Female Writers – Page 2

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.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Stephanie‘s Picks:

Angela Davis On “Free Angela & All Political Prisoners” by Livia Bloom via Filmmaker Magazine

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

Barry Norman Accused of Sexism After Branding Julia Roberts: “Every Man’s Dream Hooker” via The Telegraph

‘We Exploited the Sexism’: ‘Homeland’ Returns, with TV’s Most Compelling Female Character by Andrew Romano via The Daily Beast

Robin Swicord Replaces Frank Pierson, Joins Few Women on Academy’s Board of Governors by Sophia Savage via Thompson on Hollywood

Do We Really Need to See Sexy Mika in Vanity Fair? by Alyssa Rosenberg via Slate

Quote of the Day: Mandy Patinkin by Melissa McEwan via Shakesville

Megan‘s Picks:

Thirty Percent of Prime-Time TV Writers Are Female; Only Twenty Percent More to Go, People by Rebecca Pahle via The Mary Sue

The Mob Doctor Takes on Abortion and Parental Consent Laws by Alyssa Rosenberg via ThinkProgress

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

Sons of Anarchy is a Show About Biker Dudes. And Feminism by Alyssa Rosenberg via Slate

What have you been reading this week?

‘Seeking a Friend for the End of the World’: The Perfect Setting for a Manic Pixie Dream Girl Love Story

Steve Carell and Keira Knightley in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, from writer–director Lorene Scafaria (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist), is a charming and oddly pleasant romantic comedy set against the backdrop of the last three weeks before the Earth is destroyed by an asteroid’s impact. Unfortunately, Seeking a Friend seems to have missed its cultural moment: it not only comes on the heels of 2011’s limited-perspective apocalypse dramas Melancholia and 4:44 Last Day on Earth, but it unironically presents a quintessential Manic Pixie Dream Girl in the year of her deconstruction, from Zoe Kazan’s Ruby Sparks to Parker Posey’s character Liz on the television series Louie. 2012 phenomena aside, Seeking a Friend feels like it ought to have come out around the turn of the millennium, the last time the cultural collective was fixated on The End. As it is, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World feels hopelessly dated and out-of-touch.

Steve Carell stars as the too-on-the-nose named Dodge, the Inhibited Sad Sack who needs Keira Knightley’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl Penny to deliver him from his lonely joyless life. Penny is 100 proof MPDG, from her introduction where she literally throws herself into Dodge’s arms through his apartment window when he checks in on her during a apocalypse/breakup-induced crying session on the fire escape, to her seemingly serious medical condition that’s presented as quirky and precious (hypersomnia); her misplaced priorities (fleeing her home as a rioting mob descends, she grabs as many vinyl records as she can carry and screams to the others, “Goodbye, Friends!”) to her improbably sunny disposition (when Dodge tries to prompt her to think of things she won’t miss about the world, she even finds sympathy for her dentist).

Keira Knightley as Penny

It is unusual to find such a classic Manic Pixie in a film written by a woman, but at least Scafaria crafts Penny so that she has her own motivation outside of fixing what’s left of Dodge’s life. After missing the last of the commercial flights to the UK where her family is, she agrees to help Dodge get to the home of his high school sweetheart in exchange for him taking her to “someone I used to know who has a plane.” In one of the most touching scenes, Penny is able to contact her family via satellite phone (cell service has been discontinued for reasons I didn’t quite understand), and in that moment she seems like a real person with a real history, completely independent from Dodge or any other man.

But for the rest of the film (most notably, the conclusion), Penny seems to exist to save the spirits of Dodge. If Seeking a Friend for the End of the World were just a touch more artful, I would surmise it was using setting to further deconstruct the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Because what better time to meet an Manic Pixie than the last two weeks before the apocalypse, when everyone is acting on hedonist impulses, and long term consequences are not a concern? At the end of most Manic Pixie Dream Girl films, the credits roll and the audience has to suppress cynical speculation as to how the rest of the MPDG and the Sad Sack’s relationship would play out, wondering how such a dynamic could possibly be sustained. As Seeking a Friend for the End of the World fades to white, we’re free from these doubts. Dodge and Penny’s whirlwind romance doesn’t have to work very hard to last until the end of time.

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.

Guest Post: Can ‘Hope Springs’ Launch a New Era of Smart, Accessible Movies About Women?

Meryl Streep in Hope Springs

Guest post written by Molly McCaffrey originally published at I Will Not Diet. Cross-posted with permission.

If you watch the movie trailer for Hope Springs, you’ll see a lot of comical moments set against the backdrop of some lighthearted happy music…

…including Meryl Streep’s character telling her kids that she and her husband—played by Tommy Lee Jones—got each other a new cable subscription to celebrate their 31st wedding anniversary.

…Streep smiling happily when Jones joins her on the plane to go to “intensive couples therapy.”

…Jones cracking wise about the experience: saying things like “I hope you’re happy” when he boards the plane and “that makes one of us” when their therapist—played with both understated gravity and empathy by Steve Carrell—says he’s happy the two of them are there.

…Streep asking a bookstore clerk for a book called Sex Tips for a Straight Woman by a Gay Man. (A book, by the way, I would like to have.)

…Streep sitting on a toilet eating a banana while reading the aforementioned book (rather than using said banana for its intended purpose).

…Streep laughing bashfully when salty bartender Elizabeth Shue gets a bar full of locals to admit they’re not having sex either. (Shue’s only appearance in the film, I must sadly note.)

…Streep and Jones laughing together over their therapist’s formal way of talking about sex.

…Streep shaking her head in a lighthearted manner at Jones while Jones dances in front of her.

And while all this is happening, the screen reads:

From the director of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA … comes a comedy about love…and the things we’ll do to get it.

Finally, the trailer closes with Streep and Jones running into the neighbor with whom Jones admitted in therapy he’d like to have a threesome. The woman has just adopted her third Corgie, and the trailer ends with her saying,”Three’s the limit!”

It all feels very light, funny, silly, and—this is important—optimistic, even hopeful, an idea of course reinforced by the title, Hope Springs.

But this trailer is completely misleading because Hope Springs is not a comedy—unless you’re talking about the tradtional Shakesperian definition of a comedy, which assumes that on the way to finding happiness the characters suffer through some incredible tragic experiences.

No, the majority of this movie is more dark than light, more pessimistic than hopeful. In fact, sometimes it’s so dark that it’s hard to watch. (Not The Hurt Locker hard to watch, but still hard to watch.)

This is because Hope Springs is a movie about two people who are desperately unhappy—in marriage and in life. And it is their unhappiness that dominates most of the movie. They certainly spend more time feeling alienated or alone than they do being happy—whether they are together or apart.

And that makes me happy.

It makes me happy because it is so rare that we see a mainstream movie showing average Americans who are desperately unhappy, a condition that sadly affects more of us than it should given how relatively easy most of our lives are.

In most mainstream movies, we are shown something wholly different from these two miserable people … not their polar opposite, but still people who are mostly happy but have a tiny sliver of unhappiness in their life, a sliver which is usually located in their romantic life. As the movie progresses, these mostly happy people, of course, find romance and then all is well in the world.

In other words, most mainstream movies about couples are not at all realistic and not really all that interesting.

But Hope Springs, thankfully, isn’t that simple-minded.

At the beginning of the film, the unbelievably talented Streep and Jones are shown wallowing in the mud puddle of routine and mediocrity. Their lives are horribly mundane—they wake every day at the same time, they eat the same meals and watch the same TV shows, and, most importantly, they spend their time not interacting in the same frustrated fashion.

And some of the clips that look cute and comical in the preview—like when they mention their new cable subscription to their kids at their anniversary dinner—are much darker inside the actual movie, where it seems that absolutely nothing is able to even temporarily lift their suffocating misery. Even on their anniversary, they can’t even look each other in the eye, much less speak to each other, a scene that reads as more tragic than funny when you see it in context.

These tragic occurences continue throughout the movie. From the moment when Streep is packing her suitcase for couples therapy, crying as she thinks about the fact that Jones has said he doesn’t want to join her, to the two different scenes when they each run out of therapy on different occasions after becoming completely overwhelmed by the problems they face as a couple. *SPOILER ALERT* To the brutal scene when they finally try to have sex but ultimately fail, leaving Streep to wonder out loud if Jones is no longer attracted to her because she’s overweight and old. It’s obvious to the viewer that this is not the case, but watching Streep wimper about the baby weight she never lost after her husband stops banging her mid-coitus is utterly heartbreaking. *END OF SPOILER*

These are the kinds of moments that dominate the film, clearly demonstrating that these people are miserable in a way that is not at all happy or light or silly.

But rather is very real.

And the things they talk about in therapy are real too—why they no longer have sex, why they don’t sleep in the same bed, why they play out the same ignore-each-other script every day of their lives, why they never do anything for each other anymore, why their gifts are for the house and not each other, and even more hard-to-talk-about issues like what they fantasize about and whether or not they still masturbate.

The latter discussion made me wish—for a split second—that I wasn’t sitting between my husband and my mother while watching this scene unfold, but ultimately I was so thrilled the film didn’t flinch from the emotional honesty of these uncomfortable moments that I was able to get past the awkwardness of the situation.

I had invited my mother to see the movie with us because I’d had the wrong impression—from the misleading trailer—that it was going to be a well done but cliched and light-hearted rom-com.

But as I said, Hope Springs is far from light entertainment. It’s a movie that makes you think.

It makes you think about what it means to have a healthy relationship and about how you can lose that even with someone you love. It makes you think about how important sex and romance are to a successful relationship. It makes you think about the problems with falling into stereotypical gender roles. And, most importantly, it makes you think about how happiness is more important than being in the wrong relationship.

In that way, Hope Springs feels more like Sex and the City for seniors than a rehash of some of Streep’s other rom-coms—like It’s Complicated and Mamma Mia!—both of which were fun and had some thoughtful interludes, but were still, in the end, just light entertainment.

The woman who wrote the screenplay for Hope Springs—Vanessa Taylor—is new to film but has written for critically-praised television shows such as Game of Thones and Alias, making me wonder if maybe, just maybe, Hope Springs is a sign Hollywood is finally willing to let more serious writers take on comedy, something we’ve seen with only a handful of other screenwriters such as Alexander Payne and Diablo Cody. And if this were to happen even more, it makes me wonder if we could move away from the predominantly vacuous junk that has passed as comedy about women for the past decade—the so-called rom-com—so that we can finally return to our more Shakespearian roots.

At the very least, this movie gives me that hope.

Molly McCaffrey is the author of the short story collection How to Survive Graduate School & Other Disasters, the co-editor of Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There, and the founder of I Will Not Diet, a blog devoted to healthy living and body acceptance. She teaches English and creative writing classes and advises writing majors at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Women in Science Fiction Week: Examining Stereotypes with Ursula K. Le Guin

Guest post written by Carissa Harwood.

In the past, the act of writing science fiction has been a traditionally male dominated genre. Women have sought to create their own meanings in the books they read that don’t often include their perspectives and experiences. In recent decades, though, women writers have searched for and taken control over a fiction category that seeks to shrink them, or exploit their gender for some statement, whether intentional or not, about the female body.

While times have certainly changed, and there are many fine science fiction writers, male and female, Ursula Le Guin stands out for me as a writer who has created new meanings for women in science fiction with seeming ease in her writing. She takes a simple concept — the ‘what if’ factor — and creates whole worlds that she populates as she gives us her answer. That’s the big golden key to science fiction writing — exploring the ‘what if’.

Here’s a ‘what if’ from her novel The Left Hand of Darkness — what if there was a planet where gender wasn’t so easily defined? What if there was a planet where men had the children, what would that be like? So often I’ve come across aspiring authors who request that I review their NEW FRESH EXCITING sci-fi novel, even though my blog explicitly states I no longer review new science fiction. And here’s the reason: the submissions (from male authors) I’ve read invariably read like this (I made this up as an example, this is not a direct quote from anywhere):

“Susie laughed manically as she switched Betty’s birth control pills with pez. ‘Now I can have Tommy all to myself’, she smirked.” There is a lot of smirking going on in these novels, and I hate the word smirk. It should be used sparingly. A smirk should be used to indicate a sarcastic smile, an I-know-something- you-don’t-know sing-song smile, and I’ve always associated the smirk with something teenagers like to do. And that is how many writers of science fiction write their female characters: smirking adolescents.

Science fiction is, or should be, a place to examine stereotypes and political and social conventions, not to reinforce them. Before Le Guin came along, we had authors like Piers Anthony (a notorious misogynist, although like most misogynists he denies that he is one) and Ray Bradbury. Now I wouldn’t go so far as to call Bradbury a misogynist — I admire Bradbury’s work, I really do, because many of his themes are universal. But he falls into the same trap that Stephen King does — very few of his main characters are female, and more often than not, men are the decision makers, and the ones that move the plot along. It’s interesting to note that many writers tend to write towards their own gender. In Bradbury’s fiction, like Anthony and King, the female characters often end up in supporting roles as wives, mothers, and crushes that turn into ‘marionettes’ or a controllable programmable robot that can be easily manipulated.

I read these books as a child and teenager, and I experienced a sense of dissatisfaction with the minor roles women were playing in this male literary playground. So I wondered what women writing science fiction would be like, and that’s where I found Ursula Le Guin, who didn’t merit her own displays in the library lobby like the other authors I’ve mentioned. At least, not when I was a kid.

Compare Bradbury’s marionettes and Anthony’s robot women to Le Guin’s character of Sita Dulip in Changing Planes. The main character is a woman who travels alone and fearlessly not only to other cities in the world, but other dimensions and other planets and cultures. She isn’t someone’s ‘female companion.’ She’s not defined by her marital status or her relationships or how many children she can or cannot produce. Not once does she ask anyone’s permission. Not once does she require a male guardian or escort. Not once does she require supervision. She just goes, because that’s what any thinking and curious person should be allowed to do without restriction—go forth and explore and learn and imagine. And she can do all this without one single mention of menstruation, (or mentioning having to pack tampons) or heartlessly abandoning her children in favor of a free life seeing what the universe has to offer. A woman can venture forth into the world (or worlds, in this case) without one single thought for her reproductive capabilities.

What’s so innovative about that? A woman traveling alone, doing what she wants? Because there’s no sense of fear, or intimidation or dependence on anyone else. Sita Dulip is truly a free individual. There’s no sense of loss, or not belonging anywhere. It’s simply a story of exploring and learning, without any literal or figurative baggage.

Let’s look at another comparison of science fiction as a way to explore deeply held social constructs by looking at John Scalzi’s brilliant take on The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, by Ursula Le Guin. He wrote about this as a lens through which to examine the Penn State scandal, and I had my students read this article when we discussed comparing literature to current events. The world she constructed in the novel goes like this: If you could have a happy wonderful, perfect life, but the price was that one child would have to live his or her life in misery, neglect and starvation for the rest of that child’s life—would you do it? Could you live your life knowing it took someone’s direct pain and misery? What happens to the people who stay? What happens to the people who walk away into an uncertain world?

It’s these kinds of questions that are explored through science fiction that really melt my butter. And I’m not saying–at all–that women can write science fiction better, I just want women to have an active voice, and active participation.

It’s the demand for participation in this world as something other than a reproductive vehicle that I wanted to find. Writing is a mental communication of ideas from the author’s brain to yours, a communication that, hopefully, journeys with you as you read along and create new possibilities and opportunities, challenging our perspectives and allowing us into the hearts and minds of the most diverse cast of characters you can imagine. All writing explores how we think, but fiction provides with a vehicle we can ride in. I just don’t think the vehicles should come in distinct shades of pink or blue with all their incumbent stereotypes. This can only happen if, and hopefully when, more women take up the pen to write their own stories, and seek to answer their own ‘what ifs’.

Carissa Harwood is an adjunct professor and writer of things rich and strange, from aliens to zombies, with some feminism, paranormal romance, and urban fantasy thrown into the mix. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts Degree in Playwrighting and blogs at 3500 Words per Pound.

‘Lola Versus’ Not Your Average Romantic Comedy: Bad Love Life Decisions, Finding Happiness…and One of the Best Film Endings Ever

Greta Gerwig as Lola in Lola Versus

Romantic comedies usually make me want to gouge my eyes out. Now, that doesn’t mean I hate them all. Some of my favorite films are rom-coms. But every now and again, one comes along that entertains rather than enrages me. Following in the footsteps of female-fronted comedies Bridesmaids, Young Adult and Girls (all of which I love), Lola Versus follows a single woman making horrendously bad decisions yet struggling to find her way.

Indie muse Greta Gerwig — hands down the best part of Greenberg — plays Lola, a 29-year-old woman whose life is about to unravel. Not only is she on the precipice of turning 30 (a potentially introspective time in any woman’s life), her fiancé (the effortlessly charming Joel Kinnaman…watch him as Holder in The Killing…simply brilliant) breaks up with her shortly before their wedding. Like 3 weeks before their wedding. Understandably, her world crumbles around her.

Lola is sweet, intelligent and articulate. Gerwig imbues her protagonist with vulnerability and quirky humor. And she’s an absolute mess. A disaster. Lola doesn’t know what she wants or what to do with her life. She now has no man, no fabulous NYC loft to live in any longer, and she’s suffering from writer’s block while trying to complete her PhD dissertation.

Supporting Lola through her break-up are her best friends supportive Henry (Hamish Linklater, who I will forever think of as Julia Louis-Dreyfuss’ brother on New Adventures of Old Christine) and scene-stealing sarcastic Alice (Zoe Lister Jones, who also co-wrote the script).

Joel Kinnaman and Greta Gerwig in Lola Versus

As she tries to move on, we witness Lola ask a man to put on a condom and take a pregnancy test. Not only is it great to see aspects of sex and reproduction. It’s refreshing to see a woman exert her sexuality but not be defined by it merely an object for the male gaze.

While it started off promising, I gotta admit, the bulk of Lola Versus pissed me off. I wanted to shout at the screen, “No, Lola!! Don’t sleep with him!” or “Spend more time with your girlfriends!” or “Don’t believe him that he’s clean…whatever the fuck that means…make him wear a fricking condom!!” or “Stop smoking weed with (and being nice to) your ex-fiancé who dumped you!”

By the end of the film, I realized I wasn’t mad at the movie per se. I was pissed at Lola’s bad choices.

But isn’t that life? Isn’t that what people do when they’re dumped? They obsess over their exes, retracing the steps of their relationship, trying to deciper the clues that led to the relationship’s unraveling. They pine for them. They strategize ways to accidentally run into them (or avoid them like the plague). Either way, there’s a lot of strategizing involved. I wanted Lola to be empowered. To stop obsessing over nice but douchey guys who didn’t appreciate her or who weren’t right for her. I wanted her to hang out with her female friends. But the way the plot unfolded rang more realistic and way more uncomfortable.

Greta Gerwig and Hamish Linklater in Lola Versus

In an interview with Collider, Gerwig shared how the script spoke to her because Lola was such a hot mess:

“Sometime female characters, especially in the genre of something that people consider rom-com, make mistakes in a cute way or they’re a mess in a way that’s palatable. I like that Lola is a real mess. She’s making big mistakes and it’s not just cute. It’s destructive and self-absorbed and not awesome and she has to recover from that. She stands to damage relationships around her. Even as this crappy thing happens to her at the beginning of the movie, she uses that as an excuse to behave badly for the next year of her life. I like movies about women behaving badly, because women behave badly just like men, and we’re not always adorable and cute about it.”

Gerwig is absolutely right. Women in film aren’t usually allowed to be messy or unlikeable. Although that’s slowly changing.

Lola Versus made me uncomfortable because it reminded me of too many of the bad decisions I’ve made in my life. Falling back into sleeping with people I shouldn’t. Agonizing and analyzing every single conversation. Calling an ex, desperately hoping to rekindle that spark. Settling for someone not that great in a vain attempt to fill the gaping void that my partner’s disappearance has left.

I eventually stopped all this time-sucking nonsense. I thought by hanging onto relationships, I was boldly forging ahead seeking my happiness. But that’s not what I was really doing. I was placing my happiness in the hands of others. And so was Lola.

Zoe Lister Jones and Greta Gerwig in Lola Versus

The movie tackles the topic of single women and aging. As we approach or pass turning 30 (like me!), we contend with societal expectations. Not that turning 30 is some horrible harbinger of doom. Quite the contrary. I’ve been more confident and comfortable in my own skin after turning 30. But it’s still hard to silence the social cues that tell us our lives should fall into place in a certain pattern.

Here’s the thing about Lola Versus. It frustrated me and I rarely laughed out loud. Although the scene where she screams at the party…priceless. But Gerwig mesmerized me and the film enthralled me. It passes the Bechdel Test (yay!!!). And it boasts one of the absolute best endings I’ve ever seen in a film. Ever.

In every romantic comedy, it’s all about two people getting together in the end. Or if it’s really radical — and trust me, I use that term facetiously — they’re already together in the beginning and it’s about the two lovers facing obstacles but ultimately staying together. The only rom-coms I can recall that deviate from this predictable paint by numbers path are Annie Hall, The Break-Up and Kissing Jessica Stein.

I don’t want to spoil the ending. But I will say this. (Aver your eyes if you want to be completely surprised) Lola achieves happiness, something that had eluded her all along. She suffered writers’ block, not being able to silence the voices and noises in her head — ironic since her dissertation was analyzing silence in film — but now she could write again. She became happy with who she was and with her life.

And it had nothing to do with a man.

Now that doesn’t mean she says fuck you to all her relationships. While she knew how to love other people, she didn’t know how to love herself, a lesson most of us need to learn.

Lola talks about Cinderella with her mom (Debra Winger…so glad to see her in more films!). She tells her that she liked Cinderella as a kid but how fairy tales are toxic, teaching girls to wait for a man to sweep them off their feet and give them shoes. Fairy tales set women up for failure. We put these unrealistic expectations on love and romance. Now, I’m not arguing for settling, not by any means. But fairy tales teach girls that when they grow up, they should wait around for men; that they should put romantic relationships before everything else in their life even sacrificing themselves. Lola realizes that she must navigate her own happiness rather than relying on a man or some lofty romantic fairytale.

Too many romantic comedies subject women to stereotypical gender roles. Needy, passive, just out to find a man. Can’t romantic comedies be intelligent? Can’t they highlight the importance of female friendship too?? Yes, yes they can. And Lola Versusdoes.

One of my favorite lines in the film is when Lola says:

“In this world of shipwreck, there’s hope in uncertainty.”

Isn’t that what we do in this world? Try to salvage the wreckage of our disappointments, losses and broken hearts, forging ahead and charting a new course?

Through her relationships, Lola discovers what she truly wants from life. She realizes it’s okay to have your life in tumult as long you’re happy with yourself. Throughout the film, I kept rooting for Lola — for her to find her place in the world. I was rooting for hope. And ultimately, I was rooting for myself.

Guest Writer Wednesday: The Casual Feminism of ’30 Rock’

Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) in 30 Rock

This post written by Peggy Cooke was originally published at Abortion Gang and is cross-posted with permission.

I have had a love-hate relationship with 30 Rock almost since the show’s inception. I love it purely because it is smart and hilarious, and the Liz Lemon character is such an unabashed loser that it’s hard sometimes to remember how conventionally attractive she actually is. There are so many things about it that I like, in fact, that it took me a lot longer than it usually does to start getting annoyed with its faults.

It was an episode a couple seasons ago that did it for me; you might remember it. In the first five minutes, a man beats up and decapitates a cardboard display of Liz, and Jenna gets a book thrown at her face. Then there is a truly disgusting “joke” involving Pete raping his wife in her sleep, which gets not one, but two visual depictions. All played for laughs. Because of various elements of my privilege I was able to shrug off some of the vile sexist and transphobic “humour” of the show, but that episode really crossed a line for me.

I keep watching it, and I’m glad I do, because on Thursday night while waiting for the (in my opinion) much funnier, smarter, and warmer Parks and Recreation to start, I tuned in to 30 Rock and caught an episode that not only depicted a smart, friendly and funny little feminist child, but also involved some nuanced commentary on the American economy. But best of all was a scene in which Liz Lemon told Jack, “You are being so transvaginal right now!”.

Immediately my Twitter feed repeated the quote back to me via about six or seven different people, not all of whom are reproductive rights activists. This is the true joy of 30 Rock for me – they manage to sneak in the kind of jokes that tell you that someone is paying attention, even if it is just Tina Fey or a bunch of nerdy TV writers. Sometimes as an activist you get so wrapped up in a particular issue, you start to lose the ability to tell how much the general public actually knows about it. Is it common knowledge that these horrible transvaginal ultrasound requirements (and other ridiculous abortion restrictions) are sweeping across the US, or is this just something that abortion geeks like us pay attention to?

Not that 30 Rock making a joke about something means it is common knowledge – obviously there is an intellectual elitism that is almost essential to fully appreciating this show (another thing that bothers me about it…but also makes me feel smart when I get all the jokes). But Liz Lemon calling a controlling, patronizing, uber-privileged man “transvaginal” – it’s so, so important that she uses it in the context of calling Jack out for being intrusive – is important. It means that if this isn’t something we’re talking about, it should be. Because a lot of people are being really transvaginal right now about our wombs and lives. Liz Lemon’s got our back.

Peggy Cooke is a Canadian feminist who works for an economic/social justice non-profit. Her passions are reproductive justice activism, shark movies and proofreading. Her resume has been described as “fascinating.” She writes about abortion at Anti-Choice is Anti-Awesome and Abortion Gang, and reviews fiction set in Toronto at Smoke City Stories.

Reproduction & Abortion Week: ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Advocates Abortion and Reproductive Rights

Sandra Oh as Dr. Cristina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy

Warning: if you have not watched up to Grey’s Anatomy Season 7, spoilers ahead!

Abortion is healthcare — a routine, normal and legal medical procedure. Yet most films and TV don’t ever broach the subject. Their characters don’t get abortions, people don’t talk about abortion. That’s why I’m thrilled about Cristina Yang’s abortion storyline on Grey’s Anatomy.

As I’ve shared before, I love the hospital drama. Is it melodramatic? Of course. Is it over the top? Absolutely. But Shonda Rhimes has crafted a show with not only a woman at the center, not only an incredibly diverse cast with open auditions for characters, but a female friendship at its core. Surgeons Meredith Grey and Cristina Yang transcend best friends. They are each others’ soulmates…and frequently say so, telling each other and others that the other is “their person.”

Cristina is a badass — one of my favorite female characters. She’s arrogant, blunt, brilliant, driven, competitive and fearless. And a woman of color…huzzah! She’s never been a woman who wanted “traditional” things. She’s also been adamant that she never wants to have children. Hollywood rarely depicts women who don’t want children. If a character starts out that way, they often change their mind once they fall in love or get married. But Cristina maintained her choice, even after she married her husband Owen.

When Cristina becomes pregnant at the end of Season 7, she adamantly tells Owen that she wants to terminate her pregnancy. Yet he keeps trying to convince her to keep it. Cristina firmly replies:

“No, there’s no way we’re doing this. Do you hear me? No, no I am not this beautiful vessel for all that might be good about the future. No, I’m not hearing your hopes and dreams.”

Owen tells her that they should talk because they “are a partnership.” He says that he loves her, not her incubating potential. He doesn’t want to make her do something that would make her miserable. And yet, that’s precisely what he wants her to do. Owen wants her to change her mind…for him.

Owen: “There is a way to make this work without ruining your life or derailing your career.”

Cristina: “I don’t want a baby.

Owen: “Well, you have one.”

Cristina: “Are you getting all life-y on me?!”

I like that Cristina pointed out Owen’s ~~pro-life~~ anti-choice position. He’s telling Cristina she has a baby when it’s not a baby, it’s a fetus. It also should be Cristina’s choice. When Owen asks her how late she is, Cristina tells him it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t.

Cristina: “I don’t want one. I don’t hate children. I respect children. I think they should have parents who want them.”

Owen: “I want them. And I believe you could want them too. Your life could be bigger than it is.”

Great. So anyone without a child doesn’t have a meaningful, impactful life?? Well then I’m screwed.

Later, when Owen tells her that he could take a leave of absence, Cristina explains to him that she’s “not a monster,” if she has a baby she’ll love it. He scoffs at her as he tries to look for a compromise. But as Cristina rightfully tells him, “there is no compromise:”

“I don’t want one. This isn’t about work or a scheduling conflict. I don’t want to be a mother.”

Owen keeps telling her to trust him, trying to convince her she would be a great mother. He doesn’t listen to a word she says:

“Have a baby? This isn’t pizza versus Thai. You don’t give a little on a baby…I am saying NO!”

Owen then kicks Cristina out of their house, abandoning her for her choice. She turns to her soulmate Meredith and tells her she’s getting an abortion.

In the next episode, Cristina has postponed her abortion but is still determined to get one. When Meredith questions if she’s hesitated because she wants to be a mother too, Cristina tells her she wishes she wanted a child because it would be easier and her life wouldn’t be a “mess:”

“I don’t want a kid. I don’t want to make jam. I don’t want to carpool. I really, really, really don’t want to be a mother. I want to be a surgeon. And please, get it. I need someone to get it. And I wish that someone was Owen. I wish that any minute he’ll get it and show up for me. But that’s not going to happen. And you’re my person. I need you to be there at 6 o’clock tonight to hold my hand cause I’m scared, Mer. And sad. Cause my husband doesn’t get that. So I need you to.”

Cristina’s plea to Meredith broke my heart. Because it’s not sad that she wants to get an abortion. It’s sad that those closest to her don’t understand or respect her decision to choose what’s right for her body and her life.

Later, Meredith confronts Owen, telling him he’s “punishing” Cristina. Meredith tells him how her mother didn’t want her, how Cristina is kind and that “the guilt of resenting her own child will eat her up” inside. While I like that Meredith calls out Owen’s bullshit, it would have been great if someone reminded him that it’s Cristina’s body and Cristina’s choice, not his.

Owen eventually supports Cristina and accompanies her to the abortion, holding her hand, both physically and emotionally. Although I’ve heard (I’m a bit behind in watching), that he later accuses her of killing their baby. Horrible. As Feministing’s Maya talked about Hollywood’s “rules for abortion,” she asserted that Cristina would probably have to pay for her decision down the road. Sadly, it seems like that might be true.

What I love about this story arc is that it feels honest and raw. Cristina is a married, accomplished, financially secure, career woman in her late 30s. If a character gets pregnant unintentionally, we witness adoption or having a baby as the only 2 viable options, implying that there’s a “right” and “wrong” choice when it comes to reproduction. Cristina isn’t the stereotypical abortion patient depicted in the media. If we see abortion — which happens so rarely as it is — it’s a teenager or a woman in her early 20s. We typically don’t see women choosing abortion in committed relationships. And yet in reality, they do. Teens, single women, married women and mothers all choose abortion. People in all stages of their lives choose abortion. And this isn’t something to shame or hide.

In Shonda Rhimes’ shows Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice, abortion is shown as the routine medical procedure it is. Rhimes sits on the board of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles (OMG love her even more!!!) In an interview with Vulture, Rhimes discussed her motivation, abortion providers, and the taboo of abortion and abortion storylines:

“You know, it’s interesting because it’s true, I feel like it doesn’t happen often and they don’t talk about it and it feels ridiculous to me because it is a legal choice in our country. But what I was trying to do is, I wanted to portray that character honestly. I really wanted Cristina Yang to stay true to who Cristina Yang is. And I feel like that is a character who has never really wanted to be a mother.”

[…]

“I think for me the point is it’s a painful choice that a lot of women have made in their lives and we just wanted to portray it honestly and with a really good conversation that I think started in the season finale and carries over in this episode. And see what happens after. I try to discuss this a lot. Addison on Private Practiceis an abortion provider. There are only a certain number of abortion providers in the country and she is one of them. And she is a character who in the past had had an abortion and we talk about this issue a lot. And I felt like it made sense; I wouldn’t be doing it randomly, it made sense for the character of Cristina Yang.”

The plotline did make sense for Cristina. Throughout the series, she has vocalized her choice to not have children. I’m an unmarried woman in her 30s who’s chosen to not get married (although maybe someday) and not have children. I’ve never wanted kids and I’ve never wanted to be a mother. Yet I can’t tell you how many times (seriously A LOT) I’ve been told by people that I will eventually change my mind and have children. As if my choice is some cute and trendy passing phase. Thanks for telling me about my life, assholes.

We should stop mandating people’s life choices and start respecting them instead.

As I’ve written before, “through movies, TV series and ads, the media perpetually tells us all women want children. If they don’t, they must be damaged, deluding themselves or they just haven’t found the right man yet. Because you know silly ladies, our lives revolve around men. Tabloid magazines repeatedly report on female actors’ baby bumps. As Susan J. Douglas argues in Enlightened Sexism, “bump patrols” reduce women to their reproductive organs, reinforcing the stereotype that women aren’t real women unless they procreate.”

In fact, the only shows that come to mind where a female character chooses not to have children are Samantha and Carrie on Sex and the City, Elaine on Seinfeld, Emily on The Bob Newhart Show, Jane Timony on Prime Suspect (the original with Helen Mirren), Robin on How I Met Your Mother and Cristina Yang. Of those characters, Samantha(off-screen), Carrie (off-screen), Jane and Cristina choose abortion.

As RH Reality Check’s Martha Kempner points out, there weren’t any “extenuating circumstances” involving Cristina’s pregnancy. She wasn’t in medical danger; the fetus wasn’t in any danger. Cristina chose abortion because she didn’t want to be pregnant.

When asked if writing an abortion storyline is advocacy, Rhimes said that she doesn’t have an agenda but wants to “do what’s right for the characters.”

“It’s not a political agenda as much as me trying to make the world as full and round and as complete with peoples’ opinions as possible.”

The majority of us in this country support abortion and reproductive rights. 1 in 3 women will have an abortion in her lifetime. Yet depicting an abortion because a main character doesn’t want to be pregnant feels radical. But it shouldn’t be. If 30% of women get an abortion, then it’s an experience that should be depicted in media and pop culture. We need more films and TV shows to follow suit and showcase the full scope of women’s lives and women’s choices. And that includes abortion.

No one has the right to tell another person what they should or shouldn’t do with their body. Grey’s Anatomy doesn’t stigmatize Cristina’s abortion. Instead it shows the detriment of not supporting those you love exercise their reproductive rights. Cristina knew herself and made a choice. The series conveys how women are so often silenced when they try to assert autonomy over their body…and the stinging pain when people closest to you don’t respect and support your decision.

With a Complex Black Female Protagonist Created by a Black Female Showrunner, I’m Rooting for ‘Scandal’

Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope in Scandal

I love Grey’s Anatomy. Is it melodramatic? Absolutely. But its dramatic storylines, sharp dialogue and diverse cast have hooked me from the very first episode. So when I discovered writer, producer, showrunner Shonda Rhimes created Scandal, a political thriller TV series revolving around a woman of color, I knew I had to watch.

Kerry Washington (a feminist in real life…huzzah!) plays Olivia Pope, an assertive attorney who’s a “crisis management expert,” inspired by former George H.W. Bush administration press aide Judy Smith (who also happens to be a producer of the show). Olivia runs a small organization of lawyers who fix scandals and clean up messes like murder charges and infidelity. With a subtle and nuanced performance, Washington is definitely the best part of the series.

What’s so interesting (and fucking sad) is that Scandal is the only prime-time TV show on right now centering around an African American woman. And it’s the first network show with a black female lead in 30 years (that is horrifying). I’ve often heard Washington is a fantastic actor and she was great in the heartbreaking For Colored Girls. Here she commands the screen with confidence and poise. Olivia is an intelligent, successful and empowered woman. Others look up to her, revere her and even fear her shrewd insights and relentlessness to finish a job. She’s demanding, requiring her staff to pull all-nighters and enforcing rules like no crying in the office and not answering “I don’t know” to a question she asks. Powerful politicians turn to her for advice. She negotiates deals on her terms. While new employee Quinn (Katie Lowes) idolizes her, Olivia is far from a paragon of perfection. She’s vulnerable with a messy and complicated love life. She’s flawed, not always likeable (although I personally love her!) and uses Machiavellian tactics to complete a job. But this mélange makes her all the more interesting.

Washington was recently on The Melissa Harris-Perry Show (one of my absolute favorite feminist icons EVER!!!). She talked about inclusivity and how she and Harris-Perry, as two women of color on TV, are “expanding the idea of who ‘We the People’ is.” She also discussed playing a complex female character on-screen:

“…When I read this script, I was so blown away by this woman who in one area of her life, in her professional life, she’s brilliant and sophisticated and in power. And then in her personal life she’s vulnerable and torn and confused. And I thought this is an incredible challenge for any actor. But we also don’t get to do that often — as women in this business, as people of color in this business — to have all of that complexity to explore.”

And she’s right. We too often don’t see complex women, especially women of color, on-screen.

I loved the political intrigue and the focus on a single, accomplished, career-driven woman. And of course how could I not be delighted that Henry Ian Cusick (aka dreamy Desmond from LOST) has found a new series. I was thrilled that the show opens from Quinn’s perspective, taking a job with Olivia because of her reverence for her stellar reputation. I also loved that within the first 7 minutes, a character derided a potential client because he was an anti-choice, anti-gay Republican. While many people assume the media suffers from a liberal bias, too few shows actually discuss abortion or LGBTQ issues.

While most of it is good, some of the dialogue felt a bit staged or forced. I cringed when Olivia body polices and chastises new employee Quinn for displaying too much cleavage and when Abby (Darby Stanchfield), one of Olivia’s employees, gleefully calls a female murder victim a whore…and drops the whore word a few more times in the next episode too. While there are several female characters (none of whom are really fleshed out yet beyond Olivia), most of the time they’re interacting with men. Although Olivia does have conversations with a young woman who claims is having an affair with the president (Olivia’s former boss) and with the wife of a Supreme Court nominee. No strong female friendships emerge yet. But we’re only 2 episodes into the series. Female friendships comprise the cores of Rhimes’ other shows, Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice. So I’m hopeful that we’ll see more female interaction as the series progresses.

Much like its complicated protagonist, the series isn’t perfect yet. But it’s got potential. I’m rooting for it because we can never have too many sharp political dramas. And we can never have too many female leads, especially with women of color.

Scandal is a big deal. Not only do we have a woman of color protagonist, we have a series written and created by a woman of color. With Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice and Scandal, Rhimes belongs “in an elite group of TV show runners who have multiple series on the air at the same time.” In each of Rhimes’ television shows, she puts women at the forefront. While she has held open casting calls for all ethnicities and has African American, Latina, Asian American and white women in her shows, she’s never had a series revolve around a woman of color. Until now.

In an Essence interview, Kerry Washington said she felt “lucky” to be a woman of color in Hollywood right now:

“I think it’s a really special time to be a woman of color in this business. The landscape of who has the power is changing. We are in more influential positions and are able to have a say in the stories that are told. I feel very lucky to be in the business now…”

But The Grio’s Veronica Miller asserts that it’s hard to have faith in “Hollywood’s relationship with black actresses:”

“It will be easier when black actresses become more visible in roles across the spectrum, (think fantasy hits like Harry Potter, or romantic dramas like The Notebook) and not just ones that call for an African-American female.”

Racialicious’ Kendra James points out the pressure TV shows like Scandalwith black leads face:

“It’s risky for a network that depends on millions of viewers for advertising revenue to cast a lead that the majority of viewers (read: white people) may not relate to. While a show like Pan Am (fondly known as Carefree White Girls Explore the Third World) can fail to take off without consequence, it feels, at times, as if the fate of every black actor and actress on television rides on the success or failure of one show each season.”

Here at Bitch Flicks, we talk a lot about the need for more women in film and TV, in front of and behind the camera. Women comprise only 15% of TV writers and 41%-43% of TV roles are female. But we also desperately need more women of color.

In a time when Trayvon Martin was shot for being a young black man wearing a hoodie…when racist Hunger Games fans can’t empathize with a black character in the film adaptation…when accomplished and ridiculously talented black female actors like Viola Davis have a hard time finding roles…when black female actors must play either maids or drug addicts or sassy best friends…when female actors of color get sidelined from the cover of Vanity Fair — our society tells people of color over and over and over again implicitly and explicitly that their bodies and their lives don’t matter.

It’s time to change that. It’s time for our media to stop revolving around white men’s stories and reflect the diversity of our world.