. She is also the author of the chapbooks 7 x 7: kwansabas (Backbone Press, 2015), the upcoming Never Been Lois Lane (dancing girl press, 2016), and the libretto THE GREATEST!: An Homage to Muhammad Ali (Argus House/Winged City Press, 2013). Tara’s writing has appeared in The Source, XXL, Black Radio Exclusive, Essence, NYLON, and the blog for Ploughshares.

‘Contact’ 20 Years Later: Will We Discover Aliens Before Fixing Sexism?

But the entire gist is still pretty radical: A big-budget film about a woman leading a monumental mission that, if successful, would be the most important discovery of our time. ‘Contact’s feminism is all the more stunning to watch two decades after its release because of its stingingly accurate portrayal of sexism in science and refusal to appease the hetero-male gaze.

This guest post written by Maria Myotte appears as part of our theme week on Women Scientists.

The math is unequivocally on the side of the alien enthusiasts. “You know, there are four hundred billion stars out there just in our galaxy alone,” Jodie Foster’s Dr. Ellie Arroway explains to Joss Palmer, played by a luxuriously coifed Matthew McConaughey in the 1997 hit movie Contact. She continues, gazing upward toward an expansive, clear night sky drenched in stars. “If only one out of a million of those had planets, and if just one out of a million of those had life, and if just one out of those had intelligent life, there would be literally millions of civilizations out there.” She’s explaining to him why after years of finding nothing at all she remains committed to searching for definitive proof of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Aliens exist, but they’re not easy to find.

Ellie Arroway is the protagonist of Contact (co-written by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan), making this film one of very few to have a woman scientist at its center. There are some tells that it was released almost twenty years ago – creepy, obtuse email communication, giant computers, the use of multiple scrunchies – but the entire gist is still pretty radical: A big-budget film about a woman leading a monumental mission that, if successful, would be the most important discovery of our time. Contact’s feminism is all the more stunning to watch two decades after its release because of its stingingly accurate portrayal of sexism in science and refusal to appease the hetero-male gaze.

We are introduced to Arroway as a young girl, hanging with her Dad and paging truckers across the country. She is enthralled with radio signals’ abilities to contact truckers farther and farther away. When we see Arroway as an adult, she wears casual, comfortable clothing. Her hair is almost always pulled back from her face as she listens for any discrepancy in the vastness of space sounds. She is never objectified, nor is a romantic relationship foundational to the plot. Arroway’s romantic dalliance with Palmer flits throughout the film, but their relationship is defined by their philosophical opposition – she is a woman of science and empirical proof, he is a “man of the cloth without the cloth” and eventually a religious advisor to the President. Their conflict frames an essential tension of the movie. When they are together, they are not flirting, fighting, or dry or wet humping. They discuss in depth their personal and professional passions, like real people do as they get to know each other. The single, near-sex scene shapes more of Arroway’s personality. The morning after she sleeps with Palmer, he implores, “How can I contact you?” She says, “Leave your number,” and she skedaddles off to do science. This is the 90s, so he scrawls his number on a sticky note and underlines the words “Please Call.” She never does, because she gets her funding pulled and immediately starts a sojourn to raise money to continue her life’s work.

During her quest to find “little green men,” Arroway deals with ridicule from her male colleagues and supervisors, challenges with funding, and warnings that she is committing career suicide. Her supervisor, an older man and science big-wig, Dr. David Drumlin, scolds her early in the movie, reducing her career to two possibilities, “One… there is intelligent life out there, but you’ll never contact it in your lifetime, and two… There’s nothing out there but noble gases and carbon compounds, and you’re wasting your time. In the meantime, you won’t be published, you won’t be taken seriously and your career will be over before it’s begun!” The same warnings were levied at the woman Arroway’s character is based on, Dr. Jill Tarter, the former long-time director of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute and all-around mega-inspiring galactic badass.

But, unlike Dr. Tarter (yet), Arroway ultimately finds stunning proof of alien life in a three-dimensional radio signal containing instructions for building some sort of spaceship beamed to Earth from somewhere near the star Vega. After Arroway takes in the realness of her discovery, she alerts her network. Men swarm her lab with interruptions, patronizing warnings, mansplanations, and of course, claims to her discovery. Her foil, Drumlin, who previously revoked her funding and access to satellites, appears almost instantaneously to claim the discovery as his own. At every pivotal moment where a decision, expert, or spokesperson is needed to comment on the findings, Drumlin subtly overpowers Arroway and becomes the face of the discovery. The series of quiet defeats she endures is a crucial representation of how gender discrimination in science careers functions. Today’s stunning lack of women, especially women of color, in leadership positions in science is not the result of a single, shitty, sinister apple. Rather, it’s a series of assumptions, biases, and privileges that results in a system and culture that vaults mostly white men into the most prestigious positions where they enjoy almost total immunity from being held accountable to discriminating against and harassing women. Although bias against women in the sciences is well-documented, the very folks who need to change their behavior to help fix the problem – dudes in science – don’t believe it’s really a thing, even when shown compelling evidence.

This toxic stew of denial and power produces a culture where it is extraordinarily difficult for women to speak out against discrimination or abuse. Perhaps that’s why every time Arroway should rip into Drumlin for being a despicable human, she doesn’t. The closest she comes to confronting him is after it’s been decided that he, not her, will be shoved into the alien orb they built from instructions in the radio signal and blasted off into space as Ambassador of Earthlings to meet whomever sent the invitation. He acknowledges that she must think “this is all really unfair” but explains that the “bottom-line” is that the world doesn’t work that way, to which she politely retorts, “Funny, I’ve always believed that the world is what we make of it.” A deeply unsatisfying moment.

Today, it seems to take a hoard of women publicly calling out problems simultaneously, like sexual harassment (Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes) before anyone begins to acknowledge that the individual in question might be guilty. In January of this year, a tidal wave of stories from women astronomers who have been sexually harassed poured into Twitter with the hashtag #AstroSH. A renowned astronomer at Berkeley left the faculty after being found guilty of sexual harassment over a period of ten years. The university’s Dean of the Law School also resigned under similar circumstances. And like so many other examples across sectors, the administration had intentionally kept the harassment cases secret. The ubiquity of the harassment and discrimination exemplified by the experiences shared online with #AstroSH is made possible by a network of people and institutions which opt to not believe women, ignore them outright, and cover up evidence of wrongdoing by the men in question.

Similarly, Drumlin’s usurpation of Arroway’s discovery isn’t challenged by anyone. In fact, assumptions made by the gaggle of folks responsible for moving the project forward do a lot of this work for him. At the first public press conference about the discovery, we see Drumlin and Arroway standing off to the side of a packed room while then President Bill Clinton tries to keep his cool while explaining the brain-liquefying findings to reporters. Arroway nervously shuffles her notecards for the speech she is about to give. Her face is stressed, expectant. As the press secretary introduces the scientist responsible for the discovery, Arroway walks toward the lectern and passes right in front of Drumlin. He stays put. At the last minute, we hear Drumlin’s name announced, a surprise to both of them, but he doesn’t pass up the opportunity and confidently struts toward the front of the room to declare Arroway’s discovery as his own to the entire world. So, Drumlin’s not on a vicious, power-hungry bender; after mocking and obstructing Arroway’s life-mission, he practically crowd surfs into taking credit for it.

Arroway’s experience with sexism is not buried or subliminal; it is central to the plot. This means that the audience identifies with Arroway as she navigates these challenges and we root for her too. When Drumlin suffers a fatal injury during an explosion that destroys the machine before he or it has a chance to go anywhere, we know Arroway is about to have her day. And she does. She is dropped into the center of another machine where she eventually travels through a series of wormholes to the uber-advanced alien civilization that originally sent the message.

She manages to record the entire trip, verbally describing in detail what she sees along the way, like the wormhole transit system, the lights and structures from the alien civilization’s home planet, and the star’s solar system. She even talks with some sort of alien ambassador who takes the form of her Dad – a technology that turns their alien forms into recognizable humans which it says makes it easier for puny humans to understand what’s going on. When she wakes up on Earth, she’s told the machine malfunctioned. She was in the machine for only a few seconds. Instead of basking in triumph, her experience is literally put on trial.

Government officials accuse her of lying, having delusions, and being the victim of a bizarre prank. Arroway insists that her experience was real despite not having external evidence – ultimately forcing herself and the public to take her word for it, or take it on “faith.” But something else is happening too – a demonstration of how patriarchy conditions us to not believe women, even under the most spectacular and compelling of circumstances. This is made clear as we find out moments later that proof of Arroway’s journey existed all along – an otherwise unexplainable 18 hours of time recorded on the equipment she took on the trip – the same amount of time she guessed she was gone. In a hilarious because it might be true kind of way, Contact ends up showing how blasting through wormholes and meeting aliens might actually be more plausible than humans fixing sexism. It also celebrates real women in science today, like Dr. Jill Tarter, whose contributions too often get overlooked and omitted from history and pop culture.

Recommended Viewing: Join the SETI Search by Dr. Jill Tarter (TED Talk)

Image of Dr. Jill Tarter | Photo by Raphael Perrino via Flickr and the Creative Commons License.

Maria Myotte is a feminist writer, sci-fi and speculative fiction enthusiast, and progressive media strategist. In a parallel reality, she is a badass astrophysicist. Find her on Twitter at @mariamyotte.

Rethinking ‘Say Anything’ and the Film’s Actual Protagonist Diane Court

The problem isn’t that audiences misremember Lloyd Dobler; it’s that they forget about Diane Court. … Not only is Diane an equal player in the action; she’s the film’s protagonist. … While Diane has a clear narrative of growth, Lloyd is a static character.

This guest post written by Charlotte Orzel appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 80s. | Spoilers ahead.

In the fall of 2014, an early example of “peak nostalgia” saw a television adaptation of Cameron Crowe’s 1989 rom-com Say Anything announced and then canceled within twenty-four hours at NBC. According to Deadline, the series would have continued where the film left off:

“Set in present day, the Say Anything series picks up ten years later. Lloyd has long since been dumped by Diane and life hasn’t exactly turned out like he thought. But when Diane surprisingly returns home, Lloyd is inspired to ‘dare to be great’ once again, get Diane back and reboot his life.”

This pitch gets straight to the core of the troublesome way Say Anything has been remembered. People think of the film as synonymous with its iconic image of Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) holding a boombox over his head with his heart on his sleeve. Audiences remember Lloyd as the rare romantic lead who approaches the girl he loves with respect, earnestness, and unshakable optimism. They appreciate the way love let Lloyd “dare to be great.”

The problem isn’t that audiences misremember Lloyd Dobler; it’s that they forget about Diane Court.

Even though the two characters share the screen more or less equally, Diane (Ione Skye) is often treated more as a love interest than a romantic lead. Take this example from Total Film’s 50 Best Romantic Comedies:

“The sweet Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) might be an average student, but he aims high when he asks valedictorian Diane Court (Ione Skye) out on a date. Her affluent lifestyle and his humble upbringing make the two a perfect ‘opposites attract’ pair as he helps her overcome her shyness and the ability to drive a stick shift, and she… well, loves him.”

From this summary, and others like it that have been published since the film’s release, you get the picture of a romance that sees Lloyd Dobler as a sweet, earnest slacker, rise to his potential to win the heart of a beautiful, sheltered girl. He teaches her how to live, and she is eventually won by his charm, wit, and ability to raise a boombox over his head for the entire length of “In Your Eyes” (an admittedly impressive five and a half minutes).

What really happens is quite different. Not only is Diane an equal player in the action; she’s the film’s protagonist. While we spend a great deal of time with Lloyd, the movie’s story is structured around Diane’s life. In the summer after graduation, she has much more on her plate than Lloyd, who when asked about what his summer job is, replies, “I want to see you as much as possible before you leave.” Lloyd’s future is uncertain, but he’s not too worried about it, as long as it includes Diane. Diane, on the other hand, is incredibly anxious about what lies ahead — she has been offered a prestigious fellowship to England and her father is being investigated by the IRS — and her growing feelings for Lloyd complicate things considerably. We watch her navigate her fears for the future and reconcile them with Lloyd’s idealism which, despite her crushing sense of responsibility, she finds incredibly appealing. These issues are not merely set dressing for the romance, like many romantic comedies that give their heroines a wisp of a life to differentiate them from one another, like a set of Career Barbies. Her father’s investigation forms a solid B-plot that is frequently left out of retellings.

In the first few minutes we spend with Diane, she gives a valedictory speech which communicates not only the tremendous expectations on her shoulders, but her own ambivalence about life after high school. It becomes immediately apparent that Diane’s fears run far deeper than a kiss from Lloyd can soothe. In a later scene with her father, when she learns that she’s won a competitive fellowship in England, her initial response is to sink to the ground, worrying: “I’ll have to go on a plane” (we later learn that she has been afraid of flying since she was young). Diane is not only brilliant, shy, and beautiful, but desperately afraid of what the future holds.

Meeting Lloyd opens Diane up to the possibilities of life outside the rigor of constant achievement. Their first date is not a swoony, candlelit affair or a twee romp, but a bustling graduation party where they spend little time together, but keep track of each other over the heads of their classmates. Diane, initially asking if it would be “terrible if [she] wanted to go home early,” enjoys herself and talks eagerly, if awkwardly, with the other students, eventually calling her father to tell him that she’ll be home before dawn.

In the car on the way back from the party, the two finally connect in a conversation about how their classmates perceive them. Unlike her father, who constantly and almost unconsciously affirms her, Lloyd listens with a kind ear to Diane’s insecurities and doubts. Lloyd represents more than the potential for romance, which Diane has in the droves of suitors (and their droves of cars) her father fields on the phone. He offers her a chance to be afraid, imperfect, and vulnerable, to reach out and connect genuinely with other people, and, most importantly, to be known in turn.

Rather than holding Lloyd at a distance, Diane brings him into her world, introducing him to her father and showing him around the nursing home where she works. He teaches her to drive stick shift, gently letting her be bad at something for what might be the first time in her life. They share their first kiss. Inseparable after that, they soon have sex, which Diane awkwardly has to explain to her worried father when she doesn’t come home that night. Tentative but sure, she pushes at the boundaries of her old life, neglecting to call her father and unable to reason her way out of her attraction to Lloyd.

Then, with her fellowship in England looming on the horizon and the IRS investigation growing ugly, Diane breaks it off suddenly when Lloyd tells her he loves her. She shares her feelings, but begs him not to “put things on this level.” The seriousness of their relationship seems to only deepen her worries about the murky future. Both parties despair, Lloyd leaving Diane a string of voicemails that she screens anxiously, clearly longing for him. Though she is touched by his attempts to change her mind, including the iconic boombox scene, these gestures are not what eventually move her to return to him. Far from the popular idea of Lloyd as the persistent, charming guy who wins the girl through earnest passion, he doesn’t win her back at all. Instead, she turns to him when she discovers her father is guilty of tax fraud. This revelation not only shatters any hope of her returning to her sheltered life, but reminds her of the value of her relationship with Lloyd, who is as open and honest with her as she is with him.

Confronting her father, she is devastated that he lied to her and shrinks from the idea that he wants to use his illegal gains to “set [her] up so [she] doesn’t have to depend on anybody.” When she goes back to Lloyd, she tells him that she needs him. Lloyd asks, “Are you here because you need someone, or because you need me?” following it up by telling her, “Forget it. I don’t care.” But Diane does. The girl who kept everyone at arm’s length has finally found someone she truly knows and can rely on.

The final scene of the film seals this realization, as Diane embraces the uncertainty of her future in England with Lloyd by taking on her major fear: flying. Diane confronts the doubts surrounding her relationship with Lloyd and her fear of flying by accepting the potential for failure. Like Diane, the ding of the smoking light that signals the most dangerous part of the flight is over reassures us, but doesn’t eliminate our worries about the couple’s fate. We don’t know what their future holds, only that the scariest part is over. The plane could still crash. It’s just more likely that it won’t, and that’s enough.

While Diane has a clear narrative of growth, Lloyd is a static character. The film opens on him declaring his intention to win Diane’s heart, and closes on him having achieved his goal, but he remains earnest, steadfast, and optimistic throughout. Diane’s choices, not his, push the story forward. The movie flirts with remedying his lack of career ambition, having first his guidance counselor and then Diane’s father scorn his refusal to commit to a plan for the future. However, he ultimately concludes that his relationship with Diane is enough to sustain him. The movie cheekily points out his lack of development in a scene when he visits her father in prison, and tells him that he probably should start working on his own goals, but has decided to go to England with Diane instead.

This lack of ambition is what has led some to argue that Lloyd and Diane never would have made it work in the long run. In what may be the most cynical article of all time, Dustin Rowles speculates about how things turned out for the characters, concluding that Lloyd’s slacker attitude would wear on Diane and sooner rather than later, she would have cut him loose to go after a graduate student. The NBC pitch also suggests that a breakup between the two was inevitable. But assuming that Lloyd and Diane would split reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what brought them together in the first place. Lloyd doesn’t win Diane with his wit and laid-back attitude; his honesty and warmth encourage her to open up and make herself vulnerable enough to forge a real connection. Eventually, she chooses him because his unflagging optimism balances out her stymieing fear of the unknown. If we imagine that Lloyd won Diane over with his persistence, it’s easy to imagine her becoming disillusioned later on. If we remember that she chose him, and in doing so, took a step forward in becoming the kind of person she wanted to be, writing off their relationship as misguided becomes much harder.

In light of Diane’s place at the center of the story, why is Lloyd given so much more prominence when we talk about Say Anything?

In the years before and since the movie’s release, John Cusack’s star has burned brighter than Ione Skye’s. Since the two actors have almost an equal amount of screentime, that may make it slightly easier to imagine Cusack as the lead. While one could conceivably argue that Lloyd is a more unique and fully realized (or better acted) character, a close look at Diane suggests that conclusion is unfair. Not only is Diane’s shy, anxious braniac just as uncommon a sight onscreen as Lloyd’s witty, earnest slacker, but Crowe and Skye fill her in with loving detail. Diane is just as complex and interesting a character as Lloyd. However, for the audience of teen romance, imagined by marketing executives as young, female, and heterosexual, the male character is often made the object of desire and attention in both marketing and the film itself. This is particularly true in a genre that often makes its female characters bland and one-dimensional on the assumption that it will allow female viewers to more easily insert themselves into the story. And naturally, when male protagonists are more common and valued more highly than female ones, many viewers are already in the habit of bending over backwards to sympathize with the male perspective. These ways of watching are so ingrained that we may end up imposing them ourselves, even when films like Say Anything offer us a more nuanced alternative.

The NBC series pitch leans on these viewing habits by setting Lloyd up as the main character of the show. He is the one whose “life hasn’t turned out like he thought,” who must “reboot” to regain his old energy and idealism. But the movie worked in the first place by watching Diane grow out of her fear of the future. By undermining the ambiguity of the original ending, the TV pitch ignores the way that accepting both the hope of success and the possibility of failure was an essential resolution for Diane’s character arc. The pitch assumes that Diane was a catalyst for change in Lloyd once before and will be again, even though the movie works precisely the other way around. Say Anything didn’t dare Lloyd to be great. It dared Diane to embrace her greatness, and let us watch as she rose to the challenge.

Charlotte Orzel spent a few formative years scooping popcorn at an independent movie theatre, and in the process fell in love with film, television, and criticism of all kinds. She is a Master’s student in Media Studies at Concordia University in Montreal where she studies new initiatives in film exhibition. She tweets about her interests and adventures in writing and academia at @charlotteorzel.

Sheila E.’s Agency as an Artist in ‘Krush Groove’ and Beyond

But Sheila E. represents a woman’s creative musical power in an early hip hop film dominated by male artists. … As we consider hip hop’s presence in U.S. films and documentaries spanning the globe, it is also reasonable to consider that Sheila E. has one of the biggest roles for a woman that was written in the spate of films that began portraying hip hop culture.

This guest post written by Tara Betts appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

The film Krush Groove opens with rap group Run–D.M.C. (Joseph “Run” Simmons, Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels, and Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell) recording “King of Rock” in a makeshift studio for producers Rick Rubin (as Rick), Kurtis Blow (playing himself, as did most of the musicians in the film), and Blair Underwood (as Russell Walker), loosely based on Russell Simmons’ life. Two quiet girls listen in the studio, and the other group featured in the opening as the credits roll include The Fat Boys featuring the late Darren Robinson, also known as Human Beatbox. The Fat Boys (called The Disco Three here) portray high school students who dream of being famous rappers. Women and girls had minor roles or silent roles in the background. But one woman who received top billing and appeared on the posters in this 1985 film was none other than singer, drummer, and percussionist Sheila E., playing herself in the film. Shortly after drumming during Purple Rain with friend and collaborator Prince, the success of Sheila E.’s first single and album The Glamorous Life and the single “The Belle of St. Mark” helped her segue into her role in Krush Groove.

“The Love Bizarre” is heard before Run DMC even enters the tiny club called Disco Fever, where snippets of “King of Rock” are shot and The Disco Three dream of getting onstage. Sheila E.’s flyness come off with a singular style — asymmetrical short hair with bleached tips and gold coins dangling from her ears, her strings of pearls, a shimmery orange jacket with padded shoulders, and a black fingerless glove. She has a magnetic presence and controls the stage; she sings on her back and slides along the length of the stage, then pops back up to sing the chorus with a big-haired band member mouthing Prince’s voice on the chorus of “A Love Bizarre.” In the meantime, Russell (Blair Underwood) and Run are both watching Sheila. She ends the performance with plucking a chord or two and walks offstage to confront her manager about getting her better gigs. Sheila E. asserting herself here is one of several scenes where she speaks her mind and acts with agency on her own behalf. Of course, a snippet of the Force MDs’ song “Tender Love” foreshadows the romantic interest between Russell and Sheila E. But Sheila E. represents a woman’s creative musical power in an early hip hop film dominated by male artists.

Sheila E. practices what becomes the song “Holly Rock” later in the film. While Run and Darryl sit on the couch, Sheila stops playing to tell Run to rehearse and stop ordering shell toe Adidas. She is not one of the background vocalists on either side of Kurtis Blow when he raps “If I Ruled the World” at a scene in a club. When Sheila E. joins Blow and Run–D.M.C. onstage at The Beverly, their wardrobe takes cues from Prince’s Edwardian style suits, but the more significant element is how Sheila E. occupies the entire stage. She plays timbales, throws her drumsticks in the air and catches them, sings while prancing from one end of the stage to the other, and works the microphone while effortlessly singing and rapping.

When Run and Darryl leave Krush Groove Records, Russell looks to sign Sheila E. as part of his last ditch efforts to pay back a loan shark. Later, after Sheila and Russell fall for each other, Sheila slaps Run for cursing and bashing her for having sex with Russell. She insists on going to help Russell when the loan shark sends bodyguards to the Krush Groove office/college dorm room. Sheila E.’s reprimand convinces Run to help defend his brother. In the closing scene at Disco Fever, The Fat Boys, Run–D.M.C., Kurtis Blow, all line the stage and kick a verse. Sheila rhymes on par with any of her counterparts, and it becomes evident that her rapping becomes a recurring skill in later songs like Prince’s “Beautiful Night.”

Sheila E.’s prowess with words is only part of what makes her role distinct in this film. She stands out because she is a skillful musician who mastered various instruments and she is not necessarily a rapper in a film dominated by the then successful Run–D.M.C., a teenage LL Cool J, pop sensation New Edition, the Beastie Boys, two members of the R & B group Full Force playing bodyguards, and the future Uptown Records founder and eventual president and CEO of Motown Records Andre Harrell as half of the rap duo Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.

Sheila E. grew up surrounded by significant musicians: her percussionist father Pete Escovedo; her uncle singer and songwriter Alejandro Escovedo, her uncle The Dragons frontman Mario Escovedo, her uncle Javier Escovedo, who founded the Zeros; her uncle percussionist Coke Escovedo, who performed in Santana and started his own band; and her godfather Tito Puente, a legend of mambo and Latin jazz percussion, associated with Fania Records and movies like The Mambo Kings and Calle 54. As a child surrounded by these influential musicians, it is not surprising that she honed her talents and eventually told Prince what she was making on tours with her father and other musicians, to which he replied, “Okay, I can’t afford you.”

After starring in Krush Groove, Sheila E. recorded and released Romance 1600. In 1987, Sheila E. recorded a self-titled album on Paisley Park Records that included the U.S. singles “Hold Me” and “Koo Koo.” The video for “Koo Koo” featured dancer Cat Glover and both women later appeared in the live concert movie Sign o’ the Times as members of the band.

As we consider hip hop’s presence in U.S. films and documentaries spanning the globe, it is also reasonable to consider that Sheila E. has one of the biggest roles for a woman that was written in the spate of films that began portraying hip hop culture. In addition to this, she starred in a musical vehicle outside of Prince’s poetic universe. Sheila E. was not in Purple Rain with singers/actresses Apollonia Kotero or Jill Jones, nor did she appear in Under the Cherry Moon (1986) where Kristin Scott-Thomas plays a wealthy romantic interest. Sheila did not require a hero like martial arts actor Taimak as Leroy Green opposite Laura Charles (portrayed by singer Vanity, Prince’s partner and collaborator) in The Last Dragon (1985) either.

Earlier hip hop films included the 1983 classic Wild Style with graffiti artist Lady Pink as Lee Quiñones’ love interest and Stan Lathan’s 1984 film Beat Street, which billed Rae Dawn Chong as its most well-known star. Chong’s character Tracy Carlson offers a television opportunity to DJ Kenny Kirkland, his breakdancing brother Lee, and the graffiti writer Ramon, but she is not necessarily the main character driving the plot of the film. Lucinda Dickey, a former Solid Gold dancer who was one of the main characters in Breakin’ (1984) and she reprises her role as Kelly/Special K in Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984). But her role as a classically trained dancer who went to learn from Ozone (Adolfo “Shabba-Doo” Quiñones) and Turbo (Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers), both stigmatized as “street dancers,” offers a subtle critique against classist snobbery while still excluding women of color, even after Jennifer Beal’s stunning audition scene in the 1983 Flashdance where none other than Rock Steady Crew’s Crazy Legs acted as Beals’ breakdancing stunt double (in addition to stunt doubles dancer Marine Jahan and gymnast Sharon Shapiro).

Although Sheila E.’s notoriety skyrocketed during the 1980s, she continued in the subsequent decades to open musical doors as a musician. She was a bandleader on “The Arsenio Hall Show” and Magic Johnson’s short-lived “The Magic Show.” She released four albums after the 1987 release Sheila E. This Afro-Latinx percussionist continues to tour, perform at festivals, and share billing with notable musicians in various genres. Krush Groove was one place that showcased her talents just outside Prince’s umbrella. In 2014, she published a memoir The Beat of My Own Drum. Lately, she has been speaking with Prince’s surviving band members and coordinating events. Sheila E. also appeared in the BET tribute to Prince, along with The Roots, Bilal, Erykah Badu, Jennifer Hudson, Stevie Wonder, and Janelle Monae. Sheila E. led the electric finale with dancer and choreographer Mayte Garcia (and Prince’s ex-wife) and Jerome Benton dancing with a full crew of dancers and musicians. Sheila E. continues to captivate, entertain, and inspire audiences.

‘The Stepfather,’ Toppling Patriarchy, and Love of 80s Horror Ladies

Stephanie emerges as a poised, perspicacious, and resilient female lead. She is a wonderfully surprising alternative from most of the panoply of horror heroines who are tortured, fight, and scream their way through the terrifying films of the 80s. … Stephanie embodies what each of the archetypally male characters in the film fails to, and in doing so transcends the clutches of gender expectations in the film…

This guest post written by Eva Phillips appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. | Spoilers ahead.

Following the banal images of a brutal murder scene in a quaint, thoroughly 80s suburban living room that kick off the wildly underrated 1987 Josef Ruben film The Stepfather, there is a fantastic tracking shot that careens through a blissfully undisturbed, quintessential American upper-middle class neighborhood: we see the blooming, verdant trees, pristine yards, immaculately manicured homes — the whole shebang. The shot, which as a narration tool serves to show the titular stepfather Henry Morrison/Jerry Blake (unnerving and under-used Terry O’Quinn) exodus from one domicile — or, as the film later shows, one arena for him to futilely commandeer another single mother and her children — and move onto another, as he progresses from home-to-home, insidiously usurping them as he sees fit. But on a more subversive level, this opening tracking shot, which unintentionally parodies idyllic tracking or panoramic shots of 80s and 90s films that featured goofy but affable dad protagonists (think Uncle Buck or Father of the Bride or any film in which kids are shrunk) speaks to the film’s more profound subversive qualities. The shot indicates a sort of potential for undisturbed perfection, but it is a perfection that is violated and infested by the nefarious threat the stepfather symbolizes.

While many of the memorable and crucial aspects of The Stepfather are the flailing, if not furious, impotent attempts at O’Quinn’s menacing nomad in securing some draconian ideal family life, the true power of Stepfather lies with the groundbreaking dynamic between the two women who are preyed upon — Stephanie and Susan Maine (Jill Schoelen and Shelley Hack, respectively) — and the intuitive resilience of the daughter Stephanie in prevailing against her “new dad.” The introduction to Stephanie and Susan, mere moments after the grisly scene by Henry Morrison (who changes his name to Jerry Blake, real estate wizard, like any good homicidal villain would) is one of such unadulterated, unsullied bliss, that in my years of film watching it has yet to be rivaled by any moment of mother-daughter conviviality on screen. The two very jovially, un-eroticized and un-infantilized, play in a leaf pile, genuinely enjoying the frivolousness and love between them. What intrudes upon this mother-daughter euphoria, of course, is Susan’s mention of her new husband — aforementioned, newly reminted killer Jerry — who greets the glowing Susan and the less-than-enthused Stephanie with a puppy (which, mercifully defying the awful tropes 80s horror, LIVES TO THE END) and the hope that he’ll finally make a good impression on his surly stepdaughter.

What is most sensational about this cult classic (which, if it hasn’t officially been elevated to this status, I’m empowering myself to do so) is how, in the wake of the disquietingly erratic invasion of Jerry and his hauntingly traditional family values — the family must get along, the family must eat together, the family must not mind if the new stepfather has a completely savage break in the basement during a cookout — Stephanie emerges as a poised, perspicacious, and resilient female lead. She is a wonderfully surprising alternative from most of the panoply of horror heroines who are tortured, fight, and scream their way through the terrifying films of the 80s. Stephanie’s sexuality originates and exists organically (except when the rapidly unhinging Jerry accuses her crush of “raping” her when they kiss on the front step) and the film never once fetishizes her sexual development, or lack thereof, in the tradition of much of 80s horror cinema — built on a preexisting set of standards for horror women.

More importantly and gratifyingly, Stephanie’s fortitude and cleverness, and her determination to restore the blissful perfection between mother and daughter displayed at the beginning of the film, is in the face of the absolutely bumbling antics or brutal tendencies of the men around her. The men completely fail or are violently disconnected from reality: whether it is the well-intentioned but mainly hapless chisel-faced brother of Jerry’s slain first wife, always 10 minutes too late in trying to sniff Jerry out; the perpetually denying, stagnating police officers; or the earnest therapist who is brutally murdered by Jerry in his foolish attempt to confirm Stephanie’s feelings of unease about Jerry. Stephanie embodies what each of the archetypally male characters in the film fails to, and in doing so transcends the clutches of gender expectations in the film and in a genre that is so often besotted by explicit or implicit gendered presumptions.

Stephanie’s formidability and indefatigable stamina, despite being thwarted by Jerry at many turns throughout the film, is also a sub-textual nod to a profound reversion of a patriarchal predominance, one which looms over the film and certainly taints many films in the 80s horror tradition. The brand of paternal instincts and familial preservation that Jerry is so ruthlessly fixated on is a hollow, ghastly farce. He is joltingly compulsive, and when the family unit does not function as he wants it to (which is to say, in defiance of picturesque happiness and groveling at the shrine of Jerry-Or-Whoever-He-Is), he must resort to abhorrent violence to embody the dismay over the shambolic domestic unit “failing.” Selling real estate and life insurance in his various assumed identities, every orchestrated move Jerry makes is a testament to the meretriciousness of the type of “home” for which Jerry strives. And so, in tandem with this vicious, empty patriarchal presence, is the true domestic perfection that Stephanie stands for — one established and centering around matriarchal and even Edenic love; one based on respect and value and ass-kicking bulwarks of women. Restoring this order is not only the be-all-end-all for Stephanie, it symbolizes the natural order of things and the film, critically, supports this perspective. The culminating, relentless fight scene is cleverly staged like so many chaotic 80s horror slaying scenes: Susan is abruptly and unflinchingly assaulted by Jerry upon realizing his farce and unearthing his true identity. As she stumbles helplessly into the basement, the chiseled brother of Jerry’s former victim swoops in, only to be maniacally stabbed by Jerry. It is only Stephanie who can effectively enter the domestic sphere and overcome her despotic stepfather, ending not only his reign of terror but reclaiming the domestic sphere for herself and her mother.

For a film that gets too frequently billed as a B-Movie, or disregarded or lost in the canon of slasher-centric 80s horror, The Stepfather is outstanding for the distinct feminine strength and unity it lionizes. Moreover, the film is a brilliant experiment in subverting expectations. Despite the title’s implications, the film is not some nauseatingly machismo feature of masculine power and reconstruction in which a destabilized family unit (weakened, of course, by the lack of a “father”) is consumed by the diabolical machinations of a traditionalist murderer. Rather, the film is one of the feminine-centric family unit prevailing, and the love between a mother and daughter being the prized, organic form of love that champions the aberration of the male intrusion and the male buffoonery that ensconces it. The haunting poster for the film shows Jerry pensively staring at a fogged over mirror, the words “Who Am I Here” traced on the glass. It is not so much indicative of Jerry’s delusional mania, but indicates the emptiness and futility of the forced patriarchal order on a domestic sphere. Importantly, too, Stephanie does not function as some Carol Clover-esque horror heroine — her body and her actions exist outside of an eroticized or fetishized realm, and she is not operating within some sort of phallic terror-dome, but, rather, transcends it. And, sure, the movie has some wonky moments: laughably oblivious characters, awkwardly 80s-tastic quips, and perhaps one of the most heinous scores of any 80s horror film (think a synth-focused Def Leppard instrumental cover band with no sense of dramatic irony). But it should be valorized for its uniquely feminist message that is never pandering, unequivocally unique, and woefully difficult to replicate (case in point: the miserably dude-centric 2009 remake). The Stepfather’s sly championing of female strength and domestic reclamation is no more evident than the masterful final scene: Susan and Stephanie, shaken but stalwart, reassess their home in the backyard, as Stephanie takes an ax the birdhouse Jerry erected in the backyard, therein violently and resolutely toppling the specious emblem of his false domesticity, his pseudo-colonization, and literally dismantling the patriarchal presence. Get it, girl.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Patriarchy in Crisis: Power and Gender in ‘The Stepfather’

Eva Phillips is constantly surprised at how remarkably Southern she in fact is as she adjusts to social and climate life in The Steel City. Additionally, Eva thoroughly enjoys completing her Master’s Degree in English, though really wishes that more of her grades could be based on how well she researches Making a Murderer conspiracy theories whilst pile-driving salt-and-vinegar chips. You can follow her on Instagram at @menzingers2.

‘Pretty in Pink’: The Only Team to Be on Is Team Andie

I fixated on the Team Duckie vs. Team Blane aspect of the film so much that I entirely missed the point. I was so Team Duckie that I blamed Andie for not choosing him. …I realized I had fallen into a trap that society has conditioned us to fall into: the dreaded sexist “friend zone.”

This guest post written by Isabella Garcia appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

I first saw Pretty in Pink in middle school. Seated next to my mother, who was working through her list of favorite 80s films to show me, I fell in love with it almost immediately. I saw in Andie (Molly Ringwald) what I wanted for myself. She was confident and outspoken in the ways I wasn’t; she didn’t care what people thought about her clothing and she rocked it. I wanted to be her so badly that I scoured swap meets for “vintage” clothing (and am still on the lookout for some of Duckie’s scuffed, white duck shoes). My closet consisted of blazers with large shoulder pads, lacy shirts, flower earrings, and one t-shirt that has a picture of Duckie (Jon Cryer) and reads, “I would have picked Duckie.” Oh yes, I was one of those.

I was Team Duckie through and through. I couldn’t even hide my disdain when my mom told me that her and her friends were Team Blane. Not only did I try to channel Andie in my everyday style, I also longed for a Duckie: a best friend who was hopelessly devoted to me, who would pine for me while listening to The Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want,” who would only want what’s best for me. And in the end, I would open my eyes and realize what I had been missing out on all along. When Andie saw Duckie at the prom and asked to admire him, in the same way he asks to do that with her, I would’ve chosen him right then and there. Blane who? I would’ve righted what I thought was Andie’s wrong when she chose Blane. I fixated on the Team Duckie vs. Team Blane aspect of the film so much that I entirely missed the point. I was so Team Duckie that I blamed Andie for not choosing him. I thought she was foolish for not loving him romantically. How could she be so clueless?!

It wasn’t until I grew up some more, graduated high school, and went through several re-watches that I realized I had fallen into a trap that society has conditioned us to fall into: the dreaded sexist “friend zone.” The general definition is when one of two friends seeks to turn their friendship with the other person into a romantic and/or sexual relationship, but the other person doesn’t want to. That person just wants to remain friends. And so, the first person is “stuck” in a friendship when they really want it to be a romantic relationship. The “friend zone” comes with very common side-effects that usually disparage women. If a man, in this case Duckie, falls in love with his friend, it’s up to her to return the favor and love him back. If she doesn’t or, heaven forbid, she likes someone else, she’s seen as being in the wrong and at fault. I, unfortunately, had this mentality as a young girl, which a lot of people still have: if your best friend likes you, you owe it to them to choose them over the person you actually have a crush on. It’s harmful for girls to grow up with this outlook because it further discourages them to act on their actual feelings. It makes girls scared of being accused of leading their friend on so they feel they have to reciprocate. Women and girls don’t owe anyone a relationship.

On one of my re-watches after I graduated high school, I noticed that my reaction to Andie not loving Duckie the way he loved her paralleled Steff’s (James Spader) reaction after he asked her out towards the beginning of the film. When he starts to notice the animosity Andie holds for him, he retaliates in anger. Not only is he leaning against her car door, forbidding her from escaping, but he begins to put her down. He doesn’t see what makes her so special from all the other girls that won’t go out with him, he calls her a “bitch,” and tells her to go to a doctor to get that condition checked out. Sure, I didn’t do all these things, but I definitely thought that Andie was wrong to not get with Duckie. I wanted her to open her eyes and just see him there. Steff and I shared the same disbelief when she didn’t show interest. If Duckie loved her so much then she should love him too, right?

It was wild to me that Andie didn’t like Duckie back, but after recently re-watching the film I don’t know why I ever blamed her. She stuck true to what she wanted. She didn’t feel guilted into pursuing a romantic relationship that she didn’t want with Duckie. She acted the way she did with him because they’re friends and that’s it. The way that Andie platonically acts with Duckie can be — which I did — misconstrued to be romantic. They’re touchy, they talk “20 times” a day, they care about the other’s feelings. All of these are friendly behaviors; Andie didn’t lead him on in any way.

If you still like Duckie and Andie together and you’re now feeling bad about it, don’t. There’s nothing inherently wrong with liking the idea of Duckie and Andie together. They are cute. He really cares about her and she for him. But what is wrong is to belittle Andie and her emotions and blame her for not loving him. You can’t help the happiness you feel when Duckie shows up at the prom for Andie. You can’t help but feel a sense of hope when they run to each other, hug, and reconcile by walking into prom together. But what you can help is how you react to her not “choosing” him.

Andie’s father, Jack (Harry Dean Stanton), puts it perfectly when Duckie first tells him that he loves her: “You can love Andie, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to love you back. I mean, it doesn’t mean that she won’t, but what I’m trying to say is you can’t make it happen, you know? It either will or it won’t. It’s all in the heart.” Andie stayed true to her heart. Although she could’ve gotten with Duckie, she defied expectations and didn’t. She didn’t waver. She was strong. Now that I watch it, I can see the appeal of both Blane and Duckie, but I can’t choose a side anymore. The only team I’m on is Team Andie.

Isabella Garcia is a California-based aspiring TV writer who can be found crying over movies, books, and TV on her Twitter @isabellagrca, PopInsomniacs and It’s Just About Write.

Revisiting ‘Desert Hearts’ and Its Lesbian Romance

This guest re-post written by Angela Beauchamp appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

We all hold dear particular films that made an indelible impression on us. Somehow they connected to us as a viewer on an emotional or even a spiritual level; we identified with the story or characters in unusual ways; or we appreciated the craftsmanship so much that we could recite lines or remember the sequence of shots and all of the details in a scene. That ability to touch individuals while also reaching very large groups of viewers is part of what makes film such a powerful medium.

Desert Hearts is one such film for me. In the fall of 1986, still a kid of 22 who had just moved to the city from Podunk, Indiana, I went to the theater in a Boston suburb. There I remember looking around at the audience. I had a hard time believing that I was watching a lesbian romance film in a public place. I don’t think I breathed during the love scene. For the first time in my life, in a mainstream movie theater, I watched a film that gave me a model for what love could be. It made me want to fall in love, to find my own Cay or Vivian, and hop on the train to start a life together.

For heterosexual women, movies and television series show them every day what a loving relationship is and what the expectations are to grow up, fall in love, and find a handsome prince (however flawed that may be). For lesbians prior to Donna Deitch‘s Desert Hearts, nothing of the kind existed on-screen. We relied on romance novels from mail order houses like Naiad Press and feminist bookstores if we were lucky enough to live in a large college town or progressive city. Desert Hearts had a limited distribution (i.e. it was not shown in Podunk, Indiana), but it did find an unheard of large audience on screens across the country and abroad.

It is a conventional romance, which is one of the reasons that it is so successful. As Jackie Stacey points out, “it uses the iconography of romance films: train stations, sunsets and sunrises, close-up shots, rain-drenched kisses, lakeside confessions, ‘I’ve never felt this way before’ orgasms.” It is those Hollywood conventions that conjure shared memories of hundreds of heterosexual romances. Thus the filmmaker uses what are sometimes clichés as shortcuts to elicit particular emotions and reactions from the audience. Although the world of 1959 would certainly have been more challenging for these two lovers in the real world, the cinematic world Deitch created signals that there is an all-important happy ending coming up: a romantic Hollywood ending.

Deitch’s use of music also contributes to the romance convention. The country songs of Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash are very emotionally evocative. In particular, they evoke a feeling of wanting that comes from knowing the themes and voices that accompany these artists’ work. The soundtrack, which took up a large portion of the film’s budget, makes brilliant use of the audience’s previous knowledge. We know how we should feel before the scene plays itself out.

Placing the film’s setting in Reno also taps into our shared impressions of the West from movies and popular culture. It is a place in which one can start a new life and throw caution to the wind. The chances for romance certainly would not have felt so hopeful without the wide open spaces and bright, beautiful colors of the Nevada desert. Cay’s cowboy boots and western clothes make her the equivalent of the cowboy who sweeps the newcomer to town off of her feet. It’s the wild westerner who charms the shy school marm, just like we’ve seen a million times in the movies.

Others (like Mandy Merck) discuss Desert Hearts as conventional, criticizing it for not being challenging enough, not tackling issues of lesbian identity, for example. For me, that criticism totally misses the point. Deitch intentionally did not make an issues kind of film. She took a Hollywood formula and tilted it on its ear, creating a lesbian love story that audiences still crave today.

Angela Beauchamp is a cinema lover, film scholar, and most recently, a zombie mashup junkie. She is preparing to teach a course on Post-Apocalyptic Cinema in the fall.