Female Violence – Page 2

The Real Mother Russia: Modernising Murder and Betrayal in ‘The Americans’

The ideological battle between the FBI and KGB is thus a gendered one, as the national characters of Uncle Sam and Mother Russia are pitted against each other on a more even world stage.

Elisabeth

This guest post by Dan Jordan appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Trigger warning for discussion of rape and torture.

The spy thriller achieved prominence in the early 1960s as a way to compensate for Western Imperial decline. Often featuring male, upper class agents travelling to exotic but foreboding countries with the use of up to date technology, defeating a foreign villain and exercising their heterosexual prowess over whatever damaged or naïve island nymphs they came across, these fantasies of colonial power achieved global appeal. This is nowhere more evident than the continued relevance and success of the James Bond films. Typically, the narrative follows Bond being somehow symbolically emasculated by M before eventually regaining his authority by crushing the plans of an unwieldy megalomaniac using the latest in spy tech and sexually dominating the Bond Girl. This pattern serves to ritualistically modernise the principally British but more broadly Western national character into a stylish, sadistic macho ideal to maintain a semblance of Imperial authority over increasingly independent countries.

The Americans alters such conventions in its setting of 1980s Washington, DC where American and Russian espionage operations in the post-Cold War race for advanced technology only ever results in a hollow stalemate or opportunities for petty revenge. Also, the influence of second wave feminism, interpreted in Bond as having freed women to choose their submission to men, is instead conceived as granting access to the requisite sexual agency and dominance of the spy thriller to women. The ideological battle between the FBI and KGB is thus a gendered one, as the national characters of Uncle Sam and Mother Russia are pitted against each other on a more even world stage.

The series centres on the lives of married, suburban travel agents Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell). Though better off than their parents, they still struggle to balance their commitments to their jobs and each other within the changing dynamics of family life. Receiving orders from their native Moscow to infiltrate, undermine and expose the rotten, oppressive soul of capitalism and build a power base for Western communism to flourish as deep cover agents for the Soviet “Directorate S” only complicates matters.

Family pic

As Philip grapples with maintaining loyalty to The Cause while enjoying the indulgences and privileges life in America grants him, Elizabeth remains committed to making socialists of their children Paige (Holly Taylor) and Henry (Keidrich Salati), using sex to leverage high ranking intelligence contacts and murdering just such contacts in a way that rejects their connection to her mission, her country and her true self.

At first refusing both protection and trust to remain independent and unknowable, Elizabeth’s lack of immunity to the strains of sexual deception and death dealing jeopardises her role as a representative of Mother Russia. Her failure to birth or sustain new revolutions and forge genuine connections with anyone besides Philip leaves her at odds with the mission she committed her life to. In this way, The Americans depicts initially validating, mature and self-sacrificing female violence as increasingly deadening and traumatic, removing the ability to be either a nurturing or controlling mother. However, this internal division is a necessary part of individuality outside the constant cycle of brinkmanship, betrayal and revenge.

Elizabeth’s ability to trust Philip as more than just her fellow agent is central in The Americans’ approach to violent women’s independence. At first, she sees their 15-year marriage as a necessary role play to maintain their cover before acknowledging that he genuinely values her and her choices. We are introduced to the Jennings as they bring Colonel Timoshev (David Vadom), an ex-Soviet defector, home in the trunk of their car having missed his deportation ferry. Awaiting further orders from The Centre, Elisabeth shatters the happy family surroundings by almost stabbing Philip when he tries to kiss her.

The root of Elizabeth’s distrust of Philip is developed later in the episode, as she confronts Timoshev for beating and sexually assaulting her in combat training, a reference to the mass rapes committed by the Red Army in Germany and Poland after the end of the Second World War. As Tymochev’s transport is continually delayed, Elizabeth uncuffs, fights and defeats him and prepares to cave his head in with a tire-iron to avenge herself. Before doing so, however, she accepts Timoshev’s dismissal of the rape as “a perk” of his position rather than a punishment for her inability to defend herself. As Elizabeth accepts that the experience was as much a part of the job as her family life is, Philip realises exactly what was done to her and kills Timoshev. Having himself considered defection because of the pleasure he gets from his American life, Philip chooses to reject the unchecked, unseen dominance of male authority he was otherwise committing to.

Showing he values Elizabeth’s choice more than a high ranking Soviet officer and that their relationship is more than a job to him, their status as husband and wife becomes more than a meaningless disguise for the first time. The Americans shows that trust does not infringe on the capability of women to avenge and empower themselves over past instances of violation and reduced status but is reliant upon treating choice as not only possible but valuable.

Sadly, Philip routinely fails to learn this lesson over the course of the first season. By constantly feeling the need to protect Elizabeth from the necessary risks and harm she experiences in the field, he becomes the main source of tension in their relationship. This split between the violent outside world and the Jennings’ house in turn sets up The Americans’ dynamic of false and genuine relationships. In episode five, Elizabeth disguises herself and seduces an FBI intelligence contractor (Eric McKay) to gain access to FBI radio car frequencies. Suddenly and non-consensually, he begins whipping her with a belt. After screaming, crying and begging him to stop, Elizabeth smiles as she stands and faces away from him. The scars she gained from the encounter have given her the visible leverage she needs to probe the contractor for the information she needs, validating her capability and commitment to suffering for The Cause.

When Philip sees the scars back at home and insists on getting revenge, Elizabeth chides him for trying to be her “daddy” and reminds him the violent acts committed against and by her are neither his responsibility nor do they impact on their personal relationship. Further invalidating personal relationships in the realm of counter-intelligence, Elizabeth is then tasked with killing faltering anti-ballistics contractor and KGB informant Adam Dorwin (Michael Countrymen). Having relied on the “friendship” of the head of the Russian embassy to avoid being turned by the FBI, his vulnerability after the death of his wife is comforted by a bullet in the head from Elizabeth. With this, The Americans establishes that genuine connection with the KGB or Elizabeth is unreliable because of their higher connection to Russia and the Communist project.

Elizabeth’s commitment to The Cause is also under-estimated by her and Philip’s KGB “handler” Claudia (Margo Martindale), an older and more experienced representative of Cold War Russia. Elizabeth’s ability to not let physical and emotional turmoil overrule her orders as Claudia eventually does marks her as the more modern and capable generation of Mother Russia. In episode six, Elizabeth is submitted to psychological torture by seemingly freelance counter-intelligence agents. Placed in a disused factory closet decorated with photographs of Paige and Henry, she is confronted by implicit threats being made against them and the falsity of her status as their “real” mother.

Before she is physically tortured in front of Philip, Claudia intervenes and reveals the whole ordeal was a test of their loyalty. The suggestion that her willingly receiving physical harm was the cut-off point for Claudia’s trust infuriates Elizabeth, who savagely beats and water-boards her handler. Inflicting on Claudia what she herself would’ve suffered for her mission, she rejects an older generation’s definition of mercy and, once more, her need for protection. As well, she reveals to Philip she had told The Centre about his considered defection, betraying his trust and invalidating his perceived duty to protect her simultaneously. Elisabeth’s willingness to be harmed, to hurt, kill and betray others for her country fulfill The Americans’ requirements of a true patriot.

Claudia disguises the wounds of her distrust

However, patriotism in The Americans infringes on the individuals ability to have their own lives and identities outside their ideological commitments, eventually justifying their need for revenge as the righteous will of their country. Elizabeth reaches this crossroad of identity once the head of Directorate S General Zhukov (Oleg Krupa) is assassinated by the FBI in episode 11. Ordered to end the escalation of violence by Claudia, Elizabeth instead abducts the US military colonel Richard Patterson (Paul Fitzgerald) who oversaw the operation that took the fatherly general away from her. Detailing the love she had for the general as she prepares to kills him, the colonel taunts her that living only to feed information to The Centre and undertake ideological revenge shows she doesn’t understand loving or being loved and has no basis for revenge.

After releasing the colonel, sacrificing her personal relationship with Zhukov and obeying her orders from Moscow once more, Elizabeth discovers this too was a manipulation by Claudia. By giving Elizabeth the colonel’s name and telling her not to go after him, Claudia attempted to prove Elizabeth’s lack of commitment to The Cause when she is damaged emotionally. Instead, Claudia avenges Zhukov herself by murdering the colonel in the season finale. The generational conflict between representatives of Mother Russia past and present is resolved as the jaded Claudia chooses her personal revenge for Zhukov over her commitment to orders and her agents. Elizabeth proves her connection to Russia is more genuine than Claudia and shows the role of Mother Russia in The Americans is based on repeated self-sacrifice.

Even as Elizabeth attempts to avoid becoming Claudia by committing to a trusting, genuine relationship with Philip to stave off a lifetime of trauma, loneliness and betrayal, the comfort they take in each other barely sustains them throughout season two. As Elizabeth recovers from a mortal gunshot wound, she loses influence and power in her home and work lives, forcing her to mould a new agent in the interim. Less willing to use sex to gain information and affronted that Paige is converting to Christianity rather than socialism in her early teens, Elizabeth channels her frustration into mentoring a young Nicaraguan communist named Lucia Chena (Aimee Carrero). On their first mission together in episode two, Elizabeth listens in as Lucia seduces a congressional aide (Nick Bailey) to reacclimatise to the demands of field work after her trauma.

After securing proof that America is training contra forces after Nicaraguan elections result in a communist victory, Lucia reluctantly agrees to kill the aide on Elizabeth’s order. Lucia now lives by Elizabeth’s demands and must imitate her to establish communism in Nicaragua, her own motherland. Elizabeth’s controlling influence here establishes an uneasy mix of handler and maternal roles, leaving the possibility for genuine connection with other women and new revolutions dependent on self-sacrifice once more.

Not long after, Lucia’s revolution falls to the cycle of revenge as she sets out to avenge her father and forces Elizabeth to sacrifice her role as a nurturer for The Cause. Blackmailing closeted gay military captain Andrew Larrick (Lee Tergesen) into giving them access to the contra training camp, Elizabeth attempts to regain her capability for violence and manipulation remains in the absence of sexual threat Larrick poses. Unfortunately, Lucia does not stop attempting to murder Larig for training soldiers who tortured her father to death. In episode eight, Elizabeth is given the ultimatum to kill Larrick and lose access to the camp or letting him kill Lucia in self-defence. Elizabeth lowers her gun and watches as he chokes her to death.

As Lucia fails to pragmatically sacrifice her emotions for her mission, Elizabeth must do it instead. Cracks of trauma begin to show at last, as Elizabeth cries alone in her dark house.

Even as Elizabeth’s “recovery” has resulted in a redoubling of trauma, loss and isolation while she loses control over her children’s development, the distractions of her work have led her biological daughter to adopt similar values to her own. Where forcing Paige to do rigorous housework in the middle of the night as Elizabeth did in Russia to learn maturity fails, allowing her to protest the American nuclear weapons programme succeeds in instilling a measure of socialist enterprise into Paige. Elisabeth, having rationalised her unquestioning loyalty to The Cause as adults “doing things that they don’t want to do” learns to support things Paige chooses for herself. Without the need for violence or manipulation that now inevitably result in revenge and betrayal, Elisabeth’s previously fake identity as Paige’s mother has delivered real change. As The Centre send out orders to begin training Paige as a KGB agent at the end of series two, Elisabeth is faced with the final choice of betraying her motherland or betraying her new found motherhood.

In The Americans, conventions of the spy thriller are altered by the context of its setting to create a crisis of gendered nationalism. As Elisabeth fights for the trust to sustain harm for her cause and remain independent over even the demands of her KGB handler, she becomes increasingly isolated and inhuman. In turn, her investment in genuine relationships limits her influence over her mature, ideological commitment to representing a modern, capable Mother Russia. Neither entirely nurturing or controlling, she slowly recognises the value of her own daughter’s independence as well as her own. In seasons to come, though, she may choose to sacrifice this as well.

Dan Jordan is an insightful, eclectic writer, aspiring media critic and University of Leicester Film and English graduate. Frequently submerged in new and classic movies, TV, video games, comics and criticism thereof, he still finds time to eat and sleep. Follow him on Twitter and at his regularly updated blog The Odd Review.

‘Hard Candy’: The Razor Blade Hidden in an Apple-Cheeked Confection

Hogtying and drugging Jeff is only the tip of Hayley’s sadistic iceberg: over the course of the next several hours, she subjects him to a series of tortures more at home in Guantanamo Bay than a sleepy suburban neighborhood, including spraying his screaming mouth with chemicals, temporarily suffocating him with cellophane, and attacking him with a taser in the shower.

This guest post by Emma Kat Richardson appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Even around Halloween time, Hollywood doesn’t hand out movies like Hard Candy all that often. It’s a difficult morsel to swallow, and, despite the presence of adorably teenaged Ellen Page peering meekly from the cast list, not the slightest bit sugary – indeed, much of the exposition is skin-crawling enough to make the hardiest of trick-or-treaters lose their appetites. And yet, beneath its decidedly gruff exterior (understatement of the year, perhaps?) lies the timeless tale of a boy and a girl. But in this case, he’s a man merely masquerading as a responsible adult, and she’s a girl wearing the wiles of a woman in order to achieve a purpose much more sinister than the initial set up would lead one to believe.

Just five minutes into the film, and you’d think it was easy to ascertain the obvious villain: Patrick Wilson, playing a 30-something photographer named Jeff, seduces Page’s 14-year-old Hayley Stark through an online chat window, with the practiced precision of a well-equipped Internet predator. The two agree to meet at a coffee shop, where awkward flirtations quickly lead them back to Jeff’s house. Feeling sick to your stomach yet? You should be, but not because Hayley is dangling on the precipice of statistical tragedy. No, she’s far from being some helpless victim, as Jeff quickly learns when he finds himself waking up in a state of confusion, limbs bound to an office chair as Hayley gleefully rummages through his drawers and cabinets. “You know how they tell us pretty young things not to drink anything we haven’t mixed ourselves? That’s good advice…. for anyone.” Touche. Seems like the only thing more humiliating that being exposed as a pedophile is to be outwitted by the expected target of one’s predatory efforts. Hogtying and drugging Jeff is only the tip of Hayley’s sadistic iceberg: over the course of the next several hours, she subjects him to a series of tortures more at home in Guantanamo Bay than a sleepy suburban neighborhood, including spraying his screaming mouth with chemicals, temporarily suffocating him with cellophane, and attacking him with a taser in the shower.

May December, or murder and dismember?

But Hayley’s plan isn’t merely to make Jeff suffer the consequences of what he might have intended for her. She’s on a mission to find out what happened to Donna Mauer, a local teenager who’s gone missing. Did Jeff have something to do with it? He lives in a house decorated with near-naked pictures pubescent models; he brought Hayley back home and let her drink copious amounts of alcohol while stripping. Most tellingly of all, he has a picture of Donna locked away in a hidden safe, beneath a decorative living room rock garden. Poor Donna likely fell into a trap from which very few victims of sexual violence manage to emerge unscathed, and Hayley is determined to see that justice is served, no matter what lengths she’s forced to go to in Jeff’s kidnapping and torture.

And speaking of torture, do we need to get into detail about the castration scene? Yup, Hayley is so committed to defanging this predator (to use a rather pointed analogy) that she rigs up a makeshift operating table, lashes an unconscious Jeff down to it, and proceeds to undergo such a wicked game of psychological fuckery, it’s hard to know who to keep rooting for. The scene itself is exquisitely shot – all agonizing closeups and angles designed to elicit maximum proxy discomfort. The dialogue exchanged between the two principle actors is a mastery in cat and mouse tension; best of all is when Hayley draws a brilliant comparison between Jeff’s forthcoming mutilation and the anguish suffered by the victims of rape and abuse on a daily basis. Do your friends know? Do your neighbors know? Who can tell just by looking at you that you’ve been subjected to the most vile sort of personal attack?

Should have just signed up for Ashley Madison.

It’s perhaps this sentiment that best exemplifies what sets Hayley’s violent tactics apart from the intent of her would-be attacker. While it’s safe to say her methods are probably too extreme for the To Catch a Predator crowd, her purpose is – on paper, at least – a noble one. You get the sense that she’s adequately prepared for taking down every neighborhood scumbag that slimes his way into her chatroom; there’s more than subtle indication that she’s done all of this before. For a kid not even in high school yet, she sure knows her way around a taser. It’s disturbing, but in a way that renders the viewer in a challenging state of narrative confusion. Indeed, one of very best elements to Hard Candy is that the primary action sequences make it almost impossible to sympathize with one protagonist over another. Even the most strident of feminists probably can’t help but shudder at Jeff’s predicament – sure, he seems to be a major sleeze-ball, but does Hayley really have to go to these lengths just to make him pay for crimes she can’t confirm that he committed?

In the end, one is forced to conclude that Hard Candy is no easy cinematic meal to digest. It’s a gripping, challenging, often-exceedingly painful film to take in. But like Hayley herself, the movie’s genius lies in its ability to construct so much thought-provoking narrative with so little in the way of material tools. Shot for less than a million dollars, the sets are simple, the cast consists mainly of just Page and Wilson (Sandra Oh, who gets top billing alongside the two principle actors, appears in just one fleeting scene). It’s rare to see a story accomplish such a lasting impression with a decidedly minimalist approach. Page’s performance is a hurricane of emotions; she’s the perfect foil to Wilson’s doughy and desperate Jeff, who probably wished he’d kept his freaky tendencies limited to just porn. If Hayley Stark is a prime example of a violent woman, than she represents the very strongest in lashing out to evade victimhood. She is the anger that lives inside us all when we are harmed or abused. As she declares to a defeated Jeff in the film’s climactic scene: “I am every little girl you ever watched, touched, hurt, screwed, killed.”

Emma Kat Richardson is a Detroit native and freelance writer living in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in xoJane.com, Bitch, Alternative Press, LaughSpin.com, Real Detroit Weekly, 944, and Bust.com. She’s enough of a comedy nerd and cat lady to have named her Maine Coon Michael Ian Cat. Follow her on twitter: @emmakat.

‘High Tension’: Rethinking Female Sexuality and Subjectivity Through Violence

Rather than pander to the male gaze, Aja decides to reject these scopophilic pleasures in favour of championing female subjectivity, but he also chooses to reject heteronormativity by having the lesbian desires of Marie drive the plot of the film. Interestingly, it is these desires and subjective experiences that both initiate the use of violence and intensify the representation of violence throughout.

This guest post by Laura Minor appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Named one of TIME magazine’s “10 most ridiculously violent films” [1], Alexandre Aja’s 2003 slasher High Tension (originally titled Haute Tension) is a visceral delight, a horrific spectacle of generic excess. Yet with the film’s synopsis describing the leading character, Marie, as a “beautiful young Frenchwoman,” High Tension could have easily been seen in GQ’s article “The 25 Sexiest Violent Women in Film” [2]. Rather than pander to the male gaze, Aja decides to reject these scopophilic pleasures in favour of championing female subjectivity, but he also chooses to reject heteronormativity by having the lesbian desires of Marie drive the plot of the film. Interestingly, it is these desires and subjective experiences that both initiate the use of violence and intensify the representation of violence throughout.

Before examining the film’s treatment of gender, sexuality and violence, however, its basic narrative needs to be understood. High Tension revolves around Marie (Cécile De France) and Alex (Maïwenn Besco), two college students who travel to Alex’s parents’ farmhouse in the French countryside so that they can relax and study in peace. After arriving at the farmhouse and settling down for the night, Marie begins masturbating in bed, presumably fantasising about Alex after she inadvertently spies on her in the shower. The killer arrives simultaneously and begins brutally massacring Alex’s family without reason. He then abducts Alex after blinding her, and Marie consequently emerges as the Final Girl, the protagonist who must save the day. What ensues is a cat-and-mouse chase, with the killer eventually hunting down Marie for the archetypal finale – a one-on-one confrontation between the protagonist and antagonist. However, when Marie ends the killer’s life, it is revealed that she is in fact the killer, thereby rupturing the classical protagonist/antagonist relationship.

Aja’s ending has received strong, negative criticism for its twist, but the purpose of this ending is to not merely shock. Of course, if we read it through a conservative lens, then Marie’s transgressions serve to maintain and perpetuate heterosexist discourse, as the lesbian protagonist is revealed to be the monster; she is the outsider who has destroyed the nuclear family. Indeed according to Harry M. Benshoff,

both movie monsters and homosexuals have existed chiefly in shadowy closets and when they do emerge from these proscribed places into the sunlit world they cause panic and fear. Their closets uphold and reinforce binaries of gender and sexuality that structure Western thought. To create a broad analogy, monster is to “normality” as homosexual is to heterosexual [3].

While this has been true for past representations, Marie’s psychotic creation of “Le Tueur” (meaning “The Killer” in English) complicates the idea that she is the tangible monster. This unnamed, unidentifiable man is the one who has committed cinematic sadism, and although the monster is a manifestation of Marie’s latent desires, he also personifies the fear and anger she feels about her own sexuality. This is implied at the beginning of the film through dialogue and lighting – when Marie and Alex arrive at the farmhouse, Alex tells Marie she’ll “end up an old maid” because of her lack of interest in men. Understandably, Marie reacts with dejection. Her face is deliberately shadowed by the darkness outside as she solemnly says “Don’t start with that”. Indeed though subtle, it is obvious that Alex’s ingrained, societal beliefs have affected her deeply, the feeling that she is an outcast, that she should settle down and find a nice husband. To have her best friend and love interest speak in such a way does not excuse murder (that much is obvious), but it could explain why Marie constructs an individual that represents heteronormativity (a white, heterosexual middle-aged man) committing these violent acts instead.

This fabricated part of her psyche, in some ways, conforms to Halberstam’s notion of “imagined violence,” which is defined as “the fantasy of unsanctioned eruptions of aggression” [4]. More specifically, Halberstam argues that “imagined violence does not advocate lesbian or female aggression but it might complicate an assumed relationship between women and passivity or feminism and pacifism” [4]. To imagine the possibility of female violence is to create a new source of pleasure for women, as resistance on-screen is a reaction against gender/sexuality-based prejudices. High Tension, however, takes this level of imagination to a disturbed and distorted level, as Marie/Le Tueur brutally kill an innocent family. Yet it could be argued that this (fe)male violence symbolises Marie’s anger, or more specifically, Marie’s inability to control the rage she feels about heteronormativity upholding “traditional family values” (these being strictly defined gender roles and heterosexuality). After all, she cannot control this part of her consciousness, as she desires to kill this part of her consciousness and rescue Alex.

The “imagined violence” against the heteronormative male within is a significant, internal battle that culminates in Marie defeating Le Tueur with a fence post covered in barbed wire. She uses this aggressive, phallic symbol to “challenge powerful white heterosexual masculinity and create a cultural coalition of postmodern terror” [4], the most significant aspect of “imagined violence.” Of course, such a reading is not so simple in a film that constructs a schizophrenic narrative and a schizophrenic character, but High Tension is aware of its supposed inconsistencies, which again can be seen in its ending. Before Le Tueur’s death, he wields his chainsaw in an attempt to kill Alex, only for his weapon to be replaced by Marie’s sweet and soft kiss. The act of (fe)male violence and gentleness in this scene unifies the binaries of masculinity and femininity, and therefore complicates the definitions of monstrousness and gender. For this reason, as Joshua Cohen has argued, High Tension “poses somewhat of a problem for the critic interested in allocating monstrosity into a neatly defined category such as masculine or feminine. Rather, High Tension requires a spectator whom assumes that gender is a subject that transcends the limitations of binary oppositions” [5].

Indeed because Aja has forced us to intimately identify with Marie and then Alex via specific camerawork, these acts of violence are intensified, but so are subtle character movements. The final scene is particularly significant in this regard; when Marie is in a psychiatric hospital, Alex watches her through a one-way mirror and extends her hand to the screen, almost as if she is visiting a lover in prison. Here we are forced to identify with Alex as the camera slowly follows her hand, and when she asks a doctor whether Marie can see her through the mirror, it is clear that she is also asking this question for us, the extra-diegetic spectators. Marie answers this question soon after. No, she cannot see Alex, she can sense her, and by extension she can sense the audience. Her face beams with delight as she opens her arms in a sudden forceful yet loving gesture, and the camera lurches back in horror with Alex, thus forcing us as spectators to mimic these movements. The jerky, violent actions of Marie are therefore ambiguous. Whilst we are initially drawn to her by the placement of Alex’s hand, we are then pushed away by her affection/violence. Perhaps it would be reading too much into the ending to view Alex’s hand gesture as an act of repressed sexuality, but it is interesting that Alex, now the audience surrogate, is both drawn to and disgusted by Marie’s affectionate/violent disposition. In this regard, High Tension offers no concrete resolution as to how we should view the protagonist. Instead, it offers multiple readings of gender, sexuality, and violence that typify our contemporary, heterogeneous culture. Indeed despite the monstrous actions of Marie, underneath the surface, Alex and the audience know that she cannot be simplistically defined – it is why we have returned to her at the hospital.

Overall, to define High Tension as conservative would be problematic, as we would have to ignore the ways in which it has transcended stereotypical ideals of gender and sexuality through acts of violence, whether these acts be blatant (such as the aggressive methods of murder) or subtle (such as the sudden erratic movements of Marie). It is certainly clear that the narrative does not advocate male or familial genocide as a strategy for achieving women’s emancipation. If anything, the film seeks to place itself in-between the rich, textured spaces of female subjectivity and identity, spaces that are not always straightforward, rational or prototypical.

Footnotes

[1] Sanburn, Josh. “Top 10 Ridiculously Violent Movies.” TIME., September 2, 2010. http://entertainment.time.com/2010/09/03/top-10-ridiculously-violent-movies/.

[2] “The 25 Sexiest Violent Women in Film”. GQ., June 30, 2009. http://www.gq.com/gallery/list-sexy-women-movies-violent-angelina-jolie-halle-berry-jessica-alba-slideshow.

[3] Benshoff, Harry M (1997). Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.

[4] Halberstam, Judith (1993). ‘Imagined Violence/Queer Violence: Representations of Rage and Resistance’. Social Text 37, pp.187-201.

[5] Cohen, Joshua. ‘‘’Will You Still Love Me in the Morning?’: Gender Representation and Monstrosity in Alexandre Aja’s High Tension.” Fear, Horror, and Terror, 2^nd Global Conference. Oxford: United Kingdom, 2008. Print.

Laura Minor is currently undertaking a Master’s in Film and Television Studies. She runs a blog at lrjdmnr.wordpress.com where she discusses feminist media studies, film/television aesthetics and genre theory.

‘Thelma and Louise’: Redefining the Female Gaze

The violence may decrease as the movie progresses, but Thelma, Louise – and we – become comfortable about their actions as the film winds down, because they were now tapped into our veins, nourishing our battered spirits with acts that said, “See? We recognize your anger, cause we’re angry – and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

This guest post by Paulette Reynolds appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

“…the awareness of any object can induce an awareness of also being an object.” –Jacques Lacan

When psychiatrist Lacan formulated his theory of the mirror image in the 1950s, he was referring to the infant’s discovery of themselves as a meaningful object; thus, the Ego was formed.

Film critics applied Lacan to a number of philosophies on cinematic looking, but it took British feminist and film theorist Laura Mulvey to take this concept to the next level in the early 1970s. By giving it a name she also gave it a purpose, minting the phrase “the male gaze” and asserting that essentially men viewed women as sex objects – and that this objectification existed in all films:

“Men do the looking; women are there to be looked at. The cinematic codes of popular films ‘are obsessively subordinated to the neurotic needs of the male ego’” [1]

While Mulvey focused solely on men viewing the female characters on the screen, the females in the audience were left searching these cinematic women for the appropriate visual clues as to how they were were to be objectified in their everyday lives. Or were they?

It would be another 20 years before film theorists decided to consider the female spectator and how she felt about what role models were being offered for viewing. Another British film theorist, Jackie Stacey, devoted an entire book to the subject, Star Gazing, gathering female subjects for a study on viewing American films during the WWII years. She developed a broad examination of how women use their own gaze, both passively and actively:

“… Powerful female stars often play characters in punishing patriarchal narratives, where the woman is either killed off, or married, or both, but the spectators do not seem to select this aspect of their films to write about. Instead, the qualities of confidence and power are remembered as offering female spectators the pleasure of participation qualities they themselves lacked and desired.” [2]

I began this article with a quote about ego identification, which seems like a fitting point to keep in mind about the iconic feminist film statement of Thelma and Louise.

This Oscar-winning film from 1991 chronicled the coming-of-age for two working-class women, Thelma and Louise, as they strike out on the mama of all road trips. Each is running from relationship issues that involve absent men: Louise’s boyfriend Jimmy is gone for long stretches because of work and Thelma’s husband Darryl is absent because he cheats. Thelma’s response to Darryl’s infidelity and control issues is to be the perfect wife, clipping coupons and keeping a tidy house. Louise – a rape survivor – answers Life in general by hiding behind a tough outer shell, which keeps everyone out, including Jimmy and those repressed and unresolved memories. Yet we sense that underneath their poor coping mechanisms is a simmering rage, because – yes – we’ve all been there.

The vacation developes into a lost weekend of murder, crime and acts of revenge (and sweet sex), triggered in part by violence directed at them from a variety of arrogant, entitled men. I say in part because Thelma’s passive-aggressive urges frequently surface, leaving Louise to clean up the mess like a good surrogate big sister.

Thelma and Louise’s acting out allowed the female spectator of 1991 to connect and identify with Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis in an immediate way. This universal understanding – and approval – was instant, after all what woman hasn’t been lied to, disrespected, abused verbally or physically by some man in her lifetime? In a world directed and controlled by men, they did what we often wanted to do. When that truck blew up in a glorious angry ball of fire and heat, that was our exploding anger. The violence may decrease as the movie progresses, but Thelma, Louise – and we – become comfortable about their actions as the film winds down, because they were now tapped into our veins, nourishing our battered spirits with acts that said, “See? We recognize your anger, cause we’re angry – and we’re not going to take it anymore.”

They showed women violently dealing with their anger at patriarchy – perhaps for the first time since the great noir films of the 1940s and 1950s. These were nervous and high-strung working-class women and they weren’t going to sit still anymore. They were going to proactively deal with their situations – and what was more – they weren’t going to apologize for those actions either. This is what ultimately led to their doom, for two women to boldly act like men with unapologetic violence towards their oppressors had to be punished.

And then, cornered like a couple of scared girls, they ran their car off a cliff.

Sitting in that theater, 24 years ago, I felt like I had been victimized. My diffused anger and rage at societal norms of men getting away with gender abuse and violence had suddenly been given a voice. But in a heartbeat, we were all told that those forbidden emotions – those reserved for men to freely express – were not a viable option for us to feel. The lesson was shoved down our throats – abet in a truly melodramatic “chick flick” way – that we would literally careen off a cliff if we explored those feelings too deeply, screamed too loudly. We even had a coach, in the person of Detective Hal Slocumb – a sensitive soul who spent most of the film gently talking to our heroines like they were wild animals, needing to be calmed down before they used the tranquilizing stun gun.

After all, what would have happened if they had been caught or turned themselves in? They might act as role models for other women to reflect upon. What a scary thought to keep millions of men tossing and turning at night – and not in a good way. Some may argue that their suicide was an existentialist “fuck you” to the orderly world that Man had created for Woman, and that they freely chose to die to keep their “dream” of freedom as they went out in a blaze of glory. But such rationalization rings a bit hollow to this reviewer.

If the male gaze finds a “woman’s film” difficult to digest, it might be because the stereotypes they’re familiar with may not be so neatly drawn. Thelma and Louise must have been such a film for many males, who were – no doubt – highly uncomfortable at the images of the female response to discrimination. Even today, most rapes go unpunished, most battered women still live in fear and many women still remain passive in the face of verbal abuse. One can only imagine how vindicated the male audience felt when Thelma and Louise took a nose-dive off the Grand Canyon. The male gaze was once again pacified at the expense of the female audience.

Yet, Thelma and Louise is hailed as a definitive feminist statement by women, film critics, Hollywood, and – oh yes – men. I disagree. A film that spends 128 1/2 minutes making a bold statement, only to cop-out during the last 30 seconds is just that – a film that sold out women with a cautionary ending to satisfy societal expectations – or more importantly – societal fears. The issue of the “male gaze” has less to do with psychologically driven male angst and more to do with propagandizing females to direct our gaze away from empowered images of ourselves, regardless of who writes the script.

Yet something good did come from Thelma and Louise. Remembering that females are “responsible for purchasing 50 percent of all movie tickets” and are “more frequent moviegoers than males in the 18-24 year old demographic ($4.2 million vs. $3.3 million)” [3], movie studios took notice at the 1991 box office receipts for two “feminist statement” films – Thelma and Louise grossed $45 million in the spring and Fried Green Tomatoes followed up with a tidy $119.4 million in December.

And so, the age of the female-centered movie – for the sole pleasure of the female spectators – had arrived. By 1995 Dolores Claiborne was able to get away with murdering her abusive husband and The Quick and the Dead’s Sharon Stone could freely seek revenge for the death of her father.

During the film, Thelma and Louise strike a pose and immortalize themselves in what may be the first screen selfie. The two friends look exactly how they want the world – both female and male – to see them: happy and empowered. They control the camera, and while one level of Thelma and Louise becomes discarded, another stronger image remains fixed within us. It doesn’t matter who writes the scripts – and in many cases, who directs the film – it’s the female spectator of today who has the power to gaze, anyway that she chooses.

Sources

[1] Laura Mulvey. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16.3 Autumn 1975 pp. 6-18 August 21, 2015.

[2] Stacey, Jackie. Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship, New York, NY Routledge. 1994. pp.158

[3] Smith, S.L., Granados, A., Choueiti, M., Erickson, S., & Noyes, A. “Changing the Status Quo: Industry Leaders’ Perceptions of Gender in Family Films”

“An Executive Summary.” Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (2010) August 21, 2015.

Paulette Reynolds is the Editor and Publisher of Cine Mata’s Movie Madness film appreciation blog. Film viewing and theory are her passion, but film noir remains her first love. Paulette breathes the rarified Austin, Texas air and can be seen on Twitter: @CinesMovieBlog.

‘Sons of Anarchy’: Female Violence, Feminist Care

At the end of season 6, Gemma violently clashes the spheres of power. She’s in the kitchen. She’s using an iron, and a carving fork. Using tools of the feminine sphere, she brutally murders Tara, because she fears that Tara is about to take control and dismantle the club—the life, the style of mothering and living—that she brought home with her so many years ago.

Mothers of Anarchy

This post by Leigh Kolb originally appeared at And Philosophy and is cross-posted with permission.

Sons of Anarchy revolves around the chaotic yet highly methodical world of a motorcycle club and the forces around them—from law enforcement and crooked cops to gangs and organized crime rings. The entire series focuses on politics, power, violence, and authority in incredibly masculine spaces.

However, these are sons. And to be a son is not only to be a son of a father—the cornerstone for so many monomyths in Western literature—but also to be a son of a mother. While Sons of Anarchy was ostensibly about Jax’s atonement with his dead father and monstrous father figure (thus the countless accurate comparisons to Hamlet), who really is “anarchy” in this world?

If we look at the definition of anarchy— “a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority”—and focus in on the word “nonrecognition,” we can think about how throughout Sons of Anarchy, Gemma has been an authority figure in the domestic sphere—”fiercely” mothering her biological and nonbiological sons (she references wanting to have had a dozen sons in the final season, and really, she managed to do so through the MC), cooking meals, managing paperwork, and tending to children, all in the feminine sphere. Though she cannot ride, she and is seen as the ultimate “old lady.” She has power, and the men of SAMCRO, on some level, fear her.

Gemma’s violence

Her true authority, however, is not recognized. From the beginning, we understand her power in Charming. She ran off when she was a teenager, and, as Wayne Unser says, came back “ten years later with a baby and a motorcycle club.” There is implied ownership here; the club is Gemma’s. In reality, Gemma herself can be seen as embodying and perpetuating anarchy—in that she is an authority figure, but not recognized as such. The masculine sphere—the bikes, the guns, the gavel, the long table (hello, phalluses)—is seen as powerful. Violence, politics, gun deals, drug deals, more violence: masculine. Powerful.

Anarchy is then truly unleashed; both parts of the definition resound throughout the final season. Jax’s authority is misguided (some might say absent) as he leads the club down a path of disorder and destruction. Because no one—not Jax, not Unser, not Sheriff Jarry—could recognize Gemma’s capabilities for brutality., Her authority, or rather her control of the situation, is left unchecked for most of the season. Had Abel not overheard her confess, she may well have gotten away with it. The Sons all underestimate the capabilities of women.

Tara cannot escape Gemma

In “Anarchism: The Feminist Connection,” Peggy Kornegger points out that

“Anarchism has been maligned and misinterpreted for so long that maybe the most important thing to begin with is an explanation of what it is and isn’t. Probably the most prevalent stereotype of the anarchist is a malevolent-looking man hiding a lighted bomb beneath a black cape, ready to destroy or assassinate everything and everybody in his path. This image engenders fear and revulsion in most people, regardless of their politics; consequently, anarchism is dismissed as ugly, violent, and extreme. Another misconception is the anarchist as impractical idealist, dealing in useless, Utopian abstractions and out of touch with concrete reality. The result: anarchism is once again dismissed, this time as an ‘impossible dream.’”

This anarchy dichotomy is at the heart of the central conflict of Sons of Anarchy: the “malevolent” club that Clay and Gemma wanted versus the “impossible dream” club that John Teller and Jax wanted. We now know that John Teller’s death was at his own hand (albeit somewhat forced), when he realized that the former was the fate of SAMCRO. As Jax rose up the ranks of SAMCRO leadership, he wasn’t just fighting Clay’s philosophy of anarchy—he was also fighting Gemma’s. After Jax killed Clay, the fight wasn’t over, even though he initially thought it was. But the club wasn’t his. Anarchy was his mother.

As Tara plots and schemes to get herself and her sons away from the world Gemma had created and helped sustain, Gemma sees her as a threat, and resorts to fully embodying that destructive, violent anarchy that could uphold the status quo.

Because she has operated within this culture of masculine violence, Gemma adopts the patriarchal problem-solver of violent destruction. Since Tara is a threat to the malevolent anarchy that Clay and Gemma desired, she—in Gemma’s mind—had to be eliminated. Whereas Tara worked with other women as she was trying to make her plans to escape Charming with Abel and Thomas, Gemma consistently alienated herself from other women.

In “Socialism, Anarchism And Feminism,” by Carol Ehrlich, she says that the “debate over ‘strong women’” is closely related to leadership, and summarizes radical feminists’ position to include the following:

“1. Women have been kept down because they are isolated from each other and are paired off with men in relationships of dominance and submission. 2. Men will not liberate women; women must liberate themselves. This cannot happen if each woman tries to liberate herself alone. Thus, women must work together on a model of mutual aid. 3. ‘Sisterhood is powerful,’ but women cannot be sisters if they recapitulate masculine patterns of dominance and submission.”

Tara could have checked off all of those goals easily; she was of a new generation of old ladies. Gemma, on the other hand, isolates herself, acts alone, and in attempting to be dominant and in control, adopts masculine ways of doing so. Clay, as a harbinger of evil, wanted Tara dead. But the other Sons accepted and respected her. Her role wasn’t club mother, it was club healer. The power that she held—that she could and did save Sons’ lives (and Abel’s life in the series pilot)—was a restorative power that ran counter to what Gemma offered. And the more Tara worked with other women, the more of a threat she became to Gemma and the club.

Gemma embodies Sigmund Freud’s “masculinity complex,” which posits that girls identify with their fathers but eventually must assume female social roles. Gemma’s mother, Rose, died of the same heart defect that Gemma has and that her son Thomas died from. Gemma remembers Rose in a conflicted way, and says in season 7 that she thinks Rose had never wanted to be a mother. Gemma, by contrast, says that all she ever wanted to do was to be a mother (to sons).

Her father, Nate, was a pastor. She speaks of him with love and admiration, and one can easily see (just as easily as critics have seen the Oedipal parallels with Jax and Gemma) her own Electra complex—the Jungian theory that girls identify with and have a fixation with their fathers. While Nate leads a church and congregants, Gemma leads an outlaw club and outlaws—her dozen sons are different kinds of apostles.

In Sigmund Freud’s lecture, “Femininity,” he says,

“A mother is only brought unlimited satisfaction by her relationship to a son; this is altogether the most perfect, the most free from ambivalence of all human relationships. A mother can transfer to her son the ambition which she has been obliged to suppress in herself, and she can expect from him the satisfaction of all that has been left over in her of her masculinity complex.”

In making Jax believe the Chinese killed Tara, Gemma is both preserving herself and continuing—whether consciously or not—the legacy that Clay would have wanted: destruction, violence, and chaos. She wants her son to live out her ambitions, to fully give himself up to the anarchy of her rebellious desires.

Tara’s rebellion—that Gemma could not seem to get over—is the antithesis of Gemma’s. Tara left Charming as a teenager, leaving Jax and the club because she wanted to escape. She became a talented doctor, and later returned to Charming. When she wanted to “transfer to her son(s) the ambition which she has been obliged to suppress in herself”—escaping Charming and the grasp of SAMCRO, Gemma sees this desire as running counter to her own ambition for her son and grandsons: to stay in Charming, and to stay in the MC.

Wendy and Tara collaborate

Both Tara and Gemma are underestimated by the men, in terms of the lengths they will go to in order to preserve their desires for their lives and their sons. Because women aren’t included in the ultra-violent, masculine club scene (and are instead relegated to being porn stars, escorts, or old ladies—all very “private” roles), Tara’s plots shock Jax. Gemma brutally killing Tara is out of the realm of possibility for feminine force.

Freud added in the aforementioned lecture:

“There is one particularly constant relation between femininity and instinctual life which we do not want to overlook. Suppression of women’s aggressiveness which is prescribed for them constitutionally and imposed on them socially favors the development of powerful masochistic impulses, which succeed, as we know, in binding erotically the destructive trends which have been divested inwards. Thus masochism, as people say, is truly feminine.”

Gemma almost got away with murder because the expectation of women is that they are nonviolent and are not aggressive. Specifically, the brutal way she killed Tara was, according to law enforcement and Jax, in keeping with gang violence because it was so horrifying and malicious. When Gemma and Juice convince Jax that it was one of Lin’s men who killed Tara, Jax kills him in the same way Tara was killed, thinking he was enacting just revenge. He was, instead, simply doing as his mother taught him.

Showrunner Kurt Sutter said, “This is a story about the queen and the prince.” It seemed as if Jax had been trying to reconcile with his father and father figure all of these years; instead, we realize he needs to reconcile with his mother. When he finally realizes this, it’s too late—Gemma has killed Tara, Juice killed Eli to protect her, and they lied and set off a series of massacres and gang violence. Everyone immediately believed Lin’s crew was responsible for Tara’s death, because it looked like brutal gang violence—certainly not something a woman could do. There was no Mayhem vote for Gemma, because she isn’t at the table. However, even in her final moments, Gemma gives Jax permission to kill her, because she knows it must be done. She’s mothering—and controlling—until the very end.

As Hannah Arendt points out in On Violence, “Violence can always destroy power. Out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power.” As soon as Gemma kills Tara, her power starts rapidly declining. A conglomeration of Gertrude and Lady Macbeth, Gemma vacillates between justifying her actions and apologizing for them (but mostly justifying). As soon as she sets the stage for Jax to enact revenge upon the Chinese, his rage and misplaced revenge—without the understanding or agreement of the club—makes him less and less powerful. In the last episode, as he ties up all of his loose ends (see: killing everyone), he is losing power. By the end, he gives up himself, and his power—just like his father did—and commits suicide. Violence robs Gemma and Jax both of their power, their dignity, and their lives.

So who—and what—wins in this modern Shakespearean tale? Certainly not those who rely on a sense of vengeful justice and violence to ride through this life. In a patriarchal framework of understanding, these actions are seen as desirable and just. Instead, we must work toward a feminist ethic of care. Feminist psychologist and philosopher Carol Gilligan defines a feminist ethic of care as

“an ethic of resistance to the injustices inherent in patriarchy (the association of care and caring with women rather than with humans, the feminization of care work, the rendering of care as subsidiary to justice—a matter of special obligations or interpersonal relationships). A feminist ethic of care guides the historic struggle to free democracy from patriarchy; it is the ethic of a democratic society, it transcends the gender binaries and hierarchies that structure patriarchal institutions and cultures. An ethics of care is key to human survival and also to the realization of a global society.”

Gilligan’s research has shown that traditionally “feminine” approaches to care are about more than the individual—connectedness and care override a sense of individualism and justice. In Sons of Anarchy, the characters who most exemplify this care ethic are Nero and Wendy, who, at the end, are riding together to parent their children—biological and non—far away from Charming. They are friends, not lovers, and their goals are not for themselves, but for the safety of one another and their sons—sons who they desperately want to keep away from the individualistic, vengeful anarchy they were coming to know. Nero and Wendy are coincidentally both recovering addicts. In their recovery—from the literal and figurative drugs of their past—they care more deeply about one another and those around them than they care about their individual desires.

Wendy’s eventual ethic of care

Tara desired this kind of care for her sons, but couldn’t attain it in her lifetime because of the pull of Gemma and Jax’s patriarchal anarchy. After Gemma’s death, Jax is freed to fulfill Tara’s wishes, and legally makes Wendy the boys’ mother. As in so many Shakespearean dramas, women must die so that men will learn. However, what remains constant throughout Sons of Anarchy is that when the masculine ideals dissolve, and individuals cry, love, and care (exemplified in Tig and Venus’s powerful love scene in “Faith and Despondency”), intimacy and growth are possible.

Wendy and Nero escape with their sons, embodying the feminist ethic of care

As Nero and Wendy leave Charming, it’s clear that this, then, is the preferred way to ride—not “all alone,” as Jax does—but all together. Gemma stands by her way of mothering until the end. She’s distrustful and dismissive of teachers and school (whereas Wendy is passionate about Abel attending school), and she covertly gives Abel his grandfather’s SON ring, which he wears at the end of the finale. Jax, however, sees the dire need for care, not anarchy. “It’s not too late for my boys,” he says. “They will never know this life of chaos.” Ultimately, Jax is a tragic hero because he realizes that care, not justice, will heal and raise his children.

The feminism of Sons of Anarchy has been not only its complex, three-dimensional female characters and Gemma’s role as the rare female antihero, but also its tragic depiction of the end game of violent, individualistic patriarchy. Wrapped up in the tragedy of masculine justice and violent revenge, Sons of Anarchy lifts up of the feminist ethic of care.

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Leigh Kolb is an instructor at a community college in rural Missouri, where she teaches composition, journalism, and literature. She wrote “Mothers of Anarchy: Power, Control, and Care in the Feminine Sphere,” for Sons of Anarchy and Philosophy, and recapped the final season of Sons of Anarchy at Vulture. She is an editor and staff writer at Bitch Flicks, where she has written about the feminism of Sons of Anarchy.