Vilifying mothers is a national pastime. Absent mothers, celebrity mothers, helicopter mothers, working mothers, stay-at-home mothers, mothers with too many children, mothers with too few children, women who don’t want to be or can’t be mothers–for women, there’s no clear way to do it right.
The Killing promotional still.
This repost by Leigh Kolbappears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.
Vilifying mothers is a national pastime. Absent mothers, celebrity mothers, helicopter mothers, working mothers, stay-at-home mothers, mothers with too many children, mothers with too few children, women who don’t want to be or can’t be mothers–for women, there’s no clear way to do it right.
In AMC’s The Killing, “bad” mothers have been woven throughout all three seasons.
It would be easy to see this as a failing on the show’s part; instead, I think we can see it as a realistic depiction of how we treat mothers in our culture represented in both in the fictional world of the show and in critics’ responses to the series.
In the first two seasons of The Killing, the plot centers around the murder of Rosie Larsen, a 17-year-old girl. Her grieving parents–Mitch and Stan–have a difficult time (understandably) in the aftermath of her death and in the investigation. Mitch (Michelle Forbes), in the midst of a breakdown, leaves her two sons with Stan and her sister as she hits the road to try to heal or find something to ease the pain.
Mitch Larsen: bad mother.
In last year’s “The 10 Worst Moms on TV” on Yahoo TV, Mitch Larsen was featured as one of the worst. The critic wrote:
“Her daughter may or may not have been a prostitute or involved in some illegal doings at a casino. And she ended up dead seemingly because of it. But instead of hunkering down and paying more attention to her remaining children, Mitch left her sons to be raised by a depressed father and their hooker aunt while she went off to live in a motel and act creepy around wayward runaway girls.”
Mitch’s interaction with the runaway girl was a direct response to her feelings of inadequacy about her failings as a mother to Rosie. She was attempting to heal and grow. She mothered the runaway girl the best she knew how and was still abandoned and hurt. Mothering is difficult and complex–it’s not a simple equation of just being there all of the time.
In season 3, the victim pool has grown substantially–a number of teenage girls are found murdered, and the suspect appears to be a youth pastor at a homeless shelter.
One of the missing girls who is still unaccounted for, Kallie Leeds, has a terrible no-good single mother, Danette Leeds (Amy Seimetz), who seems to prioritize cigarettes, beer and getting laid over her difficult relationship with her daughter. Her neglect and indifference are seen as central to Kallie’s victimization.
Danette: bad mother.
As Danette and another mother of a missing girl sit next to each other at the police station, Danette notices that the other mother has a binder full of photographs and composite photos. She seems uncomfortable, as if she’s understanding the depth of her neglect. She recognizes that Kallie’s life trajectory closely mirrors her own, and the weight of that is pushing down on her. She was being the kind of parent she knew how to be, and she didn’t know how to be June Cleaver. Most mothers don’t.While these supporting characters’ relationships with their daughters are troubled, and it would be easy for the audience to “blame” the victimization of the daughters on their mothers, it wouldn’t be correct. We are so used to complex, fallible male characters that we are also conditioned to see them as complex and fallible, not good or evil. When we’re presented with women with the same depth of characterization–especially mothers–we don’t know what to do except what we’ve been conditioned to do: criticize them and blame them.
This is blatantly obvious when we consider the show’s protagonist, detective Sarah Linden (played by the amazing Mireille Enos).
Linden has consistently been portrayed as a terrible mother in critics’ reviews of the series. She is a realistic female lead character–she is good at her job, works tirelessly and struggles with her failings in her personal life and professional life. Complex female characters are a good thing, and The Killing consistently delivers them (it can’t hurt that the show’s producer and many of the writers are women).
In the first two seasons, Linden had custody of her young teenage son, Jack. Her work means long hours away from him and dinner from vending machines. Linden herself was a foster child and has difficulty negotiating her upbringing and being the kind of mother that she’s supposed to be, but cannot. In the third season, Jack has moved to Chicago to live full-time with his father–he’s thriving, and living with his father. That’s good, right? No, Sarah Linden is evidently still a piece of shit mother.
Sarah Linden: bad mother.
In reviews of The Killing, writers often take an acerbic tone when mentioning her as a mother.
For example, this reviewer seems to think taking a jog makes her a bad mother:
“We all struggle with the work-life balance thing, and detective Sarah Linden is hardly an exception. Finding time to mother her son, for instance, seems to be a challenge. Jogging, however, she manages to squeeze in. And it’s a good thing, too. Because Linden (finally) got a major break in the case this week, and it’s all thanks to the fact that she prioritizes cardio over sleep, parenthood, marriage, friendship, or updating a sweater collection that appears to have been sourced from Dress Barn circa 1997.”
This reviewer fails to make the connection that she’s preoccupied by an intense case, so she needs to stay in Seattle (or maybe the fact that she’s putting her career first figures into this assessment):
“But she’s still the World’s Worst Mother — her son lives in Chicago and she won’t visit because, well, he’s the only person she knows there. Wow, Linden. Just, wow.”
In a Salon review from last year (which, remarkably, denounces The Killing for not being “fun” enough), the reviewer slips in, “Yes, it’s still raining, and Linden’s still a bad mother…”
Even the New York Times, in a review from the first season, comes to the conclusion that the “scariest aspect” of the show is the theme of absent motherhood. Crooked politicians, murders, prostitution… those don’t hold a candle to bad mothers.
“Sarah Linden refuses to accept that her inattentiveness is gravely affecting her son until she is forced to reckon with her absence around him. And in Mitch Larsen (Michelle Forbes) we bear witness to a character who is present in her daughter’s life and yet still positioned at a significant remove from the darkest secrets of her adolescence. In the end, of course, this is the scariest aspect of all.”
And in the aforementioned Yahoo TV list, Linden gets first place. The manifesto against her begins: “She’s not actively trying to kill her son, but she may end up doing so anyway.”
OK then.
I’m not going to try to defend Sarah Linden’s parenting. That would be ludicrous–she doesn’t need defending. She’s a complex, realistic character with real issues.
At Bitch Flicks, Megan Kearns posted in the first season how it was “refreshing” to see this kind of character trying to navigate her different roles, and that “the lead character is an accomplished single mom striving to keep her son out of trouble all while maintaining her demanding career.” She manages to do that by the third season, but it’s still not good enough.
Instead, audiences and critics alike focus much too closely on the female protagonist’s failings as a mother. We do not do that with male protagonists. (OK, six seasons in, after an episode highlighting parenting, Jezebel posted about how Don Draper was a “shitty dad.”)
Is Dexter a good father? What about Rick Grimes? Walter White?
Certainly there are lists of “bad dads” in TV/film, but the tone is different, more tongue-in-cheek. And a focus on these characters’ fathering abilities doesn’t run throughout conversations about the show, especially not with the same venom we see about Linden. When there’s a bad father in the mix, it’s just a poignant piece of a Joseph Campbell hero’s journey. Bad mothers, however, deserve to be burned at the proverbial stake.
There is a dearth of female antiheroes in film and television. The response to Sarah Linden shows why this is. When audiences see female characters, they think primarily in critical terms, especially about their roles as mothers and wives. (Of course this extends past fictional characters; there’s consistent and persistent hand-wringing about real-life women working too much and not being good enough mothers.) Women aren’t perfect (especially within the narrow confines of perfection that our society has put in place). Female characters shouldn’t be perfect.
My son is doing fine and my sweaters are warm and comfortable, assholes.
Linden’s role as a parent, girlfriend and ex-wife is just one small part of the grand scheme of the show. Her partner, Stephen Holder, has a girlfriend this season. He forgets Valentine’s Day and is never home. He is not painted as a villain, because he’s out getting shit done. He’s doing his job. That is what is important in The Killing. So when critics focus (in depth, or just in passing) on how terrible a mother Linden is, that further erodes what should be good about having strong, complex female characters.
Sarah Linden may not be a full-time mother. But she’s a bad-ass mother, and that is what should matter the most.
Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.
Fox’s midseason drama ‘Empire’ is a huge hit, and it is easy to see why. The gloriously soapy family melodrama is chockablock with “watercooler moments” (are those still a thing?), many provided by the series’s breakout character Cookie Lyon, played with obvious joy by Taraji P. Henson. But despite all the well-deserved attention Cookie is getting, she’s not the only great female character ‘Empire’ has to offer.
FOX’s midseason drama Empire is a huge hit, and it is easy to see why. The gloriously soapy family melodrama is chockablock with “watercooler moments” (are those still a thing?), many provided by the series’s breakout character Cookie Lyon, played with obvious joy by Taraji P. Henson.
Taraji P. Henson as Cookie Lyon in Empire
Cookie, the ex-wife of legendary hip hop mogul Lucious Lyon (and mother the three sons vying to inherit his empire), has just been released from a 17-year stint in prison. She co-founded the company (somewhat clunkily called Empire) with Lucious, and wants the riches, fame, and power she was denied when she took the fall for the drug dealing that financed the company in its early days. Surrounded by schemers, Cookie in contrast works to get what she wants by sheer force of will. And an abundance of charisma floating on her fearlessness, brazenness, and enviable style. Cookie is glorious.
Cookie is glorious.
Despite all the well-deserved attention Cookie is getting, she’s not the only great female character Empire has to offer. This is a refreshing surprise, given co-creators Lee Daniels and Danny Strong (the same creative team behind The Butler, a movie I loved) pitch the series as “King Lear in the hip hop world,” but swapped daughters Regan, Goneril, and Cordelia for sons. These sons are all compelling characters: business-focused Andre, struggling with bipolar disorder; and promising artists Jamal, whose favor with Lucious is challenged by his homosexuality; and Hakeem, whose favor with Lucious is challenged by his tendency to be a little shit. And it does seem more true to the character of Lucious to want to leave his legacy in the hands of a male heir. But part of me will always be disappointed we couldn’t have female versions of Andre, Jamal, and Hakeem.
But, as I said, Empire still delivers a range of complex female characters to love and love to hate.
Anika (Grace Gealy) is “a ho who can slice your throat without even disturbing her pearls”
Anika (Grace Gealy), is head of Empire A&R and Lucious’s new woman. Anika and Cookie immediately strike up a fierce rivalry, first for power in the company (Anika backing Hakeem’s rising star, Cookie pushing for Jamal), and inevitably for Lucious’s affections. The rivalry works because each woman is equally savvy, but with opposing styles: where Cookie is all unbridled assertiveness, Anika is cool-headed and graceful even at her most sinister. It’s pretty much impossible not to root for Cookie, but Anika commands respect as a worthy opponent.
Kaitlin Doubleday as Rhonda in Empire
Another schemer is Andre’s wife Rhonda (Kaitlin Doubleday), who also lusts for power through the proxy of her husband. Rhonda at first seems completely unsympathetic, seeking to put Jamal and Hakeem “at war” with each other to benefit Andre. The Lyon family find Rhonda inherently suspect because she’s a highly educated upper class white woman. When Andre defends his wife as “brilliant,” Cookie responds “Pretty white girls always are, even when they ain’t.” Lucious straight-up tells Andre, “the moment you brought that white woman into my house, I knew I couldn’t trust you. I knew then that you didn’t want to be part of my family.” But Rhonda truly cares for Andre and is in many ways a good match for him (as he also has a mind for business). And her alternating support of and frustration with her mentally ill partner shows her at her most genuine.
Lucious (Terrence Howard) being typically dismissive of his assistant Becky (Gabourey Sidibe)
While not major characters, I would be remiss not to mention Lucious and Cookie’s all-star assistants. Gabourey Sidibe plays Becky, Lucious’s long-suffering but resilient PA. Becky expertly anticipates Lucious’s needs and exudes stunning patience with his routine dismissal of her. Cookie’s assistant Porsha (Ta’Rhonda Jones) is somewhat less competent (although nowhere near as inept as Cookie’s constant berating would have you believe). Porsha wins the audience’s respect by becoming something of a double agent after Anika asks her to betray Cookie. She can clearly hold her own in Empire‘s tangled web of manipulation.
Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray) with his older paramour Camilla (Naomi Campbell)
Even Empire‘s most minor female characters are interesting. Hakeem’s love interests Tiana (Serayah) and Camilla (Naomi Campbell) both have their gif-able moments. When Hakeem catches Tiana cheating on him with a woman, she points out he also has “a side piece” and asks him if her indiscretion bothers him more because it was with a woman. She then demands respect for her girlfriend, making space for her on the set of a music video shoot. Older woman Camilla calls Hakeem out on the Oedipal element to their trysts (Hakeem was a baby when Cookie went to jail, so he grew up without a mother figure), and manages to hold her own in a showdown with Lucious, refusing his offer to pay her off to leave Hakeem.
So despite swapping its King Lear‘s daughters for sons, Empire manages to present an array of strong female characters. Cookie Lyon is a force of nature and an undeniable gift to pop culture, but the other women of Empire aren’t entirely eclipsed by her awesomeness. Which is really saying something. Here’s one more gif to prove it:
Cookie says “The streets aren’t made for everybody. That’s why they invented sidewalks.”
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who hopes to one day be 1% as fabulous as Cookie Lyon.
Claire is a horrible human being for many, many reasons–but her abortions aren’t included in those reasons. The show makes that clear.
This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.
Season 2 spoilers ahead! Season 3 will be released on Netflix on Feb. 27, 2015.
Novelist Elmore Leonard said, “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” I think about that often when looking for or critiquing the dearth of feminist film and television. We often wring our hands over the Bechdel Test and the lack of “Strong Female Characters.”
Ideal feminist media would be like Leonard’s ideal writing–films and shows that don’t feel like they’re trying to be feminist. They just are. Complex women and women’s stories that aren’t just pieces of the whole, but are woven in seamlessly throughout the narrative–that’s what I want.
House of Cards delivers.
After Season 1 debuted on Netflix to critical and popular acclaim, Amanda Rodriguez and I both wrote about House of Cards and the wonderfully complex female characters (see: “The Complex, Unlikable Women of House of Cards” and “Claire Underwood: The Queen Bee in House of Cards“). The simultaneously awful and wonderful female characters whose stories were essential to the action in every single episode. Nothing ever felt forced, and the fact that these women were both sympathetic and loathsome was an absolute delight for those of us feminist viewers who are tired of “strong female characters” who pay lip service to some kind of surface-level inequality.
House of Cards’s feminism is remarkable, because it feels wholly unremarkable.
Season 2 debuted on Feb. 14, 2014, and although Netflix doesn’t reveal exact numbers, Variety reports that the viewership in the first few hours “soared,” with many subscribers watching multiple episodes at once.
And since the only Olympic-style sport we are interested in in our home is the long-form binge watch, we were finished with season 2 by Saturday night. Within the first two episodes, I was fairly certain this was the most feminist TV drama I’ve seen–because what we want (complexity, equality, and representation) is woven in seamlessly. House of Cards is not primarily about a man. It’s not primarily about a woman. It’s about people.
In the promo materials for season 1, we saw Frank Underwood sitting alone in Lincoln’s monument. Ostensibly, he’s the show’s protagonist. And in season 1, I suppose it did often feel that way.
However, the season 2 poster features Frank again sitting in Lincoln’s seat, but Claire is sitting on top of it also. From the first shot of season 2–Frank and Claire running together–we know that Frank isn’t really our sole protagonist at all anymore.
The first two episodes tie up many loose ends from season 1, and introduce new ones for season 2. In the first episode, Claire picks up her appointment with the fertility doctor not, as we learn, to become pregnant herself, but to find out more about the drug that Gillian is on so she can threaten to withhold her insurance from her, thus getting what she wants from Gillian. “I’m willing to let your child wither and die within you,” Claire says to Gillian. Frank pushes Zoe Barnes into the path of an ongoing train, and she is killed. Frank, who has taken his place as vice president, courts Jackie Sharp to be the House Majority Whip. Why? Her military record of having to order strikes and kill people (including women and children) shows Frank that she is a bastion of ruthless pragmatism, which is how he and Claire move forward; and with this, season 2 begins.
In the following episodes, Claire faces her rapist (who assaulted her in college, and now Frank must give him an award for his military service), and honestly tells Frank how she wants to “smash things” and how much she wants to talk about it. These scenes were excellent because she didn’t let Frank be the vengeful husband. She stopped him, and then kept her power by talking about the assault. It wasn’t presented as if her sexuality was Frank’s to protect; the experience was hers. She wants to let her husband in, but she doesn’t want him to avenge her honor. That’s her job.
When she goes on national television and admits to having an abortion, she says that it was to end the pregnancy that resulted from the sexual assault. She named her attacker, and a young woman called in to the show, saying that he had assaulted her as well. This kicks off a season-long story line about a military sexual assault bill that pits women against women and shows the politics of justice as being just that: politics.
Claire bares all–in her own way–on national television.
But here’s the rub: Claire had three abortions, not one, and none were from the rape. She is matter-of-fact with her doctor and press secretary that she had three abortions, and we learn that one was during the campaign with Frank, and two were when she was a teenager. One could see these story lines as using infertility, rape, and abortion as plot points.
And you know what? It’s fantastic. I love that these typically silent or exploited topics get so much air time in House of Cards, and that Claire is more human for having gone through so much, yet she uses it all for political and personal gain. (A recent study showed that when female characters consider or have an abortion in film or TV, they are disproportionally killed or at least punished.)
When done properly, I applaud these female-specific plot points. These events are plot points in women’s lives, and they should be used well on screen. House of Cards does just that.
Historically, men have wars and external, political struggles to define and provide fodder for their journeys (both fictional and non). We see this represented with Frank’s visit to the Confederate re-enactors and his war miniatures. Women’s struggles and choices–infertility, sexual assault, and abortion–are widespread and underrepresented. To have Claire live through and use these experiences is refreshing and brilliant (and appropriately villainous).
The season goes on to show the fallout that Claire receives from admitting to having an abortion (even though she publicly says she had one after a rape), including an attempted bomb attack by a man whose wife had had an abortion, and the angry, vitriolic protesters outside her home. (She tells Megan, the young sexual assault victim at one point, “They’re loud, but I think we need to be louder.”) What a great message.
Claire is a horrible human being for many, many reasons–but her abortions aren’t included in those reasons. The show makes that clear.
Jackie–Frank’s replacement and sometimes-ally sometimes-adversary–is a force. She, in her relationship with Remy, is the one who initially isn’t interested at all in a relationship. She gets tattooed to help deal with the pain of the deaths she was responsible for in the military. She’s powerful and political, and we see her as both the enemy and ally throughout the season.
Jackie, adding on to her poppy tattoo (symbolic in its remembrance of bloodshed in war, and therapeutic in its pain).
In addition to the complex shaping of women’s stories and the characters themselves, the way the show handles masculinity and sexuality seems revolutionary.
In season 1, it’s evident when Frank goes back to his alma mater that he had had a sexual relationship with a close male friend. There wasn’t much hoopla about this, it just was what it was. In season 2, Claire, Frank, and their bodyguard, Edward Meechum, have a threesome. The next day, Frank says to Meechum as he gets in the car, “It’s a beautiful day.” And that’s all there is to it. Meanwhile, Rachel has developed a relationship with Lisa, and it’s portrayed as a loving partnership (although the camera does linger on their sex scene while it artfully pans away from the aforementioned threesome).
There’s no moral focus or panic about people’s sexuality. It just–is what it is. No fanfare. And the fact that we get to see women having orgasms (in season 2, an especially steamy scene between Jackie and Remy) is a pleasant detour from the norm as well.
“Nowadays the princesses all know kung fu, and yet they’re still the same princesses. They’re still love interests, still the one girl in a team of five boys, and they’re all kind of the same. They march on screen, punch someone to show how they don’t take no shit, throw around a couple of one-liners or forcibly kiss someone because getting consent is for wimps, and then with ladylike discretion they back out of the narrative’s way.”
The women of House of Cards are not “Strong Female Characters.” They are well-written characters with a great deal of power, which they wield alongside the men. They are integral parts of the narrative. When female complexity and power is written into the narrative, everything else–including passing the Bechdel Test–effortlessly falls into place.
This is ruthless pragmatism: feminist style, and it is excellent. In a sea of male anti-heroes on TV, it’s time that women share the stage. House of Cards shows its hand, and it’s a royal flush, with the queen right next to the king.
Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.
These women are complex, if not likable, and that’s a good thing.
Daddy Issues, Menopause, and Female Power
This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.
This article covers Season 1. See here for commentary on Season 2.
Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is the vengeful House Majority Whip who lusts after power and is ambitious and unscrupulous in his attempts to get what he wants.
In fact, most of the characters fit that description.
We know that the anti-hero is in. Many of the protagonists in critically acclaimed dramas (Walter White, Nucky Thompson, Jax Teller, Dexter Morgan, Don Draper, the list goes on…) are not traditionally heroic and make decisions that are illegal and “immoral.”
Frank Underwood is a twenty-first century Iago, building his empire on a tenuous pile of cards. He looks at the camera and includes the audience in his thought process (much like Kenneth Branagh’s Iago in Othello). The Macbeth references also are clear, as Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara) scrubs a stain out of her carpet or as Claire Underwood (Robin Wright) is consistently associated with water.
Just as Frank conjures a centuries-old tradition of villainous pseudo-heroism, the women of House of Cards also represent the kind of ruthless ambition that we find so compelling in characters.
“The show would be way less interesting if only the male characters were running around town sleeping with people they shouldn’t be sleeping with and bribing people they shouldn’t be bribing while their female partners and peers waited patiently at home.”
Zoe is a scrappy reporter when we first meet her, and she quickly transforms herself into a front-page journalist because she gets the right source.
In bed.
She draws him in with a photo, goes to his house in a push-up bra and a low-cut shirt, and gets tips of all kinds. In the first episode, the most powerful women have broken into power via cleavage, marriage and tokenism (the new White House Chief of Staff Linda Vasquez, who Frank helped promote because of her ethnicity and gender). It didn’t look so good at first, but like any good story, the characters unfold as the series goes on, revealing that Claire is ambitious at all costs, Zoe holds the cards in her relationship with Frank, and the women, at the end, are instrumental in upending and beginning to unravel Frank’s plans.
Zoe Barnes
For Zoe, she is both empowered and disempowered by men who treat her like she is their child. When she shoots to stardom (via Frank) at The Washington Herald, Tom, her editor, is dismissive of her work and yet knows he needs to promote her and reward her because Margaret (his boss) wants her star-power, since Tom’s beloved hard-news print outlet is barely staying in business.
When Zoe and Tom get into a fight after she turns down the White House Correspondent gig, he accuses her of being arrogant.
Zoe: “You think when a woman asks to be respected she’s being arrogant?”
Tom: “Are you accusing me of sexism? No TV for a month.”
He’s limiting her TV appearances as punishment, but of course it sounds like he’s talking to a child and taking television away as a punishment. The line between father and boss is blurred.
Zoe’s understanding of respect is obviously convoluted as Frank constantly asks her about her parents, and her father, and if they know she lives like she does (in a shabby, dirty apartment). “Are you cared for,” he asks. “Do you have a man, who cares for you? An older man?”
When Frank visits Zoe on Father’s Day, he encourages her to call her father. While she’s still on the phone, she starts undressing him, he undresses her and goes down on her in the most graphic sex scene in the season. She’s breathless while she’s on the phone, and hangs up only after promising her father “I’m going to try and come, OK?” The line between father and lover is blurred.
Later in the season, Zoe establishes herself in a new lucrative job at Slugline, a woman-owned new media company where the reporters have free reign to post what and when they want and are not “tied to a desk.” Janine joins her after leaving The Washington Herald. Janine was her enemy at the Herald, and represents a somewhat older, jaded version of Zoe. When the two begin to work together, they make great strides. Zoe finishes her relationship with Frank and works with Janine to do real, legitimate reporting (which is quickly unraveling Frank’s web of lies). Zoe is poised to be the most successful and have the most journalistic integrity by letting go of the older men in her life (who represent a patriarchal power structure) and working with women and peer collaborators.
Meanwhile, Claire, who matches her husband in power and ambition, changes her company and re-evaluates her own life as the season progresses. She lays off half of the staff and her clean water nonprofit, including Evelyn, her office manager (after having her fire everyone). Evelyn desperately points out to Claire that she is in her late 50s, and she would have no job prospects. Claire doesn’t bend.
Claire Underwood
Shortly after, Claire goes to a coffee shop where an older woman is working the register, and can’t figure out how to ring her up. A young woman comes and shows her, as Claire looks at them, certainly thinking of Evelyn and her own possibilities.
She courts Gillian, a young, beautiful woman who has had individual success in clean water initiatives. Gillian resists the corporate atmosphere, and Claire says,
“I know what it is to be capable, beautiful and ambitious… I want to enable you, to clear the way for you.”
Gillian accepts.
And Claire starts getting hot flashes. “This is new to me,” she tells a female dinner party guest who sees her standing in front of the open refrigerator. Her coming menopause serves as a reminder that she is getting ready to enter a new phase of womanhood, which she doesn’t seem ready for.
Gillian, meanwhile, announces her pregnancy and Claire seems uncomfortable. Even though she tells Adam (her once and sometimes lover) when he asks why she and Frank didn’t have kids, “We just didn’t–it wasn’t some big conversation. I thought about it once or twice, but I don’t feel like there’s some void. We’re perfectly happy without.”
But by the end of the season, she’s visiting a doctor and having a consultation about her fertility. She doesn’t tell Frank, but the window of opportunity for her to have a baby isn’t closed yet.
Gillian goes against Claire’s orders, and Claire suggests she take some time off after Gillian snaps, “I threaten you, don’t I?” Gillian hires a lawyer and claims Claire fired her for being pregnant, trapping Claire in a potential legal battle that she cannot win. The youthful ambition she wanted to guide and empower didn’t want either.
No one is good (nor should they be, or the show wouldn’t work so well). Janine tells Zoe she “used to suck, screw and jerk anything that moved just to get a story.” And while she’s a working journalist, she obviously didn’t fuck her way to the top (nor did Zoe). They are on their way to the top, but it’s only because they’re working together.
Claire and Frank are in a surprisingly power-balanced relationship, and it only truly suffers when he puts his goals over hers. Claire elicits sympathy, disgust, anger and fear from the audience (sometimes all in one episode).
These women are complex, if not likable, and that’s a good thing. Zoe and Janine are close to the truth about Frank, Claire’s career and fertility hang in the balance and at any moment, the house of cards they’ve all helped build may come tumbling down.
Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.
The premise of ‘The Good Wife’ brilliantly sets up and challenges particular gender roles and expectations. Julianna Margulies plays the lead character, Alicia Florrick. Given Margulies’ age – she was 43 when the show began – and popular culture’s continual privileging of youth, particularly with reference to women, this is an achievement in itself. Alicia’s married to Peter Florrick (Chris Noth, who’s no stranger to playing “bad boy” partners after his role of Mr Big on ‘Sex and the City’), who has just been jailed following a string of political and sexual scandals. The pilot sees Alicia dutifully standing by her husband, remaining silent as he apologises for his indiscretions, before the show cuts to several months later as Alicia returns to work as a defence attorney following 13 years as a stay-at-home mom.
The Good Wife centralizes the conventionally marginalized wife figure
Warning: Contains MAJOR spoilers!
Like many other fans of the hugely popular political and legal drama, The Good Wife, a few months ago, I sat down to watch the latest episode, “Dramatics, Your Honor,” only to be rudely awakened from the state of pure escapism which the show pleasantly induces. Although often clever, complex, and compelling, the show is also a somewhat ridiculous yet highly entertaining romp, with a taste for outlandish storylines and theatrical, scheming characters. In other words, I do not watch the show to get a reflection of or even a reflection on Real Life. Real Life sucks, and The Good Wife allows me, and others I assume, to escape life’s often mundane, tedious, and sometimes downright brutal existence. However, in this episode, Will Gardener (Josh Charles), one of the main characters who also serves as the love interest to the leading character, Alicia Florrick, dies. Taking this extremely personally – how could the writers do this to me? – I took to Twitter to find answers. Here, I came across this letter written by the creators and executive producers of the show. In it, they wrote a rather jarring sentence: “The Good Wife, at its heart, is the ‘Education of Alicia Florrick.’” As I reflected on this statement, I began to wonder to what extent Alicia Florrick needed to learn something and, more worryingly, to what extent this need to learn is highly gendered.
The premise of The Good Wife brilliantly sets up and challenges particular gender roles and expectations. Julianna Margulies plays the lead character, Alicia Florrick. Given Margulies’ age – she was 43 when the show began – and popular culture’s continual privileging of youth, particularly with reference to women, this is an achievement in itself. Alicia’s married to Peter Florrick (Chris Noth, who’s no stranger to playing “bad boy” partners after his role of Mr Big on Sex and the City), who has just been jailed following a string of political and sexual scandals. The pilot sees Alicia dutifully standing by her husband, remaining silent as he apologises for his indiscretions, before the show cuts to several months later as Alicia returns to work as a defence attorney following 13 years as a stay-at-home mom. Through this premise, The Good Wife centralises the conventionally side-lined figure of the wife by giving her a voice and an identity beyond this primary label of “the good wife.” Alicia not only embodies a complex and multifaceted identity as a lawyer, but also as a mother, sister, daughter, friend, and lover. The show also complicates the label of “the good wife” itself. For every character who praises Alicia for standing by her husband, another lambasts her for sticking with him, claiming she fails both herself and women everywhere. The show makes apparent that a woman’s “choice” – for how much autonomy did Alicia really have in this situation? – is intensely scrutinised and criticised. The show then follows Alicia’s struggle with the complexities and obstacles of her identity as she attempts to navigate marriage, motherhood, and the workplace, as well as her increasing sexual attraction for Will, her boss and one of the named partners at the firm where she works.
Alicia navigates the many aspects of her identity including mother, wife, and lawyer
With a set-up that continually explores and challenges the traditional idea of what is meant for a woman to be “good,” I was puzzled by the idea that Alicia needs an education. As television enters a golden age with shows particularly examining the moral complexities of their lead characters, I wondered whether the need to educate rather than explore Alicia’s character is specifically gendered. As Bitch Flicks examined last year, women are critically neglected from this exploration in two ways. Firstly, women’s contribution is neglected from the critical consensus and canonisation of the television revolution. The title alone from Brett Martin’s book, Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad, makes clear the absence of female-driven television shows within the consideration of this revolution. In The New Yorker, Emily Nassbaum criticises the degradation of “female” and “feminine” culture within the canonisation of television, and proclaims Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City as “the unacknowledged first female anti-hero on television.”
This, then, leads me onto my second point. The privilege of exploring a morally ambiguous character is primarily afforded to white, cis-gender, heterosexual, able-bodied men. Female characters, as well as other oppressed groups, in contrast, are refused this privilege. Not only are there fewer critically acclaimed female-driven shows than male-driven shows, and even fewer with Black or queer-identifying leading women. But when there are shows which attempt to explore complex female characters, they face a much harsher moral and critical assessment. For example, whereas the greed, selfishness and pure pigheadedness of Tony Soprano from The Soprano’s and Walter White in Breaking Bad are continually held up as an exploration of character, earning them a cult status within popular culture, Hannah Horvath from Girls is positively reviled (see here, here and here). Although Hannah’s characteristics are less extreme that Tony and Walter’s, she also shares a tendency to be narcissistic, self-absorbed and, at times, unlikeable. Whereas male characters are entitled to be bad, female characters, it seem, must always be good.
Male television characters can be bad……whereas a female character must always be good
Ensuring women remain “good” ensures they also remain passive, docile, and unthreatening. As Carol Dyhouse demonstrates in her book, Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women, the lives of young women in comparison to the lives of young men has been plagued with social anxiety and moral panic from the nineteenth century. However, the more I thought about Alicia’s education in The Good Wife, the more I realised that her education is not about being good; it’s about being bad.
Near the end of season one, Alicia makes her first difficult and morally ambiguous decision. As the recession hits, the partners at her law firm, Lockhart & Gardener, must decide which first year associate to lay off, Alicia or Cary Agos (Matt Czuchry). In order to save her job, Alicia pulls in a favour with her husband’s campaign manager, Eli Gold (Alan Cumming), asking him to switch legal representation to her firm, enabling her to bring in top lucrative clients. Not only does Alicia unfairly exploit her advantages, advantages to which Cary simply cannot live up, in order to ensure she secures her positions at the firm. She also uses Peter for her own career prospects, much in the same way that he uses her – Eli continually makes it apparent that Peter’s resurrected career as the States Attorney and, later, as the Governor of Illinois depends on Alicia’s support. Her education in complicating, if not rejecting, her “good” label comes to a head at the end of season four when she accepts Cary’s invitation to start their own firm, pinching Lockhart & Gardner’s top clients along the way.
After Will discovers Alicia’s plans at the beginning of season five, he tells her, “You’re awful, and you don’t even know how awful you are.” As Alicia’s complicated love interest in the show – although at times they engage in brief sexual encounters, Alicia is not “bad” enough to involve herself in a full-blown illicit affair, even if her relationship with Peter is strained at best – Will’s words are highly charged. Nevertheless, there’s some truth to them. Alicia’s come a long way from the relatively meek and unsure character of the pilot. As Joshua Rothman claims, “Everyone, including Alicia, thinks that she’s a victim—but, in fact, she’s a predator, all the more dangerous for being stealthy.” With season six currently airing, the show remains committed to this education. As Alicia considers running for States Attorney, the definition of “good” and “bad” become redefined. The latest episode, “Oppo Research” demonstrates the way in which, within the landscape of politics, what’s defined as “good” and “bad” becomes, simultaneously, much more black and white, and much more tenuous – it all depends on outward appearance and surface. As (politically defined) unpleasant aspects of Alicia’s life are made apparent – although, interestingly, they relate to Alicia’s family members rather than Alicia herself – the show reveals that even good girls have skeletons in their closets.
Cary Agos goes from colleague to rival to partner, Cary Agos motivates Alicia to be bad
Without wanting to be prescriptive or wishing the integrity of Alicia’s character away, a significant part of me wants Alicia to fuck up. And I mean, really fuck up. I think this is why I became so invested in the relationship between Will and Alicia, and why I was so saddened by the death of Will. I wanted Alicia to ditch her “Saint Alicia” label and embrace being bad. But the success of female-led shows is not in swapping one side of a dichotomy for another. It’s about embracing a nuanced portrayal of women in television and wider popular culture. The Good Wife succeeds in presenting a character who, despite her best efforts, remains flawed. In this way, Alicia Florrick can finally shed “the good” label for good.
Sarah Smyth is a staff writer at Bitch Flicks who recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.
In films, as in life, women aren’t supposed to be violent. Women make up the majority of violent crime victims (domestic violence, assault, rape, and murder) but they don’t usually retaliate in kind. Even in the relatively rare film where a woman seriously injures or kills a rapist, like ‘Thelma and Louise’, she does so with lots of tears and anguish–in that film from both from the woman pulling the trigger and the one whom the man attempted to rape. The unwritten rule in movies seems to be that in order to justify a woman killing or even assaulting someone, we need to see her or some other woman suffer, a lot, beforehand. Contrast that rule with the male heroes of action films who leave dozens of corpses in their wake, and not one of the dead has raped or otherwise tortured the hero beforehand–though the hero may be avenging some great wrong the dead guy (or guys) did to his wife or daughter.
This post by Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on Rape Revenge Fantasies.
In films, as in life, women aren’t supposed to be violent. Women make up the majority of violent crime victims (domestic violence, assault, rape, and murder) but they don’t usually retaliate in kind. Even in the relatively rare film where a woman seriously injures or kills a rapist, like Thelma and Louise, she does so with lots of tears and anguish–in that film from both from the woman pulling the trigger and the one whom the man attempted to rape. The unwritten rule in movies seems to be that in order to justify a woman killing or even assaulting someone, we need to see her or some other woman suffer, a lot, beforehand. Contrast that rule with the male heroes of action films who leave dozens of corpses in their wake, and not one of the dead has raped or otherwise tortured the hero beforehand–though the hero may be avenging some great wrong the dead guy (or guys) did to his wife or daughter.
Any experienced moviegoer will see all the signs in the beginning of Freewaypointing to the eventual degradation of its protagonist Vanessa (played by a pre-stardom Reese Witherspoon). She’s an “illiterate” (a script this uneven should be careful about throwing that word around) high school student in a midriff-baring halter top (the film is a runway of 90s fashion that would best be forgotten) who fights off her meth-head stepfather’s advances while her mother does sex work to support her own meth habit. After both her parents are arrested the movie takes off (and finds its comic horror tone) when Vanessa is left alone with her social worker, who doesn’t see any other option but foster care. While addressing the woman in the most respectful manner (“I’ll leave the keys on the TV”), Vanessa chains her to the bed and escapes.
As she sets off, Vanessa wears a red leather jacket and carries her things (including cans of beer) in a wicker basket, evoking Little Red Riding Hood (as do the tacky, sexist illustrations under the opening credits). She makes her way along the freeway to where her grandmother lives.
Vanessa and Bob
The family shitbox car breaks down, and Bob (a pre-24 Kiefer Sutherland), who is driving by, sees her ass bent over the open hood and stops to help. When he can’t fix the car, he offers her a ride, which she accepts. Bob, in his shiny SUV, pleated khakis, and glasses, talks like Mr. Rogers and works as a therapist. He gets Vanessa to speak at length with him about her troubled background, including her stepfather’s sexual abuse. But when (while still driving) he initiates a “powerful new” therapy in which he asks Vanessa to detail her feelings using explicit language and humiliating details she figures out that, like many men who pretend to help women, he’s a creep. When she tries to get out of the car, she finds the door handle is missing, which Bob dangles in front of her and then uses to hit her. We find out Bob is the freeway rapist and killer Vanessa has seen reports about on TV.
Bob holds a razor to her throat and tells her to take off her pants. She stalls him by telling him she will have to unlace her boots first, but kicks him in the head, rolls into the backseat and holds a loaded gun to his head while shrieking at him to drop the razor out of the window. She hits the back of his head with the gun more than once while he drives, then instructs him to pull over into a middle-of-nowhere exit. When he tries to talk her out of it, she shrieks, “You want to get shot a bunch of times?” Vanessa’s rage in this and later scenes is like an altered state from her usual manner, but she’s not hysterical. When they stop, Bob plays the role usually played by a woman in a movie, crying and pleading for his life while Vanessa decides what she should do with him. “The time for talk is over now,” she tells him, adopting his therapist demeanor. She asks if he’s accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior, and when he says he has, she says in a thoughtful way, “That’s good. That’s really good.” At this point I thought she would let him go, because of the unwritten rule: we hadn’t seen her subjugated, and she could probably get away without further violence. Instead she shoots him in the neck and leaves him for dead.
She makes her way to a truck stop diner, covered in blood (again part of the Red Riding Hood motif). She’s arrested as she leaves. We see her entering the juvenile detention facility, her face scrubbed of her heavy eye-makeup, so she looks young, vulnerable, and angelic. When one “chola,” Mesquita (Alanna Ubach), and her companions start to threaten her (as, we learn later, a first step in getting Vanessa to “put out”) we think the movie will turn into Born Innocent (this film even has, as Born Innocent did, a weird young lesbian inmate, but this one is a character, not a predator, and is played by an excellent Brittany Murphy) or any of the other women-in-prison films in which the new inmate is assaulted–except Vanessa’s the one who attacks first–and keeps on punching. She yells at Mesquita all the while, beating her into unconsciousness and turning her face into a bloody mess until the staff grab Vanessa and throw her into solitary–where she uses her time alone to make a shiv.
Bob and his wife on TV
In her preliminary hearing Vanessa sees that Bob isn’t dead, but is left with permanent disfiguring injuries. He, of course, is posing as an innocent victim of a robbery, and just as he predicted–before she shot him–the authorities believe his word, not hers. “Holy shit,” she says, her eyes opening wide as she sees him across the courtroom and we steel ourselves for her inevitable tears, anguish and suffering, but we don’t get them. Instead, Vanessa taunts him in her thick Southern accent, “Look who got hit with the ugly stick!” When he and his wife later appear on television (to lobby for juveniles like Vanessa to be tried as adults) she watches with the other girls at the facility and taunts him further, imitating his electronically aided voice and alluding to his grotesquely distorted mouth, “My dick may not function, but I haven’t lost my smile.”
Women in films and in life are sorry for so many things, all the time, even those things that aren’t their fault; a film heroine (or antiheroine) like Vanessa, so hilariously unrepentant about her acts of violence, is a triumph. Also refreshing for the audience is being in the position of cheering on a woman threatening and assaulting men (Mesquita is Vanessa’s only female victim, and they become feminist allies by the end) when so much film and television continues to offer up men’s abuse of women–sexual and otherwise–as entertainment.
The writer-director Matthew Bright doesn’t exactly have a magic touch with all the actors (Michael T. Weiss as the stepfather and Brooke Shields as Bob’s wife are particularly execrable), and some of what passes as “satire” in the script, especially before Vanessa gets on the freeway, falls as flat as the worst Saturday Night Live skits. But Witherspoon’s Vanessa shows off the expert comic timing she would later become famous for. She also gets all the best lines. Her scenes with Sutherland (who is great at projecting both creepiness and “normalcy”) when she has her gun on him are a stellar parody of the therapist-patient relationship, with the roles reversed. Her Vanessa also uses her voice to make up for her small stature when she intimidates her victims, the way Ben Kingsley’s character did in Sexy Beast. With Dan Hedaya as one of the police detectives on her case it’s easy to see Vanessa as the violent, class-conscious, NC-17 (the film was censored to finally receive an R rating) version of the main character, Cher, in Clueless(Hedaya played Cher’s father in the film, which was released one year before Freeway). Both of them are headstrong Southern California blondes whom audiences at first underestimate, but by the end come to respect. Freeway is far from a perfect film but well worth seeing, even for those who don’t count themselves as fans of Witherspoon.
Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, xoJane, and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.
For the uninitiated, Nikita was the often too realistic story of a drug-addicted young woman who finds herself in jail after a robbery gone horribly wrong. Most filmmakers would have ended there, a cautionary tale of the woman led down the wrong path who ends up punished for her sins. But Besson took the story further; this broken young woman gets turned into an assassin that is used by her government to kill. The killing takes its toll on her, but she values her life and freedom over the other option provided her: death. She meets a guy, falls in love, and at the end of the day Nikita turned out to not be the same story I was used to.
Luc Besson
This guest post by Shay Revolver appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.
From moment I laid eyes on the first frame of ET I have loved movies. I will watch anything on celluloid , breathe it in , just so that I can examine and explore every bit of awesomeness exuding from the screen. Good or bad, every film has something to offer. It’s kind of guaranteed, unless of course you’re a woman; then it sometimes can become a crap shoot. Having been born a woman, a minority woman at that, the chance of watching a film and identifying with the main character is slim to none. Sometimes that can be off putting, and I have learned to manage as best I could without taking myself out of the experience. Being a true lover of the art, I’ve learned to be forgiving and try to find the spot of light in the midst of the gender polarizing mess. I tend to go for complexity in art and for a very long time, I watched a parade of less than complex women be carted out in front of me on screen with a sole purpose of filling a very specific and stereotypical role. As a woman, most filmmakers will portray us as a prize to be won, an undeveloped side character, the quirky friend of the queen bee or the bitch. Growing up it was a jarring contrast to my real life where the women I was surrounded by were some of the strongest women I knew. I was raised a feminist. I was taught that my frilly dresses and love of pink were just as valid as my love of playing pool, video games, and climbing trees. I was raised to believe that everything was gender neutral, but that was never what I saw on screen. By the time I was close to hitting puberty, I had all but given up on the fantasy of seeing a strong, complex, multifaceted woman (of any race) on screen.
Most of the time when I get into this debate or lament the lack of strong female characters in media, fellow feminists speak of Joss Whedon. Despite my love-hate relationship with his work, I can see valid points in hailing him as the male champion of the strong female in the gender wars of visual media. But, what if the reigning white knight of strong female characters Joss Whedon isn’t femme powered enough for you? Where does a film loving gal like me go to find true complexity? Enter the often forgotten genius of Luc Besson. I have loved his work since a twelve year old Shay got her first glimpse of video that her big sister showed her. I fell in love with La Femme Nikita, the visuals, the style, the story and the lead. Besson doesn’t get as much credit as he should for his work. Not only does he create some of the easiest to relate to yet stunningly complex female anti-heroes to grace the silver screen, but he creates a world where women almost always end up happier and okay just being alone. Sure, there is a love interest, but he’s always a subplot or distraction on the female hero’s way to her end goal. Besson always has his female lead start from a place of weakness; they’ve had a hard, almost violent life experience, and after having gone through all manner of–often male inflicted–hell, they prevail. They soldier through the trauma. They don’t stay victims or acquiesce to the men in their life trying to save them. They do something that rarely happens on film; they think for and save themselves.
Anne Parillaud as Nikita in La Femme Nikita
For the uninitiated, Nikita was the often too realistic story of a drug-addicted young woman who finds herself in jail after a robbery gone horribly wrong. Most filmmakers would have ended there, a cautionary tale of the woman led down the wrong path who ends up punished for her sins. But Besson took the story further; this broken young woman gets turned into an assassin that is used by her government to kill. The killing takes its toll on her, but she values her life and freedom over the other option provided her: death. She meets a guy, falls in love, and at the end of the day Nikita turned out to not be the same story I was used to. Besson takes the character from a scared, isolated, broken young woman and turns her into a slave to her own freedom. And then he does something that I hadn’t ever seen before. He lets her be her own hero. After an assassination gone wrong she sees her way out, a way to control her own destiny, and she does the unthinkable, she saves herself and escapes alone. She doesn’t end up with the guy, or stay as a puppet. She takes her evolution and goes off on her own to continue becoming the person that she wants to be. Watching her evolution and seeing all of the complexity that she possessed was an eye-opening journey, not just for the character, but for me as an artist.
Besson has spent his career showcasing strong women making their way through difficult situations, breaking down and then coming out the other end a little dirty, both literally and figuratively, with a delicate light shining on their sweat smeared faces. His world was filled with a range of all the complexities of human emotions and the evolution of women from girl to woman, finding a sweet spot of strength in between. His women were tough and strong because they needed to be. He showcased their beauty and didn’t feel the typical male filmmaker desire to make them man-hating, or imply that if only they had a man, their life would be so much better. In fact, most white knighting was turned on its head. There was no breaking of these women as punishment for their strength. Their strength and independence was shown as beautiful; it was a celebrated quality. It was what made them who they were and what got them out of the often dire end sequence that almost always had them being brutalized at the hands of one of their male antagonists. There was no cowering or apologies; in fact these women fought just as hard and just as strong as any man would. They were resilient and strong and, through Besson’s lens, these women were equals. True equals.
Natalie Portman as Mathilda in Leon: The Professional
In his American follow up to Nikita, he gave us a young Natalie Portman as an actual broken little girl bent on revenge who joins forces with an older assassin who she wants to learn from. There seemed to be a step back in Leon: The Professional because despite all the brilliant acting from Portman, Oldman & Reno, the female character in this film was an actual child, and she needed to be protected. But, in true Besson form, he gave her a voice. She wasn’t just vocal; she was strong and defiant, and even in the face of being overrun, shouted at, and abused by men, she held her own. She stood her ground and didn’t get the usual punishment that any other filmmaker would have doled out. Even in the end when Danny Aiello’s character forces her to go to school, it doesn’t seem like patriarchy at all. Her revenge had been accomplished; she was all alone, and it seemed fitting to know at the end of it all, she was going to be alright. She was going to have a chance to become whatever she wanted to become.
I found myself excited again when Besson showed up with Colombiana, and I could tell from the trailer that he was back to his wonderful old tricks. This was a return to the Besson style that I could so easily relate to, and he even threw in a woman of color as the lead. Like all of his other female characters, he didn’t make her a stereotype or a caricature or a piece of scenery whose sole purpose was to provide visual entertainment as a prize for the male characters. In a way, Colombiana was what you imagine might have happened to Mathilde if Leon had made her wait longer to go after her family’s killers. She was complete and whole onto herself. Colombiana showed an actual evolution of its lead from a little girl who fearlessly escaped to a grown woman with her own agenda of vengeance as a means to find peace. Her passion and emotion, much like all of his female leads, gets her into trouble but, in true Besson form, she fights her way out. In the end, when her mission is complete and her journey is over, she lets go of her rage and moves on to a new life. She wasn’t a soulless killer and worthy of pain, she was human, a little girl who fed the beast inside of her until it had had its fill. She was real, complex and human and we could relate to her pain and growth.
Zoe Saldana as Cataleya in Colombiana
A lot happened in between Nikita and Colombiana, but the messages stay the same. When Besson is directing you’re assured that there will be a woman in the lead and she will be complex, independent, strong and, with the exception of The Fifth Element, the love story would be a side story and not the main attraction. His resistance to making a romantic love story the core of the female antihero’s journey is one of the things I love about his work. When he does show us our lead’s romantic entanglements, he does show only a side story, a throwaway to the real star of the show, the woman and her journey. He makes the men part of her scenery, her manic pixie dream boys who show her how to lighten up and let go. An extra in the movie of her life whose sole purpose is to give her a glimpse at a life she could have when her journey is complete. He lets his female leads do exactly what any male director would allow their male lead to do without batting an eye. He doesn’t try to sugar coat the reality of the situation by showing them as permanent victims. He allows them to grow, evolve and be who they are, be it good, bad, or a work in progress. His camera loves strong women. Their strength is what makes them beautiful. It does not sexualize them or treat them as less than the men on screen. Through his lens we are all human and we are all equal. And, I can’t think of anything more feminist than that.
Shay Revolver is a vegan, feminist, cinephile, insomniac, recovering NYU student and former roller derby player currently working as a NY based microcinema filmmaker, web series creator and writer. She’s obsessed with most books , especially the Pop Culture and Philosophy series and loves movies & TV shows from low brow to high class. As long as the image is moving she’s all in and believes that everything is worth a watch. She still believes that movies make the best bedtime stories because books are a daytime activity to rev up your engine and once you flip that first page, you have to keep going until you finish it, and that is beautiful in its own right. She enjoys talking about the feminist perspective in comic book and gaming culture and the lack of gender equality in mainstream cinema and television productions. Twitter @socialslumber13.
Throughout the last five seasons of Breaking Bad, the female characters have played key roles–from playing adversaries to aiding and abetting–yet they are often overlooked as secondary characters. In fact, a recent article in The Atlantic doesn’t even mention any of the female characters (save for a passing mention of Jane being a “lovely” secondary character in an infographic). While Walt and Jesse are the focus of the series, and they operate in a largely masculine and man-centric world, without Skyler and Lydia, they would have been stopped long ago.
Skyler thought of the car wash. She got the car wash. She laundered the money and kept it safe. She kept the IRS away from her boss and her household. She is consistently rational and protective of her life and her family.
Lydia provided an “ocean” of methylamine. She had threats to the business taken care of. She expanded the operation overseas, and won’t settle for disappointed customers. She is fiercely in charge of her business.
Marie figured out the details of Skyler and Walt’s deceptions quicker than Hank did. She’s willing to attempt to steal–baby Holly this time, not a spoon–to punish Skyler and protect her niece.
Is there a new holy trinity in Albuquerque?
We can’t help but think about the juxtaposition of scenes in last summer’s “Fifty-One” when Skyler submerges herself in the pool and we cut to Lydia at an electrical grid. Each episode, these two become increasingly invested in and in control of producing and protecting Walt’s legacy. Skyler confronted Lydia at the car wash, but that was her home turf. Surely they’ll meet again–and that meeting (like the water and electricity) could be deadly.
(It’s important to note that this most recent episode, “Buried”–perhaps the most woman-centric of the series–was also directed by Emmy-nominated Michelle MacLaren, who some critics consider the show’s “best director.” Another fun fact? A female chemistry professor is the show’s “lead meth consultant.”)
However, the male characters (and audience members) habitually underestimate the women. Hank assumes Skyler is an innocent victim. “Ladies first,” Declan says to Lydia.
In “Buried,” Skyler and Lydia are rising to the top of their prospective enterprises.
Skyler covers a sickly Walt with a feminine quilt, comforting him, and nursing him back to health. “Maybe our best move here is to stay quiet,” she says, acknowledging that to keep the money and keep all of them relatively safe, they need to not talk. She reassures Walt that Hank seemed to have “suspicions, but not much else.” (She knows this because Hank corners her in a diner and tries to get her to talk and give him something–she refuses, screaming “Am I under arrest?” to get out of the situation.) Hank calls her a victim. By the end of the episode, it is clear that Skyler’s no victim. How far could Walt have gotten without her?
The feminine is highlighted in “Buried,” and given great power.
Lydia visits the meth lab in the desert, where Declan and company are making meth that is not up to her or her Czech clients’ standards. “It’s filthy,” she says of the lab. “What are you, my mother?” Declan responds. They underestimate Lydia. If they would have listened to her and followed her pure-meth protocol, perhaps they would have survived. She covers her eyes as she walks past the carnage that she ordered (she was brought to the desert blindfolded, and chose to leave blindly). She steps next to corpses with her feminine, red-soled Christian Louboutins.
If the cooks had listened to Lydia, things would have ended differently.
Lydia often isn’t focused on as a main character, but those Louboutins are carrying her into a pivotal role. But will she be taken seriously? A critic at Slatesaid, “Her girliness is annoying—calling Declan’s lab ‘filthy’ was sure to make him reference his mom—but she also happened to be right. The man had no standards.” Would Walt have been “annoying” if he had critiqued the way a lab was run? Probably not.
Even with Skyler and Lydia’s power plays and scheming, too many are still focused on the likability of the female characters. (In a thread on Breaking Bad‘s facebook page right now, hoards of people are calling for Skyler to be beaten or killed.) Lydia is too “girlish.” And Marie? “She is so annoying that she deserves to die.”
Critics and audiences wring their hands over who we’re “supposed” to like in Breaking Bad. If we operate in high-school superlative absolutes of “most likable” and “most hated,” how would Vince Gilligan have us categorize the characters? Are we truly supposed to feel good about liking anyone but Jesse?
In reality, we’re allowed to like male characters who maim, kill and hurt children. We’re allowed to root for male anti-heroes and revel in their dirty dealings. The women? Well, if they’re not likable, Internet commenters want them dead.
In “She Who Dies With the Most ‘Likes’ Wins?” Jessica Valenti argues,
“Yes, the more successful you are—or the stronger, the more opinionated—the less you will be generally liked… But the trade off is undoubtedly worth it. Power and authenticity are worth it… Wanting to be liked means being a supporting character in your own life, using the cues of the actors around you to determine your next line rather than your own script. It means that your self-worth will always be tied to what someone else thinks about you, forever out of your control.”
And while I’m fairly certain Valenti wasn’t cheering on money launderers, murderers, or meth dealers, the women of Breaking Bad have appeared to break bad. Their moves will undoubtedly decide the course of the rest of the series.
Audiences, though, too often want to box female characters into “likable” and “hate and kill” categories. While Skyler populated the latter category for years, it seems as if people are now–to an extent–trying to wedge her into the “likable” category. (This critic lauds her as the “best character” on Breaking Bad, and describes her as a wife and mother and extols the virtues of her as a moral center–why does she have to be moral to be a good character? Is it because she’s a woman?)
The Breaking Bad social media team coined #Skysenberg after “Buried,” showing that Skyler has crossed over and fully enmeshed herself with Heisenberg. (This is awfully and misguidedly close to her taking her husband’s name and adopting his characteristics. Because Skyler isn’t necessarily doing what she’s doing to protect Walt.)
This symbolic move into Walt’s court, though, won her some new fans:
Ugh, awful women.
High five, bro!
Heisenberg is sacred–no girls allowed!
And that’s what’s most important.
Yes. You’re right. Everything he did was for her.
Ding ding ding!
Skyler doesn’t care if you like her. Neither does Lydia. Or Marie. Gilligan himself recognizes the hatred and has said, “I think the people who have these issues with the wives being too bitchy on Breaking Bad are misogynists, plain and simple.” Skyler, Lydia and Marie are poised to decide the outcome of Breaking Bad. Skyler is calling the shots instead of Heisenberg. Lydia is decimating–and will certainly replace–a drug cartel. Marie desperately wants to see Walt and Skyler punished; her desire for revenge seems to overshadow Hank’s desire to protect his career.
In the excellent “I hate Strong Female Characters,” Sophia McDougall points out that
“If Strong-Male-Character compatibility was the primary criterion of writing heroes, our fiction would be a lot poorer. But it’s within this claustrophobic little box that we expect our heroines to live out their lives.”
Skyler and Lydia especially are clearly breaking out of these boxes, and Marie isn’t very far behind. But aren’t women supposed to be moral centers? Aren’t their roles as “wife” and “mother” supposed to define them? Aren’t they supposed to not get their hands dirty? We are so accustomed to enjoying and eagerly watching male antiheroes, but watching female characters embody the same traits has been, until now, incredibly rare.
At this point in the series, though, these complex female characters are calling the shots. (“The men are basically just sitting around diddling themselves,” my husband said.)
We don’t need to like female characters for them to be well-drawn and powerful (just like we don’t need to like Walt). We need to get over that. Skyler, Lydia and Marie aren’t just wives and/or mothers anymore. The are characters–not just female characters, or worse yet, “strong female characters.” They are effective and compelling, just how characters who happen to be women should be.
Skyler isn’t Skysenberg. She’s Skyler. And she’s got this.
When I turned 30 last summer, a switch went off inside of me–I was restless, searching and stuck deep in nostalgic thoughts, wanting to be 19 again. I was ruminating about this with my husband and he interjected, “I have indigestion.” I stared at him, and reminded him that I was having an existential crisis. “Hey, you’re dealing with 30,” he said. “I’m dealing with 31.”
I know that my experience is not special or unusual (another 30 realization–my life is really fucking normal, even though I’ve always thought otherwise), and a plethora of films support that theory. The latest film in the catalog of this kind of life crisis (oh, I guess it has a ridiculous name–the “thrisis”) is The Lifeguard, which was written and directed by Liz W. Garcia.
Leigh London (Kristen Bell) is an Associated Press reporter in New York City, and she’s having an affair with her betrothed boss. She covers a story on a tiger that was kept captive in a city apartment and died–and something clicked. She clearly sees herself as this tiger, locked up and trapped, and needs to get out.
She heads back to her hometown in Connecticut to stay with her parents. “I need some time out of my life,” she explains. Leigh–who was always a high-achiever (she was valedictorian)–decides to work as a lifeguard for the summer, just like she did when she was a teenager.
I normally don’t like to bring myself into film reviews, but there are some things you need to know. I was a mild high-achiever in high school and felt unfulfilled with my first jobs out of college, which were in journalism. I was a lifeguard in high school and college. In my scriptwriting course in graduate school, I pitched my final full-length semi-autobiographical screenplay as “like Garden State, but with a female protagonist” (“not enough action,” grumbled my professor). See above, in re: “thrisis.”
My name is Leigh.
I felt like there was a lot riding on this film for me.
Overall, The Lifeguard didn’t disappoint. Well, it didn’t disappoint me. It’s been getting largely unfavorable reviews, most of which echo the idea that this story has been overdone. But most stories have been overdone, and with a plot like this, there’s good reason–this moment in life is full of crises and tensions and people can relate to it.
“I’m the fucking lifeguard, motherfuckers.”
While there are a few minor questionable plot points and it sometimes feels like a first feature independent film (which it is), I was struck by the realistic portrayal of a life hanging in the balance between adulthood and the ache for youth.
Even the moments that felt unbelievable or clunky–well, that’s part of it. That’s part of trying to figure things out.
The filmography and soundtrack were lovely, and the actors were excellent. Leigh’s best friends–Todd (Martin Starr) and Mel (Mamie Gummer)–have lives that appear to be put together, but aren’t really. Todd is coming to terms with his sexuality, and Mel is a vice principal at their alma mater and she and her husband are trying to get pregnant, unsuccessfully. Each character is dealing with a unique but totally normal crisis.
Leigh is self-destructive throughout her journey to herself, and her friends come along for the ride. They smoke cigarettes and pot, buy beer for minors, and at one point, Leigh almost fails to see a struggling child in the pool because she’s stuck in a fantasy. Here’s the female anti-hero that we are always looking for (perhaps that’s why the mostly male reviewers were put off?).
The most destructive decision Leigh makes, though, is engaging in a sexual relationship with a teenager. In attempting to reclaim her youth, she also attempts to revise her virginal teenage experience. While on paper this seems like a dealbreaker, Garcia’s writing and direction made it–dare I say–work? The scenes are uncomfortable and incredibly sexy. They feel different than normal sex scenes, largely because of the focus on Leigh’s satisfaction.
We know it’s wrong. We know it’s destructive. But we are along for the ride, just like Leigh.
Leigh attempts to guide Jason (David Lambert) into better life choices. Their relationship is disturbing, sexy, destructive and strangely realistic.
It’s hard not to draw a parallel between The Lifeguard and The To Do List (The Lifeguard is like its much darker older sister). For the Type-A protagonists, their roles at a swimming pool allow them to be in control yet vulnerable and unclothed. The setting is important, because as female lifeguards, they experience power and vulnerability all at once. The position and pool are also seasonal and fleeting–just like youth. There’s something temporary about being a lifeguard. Leigh is trying to use that position, seeping with nostalgia, to gain something permanent.
In The To Do List, Brandy says, “Teenagers don’t have regrets–that’s for your 30s.” Leigh is trying desperately to hold on before her 30s hit.
Night-swimming in the pool–Leigh is caught between rules and control and wildness.
The Lifeguard delivers a female anti-hero and realistic struggles that women of a certain age face. The film doesn’t, as some reviewers suggest, sink. It goes into the deep end, treads water and gets out of the pool–just like most of us do.
The Lifeguard is available on iTunes and Video on Demand; on August 30, it will play in select theaters.
Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.
Ruth Wilson as Alice Morgan and Indris Elba as John Luther in BBC’s Luther
This guest post by Lauren C. Byrd previously appeared at her Web site and is cross-posted with permission.
With all of the summer tent pole movies premiering, there’s been outcry from audiences (and critics) for the studios to make superhero movies with a woman as the lead. Wonder Woman, understandably, tops this oft-cited list.
While wondering where else in our pop culture there are a lack of female characters—the answer, sadly, is everywhere—something struck me upon viewing the third season of BBC’s Luther.
There was something missing this season. It was harder to get invested in the characters and storylines, even though Idris Elba as Luther is charming and troubled as ever.
The thing missing was: Alice Morgan. In the first series premiere, Alice (Ruth Wilson) commits the perfect crime: the murder of her parents. DCI John Luther, a brilliant detective, who knows criminals’ minds as well as he knows his own, engages in a game of wits with the deliciously evil Alice. Their intriguing relationship becomes the through-line of the first series, tying Luther and Alice together, even as he solves other crimes and deals with his marriage falling apart.
Even with the glut of crime dramas now on television, several of which have female detectives as a lead (The Bridge, The Killing, The Fall), none features a woman committing crimes. All of these series involve women as victims of crimes perpetuated by men.
Maybe it seems a weird question to posit, in a day and age when women are not equally represented in Hollywood, in the boardroom, or in Congress, to ask why there aren’t more female villains on our screens.
One common argument for more parts for women is women make up 51% of the population, yet in last year’s top 100 grossing films, only held 29% of the speaking parts.
Out of homicide offenders (from 1980-2008), only 10.5% were women. White females of all ages had the lowest offending rates of any racial or age group, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s study of homicide trends.
So maybe choosing to have male villains over female is something Hollywood actually got right? You could look at it that way. But isn’t the point to have more equality when it comes to every part of the industry (acting, directing, writing, producing, etc)? If there are well-written female superheroes, there should be well-written female villains.
Glenn Close as Alex in Fatal Attraction
Female villains are difficult to portray without easily falling into trope territory. Female “baddies” tip over easily into emotionally unstable women—often stalkers–like Alex in Fatal Attraction(coincidentally, a role that earned Glenn Close an Academy Award nomination). Women are often thought to commit crimes motivated by emotion rather than with a purely evil intent. Interestingly, in criminological and sociological studies, gender in regard to crime has largely been ignored. Until recently, the extent of female deviance has been marginalized. According to sociology professor Frances Heidensohn, one of the first to study female criminology, one reason for this is because female crime has been dealt with by mostly men, from policework to legislators.
But back to fictional female villains. Even as far back as fairy tales, evil women were often portrayed as obsessive. In Grimm Brothers’ Snow White, Snow White’s step-mother, the Evil Queen, is vindictive and obsessed with being the most beautiful in the land. According to John Hanson Saunders’ book The Evolution of Snow White, when Walt Disney started to develop the fairy tale into an animated film, early concepts characterized her as “fat, batty, cartoon type, self-satisfied.” Walt Disney was not satisfied with this concept and spent time further developing the character. He saw her as a cross between Lady Macbeth and the Big Bad Wolf and wanted her to be stately and beautiful
For a character that is obsessed with her appearance, it is rather ironic that she would choose to temporarily relinquish her beauty when she transforms into the Evil Witch—also referred to as the Old Hag—undertaking an ugly demeanor in order to poison Snow White. In 2003, the Queen (Queen Grimhilde) was named by the American Film Institute as one of the 50 Best Movie Villains.
Charlize Theron as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster
The transformation of the Queen into an “Old Hag” speaks to other frequent characterizations of female villains by Hollywood. They must either be ugly, sometimes old women, or they must be beautiful sirens. In 2003’s Monster, a film based on the life of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, Charlize Theron was cast to play Wuornos. Much of the discussion about the film circled around the choice of Theron, a statuesque model turned actress, as the lead. Rather than discussing the merits of her acting, many simply wondered how it was possible to make such a beautiful woman ugly. Theron won an Academy Award for Best Actress for the role.
On the flip side of old crones and hags, Hollywood uses beauty and the sexualization of women to make them acceptable as villains, most often as femme fatales. The most notable example of this in Hollywood is the use of these characters in film noir, but the archetype dates back to Greek and Roman myths, as well as Biblical figures. A femme fatale is described as a mysterious or seductive woman, who uses her wiles to capture men and lead them into dangerous situations.
Example of the Femme Fatale
Luther‘s Alice Morgan has a bit of femme fatale in her. “Kiss me, kill me, something…” she tells him in the first season. She flirts with Luther, has red hair and large lips and eyes, but her attraction and fascination with John Luther centers around his intelligence. He deals with London’s criminal minds every day, yet still believes there’s good and love in the world. This baffles Alice. A child prodigy, she enrolled in Oxford at the age of 13 and holds a Ph.D in astrophysics, studying dark matter distribution.
After the murder of her parents, Luther is questioning Alice and discovers she’s a psychopath through her lack of empathy. She doesn’t yawn when he yawns, a telling sign to Luther. However, he is unable to prove she committed the murders and moves on to other cases.
The relationship between Luther and Alice is so well-drawn and complex because it is not simply a protagonist vs. antagonist relationship. Alice is a foil for Luther and becomes a trusted friend, despite her psychopathic and narcissistic tendencies. While DCI Luther is on the right side of evil from society’s point of view, sometimes he uses questionable methods to get what he needs to solve a case.
Alice Morgan, a villain in Luther
An increase of female villains in film and television always edges on a slippery slope, as it may lead to characters embodying common tropes and archetypes. Even if there were more female villains, it doesn’t mean they would be as carefully developed and well-written as Alice Morgan.
But just as there are those asking for superheroines, there are actors asking to play the villain. “I would like to play a villainess in some great big action movie. That would be really fun,” actress Allison Janney said during the press tour for The Help.
Wouldn’t it be great if Wonder Woman was up against an evil female mastermind? And if the film was directed by a woman?
Lauren C. Byrd is a former post-production minion, but prefers to spend her days analyzing television and film. She studied film and television at Syracuse University and writes a blog, Love Her, Love Her Shoes, about under-appreciated women in film, television, and theater. She is currently working on an academic essay about Kathryn Bigelow & the controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty.
