‘Pelo Malo’ (‘Bad Hair’): Coding Blackness and Genderqueer Identity

White and non-Black people can have a “bad hair day.” But only Black folks get labeled with bad hair for life, no matter how it is groomed. Especially Black women. Go to any retail store that sells hair products and the ethnic section (read:Black) has more hair creams, gels, mousse, sprays, relaxers, grease, puddings, pomades, hair butter, oils, lotions, to fry, dye and lay that bushy crown to the side. I won’t even get into the hot combs, wigs, weaves, lacefronts, extensions, and clip-ons used to hide a Black woman’s natural hair state. It’s one thing when little Black girls are indoctrinated early to hate their hair, but what about little Black boys who may also be genderqueer? How is this hair struggle tolerated by a homophobic mother struggling to keep her head above water?

Pelo Malo movie poster.
Pelo Malo movie poster.

There is nothing more purifying to the human psyche than when another human being sees you for who you really are and accepts you just as you are. And there’s nothing more soul-crushing than when they don’t. This is at the heart of  writer/director Mariana Rondón’s Pelo Malo as it follows the journey of a young Venezuelan boy named Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano).

Junior is a 9-year-old boy living with his single mother, Marta (Samantha Castillo), and infant brother in a Caracas housing development that looks like an overpopulated urban nightmare. I will call the child Black despite differing racial categories between North America and South America. Every coded Black person on the planet knows who the term “Bad Hair” was created for—persons of African descent with that extra curl in their DNA. Most descendants of enslaved Africans shipped to different parts of the “New World” are a mixture of African, Indigenous (Native), and European heritage. Hair textures will fall anywhere from straight, wavy, to extra thick and tightly curled. Or a mixture of all three.

White and non-Black people can have a “bad hair day.” But only Black folks get labeled with bad hair for life, no matter how it is groomed. Especially Black women. Go to any retail store that sells hair products and the ethnic section (read:Black)  has more hair creams, gels, mousse, sprays, relaxers, grease, puddings, pomades, hair butter, oils, lotions, to fry, dye and lay that bushy crown to the side. I won’t even get into the hot combs, wigs, weaves, lacefronts, extensions, and clip-ons used to hide a Black woman’s natural hair state. It’s one thing when little Black girls are indoctrinated early to hate their hair, but what about little Black boys who may also be genderqueer? How is this hair struggle tolerated by a homophobic mother struggling to keep her head above water?

Most Black boys don’t have hair issues because they are typically shorn of their locks at an early age. I’ve often witnessed Black mothers and fathers letting their son’s hair grow freely while it is still soft baby hair, but the moment it kinks up a little too tight, they cut it off. As long as boys and men keep the scalp lined up right by the barber, and don’t let it get too overgrown and unkempt, the struggle is minimal. Some Black men (and boys) get “texturizers” (basically light relaxers for men), or sport a wave cap overnight to create spiral waves around their scalp. Back in the day it was the Jheri curl or the California curl, where often dark-skinned men suffered chemical treatments like women to get that glossy-curly look that some lighter-skinned men naturally had. Ironically, to me at least, Junior has the silky dream hair that some Black boys and girls in my part of the world would pray for. The boy is naturally beautiful; however, in his mind he knows that the ultimate beauty is straight, European-looking hair.  Famous singers who he likes are his role models. They have straight hair. All his little heart desires in the movie is to take a yearbook picture for the new school year with straight hair. Dassit.

Junior tries to figure out his place in his marginalized world.
Junior tries to figure out his place in his marginalized world.

 

The one friend Junior has in the whole world, La Nina (María Emilia Sulbarán)
The one friend Junior has in the whole world, La Nina (María Emilia Sulbarán)

 

The antagonism stems from his mother Marta, who sees Junior’s fixation with his hair as a huge problem. Not only does her son fuss over his hair and appearance, but he is also effeminate. This is the most painful part of watching Pelo Malo. Marta is a beautiful woman, but her face takes on such ugliness every time she looks at Junior. This child loves his mother to death, spends a lot of time just staring at her, as if trying to figure out the laws of feminine allure. One day Junior sits on a couch watching TV with Marta. He looks over and gazes at her face with such adoration and deep love, but then she snaps on him, “Stop staring at me like that!” From her tone we know he does this often. And we get to witness this longing gaze many times. Marta spends most of her screen time projecting onto Junior her fears of having a gay son. She does some pretty damaging things to try and fix him too throughout the film.

Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano) is fixated on his mother Marta (Samantha Castillo)
Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano) is fixated on his mother Marta (Samantha Castillo)

 

Junior doesn’t break dance like the neighborhood kids, he does a trance-like inner groove with his eyes closed and she is disturbed by it. When she catches him doing this same dance on a city bus, she snatches him up, and Junior doesn’t understand why she is angry. It is literally painful to watch. She piles on the psychological and verbal child abuse. The more that Junior tries to get Marta to love him, she pushes him away. If Venus was a boy, she would be Junior. This fact frightens Marta.

Junior  and Marta don't see eye to eye.
Junior and Marta don’t see eye to eye.

 

Of course, part of Marta’s behavior is rooted in the harsh marginalized environment they live in that punishes perceived deviance. Her son’s burgeoning homosexuality is just one more problem she will have to deal with on top of being poor, single, begging for her underpaid job back, and raising two children, one of which is still nursing from her breasts. Every time she looks at her son, she sees the discrimination, danger, and ridicule they will both have to face against the outside world. But instead of being compassionate, she is angry and perturbed by his mere presence. Her face conveys so much deep-seated hatred for the boy, that at first I thought she was salty with the child because maybe he looked like his father and there was a bad break-up. However, later in the story we find out that she loved the boy’s Black father. Marta’s face softens just talking about him, so the audience has to search for other clues as to her lack of affection towards Junior. She’s constantly pushing/pulling him places, screaming at him outside their bathroom door whenever he locks himself in there to fix his hair in some kind of way that flattens it.

Marta is loving and affectionate with her white-skinned, straight-haired infant son. There is a tender moment where she is topless and bathing the little one. Junior watches (always watching), a sad yearning in his expression. I wondered. Did she ever hold him like that? Kiss him that way? Maybe when his father was alive?

 

Marta bonding with her lighter-skinned, straight-haired little one.
Marta bonding with her lighter-skinned, straight-haired little one.

 

At one point Marta lies on her bed exhausted from her job search, weary from being turned down for security work, something she is trained for. Junior crawls in next to her and tries to comfort her, and she shoves him away. I began to wonder if it was a combination of his non-conforming sexuality and his Blackness that she despised. There are plenty of non-Black women/men who find Black partners and have children, and yet still harbor racial prejudice. There are even Black-with-Black partners that harbor colorism issues regarding light and dark skin tones.

I admit the colorism/affection issue triggered me in this film. I also come from a single parent household where I am the oldest and darkest child, and the sibling I grew up with is fair-skinned, hazel-eyed, and bone-straight dishwater blonde. My mother was auburn-haired and light-skinned, and although she never had issues with my skin-tone, I was young enough to notice how other people (Black, White, Mexican, Asian, etc) reacted when the two of us went places with our mother. My sister was fawned over (her skin, her eyes, her hair), while I was referred to as the reader. Black children (and non-Black children) learn subconsciously (even before they begin to speak) that whiteness and proximity to whiteness is EVERYTHING, and the opposite is viewed as negative.  

Throughout  Pelo Malo there were uncomfortable re-rememberings of myself looking at myself in the mirror when I was Junior’s age, slathering Vaseline or Blue Magic Hair Grease on my hair, trying to slick all that stuff DOWN. Tame it. Control it. Essentially hide all that made me stand out as the really Black one in the family. So I was all in my feels watching Junior struggle to get that elusive straight hair. It’s not a comfortable experience to watch a film that basically shows you your childhood and how painful it was. I realized I had built up a lot of buffers around my own hair/skin color trauma.

Grandma Carmen (Nelly Ramos) teaches Junior to sing and dance.
Grandma Carmen (Nelly Ramos) teaches Junior to dance and get loose.

 

Junior’s only saving grace is his Black paternal Grandmother Carmen (Nelly Ramos). The moment I see Carmen’s teeny-weeny ‘fro, I know this is a woman who embraces her natural beauty. She doesn’t sport a wig, or straighten her locks. She plays music and likes to dance. She even straightens Junior’s hair when he asks just so he can see what it would look like, but she admonishes him to wet it back up before his mother comes to get him. She spots right off what is evident about her grandson. He is not a hard boy. He is concerned with his appearance. He wants to be a singer. He wants straight hair for his yearbook picture. Grandma Carmen obliges by making him a suit that looks like something the singer Prince would wear. This time spent with Carmen is a respite for Junior, but unfortunately the need for Marta’s love and acceptance is so strong, Junior convinces himself that Grandma Carmen is trying to turn him into a girl. The frilly suit he found so delightful stitched from his grandmother’s hand becomes a suit of shame.

 

Grandma Carmen straightens half of Junior's hair so he can see his desire.
Grandma Carmen straightens half of Junior’s hair so he can see his desire.

 

Grandma Carmen (Nelly Ramos) shows Junior how to sing like a rock star.
Grandma Carmen (Nelly Ramos) shows Junior how to sing like the star he wants to be.

 

In the end, Marta tells Junior he can only stay with her if he cuts off all his curly ringlets. The hair has become a symbol of Black queerness for Marta. It must be vanquished. It’s a devastating blow, and the last shot we have of Junior is a gut-wrencher. He is in his school uniform wearing close-cropped hair. Unsmiling. It is the yearbook photo. But not the one he wanted.

Pelo Malo ends with no issues resolved, and no hints that life will change or be better for Junior. However, there is one ray of hope in the end credits. We get to see what Junior looks like wearing his grandmother’s Prince-like suit. His hair is blow-dried straight and he dances to his grandmother’s favorite song. He looks glorious. And free.

I left the theater thinking, “How many Juniors, male/female/gay/gender-neutral/genderfluid/transgender/non-binary are out there in the world?”

I know there are millions. And we must be vigilant in holding safe spaces for those children to grow, discover, and define themselves on their own terms. Children like Leelah Alcorn, who recently took her own life because she couldn’t be the person she needed to be. That is the lesson of Pelo Malo.

If nothing else, people should see this little gem just to gaze at the beautiful face of actor Samuel Lange Zambrano. The weight of this movie is carried on his thin little shoulders, and he handles it like a pro. He is perfection.

 

 

The riveting Samantha Castillo(Marta) and the perfection that is Samuel Lange Zambrano (Junior)
The riveting Samantha Castillo (Marta) and the perfection that is Samuel Lange Zambrano (Junior)

 

_______________________________

Lisa Bolekaja is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop and a former Film Independent Fellow. She co-hosts a screenwriting podcast called “Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room” and her work has appeared in “Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History” (Crossed Genres Publishing), “The WisCon Chronicles: Volume 8″  (Aqueduct Press), and the SF/F anthology, “How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens” (Upper Rubber Boot Books). Her latest SF story “Three Voices” will be forthcoming in Uncanny Magazine.

The Best Mates You’ll Ever Have: ‘Misfits’ the TV Series

I caught up on the series and decided that hands down, it’s one of the best genre TV shows around. It’s a success not because of the kooky Sci Fi aspects of the show, but because of the diversity of the characters in race, class, and language, and also the engaging representation of women. The characters all start off as archetypes in the beginning of the series, but slowly over the course of the first season, layers are revealed and the audience grows to love each misfit for being the messy and vulnerable people they really are.

Misfits TV Series
Misfits TV Series

 

I was introduced to the British TV show Misfits by accident in 2012.  In the parlance of my inner voice, the show became “my shit.”

I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of the Misfits show before. Moi, who was so on top of the smart Sci Fi British flick Attack the Block the previous year. Yours truly who was always looking for cool Sci Fi movies and TV shows from other countries–especially if they had people of color in them. I was kinda miffed with myself, especially since Misfits had been around since 2009. Not only had I missed it, but my ass was really late on the come up too. The shame!

I caught up on the series and decided that hands down, it’s one of the best genre TV shows around. It’s a success not because of the kooky Sci Fi aspects of the show, but because of the diversity of the characters in race, class, and language, and also the engaging representation of women. The characters all start off as archetypes in the beginning of the series, but slowly over the course of the first season, layers are revealed and the audience grows to love each misfit for being the messy and vulnerable people they really are.

 

Alisha (Antonia Thomas), Curtis (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Kelly (Lauren Socha), Nathan (Robert Sheehan), and Simon (Iwan Rheon)
Alisha (Antonia Thomas), Curtis (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Kelly (Lauren Socha), Nathan (Robert Sheehan), and Simon (Iwan Rheon)

 

At the start of the series, Curtis (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), Alisha (Antonia Thomas), Kelly (Lauren Socha), Simon (Iwan Rheon), and Nathan (Robert Sheehan), all have committed minor offenses that have made them delinquents who must perform community service for a local community center. Forced to wear loud orange jumpers, they are required to serve out a term of about three months under the guidance of a probation officer. Most of their service work is picking up dog shit from the streets, helping elderly citizens, or collecting trash and debris at various assigned locations. Most times the misfits sit around bitching on the roof of their community center, trying to figure one another out. It becomes clear who the archetypes are early on.

Curtis is the local track star, accustomed to getting girls with his athletic prowess. Alisha is the typical gorgeous girl who every guy wants, and spends a lot of time fluffing her curls, or putting on make-up. (What isn’t typical about her from my Black American perspective is that this Black girl is the ultimate hottie for all the boys and men near her, Black, white, Indian, Asian,etc). Kelly is the tough girl from the wrong side of the tracks, ready to fight anyone who she thinks makes fun of how she talks (a class giveaway) or infers she’s just a chav. Simon is a socially awkward introvert. Nathan, the comic relief of the series, has a “live for today” attitude that annoys everyone. They are truly misfits among themselves, and in normal circumstances, would never choose to be around one another.

While performing their community service outdoors, they are assaulted by a freak thunderstorm that hurls fist-sized hail stones down upon them. Unable to reach the indoor safety of the community center, they are all zapped by lightening. Surviving the preternatural lightening strike, the crew discovers that they each have developed unique powers. They have to master them quickly because as the show progresses, these powers will help save them from other victims of the freak storm. Victims who become antagonists.  Victims who use their unusual powers to bring crisis, chaos, and even death for some of the misfits.

And talk about powers.

Curtis, who has deep regrets about his failed track career, now has the ability to go back in time and change history.

Alisha, known for having casual sex without regards to the feelings of her partners, has the power to make anyone desire her sexually by simply touching them. Even if she isn’t attracted to them. She can no longer experience the joy of human contact in any form.

Kelly, who was always conscious and on edge about how she thought people viewed her, can now read minds. She gets to hear exactly what people think about everything.

Simon, who already felt invisible and overlooked by people, literally becomes invisible at will.

And Nathan, the class clown and bothersome trickster who lived in the moment? He doesn’t have a power. Envious of the others, he spends the entire first season trying to figure out what his power could be. Eventually he dies at the end of the season. No worries though. We learn with Nathan that he’s an immortal. Great. The most annoying character will last for eternity.

The rest of the series and consecutive seasons (five in all), follow their trials and tribulations, and if this had been a lesser show, probably wouldn’t have held my interest after a couple of episodes. But the characters are so rich. And there’s lots of sex, drugs, dance raves, fantastic background music, and the best romantic pairing of two unlikely people. There’s no way this show could fail me. And did I mention lots of sex?

 

Kelly (Lauren Socha) and Alisha (Antonia Thomas) share a little girl time.
Kelly (Lauren Socha) and Alisha (Antonia Thomas) share a little girl time.

 

My favorite aspects of the show (besides the sex positivity) are the growth of the characters and the depictions of the women. What intrigues me about Kelly the tough girl, and Alisha the hottie, is the reversal of the depiction of white and Black female characters. Know this: had Misfits been an American show, Kelly, the white female, would have been the desired woman with the apex standard of  beauty. Alisha would be portrayed as the toughie, the strong black woman from the wrong side of the tracks. It is so refreshing to see a Black woman centered as beautiful to all men on TV. (I must point out that Alisha walks a thin tightrope of the Jezebel trope that haunts Black women in the media. But her character arc supersedes my Jezebel concerns later in the series.)

Misfits introduces a lot of  Black female minor characters who we meet in various episodes, all of them (except for one who has beef with Kelly in an early episode) are centered as beautiful and desirable by all men. To white women, and non-Black women of color, this may not seem like a big deal, mainly because white female beauty standards across the globe are heavily touted as the ideal—straight hair, thin lips and nose, slender body, and light-colored eyes. Black women the world over spend billions trying to attain a white standard of beauty. (Hair weaves and relaxers, skin bleaching creams, rhinoplasty etc.) On Misfits, Black British women of all hues, body types, and hair textures, are treated as equally desirable as their white counterparts. I watched the show thinking, “Man, the creators of this show have love for the sisters.” This was happening in 2009 when Misfits debuted. In America, it was not until Scandal came on the scene in 2012, that there was a sexy lead Black female being fought over by men (especially non-Black men) on a major TV network. Sleepy Hollow and Gotham have joined the mix in 2014 bringing much attention and centering the beauty of actresses Nicole Beharie, Lyndie Greenwood, and Jada Pinkett-Smith. But Misfits was doing this on the regular since 2009.

 

Black Girls Are Magic. Alisha (The Flawless Antonia Thomas)
Black Girls Are Magic. Alisha (The Flawless Antonia Thomas)

 

Kelly is a treat for me also because for one thing, she is what the old-timers call a broad. Not necessarily a lady, or a bitch, but a woman who can handle her own. Kelly is bawdy, boozy, and will knuckle up on a dude with a quickness. She’s a working-class plain Jane on the surface, but will curse you out with English slang, break into a building if she needs to without skipping a beat, and smoke you out with some herb if you need to talk it out. She’s built like a Rubenesque Goddess, and yeah, her bra may not fit properly with all that thickness, but she cleans up swell when she needs to, and she’s loyal to her mates. A boss chick who will ride or die for the misfit crew. And I love her for it. Her beauty comes from inside and through her actions. She’s not a Mary Sue, nor side-kick babe. Both Kelly and Alisha are treated as equals among the male characters, and their leadership at various times has saved them from the bad guys. As Season 3 commences, Kelly and Alisha are unlikely friends for life. Their bond is genuine. And the men grow from viewing them as possible sexual conquests to one of the homies.

 

My Gangster Goddess, Kelly (Lauren Socha)
My Gangster Goddess, Kelly (Lauren Socha)

 

 

My favorite Misfits. Alisha, Kelly, and Simon.
My favorite Misfits: Alisha, Kelly, and Simon.

 

Misfits plays with gender roles in Season 3. The crew loses their powers, but are given the opportunity to acquire new powers from a “power dealer.” After losing his time-traveling skills, Curtis gains the power to change his sex at will. He uses it to run track again, but this time on a Women’s team. He names his female self “Melissa” and strikes up a friendship with a fellow female runner. After having sex with the female teammate, as a man (and as a woman later) he soon discovers that the sexual prowess he thought he had was really bad self-serving sex. He also learns inadvertently as Melissa, that he’s a whiny chap that needs to grow up and get over is track star past. What’s a guy to do? He starts self-pleasuring himself as a woman to learn how to really make love to a woman as a man. When Simon asks Curtis if he’s a lesbian, Curtis replies, “I don’t think there’s an official term for this shit.” I want to tell him, “Yes love, it’s called being free and genderfluid.” There’s an honesty here that is refreshing. We are a part of Curtis/Melissa’s discovery of non-gendered sexuality. Curtis masters autoerotic pleasure to become a better lover. And much like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, Curtis becomes a better man by being a great woman. Of course, things get a little wonky when Curtis gets himself pregnant!

 

Venus as a Boy. Curtis is about to gender swap.
Venus as a Boy. Curtis is about to gender swap.

 

 

 

I'm coming out! Melissa, a.k.a Curtis (played by Kehinde Fadipe)
I’m coming out! Melissa, a.k.a Curtis (played by Kehinde Fadipe)

 

With all the fun, zany, and often poignant things that happen to all the characters on Misfits, my favorite character out of the bunch is Simon. Simon has the most dramatic character arc, literally doing a 180 degree turn from when we first meet his shy, bullied, and often sketchy behavior in Season 1. He has a good heart, but lacks the confidence to be the true leader he really is deep inside. Hands down, he has the best genre love story I’ve seen in awhile. His transformation and how it happens is based on his love affair with Alisha. Trust me when I say, you will root for these two unlikely lovers to be together forever. Simon sees Alisha’s inner beauty, and Alisha sees his inner strength of character. It is real true love, and how it’s handled in Misfits is brilliant.

 

My boo. Simon (Iwan Rheon)
My boo: Simon (Iwan Rheon)

 

True Love, Simon and Alisha. (Iwan Rheon and Antonia Thomas)
True love: Simon and Alisha (Iwan Rheon and Antonia Thomas)

 

Sadly for me, there were major cast changes in Seasons 4-5. All my favorite characters were gone, replaced with new faces and new powers. The fun continued, but it was harder for me to enjoy because I was so invested in the original cast. I missed the sisterhood of  Kelly and Alisha, and I especially missed the surprising and sweet Simon/Alisha romance. With mates like these, you want to hand out at the pub forever. Trust me. Go watch it now. You won’t regret it.

 

Freak lightening storm that started it all.
Freak lightening storm that started it all.

 

 

I even learned to love snarky Nathan (Robert Sheehan)
I even learned to love snarky Nathan (Robert Sheehan)

Why ‘The Babadook’ is the Feminist Horror Film of the Year

Firstly, ‘The Babadook’ complicates the depiction of women as primarily victims by presenting Amelia as a complex and multi-faceted figure. For one, she is a not a young big-breasted girl but a mother and fully grown woman. This is not necessarily groundbreaking in itself.

Written by Sarah Smyth.

“If it’s in a word, or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook…”

The poster for 'The Babadook'
The poster for The Babadook

 

So begins the bedtime story read by Amelia (Essie Davis) to her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman) in the hit Australian horror film, The Babadook. The story focuses on Amelia, a single mother whose husband died in a car crash on their way to the hospital to have Samuel, as she struggles in her role as a parent to her difficult, troubled, and increasingly erratic son. Samuel is afraid of monsters, believing them to be waiting to get him come nightfall. He frequently sleeps in bed with Amelia, and makes his own contraptions to protect both of them. His behaviour becomes so disruptive, however, that he is kicked out of school. One night, Amelia and Samuel read the story of the Babadook in a creepy pop-up book which Amelia has no recollection of owning. The Babadook, a sinister and scary ghoulish figure, will never leave after its presence becomes known. After they read the book, strange occurrences take place, and the rest of the film follows their terrifying encounters with the Babadook.

Amelia and Samuel read the creepy book about the Babadook together
Amelia and Samuel read the creepy book about the Babadook together

 

The main strength of the film, in terms of both narrative and gender politics, is the role of Amelia. Before we even consider how women are represented on film, the fact that women are represented on film, particularly by taking on the central role, is an achievement. Not only did only 30 percent of the top-grossing films of 2013 have lead female characters, but a huge number of films still fail the Bechdel test. In terms of race, the picture gets even worse as 73 percent of female characters are white. However, simply making female-led films and passing the Bechdel test is not enough. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Transformers: Age of Distinction all pass the test, yet the film’s treatment of women on (and apparently off) screen is atrocious. After Megan Fox quit the franchise, apparently likening Michael Bay, the films’ director, to Hitler, Shia LaBeouf commented that Fox developed “this Spice Girl strength, this woman-empowerment [stuff] that made her feel awkward about her involvement with Michael, who some people think is a very lascivious filmmaker, the way he films women.” The Transformers franchise makes apparent that, in order to get a more accurate look at the role women play and the impact women have in the film industry, we must look at how women are represented on screen as much as whether women are represented at all.

The 'Transformers' franchise demonstrates why the Bechdel test doesn't always cut it...
The Transformers franchise demonstrates why the Bechdel test doesn’t always cut it…

 

Horror films, in particular, demonstrate this case. Although women are often the lead character in this genre, the representation of women as a whole is often problematic at best. When filming The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock famously claimed he always follows the advice to “torture the women!” something which apparently happened as much off-screen as on-screen. As Sydney Prescott noted in the horror-parody franchise, Scream, horror films often depict “some big-breasted girl who can’t act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door.” Both Hitchcock and Sydney’s comments demonstrate women’s twofold role in the horror genre: victim and sexual object.

Firstly, The Babadook complicates the depiction of women as primarily victims by presenting Amelia as a complex and multi-faceted figure. For one, she is a not a young big-breasted girl but a mother and fully grown woman. This is not necessarily groundbreaking in itself. The Others, The Ring, and Dark Water all depict their central characters as mothers. However, none so brilliantly present their central character as complicated as Amelia in The Babadook. Amelia is not only a victim and a mother but a colleague, potential lover, sister, neighbor, and grieving widow. The strength of the narrative is the way in which the film meshes the difficulties of being a mother to a troubled child with the haunting of the Babadook, and the way in which this complex combination strains all Amelia’s relationships. It also causes her to lash out at her neighbor, miss days at work, refuse advances from potential partners, and fall out with her sister. But whether it’s the stress of being a mother or the terror of the Babadook remains ambiguous as the film presents her identity, relationships and experiences as layered and complicated.

Secondly, The Babadook consciously subverts the conventional depiction of female sexuality in horror films. Broadly speaking, female characters are either presented as “virgins” or “whores,” where they are punished “appropriately,” or female sexuality is presented as something excessive, disgusting and monstrous. In her authoritative and brilliantly titled book, Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in Modern Horror Films, Carol Clover outlines the trope of the Final Girl in the slasher film. The Final Girl, she claims, is the films lead character, who, as both the victim but also the only survivor in the film, serves as both the site of the audience’s sadistic fantasies, and the anchor for the spectator’s identification. Primarily aimed at young heterosexual men, the Final Girl must be “masculine” enough so that this (assumed) spectator can identify with her; she is often androgynous or tomboyish in appearance and sometimes in name. More crucially, she must be sexualised but never sexual; she must provide the fleshy site for the heterosexual male’s voyeuristic fantasies but she must never have autonomy over her own body and sexuality. In fact, she is often virginal. If a woman does have sex in these films, she is branded a “whore” so quickly gets killed off. Examples of films which conform to these tropes include Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and, more recently, You’re Next. Post-modern pastiche horror films including Scream and The Cabin in the Woods also play on the trope. On the other hand, as Barbara Creed discusses in her book, The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis, female sexuality is also presented as grotesque and terrifying, reflecting, she claims, male anxieties over female sexuality. Examples include The Exorcist, The Brood, and Carrie.

Laurie in 'Halloween' is a typical example of the Final Girl trope
Laurie in Halloween is a typical example of the Final Girl trope

 

The Babadook subverts these conventions by presenting woman in possession of (healthy) sexual desire and needs. In one scene, Amelia watches a romantic film alone before going up to her bedroom and taking out her vibrator. Her night of pleasure is ruined, however, after Samuel interrupts her claiming he is terrified of his own room and so cannot sleep in it. Her disappointment is evident; motherhood, it seems, can be as much frustrating as it can be difficult. Crucially, however, the film not only radically foregrounds female sexuality and desire, something which horror films, as I demonstrate, conventionally dismiss. It also links the terror of the Babadook with Amelia’s frustrated lack rather than an excess of grotesque and monstrous sexuality. At moments, the Babadook manifests itself in the form of her late husband. When Amelia first sees him, she passionately hugs and kisses him, clearly missing the affection and sexual intimacy offered from a romantic partner. Only after the Babadook, disguised as her husband, asks for her to bring him the child does she realise that this is a trap. Her husband cannot and will not come back to fulfill the needs she so desperately craves. The Babadook, like the grief she feels for her husband, will continue to haunt Amelia forevermore, serving as a constant reminder of the loss of sexual desire and intimacy which the death of her husband so tragically caused. The terror of the Babadook, then, is as much about the loss of a treasured presence as well as the intrusion of an unwelcome presence.

The Babadook offers a hope for feminist horror fans who are tired of cliché-ridden depictions of two-dimensional, victimised, hyper-sexualised female characters. A film which not only passes the Bechdel test, but presents a complex, multi-layered, sexually autonomous central female protagonist, The Babadook offers hope that the horror genre will shift its depiction of lead female characters to create more compelling, engaging and accurate representations of women onscreen.

___________________________________

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.

‘Demons:’ Finding New Language for an Old Cult Classic

I am a horror fan and most times I root for the monster. There, I said it. I root for what should be the feared. The dreaded Other. With all the loaded symbolism that the horror genre represents (fear of sex, fear of the unknown, fear of death and decay, xenophobia etc), I find it cathartic and often liberating to root for the disruption of life as we know it. I love watching humans deal with chaotic change.

Movie Poster of "Demons"
Movie Poster of Demons

Confession.

I am a horror fan and most times I root for the monster. There, I said it. I root for what should be the feared. The dreaded Other. With all the loaded symbolism that the horror genre represents (fear of sex, fear of the unknown, fear of death and decay, xenophobia etc), I find it cathartic and often liberating to root for the disruption of life as we know it. I love watching humans deal with chaotic change.

Chaotic change occurred for Hollywood in the 1980s when pretty much everyone I knew owned a VCR player and collected VHS tapes. People could lounge in the comfort of their own homes for just $1 (I remember paying that the first time I rented a tape at the neighborhood video store, before chain retailers like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video existed). For a junior high kid, this was cinema gluttony on the highest order. I could practically watch anything as many times as I wanted in my pajamas eating chocolate pudding and drinking Dr Pepper.

Although I was exposed to Italian giallo films early on at the drive-in while in grade school with classics like Suspiria, my viewing of the film Demons in the comfort of my living room introduced me to a whole new level of crazy Euro-gore. It also gave me a sneak peek of an actress who would later become a good friend in my adult years.

Demons (1985) has all the elements that make a great Euro-gore campy flick: tons of unearthly bodily fluids, unholy creatures ripping out of humans, bloody demonic possession, supernatural Nostradamus predictions, and a movie theater built on top of a gateway to hell. Classic Italian horror has no chill and will throw in everything and the kitchen sink. The actors are gorgeous and the movie has the quintessential throbbing 80s soundtrack with, for goodness sakes, Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” pumping the action along. Microwave popcorn heaven. The movie plot was ripe for a horror cinefile like myself.

Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) and Kathy (Paula Cozzo) arrive at the theater.
Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) and Kathy (Paula Cozzo) arrive at the theater.

 

In a nutshell, Demons follows two college students, Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) and Kathy (Paula Cozzo), as they arrive at an ominous movie theater to see a free screening of an unknown movie. Cheryl was given a flyer in a subway station by mysterious man wearing a silver half-mask that concealed part of his face. Cheryl convinces Kathy to skip classes. In the theater lobby they encounter other movie patrons arriving, including a Black pimp and his two working-girls, one white, the other Black. Rosemary (the Black working-girl) sees a demonic silver mask hanging on a motorcycle display. She playfully puts on the mask only to have it scratch her face and draw blood. This being horror’s obligatory symbolic penetration (orally) of a female character. It’s the catalyst that ignites the evil to come.

 

Rosemary Wears Mask
Rosemary (Geretta Geretta) playfully wears mask that cuts her cheek.

 

Eventually the audience settles in to watch what turns out to be a horror movie (surprise!) about people discovering an ancient book and the same silver mask that Rosemary put on in the theater lobby. Rosemary’s wound starts to bleed again while watching the events unfold onscreen, so she goes to the restroom to staunch the blood flow, which has gotten worse, .. …yikes…it’s turned into squirting yellow puss. She becomes demon possessed and transforms into a hideous, green vomit-spewing supernatural contagion. Shenanigans ensue.

 

Rosemary (Geretta Geretta) becomes possessed.
Rosemary (Geretta Geretta) becomes possessed.

 

What I always found to be a cool element of Demons was the film in the movie foreshadows what is to come for the film audience. And there are moments when the audience senses that this “movie” they are watching is not fiction. Eerily, a demon-possessed character in the theater film actually watches the mounting terror of the audience watching it back. The watchers become the watched. There’s also a subversive moment in the film that I latched onto as a kid, that I still find thrilling as an adult. The character of Rosemary (Geretta Geretta) on the surface plays into the classic stereotypical trope of the hyper-sexualized Black woman (she’s a hooker), and also the tiresome trope (and sad joke) of Black and/or non-white characters always dying first. But in Demons, Rosemary doesn’t die, she becomes transformed into a horrific Other, and takes everyone with her. She could kill people outright, or if she scratched anyone, they would turn into a demon too. I loved that element in the film. If she goes down, everyone goes down. She doesn’t disappear or fade into the background as Black characters often do. Hell, even the scorned Black pimp, Tony (Bobby Rhodes), takes on leadership of a more altruistic kind at one point in the film.

The beauty of revisiting old films that you loved as a youngster is that you get to change your mind about it as an adult. My first go-round with the film, I enjoyed the over-the-top craziness, and was actually excited when the heroine, Cheryl (The Final Girl), gets away with another theater patron, George (Urbano Barberini–The Final Boy) in what was a thrilling escape from the literal bowels of hell inside the possessed theater. But Demons throws in a Michael Jackson Thriller video ending, and has Cheryl break the fourth wall by turning around and showing us she has turned into a demon herself. This twist was foreshadowed by the slow camera pan towards the back of her head. I saw it coming but was thrilled nonetheless. Miss Goody two-shoes doesn’t get away.

But in hindsight, I’m now disappointed with this ending.

As an adult I had the pleasure of reading texts about filmmaking, horror theory, and feminist texts discussing the horror viewership of women and all the subtext that brings. As an adult, I view film with a more critical gaze, looking at context as well as content. Fresh eyes bring fresh views. What bothers me now about Demons that bugged me on the surface as a kid, is that Cheryl and George, the characters we are supposed to root for, start off as equals in the beginning, and end up taking on binary gender roles by the end.

 

Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) and George (Urbano Barberini) sense evil in the film they watch.
Cheryl (Natasha Hovey) and George (Urbano Barberini) sense evil in the film they watch.

 

Cheryl and George are strangers when we meet them at the eerie theater. They are both on neutral gender ground. They both are frightened by the movie that they watch together, and they are both proactive in surviving. By sharing Cheryl’s emotional state, George is feminized in a way, and by sharing George’s active behavior in protecting themselves, Cheryl is given masculine traits. There is a balance. But once their friends are possessed and killed, Cheryl becomes a falling, weepy, girly mess that George has to prod along and save. George changes from clean cut preppy-looking Golden Boy in the beginning, into some Mad Max Samurai Warrior hybrid by the end. He turns into a movie superhero. Cheryl turns into a movie damsel you want to scream at. Patronizing patriarchy wins.

 

Tony the Pimp (Bobby Rhodes) leads other demon possessed theater patrons after more victims.
Tony the Pimp (Bobby Rhodes) leads other demon possessed theater patrons after more victims.

 

There is a moment near the end of the movie where gender balance appears to be restored. The mysterious man who gave away tickets to the evil screening stands atop the theater roof where Cheryl and George have made their way up to. There is a struggle, and both Cheryl and George impale the bad buy’s head through a metal pipe together. Shortly thereafter, we learn Cheryl’s real fate. As an adult, this is the moment that shows a missed opportunity to have the rare Final Girl/Final Boy moment alive and together at the end of the movie. Equally frustrating now is the fact that the narrative followed Cheryl in the beginning, castrated her agency in favor of some random guy, and steals her away at the end. Such a different read from my teenaged-self. But of course I’ve watched thousands of hours of film since then. I now have new language to call out what I couldn’t contextualize back then. However, I still have love for this film.

My favorite part of loving this crazy movie is the fact that many years later, while attending the Sundance Film Festival, I was able to share a townhouse with the actress who played Rosemary, Geretta Geretta. I walked into the townhouse kitchen knocking snow off of my boots, saw Geretta and squealed, “Ohmigod! You were in Demons!” Geretta stared at me and said, “You remember that movie? How old are you?”

Me (Lisa Bolekaja) and Geretta Geretta (my beloved Rosemary) hanging out at our favorite Hollywood Thai spot.
Me (Lisa Bolekaja) and Geretta Geretta (my beloved Rosemary) hanging out at our favorite Hollywood Thai spot.

 

We’ve been friends ever since. I convinced her to start going to horror conventions to show people that women love horror too. Rosemary the Demon is just as iconic as Jason, or Freddy, or Michael. Female horror monsters need to be admired and respected too. And Demons is a cult classic. Geretta agreed.

Who would’ve thought that the demonic monster I was rooting for as a teenager would end up being my friend in real life? But it makes sense though. I love monsters. And they love me too.

 

Geretta Geretta taking my advice and bringing female horror icons to conventions worldwide.
Geretta Geretta taking my advice and bringing female horror icons to conventions worldwide.

‘The Good Wife’: Being Bad

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.

Written by Sarah Smyth.

The Good Wife centralizes the conventionally marginalized wife figure
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
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...
Male television characters can be bad…
...whereas a female character must always be good
…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 begins as From colleague to rival to partner, Cary Agos motivates Alicia to be bad
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.

 

‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’ Review

There is so much violence both toward men and women in the movie, but it is so over the top that teamed with the beautiful highly stylized cinematography it is hard to take seriously. This time around, the world of Sin City has a very ethereal dream-like quality that tempers its grittiness a little.

If you are thinking that it’s been a long time since the first Sin City movie came out, you would be right.  It first hit the screen in 2005, meaning it has nearly been a full decade before they have graced us with the sequel. A lot has happened in nine years; Brittany Murphy, who was in the original, passed away under mysterious circumstances. Devon Aioki’s brief reign as “Asian It Girl” has faded from our memories and people like Clive Owen and Josh Hartnett have found better things to do.

Despite myself I loved the first Sin City and on re-watching it I still do. I know it is deeply problematic–the lack of agency of the women in the movie, their constant portrayal as victims who must be rescued by big tough violent men, and their overt objectification are all things that drive me nuts.  The movie isn’t particularly kind to men either, the vast majority of whom are portrayed as greedy, callous, vicious lechers. Even the good guys are mostly anti-heroes. Overall however, the snappy dialogue and visually interesting hyper-stylized cinematography captured me, and I couldn’t help but love the sex workers of Old Town.  They are tough broads, ruled over by Gail played by Rosario Dawson, who live the way they choose, selling what they want and organizing and running their own turf where not even the dirty cops of Sin City can enter without their permission.  If there is going to be a third Sin City movie, can it please center on the sex workers of Old Town?  I feel like there could be many interesting stories to be told there.

Unfortunately Sin City: A Dame to Kill For woefully underutilizes the prodigious talents of Dawson. There are two core female characters: firstly, Ava Lord, played by Eva Green, who is the titular “dame to kill for” and Nancy Callahan, with Jessica Alba reprising her role from the first movie.  Both women, unsurprisingly (this is Frank Miller after all) are highly sexualized. Nancy still works as a dancer at the diner although she is no longer as wholesome as she once was having developed a drinking problem and dreams of revenge following the death of detective Hartigan.  Ava on the other hand is a classic femme fatale who uses her body and Dwight’s complete intoxication with her to further her own murderous ends.

NEftAGjNz7nxim_1_1

One could argue that there are some positives for women’s representation compared to the first movie. Nancy is no longer a passive victim; she turns herself into an avenging demoness in a very dramatic transformation scene and with the help of Marv manages to finally take out the overarching villain of both movies (something no man has ever been able to do despite plenty of trying). I think the whole Joseph Gordon Levitt storyline exists purely to illustrate just how untouchable Roark is and yet there he is, killed by little old Nancy Callahan, former victim of his son and current exotic dancer in the very diner where he plays his high-stakes poker games.

Ava Lord manages to manipulate all the men around her to get exactly what she wants by pretending to be what they want her to be–a fragile woman who needs rescuing from her terribly sad life, someone who needs to be protected from the filth of Sin City. Eva Green is masterful in her handling of the material and manages to bring tonality to what would otherwise be a two-dimensional caricature of a traditional noir vixen.  Ava Lord is a woman who is tired of living in a man’s world and so seeks to carve out a place of her own in it through any means necessary. She is also pretty twisted and appears to take much pleasure in the pain of others and is eventually punished for her sins. As far as wicked women go I’m pretty OK with Ava Lord.

sin-city-2-nancy-poster

There is so much violence both toward men and women in the movie, but it is so over the top that teamed with the beautiful highly stylized cinematography it is hard to take seriously.  This time around, the world of Sin City has a very ethereal dream-like quality that tempers its grittiness a little.

We can all agree that Frank Miller is a misogynist toad, but I think Robert Rodriguez has managed to interpret the source material in a way that is not terrible, helped at least in part by his excellent casting decisions.  It’s definitely not going to win “most feminist movie of the year,” but for a big budget action movie, a genre that is notoriously terrible for the ways in which it depicts women, I found it to be pretty watchable.

l-affiche-de-sin-city-2

The Women of ‘True Detective’ – Madonnas and Whores

Shots of Lisa emphasize her youth, her beauty, the perkiness of her breasts, and the roundness of her ass. Unlike Maggie, she is very sensual and perhaps the opposite of nurturing. She is openly mocking toward Marty and refuses to cater to him emotionally. Marty seems to see Lisa as a necessary evil; she allows him to deal with all the pain and degradation he sees in his job. At one point Marty says in a voiceover sequence says: “You gotta take your release where you find it, or where it finds you. I mean, in the end it’s for the good of the family”–implying that having Lisa in his life allows him to get out his “animal” urges, allowing him to be able to be a good husband and father to his family when he gets home.

As often happens when you live on an island in the South Pacific, I was late to the party with True Detective. Despite the fact that at its core it’s a show about two white dudes trying to save a bunch of ladies who are already dead, I found the show to be quite captivating because of the relationship that grows between the two anti-hero leads: Marty, played by Woody Harrelson and Rust, played masterfully by Mathew McConaughey.  Unfortunately the depth afforded the two leads is not replicated for any female characters on the show.  These are largely made up of sex workers who Rust and Marty come across in their investigations. There have been many analyses of the show’s portrayal of sex workers so I won’t delve into that. However I do want to talk about how the two female characters, who are perhaps most central to the show, personify a Madonna-Whore dichotomy. These are Maggie, played by Michelle Monaghan, who portrays Marty’s long-suffering wife and Lisa, played by Alexandra Daddario, who is his much younger mistress.

true-detective-13

It is pretty easy to see how Maggie is the classic Madonna. She is portrayed as feminine and virtuous, taking care of Marty, raising his children, looking after their home, etc. At the beginning of the season she is essentially sexless. Her initial interactions with Rust are not really flirtatious but simply an extension of her maternal role. She expresses caring and concern over his mental health and shares in his sorrow over the death of his child. She nurtures him and he appreciates her for it. We don’t really know anything about Maggie outside of her relationship to Marty; everything about her seems to be subsumed into caring for him and their children.

maggie

 

For Lisa on the other hand, her sexuality is the largest part of her character, casting her as the Whore to Maggie’s Madonna.  Shots of Lisa emphasize her youth, her beauty, the perkiness of her breasts, and the roundness of her ass.  Unlike Maggie, she is very sensual and perhaps the opposite of nurturing.  She is openly mocking toward Marty and refuses to cater to him emotionally. Marty seems to see Lisa as a necessary evil, she allows him to deal with all the pain and degradation he sees in his job. At one point Marty says in a voice-over sequence: “You gotta take your release where you find it, or where it finds you. I mean, in the end it’s for the good of the family”–implying that having Lisa in his life allows him to get out his “animal” urges, allowing him to be able to be a good husband and father to his family when he gets home.

Rust dismisses Lisa as “crazy pussy” despite the fact that all of her behaviour seems to be quite reasonable considering the circumstances. When they end up in the same bar on their respective dates it is not Lisa who loses control, it is Marty. He is unable to keep his eyes on her and ends up approaching her to harass her. It is Marty, not Lisa, who cannot accept that she has ended the relationship, and it is most certainly Marty, not Lisa, who gets intensely jealous and completely crosses the line by going to her house and beating and threatening her new boyfriend. By any reasonable measure it is Marty not Maggie who is acting “crazy,” but Marty is a man and is entitled to a degree of autonomy and the ability to act out from time to time without facing any consequences for it. Lisa has no such luxury as a woman who has sex with a married man. This is made abundantly clear when she tries to confront him at the courthouse where she works and where Marty is testifying.

Lisa repeatedly tells Marty that he cannot disrespect her like this, that his actions will have consequences. When she confronts him at court, he treats her like a hysterical female despite the fact she has very legitimate reasons for both being furious at him and confronting him openly. It seems logical for her next move to be to tell his wife, however Marty’s reaction is one of fury and confusion. He seems deeply confused that Lisa would firstly, act with her own agency and secondly, act in a way to hurt him. Despite everything he has done to Lisa, Marty seems think that Lisa might be a whore but she is HIS whore and the fact that she would act against him is incomprehensible.

true-detective-alexandria-daddario-naked_0

Maggie, being the long-suffering and virtuous Madonna that she is, takes Marty back eventually and he behaves himself for a time. The upshot of all of this is that in the True Detective universe women are clearly categorized – women who are valuable and worthy and women who are not. As Lisa fulfills the role of whore in his life he feels like he can treat her however he pleases. Whereas with Maggie, who is a virtuous Madonna, Marty must work hard to earn back her love and trust. This explains why Marty reacts so violently when his daughter is found in a car with two boys. He has to punish the boys for marking his daughter as a Whore and not a Madonna. The dichotomy also plays out in the final end of Maggie and Marty’s marriage. In order to ensure that the relationship will end for good, Maggie has to cast herself in the role of Whore by having sex with Rust. To her this is the only way by which Marty will not try and earn his way back into her life and her guess is correct. Once Marty realizes she has slept with Rust she is ruined to him and the relationship is finally over.

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The one positive to me in all of this is the portrayal of Lisa. While Marty does his hardest to push her down and treat her like she is worthless because she sleeps with him, she constantly asserts her agency. From the very first time we see her, turning the tables on Marty and handcuffing him to the bed, right to when she tells Maggie about their affair, she is constantly challenging Marty’s assumptions about her place. This at least serves to disrupt the notion that women who fit the role of Whore are passive and subject to the whims of men. Lisa is also not disposable; she is the one who decides when the relationship should end and firmly asserts the boundary even when Marty acts in ways that are both violent and childish.

Overall, however, the show fell into lazy tropes about women and the ways in which it explored them were not particularly interesting or revolutionary. Hopefully the next season does better.

 

 


Gaayathri Nair is currently living and writing in Auckland, New Zealand. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and tweet her @A_Gaayathri

‘Adventure Time’: Why Lumpy Space Princess is Important

LSP’s character design can barely be called feminine in the ways that we as a society code things feminine. This is especially true if you compare her to other female characters on ‘Adventure Time’ such as Flame Princess and Princess Bubblegum. Her gender markers are the fact that her name is Lumpy Space Princess, the fact that she is pink, and that her speech takes on the patterns and vernacular of a valley girl although her actual voice is low and not immediately parse-able as feminine. The other main gender marker of LSP is the fact that she is into traditionally feminine things such as shopping and make up.

Written by Gaayathri Nair as part of our theme week on Children’s Television.

Thanks to my friend Kaz whose thoughts added much to this post.

Adventure Time has long been admired by feminists and for good reason. On its face, the show is just another buddy comedy type cartoon with its lead protagonists–Jake the dog and Finn the human–two dudes who go on adventures together that are often bizarre and hilarious. However, that description denies the complexity of the show, which deals with themes as diverse as depression, trauma, temporary disability, bullying, dating, relationships, and so much more. The show has many interesting and diverse female characters. One of the most interesting characters on the show is Lumpy Space Princess, commonly known as LSP.

LSP’s character design can barely be called feminine in the ways that we as a society code things feminine. This is especially true if you compare her to other female characters on Adventure Time such as Flame Princess and Princess Bubblegum. Her gender markers are the fact that her name is Lumpy Space Princess, the fact that she is pink, and that her speech takes on the patterns and vernacular of a valley girl although her actual voice is low and not immediately parse-able as feminine. The other main gender marker of LSP is the fact that she is into traditionally feminine things such as shopping and makeup.

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One of her defining characteristics is that LSP is completely unapologetic, often rude, and sometimes vulgar. LSP seems to personify all the negative things we are supposed to believe about women in that she is shallow, vain, not interested in serious things like actually ruling her kingdom, and boy crazy. On top of all that she does this without having any of the things we are supposed to think of as “womanly virtues” like being kind, or gentle, or compassionate. In a traditional fairy tale or even in more contemporary narratives, LSP would automatically be coded as a villain. She ticks all the boxes – she is confident, obsessed with her appearance, and not very nice.

However in Adventure Time, LSP is not a villain, she is a friend of Finn and Jake. Sometimes they don’t really get her but that’s cool, people can be different from each other and still be friends. She sometimes manages to help them out but often screws things up because she is really selfish and also not very self-aware.  For this reason, LSP is a pretty polarizing character in the fandom. People seem to either love her or hate her and to be fair her self-centeredness does lead her to do some awful things. For example in a recent episode Finn decided he wanted to try and cope with his depression over losing his arm by trying to “make out” with lots of people. One of these people is LSP but she is unsatisfied with Finn’s definition of “making out,” which is a chaste kiss on the lips and she forcibly pulls Finn into a deeper kiss when he explicitly told her he didn’t want to. The show doesn’t really process this; it seems to further cement Finn’s depression and make him question whether “making out” is the best way for Finn to cope with not really being able to feel things.  It would have been better had the show found a way for Finn to communicate to LSP that her behavior was not acceptable even though they are friends, but it makes sense for that not to happen because Finn was conflicted about his own behavior and just generally numb about what is going on in his life.

I find interesting, however, that LSP often attracts so much vitriol as the male version of her character, a male person who is self- absorbed, confident, brash and horrible to the people around him is often a very celebrated trope. Think about characters like House or Sherlockof course these characters have an additional quality as they are imbued with the traditionally masculine virtue of being brilliant or incredibly talented/gifted.

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LSP gets no such pass because she is not brilliant, she is just vain and annoying and a lot of the hate she gets boils down to “she thinks she’s so awesome but she’s not.” Even if she was brilliant at something in the way that Princess Bubblegum is, I don’t think she would be embraced in the same way a male character with her disposition would. Look at Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada; despite being imbued with pretty much all of the same qualities as the male characters I discussed earlier she is automatically coded as villainous. While we begin to understand more about her as the movie progresses, she never really loses that shadow of villainy.

I think the existence of LSP is an great thing. To have an unlikeable female character who is not immediately cast as a villain is so rare but I sometimes worry that the joke is meant to be exactly what a lot of people think about LSP, that she thinks she’s so great when it is clear to us as the viewers that she is not actually. I want the joke to be LSP is as exactly as awesome as she thinks she is, but she needs to learn how to learn how to be a better friend and respect other people’s boundaries. That is something that I find much more compelling–everyone needs to learn things as we grow up and LSP is no exception. This doesn’t mean her personality needs to change completely; she just needs to learn how to be more considerate. I hope the writers choose to go in this direction rather making LSP a two-dimensional joke.

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Gaayathri Nair is currently living and writing in Auckland, New Zealand. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and tweet her @A_Gaayathri.

Aria and Ezra’s Problematic Relationship on ‘Pretty Little Liars’

One big problem with how this relationship is portrayed, especially its beginnings, is that it feeds into the mythology that teenage girls are temptresses who seek out older men and seduce them, applying pressure until these helpless men give in against their better judgement. This mythology has real world implications.

Spoiler Warning

The relationsip between Aria and Ezra is established in the pilot episode of Pretty Little Liars. At the beginning, I think the relationship very much represents the ultimate realization of the school girl fantasy that the older guy/teacher/pop-star that you are hopelessly crushing on will see you. Not just notice that you exist but see you for who you really are. Someone who is “different” from all those other girls, someone who is not just a child but a whole person.

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While Spencer considers herself to be the most mature of the Liars, it is Aria’s relationship that is the least like most high school relationships. She and Ezra at times behave like a young married couple. She makes him tea before he goes to work, and they stay in and watch classic movies. Their problems tend to be driven by external factors, Ezra’s mother wanting him to make an appropriate match, Ezra finding out he has a child. these are challenges that we expect to see in a relationship between people in their 20s and of course Ezra  IS in his 20s.

Initially their story follows a fairly well-trodden arc when it comes to older-guy younger-girl relationships. They run into each other at a cafe and get to talking. Ezra assumes she is in college and she does nothing to dissuade those assumptions. They end up kissing in a toilet. Later on in that same episode Ezra finds out pretty abruptly that Aria is only 16 when he turns out to be teaching her English class. He makes out that he wants to do the right thing and says they can’t see each other anymore. She claims that  they have a special connection and is deeply disappointing with his decisions. However he reneges when Aria is sad and kisses her deeply, re-establishing their relationship.

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Generally Ezra’s interest in Aria is presented as fairly unproblematic. Aria’s parents react really badly initially, and they are both conscious that if the truth comes out the consequences could be dire. A fact that doesn’t come up till season four when Ezra returns to teach at Rosewood, is that in Pennsylvania where the show is set, while  the age of consent is technically 16  if  the minor is under the age of 18, the adult can be charged with “Corruption of a Minor,” a  misdemeanor offence,  and if the adult is in a position of power (teacher, clergy, or police for example) it is a felony.

In one scene Aria imagines what would happen if A leaked evidence of the relationship to the school administration and the end result is that Ezra is arrested and ends up in jail. However these appear  to be minor intrusions into their happy life of domestic bliss. Under pressure from their daughter, Aria’s parents become tacitly permissive of the relationship and they manage to avoid any problems with the school administration despite sometimes not being very circumspect on the school grounds. Ezra considers it prudent to leave his position at Rosewood High and moves on to teaching at the local college. He ends up getting fired from there in a last ditch endeavor by Aria’s father to get him to stop seeing his daughter.

The relationship lives in this sort of netherworld where it is both seen as illicit but also fundamentally acceptable because they are in love with each other and that has to mean something. While Aria’s parents react badly the question of why Ezra, a college-educated man in his 20s is attracted to and in love with Aria, a 16-year-old high school girl, the power differential between them is never ever addressed. The subtext that we are meant to swallow is that it is because Aria is exceptional, she is mature and amazing. One of the problems with this though, is that this perception of Aria doesn’t really jive with the many poor decisions she makes on the show that are pretty understandable in a teenage girl.

One big problem with how  this relationship is portrayed, especially its beginnings, is that it feeds into the mythology that teenage girls are temptresses who seek out older men and seduce them, applying pressure until these helpless men give in against their better judgement. This mythology has real world implications. A tragic example of this is the case of Stacey Dean Rambold, who was convicted with raping one of his 14-year-old students repeatedly but only given a 30-day sentence because he believed that  she was “older than her chronological age” and was “as much in control of the situation” as the man who raped her. The judge has since been censured but, this should never have happened in the first place.  Rambold’s victim has since committed suicide in the aftermath of the case.

One could argue that for much of their relationship Ezra is not actually Aria’s teacher; they didn’t meet in that context and so the power differential is not really an issue. I do not believe that large gaps in relationships are intrinsically negative, so if you take the teacher part out of the equation does that make it less problematic? I’m not sure. I don’t want to deny Aria’s agency as a young woman but I still think we would have to question why Ezra would want to have a relationship with someone so young, It would be a little different if he was a 35-year-old interested in a 23-year-old because adolescence is a very difficult time.

 

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The whole thing is made very (even more?) creepy in season four when it is revealed to us that Ezra knew who Aria was from the very beginning. He was aware of her age, he was aware that she was a student at the high school he was going to teach at, and he was aware of her relationship with Alison. So Ezra knowingly committed a felony in order to gain insight into Alison and her friends for his book – at least this is what he claims. He is effectively a stalker who manages to convince Aria that they have a very special relationship. He uses his prior knowledge of her to manipulate her. This pretty much sinks the final nail into the coffin on this relationship with me. I think overall I come down on the side that the Aria/Ezra relationship is highly problematic and I am interested to see how the show goes on to handle these new revelations about him.

 

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Gaayathri Nair is currently living and writing in Auckland, New Zealand. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and tweet her @A_Gaayathri.

Black Widow is More Than Just a Pretty Face in ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’

Interestingly and unfortunately, most reviewers have been unable to see this. Her costume is tight, but then so is the captain’s and we are not treated to lingering shots of her butt and cleavage; in fact, most of the time we are looking at her face and not her body. Generally speaking the captain is at least if not more so objectified than she is and yet we do not seem to allow that to interfere with his essential humanity. This is often not the case when it comes to the perception of Johansen’s character. People can’t seem to see past the fact that she wears a cat suit even when she does so much more than look sexy. Like most action movies, this one doesn’t pass the Bechdel test but unlike most action movies it provides us with a female character who is actually a character in her own right.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier was everything I expected and a little more. Captain America has always been the strait-laced cousin to Iron Man and Thor. It doesn’t have the campy good humour that is so delightful about Thor or the kind of brash arrogance that typifies Iron Man.  Captain America is generally the “nice guy” of the Marvel universe. Co-headlining is Scarlett Johansen reprising her role as Natasha Romanoff (alias Black Widow) for this movie. Her character was first introduced to us in the universe in Iron Man 2 where her portrayal was that of a sexed-up femme fatal. However over subsequent movies, particularly The Avengersshe has evolved into a pretty decent three dimensional character.

 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The movie opens with Cap, aka Steven Rogers (Chris Evans), and Black Widow having to go rescue some hostages from a covert S.H.I.E.L.D boat that had run afoul of pirates. I was quite excited at first because the pirates spoke French and presented as white to my eyes. “Omg the bad guys aren’t brown people,” I whispered excitedly to my partner. This notion was to be destroyed later when someone said something about “French pirates” to be told something along the lines of ‘They’re Algerian actually.” Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. They are mostly a macguffin anyway. The raid on the boat reveals the fundamental difference between Romanoff and the Cap. He always strives to do what is right while she does what she believes (or is told) is necessary. This is an on-going theme throughout the movie. What is necessary is sometimes not what can be considered morally right, but does that make it any less necessary?

From this point on, it is pretty much what you would expect from a superhero flick. Many fights and explosions held together by a storyline that taps into people’s fears about NSA surveillance and how topical the temptation to trade freedom for security is.  There is some strong messaging about the value of personal liberties and the consequences that can occur when these are overstepped even on the basis of protecting us from what might be lurking out there in the depths.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier also introduces us to another lesser known hero from the Marvel universe, Falcon. Anthony Mackie does a great job and manages to be funny and endearing while also being totally badass. His introduction also provides a much needed perspective about the difficulties soldiers have on their return home, something most action movies don’t touch with a stick. This follows up neatly from Iron Man 3 where Tony Stark was clearly seen to be suffering from mental health consequences from his time in The Avengers. I really appreciate how the Marvel universe movies manage to slip in every now and then that violence is not without consequences to the one who commits it. I really hope we get to see more of Falcon in subsequent Marvel universe movies. It is really great to have the introduction of a super-hero of colour to the film universe and he is a nice addition to the team of Romanoff and Rogers.

Falcon

 

One of the interesting things I have found about the Marvel universe movies is how they play with the heterosexual female gaze. Who can forget the close-up of the Cap’s buttocks while he was working out his frustrations on a punching bag in The Avengers and Thor’s shirtless scenes in both Thor and Thor: The Dark World. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Captain’s body is very much on display. When he is not in uniform he wears an extremely tight white t-shirt that appears to be custom designed to show of each of his muscles. His uniform also appears to be built to highlight his physique.  

captain america wears tight shirt

On the other hand, the movie is blessedly free of a seduction by the Black Widow scene. Unlike in other Marvel movies that she has appeared in (primarily Iron Man 2), she does not need to use her feminine wiles to get her job done. Instead we are treated to a display of Natasha’s tech and problem solving skills. She also kicks ass, Her fighting style tends towards stealthy and efficient in contrast with the Cap’s flashy shield-throwing antics, but that is almost a side note to her intelligence in this movie..

Interestingly and unfortunately, most reviewers have been unable to see this.  Her costume is tight, but then so is the captain’s and we are not treated to lingering shots of her butt and cleavage; in fact, most of the time we are looking at her face and not her body. Generally speaking the captain is at least if not more so objectified than she is and yet we do not seem to allow that to interfere with his essential humanity. This is often not the case when it comes to the perception of Johansen’s character. People can’t seem to see past the fact that she wears a cat suit even when she does so much more than look sexy. Like most action movies, this one doesn’t pass the Bechdel test but unlike most action movies it provides us with a female character who is actually a character in her own right. She doesn’t exist merely to reveal plot points about the captain and provide fodder for the heterosexual male gaze. Black Widow tends to gain unfavourable comparisons to Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster in the Thor movies because Jane is a scientist and doesn’t prance around in skin tight leather. However this is a failure to realise that Romanoff’s leather is a distraction from the quick mind, loyal friend and ruthless agent that she is.  The movie does a great job with providing tantalising details about Natasha’s past, hopefully because they intend to make a stand alone Black Widow movie. I really hope that this is the case because Romanoff is an interesting character that deserves a thorough exploration in her own right.

If you like superhero movies I think that this is one to watch. While the emphasis is definitely on the effects, it also manages to carry a fairly intelligent engaging storyline and entertain throughout.

 


Gaayathri Nair is currently living and writing in Auckland, New Zealand. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and tweet her @A_Gaayathri.

 

The Best Part of ‘Captain America’ is in the Past: An Appreciation of Peggy Carter

Following my geek programming, I re-watched ‘The First Avenger’ in preparation for ‘The Winter Soldier.’ And I was reminded of the sad truth that the best parts of the first flick can’t carry on to this one, because they’re in the 1940s and now Steve Rogers is in the present.

And the best of the left-behind best is Peggy Carter, Hayley Atwell’s British intelligence agent working with the Scientific Strategic Reserve, a precursor to S.H.I.E.L.D. As a British woman surrounded by American military men, Peggy obviously sticks out, but she’s so self-possessed, confident, and skilled that it doesn’t seem far-fetched for her to be in the inner-circle. It’s wonderful to see how the higher-ups, even cad Howard Stark (Tony’s dad) and crotchety Col. Phillips, accept her presence and authority implicitly. The enlisted men who give her guff are quickly put in their place by her tendency to shoot at things that annoy her, which somehow comes across as less reckless than it actually is, probably because she’s so generally competent.

[This review contains potential spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier]

Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes out tomorrow in the US*, with abundant preview showings tonight. I’ve been eagerly anticipating it, even though I remembered Captain America: The First Avenger as just “pretty good,” because I have been programmed by my geeky upbringing to eagerly anticipate all superhero movies.

Further following my geek programming, I re-watched The First Avenger in preparation for The Winter Soldier. And I was reminded of the sad truth that the best parts of the first flick can’t carry on to this one, because they’re in the 1940s and now Steve Rogers is in the present.**

Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter
Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter

And the best of the left-behind best is Peggy Carter, Hayley Atwell’s British intelligence agent working with the Scientific Strategic Reserve, a precursor to S.H.I.E.L.D. As a British woman surrounded by American military men, Peggy obviously sticks out, but she’s so self-possessed, confident, and skilled that it doesn’t seem far-fetched for her to be in the inner circle. It’s wonderful to see how the higher-ups, even cad Howard Stark (Tony’s dad) and crotchety Col. Phillips, accept her presence and authority implicitly. The enlisted men who give her guff are quickly put in their place by her tendency to shoot at things that annoy her, which somehow comes across as less reckless than it actually is, probably because she’s so generally competent.

Peggy Carter shoots at a lot of things.
Peggy Carter shoots at a lot of things.

Peggy gets extra points for showing Steve respect and care before he gets all Hunkified, and then falling for his integrity and heart even with all those distracting muscles. The best thing about Captain America as a character is that his moral decency is as freakishly overdeveloped as his pecs, and that’s clearly what Peggy adores about him, which makes me adore her.

There is no amount of decency that will get you out of this situation
There is no amount of decency that will get you out of this situation

I’ll even give her a pass for getting mad at Cap for locking lips with Natalie Dormer, even though no one should be faulted for kissing Natalie Dormer. Peggy isn’t just jealous, she’s disappointed to see any shade on Cap’s aura of decency, which is much more understandable and forgivable. And of course, Captain was “innocent,” and she forgives him in time to tearfully talk him through his self-sacrifice at the end of the film.

And now Cap’s unfrozen seventy years later, and they’re a Peggy Carter-shaped hole in his story. Fortunately, Hayley Atwell is reportedly appearing in flashbacks in The Winter Soldier. She also starred in her own short film “Agent Carter” included in the Iron Man 3 blu-ray, and has a television series in development. I’m glad we can see more of this great character, but I’m guessing I’ll still miss her in Captain America’s present.

Poster for short film Agent Carter
Poster for short film ‘Agent Carter’

It’s also nice that her independent appearances make Peggy Carter clearly more than a love interest. But I’m still interested to see if the Marvel Cinematic Universe lets Captain America have another love interest, and if she’ll be able to live up to Peggy. In the comics, Peggy’s relative Sharon Carter takes on that role, and Emily VanCamp is in the new film as Agent 13. Hopefully Winter Soldier will overcome Marvel’s occasional issues with the Smurfette principle and develop Sharon Carter successfully alongside Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow. I will let you know how Captain America: The Winter Soldier fares with its female characters in my next piece for Bitch Flicks.

*this is one of the RARE movies that came out in South Africa (and the UK and many other countries) before being released here, but of course I’m visiting home at the time. Oh well, USA USA!
** I mean, comics and comic book movies FIND A WAY to revive and reintegrate characters from the past or beyond the veil. See the eponymous Winter Soldier.

 


Robin Hitchcock is an American writer who is presently in America! USA USA!

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

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

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

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

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Ally, JJ, and Perlina

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Ally JJ Perlina
Ally, JJ, and Perlina

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