Where ‘Ruby Sparks’ Goes Wrong

Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan in Ruby Sparks
Written by Robin Hitchcock.
I expected to either love or hate Ruby Sparks depending on where it took its premise. This premise being: sad sack writer creates a Manic Pixie Dream Girl Character named Ruby Sparks, she manifests into his real life, still influenced by what he writes about her, consequences ensue. I suspected I’d hate the movie if the creation of the woman Ruby Sparks was a happy miracle, and love it if it turned out to be a disaster, depicting the limitations of the fantasy applied to real life. 
But my feelings were more complicated than I expected. I found Ruby Sparks to be an engrossing film that was very uncomfortable to watch, like a good horror movie. But I was also left unsatisfied and disappointed by the film, wanting both a better take-down of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope and a better all-around movie watching experience. 
The first problem with Ruby Sparks is that it takes entirely too long to establish its premise. It’s actually a pretty simple idea for anyone hip to storytelling tropes (even if you don’t know the phrase “Manic Pixie Dream Girl,” you probably recognize one when you see one, and writers with God-like authorial power is nothing new either). While it is realistic that it would take our characters a while to accept this premise was actually happening, it’s frustrating for the audience. We’ve already accepted it before we started to watch the movie, which makes the first forty minute or so of “Yes, REALLY” rather tedious. 
I believe this first problem is a symptom of the second and most serious problem with Ruby Sparks: that the writer who creates her, Calvin, is the protagonist. Given the that film was written by a woman (Zoe Kazan, who also plays the eponymous character), co-directed by a woman (Valerie Feris, alongside Jonathan Dayton, the directing team behind Little Miss Sunshine), and centered on deconstructing an antifeminist trope, I was surprised how much sympathy I was expected to have for the man luxuriating in a hyper-real version of it. 
The Sad Sack in Need of the Love of Good Woman, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl’s counterpoint, is a sexist trope in and of itself. It’s rooted in the idea that only men are burdened by the pathos of true adulthood/personhood, that the expectation to be a Great Man is a constant yoke that women will never understand. In the case of Ruby Sparks‘s Calvin (Paul Dano), he’s suffering the terrible burden of being a literary wunderkind who hasn’t been able to follow up the Great American Novel he wrote in his early twenties.
Zoe Kazan as Ruby Sparks
Calvin’s therapist gives him a writing assignment to help with his writer’s block: write about a person who could love Calvin’s shaggy dog, Scotty, despite his flaws (guess what guys: THE DOG IS A METAPHOR FOR CALVIN! Whoaaaa!). Calvin then dreams (literally) and encounter with Ruby Sparks, a pretty, friendly, charming girl who likes Scotty even though she’s unfamiliar with the works of his namesake, F. Scott Fitzgerald. After this dream, Calvin can’t stop writing about Ruby (on a typewriter! In 2012. Ugh, he’s the worst.)
Calvin at his magical typewriter.
Cultural ignorance is only one of the many infantalizing qualities given to Ruby by Calvin: she can’t drive, she doesn’t own a computer, she “isn’t very good at life sometimes” because she forgets to pay bills and the like. Then there are the deficits in Ruby’s true personhood that aren’t by design, but by omission: Calvin writes that she is a painter, but we never see her paint, and neglects to give her a regular job, or any friends or family. The only outside relationships he gives her are memories of inadequate exes: a high school teacher she had an affair with (thus failing to get her diploma), an alcoholic, another age-inappropriate partner. All to make Calvin the more comparatively worthy. 
While this is all cutting writing on Kazan’s part, doing its work to highlight what makes the Manic Pixie Dream Girl a problematic trope, within the story of the film it comes out of Calvin, which makes him extremely unsympathetic to the audience. But it is clear we’re supposed to be rooting for him: as he swears off writing about Ruby and she becomes more and more human (and less and less interested in Calvin), we’re meant to worry for him. When he succumbs to the pressure to write her back into being the perfect girlfriend and it backfires, we aren’t supposed to fret for Ruby as she suffers extreme mood swings, but rather for their effect on Calvin. We don’t see how “Real Ruby”‘s friends react to these changes, only Calvin. We see how Calvin’s family responds to Ruby, but Ruby doesn’t have a family, because Calvin didn’t bother to write her one. 
I kept wondering if I was reading the film wrong, until the denouement  which confirmed that Calvin is meant to be the main sympathetic character. Having “released” Ruby from his magical creativity, Calvin writes a novel recounting this experience called The Girlfriend. It is met with wide acclaim, duhdoy. Then Calvin, walking Scotty, happens upon a woman in the park. A woman who looks just like Ruby. She acts a little bit more like a real person than the Ruby from Calvin’s original dream, but it’s clear Calvin still has the upper hand: she asks if they’ve met before, because he looks familiar to her, and he points her to his photo in her book jacket, as she’s reading The Girlfriend. The scene is extremely reminiscent of the end of (500) Days of Summer, where despite all the self-entitled jerkwad behavior we’ve seen the main male character go through over the course of the movie, we know he’s the one we’re supposed to be rooting for because he meets another (sorta, in this case) girl. 
This meeting should have read more like the villain in a slasher flick popping out of his grave to kill again, but it really seemed intended to be a heartwarming second chance for a lovable loser. And trying to make Calvin a sympathetic character when he’s acting more like a monster for most of the film makes Ruby Sparks fall apart. It’s not like we couldn’t have had Ruby as our primary protagonist because she’s “not real”, see Pinocchio. It’s a shame that Ruby Sparks asks us to sympathize more with Calvin than the title character, it weakens the film’s mission and makes it much less enjoyable to watch.

Women in Politics Week: ‘Persepolis’

 
This piece on Persepolis, by Amber Leab, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on July 1, 2009.

I rented Persepolis before the recent Iranian election, and have been thinking ever since about the film.

Persepolis is adapted from the autobiographical graphic novels written by Marjane Satrapi (which I haven’t read), and represents the first graphic-novel-as-film. Other graphic novels have been made into films, but none (to my knowledge) have remained as true to form as this. Visually, the film is lovely, stark, and at times deeply disturbing.

In Persepolis, we meet Marjane, a young girl living in Iran at the time of the Islamic revolution of 1979. The society changed drastically under Islamic law, as evidenced by Marjane’s teacher’s evolving lessons. After the revolution, in 1982, she tells the young girls, who are now required by law to cover their heads, “The veil stands for freedom. A decent woman shelters herself from men’s eyes. A woman who shows herself will burn in hell.” In typical fashion, the students escape her ideological droning through imported pop culture: the music of ABBA, The Bee Gees, Michael Jackson, and Iron Maiden.

While the film is a personal story, it does offer a concise history of modern Iran, including the U.S. involvement in the rise of Islamic law and in the Iran-Iraq war. This time in Iranian history is especially important right now, with the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the ensuing protests. One scene in particular depicts a group of people protesting when a young man is shot, bleeds to death, and is hoisted over his fellow protesters’ shoulders–eerily reminiscent of what happened with Neda Agha Soltan, whose public murder has rallied the Iranian protesters and people all over the world.

The history of Iran, while it determines the course of Marjane’s life, really is a backdrop—especially in the second half of the movie. In other words, the film is more about the experience of one woman than a documentary-style account of Iranian history. Once Marjane escapes the society she grew up in, her problems become much more ordinary for a Western audience, more commonplace. She vacillates between different crowds of people. She falls in love and has her heart broken. She feels angst and confusion over who she is and what she wants. She goes home to Iran for a time and, like so many others, ultimately finds she cannot return home.

As evident in the film, Satrapi grew up in a wealthy, educated, progressive Iranian family. They sent her to Vienna as a teenager so she didn’t have to spend her adolescence in such a repressive society, and because they feared what might happen to such an outspoken young woman there. While acknowledging her privilege, not many women in circumstances other than these would be able to accomplish what she has. Satrapi isn’t afraid to show missteps she makes in growing up, either. Young Marjane learns that her femininity, even when repressed by law, offers great power—and shows how she misuses that power. Missing her mother’s lesson at the grocery store about female solidarity, she blames other women for her troubles (“Ma’am, my mother is dead. My stepmother’s so cruel. If I’m late, she’ll kill me. She’ll burn me with an iron. She’ll make my dad put me in an orphanage.”), and falsely accuses a man of looking at her in public to avoid the law coming down on her.

Persepolis is, in every definition of the term, a feminist film. There are strong, interesting female characters who sometimes make mistakes. The women, like in real life, are engaged in politics and struggle with expectations set for them and that they set for themselves. They have relationships with various people, but their lives are not defined by one romantic relationship, even though sometimes it can feel that way.

As much as I like this movie, I can’t help but write this review through the lens of an interview Satrapi gave in 2004, in which she claimed to not be a feminist and displayed ignorance of the basic concept of feminism. I simply don’t believe gender inequality can be dissolved through basic humanism — especially in oppressive patriarchal societies like Iran. I wonder if feminism represents too radical a position to non-Westerners, and if her statements were more strategy than sincerity. Making feminism an enemy or perpetuating the post-feminist rhetoric isn’t going to help anyone. That said, this is a very good movie and I highly recommend it.

A couple of good articles about women’s role in the recent Iranian protests:

The Nation: Icons of the New Iran by Barbara Crossette

Feminist Peace Network: Memo to ABC: Lipstick Revolution FAIL

——

Amber Leab is a Co-Founder and Editor of Bitch Flicks and a writer living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a Master’s degree in English & Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati and a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature & Creative Writing from Miami University. Outside of Bitch Flicks, her work has appeared in The Georgetown Review, on the blogs Shakesville, The Opinioness of the World, and I Will Not Diet, and at True Theatre.

Quote of the Day: Screenwriter/Director Callie Khouri Weighs In On How TV Friendlier to Women

Callie Khouri

In a recent interview with Salon, Academy Award-winner Callie Khouri weighed in on how TV seems to be more friendly to shows about women. Khouri (who wrote Thelma and Louise for that Oscar) is the writer and producer for ABC’s new musical drama Nashville.
Salon asked her about television telling women’s stories and Khouri responded with thoughts that articulate the difficulties in writing feature films about women (adding that “I don’t think any studio in a million years would make Thelma and Louise right now”), and how to properly write stories once you get the green light.

Salon: People who make TV also seem much more comfortable making shows for women than people making movies do.

Khouri: “Because you’re allowed. You’re allowed to make things for women on television and there’s not like … you don’t have to go through the humiliation of having made something directed at women. There it’s just accepted, whereas if it’s a feature, it’s like “So, talk to me about chick flicks.” … I just think it’s insulting that if there is something with women in it, it’s relegated to this kind of trash heap. It doesn’t matter what it is, how good it is, if there is emotion in it, it’s immediately going to be talked down to. And I’m obviously irritated by that. Probably all women are. Certainly a lot of women filmmakers are.Anyway, I don’t want to just complain about features, but it does seem unduly hard given the number of women that exist in the world.”

On the show not being “about a catfight,” even though it starts out that way:

Khouri: “…You come at things from the place where everybody thinks they know everything about what they are seeing. And then you just slowly peel back the layers until you’ve got very complicated human beings with very different sets of problems, all of them doing something that’s impossibly hard to begin with and trying to make their place in this world. Watching two women go at it is boring. There are so many other shows where you can get that. I want it to be about something more than that.”

The depth and breadth of female characters on TV is stunning right now. Whether the female is the protagonist (Homeland, The Mindy Project, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, etc.) or females are strong supporting characters (Boardwalk Empire, Sons of Anarchy, etc.), women’s stories on TV are becoming much less of an anomaly.
Women on the big screen, however… well, we still see a distinct difference, as Khouri notes, between “chick flicks” and “Hollywood blockbusters.” This is why the Bechdel Test has to exist; it’s rare for a film to place value on women’s stories and anything that might, as Khouri says, have “emotion in it.” 
As she goes on to observe, to properly tell women’s stories you have to “slowly peel back the layers” after presenting the audience with a stereotype. Perhaps that’s why it’s easier to do in TV — the sheer time that TV writers have to lure audiences in with character development and storytelling.
It seems Hollywood’s two hours, more or less, just aren’t enough to properly “peel back the layers.”  Are women’s stories really that much more complicated than men’s? Or is the “otherness” of women just so ingrained that a writer would need a few hours to first deconstruct the stereotypes and cultural myths that the audience walks in with?
Whatever the case may be, Khouri is right. This double standard is “unduly hard given the number of women that exist in the world.” Their stories are being showcased in the private sphere of the home, but they just can’t seem to break through to the public big screen. It’s time for that to change.



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

Quote of the Day: Screenwriter/Director Callie Khouri Weighs In On How TV Is Friendlier to Women

Callie Khouri

In a recent interview with Salon, Academy Award-winner Callie Khouri weighed in on how TV seems to be more friendly to shows about women. Khouri (who wrote Thelma and Louise for that Oscar) is the writer and producer for ABC’s new musical drama Nashville.
Salon asked her about television telling women’s stories and Khouri responded with thoughts that articulate the difficulties in writing feature films about women (adding that “I don’t think any studio in a million years would make Thelma and Louise right now”), and how to properly write stories once you get the green light.

Salon: People who make TV also seem much more comfortable making shows for women than people making movies do.

Khouri: “Because you’re allowed. You’re allowed to make things for women on television and there’s not like … you don’t have to go through the humiliation of having made something directed at women. There it’s just accepted, whereas if it’s a feature, it’s like “So, talk to me about chick flicks.” … I just think it’s insulting that if there is something with women in it, it’s relegated to this kind of trash heap. It doesn’t matter what it is, how good it is, if there is emotion in it, it’s immediately going to be talked down to. And I’m obviously irritated by that. Probably all women are. Certainly a lot of women filmmakers are.Anyway, I don’t want to just complain about features, but it does seem unduly hard given the number of women that exist in the world.”

On the show not being “about a catfight,” even though it starts out that way:

Khouri: “…You come at things from the place where everybody thinks they know everything about what they are seeing. And then you just slowly peel back the layers until you’ve got very complicated human beings with very different sets of problems, all of them doing something that’s impossibly hard to begin with and trying to make their place in this world. Watching two women go at it is boring. There are so many other shows where you can get that. I want it to be about something more than that.”

The depth and breadth of female characters on TV is stunning right now. Whether the female is the protagonist (Homeland, The Mindy Project, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, etc.) or females are strong supporting characters (Boardwalk Empire, Sons of Anarchy, etc.), women’s stories on TV are becoming much less of an anomaly.
Women on the big screen, however… well, we still see a distinct difference, as Khouri notes, between “chick flicks” and “Hollywood blockbusters.” This is why the Bechdel Test has to exist; it’s rare for a film to place value on women’s stories and anything that might, as Khouri says, have “emotion in it.” 
As she goes on to observe, to properly tell women’s stories you have to “slowly peel back the layers” after presenting the audience with a stereotype. Perhaps that’s why it’s easier to do in TV — the sheer time that TV writers have to lure audiences in with character development and storytelling.
It seems Hollywood’s two hours, more or less, just aren’t enough to properly “peel back the layers.”  Are women’s stories really that much more complicated than men’s? Or is the “otherness” of women just so ingrained that a writer would need a few hours to first deconstruct the stereotypes and cultural myths that the audience walks in with?
Whatever the case may be, Khouri is right. This double standard is “unduly hard given the number of women that exist in the world.” Their stories are being showcased in the private sphere of the home, but they just can’t seem to break through to the public big screen. It’s time for that to change.



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

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Amber‘s Picks:
Megan‘s Picks:

Race and The Walking Dead: Why Michonne Matters by Renee and Sparky via Racialicious
Labor of Love: How Women Are Changing Documentaries by Chanda Chevannes via Women and Hollywood

What have you been reading this week? Tell us in the comments!

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Stephanie‘s Picks:
A Reaction to the Backlash Against Mindy Kaling by Nisha Chittal via Racialicious
Adventures in Feministory: Filmmaker Lourdes Portillo by Kjerstin Johnson via Bitch Magazine
Quote of the Day: Mandy Patinkin by Melissa McEwan via Shakesville
Megan‘s Picks:
Women Created 26 Percent of the Television Shows in the 2011-2012 Season by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood 
Film’s Independent Women by Martha Lauzen via Women’s Media Center 
Why Do Women Still Lag in Journalism? by Susan Antilla via CNN 

Filmmaker Explores India’s Complex Identity by Emily Wilson via Women’s Media Center

What have you been reading this week?

The Zoe Saldana / Nina Simone Biopic Controversy Illustrates the Need for More Black Women Filmmakers

(L-R): Zoe Saldana and Nina Simone; image via Black Street

When Zoe Saldana was recently cast as legendary singer Nina Simone in her upcoming biopic, the decision ignited a firestorm of controversy. People have vehemently criticized the decision. Not because Saldana isn’t a skilled actor (she is). But because her skin is much lighter than the music icon.

I’ve wanted to write about this topic for awhile now. But how can I, a white woman, do justice to the complex issue of race?
I’ll never know discrimination or oppression based on the color of my skin. But I realized that while the whitewashing of Hollywood remains an ongoing conversation in the Black community, it’s not a discussion amongst everyone. And it should be.
Nina Simone’s daughter Simone spoke to Ebony about why skin color should matter in the casting of her mother’s biopic:

“I can guarantee that the sense of insecurity and the questioning of one’s beauty that results from a grownup telling you that as a child you’re too black and your nose is too wide, remained with her [her mother Nina Simone] for the rest of her life.” 

At The Huffington Post, Nicole Moore writes about Nina Simone and the “erasure of black women in film”:

“Because Simone’s blackness extended as much to her musical prowess as to her physicality and image, it’s perplexing that the film’s production team, led by Jimmy Iovine, expects anyone, particularly in the black community, to (re)imagine Nina Simone as fair-skinned, thin-lipped and narrow-nosed? I guess if you look at Hollywood’s history of casting black female roles, especially in biopics, it’s not all that surprising.”

Hollywood has a massive race and gender problem. Black women’s bodies belong to a dichotomy suffering from either fetishization or erasure. When Black women appear in media, which doesn’t happen nearly enough, they suffer from stereotypes of mammies, jezebels and sapphires. And too many producers and directors clearly don’t understand the nuances of race, thinking any person of color will suffice.

Clutch Magazine’s Britni Danielle writes about the biopic and Hollywood’s massive misunderstanding and insensitivity when it comes to women and race:

“In the past few years Hollywood has consistently gotten it wrong when it comes to telling black women’s narratives. From the questionable choice of casting Thandie Newton as an Igbo woman in the film adaptation of the novel Half of a Yellow Sun and Jennifer Hudson as Winnie Mandela, to Jacqueline Fleming, a biracial woman, playing Harriet Tubman, when other people are in charge of portraying us, it seems like any brown face will do.”

The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates also finds the “bleaching of Nina Simone” problematic and reinforcing systemic racism:

“But this casting (with no shot taken at Saldana) manages to both erase the specific kind of racism Simone contended with and at the same time empower it.”  

Most white people probably don’t realize the painful history of colorism and skin shade hierarchy — dark vs. light skin — Black women continually face. When the media portrays Black women, we often see women with lighter skin and more Caucasian features. Both L’Oreal and Elle photoshopped Black women — Beyonce and Gabby Sidibe — to make their skin appear much lighter. In film, advertisements and magazine spreads, the media often whitewashes black women, continually perpetuating the unachievable attainment of the white ideal of beauty.

At The Daily Beast, Allison Samuels writes about “the myth of black beauty” and skin color:

“Skin color and its importance around the world—and particularly in the African-American community—has been a hot-button issue for generations. The debate over skin color and its painful origins dates back to the days of slavery, when lighter skin often equaled a better overall quality of life. With more pronounced European features, bearers of a lighter complexion were also considered more attractive than their darker-skinned peers. Possessing this trait was believed to open the cracked doors of opportunity ever wider.”

Due to white privilege, white people don’t agonize over their skin color. We don’t have to worry if someone will harass us or follow us around in a department store, thinking we’re going to steal merchandise simply because of our skin. If we move, we don’t have to worry about finding neighbors who don’t like us because of our skin color. We don’t have to fret over something as simple as putting on a Band-Aid which won’t match our skin tone.

My point is this: we don’t ever have to think about race. Sure, we can if we want to. But we don’t haveto. And therein lies the privilege.
But Spectra, an amazing Afrofeminist writer, asserts the dark vs. light skin in the Zoe Saldana/Nina Simone biopic debate misses the point about Black women in the media. She poses that Black women must create media in order to reclaim and tell their own stories: 
“The hard truth is this: if we spent more time creating media instead of criticizing it, there’d be way more diversity in representation, and way more stories and perspectives to which white people can be more frequently held accountable. 

“Pushing for ownership of both the infrastructure and content that portrays our lived experiences – that is the crux of the issue; not just the politics of light vs. dark-skinned actresses. So, whereas I am completely on board with calling out the colorism behind the biopic’s casting choices (and the harmful message that’s being sent to young, dark-skinned black girls everywhere by having a light-skinned woman play Nina Simone) there aren’t enough strong lead roles written for women of color in Hollywood for me to fairly tell Zoe Saldana, a hard-working, talented brown woman to ”sit this one out.”

Here at Bitch Flicks, we talk a lot about the need for more female filmmakers and women-centric films. One of the takeaways from the Zoe Saldana/Nina Simone controversy is that we desperately need more women of color filmmakers.

The Help crystallizes Hollywood’s problem with Black women. Sure, we see strong and complex Black women telling their stories of discrimination and hardship to writer Skeeter (Emma Stone). But even in a film containing the inarguably talented Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer giving phenomenal Oscar nominated and Oscar-winning performances, it still remains a racially problematic film. Even in a film that supposedly champions Black women, it ultimately revolves around a white female protagonist’s perspective.
While women filmmakers don’t merely depict female protagonists, when more women are behind the camera, we tend to see more women in front of the camera. Looking back at this year’s movies, female-fronted films such as Brave, The Hunger Games, Prometheus, and Snow White and the Huntsman graced the big screen. We saw women-centric indies like Your Sister’s Sister, Take This Waltz, For a Good Time Call… and Bachelorette. We even witnessed strong women in male-dominated movies like Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises and Black Widow in The Avengers.
But when you look at the female protagonists — aside from Beasts of the Southern Wild, Sparkle, The Lady, Girl in Progress and Celeste and Jesse Forever which all featured women of color in lead roles — you’ll notice their overwhelming whiteness.
Perhaps if we had more Black women filmmakers, we would see more nuanced and diverse depictions of Black women on-screen.
Now, that doesn’t mean white women and men can’t or shouldn’t write strong, complex Black female characters. But it does mean white people have to stop appropriating Black women’s narratives, especially if we’re not going to take the time to attempt to understand the intricate and painful complexities of the light vs. dark skin stigma. And we’ve got to stop pretending we live in a post-racial society. We don’t.
We need more films from Black women directors like Ava DuVernay, Dee Rees and Julie Dash. But we aren’t seeing enough Black women in front of or behind the camera. In her Women and Hollywood cross-post, Evette Dionne wonders “Where are the black women film directors?” She explores the “exile of black women film directors” by studios that refuse to fund their work.

“So black women, one of the most sought after audience demographics for movie studios, aren’t behind the camera providing insight into our culture. This leads to a misrepresentation of the black community on the silver screen. Often, we are caricatures of ourselves, as evidenced in Jumping the Broom and other projects, which leads to resentment for what the media machine represents in our communities.”

When a young Black female tennis player is told she’s too fat to receive funding, when the Swedish Minister of Culture and rapper 2Chainz eat racist cakes of dismembered Black women’s bodies, when the media cares more about criticizing Olympic gold-medal winning gymnast Gabby Douglas’ hair than her performance — we as a society clearly have a fucked-up, racist and misogynistic problem denigrating and oppressing Black women.

Last year, I had the overwhelming privilege of meeting one of my feminist idols, Professor Melissa Harris-Perry (squee!!). After her brilliant and empowering speech on her must-read book Sister Citizen, she graciously stayed afterwards and spoke to each and every person. When I finally got my chance to talk to her, I gushed about how much I loved her and how she needed her own TV show (and this was BEFORE her fantastic MSNBC weekend show was announced!). I also asked her how to be a good ally to women of color. She gave the simplest yet hardest advice of all. Listen. When in a room with women of color, she said to be silent, listen and let them speak for themselves. When you find yourself in a space with no women of color, that’s when you need to speak up.
So we white women (and men) need to speak up against racism.
When people talk about the need for more women in media — sadly, they often mean white women. Many of us who write about the need for women’s representation in film or women-created media feel satisfaction when we see white female leads on-screen and white female writers and directors. But that’s got to change. We need films to portray women of all races, created by women of all races — not just white women and think we’ve somehow achieved some semblance of equity.
White women and men filmmakers need to realize the damage they wreak when they only cast light-skinned Black women (if they cast women of color at all), especially in a biopic of a famous Black woman with dark skin.
It’s time for us white women to listen. Listen to black women. Listen to their needs and wants and support them from the sidelines. We can’t merely be satisfied when any woman stands on-screen. Black women must be behind the camera, telling their own stories.

 

I Want a Woman to be the Next Woody Allen

Woody Allen and Penelope Cruz on set of To Rome With Love
I went to see To Rome With Love earlier this week with the intention of reviewing it for Bitch Flicks. But this film is practically un-reviewable: the kind of frilly nothing of a movie that exits your brain before you’ve taken your last sticky step out of the theater.  It’s four short films set in Rome, unwisely edited together into a would-be Altmanesque ensemble piece, thwarted by temporal disjointedness (switching between a storyline that takes place over the span of a day and those that cover weeks or months) and a failure to thematically link the pieces beyond a tone of jovial silliness. If I had a dollar for every review of To Rome With Love that used the phrase “Lesser Allen”, I could pay my rent this month. Because there isn’t much more to say about this movie than those two words.
But one thought since seeing To Rome With Love just won’t leave me alone: I want a woman to be the next Woody Allen.
I want a woman who makes at least one movie a year for thirty years, without caring that they’re all practically the same movie.  No one else will care either.  If one of her films out of every dozen or so is exceptional in any way, the critics will proclaim that her genius is “back” and award her with another Academy Award even though they know she won’t be there to accept it because, I don’t know, her Breeders cover band has a standing gig on Sunday nights or something.
I want a woman who can write herself as the main character in 85% of her films, and “act” as this “character” whenever she pleases, or, in her autumn years, have the latest Up-and-Coming Actress step in, doing her best impression of our auteur.  Every aspiring actress will have a passable impression of our Lady Allen in her stable of characters, just in case.
I want a woman to be able to cast whatever Hot Young Actor is her current muse as her love interest, and enjoy a real-life relationship with a significant portion of these muses. And should that relationship end by her cheating on him with one of the most scandalous available partners, she will only have to endure ten years of so of late-night jokes at her expense, and suffer zero artistic consequences for her personal indiscretions.
I want a woman who can build Dream Team ensembles for any passing notion of a movie script that might come to her.  She’ll have a roster of venerable Standard Players, but also be able to pull legends out of retirement or grab the latest It Girl or make the latest It Girl (Never forget: Mira Sorvino has an Oscar).
After Lady Allen writes actors and actresses their Oscar-winning role, they’ll be content to be used by her however she sees fit (As in To Rome With Love, where Vicky Christina Barcelona Best Supporting Actress Penelope Cruz takes on a thankless hooker role in an embarrassing Three’s Company-style storyline of mistaken identities and pointless ruses), or forgotten and shuffled out of the way for her next muse (Another reminder: Mira Sorvino has an Oscar.)
Let’s be clear: I’m not being sarcastic.  I am not trying to belittle the great Woody Allen’s admirable body of work.  I LIKE having silly little diversions of films with stellar casts coming out on the regular.  I don’t miss the seven bucks I paid to To Rome With Love, a movie that devotes around a quarter of its runtime to setting up a low brow opera joke, just to prove that such a thing can exist.  And I LOVE getting to see that one out of every dozen or so Woody Allen movies that is true genius.  And I truly believe part of what makes those movies possible is that the powerful, prolific Allen has unfettered release of all his creative notions, and leaves it to his audience to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I just want a woman to get in on this action too.  I want a woman to have this level of clout in Hollywood.  I want a woman who can get away with making whatever movie she feels like at any given time. I want a woman whose “lesser works” are still recommended, who is free from worrying about being “only as good as her last picture.”
So to Lena Dunham, Mindy Kaling, Zoe Kazan, Rashida Jones, Jennifer Westfeldt, Tiny Fey, and the next generation of aspiring writer/director/actresses I say: THIS COULD BE YOUR LIFE.  Get cracking.

Weekly Feminist Film Question: Who Is Your Favorite Female Film Director?

Hey film lovers! Here’s this week’s feminist film question. Who is your favorite female film director?  Here’s what you said (along with some of their films):

Chantal Akerman — Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles; A Couch in New York; The Captive; Tomorrow We Move

Gillian Armstrong — Little Women, My Brilliant Career, Oscar and Lucinda, The Last Days of Chez Nous, Charlotte Gray

Dorothy Arzner — Dance, Girl, Dance; The Wild Party; The Bride Wore Red; Christopher Strong; Working Girls

Kathryn Bigelow — The Hurt Locker, Strange Days, Point Break, Near Dark, The Weight of Water, Blue Steel

Jane Campion — The Piano, Bright Star, Sweetie, In the Cut, Holy Smoke!, An Angel at My Table, Portrait of a Lady

Niki Caro — Whale Rider, North Country

Brenda Champman — Brave, The Prince of Egypt

Lisa Cholodenko — The Kids Are All Right, High Art, Laurel Canyon

Sofia Coppola — Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, The Virgin Suicides, Somewhere

Maya Deren — Meshes of the Afternoon, At Land, A Study in Choreography for the Camera, Rituals in Transfigured Time, Meditation on Violence

Ava DuVernay — I Will Follow, Middle of Nowhere

Nora Ephron — Sleepless in Seattle, Julie & Julia, You’ve Got Mail, This Is My Life, Mixed Nuts

Su Friedrich — Damned If You Don’t, Gently Down the Stream, The Odds of Recovery, Hide and Seek, The Ties That Bind

Debra Granik — Winter’s Bone

Alice Guy-Blaché — Algie the Miner, La Fée aux Choux, Matrimony’s Speed Limit

Mary Harron — American Psycho, The Moth Diaries, I Shot Andy Warhol, The Notorious Bettie Page

Amy Heckerling — Clueless, Vamps, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Look Who’s Talking, National Lampoon’s European Vacation

Nicole Holofcener — Please Give, Friends with Money, Lovely & Amazing, Walking and Talking

Matia Karrell — Behind the Red Door, Once Upon a Wedding

Kasi Lemmons — Eve’s Bayou, The Caveman’s Valentine, Talk to Me

Ida Lupino — Outrage, The Trouble with Angels, The Bigamist, The Hitch-Hiker, Never Fear

Deepa Mehta — Fire, Earth, Water, Heaven on Earth

Nancy Meyers — It’s Complicated, Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday, What Women Want, The Parent Trap

Mira Nair — Monsoon Wedding, Amelia, The Namesake, Salaam Bombay!, Mississippi Masala

Kimberly Peirce — Boys Don’t Cry, Stop-Loss 

Sarah Polley — Take This Waltz, Away from Her 

Sally Potter — Orlando, Yes, The Man Who Cried, The Tango Lesson

Yvonne Rainer — The Man Who Envied Women, MURDER and Murder, Privilege

Lynne Ramsay — We Need to Talk about Kevin, Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar

Dee Rees — Pariah, Eventual Salvation

Kelly Reichardt — Meek’s Cutoff, Wendy and Lucy, River of Grass, Old Joy

Angela Robinson — D.E.B.S., Herbie: Fully Loaded

Barbra Streisand — Yentl, The Prince of Tides, The Mirror Has Two Faces

Agnès Varda — La Pointe Courte, Cléo from 5 to 7, Vagabond, Jacquot de Nantes, The Gleaners and I

Did your favorite filmmaker make the list? Tell us in the comments!

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Each week we tweet a new question and then post your answers on our site each Friday! To participate, just follow us on Twitter at @BitchFlicks and use the Twitter hashtag #feministfilm.

LGBTQI Week: ‘Fire’: Part One of Deepa Mehta’s ‘Elements Trilogy’

This review by Editor and Co-Founder Amber Leab previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on November 21, 2011.

Fire (1996)
Fire is the first film in Deepa Mehta’s Elements Trilogy (Earth and Water follow). Made in 1996, it focuses on a middle-class family in present-day (funny how I still think of the 1990s as “present day,” despite the global changes of the past fifteen years) India.

The film centers around two married couples–Ashok (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) and his wife Radha (Shabana Azmi), and Ashok’s brother Jatin (Javed Jaffrey) and his wife Sita (Nandita Das)–who run a carryout restaurant and video store, and who share a home with the brothers’ mother, Biji (Kushal Rekhi), and their employee, Mundu (Ranjit Chowdhry). Jatin and Sita are newlyweds, but we quickly learn that Jatin loves another woman (Julie, a Chinese-Indian woman who has perfected an American accent and dreams of returning to Hong Kong), and married a “traditional Indian woman” out of pressure from his brother and mother.
The film offers the womens’ perspectives on the conflicts between desire and duty, and between tradition and the realities of a modern India.

As with almost any film centering on family drama and dynamics, we see the tensions simmering beneath the surface as the film focuses on the two women and their lack of fulfillment from their marriages. Mehta, in the DVD’s Director’s Notes for Fire, states,
I wanted to make a film about contemporary, middle-class India, with all its vulnerabilities, foibles and the incredible extremely dramatic battle that is waged daily between the forces of tradition and the desire for an independent, individual voice.

More than 350 million Indians belong to the burgeoning middle-class and lead lives not unlike the Kapur family in Fire. They might not experience exactly the same angst or choices as these particular characters, but the confusions they share are very similar–the ambiguity surrounding sexuality and its manifestation and the incredible weight of figures (especially female ones) from ancient scriptures which define Indian women as pious, dutiful, self-sacrificing, while Indian popular cinema, a.k.a. “Bollywood”, portrays women as sex objects (Mundu’s fantasy).

To capture all this on celluloid was, to a large part, the reason I wanted to do Fire. Even though Fire is very particular in its time and space and setting, I wanted its emotional content to be universal.
Sita learns very early in her marriage that her husband is in love with Julie–he doesn’t hide the relationship from her–and she seeks solace and comfort from Radha. Radha hasn’t been intimate with her husband in 13 years; when Ashok learned she was unable to conceive, he sublimated his desires (and began channeling a good bit of their income) into religious study with his swami. The friendship between Sita and Radha soon evolves into a sexual relationship, and when the women are found out by their family, they must decide whether to obey tradition or follow their hearts.

Radha and Sita
The film explores what traditional marriage has done to alienate these women–particularly Radha–from their own desires. The desire for intimacy and sex, sure, but also the desire to live their lives for themselves, rather than for their husbands. My reading of the film is certainly from a Western perspective, however, and you could argue that the film is about discovering desire (rather than reconnecting to it after a period of alienation), since the traditional, conservative Hindu/Indian culture didn’t allow much–if any–space for individual desire for women. Sita embodies changes in the society, as she comes from a traditional family, but is more critical of the traditional rituals and more in touch with her body and her desires. (When we first meet her, for example, she playfully tries on her new husband’s pants and dances around their bedroom, unashamed of her body.) Sita is also the one who initiates a physical relationship with Radha.

Depicting a lesbian relationship on film fifteen years ago proved hugely controversial, and Fire was immediately banned in Pakistan, and soon after pulled from Indian cinemas for religious insensitivity. Although the film twice passed the Indian censor board–they requested no editing, and no scenes removed–violent protests caused movie houses to stop showing the film. In “Burning Love,” Gary Morris writes,
The reaction of some male members of the audience was so violent that the police had to be called. “I’m going to shoot you, madam!” was one response. According to Mehta, the men who objected couldn’t articulate the word “lesbian” — “this is not in our Indian culture!” was as much as they could bring themselves to say. 

It isn’t only the tangible pleasures of a lesbian relationship that created such heated reactions, though that’s certainly the most obvious reason. This beautifully shot, well-acted film is a powerful, sometimes hypnotic critique of the rigid norms of a patriarchal, post-colonial society that keeps both sexes down.

The controversy surrounding the film may have superseded the film itself–which is beautifully shot, heartbreaking, and even darkly comedic at times. Fire contains so many elements that I love in film: strong female characters, an exploration of complex issues that is never oversimplified and that never leads to individuals being labeled good or evil (although they certainly behave in good and/or evil ways), and immersion into a culture that isn’t entirely familiar to me. Speaking to a Western audience, Mehta has stated that one of her goals in filmmaking is to “demystify India,” its culture and its traditions. Fire complicates our understanding of a traditional patriarchal culture, and throws into sharp relief the ways these traditions impact women in particular.

Again, here’s Mehta on Fire:

We women, especially Indian women, constantly have to go through a metaphorical test of purity in order to be validated as human beings, not unlike Sita’s trial by fire.

I’ve seen most of the women in my family go through this, in one form or another. Do we, as women, have choices? And, if we make choices, what is the price we pay for them?

***

There is a ton of information online about Fire. Here are some selected articles for further reading:

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Amber Leab is a writer living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a Master’s degree in English & Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati and a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature & Creative Writing from Miami University. Outside of Bitch Flicks, her work has appeared in The Georgetown Review, on the blogs Shakesville, Opinioness of the World, and I Will Not Diet, and at True Theatre.


‘Return’ – One of the Best Films You Probably Haven’t Seen – Features a Story Rarely Depicted: A Female Soldier Struggling to Resume Her Life

Linda Cardellini as Kelli in Return
Written by Megan Kearns.
When people discuss war, they often don’t take women or gender into account. While we regularly watch male soldiers on-screen, we almost never see war through women’s eyes. If women are in war films, they serve as wives and girlfriends. We see women supporting men, never soldiers themselves. That’s what makes Return so unique. It puts a female soldier center stage.
Written and directed by Liza Johnson (her directorial debut) and executive produced by Abigail Disney and Meredith Viera, Return features a captivating and quietly powerful performance by Linda Cardellini (the soul and strength of the film) as Kelli, a female soldier grappling to step back into her life after returning home from her tour of active duty.
Kelli is excited to reunite with her husband (Michael Shannon) and her two young daughters. Disconnected from her former life, she eventually finds she can no longer relate to her friends, co-workers and family. Return tells the story of a complex woman struggling to survive and wrestling with her inner demons.
While it moves at a glacial pace, it pays to be a vigilant audience. For in those silent moments, the restrained film speaks volumes. The devastatingly outstanding Cardellini (it will seriously be a crime if she’s not nominated for an Oscar) doesn’t need to utter a single word. Her expressive face reveals everything. We glimpse Kelli’s isolation and torment. It’s incredibly moving and heartbreaking as we see a woman trying to assert control as her life begins to crumble.
Unlike her husband and daughter, Kelli doesn’t find humor in a woman falling down on an America’s Funniest Home Videos show. She watches in stunned silence as another mother ebulliently applauds her daughter at cheerleading practice. When she goes to get a drink with her girlfriends, Kelli crawls out the bathroom window to escape. She quits her factory job thinking it’s a “giant waste of time.” Her relationships suffer as she unravels.
Linda Cardellini and Michael Shannon
Throughout the film, people keep telling Kelli to open up and talk about her deployment. They claim sharing trauma will heal her wounds. But Kelli insists there’s nothing to tell and incessantly says, “A lot of people had it worse than I did.” While researching her role, Cardellini found reticence and refusal to discuss combat a common thread connecting veterans, both female and male.
We never really discover Kelli’s war experiences other than she worked with military supplies. The beautifully restrained film shows rather than tells as subtle clues to Kelli’s inner turmoil unfold. When she’s in a large cage with some pigeons, Kelli cowers, her hands protecting her head. She watches a TV screen with a hollow dazed stare. When her husband tries to reignite their spark by tickling her, Kelli becomes increasingly uncomfortable and defensive, finally screaming for him to stop.
Her family and friends, while relatively supportive at first, seem to expect Kelli to remain unchanged and have little tolerance for her growing instability. Adrift with no anchor, we witness Kelli’s growing desperation as she spirals out of control. When her friend accuses her of “acting crazy” and asks her what happened to her over there, Kelly replies:
“Yeah, well a lot of people had a lot worse. You know I didn’t get raped in a port-o-potty. I didn’t have to fucking carry a dead body. And I didn’t get blown up by an EOD so I consider myself pretty lucky cause that’s what happens over there.”
It’s vital we include a gender lens when discussing soldiers and war. Female soldiers face unique challenges such as rape (although yes, men are raped too) and sexual harassment. 1 in 3 women are raped while serving in the military. In fact, female soldiers are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed in combat. Horrifying. Return isn’t a film about female soldiers surviving rape. Yet it subtly weaves in a crucial gender commentary.
Linda Cardellini and John Slattery
As I’ve said before, mothers are supposed to be everything to everyone. So when she falters, Kelli’s motherhood is called into question. Amidst a fight, her husband tells her to “be a mother.” She struggles to provide the attention and care her daughters need. At her wits end, Kelli tries to get pregnant in order to prevent another deployment and stay with her daughters. The most poignant and wrenching scenes are the ones with Kelli playing with and embracing her daughters.
Inspired by a friend’s experiences, writer/director Johnson spoke with “women who have been deployed.” Talking about gendered expectations for female soldiers, Johnson said:
“Expectations and pressures are different for women – dealing with rage is harder for them and not as acceptable as it is for men.”
Kelli tries to deal with her anger, frustration and disappointment in a world telling her to express her feelings in an “appropriate” way yet really expecting her (and basically all women) to swallow her pain.
Soldiers risk their lives for our country. Return doesn’t make any overt political statements. It honors and respects soldiers’ sacrifices. Yet Kelli’s struggles crystallize the physical and emotional toll war exacts on soldiers and their families. Is the price worth it?
Without preaching or sermonizing, the film affirms we must do more to support our troops. And it reminds us women serve in the military too. Something we obviously all know yet too easily forget.
We need more films about women, created by women. And we desperately need more movies telling stories of female soldiers whose stories too often go unheard.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Amber‘s Picks:

Hillary’s Hair: More Newsworthy Than the Summit of the Americas? by Jenn Pozner for WIMN’s Voices

People on the Internet Can Be Hella Racist by Issa for xo Jane

We Heart: Funny or Die Counsels Rick Santorum on “Aborting” His Campaign by Lauren Barbato for Ms.

Why Everyone Is Losing Their Shit Over the Magic Mike Trailer by Kelsey Wallace for Bitch Magazine

Kristin Marcon & ‘The Most Fun You Can Have Dying’ by Wellywood Woman

Stephanie‘s Picks:

Pakistani Documentary Makers Nominated in Cannes Film Festival by Areeb Hasni for The News Tribe

Daenerys Targaryen and the Most Powerful Women in Television History by Judy Berman for The Atlantic

Joss Whedon Performs at Women’s Rights Event, Decries Sexism, Praises ‘Hunger Games’ by Jordan Zakarin for The Hollywood Reporter

Condescending Dude Review of Hunger Games by Fannie for Fannie’s Room

HBO’s ‘Girls’ Is All About Spoiled White Girls by Renee Martin for Womanist Musings

Girls That Television Will Never Know by Latoya Peterson for Racialicious

Megan‘s Picks:

When ‘Art’ Goes Wrong: Black Women’s Pain Is Not a Prop by Jamilah Lemieux for Ebony

Why We Need to Keep Talking About the White Girls on Girls by Dodai Stewart for Jezebel

Film Women Shining at Tribeca Fest by Associated Press for My San Antonio

Girls Just Want to Change the Needle On a Tired Media Record: Stop Telling Us We’re Fat by Roth Cornet for Hit Fix

The Other Girls and Diversity Goals for Pop Culture by Alyssa Rosenberg for Think Progress

Yes, I’m Buying the Katniss Everdeen Barbie For My Daughter by Hayley Krischer for Ms. Magazine