Fascinating Women Characters – Page 2

‘Nightcrawler’: Centering the White Fear Narrative

Two Things:

1. Jake Gyllenhaal will be nominated for an Oscar.

2. ‘Nightcrawler’ is one of the most honest depictions of the White Fear Narrative on film.

Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom. — Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom

Two Things:

1. Jake Gyllenhaal will be nominated for an Oscar.

2. Nightcrawler is one of the most honest depictions of the White Fear Narrative on film.

Bloom and Rick on the scene (Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed)

Gyllenhaal plays Louis Bloom, a thief, a liar, and from my observations, a man on the spectrum of some form of neurodiversity. Obsessive compulsive perhaps, or living with some form of high functioning autism. (It was fascinating to watch Gyllenhaal’s face transmit so much dubious thinking behind those intense detail-oriented eyes.) Bloom is a lonely man who scrapes by on the underbelly of society. His white male privilege allows him to steal, beat up people, and sabotage competitors without fear of repercussions from the police. As the renowned comedian Paul Mooney would say, Bloom has “the complexion for the protection.”

Bloom lives in what appears to be an average working-class L.A. neighborhood (his basic studio apartment is as meticulous as his choice of words when speaking), but his only source of income and his only real viable skill is stealing from others. To the casual observer, his freshly pressed clothes, average white guy looks, and cheap car render him almost invisible. He is perceived to be a normal white person. And this perception of “normal” is crucial to his eventual rise in the world of crime journalism—nightcrawling, capturing horrific images of the worst of humanity and selling them to the highest TV network bidder. The bloodier the images the better. These “stringer” clips of film can bring in hundreds and upwards of thousands of dollars depending on who captures the images first and uploads them to the TV station the fastest. The mantra of “if it bleeds it leads” can now be given a dollar value. And the clock is always ticking.

Bloom stumbles across a car accident on the freeway one late night, and for some inexplicable reason, decides to pull over and watch the rescue of a woman from her burning car. As some police officers try to save the woman, a freelance stringer arrives (Bill Paxton in a small but compelling role) and begins filming the rescue operation. Bloom is introduced to his new obsession, TV crime news, and in his compulsive fashion, steals a high-end bike and sells it to get his hands on a cheap video recorder. A TV news starter kit.

Boss Lady. TV producer Nina Romino (Rene Russo) showing Bloom the ropes.

Bloom sells his first piece of shaky footage to Nina Romina (Rene Russo), a jaded veteran TV news producer who works at the lowest-rated TV station in Los Angeles. Nina tells Bloom that he has a good eye, and with this bit of encouragement (and his intense obsessive nature) Bloom sets off to take crime journalism by storm. He buys a police scanner and even hires his first crew member (Riz Ahmed in a heartbreaking role as a marginalized Guy Friday just desperate enough to endure Bloom’s reckless behavior).

Rick (Riz Ahmed) enduring the Mad hatter that is Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) — Rick (Riz Ahmed) enduring the Mad Hatter that is Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal)

Bloom is heckled by Paxton for being slow to big stories, and this disrespect spurns Bloom to be the best in the biz. Being the best means manipulating the raw footage before Nina gets her hands on it. The film moves into even darker territory when the quest to impress Nina and one up Paxton taps into Bloom’s deceitful nature: he now begins staging crime scenes by moving bodies, rearranging evidence, and omitting images to play up white fears of crime from the urban areas creeping into lily white suburbs. Nina even tells Bloom that the best stories are “A woman running down the street with her throat cut.” The implication here is a preference for white women because they illicit the most sympathy from white mainstream audiences. White news producers play up the recycled white woman in distress angle so often that it has become banal today.

Bloom creates the perfect angle to spin a story.

It’s a narrative used since the early 17^th century. This narrative provides high viewership numbers, and Nina needs high ratings or she will be sacked by her bosses. Nina is unapologetic about framing whiteness as the center of the universe and churning out fear-based stories that disrupt the sanctity of white comfort. She is so apathetic about it, that she appears to dismiss how this narrative implicates her in upholding white supremacy, patriarchy, and the erroneous belief that whiteness is the be all to end all. This makes the film brutally honest. It does not sugarcoat what all non-white Americans understand from jump: the implicit bias of the American mainstream media. The centering of whiteness and white comfort are the only stories worth telling and protecting. And I applaud that honesty in this movie. It made me angry too since I am someone who comes from the margins of society trying not to be marginalized on a daily basis. At the same time, I give serious props to the writer/director Dan Gilroy. He gives it to you straight with no chaser. As much as I grew to loathe Bloom, I was still compelled to see him through to the end. He’s a real punch in the gut. And Gyllenhaal is simply brilliant in his portrayal of a man I want to see burn for his transgressions.

Bloom having a moment after failing to please Nina with great footage.

Eventually Bloom films the biggest story of his new career, a home invasion in an exclusive suburb, with plenty of blood, guns, and bodies, including a missing baby. He arrives at the scene before the police and enters the home filming every gory detail, including the murderers who escaped before Bloom entered the house. He withholds the footage of the killers and their SUV license plate. He has plans to keep the story going by following the so-called “Horror House” murderers and setting them up for a bigger news story– a future staged police shootout he will capture on film. He will control and manipulate white public fear. Because he can.

Bloom capturing the story of his life, and manipulating it. — Bloom capturing the story of his life inside the “Horror House”, and manipulating it.

When Bloom shows the pre-edited Horror House footage to Nina, I swear her face appears orgasmic as she savors every bullet hole, and every inch of blood splatter. It seriously looks like she’s getting the best sex of her life. Nina calls in the newsroom lawyer to see how much she can get away with showing on live TV. As long as the victim’s faces are pixelated and the home address isn’t given out, it’s a go.

This move spins the story into a new direction with the appearance of the police who want to confiscate all the footage of the Horror House crime scene. Nina sends them to Bloom’s home, and no-nonsense Detective Fronteiri (Michael Hyatt) is determined to solve this case. From the moment she enters Bloom’s apartment, Detective Fronteiri knows he’s a conniving liar.

Detective Fronteiri (Michael Hyatt) has no chill. She sees through Bloom's b.s. — Detective Fronteiri (Michael Hyatt) has no chill. She sees through Bloom’s b.s.

Later, when Bloom sets into motion the tragic events that will net him his biggest stringer payday yet, Detective Fronteiri has to concede that she can never prove Bloom’s willful obfuscation, but she lets him know that she is aware of his deceit. He withheld crucial evidence to make a name for himself. And there are chalk lines on the ground for unnecessary deaths because of this deceit. In her eyes we see that she understands that he is controlling the false narrative of events. He has painted himself as a white victim who feared for his life and safety, and only called the police when he thought some big bad Latinos were following him. In reality, he planned to capitalize on the script he had pre-written for others to play out, including the Latino bad guys. He is the puppet master who pulls the strings. Detective Fronteiri knows this but is unable to take Bloom down. And Bloom gets to prosper in the end and continue nightcrawling with a brand new crew of underlings who have no idea that he has sociopathic tendencies. He just looks like a clean cut articulate white man with ambition. Y’know, the good guy.

The core story of Nightcrawler is how the media, TV news in particular, controls and manipulates the cultural discourse that portrays whiteness and white privilege as tangible things to be protected in America. Whiteness takes preeminence over non-white individuals and cultures. Non-white individuals in news stories are always seen as the scary Other, disrupting the comfort of good white folks–especially good white folks who live within high income zip codes. Fear-based media sells and it goes hand-in-hand with the threat of white comfort. Any challenge to the white comfort narrative is an assault on the perception that whiteness is the norm. Challenges to that white comfort norm are often rendered meaningless and worse, pathological. Look at real life TV news. Black Americans like Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Marissa Alexander, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Jordan Davis, Eric Garner et al, are victims of police violence, violent anti-Black citizens, majority white jurors with irrational fears of Black skin, and the racist court of public opinion that puts Black victims on trial with immediate character assassinations. This violence done to Black Americans is used to uphold the sanctity of white comfort, and the delusions that white privilege perpetuates. Nothing in the media is happenstance. It is created, shaped, edited, and shared on television and the internet to protect a perceived white normality. All hail Hydra, darkies be damned.

Recent cartoon depicting the irrational fear whites have of Black bodies. #MikeBrown — Recent cartoon depicting the irrational and dehumanizing fear whites have of Black bodies. #MikeBrown

Perceptions of fear-based news do not match reality. Recently, Rudy Giuliani (in a television debate with Professor Michael Eric Dyson) tried to conflate Black-on-Black crime as an excuse to ignore state sanctioned violence on Black bodies, many of whom are children. He failed to mention white-on-white crime, or how most violent crimes are perpetuated by loved ones people already know. He misused facts to be obtuse and to derail the #BlackLivesMatter conversation on social media, once again centering the white fear narrative, and painting Black people for the zillionth time as the monstrous Other, the boogie man that has to be kept in check by more police crackdowns on Blackness. He became part of the media-created frenzy used to frighten good suburban white folk. The perception he tried to paint didn’t match the reality of the discussion. Much like the TV producer Nina, when faced with a counter-narrative that didn’t match the story she was trying to sell, Giuliani stuck to his erroneous script to fan the flames of white centered fear. Truth is more fucked up than fiction.

The power dynamics between Bloom and Nina is an engaging interplay of sexual tension, and sexual manipulation. At the start of the film, Bloom is Nina’s subordinate, her little free-lance worker bee. Halfway through there’s a shift in the relationship, not quite equal, but Nina does treat him like a colleague. Bloom wants Nina sexually, and when he’s done his painstaking research on her career failures and her desperate need to keep her job, he calculates that he is worth more to her professionally than she lets on and uses this truth to pressure her into a date, and soon after, a sexual relationship.

Boss Lady still in charge. Angle framed forcing Bloom to look up at her. — Boss Lady still in charge. Angle framed so that Bloom has to look up at Nina.

Not equals but Bloom impresses TV news producer Nina with his work ethic. — Not equals, but Bloom impresses TV news producer Nina with his work ethic.

Power Dynamic shift: Nina realizes her new stringer has demands. Low angle framed so she appears to look up at Bloom.

Nina coerced into a dinner date she didn't want to keep Bloom's stringer hits. — Nina coerced into a dinner date she didn’t want to keep Bloom’s stringer hits.

One reading of this sexual coercion can be viewed as blackmail and harassment. But Rene Russo imbues Nina with a calculated agency that can also be interpreted as a woman who also knows her worth to Bloom, and uses his desire for her to get what she wants. I also sense that Nina actually finds Bloom attractive, especially when he makes demands of her. The same sexual look she gives bloody images is the same look she gives Bloom when he tries to dominate her. A lesser script would’ve used this tension as a subplot for Nina to rise above Bloom’s coercion. Instead, Nina concedes, has an off-screen relationship with him that we don’t see, and it is a stunning tête-à-tête to witness. It may very well gain Rene Russo her own Supporting Actor nod come Oscar season.

Nightcrawler is a wonderful respite from the big budget tent-pole films dominating the cinema. Original, daring, infuriating, and honest about ugly truths, I expect Jake Gyllenhaal to see his name on the Best Actor Oscar Ballot. He might even walk away with that gold statuette. And I would applaud him for it.

Jake Gyllenhaal, this film makes up for "Prince of Persia". Expect to be nominated for an Oscar. — Jake Gyllenhaal, this film makes up for “Prince of Persia.” Expect to be nominated for an Oscar.

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Lisa Bolekaja is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop and was named an Octavia E. Butler Scholar by the Carl Brandon Society. She co-hosts a screenwriting podcast called “Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room” and her work has appeared in “Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History” (Crossed Genres Publishing), “The WisCon Chronicles: Volume 8″ (Aqueduct Press), and the SF/F anthology, “How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens” (Upper Rubber Boot Books). An associate member of the Horror Writers Association, and a former Film Independent Fellow. She is a profesional agitator on Twitter @LisaBolekaja

Working My Way Through Feminist Film History: Art and Intimacy in ‘I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing’

This post is inspired by Alison Nastasi’s “50 Essential Feminist Films,” an excellent survey of films that is a kind of resource guide for those of us interested in exploring feminist film history. Though not exhaustive, Nastasi’s list is an exciting place to extend the conversation about the ways that feminist questions and concerns have been depicted in films in and outside of Hollywood in the past several decades. What’s more, this list is also a site for discovering films I didn’t even know to look for.

The Canadian director Patrica Rozema directed this quietly charming film, which stars Sheila McCarthy. McCarthy plays Polly, whose videotaped confession frames the story and immediately establishes our curiosity. What crime could this anxious and seemingly guileless woman have committed? Polly is in her early 30s and enjoys a solitary life filled with frequent bike rides to various spots around Toronto, which she eagerly absorbs in her photography. She develops the pictures in her darkroom, and we see her still images enlarged by her imagination into elaborate fantasies wherein she can fly like a bird, engage in erudite conversation about psychoanalysis, and conduct magnificent symphonies. Although there is something slightly melancholy about her, Polly appears content with the simplicity of her life.

As she tells the video camera, “It all started” when she begins working as the “Girl Friday” for a curator, Gabrielle. Polly rapturously describes how taken she is with Gabrielle, who Polly exclusively refers to as “the curator.” Gabrielle is sophisticated, confident, and serious. Most of all, she is generous toward Polly, who falls under a spell of childlike adoration. Remarkably, their dynamic is one of mutual respect, even despite their differences. Gabrielle appreciates Polly, and offers her a permanent position. However, Polly is as innocent and naïve as Gabrielle is weary and cautious, and this contrast intensifies when Mary enters the scene. An artist and former lover of Gabrielle’s, Mary is young enough to make Gabrielle feel too old to be with her, and we soon learn that the curator has an inner life that is fraught with insecurity about both aging and art.

On the latter, Polly feels a kinship with Gabrielle, who drunkenly confides to Polly that despite her accomplishments and status, she craves not to “die with her body.” Gabrielle tells Polly that she desires the immortality of creating a beautiful painting that will endure after she is gone. Polly’s openness and curiosity is a marked contrast to Gabrielle’s self-centeredness, but the intimacy of this scene makes it hard not to sympathize with both characters. When Gabrielle expresses shame around have her paintings rejected for acceptance in a university art course, Polly lovingly asks if Gabrielle will show her a painting. Gabrielle is flattered by her request, and opens the door to a room with a shining canvas that Polly finds enchanting. Even though Gabrielle and Mary are lovers, it is with Polly that Gabrielle can express her deep yearning to be known as an artist.

At the risk of spoiling this film any further, I’ll just say that what follows is an act that Polly commits with the most heartfelt of intentions but leads to a series of betrayals compelling her to document her account on video in the hopes of sharing the truth. Though not fundamental to enjoying nor understanding the film, it is interesting to revisit the poem from which the title of Rozema’s film is lifted: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Just like T.S. Eliot’s narrator, Polly dares to “disturb the universe.” In so doing, she illustrates the sacrifice inherent in sharing one’s art.

Morello’s Fractured Relationship with Romance in ‘Orange Is the New Black’

Morello’s abovementioned childlike room, her harping on about how her and Christopher’s romance is “meant to be,” like something out of ‘Notting Hill,’ ‘Pretty Woman’ or ‘Cinderella,’ and her psychotic break that sees her stealing the prison van to break into Christopher’s marital home, shows just how damaging society’s “wedding industrial complex and… [its] need to infantalise grown women,” as Nicky puts it, can be. It’s also an all-too-common one drummed into Western women everywhere they turn.

This guest post by Scarlett Harris originally appeared on The Scarlett Woman and is cross-posted with permission.

One of the most explosive backstories on this season of Orange is the New Black has been Lorna Morello’s.

The Italian-American, played by Australian actress Yael Stone, is presumably in prison for credit card fraud, as the opening segments of her life before Litchfield in episode four of the second season that aired last night on Showcase would indicate. We see a Jersey Shore-esque Morello returning to her chaotic familial home after seeing Twilight at the cinema for the “14^th time.” She retreats from her accusatory sister, ignorant father, wayward nieces and nephews and sick mother to her bedroom which is adorned with posters of West Side Story (the classic tale of Romeo and Juliet in 1950s New York, with a healthy serving of racism, which Morello is inclined to dish out), male celebrities, and wedding collages. She pauses to caress the glossy face of one of them before calling a mail-order luxury clothing company to request a refund for the patchwork Prada platforms she’s currently wearing but claims she never received.

Many of the women of OITNB have been busted for financial fraud—Sophia and Gloria come to mind—so it seems logical that Morello would be in for a similar crime. But as the episode progresses, it is revealed that Morello’s inner demons are much more extensive. During a trip to the post office to retrieve parcels of designer goods she’ll no doubt attempt to get reimbursed for, she “literally crashes into” the infamous Chris-tuh-phuh, as Morello pronounces it. Christopher promptly asks her out for a coffee after their meet-cute, and the rest is history, if the future Litchfield inmate is to be believed.

The juxtaposition between the following flashback scenes—Morello getting ready for a weekend away with Christopher and her trial on charges of stalking, harassment, violating a restraining order and credit card fraud—illustrates the fractured reality she exists in. Despite Christopher electing not to pursue Lorna after their first date, Morello still believes they’re together years later.

Stone plays Morello so sympathetically the audience feels sorry for her when we—or at least her fellow inmates—should approach with caution. The consensus at Litchfield seems to be that Morello’s fantastical romance with Christopher may not be etched in truth and word slowly starts to get around that her former “fiancé” is marrying another woman. When you’re bonding with Crazy Eyes (whom the show is taking pains in its second season not to fetishise and to address by her given name, Suzanne) about unrequited love, it’s clear that something’s not quite right.

Morello’s abovementioned childlike room, her harping on about how her and Christopher’s romance is “meant to be,” like something out of Notting Hill, Pretty Woman, or Cinderella, and her psychotic break that sees her stealing the prison van to break into Christopher’s marital home, shows just how damaging society’s “wedding industrial complex and… [its] need to infantalise grown women,” as Nicky puts it, can be. It’s also an all-too-common one drummed into Western women everywhere they turn.

In a recent Buzzfeed longread, Anne Helen Peterson dissects the films based on Nicholas Sparks’ novels and their contribution to a Taylor Swiftian world where men perform romance and women have it thrust upon them:

“… Many women (and some men) use Sparks’ narratives to replace the lack of emotional intimacy and satisfaction in their own lives and, as a result, cultivate unrealistic ideals about what a relationship—and love—should resemble…

“The Sparks narrative offers a life—and a love story nested within it—that extracts its protagonist from [the concerns of everyday life] and consolidates the demands of life into one, simple task: Open yourself to love, and love in return.”

In a way Morello is like the mirror image of the Santa Barbara shooter, Elliot Rodger: the same but opposite. Rodger took his anger at his lack of attention from women—spurred on by porn and men’s rights forums—out on the female population in general in the most violent way, whereas Morello continues her stereotypically feminine obsession with romance and fixates on one man, dangerously crafting an alternate life with him. In Morello’s fictional existence no one died, but that’s not to say she didn’t try to kill anyone. (In the courtroom she is accused of strapping a homemade bomb to Christopher’s fiancé’s car.) Think that’s too heavy handed a tar with the same brush? They are both criminals with mental health issues, after all.

In one of the closing scenes of the season, Morello simplistically attempts to explain to the cancer-stricken Miss Rosa the plot of one of her favourite movies, Toy Story (again with the juvenile interests–though, to be fair, Toy Story has universal appeal). Her warped grasp of the children’s classic leads Rosa to exclaim, “You have one fucked up view of the world, kid!”

Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based freelance writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about feminism, social issues, and pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter.

Leaning In to ‘Grey’s Anatomy’

Across its 10-season run, ‘Grey’s’ has dealt with parenting, childlessness, abortion, romantic relationships—both heterosexual and otherwise–illness, loss, friendship, and career mostly through the eyes of its female protagonist, Meredith Grey, and her colleagues, friends and family: Cristina, Izzie, Lexie, Callie, Arizona, April, Addison, Bailey and so on. This season, though, seemed to really tap into the oft-mentioned feminist issue of “having it all” (meaning kids and career) and what happens when a woman shuns that path.

This guest post by Scarlett Harris originally appeared on The Scarlett Woman and is cross-posted with permission.

Grey’s Anatomy is one of the more feminist shows currently on the air. Hell, it’s created by Shonda Rhimes (she of Scandal and Grey’s spin-off, Private Practice, fame), a big champion of woman-centric storytelling on TV.

Across its 10-season run, Grey’s has dealt with parenting, childlessness, abortion, romantic relationships—both heterosexual and otherwise–illness, loss, friendship and career mostly through the eyes of its female protagonist, Meredith Grey, and her colleagues, friends and family: Cristina, Izzie, Lexie, Callie, Arizona, April, Addison, Bailey and so on. This season, though, seemed to really tap into the oft-mentioned feminist issue of “having it all” (meaning kids and career) and what happens when a woman shuns that path.

Early on this season tensions were brewing between Meredith and Cristina when Meredith gave birth to her second child, Bailey, named after Dr. Miranda Bailey who helped deliver him, and leaned out of the surgery game. As Meredith’s life became increasingly family oriented, Cristina felt alienated from “her person,” with whom she used to compete for surgeries and get drunk on tequila at Joe’s bar. This is not to suggest that just because Cristina doesn’t want children (a character consistency since season one) she’s not involved in that part of Meredith’s life: Cristina is often shown caring for and engaging with Meredith’s daughter Zola. But this story arc illustrates that having two children is a lot different than parenting just one (cue Elizabeth Banks-style outrage over mothers of one child being less than mothers of more) and Meredith’s redirected attention certainly takes its toll on her friendship with Cristina.

This comes to a head in episode six of this season when Meredith chooses to continue her mother’s portal vein research using 3D printers (which Cristina later co-ops for one of her groundbreaking medical coups). This is partly because of Cristina’s recriminations in the previous episode, “I Bet It Stung,” that Meredith doesn’t do as many surgeries or as much research as Cristina because she chose to lean in to her children. There is much talk about “choosing valid choices” but ultimately Meredith identifies an impasse between the two friends and surgeons because Cristina doesn’t “have time for people who want things” that she doesn’t want.

Business continues much this way until April’s wedding, in the episode “Get Up, Stand Up,” in which Meredith and Cristina are both featured as bridesmaids. During a dress fitting, Cristina takes issue with Meredith calling her “a horrible person, over and over… because I don’t want a baby.” Harkening back to their very first day on the job, Meredith accuses Cristina of sleeping her way to the top, while Cristina retorts that in her struggle to maintain work/life balance, Meredith’s “become the thing we laughed at.” By episode’s end, Meredith acknowledges her envy of Cristina’s surgical trial successes:

“I’m so jealous of you I want to set things on fire. You did what I tried to do and I couldn’t… I don’t want to compete with you… but I do.”

Come the show’s mid-season return, Meredith and Cristina’s friendship is back on track, with them bonding over Meredith’s anger at her husband Derek reneging on their agreement to focus more on Meredith’s career upon her realisation that she doesn’t want it to slip by the wayside in the wake of motherhood. They do this while drinking wine and looking after the kids at Mere’s place while Derek’s out of town.

Derek’s absence throughout the season, in Washington D.C. on business at the behest of the President (I know!), is juxtaposed with Meredith’s desire to be an attentive mother, which she didn’t have growing up and was the cause of many of her ills, whilst balancing her first love of medicine. In last season’s “Beautiful Doom,” Meredith worries about leaving Zola in the care of others while she operates. Callie, a working mother herself, assures Meredith that “it’s good for Zola to see you work. It’s good for her to see you achieve. That’s how she becomes you.” The season finale sees Meredith decide to stay in Seattle despite Derek accepting a job in Washington D.C. She doesn’t want to become her father, who was a “trailing spouse” to her aforementioned mother.

As far as Cristina’s concerned, though, her ex-husband Owen’s desire for a family is what’s kept them in flux from on-again to off-again for the better part of the past three seasons. In the Sliding Doors-esque episode “Do You Know?” Cristina is given the option of two life paths: one in which she has children, whilst in the other she continues her focus on her career; both involve Owen, and both see Cristina becoming miserable. The married-with-children scenario elicits a certain empathetic desperation as it’s made clear Cristina’s only succumbing to it for her lover. And when Owen meets maternal-fetal surgeon, Emma, whom Cristina described as “picket fence; a dozen kids; fresh-baked goods,” it seems he’s found his happy ending. But Owen’s desire for Cristina, despite his better judgment, causes him to cheat on and subsequently end things with Emma who is befuddled at how her boyfriend went from house hunting to breaking up with her in the space of a day. Owen asserts it’s because Emma wanted to stay home with their kids when they had them and he wanted someone who is “as passionate about her work as I am.” Make up your mind, Owen!

While Owen’s indecisiveness is annoying, it’s refreshing to see a woman who doesn’t want children framed as desirable over the traditional portrait of womanhood. This is not to mention Cristina’s hardheaded drive. On the other hand, Emma represents the losing battle women face in the fight to “have it all” perpetually highlighted by the concern-trolling media: you’d better want to be a mother, but you’ve also got to be driven in your career; you have to be around to raise your children, but you’d also better be leaning in in the workplace.

Grey’s has always been a staunchly pro-choice show. Upon April and Jackson’s shotgun wedding, Jackson’s mother brings up the issue of April’s faith when it comes to raising their future children who will be on the board of the Harper Avery Foundation, but no pressure! Catherine Avery asks whether April believes in limiting reproductive rights, and whether she’ll raise her children with those views. If so, will that colour their judgment in providing funding to hospitals that perform abortions, like Seattle Grace/Seattle Grace Mercy West/Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital/whatever it’s called now?! And what about stem cell research?

Grey’s certainly doesn’t sweep these issues under the rug because it’s convenient for a storyline or for the show to remain politically unbiased. Rhimes has spoken about Cristina’s unintended pregnancy in a season one/two crossover storyline in which she was scheduled for an abortion but miscarried before she could have the procedure due to an ectopic pregnancy:

“… [T]he network freaked out a little bit. No one told me I couldn’t do it, but they could not point to an instance in which anyone had. And I sort of panicked a little bit in that moment and thought maybe this isn’t the right time for the character, we barely know her… I didn’t want it to become like what the show was about… And [Cristina’s miscarriage] bugged me. It bugged me for years.”

Come 2010/2011’s seventh season, Cristina again finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy to Owen. Rhimes said:

“I felt like we had earned all of the credentials with the audience. The audience knew these characters. The audience loved these characters. The audience stood by these characters. You know, we were in a very different place even politically, socially. Nobody blinked at the studio or the network when I wrote the storyline this time. Nobody even brought it up except to say, that was a really well written episode.”

With no signs of slowing down, but with perhaps one of TV’s most feminist characters departing, Grey’s Anatomy is sure to continue presenting women, work and the myriad choices in between in a positive and realistic way.

Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based freelance writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about feminism, social issues and pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter here.

Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke Praise Patricia Arquette’s Performance in ‘Boyhood’

Arquette, who is terrific as Olivia, turns in a nuanced and complex performance that is vanity free. We watch her age perceptively and slowly as her character gains wisdom but still falters. In other words, she’s the kind of three-dimensional woman we rarely see in American films.

This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz.

The stars of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood–Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, and Ellar Coltrane–age in real time in this one-of-a-kind nearly three-hour film. Boyhood, which was shot in short annual increments over a dozen years so the effect as you watch the actors change imperceptibly and slowly is like watching time-lapse photography.

This approach would come across as a gimmick or stunt if the movie wasn’t so good. The real magic of the film is that as you watch characters grow and age, you can’t help looking back and contemplating your own life changes.

The three stars and the director of Boyhood participated at a lively press conference recently at the Crosby Hotel in SoHo to promote the film. This marks Ethan Hawke’s eighth film with the director, whose most notable collaborations include the Before Sunrise trilogy and Dazed and Confused (1993).

Boyhood tracks the life of a full-faced pouty six-year-old, Mason (Coltrane) and his older, bratty sister, Samantha, played by Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter, as they grow up and mature. The story focuses on Coltrane’s character who evolves from boyhood to early manhood amid personal and family dramas, including family moves, family controversies, faltering marriages and re-marriages, new schools, first and lost loves, and good and bad times. Children of divorce, Mason and Samantha are raised by their beleaguered but devoted mother Olivia (Arquette), a hard-working woman with terrible taste in men, and her ex-husband, an immature man with a good heart but little sense of responsibility (Hawke).

Linklater described Boyhood as “this little collection of intimate moments that probably don’t fit into most movies. They’re not advancing the character enough or the story enough or the plot, but they all add up to something much bigger than each little place and each little piece of it, so that was kind of the feel to the whole movie, that it mirrors our lives.”

As to whether the film was an intimate character study or a sweeping family epic, the director said it was both. “It’s very specific and intimate but universal within that specific world. It could have been made in any country and any time. There’s such a commonality here.”

The cast and director of Boyhood — The cast and director of *Boyhood*

The film could just as accurately been entitled Motherhood or Fatherhood or Parenthood, Hawke said. He described it as “an epic about minutiae. That’s what it is. It’s difficult to title because of that. It’s a family seen through one boy’s eyes, so that title makes as much sense as any other.”

As for whether it was difficult for the actors to get back in character every year for the brief period they shot their roles, Coltrane explained, “It was a very long build up every year. We’d have a couple months to think about what we were doing and then a solid week of kind of work shopping and building the character and figuring out where the characters were that year, so by the time we got to filming we were kind of just already there.”

Hawke turned to Arquette during the press conference and told her, “I’m just throwing props your way. I’m surprised that people don’t write about more is that how awesome it is to see Patricia’s character be in this movie and to see a real woman who is a mother and a lover and more than one thing in a movie. I feel so proud to be a part of a movie that respects her character the way this movie does, and I feel it’s also sometimes so real and so true that you almost don’t ever see this in film,” he said. “It’s true in life. We see it all the time, but I don’t see that woman in movies. I don’t see her.”

“She’s in the background or just kind of in the background or ancillary elements to give some encouragement in some way to some scruffy guy. Olivia is a real, three-dimensional human being, and it was so exciting, and the women in my life who see the movie so appreciate it,” he said. ” She’s not just good, she does stupid things and smart things.”

He added, ” I just love her. You can’t pin down. One minute you go, oh she’s a good mother! No, wait, actually that was not a great decision. We’re used to people in movies being one thing, all the time.”

Arquette explained her acting technique. “In acting you have to get past your own head and your own ego and all of these fucking barriers and walls to just get to a place where hopefully you can be present enough in a scene with someone.” She added of the collaborative process, “I trusted the process. It was jumping into the void from the get-go, but when you’re in the right hands, and you jump into the void together, really great things can come of it.”

Ultimately, the director said, the movie “was always going to be a portrait of growing up but also parenting and aging. That you don’t quit growing up, especially once you’re a parent.” Hawke and Arquette’s characters are bumbling through parenting as this was happening in real life with the actors and director. “We had ourselves as parents,” Linklater said. “During this film we had five children born between us and that was just an ongoing part of life.” At the same time, “ You’re thinking of your parents once you’re a parent yourself.”

The movie mirrored what was happening in the lives of the actors and director. “We didn’t want anything to feel like it wasn’t earned or tethered to some sort of reality. I don’t think there’s anything in the movie that didn’t come out of my life or their lives,” Linklater said. His hope was that the film opened the audience up to the possibility of seeing the connection between their lives and that of the characters in the film. “Once you get to this thinking about life in general and your own life and loved ones and your own experiences, triggering all kinds of wonderful things I hope, painful and wonderful things.”

Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from “The Artist.” Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.

‘Flat3’ is the Little Web-Series You Have Been Looking For

The first season was a self-funded passion project and as it got more popular they managed to crowd fund the second season so that they could pay actors and crew; the girls did not pay themselves. They have successfully secured funding from New Zealand on Air to pay for the upcoming third and fourth seasons that should air sometime this year and I really can’t wait.

I want to tell you about a gem of a web-series that I discovered recently. It is called Flat3 and it is made in a small country in the South Pacific more famous for its big-budget fantasy epics (Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit) than for small, interesting character-driven comedies. Although let us not forget Flight of the Conchords.

How to describe Flat3… It is basically everything I have ever been looking for in a web series. Smart, funny, engaging, a little bit weird, a little bit bleak, and little bit hopeful all at the same time. The show illustrates perfectly that talented Asian women can make a show that is funny and doesn’t rely on painful self-deprecation or crapping on other minorities. Ally, JJ, Perlina, and Roseanne (the director) have said that they set out to make a show that they would want to watch. It isn’t about hitting you over the head with their Asianness, it is about three women whose lives haven’t turned out quite the way they planned and how they deal with that. For me the show really captures the pain and humour of your mid-20s, post-university, now what do I do with my life phase. Think something like what Girls would be like if it was about people you actually knew. There is considerable talent at play here. Roseanne Liang is the show’s director and writer as well as wearing the co-producer hat. She was the first ever Chinese New Zealander to theatrically release a film and her movie My Wedding and Other Secrets was the highest grossing locally made film of 2011. Co-producer and cast member JJ Fong is currently starring on South Pacific Pictures’ Go Girls, one of the highest-rated locally produced shows on New Zealand television.

Ally JJ Perlina 2 — Ally, JJ, and Perlina

The show follows the misadventures of three flatmates–two of whom have graduated with degrees in the creative industries and are trying their best to make it in this recession-heavy world. First there is Lee, the quietest one of the three who is trying to figure out what she can do with a degree in fine art and how to date when you have never really done it before. Next there is JJ, a beautiful promo girl/actress/waitress who is struggling with what it means to be valued solely for your looks and how to be taken seriously as an actress when your big break comes from shilling feminine hygiene wipes. Then there is Perlina, straightforward and upfront yet worried that she is unlikeable and struggling to connect with her work colleagues. In the first episode that centers around her, Perlina spends her time trying to be more likeable and goes to the point of interviewing her ex-boyfriend to figure out what she did wrong and how she can improve. Despite this, it is Perlina who normally saves the day because of her ability to see through bullshit and get to the crux of an issue.

I think what I like most about Flat3, aside from the fact that it is both well-written and well-acted, is that I relate to it. In JJ, Lee, and Perlina, I see many of my friends and parts of myself. They throw awkward house parties where no one turns up and you end up getting drunk and doing stilted skits while your one cool friend looks on in horror because it seems funny at the time. Their relationships seem real to me, not weirdly competitive, just sometimes a bit fucked up with a dash of drama because sometimes people go through stuff and make bad choices, especially in your 20s when you aren’t really sure who you are and what you should be doing. It is female friendship as I recognise it: chatty, supportive, fun, and sometimes complicated.

Sabotage on Flat 3 — Perlina and her friend seeking vengeance on an ex’s underwear drawer

If you have seen Flight of the Conchords you might like this, but I mean that in the generic sense of, well if you like offbeat sort of comedies that are slightly awkward but not so cringe-y that you have to close your eyes for half the episode you might like this, because really that is where the similarity ends. Highlights from the series have included: a post-coital scene that includes the clean-up of fluids (something of a unicorn on television), the line that semen tastes like “a million potential offspring crying out – and then silence,” a hitchhiker who dispenses wisdom and LSD, a fancy dress party a little bit reminiscent of Eagle vs Shark, trust exercises for accountants, and much much more.

The only thing that I actively dislike about the show is the size shaming and the dehumanizing of fat people. It is so so tired for women, especially Asian women on television, to be preoccupied with their weight and the fat jokes seem out of place with the freshness of the rest of the writing. They can do much better than this and they usually do. Fat jokes make up a tiny percentage of the humor on the show (there are many more accountant jokes) and it is not enough to stop me watching but I could certainly do without them, they aren’t funny and they contribute to the marginalization of fat people generally. I am hopeful that the next two seasons will continue to bring the excellent writing and talented acting that we have seen, hopefully minus the boring fat jokes.

If you are looking for a fresh comedy that is silly and sometimes awkward then this is definitely the show for you. To watch, head to http://www.flat3webseries.com/ and prepare to be thoroughly entertained!

Another Side of Marilyn Monroe

Her return to Hollywood in the film version of William Inge’s play ‘Bus Stop’ was again a chance to shun the glamorous armour of her gold-digger characters, to explore the role of a downtrodden saloon singer with ambitions above her abilities. Not only did her performance stun the film’s director, Joshua Logan, who called her the greatest actress he ever worked with, but it also left critics in no doubt as to her ability.

This guest post by Gabriella Apicella appears as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

“I seem to be a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I’m working on the foundation.” So said Marilyn Monroe to a reporter just weeks before she died at the age of 36 in 1962.

For the superstructure of Marilyn Monroe to have remained standing over 50 years after her death, the foundations have turned out to be stronger than anyone realised or appreciated during her lifetime. Many reappraisals of her extraordinary talent and appeal have been undertaken since then, and none so vital as the book Fragments, and the documentary Love, Marilyn, in which the woman speaks for herself.

As a fan from the moment I first saw her sheathed in magenta on a 17-inch TV screen when I was just 8 years old, it is difficult to deliver an unbiased account of her appeal, so I won’t try. Nor can I offer the in-depth analysis of Carl Rollyson’s excellent book Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress.

However, as a simple introduction to those yet to understand the fanaticism and devotion Marilyn Monroe continues to provoke from her fans, below are some examples of her less well-known appearances. These prove the woman should be remembered as much for being the fine screen actor she was, just as much as the icon she has become.

Unfortunately, Marilyn Monroe was seldom cast in a truly excellent role.* There was no Casablanca, Vertigo, Anna Christie, or Breakfast at Tiffany’s, though she performed scenes from Anna Christie to great acclaim on stage at the Actors’ Studio, and Truman Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s for her. Rather it is her presence that lifts otherwise mediocre fare into essential viewing. Her leading men were frequently unable to match her charisma onscreen, so the dynamism of pairings such as Eva Marie St and Marlon Brando, Audrey Hepburn with Gregory Peck, or Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman was also unrealised.

Despite this, even from her earliest roles in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, she delivers nuanced and sensitive performances of rather bland parts, making a forgettable supporting role into a highlight of both iconic films. Most interesting at this point of her career however, are two lesser known B-movies that showcase a very different Marilyn Monroe, and demonstrate how versatile she was. In a small role as a fish-cannery worker in Clash By Night, brawling with her fiancé, drinking beer and talking back, she is the antithesis of what we expect to see from the ultimate Queen of Hollywood. She is also entirely believable with a feisty strength that is downright thrilling to watch her embody, free from glamorous evening gowns and makeup. Holding her own alongside Barbara Stanwyck is no easy feat, yet she accomplishes this with apparent ease, and displayed the potential to one day match her co-star’s critical acclaim.

Months later she appeared as a psychologically disturbed young woman in low-budget thriller Don’t Bother to Knock. Her fragility and desperation throughout is unbearably moving, culminating in a virtually silent yet astonishingly affecting final sequence. Free again from the glamour of her usual roles, her acting and not her physical beauty has the greater importance. Despite the film’s predictability, and the rather clunky pacing, this leading role gives Monroe the opportunity to move from demure to threatening to suicidal via seductive and psychotic. It got favourable reviews, but was not a great hit with the public; it was the studio’s balance sheet that would prevent her tackling such a complex role again.

In the days of the studio system, stars did not pick and choose their parts, and with audiences going in droves to see Marilyn in frothy inconsequential comedies as a dumb blonde, she quickly became typecast. It would be several years before she would take control of her career by walking out on her contract and forming her own production company in an attempt to gain some creative satisfaction. Prompted by the studio’s attempts to cast her in a film called The Girl in the Pink Tights there’s little reason to wonder why she had become so intolerant of the image she had now become constrained by.

Her return to Hollywood in the film version of William Inge’s play Bus Stop was again a chance to shun the glamorous armour of her gold-digger characters, to explore the role of a downtrodden saloon singer with ambitions above her abilities. Not only did her performance stun the film’s director, Joshua Logan, who called her the greatest actress he ever worked with, but it also left critics in no doubt as to her ability. While there is much in the film that dates it terribly, I would urge anyone with doubts about Marilyn Monroe’s extraordinary talent to watch this performance for one of the finest given by any actor. In this role, the potential she had to shape acting history in the same way her contemporary Marlon Brando did for male actors is captured and preserved and sadly serves as a glimmer of what could have been achieved had she remained alive a while longer. As in several of her other roles, it is often when she is not even delivering a line that her performance is most powerful, accessing deep emotions and allowing her facial expressions to convey the character’s innermost feelings, presenting an entirely truthful and believable rendition.

Perhaps because they show a lesser-known side to Marilyn Monroe, these performances are among my favourites, yet there are two more that cannot be missed.

Wearing her sexiness with a sort of naïve unawareness became something of a trademark in her film roles – her characters never seemed to notice how unbelievably gorgeous she was, so at the point when she uses it as a weapon, the result is sensational. As a murderous wife in Niagara, she does just that to stunning effect. Again, it is frustratingly unsatisfying as a film, but contains a thrilling and jaw-droppingly hypnotic performance from Monroe as she sashays, manipulates, seduces, and schemes. This “dangerous” Marilyn shows the stuff of Hitchcock fantasy. While he is to have remarked she was “too obvious” a choice to cast in one of his films, and given his methodical directing methods would likely have made it a horrendous experience for both of them, I have rarely watched Vertigo or Psycho without wishing the blonde was THE Blonde!

Which of course brings us to the most important and successful of all her roles, and the one she will always be remembered for: even today, and undoubtedly for years to come, analysis continues of what aspects of the performance were “real,” and what were not. This was not Lorelei Lee, Sugar Kane, or The Girl, but Marilyn Monroe herself, played by one of the greatest screen actors of all time, named Norma Jeane.

*Some Like it Hot being an obvious exception of a great classic film, the part of Sugar Kane didn’t give her opportunity to show the range of her ability, and she was depressed to be playing a “dumb blonde” once again.

Gabriella Apicella is a feminist writer and tutor living in London, England. She has a degree in Film and Media from Birkbeck College, University of London, is on the board of Script Development organisation Euroscript, and in 2010 co-founded the UnderWire Festival that aims to recognise the raw filmmaking talent of women. Her writing features women in the central roles, and she has been commissioned to write short films, experimental theatre and prose for independent directors and artists.

Why Isn’t Naomie Harris in All the Movies?

To say that Harris is a revelation in this film may be an understatement. It not only prepared her to tackle the complex layers of Winnie Madikizela a few years later, but it also proved yet again that she is able to take on a variety of different roles–from heroic to villainous. She solidified a sci-fi fan base with her totally badass performance in “28 Days Later” showed that she can steal scenes from 007 himself, and continues to surprise audiences in roles across all genres.

This guest post by Candice Frederick previously appeared at her blog Reel Talk and appears as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Naomie Harris is an international treasure. But why do I feel like I’m the only one who knows this? Though she’s been acting for nearly two decades, delivering one great performance after another, she continues to fly under the radar. Even after her riveting portrayal of Winnie Madikizela in last year’s otherwise derivative Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, she’s still seriously slept on as one of our finest talents. I mean, the fact that she was shut out of every major award (not even as much as a nomination) for Mandela is a tragedy in and of itself.

Her IMDb page is shockingly bare in regard to future projects. Other than an as yet “rumored” role as Moneypenny in the 2015 Skyfall follow-up Bond 24, there’s nothing listed. Let’s hope this changes soon because Harris is the type of actress who deserves her own franchise. She is a talented force to be reckoned with and she she deserves far more attention than she gets.

I thought of this the other day while I was watching The First Grader (2010). In Harris’s previous performance under the direction of Justin Chadwick (Mandela), she plays Jane Obinchu, a Kenyan schoolteacher whose professional and personal lives come under conflict once she admits an 84-year-old first-time student and ex Mau Mau freedom fighter (Oliver Litondo) after the Kenyan government announced universal and free elementary education in 2003. To say that Harris is a revelation in this film may be an understatement. It not only prepared her to tackle the complex layers of Winnie Madikizela a few years later, but it also proved yet again that she is able to take on a variety of different roles–from heroic to villainous. She solidified a sci-fi fan base with her totally badass performance in 28 Days Later, showed that she can steal scenes from 007 himself, and continues to surprise audiences in roles across all genres. And on top of all that, she manages to somehow also be a red carpet fashion titan. Here’s some of her best looks:

Need I say more?

Candice Frederick is an NABJ award-winning print journalist, film critic, and blogger for Reel Talk.

Pre-Code Hollywood: When the Female Anti-Hero Reigned

We agonize over the lack of female anti-heroes in film and television as if women have never been afforded the opportunity to be good and bad on screen. It clearly wasn’t always this way. And in a time when the regurgitated remake rules Hollywood, perhaps it’s time for producers to dust off some old scripts from the 1920s and 1930s so we can get some fresh, progressive stories about women on screen.

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

An Upworthy post is making the rounds in which Shirley MacLaine, in 1975, is telling an interviewer that the disappearance of the Hays Code in the 1960s was when women stopped getting good, solid roles in Hollywood. While it’s an interesting observation–that if the bedroom was off-limits, filmmakers had to get creative–this viral meme is ignoring the crucial fact that before the Hays Code (or Hollywood Production Code) was enforced in 1934, women’s roles in Hollywood were complicated and women were allowed to be sexual, not just sexy, and have sexual agency.

A quick history:

Until 1930, states had their own regulatory/censorship policies that would deal with films.

In the 1920s, Will H. Hays (a Presbyterian elder who was Postmaster General, a former head of the Republican National Committee, and president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America for 25 years) started working on lists and regulations for the film industry to follow in the interest of “decency.”

In 1929, two male leaders in the Catholic church developed a “code of standards,” and studios were expected to adhere to it. The religious overtones in the “Code” (good must prevail over evil and strict rules about morality) were clear.

For five years, the Code had no “teeth,” and filmmakers still, for the most part, did what they wanted.

In 1934, however, the Production Code Administration (PCA) was formed, and all films released from July 1 onward were required to be approved by the PCA before release.

This was what Hollywood studios adhered to until 1968, when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) moved to a rating system, which is still in place today.

The years that spanned 1927 (when The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length film with a synchronized soundtrack and dialogue, was released) and 1934 (when the Production Code was officially enforced) saw feature films that had themes and scenes that would seem shocking and progressive today.

In 1929, Norma Shearer starred in The Divorcee, and kicked off a five-year heyday for women in film. The excellent documentary, Complicated Women (based on the book by Mick LaSalle), delves into the actresses and films of this era. The actresses who brought these complex characters to life–including Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo (both of whom fought hard to play complex characters), Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck–would go on to act after the Code, but in roles that were much less daring and progressive. Seeing complex women on screen is essential for audiences to get realistic depictions of women, and of course, playing complex women allows great actresses to work to their fullest potential.

When female anti-heroes (rarely) make it on the big- or small-screen now, we act as if it’s revolutionary. However, if we look to film history–before religious white men got control–there is a strong precedent for the female anti-hero.

Simply looking at the IMDb descriptions of some of films from that era show us a great deal about the powerful stories that made it on screen during this time:

The Divorcee (1930, starring Norma Shearer): “When a woman discovers that her husband has been unfaithful to her, she decides to respond to his infidelities in kind.” (Shearer won the Academy Award for Best Actress for this role.)

Anna Christie (1930, starring Greta Garbo): “A young woman reunites with her estranged father and falls in love with a sailor, but struggles to tell them about her dark past.” (Anna Christie was a prostitute, but she is never “punished” for her past; her story ends happily.)

Red-Headed Woman (1932, starring Jean Harlow): “Lil works for the Legendre Company and causes Bill to divorce Irene and marry her. She has an affair with businessman Gaerste and uses him to force society to pay attention to her. She has another affair with the chauffeur Albert.” (Both the book and screenplay were written by women.)

Ex-Lady (1933, starring Bette Davis): “Although free spirit Helen Bauer does not believe in marriage, she consents to marry Don, but his infidelities cause her to also take on a lover.”

Female (1933, starring Ruth Chatterton): “Alison Drake, the tough-minded executive of an automobile factory, succeeds in the man’s world of business until she meets an independent design engineer.”

Baby Face (1933, starring Barbara Stanwyck): “A young woman uses her body and her sexuality to help her climb the social ladder, but soon begins to wonder if her new status will ever bring her happiness.”

Midnight Mary (1933, starring Virginia Davis): “A young woman is on trial for murder. In flashback, we learn of her struggles to overcome poverty as a teenager — a mistaken arrest and prison term for shoplifting and lack of employment lead to involvement with gangsters…”

Queen Christina (1933, starring Greta Garbo): “Queen Christina of Sweden is a popular monarch who is loyal to her country. However, when she falls in love with a Spanish envoy, she must choose between the throne and the man she loves.” (The biopic–about Queen Christina of Sweden–features an on-screen portrayal of Queen Christina’s bisexuality, including a kiss between Queen Christina and her lady-in-waiting.)

Torch Singer (1933, starring Claudette Colbert): “When she can’t support her illegitimate child, an abandoned young woman puts her up for adoption and pursues a career as a torch singer.”

Design for Living (1933, starring Miriam Hopkins): “A woman can’t decide between two men who love her, and the trio agree to try living together in a platonic friendly relationship.” (Note: things don’t stay platonic.)

These synopses are fascinating enough, and the fact that these films were released to popular and critical acclaim 80 years ago is amazing. These films are about complicated, complex women who are not punished for their sexuality or their pasts. These women have careers, these women are leaders, these women have agency. Furthermore, the actresses who portrayed these women truly starred in the films–they weren’t simply supporting male leads. Eighty years later, it’s rare to see a Hollywood film with a female character at the center of the action, much less a female anti-hero.

What the MacLaine sound bite is missing is that, while the Code kept women out of the bedroom, its religious and puritanical strictures equated goodness with subservience and purity. Depictions of homosexuality and interracial relationships were also scrubbed from Hollywood when the Code was enforced. From a feminist point of view, we moved backward when the Code, and even the MPAA ratings system, were enacted. There are still remarkable double standards regarding female sexuality on screen, and mass audiences typically have a hard time with female characters who don’t fit nicely into the virgin/whore dichotomy (since for years, that’s all we’ve really been exposed to). Male characters have always been allowed to be “good and bad,” but the Code (and in a sense, the MPAA), just like the religious dogma it reflected, needed women to be out of the bedroom or in the bedroom–never both without being punished.

We agonize over the lack of female anti-heroes in film and television as if women have never been afforded the opportunity to be good and bad on screen. It clearly wasn’t always this way. And in a time when the regurgitated remake rules Hollywood, perhaps it’s time for producers to dust off some old scripts from the 1920s and 1930s so we can get some fresh, progressive stories about women on screen again.

Recommended Viewing: Complicated Women, This Film is Not Yet Rated (available on Netflix)

Recommended Reading: “Remembering Hollywood’s Hays Code, 40 Years On,” by Bob Mondello at NPR; The Motion Picture Production Code (interactive website); The Motion Picture Production Code – 1930 (PDF); Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood, by Mick LaSalle; “Pre-Code films: the way we really were,” by Mick LaSalle

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

Conveying a Soul: The Greatness of Meryl Streep

This guest post by Cynthia Arrieu-King appears as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

If you Google “greatest living actor,” the first hit is not only Meryl Streep, but also lists with headings like “besides Meryl Streep” and “after Meryl Streep.” There are video montages, plural, of people freaking out about how much they love her or respect her work. Her work in the mid-70s to early 80s came across the cultural wires as something freakish: the mercurially reproduced accents, the ethereality and seamlessness and virtuosity.

There’s not really any way around the boring facts of talent and hard work here. She has always known her lines. She has always been the one who bikes home from the set in the rain instead of taking a cab. She works with the coach until she’s not just speaking Polish, but Polish with a German accent (Sophie’s Choice). She hides in the closet to practice her singing for Mamma Mia! while her family yells, “We can still hear you.” She presents a moonskinned serenity and hearty laughter in her interviews that belies the hours and hours of monomaniacal obsession that is artistry that has no reason to prove it deserves to be here. It just is here. It is incontrovertible. That probably comes from a good family, a very good education, insane work ethic, shockingly keen intuition, intelligence, and a good ear.

So many actresses show in their performances why it’s hard to be a woman, and the worth of that feels political and rooted in everyday life. Streep knew she could get away with more without putting forth a persona like Jane Fonda. In Streep’s work she never seems to be like any particular person, but convinces the viewer of how human that character is. It is easier to see, especially in her earlier work, the places where people exist in themselves purely and react purely rather than emphasizing gestures. They seem like the essence of a person rather than a person, which sounds like a problem in a way. But this subtle light show makes some sense given what she once told James Lipton. She explained on Inside the Actor’s Studio that she once thought acting was a stupid way to make a living; it doesn’t do anything in the world but now she sees “its worth is in listening to people who maybe don’t even exist or who are voices in your past…come through you through your work and you give them to other people. Giving character to characters who have no other voice, that’s the great work of what we do…I mean so much of this is vanity (being a celebrity)…But the real thing that makes me feel so good is when I know I’ve said something for a soul…I’ve presented a soul.”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pha-aouBlo”]

Streep has an ability to embody in an otherworldly fashion so often in historical context. Shirley MacClaine in an American Film Institute tribute to Streep once said, “The mystery of your talent is so otherworldly, it makes me understand that there is more to all of us than meets the eye.” So what is she doing? What is she imagining in Sophie’s Choice when she tries to tell the truth of her past after “all the lies” she has told? The containment of her pain and love, the softness of her face recalling, weakness, puniness, rage, the effortless clarity of a traumatic recollection: these all move together in her face such that all seem to present themselves, all the layers are visible somehow. A different actor might show determination, grit, resolve, terror. Streep knows memory doesn’t quite settle into its original feelings at all. So even while recounting her character’s efforts in the Holocaust, you see something that feels from another time, paradoxically immensely present. Here’s the clip:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70_1MW46G9I”]

There’s another movie in her oeuvre, Plenty, that shows Streep transcending the class and propriety by being able to do almost literary interior monologue as monologue. It doesn’t even come across as something Shakespearean or professed the way Elizabeth Taylor might have done it, or balky the way Hepburn might have, it’s just spilling out. It’s not entertaining in any popcorn movie sense or even particularly sanguine. This movie trots out in Streep’s Susan Trahane the most subtle selfishness, ambivalence, detachment. The narrative elides plot to a large degree, so that you feel you’re missing something on first viewing. People slavishly watch this movie over and over. Susan is contaminated with something so guarded behind rage you do have to see it a few times to understand what her character means, and it’s the kind of vice that makes you feel bad for her. You actually feel bad for her having this rage. This performance reminds the viewer of the difficulty of true self-awareness, deceit, or self-deceit. The closest thing I’ve understood to this in art are the characters in Alice Munro’s short stories who often seem fairly normal and well-adjusted until you start seeing what price they are paying for some subtle flaw escaping their own attention. This is the small heroism for all of us: to know ourselves, to know what we cannot bear and to say something about it.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJq6mafSr-Y”]

From the feminist angle, Streep’s mold-breaking of the representation of women and her mark on scripts probably adds to her greatness in a way we can never completely measure because we can’t track it. One particular example worth mentioning is that the script for Kramer vs. Kramer did not originally explain why Joanna Kramer wants to leave Ted (Dustin Hoffman) and she fought the director Robert Benton on the script until the character is allowed to say why herself. The effect turned Joanna from a villain of misunderstood women’s liberation–as the script was written–into a person I think it would be hard for any woman living in/having lived in a male-bread-winning-female-stay-at-home family not to witness without blazing recognition. This is a fierce resolution about the representation of women that has spanned her career and for which Streep has more recently got into some hot water over with the Disney people. Many of her lines in Kramer vs. Kramer were written by her, particularly the courtroom scene, and the final scene where she changes her mind about custody of her son. It’s not uncommon to hear in interviews how she spoke her mind about some scene change or tried to hold back from speaking her mind “for a change.”

One can look back on this era of Streep’s work and see that she did not pick the Jane Fonda roles, or the roles of abrasive people on the outside of establishment. She seemed to pick roles or be given roles of a woman always struggling against the constraints of her place, but within something: a marriage, a company, an historical moment. She said on being cast in The Deer Hunter: “They needed a girlfriend, so that was me.” And so she took roles, got acclaim, was always thought to be overpaid when the male actors were getting far more than she. Then something happened when she turned 40. She did not get the same kind of roles. She noticed. She wanted to be in something funny, so eventually she was cast in several comedies, sometimes as a witch, always sending up the Hollywood machine as in Death Becomes Her. She didn’t care if she was not the pretty one. She didn’t think that was what she had been getting cast for anyway, in the pre-40 days.

Having said that, what has happened since that turning point that makes Streep the go-to actress everyone wants for any role for a woman over 60? As Tina Fey quipped at the 2014 Golden Globes, “Streep proves there are still roles for Meryl Streeps over 60.” Tracey Ullman said it so we understand the score even more: “You’re (Meryl’s) the only one working: The rest of us have to show our tits.” She’s taking all the roles: Margaret Thatcher, Julia Child, a composite of Anna Wintour. This is after a career that started with her domination at Yale, her acceptance then moving into funnier parts. She decided, at some point, “(I)t’s easier to project yourself into what you were, not what you are. Movies are a young person’s playground.” And a little more tellingly: “As there begins to be less time ahead of you, you want to be exactly who you are, without making it easier for everyone else.” Ergo, dominating her field. Ergo, not questioning where her territory begins and ends. As Goldie Hawn says, “Meryl is a freak. She has no limitations. Well, she’s a martian.” That must be her unsaid lesson to us on greatness. You can’t really learn it, and you never let opportunity get past you.

Part of me wonders what would happen if she did some little off-the-map film or what it would mean for her to have a late breaking McConnaissance (with less crazy self-regard). Maybe more of a ReConnaissance, a re-knowing? Would that amount to “making it easier for everyone else”? She has nothing to prove, and part of her potency as an artist comes from the fact that she never gave off one vibration of having to prove herself, actor-wise. But something might replenish what have become somewhat recognizable mannerisms in her impersonation-like roles these last years: The head wag of delight. More importantly what are we losing in our depictions of people getting older by having, seemingly, the mythos that only she and three other people play these parts? Something about class probably, race, and ethnicity definitely.

Having gotten momentum in the last few years to gravitate toward fun (Mamma Mia!) and over the top (August: Osage County), she’s thinking nevertheless about history, history as made by women (The Iron Lady). She’s literally supporting the museum of women’s history. Her artistic wishes seem to revolve around wanting women’s history to prevail. For the roles to become more numerous. For film to show the lives of women in proportion to their importance in the real world, as she’s always worked for. Bit by bit, how can it happen? And today, do actresses need to thank her for her breaking the glass ceiling in acting as much as they did in the last decades? Probably not. Maybe we’ll get to a moment when actresses will have the luxury of not having to recall that ceiling. Hopefully long before we forget about Streep.

Streep’s daughter once said of her role as Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada: “Now they know the real you.” But whatever monomaniacal and feminist politics she’s wielding, Streep’s still conveying the soul. At a tribute to her acting she said, “I wish I were her, I really do,” and this remark on her celebrity doubles as a remark on the people she’s portrayed. She’s given us this love through 35 years of work to date, and she’s going to keep pushing for the unheard to be heard. In this scene from Silkwood, she gives a look. Friendship, pity, love, helplessness, resolve, seeing the mortal body, a whole idea supported by the shot of the wig and the glasses. It’s a good microcosm of what Streep does–the listening to a spirit, and making sure to truly witness and to speak up for that person’s essence.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2Ec20v7wX8″]

Cynthia Arrieu-King is an associate professor of creative writing at Stockton College in New Jersey where she teaches about literature and plagiarism, so beware lazy magazine sites. Her previous Bitch Flicks articles include one on True Grit and one with Stephanie Cawley on Twin Peaks.

cynthiaarrieuking.blogspot.com.

The Unfinished Legacy of Pam Grier

Grier’s legacy has lasted over four decades, but there’s something about her career that leaves me feeling unsettled, as if her filmography is indicative of larger (backward) social trends. She started out headlining action films–an amazing feat for a woman, much less a black woman in the early 1970s. A glance at a few of these films show feminist themes that are incredibly rare 40 years later. Her early films were groundbreaking, but nothing much was built after that ground was broken.

Pam Grier was the first black woman to be on the cover of Ms. Magazine (August 1975). Jamaica Kincaid wrote the article, “Pam Grier: The Mocha Mogul of Hollywood.”

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

[Warning: spoilers ahead!]

The first time I saw Pam Grier in a film, I blurted out, “Why isn’t she in everything?”

I first saw Grier in Jackie Brown, and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t featured prominently in more films (and then I quickly remembered African American female protagonists are few and far between). It wasn’t always this way, though.

Grier’s legacy has lasted over four decades, but there’s something about her career that leaves me feeling unsettled, as if her filmography is indicative of larger (backward) social trends. She started out headlining action films–an amazing feat for a woman, much less a Black woman in the early 1970s. A glance at a few of these films show feminist themes that are incredibly rare 40 years later. Her early films were groundbreaking, but nothing much was built after that ground was broken.

Coffy (1973)

Coffy (Grier) is a nurse with a passion for bringing justice to those who keep drugs on the streets. The film opens with her posing as a seductive addict, and she gets herself in an apartment with a drug dealer and supplier. She brutally kills them, and then reports to her job as a nurse.

Coffy is a vigilante, trying to avenge those who made it possible for her 11-year-old sister to get hooked on drugs, causing her to wind up in a juvenile rehabilitation center. After her friend (a “good” cop, unlike many who are tied into the drug trade) is beaten brain dead after defending her, Coffy has an even deeper sense of purpose in retaliating against the machine that’s fostering corruption in her community.

“This is the end of your rotten life, you motherfuckin’ dope pusher!”

While Coffy uses her sexuality to position herself against her enemies, she does what she need to do to win. When a john is degrading her, she says, “You want to spit on me and make me crawl? I’m gonna piss on your grave tomorrow.” Racism, greed, corruption and masculine shows are evil, and a capable woman undoes it all.

The overall quality of the film, the fashion, the music–it’s clearly dated. However, the strong female protagonist stands out as something that’s all too foreign in 2013.

Foxy Brown (1974)

Probably the most popular of Grier’s blaxploitation films, Foxy Brown follows its protagonist through another journey of violent revenge. Foxy sets out to seek justice for the murder of her boyfriend (a government agent who worked to get drugs off the streets–again, an anti-drug theme). She poses as a prostitute to infiltrate the drug/prostitution/sex slave network that’s responsible for the blight of her community. She outwits her enemies and captors at every turn, and ends victorious.

When she’s going to the neighborhood committee for help at the end, she pleads:

“It could be your brother too, or your sister, or your children. I want justice for all of them. And I want justice for all the people whose lives are bought and sold, so that a few big shots can climb up on their backs, and laugh at the law, and laugh at human decency. But most of all, I want justice for a man, this man had love in his heart, and he died because he went out of his neighborhood to do what he thought was right.”

The group leader responds, “Sister, I think what you’re asking for is revenge.”

She says, “You just take care of the justice, and I’ll handle the revenge by myself.”

“The party’s over, Oscar, let’s go.”

Grier’s body–from the opening bikini-clad sequence to close-up shots of her naked breasts–is objectified more frequently in this film than Coffy. She had become more of a star at this point, and producers decided against it being a sequel to Coffy (as the writer had intended), so her career wasn’t a part of the film. Foxy is still a strong, empowered woman–she seeks help from her peers (the new “anti-slavery” society), helps other women and punishes men who are cruel to women. Foxy’s role seems as revolutionary as Coffy’s (maybe more so, with the increased star power).

Sheba, Baby (1975)

The opening credits to Sheba Baby are set to Barbara Mason’s “Sheba, Baby,” boasting how Sheba Shayne is a “sensuous woman playing a man’s game,” “she’s kicking ass and taking names,” and “she’s a dangerous lady, who is well put together…” Sheba is a private investigator in Chicago (a no-nonsense businesswoman, as she yells at her partner for leaving the office a mess) who is called to her hometown of Louisville when her father is in danger. She’d been a cop in the town before leaving, and an old love interest is in business with her father, who owns a loan company. Themes of police ineffectiveness and corrupt white men at the top of a chain of violence are featured again, and Sheba takes justice into her own hands when the police only step up when it’s too late (after her father is killed). She uses her looks to gain access to a yacht party, where she struggles, fights and overcomes the men who are responsible for her father’s death (as well as shutting down many other Black-run businesses in the neighborhood).

“Now you tell your boss that he is not dealing with my father anymore. He is dealing with Sheba Shayne.”

While the themes in this film are similar–anti-racism, anti-white patriarchal corruption and pro-vigilante justice–Sheba, Baby is unique in Sheba’s even fiercer independence than the previous films. When Brick asks her if she “has anyone” in Chicago, she replies: “If you’re asking if I sleep alone every night, I’d have to say no. If you’re asking if I’m going steady with anyone, I’d have to say no. So what are you asking?” The next shot, they are in bed together. However, Sheba doesn’t rely on Brick’s help (she works without him), and leaves him at the end of the film because their separate careers are too valuable. In the final shot of the film, she’s walking the streets of Chicago, smiling and confident.

The ending of Sheba, Baby should have been indicative of a future of Grier’s style of female protagonist. However, Grier wouldn’t again headline a film until Jackie Brown, Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 film (he wrote it specifically for Grier, and she was nominated for numerous awards for it, including a Golden Globe). She certainly worked in the interim, and has since (including stage work and starring in The L Word). But nothing like the string of films she starred in in the 1970s.

When asked about being the first woman to play this type of powerful character, Grier responded:

“I saw women share the platform with men in my personal world, and Hollywood just hadn’t wakened to it yet. Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn changed the way they saw women during the 1940s, but I saw it daily in the women’s movement that was emerging, because I was a child of the women’s movement. Everything I had learned was from my mother and my grandmother, who both had a very pioneering spirit. They had to, because they had to change flat tires and paint the house—because, you know, the men didn’t come home from the war or whatever else, so women had to do these things. So, out of economic necessity and the freedoms won, by the ’50s and ’60s, there was suddenly this opportunity and this invitation that was like, ‘Come out here with these men. Get out here. Show us what you got.'”

She certainly did. But like so many cultural revolutions, the women’s movement saw backlash in the 1980s and beyond, as did this new kind of feminist, African American cinematic genre.

Grier points out that she’s often criticized for the nudity and violence in her early films.

In regard to the nudity, she says,

“We’ve got $20 million actresses today who are nude in Vanilla Sky, nude in Swordfish. So what did I do different? I got paid less, but that’s it.”

To critics of the violence, she points out,

“I saw more violence in my neighborhood and in the war and on the newsreels than I did in my movies, so it didn’t bother me. Coming from the ’50s, things were very violent. We were still being lynched. If I drove down through the South with my mother, I might not make it through one state without being bullied or harassed. I feel like unless you’ve been black for a week, you don’t know. A lot of people were really up in arms about nothing, and if you challenge them, they go, ‘Well, maybe you’re right.'”

She also notes that although some people objected to the term “blaxploitation,” she didn’t feel the films were demeaning:

“You know, Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, they can all do shoot-’em-ups. Arnold Schwarzenegger can kill 10 people in one minute, and they don’t call it ‘white exploitation.’ They win awards and get into all the magazines. But if black people do it, suddenly it’s different than if a white person does it.”

Her poignant commentary on the double standards in Hollywood serves as a larger reminder of the double standards in society. The notion of a Black protagonist fighting villainous white people is something that is still uncomfortable. Grier’s nudity in the early films, and her blatant sexiness, felt different than typical female objectification. Even when her cleavage was featured prominently, she had the power–she wasn’t passive, so her sexuality didn’t seem like a marker of weakness simply for the male gaze. It was jarring to feel so comfortable with what looked like female objectification, because it was so different than what we are used to now. Looking at the poster art from her earlier films, one would see her portrayed as an object. However, in the actual films, she is a sexual being, with agency, independence and strength.

Jackie Brown

The Ms. article “In Praise of Baadasssss Supermamas” points out that “…Coffy and Foxy fought against systems that beat up on everyday folk. Imagine what they would do in the 21st century.” It’s a pretty great thought.However, it’s more likely that we get Fighting Fuck Toys (FFTs) in modern cinema, and as Caroline Heldman writes:

“Hollywood rolls out FFTs every few years that generally don’t perform well at the box office (think Elektra, Catwoman, Sucker Punch), leading executives to wrongly conclude that women action leads aren’t bankable. In fact, the problem isn’t their sex; the problem is their portrayal as sex objects. Objects aren’t convincing protagonists. Subjects act while objects are acted upon, so reducing a woman action hero to an object, even sporadically, diminishes her ability to believably carry a storyline. The FFT might have an enviable swagger and do cool stunts, but she’s ultimately a bit of a joke.”

Grier’s heroes are never the joke, and that’s what works. She can carry a storyline, have sex when she wants it (or not) and end up victorious, with her complete agency intact. She’s a subject acting upon the injustices around her.

Pam Grier is an incredible actress, and her most iconic roles serve as a reminder that women can do it all on the big screen. It’s just been too long since they’ve been allowed to.

—–

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

Ellen Page Is Like the Coolest Actress We Know, and She Doesn’t Even Have to Try

This guest post by Angelina Rodriguez appears as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

Ellen Page already had an acting career in Canada when she came to the states to make her debut in Hard Candy. The young, bright actress kicked off her career in America with a controversial role that many found to be extremely unsettling. Teenage honor student Hayley decides to take justice into her own hands when a local girl goes missing. She uses her wit to overpower the voyeuristic pedophile character played by Patrick Wilson. Page sports a red hoody as if to conjure images of Little Red Riding Hood but, she is somewhat of a wolf in Red’s clothing. She is not to be underestimated.

Hard Candy movie poster — *Hard Candy* movie poster

Hayley is intelligent, confident, and sure of herself in a way that I had never seen before in a character her age. It was extremely empowering to watch the film as a 12-year-old girl with my nose in a book and 90s girl punk blasting in my ears.

Page delivers a layered performance as she commands vulnerability and even turns it into a strength. Her acting skill is obvious as she carries the film with her co-star Wilson. The majority of the scenes are dialogue-rich and only contain the two actors and a single house as the set. Both characters are complex, relatable, and completely human. This movie is unique, in that it does not do the work for you; it really makes you think. Hard Candy drove audiences to play out their own scenarios and call their own ideas about morality and nature vs. nurture into question. It was a daring role selection for the young Page.

Page’s character Hayley declares with tears and determination in her eyes, “I am every little girl you ever watched, touched, hurt, screwed, killed.” This role was for survivors, for women, for those that have simply had enough. Although violent justice isn’t something that all survivors necessarily wish for, the film brought attention to the subject of rape culture during a time when its existence was completely ignored. The dialogue confronts victim-blaming and addresses that law enforcement, along with society as whole, don’t do their part to stop terrible things from happening or seeking justice when they do.

The film is multifaceted, but it is definitely a comforting story for every girl in need of a good revenge fantasy.

Ellen Page had a smaller part as Kitty Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand. Although her part is small, Kitty Pryde uses her ability to phase through walls to assist the team of mutants. She is a badass when she faces off against The Juggernaut, a much larger enemy, and manages to be a hero. Hopefully we will be able to see more development in the Kitty Pryde character in X-Men: Days of Future Past, set to be released in summer 2014.

Her biggest role and somewhat of a fame catalyst was Juno MacGuff in Juno. This heartfelt comedy follows a quick-witted high schooler through an unplanned pregnancy. This adult issue is handled well by Juno as she tries to continue to be a teen. She takes the disapproval of her classmates in stride with clever, sarcastic humor. Her parents are accepting and nurturing and help her through the process. Although character Juno makesthe choice to go through with the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption, some people were upset about the message in the film, claiming that it was pro-life. Page responded publicly to these concerns when she told The Guardian, “I am a feminist and I am totally pro-choice, but what’s funny is when you say that people assume that you are pro-abortion. I don’t love abortion but I want women to be able to choose and I don’t want white dudes in an office being able to make laws on things like this. I mean what are we going to do – go back to clothes hangers?” Page’s skills in Juno earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Her performance runs the gamut of emotions from side-stitch humorous to deeply moving.

The next underrated film Page starred in was Whip It; she plays Bliss Cavendar. Whip It is a story about a girl from a small town trying to find her niche and navigating the murky, adolescent waters of self discovery, early romance, friendship, and parental approval. Her mother wants her to devote her time to beauty pageants, and Bliss wants to find herself and hang out with rough, tough roller derby girls.

This film shows women being aggressive, competitive, and joining together over the love of the game and in the spirit of sisterhood.

Roller derby is a sport that allows women an outlet to express their athleticism, excludes men, and takes all kinds. Women of all shapes can find a home in the pack. Not only can any body type find a place, but any body type can be an asset. I’m glad the film was made and that it brought derby into the public eye, but it’s unfortunate that there was little diversity shown in the cast. Whip It is definitely a fun, inspirational girl power flick.

Later, Page played the role of Ariadne in Inception alongside star Leonardo DiCaprio. Page plays the intellectually driven, adventurous architect who is necessary to complete the team that illegally searches the sleeping consciousness in order to obtain information.

Recently Page delivered an incredible speech at a Human Rights Campaign about her struggle as a closeted gay person and her hopes for a better future. Although I do not fully support Human Rights Campaign for many reasons, mostly their lack of dedication to the queer community as a whole, Page gave an important speech worth listening to.

She made me proud of my generation and very sure that she is one of the great actresses of my time. Page said in her speech, “I’m here today because I am gay and because maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility.”

Page explained that she has a sense of responsibility that compels her to be honest and ethical as a person and a public figure. This same integrity will help her to continue her dedication to playing strong, interesting, dimensional characters that speak to young women. She sets her standards high with her roles and looks for stories with uniqueness, depth, and a message. Ellen Page earned her spot as a Great Actress by demonstrating a commitment to progressive roles and speaking well about the issues within her films and the issues that women face. She is an excellent role model and icon as well as a self-declared feminist.

Angelina Rodriguez studies Sociology at Fairmont State University. In her free time she thinks about things and pets puppies.