Fascinating Female Characters – Page 2

Portrait of a Girl: Reflections on the Role of Flora in Jane Campion’s ‘The Piano’

What is clear is that Campion is interested in the strategies women use to survive in patriarchy. But she is not only interested in the fate of women. She is also interested in how girl-children negotiate their way in a male-dominated world. It is through Ada’s daughter as well as Ada herself that Campion explores the feminine condition in the 19th century. Her rich, multi-layered characterization of Flora is, in fact, one of the most remarkable features of The Piano. She is as interesting and compelling as the adult characters and, arguably, the most convincing. The little girl also has huge symbolic and dramatic importance. This is, of course, unusual in cinema. There are relatively few films where a girl plays such a significant, pivotal role.

Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

It has been 20 years since its release, but The Piano has lost none of its unsettling power. An intense, provocative tale of an “imported” Scottish bride in 19^th century colonial New Zealand, Jane Campion’s finest film still stimulates debate about the nature of female identity and sexuality in patriarchy. Both written and directed by the New Zealand filmmaker, The Piano won the Palme d’Or at the 1993 Cannes film festival and picked up three Academy awards at the 1994 ceremony. Holly Hunter won the Best Actress Oscar for her memorable performance as the bride, Ada McGrath, and Jane Campion was awarded Best Original Screenplay. There was another award that The Piano took home that night–that of Best Supporting Actress. Anna Paquin won the prize for her role as Ada’s young daughter, Flora McGrath. The award was seen as unexpected by many pundits. Paquin plays a child of 9 or 10 and she was only 11 when she won the Oscar. It should not, however, have been that surprising to anyone who had seen the film. Flora is a richly complex as well as hugely important character in the story. As for Paquin’s performance, it is, simply, exceptional. Roger Ebert rightly called it “one of the most extraordinary examples of a child’s acting in movie history.”

Let’s first take a closer look at the story and central characters of this original Victorian tale. From the very start, its heroine is portrayed as a remarkable, enigmatic soul. Ada McGrath is a mute widow whose identity is clearly bound up with her beloved piano. The most important person in her life is her spirited, headstrong daughter. Mother and child are exceptionally close. They are given no back-story. Their past remains a mystery. Although Flora expresses interest in learning about her father, she does not, it seems, even know his name. Neither does the audience. At the very beginning of The Piano, we see Ada married off by her father to Alistair Stuart (Sam Neil), a colonial frontiersman in New Zealand. It is manifest from the moment she arrives on the expansive shores of that beautiful land that Ada will never accept Stuart as her husband. When he refuses to transport her piano to his home, she protests spiritedly (Flora interprets Ada’s sign language) and continues to express her discontent. It is also obvious that Stuart, a staid Victorian gentleman with a severely limited imagination, will never understand Ada. Flora, for her part, declares that she will not accept him as her father.

Another man enters Ada’s life, a neighbor and overseer called George Baines (Harvey Keitel). Illiterate, earthy and sexual, he is characterized as the very opposite of the conservative, repressed Stuart. Baines offers Stuart an exchange: some of his land for the piano. He says that he wants to learn to play the instrument. Stuart’s wife is to teach him. Baines is, however, only interested in Ada. Their association is initially exploitative: Ada is coerced into giving Baines sexual favors in exchange for earning back the piano. Their relationship changes dramatically when they fall in love. Motivated by a belief that her mother is committing a wrong as well as, no doubt, by a fear that she is no longer the most important person in her life, Flora effectively exposes their affair and gives Stuart (whom she now calls “Papa”) proof of Ada’s enduring love for Baines. What follows changes all of their lives.

The Piano is a film of arresting visual beauty. It is, however, a rose with thorns. Strange, unsettling, powerful and problematic, it can be interpreted in a variety of ways. It does invite feminist readings. Its heroine is a sensual, romantic rebel who does not conform to culturally sanctioned norms of feminine behavior. As much as men try and control her, it is clear that her body and soul can never really be owned. It also acknowledges sexual coercion and patriarchal violence as an historical reality for women. The Piano, can also, however, be interpreted as dangerously regressive in its understanding and representation of female sexuality. At the end of the day, there’s no getting around the fact that Ada falls in love with a man who has exploited her. Baines himself is transformed into a romantic hero. Then again, we may ask if Campion is perhaps trying to underscore that Ada’s psycho-sexual state is the lot of female identity and sexuality in patriarchy? Her portrait of Ada is, ultimately, extremely complex. She portrays her heroine as a victim, sexual subject, self-directed woman, and survivor.

What is clear is that Campion is interested in the strategies women use to survive in patriarchy. But she is not only interested in the fate of women. She is also interested in how girl-children negotiate their way in a male-dominated world. It is through Ada’s daughter as well as Ada herself that Campion explores the feminine condition in the 19^th century. Her rich, multi-layered characterization of Flora is, in fact, one of the most remarkable features of The Piano. She is as interesting and compelling as the adult characters and, arguably, the most convincing. The little girl also has huge symbolic and dramatic importance. This is, of course, unusual in cinema. There are relatively few films where a girl plays such a significant, pivotal role.

Flora McGrath is an extremely smart, perceptive, imaginative and articulate child. She likes to get involved, to meddle even, and loves to tell stories. ‘”My real father was a German composer,” she tells fascinated colonial women at one point. Perhaps because she has been fatherless, Flora has not been shackled by patriarchal norms of femininity. She is lively and headstrong, the very antithesis of the archetypal meek Victorian girl-child. As Ada is, also, not an authoritarian mother, her childhood has been blessed by a great deal of love and freedom. In an early scene in The Piano, we see her tearing through her grandfather’s home on roller-skates.

Flora is also not afraid of speaking to adults, even paternal figures. She shares her mother’s innate, autonomous spirit and rightly perceives that her new father is a threat to their special bond. Amusingly, the closeness of the bond is even recognized by the dull Stuart. He is always tentative when he approaches Ada and her child. At the beginning of the story, Flora tells her mother that she does not want another father. She declares, “I’m not going to call him Papa. I’m not going to call him anything. I’m not even going to look at him.” Although she wants to hear stories about her own father, Flora is conceived, at least at first, as an anti-patriarchal child. The love between Ada and Flora embodies a utopian, gynocentric ideal and, as Flora is aligned with Ada, she too represents the feminine state.

From the very start of the film, Ada and Flora are shot together. Campion’s camera recurrently emphasizes their similarities–their brown eyes, extreme pallor, and sober style and color of dress–and makes them mirrors of each other. We see them tilt their head in the same way and when someone unfamiliar crosses their path, they alternate in standing behind each other. Mother and child are in the same portrait, and the same story.

Flora serves a concrete as well as symbolic role in the story. She is, literally, Ada’s voice. Although she may sometimes fancifully embroider her mother’s unvoiced words, she interprets her signing for others. If the piano is Ada’s non-verbal means of expression, Flora is her only human instrument of communication. The child also represents Ada’s freedom and female freedom in general. This is beautifully illustrated in a scene where we see Ada joyfully play the piano on the white sands while Flora dances with supreme self-confidence for her mother.

Flora is, however, not only her mother’s helper and beloved child. She is also her adversary. It is Flora who effectively reveals her mother’s transgressions to Stuart. “I know why Mr. Baines can’t play the piano,” she tells her stepfather. Although her view was limited and she did not, of course, fully understand what she saw, she was once a witness to the adults’ curious activity. She does, however, sense that her mother and Baines were doing something her stepfather would not like. Stuart soon learns the truth and attempts to rape Ada when he discovers her making her way to Baines’ home.

Flora is not an evil little girl. She loves her mother but simply does not understand the consequences of her words. Her betrayal should not, in fact, shock the viewer. Flora most likely feels like she has been betrayed. “I want to be in the photograph,” she says with a scowl when her mother’s wedding portrait is being taken. She fears that she will no longer be in her mother’s photographs. When Baines and Ada are together in the cabin, Flora plays alone outside. Hurt and angry, she fears that she has been replaced in her mother’s affections. Perhaps she even harbors feelings of hate towards her. That is why she starts calling Stuart “papa.” The fatherless child begins to side with convention and patriarchy. Interestingly, we hear Flora judge her mother like a fanatical Puritan. She calls her mother’s observation that people talk rubbish “unholy.” At one point, she screams that her mother is “going to hell.” When Stuart boards up their house to prevent Ada from visiting Baines, Flora gives him helpful directions. She betrays her mother a second–and last–time. Charged with giving a romantic message to Baines, she decides instead to give it directly to Stuart. Flora will, however, be traumatized by her stepfather’s brutal, life-changing punishment of her mother and will soon return to the fold. She becomes, once again, the loyal, ardent voice of Ada. Her mother’s lover, Baines, will be her new father.

Campion’s portrait of Flora is as fascinating and complicated as her portrait of Ada. Flora is a strong-willed, non-conformist girl-child allied with her mother in a land of male strangers. The close bond she shares with her is unique. Flora is Ada’s very likeness, as well as instrument and expression of freedom. Yet she reproduces the lines of preachers to condemn her mother and chooses–at least, for a time–to accept her austere stepfather’s ways. Flora’s disloyalty issues from feelings of abandonment and insecurity but it is also indicative of the insidious ideological power of patriarchy. Campion shows how girl-children may reproduce its values.

Holly Hunter, Jane Campion, and Anna Paquin at the Oscars

Campion’s take on childhood itself is unsentimental and truthful. Flora is a charming, expressive child but she is not Hollywood cute. Paquin’s performance is hugely charismatic. She perfectly captures her character’s individualistic, insubordinate ways. She also, however, embodies girlhood. Flora may be intelligent and imaginative but she is also a child. While she may have spent a great deal of time in the company of adults, witnessing adult anxieties and brutality, she does not yet fully understand the adult world. Like most children, she is self-centered and like most, she wants to monopolize her mother’s love and attention. Children can also, of course, be cruel as well as affectionate–almost in the same breath, on occasion. Flora is no exception. In one scene, we see the little girl torment then comfort a dog outside Baines’ cabin. With her mother, she can be both sweet and censorious in a darkly comic way. When Stuart locks Ada in the house upon discovering her affair, Flora says to her mother, “You shouldn’t have gone up there, shouldn’t you? I don’t like it, and nor does Papa.” Almost immediately, she makes the pleasant suggestion, “We can play cards, if you like.” She scolds as well as mothers Ada, in the same way she scolds and mothers her dolly and the dog. In the final scenes of The Piano, we see Flora busily attend to her mother’s needs.

Campion not only makes Flora a real child; she is also drawn as an emotionally complex human being with her own needs and wants. Thanks to her inspired, multi-layered characterization and Paquin’s natural, fully realised performance, Flora is consistently credible and authentic. Campion’s portrait of Flora is also a political one. The writer-director is interested in her place in the world. Through Flora, she explores the distinctive nature of the mother-daughter relationship as well as the hold of fathers. Flora is an intelligent, resilient child. Like her mother, she is portrayed as a survivor and sovereign spirit. We last see her cart-wheeling in the garden of her new home. Ultimately, her fate is fascinating one to contemplate.

‘True Grit’: The Formidable Fortitude of Tweens

Not since Megan Follows played Anne of Green Gables in the 1985 adaptation of the novel with the same title have girls had a young protagonist on screen who fights against social conventions that are designed to limit her because of her age and gender. Mattie’s similarity to Anne doesn’t end at their indignation and fearlessness, they both also share a love of long braids, both can be found wearing ill-fitting clothes, both of their stories are set in a similar time period, and finally, both girls are orphans.

This cross-post by Vicky Moufawad-Paul appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Every once in a while a role comes along for a young woman who is at that tough age–that age that makes her adult-like, but before she’s realized the limiting effects of the male gaze. She is smart enough to know what is right and young enough to not know that the world doesn’t work according to right and wrong. She speaks truth to power, and expects power to accede to what would be justice. She sees what is incongruous and expects that if she shows it to others, they will correct their ways. If they don’t correct their ways, she is old enough, and in her own power enough to be able to resist their attempts to make her follow their ways. She is interested in freedom and is often called willful, clever, argumentative. It is a window that, for most women, opens as puberty hits and then shuts as puberty ends. For many women, the social relations of feudalism and capitalism make us bend and transform under patriarchal control.

Mattie Ross in True Grit, played by a 14 year old Hailee Steinfeld, looks unimpressed and determined — Mattie Ross in *True Grit*, played by a 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld, looks unimpressed and determined.

Independence, Over-Sized Clothes, and Olden Times

I recently saw True Grit, and although I don’t usually enjoy Coen brothers films, I did enjoy this film. Let me get it out of the way: I don’t connect with most of the Coen brothers’ films and I was flabbergast when a few men in my Film Studies classes during my master’s programme listed Barton Fink as one of their top ten films of all time. At the risk of sounding essentialist, in my mind the Coen brothers make “guy” films–films that guys love, but women rarely rave about. Enter: True Grit. Or, more accurately, enter the star of the film, Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old girl played by a feisty 14-year-old mixed-race Hailee Steinfeld.

Not since Megan Follows played Anne of Green Gables in the 1985 adaptation of the novel with the same title have girls had a young protagonist on screen who fights against social conventions that are designed to limit her because of her age and gender. Mattie’s similarity to Anne doesn’t end at their indignation and fearlessness, they both also share a love of long braids, both can be found wearing ill-fitting clothes, both of their stories are set in a similar time period, and finally, both girls are orphans.

Orphans used to wear over sized clothes, braid and hats — Orphans were shown wearing over-sized clothes, braid, and hats.

Orphans also liked to carry things. This is why we find similarities in adaptations of novels set at the turn of the 20th century — Orphans also were shown as liking to carry things. This is why we find similarities in adaptations of novels set at the turn of the 20th century.

Although Mattie’s mom is still around, her father has recently been murdered, and thus she has to fend for herself in situations that her father ordinarily would. Instead she is settling her father’s business affairs and searching for his killer. A whip-smart character scene shows Mattie negotiating the selling and buying of her father’s property with an adult male horse dealer. She uses fast-talking, stubbornness, sharp instincts, and the occasional appeal to getting a lawyer involved to keep her from getting taken advantage of, and in fact, gets what she wants.

Mattie shows that she can cross a river on horseback, climb trees, cut a dead hanging man down, and most importantly, keep her mouth shut when appropriate. She’s the sidekick who runs the show. Even when her interests don’t dovetail with those she has hired, she re-convinces them that their interests do coincide.

The Braid Connection: Intersecting Race, Gender, and Age

Cowboy films, as a genre, are not only male-dominated, but they also have troubling relationships to Aboriginal peoples. Critiques of the implicit and explicit issues with representation of First Peoples by Hollywood has been amply put forward elsewhere, notably by film critic Jesse Wente. I wonder what the Coen brothers were thinking when they included two scenes with Aboriginal people in them. The first seems to be a critique of racism: an Aboriginal man is hanged without being allowed to say his last words, unlike the white men being hanged beside him. I applaud this implicit critique of the differential treatment of criminals of different racial backgrounds.

The second depiction of frontier relations with Aboriginal people is a scene about halfway into the film, when the character Rooster, played by Jeff Bridges, kicks two First Nations youth. This unmotivated violence could have been another critique of racial violence (simply by making it visible), if it were not for unfortunate editing choices. Rooster is climbing the porch stairs of a house he wants to enter. There are two First Nations boys sitting on the edge of the porch of the house. Out of nowhere, Rooster kicks one of the boys and he falls off the porch onto the ground. The camera focuses on the facial reaction of the other boy who is still sitting. He laughs. Seconds later the boy who laughed meets the same fate. In the theater when I watched the film, the first reaction shot established the tone for the audience reaction to the action when it was repeated. The senseless abuse of native children by an old white man got the biggest laugh of the film. And it’s worth noting that this is one of the only laughs in a film that is mostly stern and quick.

I also have to express disappointment in the choices made around the casting and direction of the adult Mattie. I would have hoped that the young fearless girl would grow up to be someone who could have been played by Michelle Rodriguez.

It's like looking in a mirror: Michelle Rodriguez and Hailee Steinfeld looking quite similar at the end of a gun — It’s like looking in a mirror: Michelle Rodriguez and Hailee Steinfeld looking quite similar at the end of a gun.

Elizabeth Marvel, who was cast to play the adult Mattie, embodies a conventionally strong womanliness, that is more like the unhappy stern and uptight spinster, Marilla Cuthbert, who adopts Anne in Anne of Green Gables.

Unmarried women get stern in a male dominated genre. Characters Marilla Cuthbert and the adult Mattie Ross — Unmarried women get stern in a male-dominated genre. Characters Marilla Cuthbert and the adult Mattie Ross.

As I’ve mentioned, I usually have a “ho-hum” attitude toward Coen brothers films and toward cowboy genre films. But True Grit is saved by a fierce tween. Maybe the Coen brothers should cast Willow Smith in their next film? Based on how a tween rocked their script, I’d love to see them give ten-year-old Willow a chance to whip her hair on the silver screen.

10 year old Willow Smith in the "Whip My Hair" video. Eat your heart out Jackson Pollack — Ten-year-old Willow Smith in the “Whip My Hair” video. Eat your heart out Jackson Pollack.

Willow already wears braids, so she’s half way there. I’d ask the Coen brothers to give Anne of Green Gables a watch first, though. Come on, even in 1985 they let a girl have a little roll in the hay with her bosom friend.

Young women enjoying each other's company. Are Anne and Diana just bosoms? Or is the roll in the hay a vital part of their youthful strength? — Young women enjoying each other’s company.
Are Anne and Diana just bosoms? Or is the roll in the hay a vital part of their youthful strength?

Vicky Moufawad-Paul is a curator, artist, film programmer, and the artistic director at A Space Gallery in Toronto. She earned a Masters of Fine Arts from York University, where she conducted research on the visual culture of Palestine. She was previously the founding executive director of the Toronto Arab Film Festival, and has worked at the Toronto International Film Festival Group. She was a member of the Visual and Media Arts Committee at the Toronto Arts Council, a founding member of the Advisory Board of the Palestine Film Festival, and a member of the Board of Directors at Trinity Square Video. Her writing has been published by Fuse Magazine, E-Fagia, the Arab American National Museum, and the Journal of Peace Research. She was also a contributor to the anthology Decentre: concerning artist-run culture/a propos de centres d’artistes (YYZ Books, 2008). Moufawad-Paul’s video art has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Defending Dawn Summers: From One Kid Sister to Another

OK, sure, my big sister didn’t have superpowers, and as far as I know she did not save the world even one time, much less “a lot.” But from my perspective as her bratty little sister, I felt like I could never escape her long and intimidating shadow. I could never be as smart as her, as special as her; I couldn’t hope to collect even a fraction the awards and accolades she racked up through high school. And she didn’t even properly counteract her super smarts with social awkwardness: she always had a tight group of friends and the romantic affections of cute boys. She was the pride and joy of my family, and I always felt like an also-ran. Trust me: this makes it very hard to not be at least a little bratty and whiny.

Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn Summers

This repost by Robin Hitchcock appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

In the final scene of the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Season 5, Dawn Summers, Buffy’s never before seen or heard-of little sister, appears seemingly out of nowhere. While she’s completely new to the audience, oddly, it is clear that from the characters’ perspectives that Dawn has been there all along.

Dawn and Tara, fellow outsiders from the Scooby gang, pass time with a thumb war.

To quote my husband’s reaction as we reached season 5 during his (in-progress) Buffy indoctrination: “Why on earth are they doing this?”

Most of the Buffy fandom reacted with the same puzzlement. As Dawn’s character was fleshed out over the first few episodes of the season as the archetypical annoying little sister, the audience was still denied all but the vaguest of clues as to Dawn’s true nature and reason for being retconned into the Buffyverse.

Dawn as annoying little sister.

It was not until the fifth episode of the season, “No Place Like Home,” that the Dawn’s existence is explained: she is a mystical key that opens gateways between dimensions, magically given human form with blood relation to the slayer, woven into her memories and all of those around her so that Buffy would protect her with her life, to keep the evil god Glory from using the Key to destroy the universe.

Unfortunately, the only place the monks’ spell couldn’t reach was the minds of the audience, and Dawn Summers had to win us over without the benefit of false memories. This may have been an impossible feat, given her character is pretty much laid out as an immature, whiny, brat with a tendency to get into trouble.

Dawn in damsel-in-distress mode.

Also, she occasionally does this thing where she piercingly shrieks “Get out, get out, GET OUT!” which ranks up there with nails on a chalkboard, dental drills, and Katy Perry songs when it comes to horrible sounds to endure.

And so it is that Dawn is one of the least-liked characters in the Buffyverse. But not by me. I love Dawn Summers.

I suspect my unusually high tolerance for Dawn comes from my OWN memories. In “Real Me,” the episode which properly introduces Dawn’s character, she writes in her diary/narrates: “No one understands. No one has an older sister who is the slayer.”

Dawn writes in her diary.

But I understand. OK, sure, my big sister didn’t have superpowers, and as far as I know she did not save the world even one time, much less “a lot.” But from my perspective as her bratty little sister, I felt like I could never escape her long and intimidating shadow. I could never be as smart as her, as special as her; I couldn’t hope to collect even a fraction the awards and accolades she racked up through high school. And she didn’t even properly counteract her super smarts with social awkwardness: she always had a tight group of friends and the romantic affections of cute boys. She was the pride and joy of my family, and I always felt like an also-ran. Trust me: this makes it very hard to not be at least a little bratty and whiny.

And my big sister was a lot nicer to me than Buffy usually was to Dawn. If the audience found out before Buffy did that Dawn was created to induce the slayer to protect the key, it might have been a little hard to swallow. Buffy shows only hostile resentment toward Dawn for the first half of Season 5. It is only after Dawn learns herself that she is new to the world that Buffy shows her true sisterly love, when she lovingly insists to Dawn that she is Buffy’s “real sister” despite her mystical origins.

“It doesn’t matter where you came from, or how you got here, you are my sister.”

Because I relate to Dawn as a fellow annoying little brat following around her remarkable older sister, I am more forgiving of her character flaws. But I do think viewers without my background ought to take it easier on Dawn as well.

A common criticism of Dawn is that she’s much more immature than the main characters were at the start of the series, when they were close to her in age (Dawn is introduced as a 14-year-old in the eighth grade; Buffy, Xander, and Willow were high school sophomores around age 15 or 16 in Season 1). Writer David Fury responds to this in his DVD commentary on the episode “Real Me,” saying that Dawn was originally conceived as around age 12 and aged up a few years after Michelle Trachtenberg was cast, but it took a while for him and the other writers to get the originally conceived younger version of the character out of their brains. But I don’t need this excuse; I think it makes perfect narrative sense that Dawn comes across as more immature than our point-of-view characters were when they were younger. Who among us didn’t think of themselves as being just as smart and capable as grown-ups when we were teens? Who among us, when confronted with the next generation of teenagers ten years down the line, were not horrified by their blatant immaturity?

Additionally, Dawn starting her character arc as whiny brat lets us watch her grow and mature into a pretty awesome young woman. It is a long road, beset by personal tragedy and a theme of abandonment: Dawn loses her mother and her sister within a matter of months in Season 5, and in Season 6 sees her surrogate parent figures, Willow and Tara, split up just as a returned-from-the-grave Buffy is too detached from humanity to be there emotionally for Dawn. Throughout Season 6, Dawn acts out: lying to Buffy to stay out all night with friends, habitually and perhaps compulsively stealing, and ultimately sublimating her abandonment issues into a curse (with the help of Vengeance “Justice” Demon Halfrek), temporarily trapping the Scooby gang and some innocent bystanders in the Summers’ home.

Dawn’s tantrum in Season 6’s “Older and Faraway”

But Season 6 represents an era of bad choices for almost the entire cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so Dawn should be given as much slack for her missteps as we give the other wayward characters, including Buffy herself. And it is Dawn who finally pulls Buffy out of the emotional purgatory she is suffering in this season. In the Season 6 finale “Grave,” Buffy finally truly regains her will to live and recaptures her complete humanity, and this epiphany comes in large part because she finally sees Dawn as a gift in her life rather than a burden:

Buffy and Dawn hug in “Grave”

“Things have really sucked lately, but that’s all gonna change—and I want to be there when it does. I want to see my friends happy again. I want to see you grow up. The woman you’re gonna become… Because she’s gonna be beautiful. And she’s gonna be powerful. I got it so wrong. I don’t want to protect you from the world—I want to show it to you. There’s so much that I wanna to show you.” – Buffy to Dawn in “Grave.”

Dawn with Buffy during her metaphorical rebirth in “Grave.”

Dawn finds her own self-actualization in the Season 7 episode “Potential,” having once again been shoved to the sidelines of Buffy’s attention by the arrival of a collection of young “potential slayers” who need protection from the Bringers, who have been systematically wiping out the future slayer lineage. While Buffy focuses on protecting and training the potentials, Dawn clearly feels left out, trapped by her own ordinariness and unimportance (a significant change for a girl who was once the key to the fabric between dimensions).

Dawn lurks in the background as Buffy gives a speech to potential slayers.

That all changes when a spell cast by Willow appears to identify Dawn as a potential slayer herself. Dawn is emotionally overwhelmed by the news, mainly because she thinks it means that Buffy must die before Dawn could ever realize this potential (I’m pretty sure the next potential would be called only by the death of Faith, but that’s neither here nor there). A part of Dawn is clearly excited by the news, and given a huge jolt of self-confidence that lets her bravely defend herself against a vampire and then fight off the group of Bringers who come for her classmate Amanda, the true potential slayer identified by Willow’s spell. Dawn handles the news of her lack of slayer potential with perfect grace, saving Amanda’s life and transferring to her the confidence that comes with knowing you are “special.”

At the episode’s end, Xander, the only other remaining character without any superpowers, has a heart-to-heart with Dawn. He shares with her the wisdom he’s gained in seven years in these circumstances:

Xander has a heart-to-heart with Dawn

“They’ll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn’t chosen. To live so near to the spotlight and never step in it. But I know. I see more than anybody realizes because nobody’s watching me. I saw you last night. I see you working here today. You’re not special. You’re extraordinary.” – Xander to Dawn in “Potential.”

Dawn accepts her humanity and finds her maturity.

After “Potential,” Dawn, who began life at age 14, crafted from a ball of mystical energy and a spell creating powerful false memories, is finally defined by her humanity, her normalcy. She accepts this position with dignity, grace, and bravery. And in so doing, Dawn also steps up to her place as a mature young adult. And at least for this one-time bratty kid sister, that makes Dawn Summers is just as heroic and inspiring a character as Buffy herself.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, South Africa. She is a regular contributor to Bitch Flicks. She is still upset that the Season 5 Buffy DVDs don’t include the awesome “previously on” montage from “The Gift.”

‘Catching Fire’: Positive Fuel for the Feminist Flame

The Hunger Games, saturated as it is with political meaning (the author admits her inspiration for the trilogy came from flipping channels between reality TV and war footage), is a welcome change from another recent popular YA series, Twilight. As a further bonus, it has disproven the claim that series with female protagonists can’t have massive cross-gender appeal. With the unstoppable Katniss Everdeen at the helm (played in the films by the jaw-droppingly talented Jennifer Lawrence), perhaps the series will be the start of a new trend: politically themed narratives with rebellious female protagonists who have their sights set on revolution more than love, on cultural change more than the latest sparkling hottie.

This cross-post by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at the Ms. Magazine Blog and appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

I think most of us would agree there is no place on this planet that is utopian in the sense of being a perfect society (utopia literally means “no place”). Dystopia, on the other hand, exists to some extent every place. The Hunger Games trilogy is very apt in this sense of the word.

The post-apocalyptic nation of Panem’s bleak, poverty-stricken Districts echo so many other places on Earth today—West Virginia, inner-city Chicago, war-torn Afghanistan, to name just a few. Its beleaguered, starving, overworked, underpaid (or unpaid) citizens are akin to real-world fast-food employees, migrant workers and sweatshop laborers. The privileged citizens of Panem’s Capitol, in contrast, represent the figurative 1 percent—the haves who have so much that little is left for everyone else. They’re so comfortable in their having that they are not cognizant of dystopic Districts outside their utopian bubble—other than in the ways that citizens of those bad places can be exploited for their labor or their entertainment value.

The Hunger Games, saturated as it is with political meaning (the author admits her inspiration for the trilogy came from flipping channels between reality TV and war footage), is a welcome change from another recent popular YA series, Twilight. As a further bonus, it has disproven the claim that series with female protagonists can’t have massive cross-gender appeal. With the unstoppable Katniss Everdeen at the helm (played in the films by the jaw-droppingly talented Jennifer Lawrence), perhaps the series will be the start of a new trend: politically themed narratives with rebellious female protagonists who have their sights set on revolution more than love, on cultural change more than the latest sparkling hottie.

The second book in the trilogy, Catching Fire, builds upon the themes initiated in the first book but pushes the themes of performance, corruption, excess, and defiance even further. The same is true of the film adaptation. Circulating around notions of the performance of the self—not only the gendered self but also the self as lover, as friend, as enemy—the film also functions as a critique of gender norms, consumer capitalism, staged warfare, and patriarchal power.

Gender inversion is plentiful in the film, with Katniss carrying on in her heroic, savior role (typically a spot occupied by males) while Peeta and Gale are more akin to damsels in distress. Peeta (the baker, played by Josh Hutcherson) is saved repeatedly by Katniss (the hunter). Gale (with his “feminine” name, played by Liam Hemsworth) pleadingly asks Katniss, “Do you love me?”—a question usually posed by female characters. Katniss refuses to answer, indicating that the revolutionary times they live in deserve her attention more than romance.

Prim (Willow Shields), Katniss’s younger sister, also comes into her own in this film, telling Katniss, “You don’t have to protect me” and by stepping in to doctor Gale. Various other characters defy gender expectations, from Johanna’s (Jena Malone) wise and witty confidence to Cinna’s (Lenny Kravitz) nurturing and motherly care of Katniss. These non-stereotypically gendered characters highlight gender as performance, nodding to an overarching concern of the series—the ways in which performance can kowtow to social norms—as with the brightly colored hairdos and over-the top outfits of those in the Capitol who happily perform excess. Or, in contrast, how performance can be used strategically as a form of resistance, as when Peeta and Katniss perform the role of young lovers in order to game the system.

Though Katniss is visibly suffering from PTSD from her first round in the Games, she, against her truthful nature, learns she must “play the part” so as to protect those she loves. Near the start of the film, when she emphatically answers “no” when President Snow (Donald Sutherland) asks her if she would prefer a real war to the Games, we, as audience members watching from the safety of our movie theater seats, sympathize with this answer. We, too, would rather watch war from afar, glimpsing it via our flatscreens or play at it via video games that allow us to be virtual soldiers, rather than actually face war’s real pain, loss, destruction, and dehumanization.

Alas, by the close of the film, we have changed our perspective along with Katniss, recognizing that revolutionary war may be the only way to bring down the Capitol—that the tributes–people from the Districts forced to play in the life or death Games (or metaphorical soldiers) are mere set pieces in the Capitol’s plan, not the saviors that we and the citizens of Panem need and want them to be.

Will this revolutionary spark take hold, firing up audiences to question the ways in which the film is not so much set in a fictional future as an allegorical present? The excessive performance of consumer capitalism on display in the Capital of Katniss’s world is, sadly, not so far removed from the glut of glitter that adorns our own malls in the run-up to the winter holidays. The purging tonic which allows Capitol citizens to keep eating is not all that different from the reality in which some have far too much food at their disposal and others not even a cupboard in which to store food. The media of Panem is closer still to our reality, brimming as it is with surveillance, over-zealous pundits such as Ceasar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci) and mediated war that broadcasts just enough fear mixed with the right amount of hope to keep people transfixed and immobilized.

Leave it to Haymitch (Woody Harrelson), the deceptively drunken mentor to Katniss and Peeta—functioning much as a Shakespearean fool—to lay bare this performance, telling Katniss, “Your job is to be a distraction so people forget the real problems.” This film is itself a distraction, with Hunger Games: Catching Fire paraphernalia already flooding stores and fueling our consumerist desires.

So is this trilogy so different from Twilight and its sparkling vampires? I say it is, not only because it gives us a complex, brave, indefatigable heroine (Katniss is not Bella!), but also because it reminds us that “every revolution begins with a spark.” Perhaps the revolutions it ignites will only be in the ways in which viewers envision acts of heroism, love or forgiveness, but such sparks are important. If we can imagine a world in which men do the baking and women the saving, in which young black girls are mourned by a community rather than shamed and blamed, in which the corruption and privilege embodied in the likes of President Snow are resisted rather than aided and abetted, then we are, if nothing else, adding fuel to the feminist fire.

Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if …? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate.

‘The Book Thief’: Stealing Hearts and Minds

Liesel, unlike so many young heroines, resists romance—from her friend Rudy’s early problematic insistence and then throughout the remainder of the movie. Instead of being positioned in relationship to romantic partners, she has three male best friends—Rudy, Max and Hans (Papa)—as well as two females of great importance to her life, Rosa (Mama) and Ilsa Hermann (the mayor’s wife who, transgressively, supplyies Liesel with books). As for Liesel, like her futuristic counterpart, Katniss Everdeen, she is a life-saving heroine and inspirational rebel.

This cross-post by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at the Ms. Magazine Blog and appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Though the film The Book Thief is narrated by Death (as is the book) and takes place during World War II—an era particularly riddled with death—the movie brims with life. A large part of this is due to the amazing young actress Sophie Nélisse who plays the protagonist, Liesel Meminger. It is not often that we get complex, brave female characters, especially ones who are not interested first and foremost either in romance or motherhood.

While I disagree with the The New York Times review, which likened the book to “Harry Potter and the Holocaust,” I have to concur with some of the suggestions the comparison implies, such as the importance of friendship, the love of whimsy and the existence of villainous persons that threaten all of humanity. The Book Thief has no wizards though; instead, its narrative rests on the shoulders of young Liesel, orphaned at the outset and taken in by a seemingly shrewish foster mother of the Disney wicked-stepmother-as witch variety. While Rosa is somewhat softened into a more likeable character by the end of the book, the film takes her character transformation in a more feminist direction, suggesting she was merely playing the part of shrew in order to protect the family during the tyrannical times in which they live.

Similarly, Hans, who at first comes off as too quick with the wives-are-such-a-nuisance type of comments, is revealed in the film to also be playing the role of a husband who bemoans his nagging wife, mocking her whenever the chance arises. As such, the two characters play out the role of a bickering married couple so as not to draw attention to their family or house. Here, the film hints at the social roles we are forced to occupy in order to not be singled out, to not be “other.” In so doing, it nods to the fluidity of identity and the ability to resist even the most tyrannical regimes via daily acts of transgression.

Rudy also commits rebellious acts. On the one hand, as the book notes, he is “not the junior misogynistic type of boy at all,” something that has for too long been a norm of boyhood. On the other, his hero is the African American Olympic runner Jesse Owens—the man who refused to shake Hitler’s hand, though this direct political detail in the book is unfortunately not included in the film. The movie, does, however insist that racism is learned, and that Rudy has not learned it, as when his father tells him exasperatedly, “You can’t go around painting yourself black” when he does so in order to feel like Jessie Owens as he runs a race.

Similarly, though Death narrates the book, many of the characters refuse to give in to the death and destruction around them. Instead, they turn the toughest of times into opportunities for empathy and kindness—or, figuratively, to take the graveness out of death. Indeed, two of the book’s at the center of the narrative are very grave indeed, one being The Grave Digger’s Handbook and the other Hitler’s Mein Kampf. With one, Liesel learns to read; with the other, she learns to write. Thus books infused with death are used to give life to Liesel’s story and, more broadly, books, literacy and storytelling offer vital opportunities for transgression in an age of book burning.

That Liesel’s story is made possible by Max painstakingly painting the pages of Mein Kampf white, so as to create a “blank” journal in which Liesel can write is also key. Firstly, it visually negates Hitler’s heinous manifesto of hate, erasing his words with thick paint. Secondly, as the paint is white, it nods to the white Aryan supremacy promoted by Hitler and others in a way that suggests whiteness need not be the privileged, oppressive category it has been for so long. It can be, as indicated by Rudy—the white boy who paints himself black—covered over to tell a different story. Thirdly, the fact that Liesel uses the now-blank pages to write The Book Thief over the hidden words of Hitler suggests not that we “whitewash” history, but that we use what is at our disposal to make this often all-too-ugly world more bearable.

Reviews of the film thus far have been very mixed, with the most common criticism being that it’s too slow and long. For contemporary audiences, this critique has some merit. However, the critique could just as well be directed at audiences, and the film industry at large, for its penchant towards action-packed, special-effects focused, razzle-dazzle types of films. Not everything need be in 3D or filled with explosions to be entertaining. I fear for the slow death of classic films that unfold via complex characters, quiet moments and the multifaceted feelings they bring forth in the viewer. On this count, The Book Thief gives me hope.

Directed by Brian Percival (who directed several episodes of the similarly classy Downton Abbey), the film holds a special appeal for book lovers, centering as it does on the power of a good book and how literacy changes lives and words shape our existence.

It also gives me hope that perhaps we are undergoing what Melissa Silverstein of Women and Hollywood calls “A Female Revolution at the Box Office.” Says Silverstein,

It is so rare to see a full-on, beautiful shot of a young woman to open a film. And from that first moment, this young woman just commands the screen and leads this film in every way.

Though Silverstein is referring to Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, the same can be said of Nélisse: She is the heart of the film, bringing the character of Liesel to life in a haunting and mesmerizing way.

If you can steal two hours and five minutes from holiday shopping and parties to see this film, I urge you to do so. Though different from Catching Fire, its talented lead actress and its emotional message might very well burn their way into your heart.

On Milk-Bones, Toothed Vaginas, and Adolescence: ‘Teeth’ As Cautionary Tale

Early in the film, Dawn is a nymph-like virgin committed to “saving herself” until marriage. She is the poster child for the “good” girl: a loving daughter who obeys the doctrines of the church and spends her time spreading the gospel of virginity. Everything Dawn knows about the world and herself changes when her falsely pious boyfriend Tobey takes her to a far off swimming hole and tries to rape her. A confused and terrified Dawn reacts by screaming and then—much to everyone’s surprise—cutting off his penis to interrupt the rape. Little does Dawn know that her lessons about Darwin in her biology classes are taking hold in her own body.

Teeth movie poster — *Teeth* movie poster

This guest post by Colleen Lutz Clemens appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Mitchell Lichtenstein’s 2007 comedic horror film Teeth plays to and with the audience’s anxiety about a young girl’s burgeoning sexuality. In a town flanked by a nuclear power plant, the main character, Dawn, grows into her sexuality while coming to terms with having a vagina dentata–a toothed vagina. In a time when toothed condoms called Rapex to prevent rape are coming onto the market, Dawn’s travails force the viewer to consider what is necessary for a woman to survive as a sexual being in a climate of violence and rape.

Toby loses his penis — Tobey loses his penis

Dawn turns to the Internet to learn what has happened to her body (and I suggest you, dear reader, might want to avoid Googling “vagina dentata” if you are faint of heart) and learns that her vagina—something she didn’t want to see the picture of even before the rape—is a tool of terror, in her opinion.

In a desire to learn about her body, to confirm what is normal or abnormal biology, she goes to another man whom should be trusted—her gynecologist. During the exam, he also takes advantage of Dawn’s vulnerabilities and assaults her. When he doesn’t listen to her protests, he loses a finger, and Dawn flees screaming at the fear she now has over her own body and it sexual nature. With little to no information about her own body brought upon by her abstinence-only education, Dawn is left confused while her curiosity mirrors that of any young woman starting to learn about sex.

Dawn visits the gynocologist — Dawn visits the gynecologist

Viewers finally relax when they see Dawn in the hands of a loving partner, Ryan, who seems to care for her. With loving embraces and tenderness, Ryan takes a nervous Dawn to bed. Her vagina dentata seems to be reserved only for instances in which Dawn needs protection, so Ryan is safe in her embrace. But when Dawn learns that Ryan has bedded her as part of a bet while he is still inside of her, Dawn’s evolutionary adaptation intercedes and Ryan is punished for his use and abuse of Dawn. So now two trusted boyfriends and a doctor have initiated Dawn into the world of oppressive sex and violence, and all three times her vagina—the thing that has left her most vulnerable—has acted as a protector.

Finally, upon the death of her mother, Dawn starts to see her vagina as a tool not only for survival but also for justice. Her awful stepbrother Brad is the first to be the victim of the vagina dentata used purposefully. Having ignored the cries of his dying stepmother, Brad allows the most important woman in Dawn’s life to die a horrible death. A coy Dawn seduces Brad to punish him. His vicious dog gets to eat the spoils of the sexual encounter Brad had been taunting Dawn with for years.

Brad's penis (before the dog eats it) — Brad’s penis (before the dog eats it)

The final scene does the most interesting work in terms of considering Teeth as part of the rape-revenge genre (spoiler alert). Dawn has left her home to begin a new life as she can no longer survive in her town. After a succession of men whom Dawn should be able to trust take advantage of her, Dawn finally embraces her toothed vagina and uses it as a tool of resistance and justice as she works to protect other women from the awful men roaming the world. When hitchhiking, she is picked up by the archetypal “dirty old man” that solicits sex from her as his dry tongue licks his even dryer lips.

In the film’s final moments, the audience sees Dawn smile and go toward this encounter, and we know that Dawn will use her vagina dentata as an act of vigilante justice. She will sever the penis of this man so he cannot use it again and hurt other girls. Instead of being surprised by her vagina or using it as a form of reactive self-protection, Dawn is now being proactive and seeking out the opportunity to use her “teeth” to act as a fighter. She goes toward the encounter and accepts her body for what it is: a powerful sexual being that has adapted to a world that is often harsh and dangerous for the female species.

I have taught this film several times in my college courses. If I were to make a generalization, at the end of the film, the male students groan and the female students cheer. I suppose that is a natural response to some degree. After all, we did just witness a dog eat a severed penis as if it were a Milk-Bone. However, this film always leads me to ask the question: Is this the kind of agency that we as women want—access to violent acts? Is Dawn, as Tammy Oler calls Dawn in her Bitch article on rape-revenge films “The Brave Ones,” a “satisfying fantas[y] of power and fortitude”?

The film seems to argue that Dawn’s growth is a requirement, a form of natural selection–that a young woman growing up in a white, suburban, Christian, capitalist society MUST develop such a “mutation” in order to survive a patriarchal world. Dawn’s vagina dentata is the epitome of her biology teacher’s earlier lesson on natural selection, that along with the help of the effects of the nuclear power plant combined with the need to survive, women will start to adapt and grow vaginal teeth. Though she is still monstrous (the film isn’t called “Dawn,” but is instead named after the thing that makes her a monster), she also has access to mobility—she is leaving—and sexual power—she is about to control the sexual situation for the only the second time in her sexual life. Sadly, though this situation is one of power, not of love.

We do see earlier in the film that she can control her teeth when having sex in a loving environment, so the adaption will not hold her back from having a healthy sexual encounter that is safe for both partners. But when that safety is compromised, the audience is to assume that Dawn will always have the upper hand. Or should we say the upper jaw?

Colleen Lutz Clemens is assistant professor of non-Western literatures at Kutztown University. She blogs about gender issues and postcolonial theory and literature at http://kupoco.wordpress.com/. When she isn’t reading, writing, or grading, she is wrangling her two-year old daughter, two dogs, and on occasion her partner.

The Relationships of ‘Veronica Mars’

It’s common wisdom that maintaining relationships requires constant work, but there’s often an assumption (in TV, movies, and real life) that this only applies to romantic relationships. Platonic relationships are rarely the focus of a story, and when a storyline deals with issues in these relationships, they’re often easily dealt with, and the friendship goes back to being simple. Exceptions to this are problems that are caused by romantic relationships. Veronica Mars is an exception to this; for its first two seasons, it depicts many platonic relationships, and explores the many issues involved in navigating them (some of these problems are related to romance, but many are not, showing platonic relationships have their own complexities, separate from romance).

This guest post by Sarah Stringer appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

The opening monologue of Veronica Mars makes it sound like this show is going to stick very closely to the trope of the jaded heroine, whose job has shown her so much lying and cheating that she’s closed off to the possibility of relationships. This idea is reinforced throughout the show, as various characters make jokes about Veronica’s cold cynicism. She’s snarky and sarcastic, and does have trouble getting close to people, largely because of all the trauma she went through before the beginning of the show.

Veronica with her trusted camera and jaded attitude

However, Veronica Mars ends up subverting our expectations. Far from being a show about an aloof hero who can’t work with others, it ends up being largely about Veronica’s various relationships. It’s a running joke throughout the show that she’s constantly asking her friends for favours, but it’s also a running joke that people are constantly asking Veronica for favours, and the favours she asks for are usually to help her help others.

Her friends complain about constantly having to come to her aid, but they never refuse her requests, because they know the favours will be returned when they’re in need. This creates complications, as Veronica finds the line between relationships based on mutual usefulness and reciprocity, and relationships built on genuine caring and respect. As the first couple of seasons progress, she gets better at navigating the second kind of relationship, and mixing it with the first kind.

It’s common wisdom that maintaining relationships requires constant work, but there’s often an assumption (in TV, movies, and real life) that this only applies to romantic relationships. Platonic relationships are rarely the focus of a story, and when a storyline deals with issues in these relationships, they’re often easily dealt with, and the friendship goes back to being simple. Exceptions to this are problems that are caused by romantic relationships. Veronica Mars is an exception to this; for its first two seasons, it depicts many platonic relationships, and explores the many issues involved in navigating them (some of these problems are related to romance, but many are not, showing platonic relationships have their own complexities, separate from romance).

Veronica starts season one with no friends, but in the pilot episode, she befriends the new kid at school, Wallace Fennel. Her very first meeting with him involves her helping him out, by cutting him down from the flagpole where some bullies had duct taped him. She immediately lets him know that sitting with her won’t help his social standing, and he doesn’t need to be her friend just to reciprocate her gesture. He sits with her anyway, not because he feels like he owes her for the help, but because he likes her as a person.

Wallace and Veronica become best friends, and they’re a rare example of a show seriously dealing with the complexities of platonic relationships. As Wallace spends more time at the school, he starts to befriend other students, and get quite popular as a result of being a star on the basketball team. This creates problems in his relationship with Veronica, as they both try to navigate the jealousy, resentment, and time conflicts that come from vastly different social statures.

Another issue in Veronica’s relationship with Wallace is the same issue that exists in all her relationships: the balance between genuine friendship and trading of favours. She often uses his job in the school’s office to get information for her cases, and he’s put himself at risk in that way and other ways to help her. He grants all her requests, sometimes with no knowledge of why he’s doing it (and no questions asked), but he knows her resources will be put to his use anytime he’s in trouble.

Sometimes the balance starts to tip too far, and Wallace feels like she’s taking him for granted. This comes to a head several times, especially when his mother gets in trouble at her job because of something Veronica had him do, without telling him how dangerous it could be. He calls her out several times when she starts neglecting her friendship with him, blowing him off to work on her cases and just using him for the assistance he offers. Veronica tries to make up for this by doing things like baking spirit cookies for his locker, telling him she may have no school spirit but he does, and what’s important to him is important to her.

Veronica and Wallace, figuring things out together

The issue of one partner taking the other partner for granted is one that often comes up in relationships, and little gestures to show affection is a common (partial) solution to it. The depiction of this as a constant issue between two platonic partners is quite refreshing.

This dynamic is seen in several of Veronica’s other relationships, particular with Weevil, a local biker, and Mac, a computer nerd. She gets Weevil and Mac out of trouble when they need it, and they both help her out whenever they can. Working around the inherent potential for taking advantage of each other, as well as Veronica’s own cynicism, they forge genuine friendships that grow as much as any romantic relationship.

The show also devotes a lot of time to Veronica’s relationship with her father, Keith. She works for him at his private investigator practice, and there are times when it’s difficult for them to navigate the dual dynamics of father-daughter and detective-receptionist/junior detective. He wants to protect her, but also teach her, and he often needs her help. He wants to trust her, but there are times when she breaks that trust, and he has to decide how to deal with that as a father and as a boss.

Familial relationships aren’t rare in television or movies (though complex portrayals of them are still rarer than in-depth looks at romance), but they’re rarely dived into as deeply as with Veronica and her father. They joke together, work together, go through extremely difficult circumstances together, and work together to come back from the problems created when they both inevitably screw up.

Veronica Mars portrays all these relationships, and their various issues, without touching romance. That’s not even getting into the relationships Veronica forms with whatever classmate she’s trying to help that week, or with other characters like Meg (her romantic rival, but also far more than that) and her dead best friend, Lily. In a subversion of a heroine who’s closed off and can’t get close to people, Veronica Mars is essentially a show about relationships of all types, and it’s at its best when it’s focusing on those.

The show deteriorated for many reasons in season three, but in my opinion, the major reason was the increased focus on romantic drama, at the expense of the many platonic relationships it built up previously. Weevil and Wallace have significantly smaller roles. Keith and Mac are still important, but mostly because of their own storylines, and they do a lot less interacting with Veronica. When Mac does talk to Veronica, it’s mostly so they can discuss their romantic lives, rather than develop their relationship with each other.

Season three's Weevil, aka "Who the Hell Is This Guy, Again?" — Season three’s Weevil, aka “Who the Hell Is This Guy, Again?”

Romance certainly existed in the show before season three. Veronica had three boyfriends in two seasons, and those relationships were in no way simple or small parts of the story. But they were portrayed quite similarly to the platonic relationships: the focus was on human interactions, and two people figuring out how to fit their personalities together. They even shared the issues about genuine caring versus using each other; Veronica’s first boyfriend was a cop who she met because she was trying to sneak past him to steal evidence, and she spent the better part of the second season trying to get her next boyfriend off for murder.

However, in the third season, most of Veronica’s romantic issues were more superficial. Her and her on-and-off boyfriend Logan spent more moping about each other than actually figuring out how to be together (or not be together). There’s drama about who’s sleeping with who that leads to more fights than resolutions. The show seems to lose its focus, particularly since so many of Veronica’s platonic relationships are neglected.

There were things I liked about the third season of Veronica Mars, and I await the upcoming movie with as much bated breath as the next fan. But I hope the movie put the focus back where I think it belongs: on complex relationships of all kinds, rather than romantic drama.

See also at Bitch Flicks: “Why Veronica Mars is Still Awesome,” by Amanda Rodriguez

Sarah Stringer is a psychology student in Ontario, with an interest in the political aspects of pop culture.

A Role of Her Own: A Celebration of Satyajit Ray’s ‘The Big City’

Arati is, in fact, a great screen heroine. She is elegant, giving, gritty and spirited. Committed to supporting others, she has a strong personal and public moral code. She cares for both her loved ones and her fellow female co-workers. She buys presents for every member of the family when she gets her first salary and, although he has hurt her, she does not hesitate to praise her failing husband when she is with others. At work, Arati is not frightened of asking her boss for a raise and she learns to bargain with her colleagues for extra commission pay. When Edith’s virtue is slighted at work (the boss believes Anglo-Indians to be inherently promiscuous), she speaks out against the injustice and makes an extraordinarily risky yet heroic move. It is important to note that Arati is not regressively presented as a maternal martyr but as a dynamic, engaged worker and citizen.

Written by Rachael Johnson.

For most lovers, and scholars of ‘World Cinema’, the great Indian director Satyajit Ray will be forever identified with the Apu Trilogy. Chronically the coming of age of a young Bengali boy in the early part of the last century, the critically-acclaimed Pather Panchali (1955), Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (1959) still feature in highly regarded Greatest Films of All Time lists. While they remain prized, influential films, 2013 has given us the opportunity to look at other great works by Ray. Re-released by the British Film Institute to celebrate its 50^th anniversary, Mahanagar (The Big City) is one that particularly caught my eye. It proved a pretty special discovery.

Set in 1950s Kolkata, The Big City is an intimate, insightful examination of the role of women in post-Independence India. The heroine of the tale is Arati Mazumdar (Madhabi Mukherjee), a lovely, kind-hearted housewife who lives with her bank clerk husband, Subrata (Anil Chatterjee), and their small son Pintu. They share their modest, lower middle-class home with Subrata’s elderly parents and teenage sister. As he is finding it hard to make ends meet, it is decided that Arati should also help support the family. She procures a job as a door-to-door saleswoman. Initially fearful of stepping out into the city streets, Arati soon adapts to the world of work. Gaining confidence and customers, she displays a considerable talent for the business. She meets people outside her family for the first time and strikes up a friendship with a stylish Anglo-Indian colleague called Edith (Vicki Redwood) who introduces her to lipstick.

But all is not well at home. Horrified by the very idea of his daughter-in-law working, Subrata’s deeply conservative father, Priyagopal (Haren Chatterjee), cold-shoulders the couple. The retired school teacher is particularly ashamed of his son. He believes that he has failed as a husband and that a woman who works suffers great hardship. Interestingly, he feels no shame in asking his former pupils for financial help. Subrata embodies urban post-colonial India and comes across as a quite genial and relatively modern husband. There are nicely-observed scenes at the beginning of the film where he shows engaging support for his wife who is naturally nervous at entering the workforce for the first time. He defends their decision to his father. ‘Change comes because it’s necessary,’ he says. However, Subrata too becomes increasingly threatened by Arati’s new role. She is forced to mollify his masculinist sense of worth. ‘I’m still the same. Just a housewife,’ she says. But he still tells her to quit her job. It is a cruel demand as it shows that Subrata does not care about Arati’s personal happiness and sense of self-worth. It also demonstrates a lack of logic and imagination. The request is all the more discouraging because he is a customarily gentle, likeable man. The Big City is not a polemic and Ray does not express an openly judgmental attitude towards his male characters. The film does, however, indicate that their narrow-mindedness is irrational and self-defeating. The director shows, through the illustration of a potentially disastrous life-changing event, that such reactionary, patriarchal attitudes are dangerous to the survival of both men and women. Unchanging concepts of gender serve neither the family nor community. Ray is, therefore, interested, in both the consequences of women’s participation in the workforce for both the individual and her society.

Ray wonderfully shows what work and economic independence mean for Arati personally. His portrayal of her struggle and advancement is both tender and progressive. Ray’s heroine is both good at her job and fulfilled by her work. It energizes her. ‘I work all day, and yet I don’t feel tired,’ she tells Subrata. There are many beautifully-observed moments in the movie but one scene in particular captures Arati’s own feelings towards her emerging role and independence. When she receives her first pay packet at work, she goes into the bathroom and opens the envelope to examine the pristine notes. In front of the mirror, she holds them to her chest and then smells them. She is pensive, a little bemused, and simply, understandably, proud of her success. At home, she tells her husband, ‘If you saw me at work, you wouldn’t recognize me.’ She is, of course, deeply hurt when Subrata asks her to give up her job. Ray addresses social change in humorous ways too. In one amusing scene, a stunned Subrata, having tea in a café, watches Arati, in black shades, cross the busy street outside. She runs into the husband of a friend and accompanies him into the café. It is an entirely innocent meeting but Subrata listens to their conversation behind a newspaper. Arati has two selves for two worlds. At home, she hides the lipstick she wears in the big city. These tensions are handled with delicacy and wit. Thanks to the well-drawn characterization and Mukherjee’s fully-realized performance, Arati’s growth always strikes the viewer as believable. Her spark is actually evident from the very beginning of the story when she wakes Subrata up in the middle of night to tell him, ‘I’m going to work.’

Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee) and husband Subrata (Anil Chatterjee)

While it is a tale filmed in black and white, and rooted in particular time and place, The Big City has immeasurable universal appeal and contemporary significance. Although it is not without melodramatic elements, it tells a very human story with both wit and kindness. It has a progressive sensibility and great heart. A sensitive study of a woman’s personal awakening and growth, it also understands that the personal is deeply political. The Big City has a wonderful heroine and a memorable central performance. Mukherjee’s turn as the strong, gracious Arati is quite mesmerizing. Newly restored, it is, in addition, gorgeous to look at. Now part of the Criterion Collection, The Big City is not difficult to track down. It is a beautiful film and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

In Praise of ‘The Fall’s Uber Cool Feminist Heroine: Gillian Anderson’s Stella Gibson

The Fall is one of 2013’s television success stories. The five-part BBC crime drama is a compelling, well-crafted production with a fine cast and a terrific lead performance by Gillian Anderson. Set in present-day Belfast–and also shot on location in the Northern Ireland capital–The Fall chronicles the police hunt for a serial killer of attractive, professional women in their thirties. It is created and written by Allan Cubitt–who scripted Prime Suspect 2 (1992, UK)–and directed by Jakob Verbruggen.

Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson)

Written by Rachael Johnson

The Fall is one of 2013’s television success stories. The five-part BBC crime drama is a compelling, well-crafted production with a fine cast and a terrific lead performance by Gillian Anderson. Set in present-day Belfast–and also shot on location in the Northern Ireland capital–The Fall chronicles the police hunt for a serial killer of attractive, professional women in their thirties. It is created and written by Allan Cubitt–who scripted Prime Suspect 2 (1992, UK)–and directed by Jakob Verbruggen.

Anderson plays Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, an Englishwoman called in from the London Metropolitan Police to review a high profile PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) investigation into the murder of an architect. When another woman of similar looks and background is found murdered, Gibson takes charge of the investigation. The Fall is not a whodunit like Forbrydelsen (2007, DK) or The Killing. We know the identity of the murderer, a certain Paul Spector, from the very first episode. The viewer’s interest lies instead in studying the killer and watching Stella pursue the case.

The serial killer’s personal and professional lives are “normal”: Spector is a young man in a caring profession with a hard-working wife and two small children. He is a bereavement counselor. She is a neonatal nurse. Capably played by Jamie Dornan, Spector is slender, good-looking and athletic. A good family man, he seems to have a loving relationship with his children. His sweet, sensitive daughter adores him. Spector’s wife, Sally Anne (Bronagh Waugh) does not know that she is sleeping with a killer of women. He does not reveal violent, misogynist tendencies in his family life. Nor does he show evidence of any psycho-sexual hang-ups in his marital relations. Returning home from violating the domestic space of a potential victim, he falls into bed and makes love with his wife. Possessing, it seems, a split personality, Spector leads two very different lives. At times, these lives are sustained simultaneously. In one unnerving scene, he stalks a potential victim in a park with his young daughter in tow. At first, Dornan’s Spector struck me as a little too normal to be credible but there is an intensity and arrogance to his character that suggests a darker side. There have been serial killers from very average backgrounds and the makers of The Fall consistently underline Spector’s chilling ordinariness in their observational study of the killer. The writer Allan Cubitt has created a man–not a monster.

As a writer of a series that introduced the world to Helen Mirren’s Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, Allan Cubitt is, of course, well-acquainted with strong female characters. His Stella is a particularly striking, commanding protagonist. Clad in pencil skirts, silk blouses and stilettos, she cuts an elegant, glamorous figure. Amusingly, Stella’s silk shirts have become a fashion column and pop culture talking point in the UK. The character’s ultra-feminine looks, it must be said, aim to signify authority rather than slavishness to an ideal of femininity. Stella is self-governing and goal-oriented. The English outsider has, in fact, an almost patrician manner at times. Her leadership style cannot be characterized as either buddy-buddy or maternal. Stella is a cool rather than cold woman, however. This is apparent when we see her calmly help a male co-worker recover from a traumatic incident. We admire her poise and intelligence. Stella also shows interest in the lives of her female co-workers. Most importantly, she possesses a feminist consciousness: she exposes misogyny while combating male violence against women.

Murderer and Family Man, Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) — Murderer and family man, Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan)

Entirely at ease in her skin, Stella is, also, very much a sexual woman. One scene in particular stands out. Spotting a good-looking cop at a crime scene, Stella asks her female companion, police constable Danielle Ferrington (Niamh McGrady) to introduce her to him. When he asks her how long the review will take, Stella tells him point-blank: “I’m staying at the Hilton. Room 203.” It is an impressive, amusing display of female sexual sway. They enjoy their night together but when he makes the mistake of texting a sexy selfie the day after, Stella breaks off contact. She has no interest in pursuing a relationship. Stella is also unafraid of exposing sexual double standards. The one night stand becomes a potentially compromising issue for her male co-workers as the plot develops. Stella, however, detects the underlying reasons for their unease. She puts them in the picture: “That’s what really bothers you, isn’t it? The one night stand. Man fucks woman. Subject man, verb fucks, object woman. That’s ok. Woman fucks man, woman subject, man object. That’s not so comfortable for you, is it?”

Police Constable Danielle Ferrington (Niamh McGrady)

Stella is a rational, self-directed, sexual woman. What is unfortunate is that this particular combination of characteristics in a female protagonist is still rare in mainstream film and television. Unusually, the makers of The Fall have not given Stella a troubled back story or a comforting vulnerable side. She does not appear to be haunted by her past and there is no evidence of alcoholism or other psychological problems. Happily, the script does not seem to support the outdated, bogus belief that successful, professional women can only attain real happiness by marrying and having children. Stella does not seem to be mourning a lost love. Nor does she seem to ache for a child. These tendencies, it must be said, invariably surface in Hollywood and mainstream US television’s characterizations of strong women and it is commendable that The Fall does not take that route.

Stella Takes Charge — Stella takes charge

The Fall could be said to exhibit strong feminist principles. Of course, makers of serial killer dramas risk aestheticizing sexualised violence against women. Although they arguably represent an attempt to get into the mindset of the killer, some may find The Fall’s scenes of voyeurism and violence as suspect as those in more plainly exploitative productions. The Fall is, however, manifestly feminist in its refusal to portray Spector as a monstrous other and in its remarkable characterization of its heroine. It is also evident in the direct way it tackles the issue of victim-blaming. In a conversation with Jim Burns, the Assistant Chief Constable of the PSNI (John Lynch), Stella questions the use of the word ‘innocent’ in describing the killer’s victims:”‘Let’s not refer to them as innocent…What if he kills a prostitute next or a woman walking home drunk, late at night, in a short skirt? Will they be in some way less innocent, therefore less deserving? Culpable? The media loves to divide women into virgins and vamps, angels or whores. Let’s not encourage them.” There are other independent, resourceful women in The Fall and other instances of female solidarity. Stella has a good rapport with pathologist, Paula Reed Smith (played by Archie Panjabi) as well as PC Danielle. We see the latter stung with guilt that she was not able to save a potential victim. Danielle’s sisterly camaraderie even extends to removing the tell-tale signs of Stella’s one-night stand on an errand to her hotel room.

Stella with Pathologist Paula Reed Smith (Archie Panjabi) — Stella with pathologist Paula Reed Smith (Archie Panjabi)

The Fall is not without derivative elements and devices but it is a stylish and quite gritty series. A deeply engrossing thriller, it unsettles, frightens and moves its audience. The Fall’s setting is also interesting. Belfast provides a somewhat tense, moody backdrop. Sectarian conflict is not a distant memory and politics shapes everyday lives. While we may ask whether The Fall provides a particularly pioneering or remarkable study of male violence, it is admirable that its creators are not afraid to emphasize the killer’s normality and masculinity. Most importantly, The Fall has given us a new, über cool feminist heroine. The good news is that there will be another season.