Tag: Female Writers

‘Best Friends Forever’ TV Series Focuses on Two Female Friends, Which Must Infuriate Sexist ‘Two and A Half Men’ Creator

Lennon Parham and Jessica St. Clair in NBC’s Best Friends Forever


 “Hey, you always have a choice when it comes to your vagina.”
So says Lennon on NBC’s new sitcom that premiered last night, Best Friends Forever. And yes, you do have a choice, when it comes to vaginas and other things. So should you choose to watch the new female-fronted show?
When I first saw the trailer, I was ecstatic. I mean, a TV show putting two women front and center, even in their title??? Yes, please! 
Written, produced and starring real-life friends Jessica St.Clair and Lennon Parham, it also features Alexa Junge as producer and showrunner. After her husband serves her divorce papers, Jessica (St. Clair) moves from California back home to Brooklyn to live with her best friend Lennon (Parham) and her live-in boyfriend Joe. As Jessica and Lennon reminisce and bond, Joe (Luka Jones) feels left out.
Best Friends Forever is witty, funny and surprisingly sweet and tender. Parham and St. Clair share an effortless chemistry. The characters are likeable and interesting. While it seems like it might suffer from predictability – a Three’s Company premise, Joe seems like he might be a stereotypical man-child (like when he creates a female video game avatar with ginormous boobs), vagina talk between Jessica and Lennon – it possesses realistic dialogue and its humor isn’t mean-spirited. Jessica is snarky but not deemed a shrew. Lennon is nurturing but not a doormat. Lennon and Joe’s relationship is refreshingly egalitarian and uber adorbs as they bond over their shared love of Braveheart and Medieval Times. Neither gender is portrayed as superior and as Rachel Stein at Television Without Pity points out, “it weighs men and women equally.”
Best Friends Forever passes the Bechdel Test, which so few films and TV shows do. The female friendship is clearly  front and center. Talking about the show’s premise:
Lennon: “Essentially it’s a story about two best friends who are so close — it’s like that romantic relationship that girls have in middle school that travels with them.”
Jessica: “Someone brought this up to us: The word ‘friendsbians.’ You’re so close you might as well be having sex, but you’re not. [Laughs.] So really it’s a love story about two women. It’s a romantic comedy, but instead of a boy and girl, it’s Jessica and Lennon.”
Parham and St. Clair hope the series “fills the void” that Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls and Anne of Green Gables has left. Okay, as a huge SATC and Anne Shirley fan, I so heart that.
You can sense that the two leads share a history, finishing each others’ sentences, discussing dinner parties and whipping up homemade Scoops (um, which sound delish btw), and using a movie (in this case weepy Steel Magnolias and “pulling a Shelby” if you rush into major life decisions) to give advice about life, which is unusual in the pilot as most shows take at least a season or two to sink into the camaraderie. 
Yes, it’s problematic the characters are white and straight, aside from neighbor Queenetta (Daija Owens), the ubiquitous precocious child and the stereotypical sassy black girl…as if all black girls must be sassy. Although I’ve got to admit, she delivered one of the funniest lines of the episode when she said, “There’s a new baby in my house and I don’t like the way it smells!”
“Enough, ladies. I get it. You have periods…But we’re approaching peak vagina on television, the point of labia saturation.”
Oh that’s right. Women shouldn’t write, create, act or do anything. Cause you know all we ladies care about? Our fucking periods. Silly me for forgetting that. Thankfully fab feminists Martha Plimpton and Lizz Winstead among others called out this douchebaggery.
While it seems that there’s been a surge in female-centric comedies, Aronsohn’s bullshit sexist comments about vagina saturation is just that. Bullshit. Because if you look at the actual numbers, it’s not so. If you look at the female-fronted TV shows, they may be ensembles but they rarely focus on female friendship. 2 Broke Girls and Parks and Recreation(although not really this season) are the only other TV shows on right now that revolve around 2 female best friends.
As Amy Tennery at The Jane Dough, using data from Women’s Media Center, points out last TV season, women only comprised 15% of writers (!!!) and “the closest we’ve ever come to having parity with guys was in 2009 when women comprised 39% of television entertainment producers.” So there must be surge of women as TV characters then for Lee’s tirade, right?? Nope. Women constitute approximately 40% of TV characters (41% according to WMC, which doesn’t include last season, and 43% according to GLAAD). Um yeah, douchebag…that’s not exactly “peak vagina” season, whatever the fuck that is.
Is it the best comedy on TV right now? No, although it might be too early to tell. Parks and Rec still holds that title for me, followed closely by Community and Up All Night. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have oodles of potential. It made me laugh out loud. Something very few comedies actually do. And we desperately need more women writers and female characters. With two smart, funny ladies at the helm, I’m curious to see where Best Friends Forever goes.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Persepolis

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


Marjane can’t hide behind ABBA
In Persepolis, we meet Marjane (Satrapi), 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. 

Lena Dunham’s HBO Series ‘Girls’ Preview: Why I Can’t Wait to Watch

(L-R): Jemima Kirke, Lena Dunham, Alison Williams in HBO’s ‘Girls’
I cannot tell you how ecstatic I am to see Lena Dunham’s new HBO series Girls. I mean, April 15th…hurry up and get here already damnit! After the first 3 episodes received rave reviews at SXSW, the buzz swirling around the indie darling’s new show has grown even louder. And with good reason.
From the trailer, here are just a few of the clever lines that made me laugh out loud:
“I’ve been dating someone who treats my heart like it’s monkey meat.”

 “I think I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least, a voice of a generation.”

“This is why you have no friends from pre-school.”
“I have a lot of friends from pre-school. I’m just not speaking to them right now.”

“You could not pay me enough to be 24 again.”
“Well, they’re not paying me at all.”

Created by the ridiculously talented Dunham, who wrote, directed and starred in Tiny Furniture, and executive produced by Judd Apatow and Jenni Konner, some have called Girls a “game-changer” and claim it “solidifies Dunham’s place as a bold new voice in American comedy.” Considering there’s so few leading roles for women, so few films or series that showcase female friendships and even fewer women in Hollywood write and direct, it’s refreshing to see Dunham spearhead an HBO series.
Explaining her motivation to create Girls, Dunham said:
“I felt like there wasn’t a pop culture mirror reflecting girl my age experiencing the trials and tribulations of being female at this specific time.”

Dunham plays editorial intern and aspiring writer Hannah, “a post-college Brooklynite with big if uncertain ambitions, a perpetual lack of money and a coterie of friends with personal lives as jumbled and complicated as her own.” While Dunham’s vision – she writes, directs and stars in Girls – this appears to be very much a female ensemble. The other female characters include Marnie (Alison Williams), Hannah’s “seemingly perfect,” “more put-together roommate” working at a PR firm looking to practice environmental law; Jessa (Jemima Kirke), a “headstrong,” “loosey-goosey free spirit” who yearns to be an artist/educator; and Jessa’s “innocent” cousin Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet).
“These characters are a really funny mix of sort of highly educated and very naïve…Every woman I know is such a bundle of contradictions. It was so important to me that there could be a girl who was confident but sex made her incredibly anxious, or a girl who respected herself but was using sex to push boundaries to understand herself better.”

As to why the show is called “Girls” and not “Women,” which I gotta admit is probably the one thing that irked me about the show (I hate the infantilizing term “girls” for grown ass women), Dunham says the female characters wouldn’t self-identify as “women” yet and occupy “that specific in-between space (not a girl, not yet a woman).” Okay, that makes sense.
But haven’t we seen this before? What about Sex and the City or Gossip Girl? Or 30 Rock and Parks and Rec? Or the new slew of female-centric comedies like 2 Broke Girls, The New Girl, Whitney or Up All Night? Well first of all, that’s sexist (and just plain stupid) to assume all shows featuring women are the same. I mean, how many shows feature vampires in love triangles or middle-age-men-who-act-like-boys or DNA-examining crimefighters?? But nope, Girls looks different. And here’s why. In all those shows, women have established their careers and/or relationships or at the very least know the direction they want to go. Most of them also sound painfully forced, lacking any shred of authenticity. Dunham wanted to address that confusing, nebulous time in women’s post-college lives when they don’t have a clue as to who they are or know what the hell they want to do (for some of us, this continues into our 30s…). It’s about trying new things, fucking up, and finding yourself along the way.
Talking about Girls and other shows, Dunham said:
“I really like all the new network “girl” shows. But someone once described the attitude of women on network TV as “Check it out, guys: ladies be talkin’!” And I think we were really careful about anything that rung false…

“The stuff that I’m naturally drawn to writing is stuff I’ve felt but haven’t seen. I’d seen “Gossip Girl,” which was an aspirational high school story. And “Sex and the City,” which I grew up on and completely respect, was about women who had figured out the career, figured out their friendships and were really trying to lock the love thing down. To me there’s this time of life where you don’t even know what you want, and you don’t know how to want it. It’s much more abstract and wandering.”

Exploring female friendship, sex, dating douchey guys, abortion (SO few shows deal with abortion…huzzah!) living in the ridiculously expensive yet awesome NYC – it looks like Girls contains awkward, painful yet ultimately funny moments that “resonate” with many of us. I may not be 24 anymore and I’m not financially privileged. I supported myself after high school, paid my own way through college and don’t live in NYC (yet). But watching the clips – hearing Dunham’s thoughts and the way the female characters interact with one another – feels like A LOT of my life. In the trailer, Hannah says,  “My entire life has been one ridiculous mistake after another.” YES!!! I mean, aren’t we all trying to figure shit out and find ourselves or our path in life??
Dunham clearly looks at the world through a feminist lens (does she call herself a feminist? I hope so…that would be badass) as she wants to focus on female relationships. In addition to Girls and Tiny Furniture, she curated a film series called “Hey Girl! Lena Dunham Selects” (running April 2-8) for the BAMcinématek, the film program of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Lena Dunham possesses a fresh, hilarious, intelligent and raw voice. Buoyed by funny dialogue, her must-see film Tiny Furniture makes astute commentaries on gender, body image, sex, dating and female relationships. But I also found myself irritated it didn’t move at a faster pace. I eventually realized I was partly annoyed because Dunham makes you witness uncomfortably awkward moments and doesn’t let the audience off the hook. She forces you to squirm right alongside her compelling characters, feeling their pain. After reading interviews and watching the trailers, it sounds like Girls will continue her theme of candor, humor, poignancy and self-discovery.
We desperately need to hear more feminist voices. I’m delighted Dunham’s getting a bigger stage in which to share her hilarious observations and vision of the lives some women lead.
Girls premieres on April 15 on HBO.

‘Friends with Kids’ Preview: Leading a Stellar Cast, Writer/Director Jennifer Westfeldt Depicts an Unconventional Path to Parenthood

I’ve been excited to see Friends with Kids since last year when I heard it would reunite Bridesmaids castmates Kristen Wiig (omg do I love, love, LOVE her in Bridesmaids and on SNL!), Maya Rudolph (adore her in Away We Go and Up All Night), Chris O’Dowd (adorbs in Bridesmaids) and Jon Hamm (of course I swoon for Don Draper). When I discovered a woman wrote AND directed it, Jennifer Westfeldt in her directorial debut, my elation skyrocketed! No joke.

Written, directed, produced and starring actor Jennifer Westfeldt, Friends with Kids tells the story of two best friends Julie (Westfeldt) and Jason (Adam Scott), who decide to have a baby together while remaining platonic friends “so they can avoid the toll kids can take on romantic relationships.” It looks like a hilarious, awkward yet sweet ensemble comedy about friends navigating friendships, relationships and parenting.

A Tony and Indie Spirit Award nominated actor, Westfeldt is probably best known for her role as actor, co-writer and co-producer of the critically-acclaimed lesbian romantic comedy Kissing Jessica Stein. She also wrote and starred in Ira and Abby, a story of two strangers who get married. In an interview with Marie Claire, Westfeldt shared her inspiration for Friends with Kids, which stemmed from being out of sync with where your friends are in life:

“Four years ago, Jon’s and my friends started having babies, and everything became so kid-centric. You miss one-on-one time with your friend. When you’re childless and close friends become new parents, you suddenly feel left out, and that’s where the kernel of this idea came from.”

Adam Scott (who I crush on hardcore in his role as Ben Wyatt on Parks & Rec) and his wife Naomi Sablan have been friends for years with Westfeldt and her long-time partner Hamm. After reading the script, Scott realized he and his wife were those friends who pull away after they have a baby. As someone with friends who have kids, yep, this definitely happens but understandably so. Now, I don’t have babies and I don’t want them. Seeing my friends have babies doesn’t trigger any biological clock in me. But I really like Westfeldt’s idea of looking at parenthood in a non-traditional way from the perspective of two single people.

Being single doesn’t sound a death knell. Yet Hollywood would have you believe otherwise, especially if you’re a woman. The media also often shows only the glamorous, fairy-tale side of weddings, babies and relationships. I’m hoping Friends with Kids will tell a more authentic story. Too many people wait for their life to start, thinking events must progress in a certain order: college, career, marriage, home, baby. But why can’t you do things differently? Who’s to say you can’t have a baby without a relationship?  Each of the 3 films Westfeldt has written share a theme of taking relationships and life choices and “turning the norm on its head,” choosing a different path than what convention dictates.

Earlier today, Melissa Silverstein wrote about the “depressing reality of women directed film in 2012” and how we need to generate more anticipation and buzz for upcoming films directed by women. With female writers comprising 24% of all writers in Hollywood, 17% in film and only 5% of women as directors, down from 7% in 2010 and 2009 (god that’s horrifying depressing and makes me cringe), it’s exciting to see a film written and directed by a woman that could potentially do well with both female and male audiences.

Now, I’m not saying films written, directed or starring women are automatically good. Some suck (although I always hate saying that since there aren’t nearly enough movies created by women). And I don’t know if Friends with Kids will be amazeballs, a feminist extravaganza! But I’m optimistically hopeful considering it co-stars two talented and hilarious female comedians (Rudolph and Wiig) and Westfeldt, the woman behind and in front of the camera, not only writes interesting female characters but also speaks openly that “there aren’t that many interesting roles for women in TV and film.”

We need to support women filmmakers if we ever hope for Hollywood to become more gender equitable. When Bridesmaids came out, Salon writer Rebecca Traister argued it was people’s “social responsibility” to go see it:

“Yes we can … buy tickets to a Kristen Wiig movie in an effort to persuade Hollywood that multidimensional women exist, spend money and deserve to be represented on film…we now inhabit an entertainment universe in which everything male-centered is standard, and everything female-centered is female…What that means in practical terms is that women will plonk down dollars to see a male-dominated action movie, a girl-gobbling horror flick, or a dude-centric comedy just as easily as they’ll pay for the kind of female-fueled movie that is literally made for them. Men, meanwhile, have apparently been so conditioned to find anything female emasculating (notwithstanding the expectation that their girlfriends find anything male, including “Thor,” scintillating) that they cannot be moved to sit through any movie with a fully developed woman at its center.”

With a film written and directed by a woman, with a stellar cast of talent, the same applies here: we need to vote with our dollars.

Westfeldt wasn’t initially going to direct but she stepped into the role of director in order to remain on the tight filming schedule. But that doesn’t mean Westfeldt doesn’t recognize the importance and power of female filmmakers:

“It’s really been a year of sisters doing it for themselves. At Sundance there were, like, five movies where women were writing roles for themselves. And the success of women like Lena Dunham and Miranda July and Tina Fey and now Kristen [Wiig], among others; it’s a pretty cool time to see how much has evolved in that regard…I’m happy to be part of that wave, and I’m inspired by how much of that is going on. It feels like there’s a wave happening of women taking a little more control of their own creative fates.”

Amen, sister! So in honor of all the “sisters doing it for themselves,” I will be seeing Friends with Kids this Friday (March 9th)…and I hope you all will too.

Saying Goodbye to ‘Prime Suspect’ and One of My Fave Badass Female Characters

Maria Bello as Detective Jane Timoney on NBC’s “Prime Suspect”
Some argue women fare better on television than in films. The roles are more complex, with more feminist issues explored. One of the most interesting female protagonists I’ve watched in a long time? Detective Jane Timoney on Prime Suspect. A show I love that sadly comes to an end this Sunday night (1/22.)
Prime Suspect centers around NYC Homicide Detective Jane Timoney, played spectacularly by Maria Bello. I’ve been a long-time fan of Bello’s work from ER and A History of Violence to Payback and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. Bello gives a tour-de-force performance as Detective Timoney, a role she personally identifies with since she envisions herself as Jane, only “nicer.”
It’s a gritty, raw and surprisingly funny show. Detective Exuding strength and keen intelligence, Jane Timoney is tough and self-reliant. She’s fearless and complicated with a big mouth and a bitingly sarcastic sense of humor. She drinks a lot and shoots perfectly at the firing range. She possesses a sharp mind that thinks of scenarios others might overlook when solving a homicide. Timoney doesn’t give a fuck what other people think about her and she’s not afraid to be herself. And that might be the most refreshing aspect of all.
Having a show revolve around a female detective isn’t a groundbreaking concept. Following in the footsteps of the original British series with Helen Mirren playing the lead, it echoes The Killing, The Closer, Saving Grace, Cold Case, Rizzoli & Isles, and Cagney & Lacey. But a show created and written by women, with a strong female lead who’s willing to say fuck you to anyone and everyone? You don’t see that every day.
Female protagonists aren’t often allowed to be unlikeable or do despicable things. Even rarer are the characters who don’t give a shit what anyone thinks of them. The female roles on TV I can think of include Roseanne Conner (Roseanne), Captain Kara Thrace (Battlestar Galactica), Maude Findlay (Maude), Elaine Benes (Seinfeld), Christine (New Adventures of Old Christine), Xena (Xena Warrior Princess) Jackie Peyton RN (Nurse Jackie), Dorothy Zbornak (Golden Girls) and Patty Hewes (Damages). Although, I happen to like almost all of these female characters.
Detective Jane Timoney (Maria Bello) “Prime Suspect”

In the premiere, the sexism Timoney faces jars and appalls. As a woman, she’s entered a perceived male domain. Her male colleagues insinuate and (some outright say) that she doesn’t deserve to be in homicide as she only got transferred to the department after sleeping with a chief. She faces the wrath of her co-worker, Detective Duffy, who accuses her of leading a homicide case only because another detective died of a heart attack.  To their chauvinistic paradigm, she’s transcended boundaries and they’re going to make sure she knows it. When Timoney finds another angle to the case and gets information out of a witness that the previous detectives hadn’t. Calling her a bitch (by implying she’s a witch), Detective Carter snarkily asks her:

Carter: You ever worry that someone’s gonna drop a house on you?
Timoney: Car’s not going to drive itself, is it?
Carter: I guess you don’t.
The original British series premiered in 1991, evolving out of sexism in Scotland Yard. When writer Lynda La Plante discovered only 4 women were Detective Chief Inspectors (DCIs), she created the show. The first season (or “series” in the UK) contends with sexism in the workplace and the hostility that Detective Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) faced due to her gender.
While the premiere focused heavily on workplace sexism, the rest of the series shied away. Matt Zoller Seitz at Salon reports that Alexandra Cunningham and Peter Berg made a conscious decision to “tone down” the sexism in subsequent episodes. Before the show premiered, Cunningham said:

“Obviously, it’s 2011. There’s no institutionalized sexism. There’s human resources. Women have recourse at work when things happen. “Prime Suspect” [will] try to make it more realistic, because sexism isn’t gone. It’s kind of more subtle and insidious in a modern world, and that’s what we’re going to try to do.”

What? No institutionalized sexism?? I’m not sure what world Cunningham lives in but sexism, both blatant and subtle, still very much exists.

As the show progresses, we see Detective Timoney collaborate with her colleagues. We see the hilarious friendship and banter between Detectives Blando and Calderon. We also see Timoney clash with her co-workers, boss, her loving boyfriend, her protective father and her vegan sister (yay a vegan!). Detective Timoney might be a hard-ass. But she’s also funny as hell. Here are some of Jane Timoney’s quips throughout the season:

Timoney: I love to know where the crime scene isn’t.
­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­
Timoney: Ever seen a duck? Yeah, they don’t chew either. You just ate that hot dog like a duck.
Hypnotherapist: You don’t seem to be in the right head space to quit smoking right now.
Timoney: I don’t just want to smoke right now. I want to shove a pack of cigarettes in my mouth and light it with a blowtorch.
Timoney: You look tired means you look old. You look short. How’s that feel?
Duffy: Do you know what your problem is?
Timoney: Oh, why limit it to just one?

Detective Jane Timoney (Maria Bello) in “Prime Suspect”

In addition to sexism, the show also broached racism. In one of the episodes, 10 of Detective Timoney’s colleagues get pulled from a case of a murdered Latina to work on the murder of a pretty white female who’s an NYU student. Timoney tells the Chief:

“You’re making their point for them. You couldn’t have done it better…When it’s a missing brown girl, from a nobody family, it’s an afterthought.”

While I wish the show had delved deeper, I was thrilled this line appeared at all. Rarely does a TV show with a white protagonist tackle the intersection of racism and sexism.

Prime Suspect also makes interesting gender commentaries when Detective Timoney interacts with other women. There’s another female detective, Detective Carolina Rivera, who all the men flirt with. She’s coquettish and friendly in return. It’s a stark contrast to Detective Timoney’s no-nonsense, straight-forward style. She doesn’t care if the men like her. She’s there to do her job. Timoney also differs from her boyfriend’s ex-wife, Trish, who she often has to communicate with since her boyfriend and Trish share a young son. Trish often makes snide remarks about her carrying a gun or her line of work, especially when it co. Timoney isn’t a girlie girl. And she’s no pushover. In a great scene, after Trish asks Timoney what happened to her face (which is cut and bruised from fighting with an arrested suspect):


“Listen to me: I work terrible hours, often have to leave things early, I arrive to things late. I get phone calls in the middle of the night and all day long. I’ve never been shot, but I’ve been stabbed. I’ve had lye thrown in my face once, and I’m a homicide detective, Trish. Not a policeman or a policewoman. I’m also not a divorce lawyer, but I know about going to court.”

In “Underwater,” my fave episode so far, Timoney and Duffy go on a road trip to protect a little girl. Timoney grows fond of her, telling her she doesn’t like many people but that she likes her. While she’s close with her father and boyfriend, she has seemingly chosen not to have children of her own. In an episode where a man has beaten his wife and murdered her, he asks Detective Timoney why she doesn’t have children. She replies:

“I don’t know. Lucky.”

It’s rare for a female protagonist not to want children. Films, TV series and ads perpetually tell us all women want to have babies. 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.

One of my favorite moments occurs in the premiere. In a heart-breaking scene, Timoney comes home to her boyfriend, after a grueling day. The two of them fought earlier. She asks him to hold her even though he’s mad because she had a rough day. In a rare moment of exasperation and tenderness, Timoney quietly cries in his arms. She’s not a caricature. She’s a fully developed, complex character who knows she can’t let down her guard and weep at work.

Detective Jane Timoney (Maria Bello) in “Prime Suspect”

In “The Sad Death of Prime Suspect,” Melissa Silverstein laments Prime Suspect’s cancellation. She also talks about the difficulties of centering a show around a female protagonist:


“One thing this show made me notice is how it is easy to write a TV show starring a man and have female and male supporting characters surround that lead, but that it is way harder to write a show about a female lead and to create a realistic ensemble around her.

“One of the issues with this show is that there were no other female credible characters on the show. It’s too much baggage for the female lead. She has to respond to the pretty cop who comes in and flirts, she has to deal with the crazy demands of her boyfriend’s ex, she has a crazy sister (where did that come from?). None of those women was a peer or someone she could have a decent conversation with to get her away from all the testosterone.”

That’s my one complaint of the show too: the lack of strong and interesting female characters for Timoney to interact with. No female camaraderie. No best friend to vent to. I wish the show contained a multitude of female characters or sexism in the workplace remained a central theme. But who knows where the show might have taken us.
Prime Suspect is a compelling show with a memorable female character. I’ll be sad as I watch the last 2 episodes Sunday night. I’m going to miss Detective Jane Timoney. We need more badass women like her.

Here’s the part where we ask for your help.

Running a blog is difficult and time-consuming work. It’s also often thankless: you don’t make any money, you have to fend off trolls and commenters only interested in personal attacks, and you worry that no one reads that post you spent hours writing. 
 
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YouTube Break: Too Many Dicks on the Daily Show

I love The Daily Show. They offer insightful (and often hilarious) commentary, especially their critiques of media hypocrisy.  
BUT. The Daily Show is yet another example of media that is male-centered in its cast, crew, and content. 

Here’s a remix from Rebellious Pixels.

From Rebellious Pixels’ description:

I am a fan of The Daily Show about 50% of the time but often find myself disappointed with the overwhelmingly male-centered style, jokes, segments and guests each night. Sure the occasional, strategically deployed, dick joke can be an effective tool for pointing out sexism or undermining homophobia but more often than not Jon Stewart and his team just use penis humor to get cheap laughs. I can’t help but feel that there are, in fact, just too many dicks on the dance floor. 
The serious lack of women in on-screen or leading creative roles on The Daily Show and other late-night comedy shows has been well documented and discussed in recent years. But here’s a quick recap: Only 3 of the 12 regular correspondences/contributors on The Daily Show are women. Only 2 of the 16 writers are women. And so far barely 15% of the guests in 2011 have been women.

Be sure to read the entire description (and watch other remixes) here.

(And now that song is stuck in your head. You’re welcome.)

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: Juno

This review by Amber Leab originally appeared at Bitch Flicks in October 2008. 
Juno(2007)
It took me a long time to see the film Juno. I was thrilled when Diablo Cody won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, but at the same time suspicious about her little movie being so lauded. To win an Oscar, the film must be saying the “right” things to the “right” people, a dynamic that rarely favors progressive thinking (see the movie Crash as a recent example). In other words, when too many people love a movie, there’s probably something wrong.
Aside from critical praise and popularity, the topic of teen pregnancy is rarely done without a hefty dose of morality. While we are in a peculiar cultural gray area on the subject—consider the cover of OK Magazine, featuring smiling teen mom Jamie Lynn Spears, or the Republican VP nominee’s pregnant teenage daughter—there seems to be an anti-choice undercurrent running through pregnancy plots, not to mention the culture at large.
The expectations I had going in were also based on reading commentary about the ultra-hip dialogue and soundtrack of the film. While certainly not negative in themselves, coupled with a controversial topic, these features could be enough to couch a conservative, anti-woman message in a hip, fresh film. 
It turns out, however, that after an initial adjustment period to the dialogue (and a question about whether the film is set in the early ‘90s), Juno turns out to be planted in a feminist worldview, and is a film that teenagers, especially, ought to see. It was thoroughly enjoyable, funny and touching. I liked it so much that I watched it again, but when I started to write about it, what I liked about the movie became all the more confusing. I loved the music, although Juno MacGuff is way hipper than I was (or am), and I saw a representation that reminded me of myself at that age. I saw a paternal relationship that I never had and a familial openness that I’ve also never had. I saw characters who I wanted as my childhood friends and family. 
And while in Juno we have a strong, unconventional female character—and a lead character, at that—the film itself was very, very safe. And I worry whether that’s a good thing. It’s certainly understandable for a first film. A Hollywood outsider would have a much more difficult time making an overtly progressive movie about teen pregnancy, but if she plays the politics safe, and if her own personality is enough of a draw, she just might make it.
I was worried when Juno visited the dumpy abortion clinic and met her pro-life classmate protesting in the parking lot, and I was worried by the very dumpiness of the clinic. I was struck by the notion that a clinic like that would look and feel much more sterile—even in the lobby, as far as Juno went. The thought of fingernails sent her running out of the building. A detail like “fingernails” made the abortion too real for Juno, a teenager, I suppose. Is this a good or bad thing? I don’t know.
Juno, in a rather nonchalant way, seeks permission of the baby’s father, her good friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), for the abortion. Or, rather, she seeks his opinion; she seems to want him to resist her plans. But his lack of resistance causes her to make the following decisions on her own. This straddles the line somewhat. She wants to be told what to do, and rather than seeking out someone smarter and more experienced than she is, she asks the boy whose approval she’s still seeking.
Juno wants her baby to have the perfect family; one unlike her own, which her mother abandoned. Her family now consists of her father, her stepmother Bren (Allison Janney), and her half-sister Liberty Bell. Juno doesn’t have a bad deal going. Her folks are markedly working class (they’re both members of the labor class, a group that doesn’t see much Hollywood recognition; he’s an HVAC repairman, she’s a nail technician). Yet Juno imagines a perfect life to consist of two loving parents and a McMansion.Why would she seek out people of this particular class? Is this a case of Juno’s lack of class awareness or the film’s?
The film’s real progressive moment comes when Juno realizes that her idea of perfection isn’t perfect. She realizes that a father who doesn’t want to be there would be as bad as a mother who hadn’t wanted to be there. She sees that a father isn’t a necessity–or perhaps simply that two parents aren’t a necessity. Yet what does this all add up to mean? There’s certainly a moment of female solidarity (and this isn’t the only one, certainly, in the film), and a difficult decision that she makes independently. But, as with other conclusions I’ve made, I’m left with the question of “So what?”
The film does love all of its characters, which is a refreshing change for a high school flick. Juno’s best friend, Leah, is a cheerleader who exhibits some flaky, teenage qualities (her crush on the chubby, bearded, middle-aged math teacher takes a cliché and gives it a twist), but the film loves her nonetheless. Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) is an obsessional, middle-class mommy blogger type, but we see that she would be a good mother, and the film cares for her. We even have sympathy for Mark (Jason Bateman) who, through his relationship with Juno, realizes that he and his wife no longer want the same thing (if they ever did). There are cringe-worthy moments with Mark and Juno, but none that damn him completely. It’s a rare film that gives us no bad guys, which is a large part of its charm.
It’s easy to want to live in a world like this, where a pregnant sixteen-year-old seems to get by pretty well, with her parents’ support and a relationship with her baby’s adoptive family. She has a sweet teenage love affair and doesn’t seem to struggle much. While teen angst is the stuff of Hollywood cliché, things just seemed too easy for Juno. I wish my teenage years could’ve been a bit more like Juno’s. Hell, I wish my life now could be. 
The final question remains, though, about whether we should criticize a movie like Juno. Representations of role models for American girls tend to inhabit the poles; either young girls are encouraged to be the beautiful bimbo or the chaste Christian. This film has a strong personality (that masquerades as strong values—even an ethic) without being preachy or moralistic. That can’t inherently be a bad thing. Yet I find myself asking for more, wanting more–something that steps outside of the realm of safety. Perhaps Juno isn’t the film to give me more.
In all, I fear Juno suffers from the same postmodern condition afflicting so many films today. It strives for a non-message in order not to offend anyone, thus allowing anti-choice advocates to cheer the film as loudly as pro-choice feminists. There’s a problem here. If a film that almost universally passes as hip and progressive is so murky in its values and allegiance that we’re not really sure what to think of it, how can a truly hip and progressive film make it today?

From the Archive: Movie Review: Juno

This review originally appeared at Bitch Flicks in October 2008. With Diablo Cody set to direct her first film, it’s interesting to go back and look at the film that launched her career.
Juno(2007)
It took me a long time to see the film Juno. I was thrilled when Diablo Cody won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, but at the same time suspicious about her little movie being so lauded. To win an Oscar, the film must be saying the “right” things to the “right” people, a dynamic that rarely favors progressive thinking (see the movie Crash as a recent example). In other words, when too many people love a movie, there’s probably something wrong.
Aside from critical praise and popularity, the topic of teen pregnancy is rarely done without a hefty dose of morality. While we are in a peculiar cultural gray area on the subject—consider the cover of OK Magazine, featuring smiling teen mom Jamie Lynn Spears, or the Republican VP nominee’s pregnant teenage daughter—there seems to be an anti-choice undercurrent running through pregnancy plots, not to mention the culture at large.
The expectations I had going in were also based on reading commentary about the ultra-hip dialogue and soundtrack of the film. While certainly not negative in themselves, coupled with a controversial topic, these features could be enough to couch a conservative, anti-woman message in a hip, fresh film. 
It turns out, however, that after an initial adjustment period to the dialogue (and a question about whether the film is set in the early ‘90s), Juno turns out to be planted in a feminist worldview, and is a film that teenagers, especially, ought to see. It was thoroughly enjoyable, funny and touching. I liked it so much that I watched it again, but when I started to write about it, what I liked about the movie became all the more confusing. I loved the music, although Juno MacGuff is way hipper than I was (or am), and I saw a representation that reminded me of myself at that age. I saw a paternal relationship that I never had and a familial openness that I’ve also never had. I saw characters who I wanted as my childhood friends and family. 
And while in Juno we have a strong, unconventional female character—and a lead character, at that—the film itself was very, very safe. And I worry whether that’s a good thing. It’s certainly understandable for a first film. A Hollywood outsider would have a much more difficult time making an overtly progressive movie about teen pregnancy, but if she plays the politics safe, and if her own personality is enough of a draw, she just might make it.
I was worried when Juno visited the dumpy abortion clinic and met her pro-life classmate protesting in the parking lot, and I was worried by the very dumpiness of the clinic. I was struck by the notion that a clinic like that would look and feel much more sterile—even in the lobby, as far as Juno went. The thought of fingernails sent her running out of the building. A detail like “fingernails” made the abortion too real for Juno, a teenager, I suppose. Is this a good or bad thing? I don’t know.
Juno, in a rather nonchalant way, seeks permission of the baby’s father, her good friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), for the abortion. Or, rather, she seeks his opinion; she seems to want him to resist her plans. But his lack of resistance causes her to make the following decisions on her own. This straddles the line somewhat. She wants to be told what to do, and rather than seeking out someone smarter and more experienced than she is, she asks the boy whose approval she’s still seeking.
Juno wants her baby to have the perfect family; one unlike her own, which her mother abandoned. Her family now consists of her father, her stepmother Bren (Allison Janney), and her half-sister Liberty Bell. Juno doesn’t have a bad deal going. Her folks are markedly working class (they’re both members of the labor class, a group that doesn’t see much Hollywood recognition; he’s an HVAC repairman, she’s a nail technician). Yet Juno imagines a perfect life to consist of two loving parents and a McMansion.Why would she seek out people of this particular class? Is this a case of Juno’s lack of class awareness or the film’s?
The film’s real progressive moment comes when Juno realizes that her idea of perfection isn’t perfect. She realizes that a father who doesn’t want to be there would be as bad as a mother who hadn’t wanted to be there. She sees that a father isn’t a necessity–or perhaps simply that two parents aren’t a necessity. Yet what does this all add up to mean? There’s certainly a moment of female solidarity (and this isn’t the only one, certainly, in the film), and a difficult decision that she makes independently. But, as with other conclusions I’ve made, I’m left with the question of “So what?”
The film does love all of its characters, which is a refreshing change for a high school flick. Juno’s best friend, Leah, is a cheerleader who exhibits some flaky, teenage qualities (her crush on the chubby, bearded, middle-aged math teacher takes a cliché and gives it a twist), but the film loves her nonetheless. Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) is an obsessional, middle-class mommy blogger type, but we see that she would be a good mother, and the film cares for her. We even have sympathy for Mark (Jason Bateman) who, through his relationship with Juno, realizes that he and his wife no longer want the same thing (if they ever did). There are cringe-worthy moments with Mark and Juno, but none that damn him completely. It’s a rare film that gives us no bad guys, which is a large part of its charm.
It’s easy to want to live in a world like this, where a pregnant sixteen-year-old seems to get by pretty well, with her parents’ support and a relationship with her baby’s adoptive family. She has a sweet teenage love affair and doesn’t seem to struggle much. While teen angst is the stuff of Hollywood cliché, things just seemed too easy for Juno. I wish my teenage years could’ve been a bit more like Juno’s. Hell, I wish my life now could be. 
The final question remains, though, about whether we should criticize a movie like Juno. Representations of role models for American girls tend to inhabit the poles; either young girls are encouraged to be the beautiful bimbo or the chaste Christian. This film has a strong personality (that masquerades as strong values—even an ethic) without being preachy or moralistic. That can’t inherently be a bad thing. Yet I find myself asking for more, wanting more–something that steps outside of the realm of safety. Perhaps Juno isn’t the film to give me more.
In all, I fear Juno suffers from the same postmodern condition afflicting so many films today. It strives for a non-message in order not to offend anyone, thus allowing anti-choice advocates to cheer the film as loudly as pro-choice feminists. There’s a problem here. If a film that almost universally passes as hip and progressive is so murky in its values and allegiance that we’re not really sure what to think of it, how can a truly hip and progressive film make it today?

Quote of the Day: ‘Movie-Made America’

Movie-Made America by Robert Sklar
I came across this interesting piece from Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies, in which author Robert Sklar talks about a fairy-tale aspect of acting (being “discovered”), the patriarchal foundation of casting, and the behind-the-scenes women of the 1910s and 1920s. I’ve added some links to the original text for further reading.
In the World War I era–an unsettled period when late-Victorian mores persisted side by side with an emerging image of a “new woman”–it could only have been disconcerting to respectable Americans to see photographs of determined young women in the ankle-length dresses, high-button shoes and broad-brimmed hats standing in long lines outside a Hollywood casting office. The American middle class had only just begun to regard movies as something other than immoral trash for working-class people; and suddenly their daughters were packing up and leaving home to seek their fortunes in the movies.
If they had to go, the least one could do was give them sound advice, most of it intended to be discouraging. A girl should plan to have enough money to survive for a year without additional income; authors of advice books and articles for the movie aspirant set the minimum figure at $2,000. She should have resources enough to be able to acquire her own wardrobe, since extras in those days had to supply their own outfits for scenes of contemporary life. She should consider what abilities she possessed and perhaps direct her ambitions to other interesting work in motion pictures.
Studios needed talented dress designers, set decorators, film cutters, all jobs that were open to women. In fact, the motion-pictures studios in the 1910s and 1920s gave more opportunities to women than most other industries, far more than they ever did again. Many of the leading scenario writers were women, among them Anita Loos, June Mathis, Frances Marion and Jeanie Macpherson. Lois Weber was a well-known director and independent producer, and Elinor Glyn, Dorothy Arzner and other women directed films during the 1920s. Women were occasionally found in executive positions in Hollywood producing companies. And if a woman possessed none of these talents, there were always jobs as secretaries, mail clerks, film processors, and in other modest but essential roles in the making of movies.
But what women wanted was to be actresses. They could see that other girls, many still in their teens, without acting experience, were making it. Why not they? But no one informed them that a fair share of the young girls with film contracts were “payoffs,” as Colleen Moore called them: players who were hired as a favor to influential people or to pay back a favor they had done the studio. Moore got her start because her uncle, a newspaper editor, gave D.W. Griffith help in getting his films approved by the Chicago censorship board, and Griffith repaid him with a contract for his niece. In Silent Star, Moore reports that Carmel Myers, Mildred Harris (a bride at sixteen to Charlie Chaplin) and Winifred Westover, who began acting as teen-agers, were all “payoffs” in similar ways.

Our 3-Year Blogiversary!

Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda plot their revenge in 9 to 5
Three years of Bitch Flicks! How can it be? Have we done any good? Is the state of women in film any better than it was when we started, on March 28, 2008? Or are we just shouting into the abyss?
Our egos aren’t so big as to think this little ol’ blog would chip away at a machine as big and finely-tuned as Hollywood. However, we see ourselves as part of a growing reaction against conservative, patriarchal values in mainstream film and the lack of women–and especially of diverse women–starring in, directing, writing, producing, and critiquing movies, television, and media in general (check out our “Sites We Like” blogroll for a number of people doing excellent work). We’re (still) sick to death of misogynistic, exploitative, sexist, racist, homophobic, ageist, one-dimensional, etc. portrayals of women in film. We’re (still) sick to death of the reign of the adolescent-male demographic as the coveted Ones. We’re (still) sick to death of being the exception, the Other, the minority, the ignored, the simplistic chicks. 
In other words, we still need Bitch Flicks.
Running a blog is, as those of you who do it yourselves know, difficult and time-consuming work. It’s also often thankless: you don’t make any money, you have to fend off trolls and commenters only interested in personal attacks, and you worry that no one reads that post you spent hours writing. But it’s also very rewarding: you meet people online who share your interests and concerns, you explore ideas that other people help you more fully understand, and you have a venue for fighting back against systems that seem untouchable in everyday life. We’re grateful for all of you who read our pieces, comment on them, link to them and cross post them on your own sites. We’re especially grateful for those of you who have contributed pieces to our site, and expanded the discussion.
Here’s the part where we ask for your help.
We’ve tried to keep Bitch Flicks free from obnoxious, and often offensive, ads (yes, there’s that one Google ad in the sidebar, kept as a mere experiment, as we’ve earned nothing from it)–which means there has been zero revenue to pay for site hosting, guest writers, and upgrades. So we’ve added two ways you can help us pay for these things:
  1. Donate via PayPal. Notice the “Donate” tab at the top right of the page. If you’re a reader who supports what we do, consider donating to the cause. Any amount, however small, is a gesture of support and will help pay for our expenses.
  2. Purchase items through our Amazon store. We sometimes link to products on Amazon in our posts, and have a widget in our sidebar called “Bitch Flicks’ Picks.” If you go on to make purchases through our site, we earn a small percentage of the proceeds, and if it’s an awesome feminist film, TV show, or book–then we all win.

If you support what we do but can’t afford the financial contributions, there are a number of things you can do to show your appreciation and help spread the word about Bitch Flicks.

Finally, a big public thanks to the volunteer who created our new banner. We wanted to re-vamp the look of the site for our blogiversary, and that new banner is the biggest visual change. You might also notice the new pages (not all of which are complete yet!), new sidebar widgets, and new pictures on Twitter & Facebook. There are other new ideas we’ll be implementing in the coming months, so stay tuned, and, as always, thanks for reading!
–Amber & Stephanie