films about the media – Bitch Flicks

The Women Men Rescue (or Choose Not To): ‘The Witness’ and ‘Disorder’

Saving a beautiful woman from danger is such a pervasive male fantasy that right now, no matter where you are you could probably see an example of this trope by randomly flipping through channels or wandering into a multiplex. But what if the man was never able to save the woman? Or what if he has problems of his own that keep him from being a stereotypical hero?

Written by Ren Jender.

[Trigger Warning: discussion of explicit, fatal violence against women and rape]

You’d never know from watching movies that statistically men are much more likely to harm women than rescue them. Saving a beautiful woman from danger is such a pervasive male fantasy that right now, no matter where you are, you could probably see an example of this trope by randomly flipping through channels or wandering into a multiplex. But what if the man was never able to save the woman? Or what if he has problems of his own that keep him from being a stereotypical hero? Two new films, respectively James D. Solomon’s documentary The Witness and Alice Winocour’s French thriller Disorder, attempt to answer these questions.

The Witness tracks Bill Genovese, a Vietnam veteran and a person with an amputation who uses a wheelchair, as he tries to find out 40 to 50 years later (the film took a decade to make) what really happened the night his older sister, Kitty Genovese, was stabbed to death (and although it’s not included in the film also raped by her murderer) in front of her own Queens apartment building in 1964. Kitty Genovese’s killing became the stuff of front page headlines and sociology classes when an apocryphal story in The New York Times stated that 37 (the number was later amended to 38) of her neighbors, awakened by her screams, saw her being stabbed from their bedroom windows but none called the police or offered any other help which might have saved her life.

The truth, uncovered in more recent articles is: although neighbors heard her screams, nearly none of them knew what was going on (some thought she and her killer were a drunk married couple having an argument) especially since the scene was quiet and Kitty was out of sight for some time between her murderer’s initial attack (interrupted when a neighbor shouted at him through the window to get away from her) and when he fatally wounded her (after which a woman neighbor and friend of Kitty’s held her in her arms as she was dying).

The original news story was a manipulation of facts that made a compelling resume builder: Abe Rosenthal, who later became the long-reigning executive editor at The New York Times wrote a sensationalistic book based on the fabricated story. When Bill interviews Rosenthal, he still insists the original account was the correct one. Some other journalists who covered the story when it was still new, like the late Mike Wallace, are more philosophical. “It was a fascinating story,” he says, one that was apparently too good to let the facts get in the way.

What actually happened is more complex. One surviving neighbor Bill interviews on camera says, “I heard someone yelling, ‘Help, help,’ and I called the police,” though no records of her call are on police logs. As Bill explains to us in his narration, we don’t know if the station neglected to write down the call or if the woman is telling this story to make herself feel better about her own actions (or inaction) that night.

We also see, unlike in most narrative films, how uninterested some people are in the truth. Kitty’s killer, Winston Moseley (he has since died) who raped and killed at least one other woman and later, in an escape from prison, raped another and held hostages at gunpoint, refuses to meet with Bill and instead offers in a letter an obviously fictitious story about being framed. Moseley’s son, who was 7 at the time of the murder, is a minister who wears a shiny cross, but seems to believe another of his father’s stories (that contradicts everything we know about the case): that Kitty called him a racial slur and he snapped. The son also seems unwilling to accept that his father was responsible for the other murder (which, like Kitty’s, he confessed to after he was arrested for stealing a television) in which he set fire to his victim while she was still alive. Instead, the son states that, for years, he and the rest of family had believed that Kitty was related to the infamous New York Mafia Genoveses (she was not).

Because most of the memories of Kitty and the analysis of her death come from men, we feel a little removed from her. When one man talks about how his mother (the woman who held Kitty in her arms as she died in the hallway) often had coffee with Kitty and would “talk about whatever women talk about,” it’s as emblematic of the film’s distanced viewpoint, as the blurry, nearly faceless image we see of Kitty in clips from an old home movie which are interspersed throughout the film.

Bill is in nearly every frame of the film’s live action — most of the recreated scenes are rendered in the delicate, evocative animation of The Moth Collective. Even as we see him moving in and out of his wheelchair, wearing gloves to pull himself up the stairs to an otherwise inaccessible apartment and narrating the film, he remains something of a mystery. Why does he wait to find out the real story until 40 years after his sister died? By the time he tracks down the witnesses who testified at the trial, most are long dead. One of the only insights into his mindset comes from his wife: “The choices that he made in his life were all related to the fact that no one helped his sister.”

Bill also has a willful obtuseness when he wonders why Kitty, whom he was close to, never came out to him at a time (she died five years before Stonewall) when people who told their families they were queer were disowned. Kitty being a fairly out queer person (in a highlight, after her partner, Mary Ann Zielonko, tells Bill that the patrons at the bar where she worked didn’t know Kitty was queer, two of them tell Bill everyone at the bar knew and considered her “one of the boys”) makes me wonder if Karl Ross, one of the only witnesses who did see what was happening and was close enough to halt the murder, failed to do so because of homophobia — or a fear of police since he too may have been gay. Mary Ann says of Ross, “He knew us.” He owned the pet shop where Kitty bought a poodle for Mary Ann as an apology after an argument.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4irXjYt_LM”]

In Disorder, co-written and directed by Alice Winocour (the co-writer of Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Oscar-nominated Mustang), the woman in peril is Jessie (Diane Kruger), the wife of a shady and very wealthy businessman, and her protector is a paid bodyguard, Vincent (Matthias Schoenaerts) back from a stint in Afghanistan and suffering from PTSD (as well as some hearing loss, the doctor at the beginning tells him — and us).

We see Vincent try to do work as he deals with the sounds (all the electronic beeps and boops of modern life) and sights that trigger him. Wariness is actually part of his job description, but at first we’re unsure if Vincent’s has more to do with his internal struggles than it does with anything going on around him. Silly us: this film is a thriller. Of course the main guy’s paranoia is justified.

The film manages to squeeze a surprising amount of tension out of a not-terribly-original situation before its first violent incident (which is punctuated, stunningly, by a cracked windshield and a brief blackout) but falls apart soon afterward. The film has lots of overheard conversations and pieces of information that never really come together in coherent form, which might reflect what a paid protector would overhear and understand but doesn’t really engage the audience. The violent aggressors are the opposite of a menace in their cute, black, ninja outfits and masks. No matter what Vincent’s skills as a fighter (never impaired by psychological problems so obvious that Jessie asks his coworker directly, “What’s wrong with him?”) always flatten them, so the action becomes monotonous.

Winocour’s film was apparently influenced by her suffering PTSD from a traumatic childbirth experience (she and her daughter are fine now), a phenomenon women I’ve known have also experienced, but something I have never seen captured on film. I desperately wished Disorder was about women’s trauma instead of the tired cliché of a male soldier’s suffering. The film also doesn’t give us any insight into Jessie’s point of view. She looks great in the backless floral evening dress she wears to a party early in the film, but in every scene she is so much an object she might as well be tied in pink ribbon. This lack of attention to the character is especially shocking and disappointing because Winocour co-wrote Mustang, an instant feminist classic that is flawlessly attuned to its girl protagonists.

Additionally the husband and his cohorts are all from the Middle East: the only person of Middle-Eastern descent who doesn’t seem sinister is Ali, Jessie’s Keane-eyed, curly-haired, young son. France’s traditional anti-Arab sentiment and more recent anti-Muslim policies (on the same beaches where Jessie and Ali frolic) make the ethnicity of the bad guys seem not strictly coincidental and more than a little racist. Skip this film and see Mustang (again) instead.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMThvaCTAm0″]

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

Suzanne Stone: Frankenstein of Fame

The would-be news anchor is not only an extraordinarily unlikable–though entertaining–protagonist; she also embodies certain pathological tendencies in the American cultural psyche.

Poster for To Die For — Poster for *To Die For*

Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Spoilers galore.

You’ve got to give it to Nicole Kidman. For an archetype of Hollywood movie stardom, she has–for many years now–been quite unafraid of taking on edgy, unsympathetic roles. Her impressive turn in Gus Van Sant’s mockumentary black comedy, To Die For (1995), could, arguably, be considered Kidman’s first truly risky part. In it, she plays a murderously self-interested, fame-obsessed small-town TV personality with the perfectly fitting name of Suzanne Stone. “You’re not anybody in America unless you’re on TV,” Suzanne sermonizes at the start. “On TV is where we learn about who we really are. Because what’s the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody’s watching? And if people are watching, it makes you a better person.” The would-be news anchor is not only an extraordinarily unlikable–though entertaining–protagonist; she also embodies certain pathological tendencies in the American cultural psyche.

Surfaces seduce and deceive in Van Sant’s satire on American ambition. Suzanne is a vision of beauty and purity for her future husband, Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon), when he first encounters her, and the crimes she commits take place in an ordinary, pretty town in New Hampshire called Little Hope. It’s love at first sight when the laddish, none-too-bright Larry catches her eye while playing with his band at his father’s restaurant. Janice, Larry’s savvy, ice-skating sister (Illeana Douglas), immediately sees through Suzanne but he ignores the ice-maiden cracks and commits to the “the golden girl of my dreams.” The young man surprises everyone by ditching his drums and rock star ambitions for marriage and home-buying. Janice acerbically observes, “he went from Van Halen to Jimmy Vale overnight.” Larry is not only taken by Suzanne’s beauty; he’s also in awe of her go-getting personality. “She’s going places. She’s got goals,” he tells his father, Joe (Dan Hedaya). Larry, by the by, comes from a fiercely loving, old-fashioned Italian-American family; Suzanne’s parents are portraits of smug, airy WASPness.

Suzanne soon gets a job at the local cable TV station as a weather presenter. Her co-workers baptise her “Gangbusters” and she becomes a workaholic member of their tiny outfit. Fancying herself as a future Barbara Walters, she understands that she must start somewhere. Tensions, however, surface on the first anniversary of her marriage. Larry wants a child and more time together but this doesn’t figure in his wife’s plans. She explains to her puzzled mother-in-law, Angela (Maria Tucci), that a baby would prevent her from covering a revolution–or royal wedding. Feeling trapped by his expectations of her, Suzanne determines to bump Larry off. But she does not do the dirty deed herself. She befriends a trio of daft teenagers, subjects of a documentary she’s working on, to set it up and do her bidding. The ultimate plan, of course, is to pin the murder on them. They comprise vulgar Russell (Casey Affleck), impressionable, insecure Lydia (Alison Folland) and sensitive Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix), who seems permanently stoned. Both Lydia and Jimmy adore Suzanne. She sexually targets Jimmy, all the while him telling tales of marital abuse, and promises Lydia that she will employ her as her secretary when she becomes famous. The besotted Jimmy soon becomes the designated shooter.

But things don’t go to plan for Suzanne when the three luckless teenagers are arrested. Lydia chooses to cooperate with the police, and wears a tape to record a confession by Suzanne but she is acquitted as the authorities took the entrapment route. When Suzanne publicly suggests Larry’s murder was drug-related–her husband, she says, was a coke addict–his family finally crack, and take matters into their own hands. Suzanne just can’t help herself when she is lured to a remote location by the promise of telling and selling her story. Lydia does not see jail and becomes a kind of celebrity but the boys get life.

There are other targets of Van Sant’s satire in To Die For. Suzanne’s family are characterized as unthinking, self-regarding snobs. Her father Earl (Kurtword Smith) thinks his daughter, a junior college graduate with a degree in electronic journalism, is too good for high school Larry. There is even an unsympathetic side to the loving Italian-American in-laws. Apart from arranging a hit on her at the end (!), it’s clear that they want Suzanne to conform to their traditional ideals of womanhood. Even Larry’s cool sister encourages him to “knock her up.” We only really empathize with the teenagers, particularly Jimmy and Lydia. They backgrounds are troubled, and both come from unprivileged homes, but Suzanne mercilessly exploits them. In fact, she not only violates Jimmy’s youth; she also destroys his future. It’s disquieting subject matter. Scripted by Buck Henry, To Die For is actually based on Joyce Maynard’s 1992 book of the same name, a novel inspired by the similar, real-life 1990 Pamela Smart case. Telling the dark, outlandish tabloid tale in blackly amusing faux-documentary style, however, Van Sant maintains a markedly satirical tone. The uniformly pitch-perfect performances serve his vision. Phoenix, incidentally, is superb as the tragic-comic teenager.

Suzanne Stone is a mediagenic monster in pastels. She’s both a perverse creature and a nightmarishly pure ideological product. Entirely indoctrinated by televisual ideals, she’s a kind of Frankenstein of fame. In a more general sense, she is also a wickedly amusing portrait of American ambition, a workaholic who will do anything to get ahead. Suzanne Stone is, what’s more, a thoroughly unoriginal person. Her ideas are pilfered from others as well as, of course, television. To Die For not only sends up the hollowness of fame; it also attacks the manufactured personality. Suzanne believes that the human mind can be fashioned and cultivated by self-motivation books, and, again, television.

There is also that charming personality. The world revolves around Suzanne and she’s entirely indifferent to the feelings of others. A psychopath really. This is amusingly demonstrated at her husband’s funeral when she stands by his grave and slams on “All By Myself” on a tape-recorder. There’s a socio-economic aspect to all of this too. Suzanne Stone is entitled and knows it. She’s, indeed, an extreme product of white, bourgeois privilege. She warns Lydia when threatened with exposure, “I’m a professional person, for Christ’s sake. I come from a good home. Who do you think a jury would believe?”

An obsession with looks is also integral to her ideological make-up. Some of her comments are quite memorable–such as her suggestion that Gorbachev’s political career would have been more successful if he had had his birthmark removed. To Die For targets television and tabloid culture’s role in stimulating and nourishing human narcissism. The movie takes place, of course, in the pre-internet era–TV’s one of many communication platforms now–but the fundamental message about human vanity endures. As everyone reading this knows, social media has proved to be an extremely indulgent parent of self-love.

To Die For does not solely savage celebrity culture; it also takes aim at culturally constructed American femininity. Suzanne Stone has been entirely radicalised by televisual ideals of cosmetic beauty. Although naturally beautiful, she is paranoid about her own appearance and shamelessly advises the attractive Janice to get plastic surgery. Physical descriptions of Suzanne point to a distinct lack of humanity. Janice calls her an unfeeling doll, Lydia considers her a “goddess” while Jimmy is in awe of how clean she is. Suzanne Stone is not a sensual woman. Her very sexuality, it is suggested, is inauthentic. Sex seems to be primarily an exhibitionist or strategic move bound up with the manipulation of others.

Ultimately, Suzanne Stone is not only a uniquely unlikeable protagonist. Representative of much that is wrong with her place and time- the self-interest, addiction to fame, lookism and classism–she is a skillfully drawn object of satire. Kidman cleverly captures her insane single-mindedness and narcissism. With her purple eyeshadow, short skirts, and little dog Walter–named, of course, after Walter Cronkite–her Suzanne Stone deserves a place in cinematic history’s gallery of dazzling grotesques.