Eight Elections Later, ‘The Contender’ Still Relevant

To my fellow Americans, happy election week! (Or, depending on your politics and your jurisdiction, unhappy election week.) I thought I’d celebrate by revisiting one of my favorite political thrillers, 2000’s ‘The Contender.’ I’m not sure if it is a credit to this film or a knock against America politics that it holds up so well 14 years later. When ‘The Contender’ was released, Hillary Clinton was in the midst of her first Senate campaign. Now, she’s the front-runner to be the democratic nominee in the next presidential election. But ‘The Contender’ still feels extremely relevant.

Image from 'The Contender' movie poster.
Image from The Contender movie poster.

To my fellow Americans, happy election week! (Or, depending on your politics and your jurisdiction, unhappy election week). I thought I’d celebrate by revisiting one of my favorite political thrillers, 2000’s The Contender. I’m not sure if it is a credit to this film or a knock against American politics that  that it holds up so well 14 years later.  When The Contender was released, Hillary Clinton was in the midst of her first Senate campaign. Now, she’s the front-runner to be the democratic nominee in the next presidential election. But The Contender still feels extremely relevant.

You’d think The Contender’s assertion that “A woman will serve in the highest level of the executive. Simple as that!”  would feel less bold now, with 14 years and eight elections having passed, aBlack president in his second term and a woman poised to succeed him.  But everything we see Joan Allen’s Laine Hanson go through to be confirmed as a vice presidential appointee seems no less plausible in 2014 than it was in 2000.

Joan Allen as Senator Laine Hansen
Joan Allen as Senator Laine Hanson

 

The Contender sees Jeff Bridges as lame duck president Jackson Evans (what a great fake president name that is) designating a replacement for his deceased vice president. After the presumptive designee gets tangled up in a news story involving an accidental death, he chooses Ohio senator Laine Hanson, daughter of a governor, liberal Republican turned conservative Democrat, mother of one, terrible basketball player. She’s a lifelong public servant, a true believer in American democracy, 100 percent ready to serve at the pleasure of the president despite her concerns the vice presidency will mean a loss of political power.

But she’s surrounded by doubters, in public opinion, in Congress, even within the president’s staff. The symbolic importance of a woman in the office means something to President Evans, and his aides dismiss the historic designation his “swan song.” The members of Congress in her confirmation hearing, led by the repugnant Rep. Shelly Runyon (Gary Oldman) speak a lot of “greatness,” doubting that Sen. Hanson has it. It seems rather apparent that at least Runyon believes greatness and womanhood are mutually exclusive. Or at least her womanhood automatically makes her greatness suspect, because surely if “the cancer of affirmative action” were not in play, a man would get the nod.

Gary Oldman as the villainous Rep. Shelly Runyon
Gary Oldman as the villainous Rep. Shelly Runyon

This doubt of Sen. Hanson leads to brutal and baldly sexist attacks against her. The tamest of these is probably her being questioned about how she’d handle having a child in office, and the shocked silence that follows her answer “my husband and I practice birth control.” The crux of her oppositions strategy against her is a sex scandal involving her alleged “deviant sexual behavior” (basically, semi-public group sex) at a frat party she attended at the age of 19. Sen. Hanson refuses to dignify these “accusations” with a response because “if I were a man, no one would care how many sexual partners I had in college.” Photographs purporting to show her in the act are published on the internet. She’s ambushed on national television by a man claiming to have been a participant. But she remains steadfast in her refusal to deny or respond to the story, which does nothing to silence it.

Interestingly, it is a second “sex scandal,” one where she does admit to the allegations, that is nearly Sen. Hanson’s undoing. Runyon subpoenas the ex-wife of Hanson’s husband, who reveals his affair with Hanson when he ran her first campaign is what led to their divorce. Hanson admits she slept with another woman’s husband. This comparably “mainstream” sexual indiscretion, which again, would unlikely be seen as particularly relevant to the nomination of a man to the post, almost damns Hanson’s confirmation.

Sen. Hansen's confirmation hearings
Sen. Hansen’s confirmation hearing

Sen. Hanson’s personal life is the main focus of her confirmation hearings even though she has some political views and personal beliefs that make even her election to the Senate suspect: she’s an atheist, she “stands for every gun taken out of every home, period,” though she’s also a military hawk.  But with the exception of her support for reproductive rights and her atheism, her politics don’t seem much of interest to those who oppose her nomination.  Both her supporters and her detractors mainly care about the symbolic importance of a woman as vice president.

Ultimately, Sen. Hanson is saved by a plot twist revealed through the investigation of plucky FBI agent Paige Willomina (Kathryn Morris, stealing scenes with her wickedly clever interrogations) that rules out the alternative designee, and President Evans deciding to stick by her and pull on all his charisma and clout to force her confirmation through. In his speech to a joint session of Congress, he says a woman in this office is “an idea whose time has come,” and claims Hanson has all the greatness she was doubted because she refused to play the petty political games to which Runyon and his cronies subjected her.

Jeff Bridges as President Jackson Evans
Jeff Bridges as President Jackson Evans

The Contender succeeds not only as an excoriation of attack politics and sexism against female politicians, but an endorsement of a candidate’s identity being relevant to their qualifications, another way of thinking about the so-called cancer of affirmative action. Something the film does extremely well is deny the myth of meritocracy in national politics. When you’ve got a huge pool of qualified candidates for a position like the vice presidency, “the best person for the job” is rarely if ever going to be a clear choice. After she’s completed her investigation, Agent Willomina begs the president’s chief of staff not to dump Hanson because “She’s hope… hope that there is no double standard. That the goals can be the same.” Hansen being a woman is part of what makes her the best choice for the job.

Fourteen years later, and none of this feels dated (well, the part where a Washington Post reporter literally prints out the faux Drudge Report Internet piece on the sex scandal and acts like he has a scoop is a bit jarring). It all feels pretty depressingly familiar, in fact. As much as I love the film, I wish The Contender didn’t stand up so well to the test of time.

‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes:’ My Dear Forgotten Cornelia

‘Dawn’ lacks strong female characters. How much more interesting the story could have been if Ellie had taken the lead in negotiating with Caesar and restoring the dam! Likewise, a fighting female ape could have provided interesting contrast while either avoiding or spotlighting appearance-based tropes about violent women.

Written by Andé Morgan.
Release poster.
Release poster.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) is an artful and visually appealing summer blockbuster, and it almost makes up for Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014). Unfortunately, like that movie and almost every other recent film in its genre, Dawn has a dearth of significant female characters.
Dawn was directed by Matt Reeves and written by Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. It is the sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011).
Featuring much less James Franco (thank you, Noodly One) than RiseDawn stars Andy-Serkis-in-a-digital-monkey-suit as Caesar, Gary Oldman as Dreyfuss, leader of the surviving humans, and Jason Clarke as Malcolm, an utterly unmemorable white male lead. Keri Russell plays Ellie, a former CDC doctor and Malcolm’s companion.
Andy Serkis as Caesar.
Andy Serkis as Caesar.
The introductory news montage dovetails with the end of Rise. The Simian Flu, unleashed by Franco’s character, has killed almost everybody. A clutch of genetically-immune humans has outlasted the violent first 10 years of the apocalypse. Like characters in a late ’70s sitcom, they’re scraping by and doing the best they can in the bottom of a San Francisco high-rise.
In contrast the apes, led into the Muir Woods by Caesar in the previous film, have built a cellulose utopia. No cages, no electricity, no artisanal cat videos, no bullshit. Reeves and company do an excellent job of establishing a believable community, and of illustrating the depth of the inter-ape relationships. The father-son drama between Caesar and Blue Eyes is particularly well done, both in movement and in dialogue (such as it is), and was my favorite element of the film.
Malcolm and Ellie form a post-apocolyptic nuclear family with Malcolm’s son, Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Malcolm leads them and a small group of stock characters into the Muir Woods to locate and renovate a hydroelectric dam so that the survivors can power their peripherals. This quest precipitates the inevitable confrontation between the humans and the apes.
That's Ellie in the back.
That’s Ellie in the back.
Did I mention less James Franco? Also, the visual elements were excellent. Filming took place on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and Reeves and Michael Seresin (cinematographer) really sell the lush rain forests of the Pacific Northwest. The scenery works well with the CGI and motion capture techniques, and the scenes where Caesar and family hunt and fish are beautiful and seamless.
If only the humans could have been apes. I know the film was really about the apes, anyway, but it was hard to identify with the human characters enough to care about their fate. Speaking of humans and unsympathetic characters, Gary Oldman was woefully miscast as a former military special operations badass. Judging by his stilted and unenthusiastic delivery, he wasn’t sure what he doing there, either.
Also, dystopia, again. I know, the whole series is about the fruits of war and hubris, but I’m just feeling saturated. Lately, it seems like every wide release can’t wait to tell me about how humanity is so over. What’s more, the dystopia in Dawn is not dystopic enough (if it sounds like I’m complaining out of both sides of mouth, I am). It’s too shiny, and the humans are too happy and well fed. The survivors’ colony looks more like a saturday morning farmers’ market than the last remnant of humanity. Post-tribuation San Fransico actually looks more livable covered in vegetation and sans traffic.
Similarly, the ape community is shown as a bit too idyllic (at first, anyway), and initially conveyed a subtle look-at-the-happy-natives vibe.
The movie so badly wanted to be taken seriously, but the score did not help. It alternated between ineffective back ground movie muzak and hokey homage to the cheesiest riffs of the original films. The film was best in its dark moments, and it should’ve gone darker instead of relying on poorly-aged instrumentals and noble savage tropes.
As Kyle Buchanan notesDawn’s dystopia is similar to its contemporaries in one important way: women need not apply. Of the many female survivors depicted, only Ellie has any lines. Almost all of which constitute her comments on or validation of the acts of Malcolm and Alexander. For example, Sam Adams references a scene where Ellie marks Malcolm’s development by saying, “That was a brave thing you did.” What little we see of her trails off to nothing in the third act as Malcolm goes adventuring solo, as a man should, apparently.
The Muir Woods don’t fare any better. It’s a bit more difficult to tell, but I reckon that the only female ape shown on screen was Caesar’s spouse, Cornelia (Judy Greer). We meet her as she gives birth (it’s a boy!) in the first act. She spends almost the entire remainder of the film in the same place, suffering and shivering from an infection contracted during the birth. As a device designed to humanize Caesar and to foster a bond between the survivors and the apes, I guess she works. As a well developed, depthful character, not so much. In fact, no one even addresses her directly — you won’t even know her name unless you stay for the credits.
Maurice, a male orangutan and Caesar’s confidant, was played by female actor Karin Konoval (she also played Mrs. Peacock in the infamous X-Files episode Home). Unlike the other male apes, Maurice doesn’t seem particularly conflict-oriented. While he acknowledges that his experience as a circus ape exposed him to the bad side of humanity, he seems to understand Caesar’s sympathy for the survivors. In one of the best scenes of the film, Alexander looks up from reading a graphic novel in his tent to see an observant Maurice quietly sitting outside. He goes to Maurice, and they read together.
Karin Konoval as Maurice.
Karin Konoval as Maurice.
Dawn was sorely missing a strong female character. How much more interesting the story would have been if Ellie had taken the lead in negotiating with Caesar and getting the dam up and running! Similarly, a fighting female ape could have provided interesting contrast while either avoiding or spotlighting appearance-based tropes about violent women.
Some critics have posited that Dawn’s lack of female characters was justified due to the film’s supposed focus on “primal urges.” Primal usually means essential or original, but apparently primal means violent when we’re talking about hominids. And women, and stereotypically feminine values like empathy and non-violence, just aren’t primal. Except that they are. Indeed, even modern male apes aren’t universally violent or paternalistic. I wonder, where were the Bonobos?
Regardless, Dawn isn’t about primal urges. Instead, it is about the physical and mental frailty of humankind. Like most other contemporary blockbusters, it reflects our modern anxieties, including our feelings of helplessness and discord — feelings held by men and women alike.
Also on Bitch Flicks: Depictions of dystopias in television and film.

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about film, television, and current events. Follow them @andemorgan.