Felicity Huffman – Bitch Flicks

Negotiated Identities and Gray Oppositions in Ridley’s ‘American Crime’

With that said, even the traditional gender binary is flipped on its head—the women of the show uphold the patriarchal system that controls them, while the men are often portrayed as effeminate and oppressed by the same system that is supposed to give them power. Yes. Take a second while you process that.

This guest post by Sean Weaver appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.

When I was a young preteen kid, my dad told me tales of how Miami Vice and Magnum, P.I. once helped him entertain the dream of becoming a private detective. He was so enamored by detectives and the law that he took a college course on crime, criminal investigation, and the law. Unbeknownst to him, I remember stumbling across one of his old tape recorders, hitting play, and listening to his own secret sting operation play out. Perhaps that’s where I began my long career of advocating social justice–justice against a system that is seriously flawed.

With all nostalgia and conspiracy theories aside, at first glance, Jonathan Ridley’s (director of 12 Years a Slave) American Crime seems like one of those old school detective thrillers, the likes of which have entertained American television and cinema since the 1980s. Up to its premiere on March 5, 2015, I had seen previews on ABC. I imagined it would be everything I had hoped in a detective drama: the gritty neo-noir tone, the masculine detective hero out to solve the un-solvable case, and the plot line driven by suspense and a nagging “Who dun it?” Instead, what I came across is a show that is powerfully poignant, thought-provoking, and one that delves the viewer deeper into the conditions of the human experience.

This isn’t a show aimed at entertaining. It is a show that relies on provoking the viewer into moving past that cushy comfort zone of self-identification, and questioning the very foundations that control our daily lives: social justice, race, and gender. In her review on American Crime in The New York Times, Alessandra Stanley beautifully captures the sentiment and driving force of this show. She states, “This series is at heart a murder mystery—someone has been killed, and the show withholds who did it. But solving the crime isn’t the point. The murder is a clue to the mysteries of character, experience, and self deception…”

It is a murder mystery. But, as Stanley so eloquently puts it, it isn’t. It’s so much more. In the introduction to her book Detecting Men: Masculinity and the Hollywood Detective, film critic Philippa Gates writes:

“The detective genre has traditionally been a male-centered one based on the social assumption that heroism, villainy, and violence are predominantly masculine characteristics. The detective genre has traditionally been a male-centered one based on the social assumption that heroism, villainy, and violence are predominantly masculine characteristics…Not only is the genre male-centered, it is also hero-centered, tending to adhere to a structure of binary oppositions— good/bad, civilized/uncivilized, law/crime, order/chaos, and heroes/villains…[However] Not all detective films make absolute distinctions between these oppositions, and the examination of the indeterminate, ‘gray’ area between heroism and anti-heroism also proves illuminating in terms of the social mores and attitudes toward crime and law that it can reveal.”

Gates rightly points that not all detective films, and in this case show, make absolute distinctions in these traditional masculine tropes/themes. American Crime focuses on illuminating this “gray” area that reveals the social mores and attitudes toward crime and law, and in turn attitudes on crime, race, and gender in American society. It forgoes the masculine detective hero out to solve the crime, and instead focuses on those impacted by such crimes—whether they are guilty by circumstance/hearsay, victims in their hurt, or even willing participants. Like Stanley also points out, this “gray” area exists in the things the characters fail to say or do. By focusing on this “gray” area, viewers can truly come to appreciate the complexities of this astounding show.

Set amidst the dark and drug-filled backdrop of San Modesto, California, the show centers primarily on four families and the suspects associated with a high profile murder, all poised to give into the collision course of hate, fear, and suspicion that guide their highly racialized and gendered lives. In short summary for those who haven’t yet seen American Crime, the driving plot is that a White man is killed by a Black man, under the guise of a “hate crime.” Hold on to that for a second. A Black man is charged with committing a hate crime against a White man. Talk about flipping the traditional binary. With that said, even the traditional gender binary is flipped on its head—the women of the show uphold the patriarchal system that controls them, while the men are often portrayed as effeminate and oppressed by the same system that is supposed to give them power. Yes. Take a second while you process that. And finally, each character is hell-bent on seeking a social justice, whatever that may be, that reasserts their own existence. I’d rather not give away to many more details. Take my word for it, watch it.

With all the background stuff out of the way, the task of unpacking the complex lived realities of the Skokie and Nix families is rather daunting. However, at the head of the Skokie family is Barbra Hanlon (Felicity Huffman), mother of the murdered White man, and ex wife of Russ Skokie (Timothy Hutton). Barb fits all the characteristics of the stereotypical suburban middle aged White woman. She is assertive, grieving, and every bit fearful of those she perceives as “other.” She is the walking parrot of the patriarchy, and embodies all its masculine ideals. She wields power, through her very own existence. So much so, that if you hadn’t watched the first few episodes, you would swear that she was the intended murdered victim.

She creates fact from the truths she is unable to face. She decries her son a hero, even after authorities question her son’s involvement in an illegal drug cartel: “You want me to say stuff about my son that isn’t true? He is a war hero, a veteran.” Finally she gives into the easy out of declaring racism and her son’s murder a hate crime, knowing that the lead suspect of her son’s murder is in a relationship with a White woman. She groups people by the stereotypes engrained in her social upbringing—even going as far as declaring, “It was probably one of those illegals.” At one point, she comes into her power and wields it, well, like a man—even going as far as purchasing a firearm. The feminist in me cringes at this description. Because on the surface it seems like the stereotype of the grieving hysterical mother is being perpetuated once again. But there comes a point in the show where the viewer realizes she is not just a woman facing “hysteria.” No, the show is pushing past the perceived identities we take so much stock in. Instead, it shows how easily it is for the oppressed to become the oppressors by wielding fear and distrust. It also shows how people often negotiate the power of their identities at the expense of others.

The antithesis to Barb’s masculine ideals is her ex-husband, Russ. Like his wife, Russ takes stock in illusions that the exterior just needs to be brushed off. Russ is the failed man. When I say failed man, I mean he fails to live up to the expectations of the patriarchal world that controls his life. He is weak, timid, and ultimately unable to hold ground with his wife. At one point Barb delivers the ultimate emasculation speech, concerning where and who should bury their dead son exclaiming, “You walked out. You no longer get to say you’re his father.” The viewer becomes perplexed and is left with figuring out whether she is right or wrong. Is he the hero because he has returned? Does he return to step into the perceived masculine role of putting the pieces back together? Does his masculinity rely on the perceived social norm that the man is the back bone of family? Has he really overcome his gambling addiction? For Russ, the answer is yes, because countless times he declares, “We need to be a family.” In the end, Russ can only reclaim his own lost masculinity by taking his own sense of justice. In the final episode, Barb is distraught that the man she deems murdered her son is released. Her masculine veneer fades, and the viewer is left with a defeated woman realizing the realities she has fabricated are nothing but lies. After being cast off by Barb in a moment of rare intimacy between the two, Russ returns home to the gun that Barb has entrusted in his care. She has rejected his last attempt to once again reunite the family, his last attempt to be a man. He fails to be the hero, and instead becomes the villain he has tried to protect his family from by murdering Carter Nix (Elvis Nolasco).

On the receiving end of the prosecution is the Nix family. Carter Nix stands accused for the murder of Matthew Skokie. While the show never reveals whether or not Carter killed Skokie (which to me is a nod to the infamous system in which the guilty go free and the innocent accused), the viewer is left to come to their own conclusion. The facts are plentiful, but the truth is even harder to discern, and is found only in what is left unsaid. On the surface, it might seem like the show is reproducing the Black “thug” stereotype; Carter is a drug addict dating a White woman with the same problem. In fact, every chance they get the prosecution tries to save Carter’s girlfriend Aubry (Caitlin Gerard) from the menacing Black man: “Give us something to put him away.” However, Carter is far from the stereotypes that seem to define his life, and consequently his actions. Like his White counterpart Russ Skokie, Carter is a defeated man, emasculated in every sense of the word. While the circumstances differ, the same power structure is at play. The reason Carter relies on drugs is to create realities he wishes to see as truth. In one scene, Carter discusses how Aubry has saved his life with his sister Aliyah Shadeed (Regina King). He states he was miserable being an accountant, subservient to the White men that controlled his life. He then shares with her a magazine clipping of a Black man and White woman, the reality he wishes to share with Aubry, but cannot due to the interference of what is socially acceptable and not. He must negotiate his identity for drugs, and perceived lived realities, all while fighting an impenetrable system of control.

Finally the last person who seems to take a central role in the unfolding drama is Aliyah, Carter’s sister. She is every bit the counterpart to Barb Skokie. In fact, she is just as strong and willfully powered. She becomes the spearhead of a campaign to free Carter and is right to point the finger at a system that is massively corrupt. In one brilliant dialogue with Carter she states, “You sleep with their women, use their drugs, and take their guns. And you don’t expect to be locked up here?” She is a strong figure and is masculine in her own rights. However, in her fight to free Carter from his metaphorical chains she becomes just as guilty of upholding and instilling fear and hate. Like Barb, she becomes the victim; it is no longer her brother’s fight. In doing so, she manages to push Carter into breaking up with Aubry, forcing Carter to take sides in an invisible war. Just before the final scene in which her brother is murdered, Aliyah gives a speech in her mosque stating, “If we as a people cannot forgive, then we are cursed to hate.” The irony is that Aliyah was only able to forgive once her cause had been won. But her victory comes at the cost of her own negotiated identity, proving that the true American crime is not the physical act of murder itself, but something far more harmful: the negotiation and deception of one’s self.

Sean Weaver has a MA in English/Literature from Kutztown University. He is currently News Editor at Vada, an online magazine from the UK with a new queer perspective. When he isn’t reading or writing, he is hard at work looking for new ways to understand what it means to be queer.

Twitter: @levirush8

Blog: http://post-colonial-scholar.blogspot.com

LGBTQI Week: Transamerica

This is a guest review by Stephen Ira.

“I got a phone call last night from a juvenile inmate of the New York prison system. He claimed to be Stanley’s son,” the trans woman explains, trying her best to articulate herself to her therapist. It’s hard to talk about her life in her assigned gender, because it was such a painful and traumatic time, and it’s doubly hard to articulate herself to her cis therapist, practitioner of a profession that’s been pathologizing trans experiences as long as it’s been talking about them.

“No third person,” says the cis therapist paternally, jumping to her role, which is of course to moderate the way that the trans woman experiences her gendered self.

“My son,” the trans woman agrees, because she is a good trans woman, one which the audience is supposed to respect and admire, except wait–isn’t that Felicity Huffman, who is totally not a trans woman at all? Psyche! You’re watching Transamerica, and director Duncan “wow, trans women really don’t look like Daniel Day Lewis in a dress?!?” Tucker is about to teach all you trans women in the audience how you need to behave in order to become a real woman!

Cissexist ideas are built into the structure of Transamerica. I’ve criticized the trope of the “journey” before in cis narratives of trans lives–cis people love to tell us about our trans “journey.” They love asking how it’s going, telling us how much they support us in it, that whole party line. Now, this movie is literally about a woman going on a cross country road trip so that she can get bottom surgery–and thus, within the film’s cissexist logic, become a “real woman.” She has to do this because she’s got a kid from an affair back when she was still presenting as male, and in order to satisfy her therapist that she’s ready to get surgery, she needs to deposit this kid on the West Coast.

You don’t really have to watch this movie to know it’s going to be a real winner. Just read an interview with the director, then imagine what kind of movie a guy like this would make about a trans woman. He pulls out gems like, “I did a lot of research on transgender women, and most of them don’t look like guys in dresses.” Better yet, that quote is a response to a common query: why on earth cast Felicity Huffman? After all, Calpernia Addams appears in a brief scene, along with a couple of other transgender actresses. Why not cast Calpernia? It’s a mystery. Tucker puts forth that he did his “due diligence” upon discovering that there were “a couple transgender actresses in Hollywood”–what a shock. He also insists that the “couple of transgender actresses” he found “were closeted.” Considering that out transgender actress Calpernia Addams is clearly out, transgender, and in fact in his movie, the mind of Duncan Tucker is simply not to be understood. I will not try. Instead, let’s talk about the real reason Felicity Huffman plays this role.

Tucker says he was looking for “someone who could do stealth–not someone who was going to look like a guy in a dress. . .someone you look at and say, ‘She could be a woman.'” In the context of his casting choice, this quote becomes a kind of post-structuralist gender theory slapstick. Tucker cast a woman, because he was looking for someone who looked like they could be a woman? De Beauvoir called. She wants her famous quotation back. He cast a cis woman specifically, because clearly in this logic, trans women don’t look like they could be women. Or they’re in such deep stealth that they would never want to play a trans woman. The fact that both of these possibilities are disproved by the presence of Calpernia Addams in the film again seems to bother Tucker not at all–after all, he needn’t pay attention to the trans bodies already in the world when he has trans bodies of his own to construct.

Huffman was cast so that Tucker could make her into the transsexual he wanted. He needed a woman, because he is telling a heartwarming story about how Bree–the trans character–turns out to be really a woman after all. Paradoxically, Tucker needs a cis woman, because cis women are the only valid women, to play a trans woman in a movie in which trans women are proved to be valid women. In a story where we’re accepted, our bodies can’t be seen. Only a false version of a transsexual can be accepted, a parody. Tucker’s poisonous brand of “acceptance” cancels our bodies out.

Before Huffman can look plausibly trans, she has to be uglified, and that uglification interests me. The trouble with casting an actual trans person is that we don’t necessarily look like what Tucker has decided he needs a transsexual to look like, but a cis person–Tucker can make her look as hideous as he likes, all in the name of realism! When Transamerica came out in 2005, you may remember how much of the press revolved around the character’s ugliness. Felicity Huffman laughed about how deprecating it was to have to wear all that ugly makeup in interview after interview. In character, she’s caked with goop designed to make her look “trans,” a word which here means, “a little bit manly and a lot aesthetically unpleasant.” In the best example of the film’s “Come See Our Movie About a Hideous Transsexual” school of publicity, the US DVD cover is holographic: tilt it one way, and you have Huffman looking red carpet ready, but tilt it the other and you have her as she appears in the film, frumpy and square-jawed. (Memo for your edification: trans women are frumpy. Duncan Tucker told me.)

DVD cover for Transamerica

This gimmick mystifies me–what’s it trying to say? That at the beginning of the movie Bree looks one way, but at the end she transforms from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan? Because she doesn’t. At the film’s end, she looks more or less the same, which in itself contradicts the rest of the film’s logic. According to the cis concept of how surgery works, one is not a real woman before and is a real woman afterward. Transamerica supports this narrative in which a trans woman goes under the knife and comes out a different person–Bree’s whole raison d’être is obtaining surgery, and at one point she actually says, and I quote, “Jesus made me this way so I could suffer and be reborn the way he wanted me.”

Sure, at that point she’s pretending to be a missionary, which she really isn’t–this movie’s plot is just as much a gem of shit as the rest of it–but Huffman acts so goddamn much in the scene that we’re clearly supposed to assign a measure of emotional reality to the moment. But after her surgery, there Bree is, looking the same, and not reborn at all, because the film also has to fulfill the cissexist belief that trans people are irretrievably trans, irretrievably ugly, even if we don’t look like Daniel Day Lewis in a dress. The Daniel Day Lewis in a dress comparison, by the way, is an actual Tucker original.

There’s only one major difference between Bree pre-surgery and Bree post-surgery, actually: now she’s fit for the public cis eye. We see Bree at work at the beginning of the film in back of a restaurant washing dishes, and by the end, she’s moved up to waitressing. She even talks to some people! Which is a relief, because it’s established early on that Bree’s only connection with humankind is that horrible cis therapist I mentioned before. Where are that woman’s ethics, anyway? When did it become proper practice to require a trans woman to take her son on a road trip before you write her a surgery letter? I don’t know; I wish I could say I found this part of the movie implausible, but cis people, you never know. The point is that before her surgery, Bree is too hideous to go out in public and make connections, but at least bottom surgery changes that. THANK GOD.

As trans women invariably are when they aren’t fetishized, Bree is desexualized. In the whole film, we see her flirt once, schoolgirlishly–which is fitting with the style of dress the filmmaker has given her. Said style entails a wardrobe like a sixteen-year-old Mennonite who has just left the church and discovered the color lavender, and is milking her newfound glory for all it’s worth. I have never seen a trans woman who dresses like this. I have never seen a cis woman who dresses like this. According to an interview with Huffman, it’s because Bree orders her clothes from catalogues rather than buying them in shops, because as we all know trans women are unable to buy clothes in public? I’m joking–obviously this is an issue trans women face, but I have yet to meet one who dealt with it by dressing like a cross between a nun and the original 1950s Barbies. By the way, it’s heavily implied that she’ll be able to go back to the man she flirts with after surgery and have a Real Relationship at last. This is because if trans people attempt to have a romantic relationship without getting bottom surgery, we combust.

You know Julia Serano’s seminal trans feminist text, Whipping Girl? You know those machines from cartoons where they’d put the good guy in and the evil version of him would come out? Transamerica is what you get when you put Whipping Girl into one of those machines. In her book, Serano talks about the scenes in media featuring trans women where the trans women put on makeup, clothes, breast forms, and how those scenes exist to remind cis people that trans women are not “real.” Well, Transamerica fulfills its Trans Woman Putting on Lipstick Quota within the first twenty minutes, so you know this is a quality production.

Seriously, this is one of the most misogynistic films I have ever seen: over and over, we see Bree reduced to her body. And what can be more misogynistic than a woman reduced to her body? At one point we even see how damn irrational that womanly estrogen is making her! It’s spotlit in the dialogue, so you can be sure. I’m not sure if all the readers here have encountered the word transmisogyny before, but it is vital vocabulary, and it’s exactly what this movie is riddled with. Transmisogyny is misogyny that’s directed towards trans women, specifically predicated upon their trans status. Trans women experience garden variety misogyny as well, but transmisogyny is specific. When we decide that a woman has to have a certain type of genitalia in order to be acceptable for public view and human relationships, that’s transmisogyny. When we decide that trans women have to enact 50s Mennonite Barbie gender roles in order to look like women, that’s transmisogyny. When we support transmisogyny, we support misogyny; transphobia is a tool of patriarchy. Gee, it sure is nice up here on this soapbox–I’ll just recommend some blogs that get this on the nose and carry on talking about the movie.

At some point in the movie, there is a plot. It seems to involve a mother/son relationship. Kevin Zegers does a good job as the gigolo son, presumably by spending the entire shoot pretending that he’s playing a disaffected hustler in My Own Private Idaho and not this disaster. Kevin Zegers is also SUPER hot, and his beauty combined with his performance makes him the best part of the movie except for Dolly Parton’s theme tune, “Travellin’ Thru,” which is a song by Dolly Parton and thus flawless by nature.

I do not recommend this film. If you feel you must consume it in some capacity, may I suggest distilling the essential elements of the experience? Call up the most transmisogynistic person you know and have them talk to you about what they think bottom surgery signifies. While they talk, look at pictures of Kevin Zegers looking wounded and hot, and listen to “Travellin’ Thru” in one headphone. All of the Transamerica with none of the hassle!

———-

Stephen Ira is a trans femme-inist poet and activist. He has poems forthcoming in EOAGH and Specter Magazine and short fiction forthcoming in The Collection from Topside Press. He blogs about politics at Super Mattachine on WordPress.

Motherhood in Film and Television: Phoebe in Wonderland

This review of Phoebe in Wonderland, by Stephanie Rogers, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on September 14, 2009.

Movie poster for Phoebe in Wonderland

For a film that wants to explore the difficulties of marriage and motherhood and, essentially, what it means to exist as a woman in a society that places so many demands on wives and mothers, I found it disconcerting to say the least that this film only barely passes the Bechdel Test. If it weren’t for one scene, where Felicity Huffman’s character, Hillary Lichten, engages in a brief conversation about her daughter, Phoebe, (played by Elle Fanning) with her daughter’s drama teacher, Miss Dodger, (played by Patricia Clarkson), then this entire movie, a movie about women, would plod along without one woman ever speaking to another woman.

imdb plot summary: The movie focuses on an exceptional young girl whose troubling retreat into fantasy draws the concern of both her dejected mother and her unusually perceptive drama teacher. Phoebe is a talented young student who longs to take part in the school production of Alice in Wonderland, but whose bizarre behavior sets her well apart from her carefree classmates.

Well, on the surface, the movie is about Phoebe and her struggle to fit in with her peers. But it quickly turns into an examination of motherhood and parenting in general, when Phoebe’s odd behavior gradually worsens: she spits at classmates, she obsessively repeats words and curses involuntarily, she washes her hands to the point that they bleed—and she explains to her parents over and over again that she can’t help it. However, her mother (and father), being academic writer-types (Hillary is actually attempting to finish her dissertation on Alice in Wonderland), merely choose to see their daughter as nothing more than eccentric and imaginative.

The caretaker role falls exclusively to Hillary. She’s a stay-at-home mom trying to write a book while also attempting to care for two young daughters. While her struggle to play The Good Mom definitely lends sympathy to her character—I mean, honestly, what the hell is a good mom?—I couldn’t help but despise her selfishness and blatant disregard for Phoebe’s needs. Even though both parents decide to (finally) get Phoebe into therapy, it’s Hillary who refuses to accept the doctor’s diagnosis, even going so far as to remove Phoebe from therapy, deliberately hiding the diagnosis from her husband.

The problem here, and where the movie most succeeds, is that Hillary feels alone as a parent. She believes that her children’s struggles will ultimately reflect poorly on her as The Good Mom, and she even says at one point that she doesn’t want her daughter to be “less than.” Obviously, we live in a society that mandates the over-the-top importance of living up to an unattainable standard of proper mothering (see: any celebrity mother and the scrutiny she faces, with barely a mention of celebrity fathers), and Hillary definitely effectively represents that unattainable standard.

The movie also

successfully portrays the societal trend of the working father: he pokes his head in when necessary, checking in on his daughters, and demonstrating just the right balance between quirky annoyance at their neediness and curiosity about their daily lives—he shows up to parent/teacher conferences, he consoles Phoebe when she gets in trouble at school, and he genuinely wants to participate; he’s just not required to maintain the role of The Good Dad—it doesn’t exist.

Click here to read the rest of the review.

2012 Golden Globe Analysis

Since yesterday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a federal holiday, I thought it was more important to post something specific about race in the United States than an analysis of the Golden Globes. However, it turns out there’s still a lot to say about race with regards to the awards. More about that–and my picks for highlights and lowlights of the cerermony–after a quick rundown of the night’s winners.

Motion Picture
Best Picture – Drama: The Descendents
Best Performance by an Actress – Drama: Meryl Streep for The Iron Lady
Best Performance by an Actor – Drama: George Clooney for The Descendents
Best Picture – Comedy or Musical: The Artist
Best Performance by an Actress – Comedy or Musical: Michelle Williams for My Week with Marilyn
Best Performance by an Actor – Comedy or Musical: Jean Dujardin for The Artist
Best Animated Feature Film: The Adventures of Tintin
Best Foreign Language Film: Asghar Farhadi for A Separation
Best Director: Martin Scorsese for Hugo
Best Screenplay: Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role: Octavia Spencer for The Help
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role: Christopher Plummer for Beginners
Best Original Score: Ludovic Bource for The Artist
Best Original Song: “Masterpiece” by Madonna, Julie Frost & Jimmy Harry for W.E.

Television
Best Series – Drama: Homeland
Best Performance by an Actress – Drama Series: Claire Danes for Homeland
Best Performance by an Actor – Drama Series : Kelsey Grammer for Boss
Best Series – Comedy or Musical: Modern Family
Best Performance by an Actress – Comedy or Musical Series: Laura Dern for Enlightened
Best Performance by an Actor – Comedy or Musical Series: Matt LeBlanc for Episodes
Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture: Downton Abbey
Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture: Kate Winslet for Mildred Pierce
Best Performance by an Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture: Idris Elba for Luther
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role: Jessica Lange for American Horror Story
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role: Peter Dinklage for Game of Thrones

Cecil B. DeMille Award: Morgan Freeman

A few brief thoughts about the nominees and winners:

No women were nominated in the score, screenplay, best picture, or directing categories.
The only woman to win an award outside of acting was Madonna, for best original song.
Two people of color won acting awards–Octavia Spencer & Idris Elba–which seems better than previous years, though perhaps still not good enough.
Modern Family won yet another award, this time in a category that did not include Parks and Recreation, which I would argue is the best comedy on television.
Matt LeBlanc & Kelsey Grammer?! I didn’t realize the 1990s were experiencing such a resurgence, and these were some of the biggest surprises of the night for me.

Highlights:

Meryl “I can’t believe I said shit on TV” Streep

Meryl Streep

Her acceptance speech was exuberant and funny. She forgot her glasses, was possibly drunk, swore, and was censored. She then proceeded to deliver the best speech of the night. She mentioned not only the other women nominated in her category, but gave a shout-out to Pariah star Adepero Oduye and Jane Eyre star Mia Wasikowska. She is lovely, classy, funny (with two references to host Gervais), intelligent, and willing to step out of her comfort zone to take on challenging roles (like this one).

Here’s a clip of the speech from YouTube, which will probably be taken down soon:

Tina Fey & Jane Lynch

Tina Fey and Jane Lynch

Two very funny women presented an award and proceeded to joke about how little they resemble the characters they play on television. But the best moment came at the end, when they not only got in that penis joke,* but highlighted the “triumph” with an in-unison “penis joke!”

Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy sing

Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy

Another favorite moment involved the presentation of an award, rather than an acceptance speech or anything the host said. The duo sang their teleprompter speech, giving us all a pleasant surprise. In a show that can be–and often is–boring and too serious (which is why a host like Gervais is brought in at all), their moment was fun, light-hearted, and playful. If only there were more moments like this in the 3-hour ceremony…

Lowlights:

Ricky Gervais being…funny?

Ricky Gervais

Gervais tells sexist, homophobic jokes and thinks (?) it’s funny to say he “can’t fucking understand” native Spanish speakers (who also speak perfectly clear English) Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas. However, he also skewers celebrities during the very awards ceremonies that laud them and treat them like royalty. I like this dynamic very much, and think it captures the way many of us feel about movie stars: we simultaneously adore them and find them utterly ridiculous. The Golden Globes needs a host who is funny and irreverent if the show is to be of any interest to average viewers. I’m convinced this person exists, and I’m also convinced that Gervais is not this person.

Meltem Cumbul on the red carpet

Meltem Cumbul

Ordinarily I’d be pleased to see an international film star who isn’t from the United States appear at the Golden Globes. However, I was puzzled by the appearance of Meltem Cumbul, who made a brief statement and then left the stage. She didn’t present an award, and she didn’t introduce a presenter. While it was wonderful for the Globes to acknowledge that films are made outside of Hollywood, it struck me as a cynical move–to have us believe that the organization is more progressive and inclusive than it actually is. Perhaps I’d be more convinced if she’d have served a purpose on stage, or if the HFPA had more than one category recognizing filmmaking around the world.

Queen Latifah introduces Best Picture nominee The Help

Queen Latifah introduces The Help

Queen Latifah is a talented, confident, and beautiful Black woman, and it was good to see her on stage. That the Globes brought her on stage to introduce the only Best Picture nominee that remotely deals with the experience of Black people…well, that looks like the same kind of cynical move I saw with Cumbul’s appearance. I also can’t help but think that this was the HFPA’s way to avoid or sidestep the real backlash against this movie. Octavia Spencer won for her performance in The Help–and, as I tweeted during the ceremony, I’m glad she won–but it would be nice to see a Black woman win an award for playing something other than a maid, and it would also be nice to see a Black woman introduce a Best Picture nominee that isn’t an extremely problematic story mainly about a White Savior.

Dishonorable Mentions

Penis Jokes*

As seems more and more the norm on television today, we can’t seem to get through a program without implicit or explicit penis jokes. I actually liked Fey and Lynch’s ironic joke, as I mentioned above, but because it was done in the spirit of acknowledging and ironically commenting on the comic trend. Whether you’re watching The Daily Show or the Golden Globes, you’re going to hear about penises. Sunday night, Seth Rogen sexually harassed his co-presenter Kate Beckinsale with a “joke” about having a “massive erection.” Later, George Clooney “joked” (though this seems timid compared to Rogen’s offense) that Michael Fassbender could play golf with his hands tied behind his back. All I can say about this is ENOUGH ALREADY.

Miss Golden Globe

Why oh why oh why oh why do we STILL have to have a lovely young woman stand on stage to occasionally usher off a confused star? Why? WHY?

That’s it from me. What are some of your favorite and least favorite moments from the 2012 Golden Globes?

Ripley’s Rebuke: Phoebe in Wonderland

Phoebe in Wonderland. Starring Felicity Huffman, Elle Fanning, Patricia Clarkson, and Bill Pullman. Written and Directed by Daniel Barnz.

The movie also successfully portrays the societal trend of the working father: he pokes his head in when necessary, checking in on his daughters, and demonstrating just the right balance between quirky annoyance at their neediness and curiosity about their daily lives—he shows up to parent/teacher conferences, he consoles Phoebe when she gets in trouble at school, and he genuinely wants to participate; he’s just not required to maintain the role of The Good Dad—it doesn’t exist.

In many ways, Miss Dodger, the drama teacher, saves Phoebe from herself, at least for a while. Clarkson’s character complicates the film further by positioning Miss Dodger as somewhat of an Other Mother—they’re kindred spirits, and Miss Dodger attempts to create a safe space for Phoebe in the theater, realizing that she doesn’t feel safe anywhere else. But in the one main interaction between Hillary and Miss Dodger, Hillary confronts Miss Dodger about Phoebe’s penchant for self-injury, even blaming her for not paying close enough attention (which is nothing more than a projection of Hillary’s own feelings about failing at the role of The Good Mom).

At first, the film explores Hillary’s inability to separate the weaknesses she perceives in her children from her (real or imagined) personal failings as a mother. And that theme deserves recognition. Hillary is a complicated character, after all, and how often do we get to watch complicated women struggle with real issues on-screen? The issue I struggle with, though, warrants discussion as well: how long does Phoebe have to repeatedly self-harm before her mother acknowledges the doctor’s diagnosis?

What could’ve been (and actually was, at first) a feminist investigation of the plight of motherhood and marriage in a society that still treats women as second-class citizens (even if it pretends not to view them as such), somehow turned into an indictment of The Selfish Mother. Just because Hillary says out loud (something along the lines of): “I don’t want to look at my life when I’m 70 and realize I did nothing important. But at the same time, I wouldn’t mind. My daughters make me live,” well, that doesn’t negate the fact that she waited until her daughter jumped off a fucking theater scaffold before she decided that, okay, something might be wrong with her.

The film makes it almost impossible not to hate that mother: in one scene, she comforts Phoebe after a nightmare, realizes Phoebe has horrible bruises all over her legs, and listens (once again) to Phoebe cry about how she can’t help hurting herself. While Phoebe continues her obsessive compulsions, which result in removal from the play at one point, her mother continues to ignore the doctor’s diagnosis of Tourette’s Syndrome.

My point is, what the fuck? Am I supposed to believe that part of the feminist complications of motherhood include the struggle to not seriously neglect (and consequently, abuse) your child? Perhaps in some warped way, the film wants to illustrate how motherhood in our society really is a double-edged sword: she can choose to help her daughter, and risk feeling like a failure as a mother (because she would have to acknowledge her daughter is “less than”), or she can hope that her child really is an imaginative eccentric who shouldn’t be medicated and drained of her creativity.

While Hillary clearly buys in to both the cult of motherhood and the demonization of disability, the filmmakers really only succeed in showcasing the latter, resulting in a somewhat interesting examination of how we, as a society, often react to what we perceive as different or Other. But because the film also attempts to examine motherhood simultaneously, I found it virtually impossible not to read it as anything more than a deliberate, over-the-top, worst case scenario metaphor for the consequences of Bad Mothering.