Feminism – Page 4 – Bitch Flicks

The Male Gaze and ‘Gigi’

However, the film musical is very different, dividing the women and telling the story from a male gaze, making it a romance instead of a story of female survival.

First made as a film musical in 1958 and then flopping as a stage musical in the 1970s, the revival of the Lerner and Loewer’s Gigi just opened on Broadway on April 8 with Vanessa Hudgens in the title role. This revival has brought more attention to the original film musical, which starred Leslie Caron as Gigi. The story Gigi, originally written as a novella in 1944 by Colette, takes place in Paris in the year 1900 and follows a girl coming of age while being pressured into becoming a courtesan to upper class men. Though her age was raised for the current stage adaptation, in Colette’s novella, Gigi starts the story at 15. At 15-and-a-half, her “lessons” in womanhood are completed, and she is expected to be a mistress to an old family friend – the wealthy and mustached 33-year-old Gaston. Instead of taking her on as his mistress and being her introduction to life as a courtesan, he asks for her hand in marriage. The novella ends there, and it is left up to the audience as to whether Gaston’s request was granted.

Colette’s novella focuses almost entirely on the domestic and “female” space of Gigi’s apartment, which she shares with her mother and grandmother (whom Gigi calls Mamita), and where her great-aunt (Aunt Alicia) often comes to visit. Her mother became a courtesan and then an actress/singer, and while she is often home late, she nonetheless cares deeply about her daughter and her future. She contributes to the income of the family, and is largely supported in her career choice by them. Alicia and her sister were courtesans, have since retired, and they are the ones who look after Gigi while her mother is working. Gigi’s full name is revealed in the novella to be Gilberta, a family name and one passed down by the women in her life. These women are independent due to having been courtesans, one of the very few ways a woman could be independent in France at that time. Yet, their independence has not kept them from being crushed and controlled by patriarchy. Another layer is that Gigi’s great-aunt and grandmother are Spanish, having immigrated to France. It is implied that their “dark” features resulted in their being othered, exoticized, and fetishized by French patriarchy.

Gigi’s older female relatives collaborate in deciding what is best for Gigi, and sometimes have one-on-one talks with Gaston about the family and Gigi. When Gigi has her own one-on-one talk with Gaston, it is evident that she is afraid of growing up into a woman, afraid of being sexually objectified and, even in the more independent choice of being a courtesan, having to constantly keep up a sexually gratifying façade to please the male gaze. Gaston felt out of place with his family and at his home, where everything felt cold and often just for show. He developed real friendship with Gigi’s family, who were always kind to him, and it is perhaps not just out of fondness for Gigi but also out of loyalty to Gigi’s family that Gaston proposes marriage, because by marrying Gigi he can personally and permanently help support the women who have been so kind to him. This story about women by a woman about female autonomy and the often lack of it ends with a man stepping forward to help support women. It is left up to the audience to decide whether Gaston should be trusted, and whether marriage under a kind master is or isn’t preferable to heartbreaking independence. This story is female-centric, pro-women’s empowerment, shows women supporting women, a man wanting to help these women’s well-being in the only way he knows how. However, the film musical is very different, dividing the women and telling the story from a male gaze, making it a romance instead of a story of female survival.

Gigi getting fitted for a dress, while her Aunt Alicia and Mamita examine.

While the novella shows women working together and supporting one another, the film divides them and shows them criticizing each other from afar and face-to-face, and competing and arguing with one another. The film musical removes Gigi’s mother almost entirely from the story (we hear her singing, but never see her), and it is implied that she is not a good mother because of her desire to pursue a career instead of staying home/marrying. The scenes often takes place in public and more “masculine” spaces, whether at nightclubs, barber shops, or in the streets of Paris. It also focuses more on Gaston (played by Louis Jourdan), as well as the new character from whose perspective the story is told – Gaston’s uncle, Honoré (played by Maurice Chevalier), who is around the same age as Gigi’s grandmother Madame Alvarez (played by Hermione Gingold). Through the male gaze, the complexity of Aunt Alicia (played by Isabel Jeans) and her warmth toward her family is largely taken away, making her into a cold stereotype, while her sister suffers a similar fate but in the opposite direction – becoming the stereotypical domestic mothering type always available to comfort and feed Gaston/men.

The film also adds the character Liane (played by Eva Gabor), a courtesan who starts the story as his mistress. When Gaston realizes that she is having an affair with her ice skating teacher, she slut-shames her, has his men forcefully escort her lover off of the premises of the hotel at which she is staying, and dramatically dumps her. This leads her to attempt suicide. This entire story line is played for laughs, with the moral that men can sleep around all they want but women have to be faithful to one man (even if they are a courtesan) and let their men control them. However, this was not a relationship or a marriage, but a business relationship. Though Liane violated her contract, she had few choices in life open to her. She became a courtesan, assumedly to be independent. Being a courtesan was her career, and then she fell in love (or lust) with a man who was not rich. She kept her career with Gaston and then had a fulfilling relationship with an ice skating teacher. She fulfilled Gaston’s sexual fantasies, as it was her job, but he did not fulfill hers, nor was he contractually supposed to, so she got her fulfillment elsewhere. Gaston then publicly shames her for it, she attempts suicide, and the entire catastrophe is in the papers the next day. Liane’s attempt at suicide is implied to be a mean of vying for attention, and once again she is shamed. Gaston is then comforted, even by Gigi and her grandmother, over the break up, even though Liane is the one who is most hurt. Liane was a victim of a patriarchal society and who could not find self-fulfillment in even the most independent life choices that patriarchy allowed her due to its narrow confines.

The film even undermines the experiences of its own heroine. Gigi (played by Leslie Caron) has some character-driven songs in the film (many of which were originally cut for the musical, and then put back in for the recent revival), but these are still largely from the male gaze in order to show Gigi as “amusing” or beautiful. Though Gigi’s lessons in female etiquette are mocked by the film, it is far from a commentary of how women and girls are oppressed by what patriarchy demands of them. The story establishes these “lessons” in how to dress, speak, and act as necessary by showing in a positive light how Gigi eventually succeeds in being seen as a desirable woman by the men in her life.

Gigi being instructed by Alicia as to how to sit like a lady.

Gigi, though being trained to be a courtesan and a mistress, has been told very little about sex, fitting in with the standard of women remaining even mentally virginal and “pure.” However, in a scene that could have been feminist, Gigi finds this unfair. When Gigi and Gaston have their first talk about the possibility of Gigi becoming his mistress, and Gigi brings up sex; Gaston says, “You’re embarrassing me,” and tries to avoid the conversation. However, Gigi demands that she has a right to know what is expected of her. When Gaston tells her that he is in love with her, Gigi becomes horrified and calls Gaston cruel. She thought that the plan for her to become his mistress was made because it was just what was expected of them, just business. “You say you love me,” she says, but he would willingly have her sexually objectified and her every move criticized, and would dump her when he was done with her, leaving her like his last mistress to contemplate suicide. Gigi runs out of the room, crying. Instead of this being a commentary of how patriarchal expectations cause men to hurt the women they claim to love, the film ends up criticizing Gigi’s grandmother. Gaston turns to Madame Alvarez and yells at her for not making life as a courtesan seem more appealing to Gigi, then storms out.

Gigi as Gaston's wife and arm candy — Gigi as Gaston’s wife and arm candy

Gigi later decides she would rather be “miserable with [Gaston] than without [him].” She behaves elegantly on their first date, receiving many appraising stares. Gaston’s uncle proclaims that Gaston chose well, and that Gigi will keep Gaston “entertained for months.” It is this comment from his uncle that makes Gaston question the choice to have Gigi be his mistress. Gaston was raised to be a playboy, but he finds himself wanting more than just “months” with Gigi. He drags Gigi back to her home without explanation, putting her and her family into a panic, afraid of scandal and the ruin of Gigi’s reputation before it started. Gaston, after a long self-reflecting walk, proposes marriage and his request is granted. In the last scene, Gigi is shown in what must be a very uncomfortable outfit as Gaston’s permanent arm candy. While Colette leaves the ending up to us, asking us to reflect on patriarchal treatment of women and what the solution to it might be, the film gives the harmful message that marriage with the man in control and the woman looking pretty and being “entertaining” is the best life choice for all parties.

Heidi Thomas, who adapted the revival of the stage musical, has put more of the story’s focus back on the title character; the choreographer and the director of the revival are both men. As the character Gigi and the actress Vanessa Hudgens have been sexualized by men, and their careers often controlled by men, it seems an odd choice thematically to have men be the ones telling Vanessa Hudgens as her character Gigi how and where to move and working with the actress on how to express what Gigi is feeling. The release of semi-nude and nude photographs of Vanessaa Hudgens in 2007 and 2009 were sexual assaults, yet she was made to apologize for them and to feel ashamed and embarrassed by Disney, her publicists, and various journalists. Now here she is playing Gigi, whose sexuality and sexual expression are tightly controlled while she tries to fight for her own autonomy. Is this really something that the cismale director and choreographer can fully understand? As a transmale who grew up being told by society that I should try to fit myself into a narrow definition of femininity, empathizing with Gigi when she felt uncomfortable during her “lessons,” I still have trouble understanding female perspectives sometimes. Female perspectives are, of course, incredibly varied, which Colette attempts to explore in the novella. However, I am also not female or attempting to live as one anymore, and don’t as many shared lived experiences. Hopefully, an adaption of Gigi will eventually be made which is more fully from the perspective of women.

Vintage Viewing: Lois Weber, Blockbusting Boundary-Pusher

Thanks to Alice Guy and Lois Weber, filmmaking was once almost unique in its gender equity, before a centralized studio system eliminated the female directors.

Written by Brigit McCone.

Part of Vintage Viewing, exploring the work of female filmmaking pioneers.

“No women directors have achieved the all-embracing, powerful status once held by Lois Weber” – film historian Anthony Slide

Lois Weber: social justice warrior

The career of Lois Weber demonstrates the importance of mentoring between women; entering Gaumont Company as an actress in 1904, Weber was encouraged by the original film director, Alice Guy, to explore directing, producing, and scriptwriting, while Weber mentored female directors at Universal like Cleo Madison and Dorothy Davenport Reid. Weber’s career also demonstrates the importance of precedent: elected to the Motion Picture Directors’ Association and the highest paid director in Hollywood, her success inspired Universal to promote female directors such as Ida May Park to replace her when Weber left to found Lois Weber Productions. Thanks to Alice Guy and Lois Weber, filmmaking was once almost unique in its gender equity, before a centralized studio system eliminated the female directors. The only survivor into Hollywood’s Golden Age, Dorothy Arzner, was great for transmasculine representation, but an indicator of how exclusively masculine-coded directing had become.

Three directors: Cecil B. DeMille, Lois Weber and Jeanie MacPherson — Three directors: Cecil B. DeMille, Lois Weber, and Jeanie MacPherson

For her first feature film, 1914’s The Merchant of Venice, Weber chose a Shakespearean classic whose brilliant female lawyer, Portia, resolves the plot’s dilemma. Her 1915 feature, Hypocrites, is a lush epic. Made the year before D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, Hypocrites parallels the medieval past and the present in a moral allegory, anticipating Griffith’s most admired film. Weber’s Hypocrites criticizes mob mentality and organized religion, as a medieval monk creates an icon of truth as a naked woman and is murdered by a mob for lewdness. Using innovative traveling double exposures and intricate editing, Weber constructs her naked star as a disembodied phantasm, who confronts congregation members with their own urges for money, sex and power, bypassing slut-shaming to examine society’s fear of the naked woman in the abstract. Fact mirrored fiction, as audiences flocked to Hypocrites for its nudity, before Weber faced a backlash of hypocritical outrage. Weber’s film also features vast canvases and landscapes, using mountains with interesting silhouettes and the highly reflective surface of lakes to compensate for the low light-sensitivity of early cameras. Film critic Mike E. Grost points out that this pictorial quality is associated with the cinema of John Ford, who started his directing career working for Weber’s employer, Universal, in 1917, two years after Hypocrites. [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJBJvEEPegI”]

Extract from Hypocrites, showcasing Weber’s pictorial allegory

In 1915, Hypocrites was banned by the Ohio censorship board, as was the racist The Birth of a Nation. The all-male Supreme Court’s judgement in Mutual vs. Ohio, that free speech protections should not apply to motion pictures, centers sexual “prurience” as their concern however, not hate speech. By 1915, female directors Alice Guy and Lois Weber had explored gender role reversal, gay affirmative narratives, social pressures fuelling prostitution, the evils of domestic abuse, and the hypocrisy of male censorship of the female form. The following year, Weber would condemn capital punishment in The People vs. John Doe, while the Supreme Court’s decision enabled widespread censorship of films by Weber and Margaret Sanger advocating birth control. By the time free speech protections were extended to film, with 1952’s Burstyn vs. Wilson decision, female directors had been eliminated from Hollywood’s studio system.

More than just social propaganda, Weber’s films were equally noted for her talent at drawing out effective performances, shown in this extract from 1921’s exploration of wage inequity and the credit crisis, The Blot. [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1ttuOKdPC4″]

Margaret McWade‘s dignified humiliation in The Blot (extract)

Though most of Weber’s films are credited to the husband and wife team of Weber and Phillips Smalley, Weber was the sole author of their scenarios. She went on to write and direct five feature films after her divorce from Smalley, while he never directed again. Nevertheless, film historian Anthony Slide claims that her productivity declined post-divorce as she could not function “without the strong masculine presence” of her husband. Her drop in productivity actually parallels most of her female peers, with outside investors playing an increasing role in 1920s Hollywood and preferring to back male productions. Despite setbacks, including the bankruptcy of Lois Weber Productions, Weber entered the sound era with lost film White Heat in 1934, depicting a plantation owner ruined after discarding his native lover and marrying a white society girl. This echoes Weber’s 1913 short Civilized and Savage, in which a heroic native girl nurses a plantation owner and departs unthanked. Though Weber’s brownface performance in Civilized and Savage, and her use of “tragic mulatto” clichés for White Heat‘s martyred heroine, can be criticized, both films are theoretically anti-racist. Weber died of a ruptured gastric ulcer, aged 60, in 1939, dismissively eulogized as a “star-maker” rather than a distinctive artist with her own voice and politics.

Suspense – 1913

“The Final Girl is (apparently) female not despite the maleness of the audience, but precisely because of it.” – Carol J. Clover

In Carol J. Clover’s influential study Men, Women, And Chain Saws, she expresses surprise at finding feminist enjoyment in horror, where majority-male audiences are expected to identify with a female protagonist. But slashers were not the male creation she assumed them to be. Gothic horror was popularized by Ann Radcliffe, writing from the perspective of a vulnerable yet resilient heroine. Radcliffe’s Final Girl was raped by Matthew Lewis’ Monk, parodied by Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, and made lesboerotic by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, but her role as the conventional protagonist of horror was fixed, her impact discussed by Bitch Flicks‘ guest writer Sobia. Male artists obsessively sexualized the Final Girl, but didn’t create her.

In Lois Weber’s 1913 short Suspense, the Final Girl crosses into cinema, now unsexily a wife and mother. Ideologically, Suspense is not radical: Weber’s middle-class heroine is a damsel-in-distress, shrieking and clutching her baby as she’s imperiled by the house-invading “Tramp,” waiting passively for her husband to rescue her. What Suspense brilliantly achieves is a cinematic language of the female gaze, inducing male viewers to identify with the heroine. From the mother spotting the Tramp from an upper window in dramatic close-up, to the Tramp’s slow ascent, viewed from the woman’s position at the top of the stairs, to Weber’s close-ups of the mother’s terrified reactions, Suspense demonstrates that identifying with the imperiled woman is essential to produce… suspense.

Weber’s split screens, and the dread she builds by allowing the Tramp to initially lurk in the background, were also innovative. From George Cukor’s Gaslight to Hitchcock’s Rebecca to John Carpenter’s Halloween, directors would use Weber’s techniques of female gaze to induce the male empathy that they required for their suspense effects, creating the accidental feminism of horror that Clover celebrated. Though often remembered for her moralism, Weber mastered the craft of popular entertainment, scripting the original 1918 Tarzan of the Apes, and being drafted to recut the Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera after initial versions tested poorly, successfully crafting it into an acknowledged classic. [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_wkw5Fr_I8″]

Where Are My Children? – 1916

“Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises.” – Margaret Sanger

“Must She Always Plead In Vain?” by legendary feminist cartoonist Lou Rogers, 1919

A Cinema History slams Weber’s influential 1916 film with the claim that “even more strongly than D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, this film defends the superiority of the white race… the film is in the first place defending eugenics.” It is true that Weber’s film invokes eugenics in her courtroom defense of birth control, but her case studies are of impoverished white families in circumstances unsuitable for children – abusive relationships, overcrowded homes and ailing mothers. Weber’s argument, “if the mystery of birth were understood, crime would be wiped out,” actually anticipates research by popular book Freakonomics. The irony of Where Are My Children? — that birth control and abortion are available to women who can afford children, but not to the poor — mirrors current realities in Ireland. Though the activism of Women on Web has reduced the number of Irish women driven overseas for terminations over the last decade from over 6,000 yearly to around 3,000, the law almost exclusively impacts institutionalized women, illegally trafficked women, asylum seekers, homeless women, hospitalized women and victims of reproductive coercion – that is, groups most at risk of sexual exploitation.

Like Weber’s choice of a white actor for the Tramp of Suspense, and her argument in Civilized and Savage that civilized values are independent of race, her choice of white families as negative case studies in Where Are My Children? dodges eugenics’ racial aspect. To understand why she is using eugenics, one must appreciate the philosophy’s widespread acceptance before its adoption by Nazism, shaping US debates on immigration and converting celebrities George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill in the UK. Weber covers her bases by invoking religion as well as pseudoscience, using Calvinist concepts of election as a metaphor for the “predestination” of planned parenthood, with cherubs representing pregnancies that were unfilmable at the time.

The prosecution of Margaret Sanger inspired the film’s Dr. Homer. A Cinema History questions Weber’s feminist cred by demanding, “Why did Lois Weber turn this positive female character into a man?” Why A Cinema History considers eugenicist Sanger “a positive female character” while criticizing Weber is a mystery, but here’s why Dr. Homer’s a man: the success of Where Are My Children? emboldened Weber to make The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, starring Weber herself as a woman on trial for advocating birth control. The film’s original title Is A Woman A Person? echoes Ireland’s #iamnotavessel. The Hand That Rocks The Cradle was censored across the Northeast and Midwest, and is now lost.

Alison Duer Miller, sarcastic suffragette bitch (in a good way)

The suppression of The Hand That Rocks The Cradle demonstrates the necessity of Weber’s patriarchal approach to Where Are My Children? (including remaining uncredited to obscure its female authorship), as classic deliberative rhetoric. Weber harnesses popular horror of abortion to present birth control as the only alternative to “stop the slaughter of the unborn and save the lives of unwilling mothers.” The hero, Walton, fails to consult his wife on having children, driving her to secret abortions which render her unable to conceive, punishing him with permanent childlessness. In a Dirty Dancing twist (another female-authored blockbuster), the housekeeper’s daughter dies by tragically botched abortion, blamed on the wealthy “wolf” who seduced her without consequence.

Though A Cinema History claims the film shows “how moral values have shifted since the 1910s,” their interpretation of Weber’s frankly depicted unwilling mothers, as “refusing motherhood out of pure selfishness,” rather suggests little has changed. Where Are My Children? is not a free expression of Weber’s eugenic or anti-abortion views (whatever they were), it is calculated propaganda for an age when advocates of birth control were prosecuted by male juries, under obscenity laws created by legislatures for which women were not yet entitled to vote. Watching Where Are My Children?, you see our foremothers going to the mattresses for freedoms we (even me, thanks to Ireland’s Contraceptive Train) now take for granted. Despite its outdated imagery, or precisely because of how that imagery reflects Weber’s anticipated audience, Where Are My Children? is a milestone in the struggle for reproductive rights.

Suggested Soundtrack: Joan Baez, “Baez Sings Dylan”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwrkAyH0-8A”]

See also at Bitch Flicks: Erik Bondurant reviews Where Are My Children

Lois Weber was only one of many actresses who took creative control over their films by moving into directing in the silent era. Next month’s Vintage Viewing: Mabel Normand, Slapstick Star in Charge. Stay tuned!

Brigit McCone writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and memorizing lists of forgotten female artists (Brigit McCone is an extremely dull conversationalist).

Whispers of a House Mouse: Attempting to Disrupt ‘Cinderella’ in 2015

Written by Colleen Clemens.

I took my daughter to see Kenneth Branagh’s live action Cinderella over the weekend, even though before my daughter was born, I swore there would be no princesses.

We knew she was a girl early on but, much to the consternation of those around us, didn’t share the news. I wanted to avoid the “pink tide” for as long as possible. We have a strict “No Barbie” policy in the house. I teach Gender Studies; I rail against the princesses during class hours. But my home isn’t a feminist utopia. My daughter made bracelets instead of bridges with her Goldie Blocks. At this point in her life, she is more interested in accessorizing than engineering.

I was parenting solo that weekend. I had a cold and was exhausted. The movie was cheap, the popcorn and soda for dinner even cheaper. I told myself it was a material issue, that it was a feminist act that I chose my sanity, the promise of her being still and entertained for a few hours worth the exposure to blond, white princesses. And there was the Frozen short we were both curious to see.

In the end, I liked the movie. But I didn’t love that I took her. Because I worry that some of the images from the film—as much as I tried to disrupt them—will stick with her. I can think of three specific examples.

First, the waists. I had been so worried about the whiteness, the blondeness, the general thinness, that I forgot to think about the waists, but during my viewing, all I could do was stare at Lily James and Cate Blanchett’s waists. I hadn’t read all of the pre-film hype about the issue, that James had eschewed solid food for days on end to fit her already slim waist into the corset. During the movie, my mind raced: Will my daughter think this size is normal, even though she often pulls up my shirt to look at my very normal belly to press my belly button? Will she start comparing my stomach to Cinderella’s? I kept wondering: Can film editors do the same tricks that print editors do? Is there some kind of filmic Photoshopping happening? (They swear there is no digital magic happening.) The waists are something to behold and left me trembling. Meanwhile, my daughter housed a large popcorn without a care in the world. But how long will it be before she starts to make connections between food and body shame, even if I do all I can to disrupt it?

Second, the love story. The idea that all stories work toward a heterosexual coupling is a myth we work toward disrupting in our household, for both familial and political reasons. We have lots of conversations about what love can look like for her and for those around us. So I wasn’t too upset when she insisted she needed to go to the bathroom at the moment Cinderella and Kit come together to declare their love. However, the line at the loo foiled my plan. As we stood at the back of the theater and watched the two come together, I whispered in her ear: “Remember, this movie is about a boy and a girl in love. And there are lots of other ways to love. But this movie right now is about a boy and a girl.” I can whisper in her ear all I want. Until she actually sees a romance that goes beyond the one trope we all know, these whispers may fall on deaf ears.

Third, the desperation. The shenanigans that the women of the kingdom enact to jam their feet into the glass slipper are hysterical. I laughed. Especially at the wicked stepsisters and their desperation to get…that…foot…into…that…shoe.

However, just as with the rest of the movie, I also felt an anxiety about those scenes as I felt the weight of my daughter, sitting on my knee at this point in the movie. If the goal to be attained is the love of a wealthy man in just about every film marketed to her, and if her initiation into girlhood isn’t going to be completely mediated by me (though how I wish that were possible), what are my choices? I can whisper in her ear that marriage isn’t everything, that waists aren’t that tiny, that love looks like many things, but aren’t the shouts of Disney in this world louder than my whispers in her ear?

I may only be as loud as the mice that flit about Cinderella’s feet.

Colleen Lutz Clemens is assistant professor of non-Western literatures at Kutztown University. She blogs about gender issues and postcolonial theory and literature at http://kupoco.wordpress.com/. When she isn’t reading, writing, or grading, she is wrangling her two-year old daughter, two dogs, and on occasion her partner.

‘Pygmalion’ vs. ‘My Fair Lady’

If the story is a gay man attempting to make over a straight woman, it simply emphasizes that all men of all sexualities in a male-dominated society need to respect women, and women should feel free to and be able to express confidence in themselves.

Written by Jackson Adler.

Last year, and 100 years after George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion premiered on London’s West End, film producer Cameron Mackintosh announced that his remake of the Lerner and Loewe classic musical My Fair Lady, and its subsequent 1964 film adaptation starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, which are based off of Bernard Shaw’s play, was being shelved after “various things that happened with the rights and the studio and everything like that.”

Emma Thompson had written the screenplay for this new adaptation, and it was supposedly to have been truer to Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. The same reason I was excited about Emma Thompson’s screenplay was probably the main reason the project was shelved. I say this because aspects of Pygmalion, especially its ending, have been under fire for what is now over a century. Pygmalion is a play on the Greek myth in which a sculpture falls in love with his own creation of a beautiful female statue. In Bernard Shaw’s 1914 story, a phonetics professor Henry Higgins and his new friend Colonel Pickering make a wager that Higgins can give a makeover in speech, manners, and dress to flower girl Eliza Doolittle and successfully pass her off as a duchess. However, it is Eliza’s efforts that win Henry his bet, and when she isn’t praised for it, she learns to stands up for herself, and eventually Henry learns to respect her for it. Unlike in the Greek myth, there is no romance at the end.

Eliza confronts Henry of his mistreatment of her in Pygmalion (1938) starring Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard. — Eliza confronts Henry of his mistreatment of her in *Pygmalion* (1938) starring Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard.

Bernard Shaw, though not always a great ally, was a feminist, and his play was only adapted into a musical after his death. He had refused to allow a musical adaptation of his play, afraid the relationships between his main characters Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins would be romanticized and the ending, in which they do not enter a romantic relationship or marriage, would be changed, something the 1938 film adaptation of Bernard Shaw’s play had already done, with Eliza pretty much crawling back to Henry at the end. Bernard Shaw did not want a musical version to do the same. His feelings were completely ignored after his death, and lyricist and librettist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe stuck on a conventional Hollywood ending to the story and created My Fair Lady, with an ending similar to the 1934 film.

Hollywood still likes its romantic and “happy” endings, and no doubt there were disagreements over how Thompson’s and Mackintosh’s My Fair Lady should depict Eliza’s and Henry’s relationship. Bernard Shaw wrote an entire epilogue to his play to emphasize that, no, the characters did not nor never would marry each other or have a romantic or sexual relationship. This is not tragic or sad, it’s just that they don’t belong together, but still respect each other and continue to be friends long after the events of the play.

Hollywood still struggles with the ridiculous question “Can (cis and heterosexual) men and women be just friends?” even though common sense and observation have always proven that, yes, they can, many are, many always have been, and many will continue to be so. As Henry Higgin’s mother tells him, in what seems to be every incarnation of the play and musical, Eliza is not an “umbrella” – not an object or a piece of property that can be owned or mistreated or thrown aside. Yes, women are people, and do not merely exist to support men. Both Henry and Eliza live in a world in which close friendships between men and women are discouraged, and marriage encouraged. That they each defy this, refuse to marry each other, and continue to be friends regardless of their other friendships or romantic partnerships, is wonderful – and, seemingly, something Hollywood still refuses to see as a valid choice. Whether its When Harry Met Sally, or No Strings Attached, or Friends With Benefits, Hollywood still teaches us that close relationships between (cis and hetero) men and women should ideally only be close if they are romantic, though occasional exceptions can be made if one of them is “taken,” such as in the case of How I Met Your Mother’s Ted and Lilly.

Though the argument can certainly be made that Higgins is homosexual (he and Colonel Pickering move in together at the start of the story, and continue to live together the rest of their days, despite both being financially independent) or asexual, and many have claimed that Bernard Shaw himself was closeted, Henry’s sexuality is perhaps not as important in the overall story as Eliza standing up for herself and Henry respecting her for it. This is emphasized in the 1983 TV adaptation of Pygmalion in which Peter O’Toole, who had previously and famously played gay or bisexual Henry II of England in Becket and The Lion In Winter, plays Henry Higgins, and Higgins’ mother knowingly states that “I should be uneasy about you and her if you were less fond of Colonel Pickering.” While this line was also added in the 1981 TV adaptation with Robert Powell, and also knowingly states, O’Toole’s reply of “nonsense” in regard to himself and Pickering is less adamant than Powell’s. If the story is a gay man attempting to make over a straight woman, it simply emphasizes that all men of all sexualities in a male-dominated society need to respect women, and women should feel free to and be able to express confidence in themselves.

Rex Harrison as Henry and Audrey Hepburn as Eliza in My Fair Lady (1964) — Rex Harrison as Henry and Audrey Hepburn as Eliza in *My Fair Lady* (1964)

Hollywood has loved and still loves the story of the makeover, whether shown in the newest Cinderella, or in the recent film Kingsman (in which My Fair Lady is referenced, a move all the more insightful since Colin Firth had supposedly been set to play Henry Higgins in the now shelved adaptation), in 1999’s She’s All That, or in various episodes on various Disney channel shows throughout the years. As Pygmalion points out, issues of class, gender, sexuality, and beyond cannot be solved overnight, or even in a few months, and certainly not just by a change of clothes and habits. In Bernard Shaw’s story, respect for one another is of vital importance, more important than romance. Eliza does find romance, but it is on her own terms and with someone who has shown her more “kindness” than Henry. Though she and Henry have multiple scenes together, assist each other, and clearly care for each other in their own way, they have no obligation to enter into a romance with each other, a message that, hopefully, Hollywood will remember the next time they choose to adapt Pygmalion or My Fair Lady.

You May Meet Alex and Hedy As You Progress Through Life

Though we might sympathize, mostly we reflect on them, after escaping them, with awe and terror. They are not good. They are not our lovers nor our friends; they do not have our best interests at heart.

This is a guest post by Stephanie Brown.

“‘I won’t be ignored, Dan.'”

As a new friend and I got to know each other during the past couple of years, this became our shorthand joke. We’d say it when we worried we were calling or texting too often. We used that line because the character Alex Forrest, who says the line (actually “I’m not going to be ignored, Dan!”) in the film Fatal Attraction is the symbol for a person who doesn’t take a hint, let alone an outright declaration that a person doesn’t want an involvement. She’s a person who becomes a stalker because she’s delusions about her relationship with a married man. She becomes as destructive and vengeful as a witch in a fairy tale.

No one wants to be the person who has no common sense about other people. No one wants to be Alex Forrest, or Hedra “Hedy” Carlson in Single White Female, another film that gave us a character so needy and envious, she puts Snow White’s stepmother to shame. When someone “goes all Single White Female” on you, you know you’re dealing with someone who can suck the life out of you by copying your moves and destroying you in the process. Viewers, like the victims who surround an evil witch in a fairy tale, learn that it’s almost impossible to outwit these two, as their nasty feelings manifest into destructive actions, but outwit them we must.

Both films are misogynistic. They depict women we hate and would hate to be like. If we knew more about them we’d probably feel compassion for what made them so evil–but like figures in fairy tales, the backstory is irrelevant to the action and to the victims facing their wrath. Alex and Hedy are symbols for those hatable people who are normal-on-the-surface-but-crazy-underneath. They are hatable because they are impossible to like once you get to know them. Their big, destructive personalities can be glimpsed in people we know, as we can glimpse Snow White and her stepmother, Cinderella, and her sisters, or Jack-in-the-Beanstalk’s father-son rivalry in families we know. Male screenwriters and directors developed these characters, and they can be dismissed as depictions of exaggerated, baseless male fears. But hatable women exist, be they one’s partner, relative, or friend. Like fairytale archetypes, Alex and Hedy harken back to significant relationships–and by being sort of preposterous they are kept at a safe remove. Alex is not our own wife or nightmare ex, she is only a one-night stand who lied to us and herself about having sex with no strings attached. Hedy is not the mother, sister or co-worker who envies us, she is someone we randomly met to share expenses on an apartment. We can displace our hatred on the fictional character, while we might not be able to admit hatred for those we are close to due to fate or necessity.

I saw Fatal Attraction by myself when I was living by myself, an SFW (single white female, in the shorthand of classified seeking-roommate ads of the day) in Oakland, Calif. The theater was packed and the audience’s shout-outs to the screen funny and raucous as Alex’s behavior became increasingly bizarre.

By the climax–where she is shot in the bathtub by the wife, Beth Gallagher–I was laughing out loud. The movie seemed ludicrous to me. Soon after seeing it, I tuned into the end of a radio show. The person speaking was animated about her subject, the movie Fatal Attraction, which she said was a hot conversation topic between men and women because the story reflected anxieties about feminism and working women. To me it seemed to be a cautionary tale for men about how the wages of sin (adultery) can lead them to ruin, but it was hard for me to believe that a person like Alex could even exist. But then, I lived alone (and was lonely) and had no one to really talk to about the movie, whether it was ludicrous or should be taken seriously, or about feminism or anything else.

What I did know about living alone was that it might make you go crazy. You forget how much you have been with your own thoughts when you finally talk to someone. Not having a romantic partner made me unhappy and disappointed with life, which are probably the feelings Alex and Hedy had, being alone in the world, looking for a connection. Why they did not have connections is only hinted at, and we can only guess why. I was in my 20s when I saw these films, the time of life when most people have temporary living arrangements, like the characters in Single White Female. I had lived in five different places by the time I was 26. You took chances on roommates and places and living alone in safe or unsafe neighborhoods. I had lived anonymously in two large cities. Like city dwellers Dan and Allie, in a city one has to take a person at her word when looking for a living arrangement or when meeting in the workplace. You don’t have a small town’s generational history to inform you that someone has been damaged by their childhood or was outcast by everyone. That’s also the reason why the city appeals to people–it’s a place to reinvent oneself, where no one really knows you, and where most relationships are friendly but safely superficial. This is the same in the large workplace, where one can observe another’s eccentric or charming or moody behavior at a distance. You only know what someone is really like by working closely with them. It’s amazing how personality deficits and disorders are revealed when one is in daily contact with someone else in the workplace. In all cases, your relationships are left mostly to chance.

At that time I still kept in touch with childhood friends and still felt close to them. Though we only saw each other a few times a year, we talked on the phone for hours sometimes, at long-distance expense, which I budgeted for; it felt so necessary to me. However, every time we got together I could feel us drifting apart.

The friend I was closest to called me soon after Fatal Attraction was released, and asked me what I thought of it. It had really struck a chord with her. She saw it by herself and then took her boyfriend to see it, because she wanted him to see her resemblance to Alex; she thought it would help him understand her better. In particular, the scene where Alex sits alone in her apartment and turns the light on and off is what she wanted him to see. She wanted him to understand how she felt–I suppose how she felt when she felt desperate? They were not in a cheating relationship and were not married, but she related to the character’s personality. I don’t remember if I told her this, but I found that very disturbing. I could not imagine relating to Alex at all, and I still don’t. Had I not known her for as long as I had, I would have dropped the friendship then and there. As it was, our friendship did not last and for me is was because of coming behaviors that did indeed evoke Alex’s. I also knew by that time that I ought not to live alone with few connections. It might make me into an Alex or a Hedy. I also knew that I had the capacity to be like Allie or Dan, using people and expecting them to not care, and I knew I had experienced envy from others, and I did not like how it felt.

These films were released within a few years of each other: Fatal Attraction in 1987, Single White Female in 1992. They are sometimes seen as mirrors of the era, especially as responses to ascending feminism. But to me, feminism had already ascended and was accepted–I suppose I was naive, but to me they were about women with damaged psyches whose gigantic wells of neediness and envy were so mythic they created tragedies because they did not know how to do anything else. In the 30 years or so since these films were released, I’ve come to know many women like both of these women–not that they’ve come to bloody conclusions, but they have created nightmares, migraines and heart attacks, for instance, as well as fear and anxiety and frustration. I wish we had had the characters’ back stories in the films. In the years since, I’ve become fascinated by what breaks people and makes them behave in such ways. I have learned compassion for them while still keeping them at arms’ length. The stories’ plots, however, depend upon us identifying with Dan in Fatal Attraction and Allie in Single White Female. It is possible to find yourself at a point in life where you must obtain a restraining order against someone. At that point, it is not hard to identify with these victims.

People like Alex and Hedy are people who feel dead and empty and hopeless; they can’t be helped, they push too hard, they want the impossible and don’t give up when they should. Someone who seems fun and lovely at first but who is impossible once the mask is taken off her face. We saw a few glimpses of Alex’s scrapbook in the film, but were not given enough to speculate about her background or what made her the way she was. We don’t know why they lack connections with others.

But maybe that is beside the point: the Alexes and Hedys I’ve known have few connections because everyone has left them behind and wants nothing to do with them. No one can stand them for very long. It’s hard to believe, because when you meet them, they are friendly and fun and have good heads on their shoulders. But after a while the mask slips and one finds oneself growing annoyed at giving the same advice to their requests for advice, or hearing the same complaints about the same person again and again, or finding out something that makes the hair stand up at the back of your neck: that the person was let go from a job because, you’re now told, the principal of the school did not understand how to discipline kids properly, the way she did. When your work acquaintance becomes your boss and you discover she yells and screams until you feel like you are living with an abusive mother in a tiny house where you are never fed or looked after, you know why she has gotten stuck at this particular rung in their career, and why you are likely to pass her as she drifts downward. People like her fake it by using buzzwords and speaking aggressively and sounding smart, while there is no substance to back it up. To mask their incompetence, they need to steal your ideas, block your ideas, exhaust your ears, or take on your mannerisms and demeanor because they see how others have a positive response.

Fairytales tell us how to make practical choices when faced with another’s envy or wrath. Children are instructed on what to do when faced with Snow White’s envy (leave home) or Cinderella’s sisters (wait it out–they will destroy themselves) or how to fell a jealous father-giant (be clever and nimble and you will cut him down eventually). There are people who wish us ill and mean us harm. There are people so envious and angry of those around them (usually those who are competent, gifted or kindhearted) that their satisfaction comes from seeing the envied fail and flail. As Jeanette Winterson wrote of her mother in Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, a book that uses fairytales tropes as a way to understand a destructive, cold mother: “She filled the phone box. She was out of scale, larger than life. She was like a fairy story where size is approximate and unstable. She loomed up. She expanded. Only later, much later, too late, did I understand how small she was to herself.” [1]

When we’ve escaped from an Alex or Hedy, we can look back and see how someone who destroys others is sad or desperate or lonely or feels small. I think Winterson is right–destructive women loom large, change size, extend themselves by loud voice, by taking things from you, by holding weapons because they feel small and overlooked. Though we might sympathize, mostly we reflect on them, after escaping them, with awe and terror. They are not good. They are not our lovers nor our friends; they do not have our best interests at heart.

Because I’ve known them, I value my new friend all the more, the one with whom I can use a shorthand joke from Fatal Attraction. She also has known these kinds of people, who actually may be men or women.

1. Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, p. 2-3. New York: Knopf, 2011.

Stephanie Brown is the author of two collections of poetry, Domestic Interior and Allegory of the Supermarket. She’s published work in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and The Best American Poetry series. She was awarded an NEA Fellowship in 2001 and a Breadloaf Fellowship in 2009. She has taught at UC Irvine and the University of Redlands and is a regional branch manager for OC Public Libraries in southern California.

Vintage Viewing: Alice Guy, Gender-Bending Pioneer

‘Bitch Flicks’ presents Vintage Viewing – a monthly feature for viewing and discussing the films of cinema’s female pioneers. Where better to start than history’s first film director, Alice Guy?

Alice Guy: she's the man — Alice Guy: she’s the man

Written by Brigit McCone, this post is part of Vintage Viewing, our series exploring the work of women filmmaking pioneers.

When discussing opportunities for women and minorities created by new media, Kathleen Wallace highlighted the explosion of female directors at the birth of cinema, later squeezed out by the studio system. The list of vintage female directors is long, varied, and multinational. Yet, theorists like Laura Mulvey define feminist cinema by its resistance to the Male Gaze™, virtually ignoring the precedent of the female gaze. When was the last time we watched vintage female-authored films and discussed their art or meaning? Bitch Flicks presents Vintage Viewing – a monthly feature for viewing and discussing the films of cinema’s female pioneers. Where better to start than history’s first film director, Alice Guy?

Alice Guy may be compared to Ada Lovelace, who published the original computer program and first predicted the wider applications of computing. Like Lovelace, Guy was the pioneer who envisioned the future of her field. Like Lovelace, her legacy is only now being reappraised after decades of neglect. Though Guy’s memoirs indicate she may have directed the world’s first fiction film, her massive output, estimated at almost 1,000 films, is really more remarkable for its overall grasp of film’s potential, both technical (hand-painting color film, pioneering the close-up, synchronized sound, and special effects such as superimposition) and in establishing tropes from melodrama to comedy to action to suspense.

Click here to watch an excellent youtube documentary.

Alfred Hitchcock once cited two thrilling early influences: D. W. Griffith and Alice Guy. But Guy wasn’t simply an influential pioneer who happened to be female; she repeatedly challenged gender stereotypes in her work. Though sexologist John Money only coined the concept of a “gender role” in 1955, Alice Guy’s cross-dressing films were interrogating gender’s socially constructed nature 50 years earlier.

Pierrette’s Escapades – 1900

“We have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic.” – Audre Lorde

Pierrette’s Escapades is one of the hand-painted demonstration films that Alice Guy produced for Gaumont in France, before her move to America. This film is particularly interesting for probably containing cinema’s first lesbian kiss. Guy recognized the power of representation, not only for queer visibility, but with 1912’s affirmative Jewish narrative A Man’s A Man, and cinema’s first Black cast in that same year’s A Fool and His Money, a story of hustling and hard luck inspired by blues narratives. Within a lushly tinted, escapist sensuality, the women of Pierrette’s Escapades play roles from anarchic Commedia dell’Arte and carnival traditions. As such, their flirtations and kisses can be explained by the established relationships between these stock characters, but Guy has taken conventionally heterosexual love scenes and reimagined them with an all-female cast.

The femme Pierrette, in her throbbing pink dress, resembles a coquettish Columbine, the trickster wife of sad clown Pierrot, and mistress of witty Harlequin (the 16th century’s Bugs Bunny). As rivals, Harlequin and Pierrot represent the two faces of love, its triumphs and disappointments. The film opens with Pierrette reveling in her costume and powdering herself for Harlequin. A figure sidles into frame, in the traditional costume of Pierrot. Pierrot’s baggy clothes and white-powdered face make it difficult to identify the figure’s sex, who clumsily moves to embrace Pierrette, while she dodges impatiently, before Pierrot steals a kiss on her bare shoulder. Pierrette angrily orders her husband/wife to bed and primps for Harlequin. In the skintight, checkered costume and hat that identify the character, Harlequin is unmistakably feminine. In contrast to her coerced affection with Pierrot, Pierrette blossoms with female Harlequin, swooning and spinning before melting into her arms. Guy cuts the film at the moment of their kiss, leaving it open-ended and suggestive.

Pierrette’s low-cut bodice and the raising of her skirts mark this film as teasingly erotic for the time. Records indicate that Guy filmed cinema’s first striptease three years before Pierrette’s Escapades. Since the forced hypersexuality of women on film has become an expression of male control, modern feminists often read such images as objectifying. It’s worth remembering that a female director, Lois Weber, filmed the first female full-frontal, while Mae West provoked the paternalist Hays Code with her sexual frankness. The eroticism of Pierrette’s Escapades is a reminder of the liberating power of playful, sexual self-representation. Like the suffragettes, who wore lipstick as a symbol of defiance, it challenges sexless definitions of feminist orthodoxy. Isn’t viewing female bodies only from the imaginary perspective of an objectifying Male Gaze™ itself oppressive? Soundtrack suggestion: Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun“ [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeByzgJFLMs”]

Walk in the sun

The Consequences of Feminism – 1906

“Femininity, if one still wants to call it that, makes American women a target and a victim of the sexual sell.” – Betty Friedan

Alice Guy’s work regularly explored the status of women. She moulded Vinnie Burns into cinema’s first action heroine, and depicted women in traditionally male professions such as magicians and dog-trainers. In 1912’s Making an American, “Ivan Orloff and his unhappy wife” represent a caricature of East-European cultures of wife-beating – Orloff’s wife is yoked to his wagon as a beast of burden. When the couple emigrate to America, Guy shows Americans constantly intervening to correct Orloff’s treatment of his wife, presenting resistance to domestic abuse as an American value fundamental to the “Land of the Free.” 1914’s The Lure was a sympathetic examination of the forces pressuring women into prostitution. Nevertheless, many feminist viewers struggle with Guy’s 1906 farce, The Consequences of Feminism, an apparently reactionary nightmare in which feminism creates a world of “sissified” men, who rebel by reclaiming their clubhouse and toasting the restoration of patriarchy. Discussing Pamela Green’s Guy documentary Be Natural, Kristen Lopez concludes this film depicts “the bad side” of feminism, before apologetically suggesting “the very idea that a woman was exploring social issues in a time when women weren’t allowed to vote is astounding”. Is this really all that can be said? That it’s cool to see a woman having enough of a voice to argue against women having more of a voice?

The Consequences of Feminism does not depict a society on the verge of collapse, it depicts straightforward role reversal. In her lost 1912 film In The Year 2000, Guy also reverses gender roles, with Darwin Karr playing the objectified “Ravishing Robert”. This anticipates later female authors who used sci-fi to interrogate gender, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman with 1915’s Herland, or Ursula LeGuin with 1969 Hugo and Nebula prize-winner The Left Hand of Darkness (off topic: am I the only one shipping the Wachowski siblings to adapt?). Compare “Turnabout Intruder,” the genuinely reactionary 1969 finale of the original Star Trek series, which used role reversal to attempt to discredit second-wave feminism. In “Turnabout Intruder,” Dr. Janice Lester voices feminist grievances: “your world of starship captains doesn’t admit women,” before swapping bodies with Captain Kirk and attempting to command. Kirk shows calm authority in Lester’s body, while Lester is emotionally incapable of handling Kirk’s command and “red-faced with hysteria.” As “Turnabout Intruder” shows, discrediting feminism through role reversal requires a demonstration that women are incapable of performing male roles.

The Consequences of Feminism, by contrast, uses a farcical depiction of feminist rule to demonstrate that, while women thrive in male roles, men could not endure Friedan’s “sexual sell” of trading desirability for loss of power. Male viewers are confronted with a vision of themselves as passive “Ravishing Roberts” who must feign sexual resistance to preserve their reputation, laboring in domestic servitude while women supervise at their leisure. Society’s devaluing of domestic labor is shown by the women ridiculing their clubhouse’s sole washerman and pelting him with linens. If male viewers are relieved by the ending, in which a father revolts against a woman who disowns her child, and leads the men in storming the women’s clubhouse, they must acknowledge that collective rebellion against oppressive female roles is justified. Guy’s tongue-in-cheek film is the opposite of stereotypical, humorless feminism, but it demolishes the illusory power of “feminine mystique” just as effectively, as relevant for today’s MRA as for the chivalry of Guy’s own era. Soundtrack suggestion: Missy Elliott, “Work It”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIPMbkHQO3w”]

Put my thang down, flip it and reverse it

Algie The Miner – 1912

“We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” – Gloria Steinem

As a subversive populist, Guy was a master of the bait-n-switch. In 1913’s Officer Henderson, she offers audiences macho police officers dressing as women to catch crooks, the joke being the ridiculous juxtaposition of their fighting skills and feminine image. Then, at the end of the film, Guy substitutes the police officer with his wife, who reveals equal skill in tackling the crook. Officers watch and laugh at their supposed crony brawling in drag, but Guy’s real joke is revealed to be on the men themselves, for assuming that women are incapable of violence or self-defense.

Algie the Miner‘s IMDb entry lists Guy as “directing supervisor” and producer to Edward Warren’s director, at a time when the distinction between producer and director was ill-defined. Her fingerprints are all over the film, however, which she’s often credited as directing. Algie the Miner offers the joke of a flamboyant “sissy” man, contractually obliged by his future father-in-law to “prove himself a man” in rugged Western pursuits, but this is only the bait-n-switch for Guy’s critique of toxic masculinity and homophobia. Rugged pioneer Big Jim gives Algie directions to a frontier town and Algie kisses him in gratitude, leading to an explosion of violent insecurity from Jim. After discovering how non-threateningly puny Algie’s gun is, Jim thaws and agrees to become his mentor in manhood, settling into a cohabiting relationship whose separate beds recall Sesame Street‘s Bert and Ernie. Despite Algie’s female fiancé/beard, Algie the Miner is celebrated as a milestone in the history of gay cinema. When shown his separate bed in Big Jim’s cabin, Algie appears to lean into Jim suggestively before being rebuffed, giving grounds to view him as bisexual. As such, Algie’s final empowerment is gay-affirmative, as well as vindicating feminine values.

Though the rugged pioneers howl with laughter and ridicule Algie’s tiny gun, his willingness to kiss larger men demonstrates an effortless physical courage greater than that of his sexually insecure cowboy hosts, anticipating Marvel’s Rawhide Kid. Over the course of their relationship, Big Jim will teach Algie manly skills, but Algie will rescue Jim from ruinous machismo, nursing the alcoholic through his delirium tremens, saving Jim’s life from robbers and bravely defying the macho peers who pressure Jim to drink. Algie’s resistance to peer pressure, as well as his self-sacrificing nurturing instinct, vindicate feminine courage in the face of macho weakness. When Algie plans to return and claim his bride, Jim is visibly downcast until offered the chance to accompany him. Every Big Jim needs an Algie. The film ends with Algie “proving himself a man” by forcing his future father-in-law to bless his marriage at gunpoint. Closing with the father-in-law’s terror, the viewer must question whether such stereotypical masculinity is truly superior. In all, Alice Guy’s Algie the Miner offers cinema’s most affirmative portrait of male femininity until Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot. Soundtrack suggestion: Hole, “Be A Man” [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCYYa0WxLXA”]

I’m potent, yeah

After almost single-handedly inventing the language of narrative cinema, Alice Guy mentored director Lois Weber, whose blockbusting success ushered in the golden age of female filmmakers in Hollywood. Next month’s Vintage Viewing: Lois Weber, Blockbusting Boundary-Pusher. Stay tuned!

Brigit McCone may now officially be an Alice Guy fangirl (Guynocentric?) She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and making bad puns.

‘House of Cards’ Season 3: There’s Only One Seat in the Oval Office

“I’ve been in the passenger seat for decades. It’s time for me to get behind the wheel.”

Walking side by side in this season 3 promo still.

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Season 3 Spoilers Ahead!

Season 3 of House of Cards, released Feb. 27 on Netflix, ends abruptly, as we dangle on the edge.

As Claire gives her blood in Iowa–literally for the Red Cross for a nice photo op and figuratively for Frank’s career–she gets lightheaded, and tells their biographer that she thinks about jumping of a bridge. Before she passes out, she tells him that when Frank proposed, she’d told him that “every seven years, if it’s still good enough,” they’d stay married for another seven years before reassessing the marriage.

They’ve been married for 28 years. And it’s time to take stock of the partnership, which has been feeling less and less like a marriage of equals. There’s only one seat in the Oval Office, after all.

Season 3, at its core, is about a series of clashes. Not only are the Underwoods clashing, but so also are countries, special interests, and air and water temperatures. These clashes of powers and contrasts of ideologies can be violent, but season 3 is less shocking, less violent, less sexy, than seasons past. Frank and Claire Underwood were maneuvering and clawing their ways to the top, but now they’re there. Or at least, Frank’s there. Season 3 concerns the delicate and perhaps less passionate dance of staying at the top, when the only place you have to go is down.

Because of this, Frank and Claire seem decidedly less evil than they have in the first two seasons. All of the characters are complex and none is simply good or evil–the show has always been excellent that way, and that writing certainly lends itself to being decidedly feminist, as I’ve argued for the last two seasons. Frank even seems like a tragic hero sometimes, more disheveled, more pitiful than he was while he was violently rising the ranks. Of course, he opens the season by pissing on his father’s grave–so Frank is still Frank–but his desperation to hold onto power weakens him.

Claire accomplishes very little on her own in season 3. She needs Frank’s help to appoint her as UN ambassador when she can’t get the votes from Congress. Her role as First Lady repeatedly overshadows her own goals, and she eventually must resign her UN role because President ~~Putin~~ Petrov bullies Frank. She then must launch full-force into First Lady mode, dying her hair to please focus groups, kissing babies, shaking hands, living and working solely for Frank. This is not Claire Underwood. She knows that this is not who she is. By the end of the season, she’s acknowledged this, and is leaving the White House. “Claire!” Frank shouts as she announces that she’s leaving him, and the credits immediately roll.

As is suggested by the promo shots for season 3, Claire is becoming more and more an equal player in House of Cards (in season 1’s promos, she didn’t appear; in season 2’s, she sat behind Frank; in season 3’s, they are walking side by side, as they often do in the episodes). However, her role in the White House had to be for Frank, and it–and he–wasn’t enough. When Frank yells out for her to not leave at the end of the season, it’s because he also knows that he’s not enough. Without her, there will be no White House.

There are, as always, some incredible moments woven throughout this remarkably feminist political drama. Here are some of them:

Episode 1: They are sleeping in different bedrooms, and it’s clear that Claire is being left behind. She requests an appointment to be the UN ambassador, because the work of a First Lady is “not the same as contributing in a real way.” She says, “I’ve been in the passenger seat for decades. It’s time for me to get behind the wheel.”

Episode 2: Claire channels Hillary Clinton in during her nomination hearing, snapping that the “US military is irrelevant.” Of course, it’s taken completely out of context, just as Clinton’s “What difference does it make” statement was during the Benghazi hearings (the nods to current events in season 3 seem clearer than ever before). Claire is attempting to secure an incredibly important position in the UN, and at the same time, she has to pick two Easter Egg designs for the yearly Easter Egg Roll–a First Lady duty. The contrast between world power and decorative pleasantries is stark. “It’s too pink,” she says of one egg. “Girls like pink,” responds the woman with the eggs. Claire does not choose the pink egg.

Episode 3: Pussy Riot! Le Tigre! Russian President Petrov represents a time when “men were men.” He and Frank smoke Cubans and jockey for power while Ambassador Claire Underwood and Secretary of State Cathy Durant play beer pong and work toward peace. The masculine old guard often looks silly–the gifts, the games, the pride–but they too often still wield the power. By the end of the episode, Frank is lauding Pussy Riot and is flanked by Claire and Cathy (certainly not the last time he’s flanked by more powerful women in this season).

Episode 4: Solicitor General Heather Dunbar rises to power early on in the season. Frank asks her to consider his nomination for Supreme Court Justice, but she quickly realizes she wants to run for President instead. This episode deals with the US’s drone strike policies, and challenges the idea that killing innocent people to stop one guilty person is just. Meanwhile, a gay American activist is arrested and detained in Russia. In a bit of a heavy handed scene, Frank speaks with a priest in the church about justice and love, and ends up alone in the sanctuary, where he spits in Jesus’ face. The statue falls and breaks into a hundred pieces after he goes to wipe the spit off.

Episode 5: Dunbar starts campaigning, and takes the gay activist’s husband with her. She comes out strong on social issues that Frank has stayed moderate on. Frank’s dismantling of entitlement programs and his approach with America Works is Tea Party politics compared to the D next to his name. A powerful female reporter from The Telegraph replaces the former reporter whom Seth Grayson kicks out. He tries to silence one woman who asks challenging questions, and is faced instead with someone who is even more threatening. When Dunbar learns that Claire lied about her abortion on national TV, she says, “I would never do that to another woman,” in re: using the information against her. And in an incredibly powerful scene, Claire makes the Russian ambassador meet her in the woman’s bathroom while she puts on makeup, and then urinates with the door open. He’s uncomfortable, and she’s in control.

Episode 6: Claire goes with Frank to Russia to meet with Michael Corrigan, the imprisoned activist. They have a compelling conversation about marriage. Claire is unable to talk him into reading the prepared speech to be let free (he would have to apologize to President Petrov and Russia for parading nontraditional sexual ideas). Instead, he commits suicide while Claire sleeps in the cell, and he uses her scarf. She speaks out for him at the press conference–much to Frank and Petrov’s horror. “He had more courage than you’ll ever have,” she tells Frank. “I should have never made you ambassador,” Frank says. She responds, “I should never have made you president.”

Episode 7: Tibetan monks will work for weeks on intricate sand paintings, mandalas, and then ritualistically destroy it to symbolize the impermanence of the material world. A group of Tibetan monks are in the Underwoods’ White House as part of a cultural exchange. The gorgeous, time-consuming nature of their work, and the beautiful destruction of it, serves as a backdrop to Claire and Frank deciding to renew their vows. Claire changes her hair color to the dark shade it was when they first met. She’s being honored by GLAAD and other gay rights organizations. They must show the world that they are a team, but they are feeling less and less like one. Frank visits the FDR Memorial and reflects upon their similarities to the Roosevelts (his revamped “New Deal” and Claire’s human rights and United Nations activities). Claire rises again in this episode, and while they renew their vows and sleep in the same bed again, the monks poured all of that beautiful sand down a flowing river. Nothing lasts forever.

During episode 7, Claire and Frank sit at the breakfast table reading the newspaper, reminiscent of this scene from Citizen Kane. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Episode 8: A hurricane is brewing, and it’s being narrated by two voices: novelist Tom Yates, whom Frank has asked to be his biographer; and Kate Baldwin, the enterprising Telegraph reporter. The feminine and masculine (not necessarily female and male) are frequently clashing in House of Cards. These forces–whether they be stereotypical ideals of compassion and power or embodied in figures like Tom and Kate themselves–are often at their best when combined. Freddy is back in this episode, and delivers a powerful message to his grandson after meeting with Frank: “He lied to you. You’ll never be president,” he says. “It’s good to have dreams, as long as they’re not fantasies.”

Episode 9: The women are always on top in season 3’s sex scenes. The sex scenes are less exciting than season 2’s, but this positioning doesn’t go unnoticed. On the campaign trail, Dunbar is taking a decidedly feminist approach: raising the minimum wage, fighting for gay rights, and ending corporate greed. Frank, on the other hand, chants “You are entitled to nothing,” and toes the individualistic, masculine line. Remy is faced with racism–from an Iowa lobbyist and the police. Doug–whose story line is terrifying and constantly uncomfortable, except for a few warm moments with his brother–is working for Dunbar to get info for Frank.

Episode 10: Claire sits between Israel and Palestine–she’s a powerful force. She’s tricked by Petrov, however (who has always clearly been threatened by her or anyone/anything that threatens the traditional order), and her fake intel leads to a US troop’s death. When Petrov and Frank meet in the Jordan Valley (the House of Cards version of the Gaza Strip), it’s a masculine scene–guns, ammo, tanks, kevlar, camo. Petrov tells Frank that Claire must not be an ambassador anymore. Frank agrees. This, then, is the beginning of what was already an end in sight. By the end of the episode, Claire is looking at a history of headshots, agreeing to go blonde because “Iowa in particular likes the blonde.” In what has become a necessity for each season, ambiguous sexual tension takes place between Tom and Frank. Tom admits that he used to “turn tricks” with men for a living, and got addicted to hearing their stories. They hold hands for a moment–it’s an incredibly intimate scene–and then it’s over. As others have noted, it’s refreshing to see sexuality treated with such nuance.

Episode 11: Blonde Claire gives a campaign speech at a fancy little ladies’ luncheon, quite the opposite of negotiating peace talks as she had been just days before. Claire is so much like Hurricane Faith, which was poised to make a huge difference, but then did nothing. Frank can’t control the weather, but he’s trying to control Claire. Jackie Sharp is also running in the Democratic primary, but only to split the vote to eventually be Frank’s VP. She doesn’t want to do what Frank tells her to–calling Dunbar sexist or bringing Dunbar’s children into the debate–but she does when Dunbar won’t promise her Secretary of Defense. So Jackie pulls the sexism card and pulls the private school card during the debate, and Frank attacks her for it. Shortly after, Jackie suspends her campaign and endorses Dunbar. Seth calls her a “Judas Bitch,” and Remy resigns as Frank’s Chief of Staff. Players are choosing sides, and Frank must rely on Claire’s likability to get the numbers he needs for Iowa. She’s reading children a book at story time now instead of attempting to broker peace between Israel and Palestine.

Episode 12: Claire is told to be more and more in the spotlight, even answering Q&As. She’s “favorable” to voters, and there are moments where it looks as if she’s the one running for president, and she certainly feels the sting of that not being the case. “I’ll keep waving my pom-poms,” she says. She spends time with a young mother in Iowa on the campaign trail. The Underwood signs in the yard are her husband’s, though. “I wish you were running for president,” she tells Claire. The exhausted young mother talks about her unhappy marriage, and laments to Claire that if it weren’t for the baby they took out two mortgages to have via IVF, that she would leave. Moments later, Frank calls Claire to tell her that Dunbar knows about her journal and the truth about her abortions. “No, Francis. This can’t happen. Whatever you have to do, fix it.” Doug brings the journal to Frank and burns the page, promising that he’d just gotten close to Dunbar to prove his loyalty to Frank. He requests, and gets, the position of Chief of Staff. Claire is rightfully furious, considering her reproductive choices have been used as political pawns by other people. Frank has stopped seeing Claire as an equal; as soon as he was in the Oval Office, she was just the First Lady.

Episode 13: Doug’s subplot of using Gavin to find Rachel climaxes in the last episode, as he buys a trash-heap of a white van to drive to her and avenge the fact that she’d beaten him almost to death in season 2 (after she had assumed–probably rightfully so–that he was going to kill her). These awful scenes are made more tragic by the fact that Rachel has escaped her former life and is helping other abuse victims in the process. Doug comes close to love and compassion when his brother stays with him while he gets clean, but he doesn’t come close enough. Claire tries to get Frank to “fuck her,” to “be rough,” but he won’t. He sends her back to DC, and we hear the screams and clapping for him campaigning while she gets back to the White House alone. Frank wins Iowa without her there, but he knows that she must be by his side for him to be successful. When he gets back, she’s sitting in his chair in the Oval Office–where she, and probably he, knows she should be. “For all these years,” she says, “I thought we were in this together. This is not what I thought it would be. It’s your office. You make the decisions.” He snaps back that she can’t have it both ways–to be an equal partner, and for men to control her (bringing up the sex scene in a powerful way). She feels “weak” and “small” and can’t feel like that any longer.

“Without me, you are nothing,” Frank snaps at her. “It’s time for you to do your job. You will be the First Lady.”

She looks at the picture of the Tibetan mandala–capturing a moment that was destroyed–and she packs her bags, but not for the campaign trail. Claire Underwood was meant to be first, not First Lady.

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

Feminist Highlights and Fails at the 2015 Oscars

This year’s Oscars lacked racial diversity with all 20 acting nominees being white. The overwhelming whiteness of the Oscars, which hasn’t been this egregious in nominating people of color since 1998, spurred a Twitter boycott and the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite created by April Reign. In addition to racial diversity, once again the Oscars lacked gender diversity. No women were nominated for director, screenplay (adapted or original), original score or cinematography. The snub of Ava DuVernay especially stung.

I usually eagerly anticipate the Oscars. As a huge cinephile, I love seeing films, actors, and filmmakers celebrated. But this year, I dreaded them.

The Oscars may be the most visible celebration of filmmaking in the U.S. and possibly the world. This is why they matter. Whether we agree or not, they signify what films are collectively deemed important in our society.

The Oscars often overlook female filmmakers — only four women (no women of color) have ever been nominated for Best Director, only one has won (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker) — and women-centric films. It was disappointing to see that all eight of the Best Picture nominees were written and directed by men, except for Selma, which was directed and co-written by Ava DuVernay, a woman of color. Each of the films revolves around men as the protagonists. However, Selma is a notable exception for spotlighting not only Martin Luther King Jr. but the vigilance and dedication of Black women and Black men in the fight for equality.

Lack of diversity amongst the nominations disappointed, and racism and sexism often tainted the evening. Yet powerful moments emerged during the awards ceremony.

Labeled as “the most feminist moment” of the night by many writers and those on Twitter, Patricia Arquette advocated for equal pay and women’s rights during her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress for Boyhood:

“To every woman who give birth to a taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s rights. It’s our time to have wage equality, once and for all. And equal rights for women in the United States of America.”

Yes, yes, a thousand times YES. Patricia Arquette’s speech was a powerful feminist declaration condemning the gender pay gap and the need for wage equality. Women earn 78 percent less than men for the same job. But women of color earn far less. Black women earn 64 percent less, Indigenous women earn 59 percent less and Latina women earn 54 percent less than white men. Hearing the words “wage equality” and “women’s rights” uttered on a national broadcast delights me. Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez excitedly cheering in the audience was the icing on the cake.

Arquette elaborated backstage, mentioning the ageism comingled with sexism that women actors face: “The truth of it is the older an actress gets, the less money she makes.” She is absolutely right. Male actors earn more than women. After the age of 34, women actors earn far less than their male colleagues. But unfortunately, here’s where Arquette’s speech unravels:

“It’s time for all the women in America and all the men who love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we’ve fought for, to fight for us now.”

Sigh. Why couldn’t she have just stopped? My initial excitement faded to disappointment, irritation, and anger.

Her statement implies that LGBT people and people of color have achieved equality. They haven’t. LGBT justice and racial justice still have far to go. It blatantly ignores coalition building that has happened across movements. Arquette excludes women of color and queer women with her statement. Women have multiple, intersecting identities. To ignore that fact erases many women’s existence. When feminists talk about women’s rights, we should not be claiming, either overtly or covertly, “women” equals straight, white, cis women. We white women need to do a much better job to make feminism an intersectional, inclusive movement.

Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne won Best Actress and Best Actor for playing people with disabilities. Each actor mention ALS and Alzheimer’s in their acceptance speeches. Moore said: “I’m thrilled we were able to shine a light on this disease. … “Movies make us feel seen and not alone.” However, The Theory of Everything has been accused of being guilty of “inspiration porn” and using a person with a disability as “Oscar bait.”

Julianne Moore was absolutely outstanding in Still Alice. A chameleon, she melted into the complex, nuanced role. It was also great to see a woman win for a film revolving around a female protagonist. Considering the ageism of Hollywood and the Oscars, I appreciated seeing a woman over the age of 50 win. We need more roles for women in general but particularly women of color, queer women, older women, and women with disabilities.

Suicide was discussed in two acceptance speeches. Dana Perry, the co-director of Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 which won for Best Documentary Short, shared the tragedy about her son who committed suicide:“We should talk about suicide out loud.” Best Screenplay winner Graham Moore (The Imitation Game) revealed his own suicide attempt:

“When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself because I felt weird, and I felt different, and I felt like I did not belong. … So I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels she’s weird, or she’s different or she doesn’t fit in anywhere. Yes, you do. I promise you do. Stay weird, stay different.”

Not only did these two heartbreaking speeches illuminate suicide, but they ultimately gave a positive message, that for people suffering, you are not alone.

Selma may not have been honored with all the awards it deserved. But a tribute to the film and to racial justice was depicted in Common and John Legend’s powerful performance of “Glory” from Selma. Accompanying the uplifting yet searing lyrics, they visually recreated the march in Selma onstage. In their passionate acceptance speech for Best Song, Common spoke about the historic bridge in Selma where the civil rights march took place.

“This bridge was once a landmark of a divided nation. But now it’s a symbol for change. The spirit of this bridge transcends race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, social status. … This bridge was built on hope, welded with compassion, and elevated by love for all human beings.”

John Legend highlighted institutional racism, incarceration of Black men and the prison industrial complex.

“Nina Simone said it’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times in which we live. … Selma is now because the struggle for justice is right now. We live in the most incarcerated country in the world. There are more Black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850.”

Selma may be a biopic of an iconic civil rights leader. Yet as legend says, it remains extremely relevant, a reflection of the racism and white supremacy happening currently with the harrowing murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the activism in Ferguson and with #BlackLivesMatter. It was crucial to hear Legend discuss the pernicious racism of our criminal justice system. Sadly, the lack of applause for his statements by an audience often deemed liberal was extremely disconcerting.

But perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised at the audience’s reaction, especially as many in Hollywood look the other way when it comes to racism and abuse of women. I cannot fully express my disgust at seeing Sean Penn, an abuser of women, as a presenter onstage. He made a racist joke when announcing Birdman, directed by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, as the Best Picture winner: “Who gave this son of a bitch his green card?” How lovely to see racism and xenophobia at the end of the Oscars. Sigh. Unfortunately the racism didn’t stop there.

Within the first few minutes of the show, Neil Patrick Harris said, “Tonight we celebrate tonight’s best and whitest, oh I mean brightest.” Here’s the thing: I love when a celebrity shines a light on inequality or injustice. But the “joke” felt more like a way to acknowledge the Academy’s glaring racism rather than actually calling them out and holding them accountable. It lets Hollywood off the hook for not taking measures to increase diversity. Harris also tokenized accents, did a “joke” where Black actor David Oyelowo read a denouncement of the Annie remake starring Quvenzhané Wallis and had Octavia Spencer “watch” his ballot predictions box as if she was his servant.

Thankfully, Iñárritu took the opportunity in his acceptance speech to counter Penn’s racism advocating for immigrant justice. He dedicated his Oscar for Best Picture to his “fellow Mexicans” and Mexican immigrants. He is the second Latino to win Best Director and the first Latino to win as producer for Best Picture. Iñárritu spoke of the need to build a new government in Mexico and for the need for rights for immigrants:

“…I just pray they can be treated with the same dignity and respect of the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation.”

What this disjointed awards show accentuated to me is the need for an intersectional lens in everything we do: our daily lives, activism, making media and consuming media. We can’t truly claim a milestone a victory if it only benefits wealthy, white, straight, cis, able-bodied women. We can’t call truly call ourselves feminists if we ignore the plight of those more marginalized or oppressed than ourselves.

Equal pay for women (along with highlighting the need for intersectional feminism), racial justice, mass incarceration, suicide, rights for people with disabilities and immigrant rights – all of these took center stage. Now if only the Academy had been so radical and the Oscar nominees had reflected such diversity.

Megan Kearns is Bitch Flicks’ Social Media Director and a Staff Writer, a freelance writer and a feminist vegan blogger. She tweets at @OpinionessWorld.

Queens, Princesses, and the Battle of the Sexes in ‘The Lion In Winter’

Their strength lies in being able to laugh at the terrible or dangerous situations in which they find themselves, and this is particularly true of the female lead, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who declares that smiling is “the way [she] register[s] despair.” Indeed, while the 2003 adaptation shows Eleanor’s war with her husband Henry II of England at the beginning of the movie, and shows her in armor and taking part in the action, to take away or lessen Eleanor’s sense of humor is to take away both her greatest weapon and greatest defenses.

Written by Jackson Adler.

James Goldman’s 1964 historical play The Lion In Winter: A Comedy In Two Acts has twice been adapted to the screen, first in 1968 starring Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn, and again in 2003 as a made-for-TV movie starring Sir Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close. When Goldman originally wrote his play, he attempted to make it as historically accurate as possible, but time has shown that some of his sources were incorrect in their information. However, the power of these characters is true to their historical counterparts, and Goldman’s dialogue and pacing have stood the test of time. While both screen adaptations are heavy handed with the moments of drama, and the second adaptation forgets that it’s a comedy altogether, which actually takes away from the strength of these characters. Their strength lies in being able to laugh at the terrible or dangerous situations in which they find themselves, and this is particularly true of the female lead, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who declares that smiling is “the way [she] register[s] despair.” Indeed, while the 2003 adaptation shows Eleanor’s war with her husband Henry II of England at the beginning of the movie, and shows her in armor and taking part in the action, to take away or lessen Eleanor’s sense of humor is to take away both her greatest weapon and greatest defenses. Katharine Hepburn’s delivery of Eleanor’s sharp wit depicts a woman of power, strength, and ambition. In the 1964 adaptation, it is not necessary to show Eleanor in battle because we can already tell that she has done much and ruled long just from the way she speaks and carries herself. Glenn Close rages, screams, and cries, but Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor is allowed by her director to simply be a badass and give no fucks, much like Katharine Hepburn herself.

The story of The Lion In Winter focuses on Henry II of England’s midlife crisis during a partial family reunion at Christmas with an incredibly dysfunctional family. The play was finished in 1964, only a year after the release of The Feminine Mystique, and appeared on Broadway in 1966, the year of the founding of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Much of the conflict in the play is between Eleanor and Henry, with Eleanor having been locked up for years by her husband for challenging his rule, much like middle and upper class women were confined to the home after World War II. This comparison would not have been so easily lost on the audience of the 1968 film, especially with Hepburn’s film history in the backs of their minds. The 2003 film could still have been powerful in spite of the different cultural context, but when combined with the lack of humor, and therefore a disruption of the pacing required by Goldman’s dialogue, it falls flat. The 2003 film’s saving grace is Yuliya Vysotskaya as Alais. The French princess Alais was raised with Eleanor and her family since she was betrothed to Henry’s and Eleanor’s second son Richard (the Lionheart). Eleanor was her surrogate mother, but after Eleanor is locked up, Alais becomes Henry’s mistress. Alais does not joke as much as most of the other characters, mainly because there are “Kings, queens, knights everywhere [she] look[s] and [she’s] the only pawn,” and she’s sick of their shit. She has never been permitted to rule any part of land, or any army of the any kind, unlike most all the other characters. As she says “[She] hasn’t got a thing to lose. That makes [her] dangerous.” Vysotskaya’s delivery of these lines of flawless, showing that while she lacks political power of her own, she has fierce determination to keep her self autonomy. The 1968 film attempted to contract Hepburn’s Eleanor with a soft portrayal of Alais by Jane Merrow, highlighting the fact that Henry would in many ways prefer a younger, more docile, and not as uppity female companion. However, this conflicts with how the character of Alais is written. At first glance she may seem and even purposefully act submissive to Henry, but her first act and line in the story are in defiance to Henry, refusing to come down from her room to interact with the family, whom she accurately sees as enemies. Jane Merrow’s portrayal of Alais forgets that she was raised by the powerful and independent Eleanor for a majority of her life, and while she may know how to pretend to be submissive in order to get what she wants, she can be just as fierce as any of the other characters. She proves this by almost getting Henry to lock up his surviving sons for life when the chance arises for Henry to annul his marriage with Eleanor in order to marry Alais and start a line of heirs of their own. Alais’ dream of becoming Henry’s powerful queen almost comes true, largely due to her own actions.

Yuliya Vysotskaya as Alais and Sir Patrick Stewart as Henry.

While the 1968 film does well at depicting Henry’s mid-life crises through his relationships with the women in his life, Alais’ character and her relationship with Eleanor is undermined. In the story, Alais and Eleanor share a particularly beautiful scene that briefly passes the Bechdel Test. In the scene, the true reason why Alais has been so cold to Eleanor in spite of Eleanor’s warmth toward her is revealed. Alais has heard that Eleanor poisoned Rosamund, Henry’s former mistress, and fears that the ambitious Eleanor might do the same to her despite their past mother-daughter bond. When Eleanor claims she never had Rosamund poisoned, Alais throws herself into Eleanor’s arms and starts to cry, and they are mother and daughter once more. Alais literally calls Eleanor by the French “Maman” for “Mom.” Henry interrupts this scene, partly because nothing could threaten him (or the patriarchy) more than the women in his life (or in 1960’s America) working together. Eleanor does not blame or hate Alais for becoming Henry’s mistress, but sees her as a victim of circumstance, though she does seem to have some bitterness for Henry over it. Hepburn is allowed to play all this very well, but Merrow has appeared particularly sensitive and vulnerable throughout the film so that when she becomes vulnerable in this moment with Eleanor, the change is hardly noticeable. Yuliya Vysotskaya was permitted by her director husband to show more of a range of character, and therefore gives a much more stirring portrayal of the princess, and creates a more touching moment between Alais and Eleanor.

Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor and Jane Merrow as Alais.

The story is not entirely feminist, as it not only centers on Henry, but emphasizes that the two women remain divided, in spite of their affection for one another, because of their romantic love for him. When Alais confronts Eleanor after it appears that Eleanor helped save her sons not only from being locked up for life, but from punishment for almost murdering Henry, Alais says, “You always win, Maman,” and Eleanor replies “Except the prize,” most likely referring to a romantic relationship with Henry.

The ending has conflicting messages, emphasizing the theme of the battle of the sexes between Henry and Eleanor, but also emphasizing Henry’s and Eleanor’s love for each other. When Henry complains about the tragedies of his life, Eleanor calls him out on it by saying, “I could take defeats like yours and laugh. I’ve done it. If you’re broken, it’s because you’re brittle.” Indeed, Henry, their sons, and the patriarchal laws of Medieval Europe have made her life nearly unbearable. Henry shifts in this last scene from feeling sorry for himself to having profound sympathy for his wife. Henry claims that he has nothing, in spite of his political power, land, armies, wealth, and freedom, though what he most likely is referring to is others’ lack of love and sympathy for him. Eleanor, however, responds, “You don’t know what nothing is.” The final scene is absolutely brilliant in the 1968 film, showcasing the chemistry between and the talents of Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn. Due to the lack of relief from the drama and darkness of the 2003 one, though, the bittersweet and almost uplifting ending comes out of nowhere, despite featuring the two talented actors, Sir Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close.

The story’s best feminist virtue is that it depicts Eleanor as a complicated and at times particularly sympathetic character, not as a vicious man-eating harpy undermining the glory of an otherwise perfect man. This could easily have been done, as the play is almost a sequel to Jean Anouilh’s 1959 play Becket, or The Honor of God. A film adaption was made in 1964, starring Peter O’Toole, who has said that he could never have played Henry in the 1968 The Lion In Winter if he hadn’t first played the same character in Becket. Anouilh’s Becket implies that Henry had strong homosexual love for his frenemy Thomas Becket (played by Richard Burton in the film), and that Eleanor (barely present in play or film) was an annoyance to Henry, and hardly worthy of being a rival to his manly love for his friend. Pamela Brown’s Eleanor is particularly one-leveled, and it is supposed to be amusing when Henry yells at her and puts her down. However, it seems neither the play nor the film of Becket could deny the historical character’s astuteness, as it is Eleanor who first openly speaks of Henry’s love for Becket, saying that he loves him “like a woman,” to which Henry flies into a rage. In The Lion In Winter, the subject of the late Becket is broached, and while Peter O’Toole’s Henry evidently still has love for him. This time, he has a complicated and fully fleshed out Eleanor in Katharine Hepburn’s portrayal with whom he can have a more nuanced conversation about the subject. When Eleanor falsely claims to have had an affair with Becket, O’Toole’s Henry lividly responds, “That’s a lie!” to which an amused Eleanor responds, “I know it. Jealousy looks silly on us, Henry.” The scene is incredibly different in the 2003 film, which not only lacks the cultural context of the 1960’s, but has no tie to the play or the 1964 film of Becket. Sir Patrick Stewart dismissively, almost as if he is bored, responds “That’s a lie,” undermining the incredible history and emotion that can be present in the scene, and giving little to which Glenn Close’s Eleanor can realistically respond with her next line.

Richard Burton as Thomas Becket and Peter O'Toole as Henry in the 1964 film Becket. — Richard Burton as Thomas Becket and Peter O’Toole as Henry in the 1964 film Becket.

While the consistency of the character of Henry through Becket and The Lion In Winter’s can be important for Henry’s character arch and motivations (and, arguably, also for his son Richard, who has a homosexual affair in The Lion In Winter), it’s a relief that the character of Eleanor was given so much more time and substance in Goldman’s story. Eleanor and Alais are not only queen and princess, but complex human beings fighting for self-autonomy as well as love. In this way, they are afforded the same care by Goldman as Anouilh gave in writing Thomas Becket and Henry. Goldman’s Eleanor is Henry’s mental equal and rival, and he loves her very much. However, it is implied that if she is ever “let out” by Henry (or if 1960’s middle and upper class women are ever permitted to leave the home to be equals in the workforce), that her ambitions will cause chaos and war (ignoring the fact that chaos and war had been occurring in Medieval Europe both with and without Eleanor and other women), and Henry will lose any and all of the power that he still possesses. Interestingly, it is also implied that Henry’s reign won’t continue for long, for better or for worse, hence the midlife crisis that he experiences.

Though this is implied in the dialogue, the stage directions of the play are explicit, stating that his physical health is “just before the start of the decline.” Hopefully, the fear that men reliant on the patriarchy (such as Henry) experience when women challenge their authority will diminish, and men and women will continue on the path to and reach equality, when no one oppress or have the other “locked up.”

Why ‘Pretty Woman’ Should Be Considered a Feminist Classic

Whether we believe Vivian’s “white knight” fantasy is cheesy is beside the point; a film in which a woman explicitly negotiates the terms she wants for her relationship, and displays willingness to pursue her goals independently if those terms aren’t met, cannot be considered patriarchal.

This is a guest post by Brigit McCone.

Pretty Woman has already been reviewed negatively by Bitch Flicks as “one of the most misogynist, patriarchal, classist, consumerist, and lookist movies ever to come out of Hollywood” and by sex workers for portraying prostitution unrealistically and romanticizing the patronizing “Captain Save-a-Ho” client’s rescuer fantasy. There is justice to these criticisms, but I would like to examine the film more positively from another angle. Pretty Woman consistently shows greater respect for the bodily autonomy of its heroine, Vivian (Julia Roberts), than most traditional portrayals of romance and most feminist portrayals of prostitution. The debate whether Pretty Woman should be considered a feminist classic cuts to the heart of feminism itself: is it a liberation movement that prioritizes the freedom and agency of women above all, or a dogma that dictates gender roles to women? To explore this question more fully, I’d like to address the most common criticisms leveled at Pretty Woman:

Pretty Woman Glamorizes Prostitution!

It says something about our common perception of sex work that the film most often accused of glamorizing prostitution should open with a “dead hooker in a dumpster,” before our heroine is punched in the face and sexually assaulted by a creep who screams, “She’s a whore, man!” when challenged. Would a film be accused of glamorizing accountancy if it opened with a bankrupted accountant leaping to his death from the upper window of an office block? If anything, Pretty Woman may be accused of glamorizing the exit from prostitution, by making a future of monogamy with a patronizing rescuer-john into an unrealistically attractive option. The glossy, Hollywood production values of the film may glamorize prostitution, but only in the sense that Apocalypse Now glamorizes warfare, or Wall Street glamorizes capitalism. I suspect that those who claim to be disturbed by Pretty Woman‘s “glamorizing” of prostitution are actually more disturbed by these key assertions: that a prostitute is an individual, that prostitution is work comparable to other forms of labor and that abuse of a prostitute is the sole responsibility of the abuser.

Vivian’s individuality is shown in Pretty Woman as she proves stereotypical assumptions wrong. She does not do drugs; her backstory involves some bad relationships but no explicit sexual trauma; her intelligence repeatedly surprises listeners. Arguably, this marks Vivian as the exceptional “tart with a heart” cliché, who deserves to be loved and rescued because she is “special” and “not like the others.” I would argue that the treatment of Kit de Luca complicates this reading. Through Vivian, we are encouraged to sympathize and feel solidarity with Kit, a streetwise prostitute and drug addict. Vivian gives Kit a large sum of money at the end of the film, respecting her right to choose whether to spend it on her drug habit. Vivian never dictates life choices to Kit, only supports her self-esteem and encourages her to regard herself as having potential to define her own dreams. Through Vivian’s attitude to Kit, the viewer is encouraged to extend their respect for Vivian’s agency to the agency and individual potential of all sex workers.

Sex worker advocacy groups have long claimed (and it’s now being discussed by Amnesty International and the World Health Organization) that the most effective way to combat trafficking, abuse, and other hazards of prostitution is by decriminalizing it and recognizing it as work, entitled to the same health and safety protections as any other labour. By repeatedly comparing Vivian’s work as a prostitute with Edward’s (Richard Gere’s) corporate work, Pretty Woman reinforces this message, albeit in cutesy Hollywood style. Vivian’s backstory also notably emphasizes that her reason for becoming a sex worker was her desire for financial autonomy and her struggle to pay rent.

Finally, virtually all cinematic depictions of sexual assaults on sex workers fall into one of two categories: those that pay no attention to the abuser’s character and treat him (almost always “him”) as a faceless “symptom of prostitution,” reinforcing the victim-blaming narrative that the heroine attracted inevitable assault by her choice of profession, or those that center the abuser as an “anti-hero” while treating the sex worker as disposable. Pretty Woman does neither. When Stuckey assaults Vivian at the climax of the film, we are already well-acquainted with both characters and understand the assault as a direct expression of Stuckey’s insecure manhood, repulsive entitlement and poisonous resentments, while the assault’s impact on Vivian is sympathetically centered. By allowing us to know both would-be rapist and intended victim, Pretty Woman succeeds in resisting victim-blaming and suggests that the assault of sex workers is an unjust and inexcusable act that reflects the character of the abuser. For that alone, Pretty Woman should be considered a feminist classic.

Pretty Woman Is Materialist!

As a film in which the monetary value of sex and companionship is negotiated, Pretty Woman is inevitably about materialism. But this does not necessarily mean that it is uncritically materialist. The film makes a point of highlighting how impersonal wealth is: “Stores are never nice to people, they’re nice to credit cards.” Vivian’s famous, triumphant confrontation with the shop assistants – “You work on commission, right? Big mistake!” – might be read as glorifying her newfound superiority as rich woman, but it satisfies because it allows Vivian to confirm that the shop assistants were judging her credit card all along. The scene shows Vivian that her personal worth is irrelevant to society’s hostile treatment of her, building her self-esteem. Since Vivian empowers herself in other scenes by implausibly rejecting cash payment to assert personal worth, this anti-materialist interpretation of her shopping triumph feels correct. Pretty Woman repeatedly highlights ironic contradictions between the performance of wealth and the personal self. Edward performs wealth by purchasing the penthouse as status symbol, but he cannot enjoy it as he’s personally afraid of heights. His elite peers can purchase opera tickets as status symbols, but Vivian can appreciate opera as personal taste – by choosing “La Traviata,” an opera about a sex worker, the film also highlights the ironic contrast between society’s mindless appreciation of sex worker pathos in elite entertainment and their mindless hostility to sex workers in life.

Elements in Pretty Woman satirizing materialism, and exploring the hazards of prostitution, are hangovers from the original script, $3000, in which Vivian was a drug addict and discovered Kit overdosed at the film’s end. That version might seem “edgier,” but is it truly edgy to echo and reinforce society’s dominant narrative of prostitution? By adapting $3000 into a commercial romcom, Disney accidentally spawned something far more challenging: a film in which prostitutes aren’t necessarily doomed, and men are individually responsible for their treatment of them. Wealth, likewise, is not presented as automatically good or bad in the film. It is his over-investment in wealth and status that drives Stuckey to become a vengeful would-be rapist. Money can destroy lives, or build “great, big boats.” Kit’s final choice, whether to spend her “scholarship fund” on her dream or her drug habit, shows that money has empowering potential but is no guarantee of happiness. If Pretty Woman‘s beautiful clothes and jewels distract from this message, that is a reflection of the viewer’s attitude to luxury, not the film’s.

Pretty Woman Is Patriarchal!

There can be few images more patriarchal than a white knight riding up to rescue his (usually comatose) princess, claiming her love as his inevitable reward. This is not, however, the ending of Pretty Woman. Pretty Woman ends with Edward role-playing Vivian’s explicitly requested fantasy, and thereby indicating willingness to comply with the conditions she laid down for their relationship. In fully accepting Vivian as his romantic partner, rather than conditionally accepting her as a mistress or object of pity, Gere echoes the “I like you the way you are, so what do I care how you got that way?” philosophy of Marilyn Monroe’s Bus Stop, another underrated affirmation of the bodily autonomy, emotional complexity, and romantic viability of promiscuous women. Whether we believe Vivian’s “white knight” fantasy is cheesy is besides the point; a film in which a woman explicitly negotiates the terms she wants for her relationship, and displays willingness to pursue her goals independently if those terms aren’t met, cannot be considered patriarchal. Whether we believe Edward is a slime-ball who looks like a peeled prawn in the bathtub is equally irrelevant; female emancipation must include the right to have questionable taste in men, or it is no true freedom. Gere serves here as a metaphor for sex work itself: whether one personally finds him icky should not distract from crucial issues of consent and agency.

Vivian displays her willingness to leave Edward and set boundaries on multiple occasions: when he embarrasses her by outing her sex worker status at a social gathering, she dictates the way she wishes to be treated; when he offers her the status of a mistress, she dictates the status of a full equal. Let us never forget that, when the prince rescues her, she rescues him right back. Pretty Woman should also be celebrated as one of the only romances to include explicit negotiation of condom use, initiated by the female sexual partner. By ultimately suggesting that a sex worker’s ethos of “we say who, we say when, we say how much” is the key to success in romantic relationships, Pretty Woman is deliciously subversive. A romantic “happy ending” only serves patriarchal goals if it is a reward, conditional on female compliance and chastity. If it becomes just an individual dream, that any hooker can define and negotiate for herself, then its coercive power collapses. That is the real reason why conservatives howl about the “glamorizing of prostitution” in Pretty Woman. That is why millions of women love and laugh with Pretty Woman worldwide. That is why Pretty Woman deserves to be considered a feminist classic.

Pretty Woman Is Heterosexist, White Supremacist, and Lookist!

Pretty Woman is about straight, white, conventionally pretty people, but it is not derogatory to other groups. While the film’s villain, Stuckey, is indeed short and balding, and this may fuel his competitive resentment toward Edward, Hector Elizondo’s hotel manager, Barney, is also somewhat balding, yet serves as the moral core of the story. Though nominally a supporting character, Elizondo delivers a master class in creating fully realized humanity with a few brushstrokes – subtly suppressed frustrations and resentments that co-exist with, and complicate, his character’s warmth and dignity, leading to a well-deserved Golden Globe nomination for the role. At the film’s end, an unnamed African-American demands the audience’s recognition for his humanity and dreams, while challenging them to define their own. Pretty Woman certainly marginalizes its minority characters, but it does not dehumanize them. For Hollywood, sadly, that remains a minuscule achievement.

Pretty Woman is not a realistic portrayal of prostitution; it is a Hollywood fairy tale and never claims to be otherwise. At the same time, the values that it embodies as fairy tale are both progressive and feminist: recognition of the agency and bodily autonomy of sex workers; categoric rejection of victim-blaming in assaults on sex workers; positive endorsement of a woman’s negotiating boundaries within romantic relationships; positive endorsement of the romantic potential of promiscuous women as life partners; positive endorsement of personal worth as founded on ethics, independent of wealth, education or sexual history. Pretty Woman is a beautiful freak; an accidental anarchy spawned from commercial compromise. To describe Pretty Woman as “anti-feminist,” or to fail to celebrate its feminism, is to prioritize the sexist surfaces of “whores” and “white knights” over real issues of agency, desire and consent. Big mistake. Big. Huge.

Brigit McCone always thought Vivian should have chosen Barney the hotel manager, but recognizes he’s probably married. She writes and directs short films, radio dramas and “The Erotic Adventures of Vivica” (as Voluptua von Temptitillatrix). Her hobbies include doodling and taking romcoms ridiculously seriously.

New Comedy Web-Series ‘Black Feminist Blogger’

When you only share narratives from a small percentage of the population, chances are the stories might start to overlap. Only allowing a certain group of people access to representation is merely a way of securing total domination, and normalizing white supremacy. This trend is especially common in the comedy space.

This is a guest post by Aph Ko.

I am the actress, writer, and producer for the new independent web-series called Black Feminist Blogger. The show centers on the protagonist Latoya as she attempts to navigate the competitive terrain of the online feminist blogging marketplace.

She is a full-time blogger for the online feminist magazine Sapphire Mouth Magazine, which is run by a white woman named Marie. The show comically highlights some current issues within blogging culture such as the exploitation of writers, the overwhelming amount of under-paid writing positions, as well as the overt privileging of white women’s voices over minoritized women.

As the show unfolds, we see all aspects of Latoya’s life impacted by the massive amount of time she spends online catering to Marie’s requests for more sanitized, mainstream, “page-clicky,” commercial material. From not receiving regular paychecks, to having relationships fall apart, Latoya’s world spins upside down as she attempts to find a way to balance her love for feminism and writing, with the exploitative market inherent in many blogging spaces.

The struggles that Latoya faces are not all that different from many other bloggers online. Blogging is still largely seen as a hobby rather than a business, therefore, exploitation runs wild. Additionally, because so much of the labor is invisible to the mainstream, there are rarely any entertainment products that cater to bloggers. The blogosphere functions much like any other workspace, except much of the communication is done online. There are so many funny narratives lurking “behind the scenes” of blogging and I decided that I would start with some of my own stories.

I think it’s important that young women of color pick up cameras and film their own narratives, regardless if you don’t have a budget or camera experience. Hollywood shouldn’t have a monopoly on creativity and expression. I’m so tired of going to movie theaters or turning on Netflix and seeing that white people (predominantly men) dominate all stories. It’s not right, and frankly, it’s boring as hell.

A lot of comedy today is politically, critically, and intellectually bankrupt.

Even when the media product is supposedly “progressive,” it still centers whiteness. Think about the Colbert Report or The Daily Show, where they say some of the most progressive commentary on television, yet they are the first to carry the torch of whiteness and continue on the tradition of white men dominating media. In fact, when I watch these shows, sometimes I feel like they’re explicitly talking to white people, so I laugh, but again, I laugh from the margins.

The privileging of whiteness is the underlying foundation for mainstream comedy today.

Rocio Isabel Prado from Black Girl Dangerous states:

“Mainstream comedians like Louis C.K. are well known for acknowledging their white privilege, but they continue to use racism in their routines. Because people of color are not the intended audience, we are the targets for jokes.

White comedians’ refusal to acknowledge audiences of color has been painfully consistent. I’m tired of waiting for the Mexican joke to be over so that I can go back to listening to the rest of the show. Instead of hoping for white comedians to validate my experience, I have since begun to actively seek out comedians of color.”

It’s time we disrupt this trend and take over. If you really think #blacklivesmatter, then you should support the hell out of Black independent artists. Waiting for white people to “get it” doesn’t have to be the activism. Actively seeking out Black comedians, artists, musicians, intellectual thinkers, and filmmakers is the activism.

Being able to relax, being able to be entertained (without the drudgery of a thousand side-thoughts about how white-centric or sexist a program is), and being represented is revolutionary.

We must continue to cultivate, foster, and support Black independent media.

As I said on For Harriet:

“Imagination is a powerful tool that white supremacy keeps trying to hijack. When imagination becomes institutionalized, corporatized, or white-washed, it can become a tool of violence that can shape reality. Black independent media is a revolutionary reclamation of imagination.”

Check out the facebook page for Black Feminist Blogger and subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Here’s ep. 1, 2, and 3. New episodes are out every Monday.

Aph Ko is a contributing writer for Everyday Feminism and For Harriet. She loves merging digital media with social justice. She is also the creator of Tales from the Kraka Tower, a web-series that satirizes diversity in academia.

‘Big Eyes’ for a Big Year

Until the release, ‘Big Eyes’ looks like a promising movie to end off the empowering year of the woman. Flexing in the face of men, Margaret Keane’s story translates to roadblocks women surpass on the daily at the workplace and at home. Depending on how Burton captures Margaret’s story, Amy Adams has the opportunity to do women justice and end off the year of feminism with a bang–a big-eyed bang.

This is a guest post by Samah Ali.

It’s been a big year for feminism. Tight throats have softened as women and men voice their opinions on equality as the fire of third wave feminism ignites in the next generation. Iconic moments like “Feminist” echoing across nations during Beyoncé’s Vanguard Performance and Emma Watson’s HeForShe Campaign uniting the sexes for a greater tomorrow clearly shows that not only was this the year of the woman, but this was the year of feminism.

As the Oscar circuit releases movies about struggling, white men on power trips, there is solace in Tim Burton’s Big Eyes to reflect on the powerful year for women and feminism. With a talented female lead and enough buzz to get nominations, Big Eyes has the means to add to the number of women who showed off this year.

[youtube_sc url=” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xD9uTlh5hI”]

Amy Adams takes on the role as Margaret Keane, a painter whose portraits of big-eyed children are falsely sold as her husband’s, Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz). Growing sick and tired of her lie and unaccredited work, Margaret takes Walter to court in hopes to gain rightful ownership and acknowledgement for her paintings. This is a timeless story applicable today as women continuously break the glass window in their lines of work.

Bullied by the fact that “people don’t buy lady art,” Margaret’s true story translates to women overcoming stereotypes and validating their creative expression today. As Shonda Rhimes casually dominates Thursday primetime, some are still threatened that an “Angry Black Woman” is capable of writing and running the year’s most successful television dramas. And as Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl book tour came to a slow halt due to right-winged, sexual assault accusations, evidently women are still receiving bigoted doubts in a male-dominated field. Fighting the power in true Public Enemy style, Shonda still ran Thursday primetime, Lena’s book tour still continued, and Margaret still fought for her paintings. Resilience and women–it’s like coffee and cream.

Since Big Eyes highlights the power relation between Margaret and Walter, the movie shows another angle to abusive relationships after countless awareness projects, essays, and declarations over the past few months. The opportunity for another angle on abuse captures how tired one grows after being caught in a web of lies surrounding rape, violence, or mental persuasion. Convinced that no one would believe her talents, Margaret allowed her husband to take credit for her work until she had the courage to stand against him in the public eye. As more victims of abuse come out as an act of solidarity, Big Eyes can be a platform to encourage similar acts and show the true victor in victims.

Nevertheless, there are some questions to be answered as the movie plays out.

Considering the story is about a female defying sexist opinions toward her art, why was Tim Burton given the directorial role as opposed to an acclaimed female director? Maybe Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids are All Right, 2010)? Maybe anyone? Even though Burton is a fabulous, wonky director, he is still a man with male experiences in a man’s world. Not quite the angle needed since the movie is about a woman with female experiences in a man’s world. Hmph.

This carries over to the point of view: expectations assume that Margaret’s story will be told how she saw it, a violation of her creative expression and plagiarism of her work. But if told from the perspective of her husband, Margaret may appear as a backstabbing housewife who overstepped her bounds. Hopefully Burton will get it right because another male-driven movie is unwanted here.

However the most disappointing result would be if Big Eyes does not pass the Bechdel Test. Let’s pray the script allows Margaret’s conversations to go deeper than the actions of her husband and more into her identity as a woman breaking boundaries. After all, if this female-driven movie can’t even pass the Bechdel Test then what other Oscar bid is there?

Until the release, Big Eyes looks like a promising movie to end off the empowering year of the woman. Flexing in the face of men, Margaret Keane’s story translates to roadblocks women surpass on the daily at the workplace and at home. Depending on how Burton captures Margaret’s story, Amy Adams has the opportunity to do women justice and end off the year of feminism with a bang–a big-eyed bang.

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Samah is a dedicated film buff seeking films that enhance the movie watching experience by provoking thought, emotions, and relation between the audience and the screen. With a passion for storytelling and ample free time, she looks for the next feature to preach about to the masses. @samahaliii