Gender Identity – Bitch Flicks

Slashing Gender Assumptions: The Female Killer, Unmasked

This guest post by Kate Blair appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Serial killer movies tend to follow a similar trope: An anonymous and monstrous killer stabs and disembowels his way through a panoply of victims until he faces off against one final, sweaty, and bloodied girl who escapes his clutches. At this point, the killer’s true identity is revealed, and he is overthrown – at least until the sequel. While we don’t necessarily know anything about the killer, we tend to assume this nameless menace is male. However, movies like Deep Red and Friday the 13th subvert viewer expectations when we ultimately find out the killer is not a man at all, but a woman – and a middle-aged one at that. Friday’s Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) and the less celebrated Marta (Clara Calamai) from Deep Red reset the paradigm of the slasher genre and raise many interesting questions about gender as they do so.

To a certain extent, the reveal of woman as killer in both films comes across as a “gotcha” moment. After an hour or so of being scared out of your wits, it’s both surprising and puzzling to see a woman emerge as the killer. In the real world, most documented violent crimes are committed by men, but in a film, where anything can happen, there’s no reason to make this assumption. That’s why the gotcha-like reveal is also what makes these films so powerful. In shock, viewers think, “Why?” Then, after a moment’s reflection we think, “Why not?”

In one sense, female killers onscreen demonstrate women are just as capable of performing monstrosities as men are. Human beings frequently surrender to our darkest instincts. Women, of course, are no different. The murders these particular women commit are deeply disturbing, demonstrating women can be every bit as ruthless and dangerous as men – not just victims, but perpetrators as well.

Furthermore, female killers go against all the traits women are assumed to possess, such as passivity and weakness, and upend viewer expectations about femininity. We simply don’t expect murder from women, especially not the kind involving penetration and mutilation. It’s frightening, but at the same time, as a female viewer this moment is powerful because it’s rare for us to see ourselves reflected in such a persona.

There are a few widely accepted interpretations of slasher films (for these purposes, I’m considering Deep Red a slasher as well). As with all horror movies, critics focus on the audience’s response to the action on screen, which is often physical in addition to being emotional. In other words, the main reason audiences enjoy horror so deeply is that we get to enjoy watching victims being maimed in increasingly creative ways while our own entrails remain intact.

Slasher movies, especially Friday the 13th and Deep Red, also give viewers a chance to explore the fluidity of gender identity. Theorists like Linda Williams and Carol Clover contend slasher films allow the assumed male audience members to put themselves in the position of the female victim and empathize with her. Williams acknowledges female viewers obtain pleasure from of watching these movies as well, specifically in reacting to (and acting out) femininity.

These writers have also argued the main appeal of slasher films is the final girl who rises up and defeats her tormentor. She becomes increasingly resourceful and evades death, emerging unscathed from a massacre. Through this experience, she gains the active agency typically reserved for men on film. When women watch horror movies, we dabble in masculine traits by identifying with this final girl. However, it’s rare that we get to try on the role of killer.

Viewers, both male and female, identify with the victims on screen, but there are moments where we also experience the killer’s perspective. These films are set up so there are sequences where subjective camera work places us in the point of view of the murderer. In Friday the 13th we see the counselors as their stalker sees them, stabbing and slicing with careful deliberacy. In Deep Red, viewers also witness brutal acts through the killer’s eyes. In one instance, the anonymous figure simultaneously drowns a victim and scalds her face with hot water.

We assume this perspective is male, not only because of the actions being committed, but also because viewers always assume a male point of view in cinema, whether or not we realize it. The camera’s gaze looks, the female body is looked at. In some ways, it would be a shock to find we had been seeing through the eyes of a woman, no matter what she was doing. In this case, it’s even more unexpected.

For Dario Argento in particular, violent women are a bit of a fixation, even dating back to his first film, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. The killer in this classic giallo also turns out to be a woman. A previous victim of a violent crime, a gallery owner named Monica becomes a psychotic killer after coming in contact with a piece of art depicting a similar event. Rather than reliving the memory of her victimhood, she instead identifies with the knife-wielding killer and goes on to commit similar acts.

Deep Red also sets up a question of gender roles early on by invoking a screwball comedy-like sparring between Marcus Daly (David Hemmings) and Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi), the journalist he works with to solve the case. She has some masculine characteristics; he has some feminine ones. He is a sensitive artist (a pianist), and she is a career woman. He notes it’s a simple fact that men are stronger than women. In response, she challenges him to arm wrestle. She wins twice, and naturally, he accuses of her of cheating. Despite these power plays with his accomplice, it never seems to cross his mind that his invisible sparring partner, the killer, might also be a woman.

In Deep Red and Friday the 13th, Mrs. Voorhees and Marta both make an appearance before they are unveiled as the killers, but neither of them is suspect. Both appear harmless to characters who cross their paths, which likely has something to do with the fact that both killers are middle-aged women. Daly even spots Marta at the scene of the crime, but believes what he saw was only a painting. He is distressed when it seems to disappear. She shows up again some time later when Daly goes to his friend’s apartment hoping to track him down. Instead he finds Marta, who also happens to be his friend’s mother. Daly later discovers “the painting” he saw was Marta’s reflection in the mirror – underlining the idea that he simply doesn’t see her at all.

In Friday the 13th, viewers don’t actually witness the iconic Mrs. Voorhees’ face until the final act, but we do see various campers’ reactions to her. In each case, the campers appear relieved to have come across her. The first victim, Annie (Robbi Morgan), late to her first shift in the kitchen, flashes a dopey grin as she asks for a lift to the camp ground. Similarly, after being barricaded in her cabin and terrorized by the psychopathic killer, Alice (Adrienne King) is deeply relieved when Mrs. Voorhees approaches. Alice even goes so far as to embrace her apparent savior. None of the campers seem the slight bit distressed by Mrs. Voorhees’ appearance. In a turtleneck with dyed, bobbed hair, Mrs. Voorhees appears a maternal figure, but the psychotic glint in her eyes reveals she’s anything but.

Mrs. Voorhees and Marta don’t look like we expect killers to look. As middle-aged women, they appear maternal – more likely to sit you down, feed you cookies and tell you everything will be all right. However, in this case, making assumptions based on appearance is particularly deadly. Older women are often overlooked. As murderesses, Marta and Mrs. Voorhees lend a sense of power and vitality to this demographic. These women seek their revenge on the youth who consider them obsolete, or nurturing figures who exist to support the young people’s story. To play an active role in their own narratives, these women take up the knife.

There are many enjoyable aspects of watching horror movies. Viewers get to toe that fine line of being scared and being exhilarated without fear of actual injury. We also get to float between identification with victims and killers. While we are in the safe space of cinematic imagination, it’s not wrong step out of the role of victim and instead, into that of a killer. As Monica discovers in Bird with the Crystal Plumage, being a victim (however resourceful) grows tiresome after a while. Simultaneously, as maternal figures, Mrs. Voorhees and Marta remind us that women don’t fade to the background with age, and male gender traits don’t belong to men alone.

It’s exhausting to be victimized – first babied and objectified, then cast aside when we are too old to be considered objects of lust. It’s frustrating to be perceived as passive rather than an active force, a person who makes her own choices, however evil they may be. Horror movies have always allowed women to explore their masculinity, and inhabiting the role of killer is an extension of that playfulness. Female killers like Marta and Mrs. Voorhees strike down gendered assumptions, one gruesome murder at a time.

Kate Blair enjoys writing about film and feminism. She currently resides in Chicago with her wife, cat, dog, and a bowl of pasta. You can find more of her scribblings on her blog Selective Viewing or follow her on Twitter @selective_kate

‘Cinderella II’: The Gender Identity Romcom of ‘Some Like It Hot’

Jerry never leads with Joe or Sugar. This suggestion, that the character might be made more assertive and empowered by a female role, effectively challenges the patriarchal concept of femininity as necessarily submissive and disempowering; femininity in ‘Some Like It Hot’ is portrayed as empowering and liberating when it better expresses the individual’s natural impulses and identity.

This is a guest post by Brigit McCone.

Some Like It Hot topped the AFI poll as funniest film of all time, almost always ranking high in similar surveys. It is, beyond doubt, the most popular choice for the greatest cross-dressing farce of all time. While we regularly debate whether political correctness is killing comedy, it is worth remembering that the greatest cross-dressing farce is also the most humanizing (and, rather depressingly, unequaled since 1959). Where most cross-dressing comedies (except possibly those by Alice Guy) rely on the humor of insecure masculinity in a one-joke premise (“it’s funny because they think we’re gay/women, but we’re actually not gay/women, which is embarrassing because being gay/women is inferior”), Some Like It Hot expertly raises these anxieties, but has the courage to interrogate them by exploring the possible attractions of a female role. The film is still among the only cross-dressing comedies to feature a genuine gender identity crisis by a sympathetic protagonist; the human depths that this adds to the flimsy set-up are the key to its comedy. Jack Lemmon’s Daphne/Jerry is not the butt of the joke; Daphne/Jerry is an acid-tongued wit in hir own right and the film casually assumes our maturity to follow hir on hir gender journey, laughing along with its contradictions and pressures.

According to Wilder, he was unsure himself whether the legendary “nobody’s perfect” was strong enough to be the final line of the film. This suggests that Wilder was unaware of the extent to which he had crafted perfect romantic comedy between Daphne/Jerry and Osgood, along the lines of Jane Austen’s genre-defining Pride and Prejudice, which uses romance as a catalyst for confronting the self. Where Tony Curtis’ Joe and Marilyn Monroe’s Sugar Kane have a relatively flimsy romance, begun in lies and concluded with inertia as each reverts to their established type, the romance between Osgood and Daphne/Jerry is the catalyst for a psychosexual crisis as profoundly subversive as it is hilariously expressed. Although Daphne’s relationship with Osgood has been interpreted as a “low comedy flip” of the primary relationship between Curtis’s Joe and Monroe’s Sugar, I suggest that the brilliance of I. A. L. Diamond’s final line is how satisfyingly it flips that interpretation, revealing Daphne’s relationship with Osgood as the major love plot. I have explored how Austen’s template structures the psychological struggles of Fight Club; I’d now like to explore the way that it deepens and illuminates the gender identity struggle at the heart of Some Like It Hot.

Cinderella the Second: The Meet-Cute — *Cinderella the Second*: The Meet-Cute

The classic Pride and Prejudice meet-cute occurs when the judgmental Elizabeth Bennet is herself judgmentally dismissed by Darcy as “not handsome enough to tempt me” – its cuteness lies in the irony of the similarity at the root of the mutual hostility. The meet-cute of Some Like it Hot occurs when Osgood chivalrously leaps to restore Daphne’s lost stiletto, provoking her to comment that she is “Cinderella the Second.” The irony is double: Jerry feels the ironic absurdity of being treated as a princess when he is really a man, yet the character’s story will genuinely serve as a comic twist on the Cinderella archetype. Jerry is the downtrodden servant, constantly bullied by Tony Curtis’ alpha Joe, the wicked stepbro of macho peer pressure; Daphne is the mysterious stranger who captivates the prince. Jerry loses the coat off his back because Joe demands it; Daphne is showered with diamonds. Jerry must watch Joe get all the girls (it is significant that hir attraction to Sugar never makes Daphne/Jerry consider attempting to woo her in male form, as Joe instantly does); Daphne is a sexually irresistible “firecracker.” Daphne is swept off her feet for a night of glamorous dancing, then bullied into becoming Joe’s “Jerry” again in the morning.

The stiletto heels play a significant symbolic role in this transition. When we first see Jerry in drag, he is complaining that he doesn’t understand how women can “walk in these things.” Despite his theoretical attraction to cross-dressing (Jerry suggests cross-dressing for cash even before the pair are forced to flee the mafia, and appears titillated by the idea), he is the one who panics and feels threatened by taking on a female identity – “it’s a whole different sex!” – which for Joe is only a meaningless disguise. Where Daphne wants to choose her own name, Joe apathetically takes the feminine form of his male name. The Cinderella meet-cute with Osgood turns Daphne’s clumsy inability to walk in heels into the beginning of her fairy-tale romance, rather than a betrayal of masculinity. It is therefore a stroke of genius that the mafia recognize Daphne, at the end of the movie, because she’s still wearing her heels even when fleeing in a male disguise. Jerry is not betrayed as “really a man” while attempting to be Daphne; rather, Daphne’s true nature is revealed by her heels as she attempts unsuccessfully to pass as male. Jerry’s transition into accepting Daphne’s heels as second-nature suggests Daphne may likewise accept Osgood’s love, a conclusion as taboo in the 1950s as it was satisfying to leave to the viewer’s imagination. If the shoe fits…

I'm a Boy. I Wish I Were Dead: Protagonist Rejects Love Interest — *I’m a Boy. I Wish I Were Dead*: Protagonist Rejects Love Interest

In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth’s initial aversion to Darcy’s arrogance is compounded by a series of misunderstandings that peak in her explosive rejection of him in the famous proposal scene. In Some Like It Hot, Daphne’s loudly stated aversion to the “dirty, old man” Osgood is, from the very beginning, comically insufficient to prevent her from repeatedly flirting with him. The climax of their relationship is also a proposal scene: the sweeping of Daphne off her feet in the film’s delirious tango sequence. Daphne can’t stop leading during the dance; that might be seen as a joke reflecting her actual maleness, but it is equally a sign of her growing confidence, spark and fire. Jerry never leads with Joe or Sugar. This suggestion, that the character might be made more assertive and empowered by a female role, effectively challenges the patriarchal concept of femininity as necessarily submissive and disempowering; femininity in Some Like It Hot is portrayed as empowering and liberating when it better expresses the individual’s natural impulses and identity.

After a night of zinging banter, heady admiration and dance, Daphne is seduced and agrees to marry Osgood. In the morning, Joe forces the male role back onto her: “You’re a guy! Why would a guy want to marry a guy?” and Daphne agrees to renounce her plan. It is true that Daphne’s claim to be marrying Osgood for “security!” ironically reflects Joe and Sugar’s relationship, where Sugar believes she is chasing money and Joe believes he is chasing sex. However, rather than simply parodying their shallowness, Daphne’s shining eyes and glee after the tango scene reveal that her own attraction to Osgood is more than mercenary, just as Osgood will later reveal that his attraction to Daphne goes far deeper than a comically blind urge to chase anything in a skirt. The key to Daphne’s decision to reject Osgood’s proposal is the unquestioned assumption that Osgood would reject Jerry if he discovered his true nature; this is the underlying misunderstanding that keeps the lovers apart, forcing Daphne to define her seduction as an impractical dream. Like Cinderella’s ball, it is magical but incompatible with her real self. Where she formerly chanted “I’m a girl! I’m a girl!” to resist her sexual attraction to women, now she must chant “I’m a boy! Boy, oh boy, am I a boy!” before sighing “I wish I were dead” as she renounces her fantasy self. The use of gender identity as romantic obstacle complicates the usual dynamic of love interests rejecting each other. It is more accurate to say that Daphne rejects herself on Osgood’s behalf.

The Omelet's About To Hit the Fan: Fate Intervenes — *The Omelet’s About To Hit the Fan*: Fate Intervenes

The psychological dynamics of acceptance and rejection in Pride and Prejudice are interrupted in the book’s final third by the dramatic elopement of Lydia, which brings relationships to crisis-point and a more dramatic conclusion; at first appearing to separate the lovers, it ultimately unites them. It is at roughly this same point in the plot of Some Like It Hot that the mafia re-enter. The mafia function throughout the film as a device to express transphobic anxieties without confronting them. By providing an urgent motivation for the characters’ cross-dressing, they allow the audience to avoid confronting the issue of any internal motivation. The intense, scrutinizing pressure and threat of violence which the openly transfeminine are subjected to, even today, is expressed through the extreme anxiety of the need to “pass” under mafia scrutiny, but it is not confronted: the characters of Some Like It Hot are never threatened with transphobic violence, only with murder as witnesses to the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (although it could be regarded as symbolic that the mafia become murderous after flirting with the girls, then stripping Daphne’s curvaceous double bass to reveal her true identity – “there’s your valentine!”). Although the mafia threat appears to be a force that will drive Daphne away from Osgood, her fear of the sinister and shaming “ladies’ morgue” is ultimately the only catalyst strong enough to make her defy society’s conventions and to push her into his arms. Both the mafia and the ladies’ morgue represent exposure anxiety; they also represent an inevitable mortality before which a person’s greatest regrets are usually the things they have left undone.

Nobody's Perfect: Sacrificing The Ego — *Nobody’s Perfect*: Sacrificing The Ego

The final reconciliation of Pride and Prejudice is made possible when Elizabeth Bennet sacrifices her ego to make a humiliating admission of her feelings for Darcy to Lady Catherine de Bourgh. In an even more major sacrifice, Daphne risks murder by mafia as well as humiliation by confessing her true identity to Osgood. After a series of comically escalating confessions, she finally tears away her wig and announces “I’m a man.” Osgood replies, shrugging, “nobody’s perfect.” This might be an easy laugh at Jerry’s awkward entrapment, but we have already seen his glowing eyes after their night of tango. Rather, the line “nobody’s perfect” flips our assumption that we are watching a farcical romantic parody on its head, to become supremely romantic. In a trademark Wilderism, Some Like It Hot reveals cynicism to be a facade for romance rather than the reverse: Joe and Sugar’s “real” goals of sex and money give way to their “pretended” love; Daphne and Osgood’s “real” identities as fraud and womanizer give way to their human connection. A night of chemistry at Cinderella’s ball is as real as the enforced roles of our daytime reality. The oddball coupling of a cross-dresser and a wrinkled millionaire can seem more lovable than the photogenic pairing of Monroe and Curtis. It is the genius of Lemmon’s performance that he is able to make Daphne’s personality more vivid, enticing and three-dimensional than Jerry’s, so that Daphne seems seductively like the true self that Osgood appreciated all along. Finally, a character defined for the entire film by comically escalating discomfort with their own identity meets absolute and unconditional acceptance. Our image of what happens next is a Rorschach test of each viewer’s own assumptions, of their varying levels of ageism, transphobia and romantic cynicism. But in my own interpretation, Cinderella the Second has a ball.

Brigit McCone is a shameless Wilder groupie, writes and directs short films, radio dramas and The Erotic Adventures of Vivica (as Voluptua von Temptitillatrix). Her hobbies include doodling and making weird Pride and Prejudice analogies.

‘Transmormon’: The Spaces In Between Religion and Gender

Like so many other orthodox and traditional religions the issue of gender identity is seen as an eternal assignment from God, as are the sexual desires and attractions that accompany it. For Eri Hayward, a transgender woman from one of Utah’s most conservative areas, the difficult experience of realizing what she believes about her own eternal identity is a familial journey steeped within the religious mores of her community.

Written by Rachel Redfern.

Many of America’s regions are steeped within the highly charged atmosphere of religion, with some of these religions even dominating a geographic area entirely. This is of course the situation in Utah where over 62 percent of the state population belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons. Like so many other orthodox and traditional religions the issue of gender identity is seen as an eternal assignment from God, as are the sexual desires and attractions that accompany it. For Eri Hayward, a transgender woman from one of Utah’s most conservative areas, the difficult experience of realizing what she believes about her own eternal identity is a familial journey steeped within the religious mores of her community.

Eri’s courageous story of faith and identity is documented by director Torben Bernhard in Transmormon, a short documentary film and winner of the Artistic Vision Award at the 2013 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Bernhard generously agreed to grant Bitch Flicks an interview regarding Transmormon and filming a movie about a woman whose experiences, according to him, embody the tensions circulating around the issues of religion, same-sex marriage and gender identity in America.

Part of what made Eri’s story so compelling to Bernhard is the potential for her story to hopefully ease some of the conflict: “Too often, individual stories get lost and absorbed into statistics and talking points around heated issues. I was interested in attempting to address those tensions, but from the perspective of someone who lives with the reality of those issues in their inner life. I see Eri’s family’s journey as a guide to how we can be kinder, more compassionate, and ultimately gracefully accept and validate the lived experiences of others.”

Transmormon follows Eri and her family just days before Eri leaves for Thailand to have Sexual Reassignment Surgery and complete the physical changes she believes will more accurately reflect her spirit. Throughout the details of Eri’s life and challenges in accepting who she is runs the ever-more familiar theme of coming to grips with religious beliefs.

For much of America’s LGBTQ community being themselves can sometimes come at a price; some families cut their children off, jobs may be lost, and their religious communities might ask them leave. Luckily, Eri’s family is incredibly supportive of her, and while her place within the religion she’s lived her whole life is uncertain, Eri remains a woman of some faith.

However, for faithful LDS members, gender is eternal in nature and Eri’s decision to have SRS means that she can never enter the temple and may only serve a limited role in the church. And in viewing Eri’s story, the inherent pull between change and growth and family and tradition in the Mormon community is highlighted. Berhnard recognized this fact and intentionally included it; “The messages from the pulpit often emphasize the love and compassion that should be extended to LGBTQ members, only to reiterate that marriage is strictly between a man and a woman. So, what are you to do when you cannot conform to the seemingly impossible standards put forward by a church you have always belonged to and have faith in?”

Rather than focusing entirely on Eri’s place within the Mormon religion though, Bernhard chose to focus on Eri’s spiritual and emotional journey as she tries to come to a stable and happy place of acceptance, ultimately mirroring the very human experience of growing up and settling into our individual beliefs. In fact, choosing what exactly to show in Eri’s situation was one of the main obstacles in producing Transmormon: “While editing, we tried to approach this in a number of ways and eventually decided that the criticism we wanted to express already existed in the juxtaposition between her struggle and the institutional policies of the church. Instead, we tried to detail the real struggles that exist for members, while showing that, despite how lovely her family may be, Eri will still ultimately be subject to the judgment of the Mormon church (inasmuch as she accepts their judgment).”

Eri walks the crew through her morning routine.

Because marriage is still generally placed within the context of a chapel, issues of sexuality and gender are still being fought on a religion vs. state battleground and Utah has become a key player.

However, despite the LDS church’s hardline stance on gender roles and even its massive financial contributions to causes like Prop 8 in California, Utah and its creative community are steadily reaching out to the changing face of families and residents like Eri. In fact, Transmormon was conceived because of artistic collaboration in Salt Lake City and was released with an hour-long radio episode dedicated to raising a transgender child.

As Transmormon was screened first in Utah, I was curious about the response that the film would have received; happily, the response to the film has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, it seems that Transmormon reminds us of the incredible power of storytelling to soften the edges of political and religious difference by placing faces next to difficult topics. Bernhard has received notes and emails from deeply conservative audiences who thank him and Eri for challenging their long-held ideas on gender and identity. Bernhard hopes that “through telling her story, audiences will leave the film with a more nuanced understanding of challenges facing the transgender community and the complexities of gender identity. I also secretly hope that some parents will watch it and make their kids’ lives easier.”

If with every viewing of Transmormon and other films like it, films deeply committed to telling human stories that “transcend biases” audiences are changed and minds are opened, then we desperately need more of them, which luckily Bernhard and other artists are already working on. Bernhard’s next project is a full-length documentary that follows the fight over same-sex marriage in Utah, with exclusive access to plaintiffs and legal teams on both sides. Ultimately though, it’s the ways that these stories touch us on a personal level that make the difference for people everywhere. Even Bernhard, a supporter of the LGBTQ community already, found himself embracing more compassion and respect, “for the individual pain that each family member processes as they grapple with unexpected life turns. There is so much pain implicit in journeys that do not fit neatly into the constrained categories societies often produce.”

You can view Transmormon on Vimeo, but if you’d like to hold a private screening in your community, please do! Bernhard and his team are committed to “opening hearts and minds” however they would like to be aware of the films reach; please email or tweet to let them know.

How’s Eri doing since her surgery? Well, she’s returned from Thailand and a successful surgery, back to Utah and her family. If you’d like to stay updated on her progress you can follow her here.

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Rachel is a traveler and teacher who spent the last few years living in Asia. Now back in her native California, she focuses on writing about media, culture, and feminism. While a big fan of campy 80s movies and eccentric sci-fi, she’s become a cable acolyte, spending most of her time watching HBO, AMC, and Showtime. For good stories about lions and bungee jumping, as well as rants about sexism and slow drivers, follow her on Twitter at @RachelRedfern2

The Shock of ‘Sleepaway Camp’

On the surface, Sleepaway Camp isn’t much different than your average 1980s slasher movie. The comparisons to Friday the 13th can’t be ignored – Sleepaway’s Camp Arawak, much like Friday’s Camp Crystal Lake, is populated by horny teens looking for some summer lovin’, and is the site of a series of gruesome and mysterious murders that threaten to shut down the camp for the whole summer. But unlike Friday the 13th and other slasher films, the twist in Sleepaway Camp isn’t the identity of the murderer, and the final girl isn’t exactly who you’d expect.

This piece by Carrie Nelson previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on October 24, 2011 and is republished as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

On the surface, Sleepaway Camp isn’t much different than your average 1980s slasher movie. The comparisons to Friday the 13th can’t be ignored – Sleepaway’s Camp Arawak, much like Friday’s Camp Crystal Lake, is populated by horny teens looking for some summer lovin’, and is the site of a series of gruesome and mysterious murders that threaten to shut down the camp for the whole summer. But unlike Friday the 13th and other slasher films, the twist in Sleepaway Camp isn’t the identity of the murderer, and the final girl isn’t exactly who you’d expect.

(Everything that follows contains significant spoilers. Read at your discretion.)

The protagonist of Sleepaway Camp is Angela, the lone survivor of a boating accident that killed her father and her brother, Peter. Years after the accident, her aunt Martha, with whom she now lives, sends her to Camp Arawak with her cousin Ricky. Angela is painfully shy and refuses to go near the water, which leads to the other campers tormenting her incessantly. Ricky’s quick to defend her, but the bullying is relentless. One by one, Angela’s tormenters are murdered in increasingly grotesque ways (the most disturbing involves a curling iron brutally entering a woman’s vagina).

So come the end of the film, when it’s revealed that Angela is the murderer, there’s no particular shock – after all, why wouldn’t she want to seek revenge on her tormentors? But the fact that Angela is the murderer isn’t the point, because when we find out she’s the murderer we see her naked, and it is revealed that she has a penis. We quickly learn through flashbacks that it was, in fact, Peter who survived the boat accident, and Aunt Martha decided to raise him as a girl. The ending is profoundly disturbing, not because Peter is a murderer or because he is a cross-dresser (because his female presentation is against his will, it isn’t accurate to call him transgender), but because he has been abused so deeply by his aunt and his peers that he can’t find a way to cope.

Unlike most slasher movies I’ve seen, I wasn’t horrified by Sleepaway Camp’s body count. Rather, I was horrified by the abuses that catalyze the murders. Peter survived the trauma of watching his father and sister die, only to be emotionally and physically abused by his aunt and forced to live as a woman. At camp, he’s terrified of the water, as it reminds him of the tragic loss of his family, and he’s unable to shower or change his clothes around his female bunkmates, as they might learn his secret. But rather than being understanding and supportive, the other campers harass Peter by forcibly throwing him into the water, verbally taunting him and ruining his chance to be romantically involved with someone who might truly care for him. Not to mention, at the start of camp, he is nearly molested by the lecherous head cook. Peter may be a murderer, but he is hardly villainous – the rest of the characters are the real villains, for allowing the bullying to transpire.

The problem, of course, is that the abuse of Peter isn’t the part that’s supposed to horrify us. The twist ending is set up to shock and disgust the audience, which is deeply transphobic. Tera at Sweet Perdition describes the problem with ending as follows:

But Angela’s not deceiving everybody because she’s a trans* person. She’s deceiving everybody because she’s a (fictional) trans* person created by cissexual filmmakers. As Drakyn points out, the trans* person who’s “fooling” us on purpose is a myth we cissexuals invented. Why? Because we are so focused on our own narrow experience of gender that we can’t imagine anything outside it. We take it for granted that everyone’s gender matches the sex they were born with. With this assumption in place, the only logical reason to change one’s gender is to lie to somebody.

The shock of Sleepaway Camp’s ending relies on the cissexist assumption that one’s biological sex and gender presentation must always match. A person with a mismatched sex and gender presentation is someone to be distrusted and feared. Though the audience has identified with Peter throughout the movie, we are meant to turn on him and fear him at the end, as he’s not only a murderer – he’s a deceiver as well. But, as Tera points out, the only deception is the one in the minds of cisgender viewers who assume that Peter’s sex and gender must align in a specific, proper way. Were this not the point that the filmmakers wanted to make, they would have revealed the twist slightly earlier in the film, allowing time for the viewer to digest the information and realize that Peter is still a human being. (This kind of twist is done effectively in The Crying Game, specifically because the twist is revealed midway through the film, and the audience watches characters cope and come to terms with the reveal in an honest, sensitive way. Such sensitivity is not displayed in Sleepaway Camp.)

And yet, despite its cissexism, Sleepaway Camp has some progressive moments. Most notably, the depiction of Angela and Peter’s parents, a gay male couple, is positive. In the opening scene, the parents appear loving and committed, and there’s even a flashback scene depicting the men engaging in romantic sexual relations. Considering how divisive gay parenting is in the 21st century, the fact that a mainstream film made nearly thirty years ago portrays gay parenting positively (if briefly) is certainly worthy of praise.

Sleepaway Camp is incredibly problematic, but beyond the surface-layer clichés and the shock value of the ending, it’s a fascinating and truly horrifying film. Particularly watching the film today, in an era where bullying is forcing young people to make terrifyingly destructive decisions, the abuses against Peter ring uncomfortably true. Peter encounters cruelty at every turn, emotionally scarring him until he can think of no other way to cope besides murder. Unlike horror movies in which teenagers are murdered as punishment for sexual activity, Sleepaway Camp murders teenagers for the torment they inflict on others. There’s a certain sweet justice in that sort of conclusion, but at the same time, it makes you wish the situations that bring on the murders hadn’t needed to happen at all.

Carrie Nelson was a Staff Writer for Gender Across Borders, an international feminist community and blog that she co-founded in 2009. She works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit, and she is currently pursuing an MA in Media Studies at The New School.

‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and the Pitchfork of Puritanism

The midwestern, puritanical values that American Gothic seems to represent so well win at the end of the film, and quite literally kill difference and sexual and gender subversion. While Riff Raff and Magenta go back to their home planet Transsexual, in the galaxy of Transylvania, Brad, Janet and Dr. Scott are left on the cold ground, crawling and writhing in their fishnets.

The lips in the opening sequence–the biting action has sexual and fearful connotations.

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

The cult classic film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which was based off a British play of the same name, was released in 1975. At that point in American history, audiences (young audiences especially) were eager to have their boundaries pushed and revel in the debauchery that Rocky Horror provided. Whether it was the after-glow of the sexual revolution of the 60s and early 70s or a preemptive strike back to still-noisy social conservativism, Rocky Horror dealt with issues of gender and sexuality in a way that can resonate with viewers almost 40 years later. Buried beneath the campy music and bustiers is strong commentary on religion, gender and sexual norms, social customs and puritanical morality.

After the opening sequence (in which the famous red lips–belonging to Patricia Quinn, who plays Magenta–lip sync to Richard O’Brien, who plays Riff Raff and wrote the original play and screenplay, singing “Science Fiction/Double Feature”), the first shot of the movie is a cross atop a church steeple. The camera pauses, making the audience absorb the contrast between a clearly sexual (and even fearful), disembodied mouth and Christianity.

As the camera pans down, a wedding party and guests burst through the doors of the church. Outside of the church doors, a solemn-looking Tim Curry appears as the pastor, and Quinn and O’Brien flank him in the style of the American Gothic painting by Grant Wood.

We will see this image again. It will never really leave us.

The actors who will appear later as Magenta and Riff Raff play American Gothic in the first scene at the church.

According to the Art Institute of Chicago, “American Gothic is an image that epitomizes the Puritan ethic and virtues that he [Wood] believed dignified the Midwestern character.” Puritanical “virtues” are on display in this opening sequence.

As American culture reminds us, when these virtues are imbedded in a society, often the only option for sexual expression is at the extremes of the virgin/whore dichotomy. Suppression and purity on one end of the spectrum, complete surrender to earthly pleasure, no matter the cost, on the other. These extremes are shown throughout the film.

As the wedding comes to an end (and after Janet, played by Susan Sarandon, has caught the bouquet), a car pulls up to take away the bride and groom. Sloppily written on the side of the car is, “Wait till tonight, she got hers now he’ll get his.” The heteronormativity of this scene is clear. Women (including Janet) are eager for marriage, men want to “get theirs” after the wedding is over. Janet’s boyfriend, Brad (Barry Bostwick), does quickly propose to her after they discuss marriage in the church cemetery as a storm brews overhead. A billboard with a heart and the motto “Denton – The Home of Happiness” looms above them. The marriage ritual and social expectations surrounding it are, on the surface, celebrated in this scene (“Dammit, Janet, I love you!” sings Brad as they rollick around the church). However, the symbolism of the cemetery, the pending storm, and the fact that the American Gothic characters are preparing the church for a funeral as they wheel in a casket is not lost on the discerning viewer.

The two set off on a road trip to announce their engagement to a professor they’d had in college (they met and fell in love in his class). On the way, as they drive through a thunderstorm while listening to Nixon’s resignation speech on the radio (perhaps a nod to moral failure), they blow a tire. They end up at a foreboding castle (one used in many “Hammer Horror” movies that Rocky Horror parodies), and motorcycles pass them on the road going to the same destination. Brad says of the biker with judgment, “Life’s pretty cheap for that type.” An “Enter at Your Own Risk” sign invites the couple into the castle grounds, and they do.

After Riff Raff lets them in, they’re quickly initiated into the party that’s being held–the “Annual Transylvanian Convention.” They stand, innocent and wide-eyed, as guests (all dressed in gender-neutral tuxedos) dance the “Time Warp” and thrust their pelvises. The American Gothic painting, as well as the Mona Lisa, both appear on the walls of the castle.

Riff Raff welcomes Brad and Janet to the castle; the American Gothic painting looms behind him.

PBS art commentator Sister Wendy Beckett says, “You can recycle the Mona Lisa any way you like. Back to front, upside down, it remains instantly recognizable. That’s the ultimate compliment and it’s been paid to Grant Wood’s American Gothic. Somehow it seems to speak to the American psyche, though what it actually says isn’t as simple as it might seem.” The coyness of these particular works of art mirror what lies beneath The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Brad and Janet are visibly uncomfortable in this world (it seems “unhealthy,” Janet says). They, and the audience, which has seen the action from their naïve perspective, are then introduced to Dr. Frank-N-Furter, played by Curry. The camera pans up his fishnet-clad legs, reminiscent of the gratuitous male gaze present in so many other films. However, this time the object of that gaze is a “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania,” as he introduces himself in song.

Dr. Frank-N-Furter introduces himself to Brad and Janet.

He invites the couple up to his lab to “see what’s on the slab.” They are stripped to their underwear by Riff Raff and Magenta (“We’ll play along for now,” says Brad). On their way up to the lab, Janet asks Magenta if Frank-N-Furter is her husband. She laughs, and Riff Raff exclaims that he’ll probably never marry (again, marriage is slighted). Frank-N-Furter has changed into a scrubs-style dress (with a pink triangle on the chest) in the lab. He flirts with Brad, calling him a “force of manhood, so dominant,” and Janet begins to giggle and seem less uncomfortable in this new setting. Being stripped of their clothes leaves them almost naked and vulnerable, yet opens them up to sexual possibilities that explore gender and dominance.

Frank-N-Furter, seated, flanked by (from left) Columbia, Magenta and Riff Raff–all of whom he as used for his gain.

Frank-N-Furter announces that “My beautiful creature is destined to be born!” and the references to Frankenstein throughout the film thus far are fully realized. He climbs above the tank that is holding his “creature,” and drops in rainbow-colored liquid, leaving the creature awash in the rainbow. (In 1975, the rainbow flag had not yet been formally adopted as the LGBT banner, but rainbow flags were commonly used for similar liberal causes starting as early as the late 1960s.)

After his creature is born–a muscular, blonde, tan god–Frank-N-Furter ogles and gawks at his creation, chasing and crawling after him, scrambling to even kiss his foot. Rocky (his creature) doesn’t seem interested at all, as he sings about feeling the sword of Damocles above him. As history (and science fiction, like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) has repeatedly shown us, when we create a system in which others are to be subservient–whether via imperialism, slavery or patriarchy–the outcome is only good for those in power, and even then the reward is short-lived.

But for now, Frank-N-Furter appears to be getting his way (after ridding himself of Eddie, played by Meat Loaf, who we find out was an ex-lover of Frank-N-Furter and Columbia, played by Little Nell). Masculinity is magnified in this scene as Frank-N-Furter sings about making Rocky a “man” through intense physical workouts and bodybuilding routines, and Eddie’s display of hyped-up violent masculinity (motorcycle, leather jacket, rock and roll). But who is the dominant one in these relationships? Frank-N-Furter, in his fishnets and heels. As heteronormative as the opening scene of the film was, at this point almost all of the lines have been or are beginning to be subverted and blurred.

Frank-N-Furter and Rocky walk out of the lab arm in arm as the wedding march plays and his guests shower them with confetti. The curtain is drawn as they embrace, and the audience expects that they will consummate this “marriage” immediately.

In the middle of the night, Rocky escapes the wrath of Riff Raff and Magenta (he has chains on his ankles as he attempts to flee).

Janet and Brad have been put in separate rooms, of course, so they may retain their pre-marital chastity.

While his creation attempts to escape, Frank-N-Furter visits Janet. He acts like he’s Brad, and she welcomes his embrace and sexual advances. When she figures out it is Frank-N-Furter, she kicks him off: “I was saving myself!” she cried out. After a moment of rough persuasion, she lies back. “Promise you won’t tell Brad?” she says, and laughs as Frank-N-Furter descends upon her.

Afterward, “Janet” visits Brad, and he also welcomes the embrace until he realizes it’s Frank-N-Furter. The scene plays out exactly as it does with Janet–persistent refusal and then “You promise you won’t tell?” Again, Frank-N-Furter moves downward on Brad.

These scenes are poignant in that they are exactly the same–from the strict puritanical refusal to the “secretive” consent to the oral sex act itself–yet the sex of the participants is fluid. Frank-N-Furter is on top, but he’s adamant that the two give themselves “over to pleasure,” which he delivers.

(It’s also worth noting that during the sex scenes others in the house–Riff Raff, Magenta and Columbia–can watch via monitors that display live feed from the rooms. Voyeurism isn’t off-limits, either. Like most issues in this film, there is vast gray area in regard to consent that we are challenged to think about.)

By the next morning, Janet is crying and feeling immense guilt about betraying Brad. However, she happens upon a monitor showing him smoking a cigarette on the edge of his bed, which Frank-N-Furter is lying in. She then spots the injured Rocky, and tends to him. He touches her hand, and she smiles a smile that indicates she has found within herself power and passion.

Janet then bursts into her climactic song, “Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me,” a sex-positive female power anthem if there ever was one. She decries her years of avoiding “heavy petting,” since she thought it would only lead to “trouble and seat wetting.” While the narrator says that Janet was “its slave,” it’s more clear that she is sexually dominant in this scene.

After a lustful night with Frank-N-Furter, Janet embraces her sexuality with Rocky (she places his hands on her breasts).

Even in her critique of the woman’s stray curl in American Gothic, Sister Wendy senses something beyond the surface: “Some see the stray curl at the nape of her neck as related to the snake plant in the background, each one symbolizing a sharp-tongued ‘old maid.’ Sister Wendy sees in the curl, however, a sign that she is not as repressed as her buttoned-up exterior might indicate.” Nothing is quite as it seems.

After a cannibalistic dinner (insert corny pun about Meat Loaf here), everything seems to be falling apart. Eddie’s uncle–the Dr. Scott who Janet and Brad were trying to visit in the first place–comes to the castle (he’s both looking for his nephew and doing research on alien life forms). Dr. Frank-N-Furter, seeing everything he’s built to serve himself revolt (Riff Raff, the “handyman,” and Magenta, the “domestic,” are getting antsy to leave to go home to Transsexual; Columbia screams at him for just taking from people–first her, then Eddie, then Rocky, etc.–and Rocky isn’t working out as he planned), clings on to whatever power he can. He mocks Janet and her sexual inadequacy–“Your apple pie don’t taste too nice”–and turns all except for Riff Raff and Magenta into stone via his Medusa switch (the mythology echoing that of Damocles’s sword and what happens when one demands too much).

“It’s not easy having a good time,” Frank-N-Furter laments.

The floor show that follows is a spectacle of gender-bending and sexuality. The stone figures are “de-Medusafied” one by one, and all are wearing kabuki face makeup and Frank-N-Furter-style fishnets, heels, garters and bustiers. They each sing a stanza exploring their current state of drug dependence, uncontrolled libido and freedom in “Rose Tint My World.”

Columbia, Rocky, Janet and Brad have all reawakened in Frank-N-Furter’s gender-bending image for the floor show.

As Frank-N-Furter begins “Don’t Dream It, Be It,” he asks, “Whatever happened to Fay Wray? / That delicate satin draped frame / As it clung to her thigh, how I started to cry / Cause I wanted to be dressed just the same…” Here we see him stripped of his over-exaggerated power as he indicates that he struggled with gender, presumably when he was young. He’s been searching for how and where he fits, and “absolute pleasure” and “sins of the flesh” have been where he looked for fulfillment.

Frank-N-Furter jumps into an on-stage pool, and shot from above he’s floating on a life saver between God and man in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. The religious imagery present in the opening scenes is re-visited here, inviting the audience to consider the juxtaposition of “giving in to absolute pleasure” and the church, which is the very institution that dictates much of what we consider gender and sexual norms.

Frank-N-Furter floats in the pool, meticulously placed above Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam.

Janet, Brad, Rocky and Columbia all jump into the pool, and as they lustfully sing “Don’t dream it, be it,” there is a wet conglomeration of fishnets, limbs, tongues and strokes in the pool over the image of the Creation. Janet breathlessly sings, “God bless Lili St. Cyr.” She’s embracing her newfound sexuality by referencing a burlesque dancer/stripper/lingerie designer from the 1940s and 50s.

In the midst of this dream-like pseudo-orgy, Magenta and Riff Raff violently storm into the room. Dressed in other-worldly attire (yet gender-neutral), Riff Raff is holding a pitchfork-like weapon (American Gothic, of course), and threatens Frank-N-Furter and the group. “Your lifestyle is too extreme,” Riff Raff scolds, and says he’s subverting the power and will now be the master. For all of this time, Riff Raff and Magenta have been the “help,” and saw the need for an uprising. This also supports the subversive power roles within the film. Also worth noting is that Riff Raff and Magenta are lovers and brother and sister (the American Gothic painting is said to feature a brother and sister or father and daughter, not a husband and wife like many viewers imagine). Relationships, and our expectations and discomfort levels throughout, are meant to be examined.

Riff Raff and Magenta appear again as a futuristic American Gothic; his laser pitchfork will kill those whose “lifestyle” is too extreme.

Riff Raff proceeds to kill Columbia and Frank-N-Furter with his laser pitchfork. Rocky is more difficult to kill, and while he cries and mourns over Frank-N-Furter, he throws him on his back and tries to climb the RKO radio tower on stage. Frank-N-Furter so badly wanted to feel like Fay Wray in his life, and he finally got to after he died. However, Rocky’s plan doesn’t work and the two fall backward into the pool, buried in the very source of life.

The narrator closes the film with the words: “And crawling, on the planet’s face, some insects, called the human race. Lost in time, and lost in space… and meaning.”

We are, the narrator suggests, quite meaningless in our earthly struggles. We blindly grasp on to expectations and norms, whether it be social constructs, gender or sexuality, and if we wander outside of those norms it will very well ruin us because of the deeply ingrained expectations we have in regard to these issues of morality.

Of course, we aren’t supposed to walk away from a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show feeling utterly meaningless. O’Brien himself self-identifies as transgender, and has been outspoken about how society should not “dictate” gender roles. He said in a recent interview, “If society allowed you to grow up feeling it was normal to be what you are, there wouldn’t be a problem. I don’t think the term ‘transvestite’ or ‘transsexual’ would exist: you’d just be another human being.” He also has said, in terms of Rocky Horror’s significance, “Well in our western world, England, Australia and the United States etc, there are still strongholds of dinosaur thinking. But, you know, I am a trans myself and I know it’s easier for me now. I can be wherever I want, whatever I want and however I want. And I suppose to some extent, a very small extent, my attitudes in Rocky Horror have helped make the climate a little warmer for people who have been marginalised, so that’s definitely not a bad thing.”

No it’s not. And for all its campy fun, great music and dance moves (and how ironic that the Time Warp lives on at wedding receptions across America), The Rocky Horror Picture Show also provides forceful commentary on religion, gender roles, sexual agency, control and the foreboding power that the pitchfork of puritanism holds over us all still.

A version of this appeared at Bitch Flicks on Sept. 26, 2012.

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

Women in Sports Week: Bend It Like Bynes: Ambivalent Empowerment in ‘She’s the Man’

Everybody has a secret …

This is a guest post by Caitlin Moran.

The first time I saw She’s the Man, I was in the middle of a 23-hour band trip bus ride, and probably in the first stages of delirium. I had low expectations for the movie, and even lower expectations for what remained of my sanity—and yet, when one of the chaperones popped in the She’s the Man DVD, I found myself loving it. I was sitting next to my best friend and varsity soccer teammate, and we were both loopy enough from extended time on the road to enjoy the goofier moments of the movie while still reveling in the extended soccer scenes. Still, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I returned to the movie seven years later to examine its depiction of high school sports—watching Amanda Bynes change clothes and genders on a Spin the Apple carnival ride can only be funny so many times, right? (Wrong—I will never not laugh at that scene.) But whether the rest of the movie would uphold the integrity of the female athlete was a different story altogether.

Justin and the rest of the Cornwall boys. You’re gonna regret this, bro.

Like that other perennial high school favorite set on an unbelievably beautiful campus, She’s the Man is based loosely—loosely—on Shakespeare, in this case Twelfth Night. Bynes plays Viola Hastings, a high school soccer star, living out the last days of summer playing the beautiful game with beautiful people, including her boyfriend Justin (Robert Hoffman), on the beach. But the start of school brings unwelcome surprises: in the first ten minutes of the movie, Viola and her teammates discover that their school, Cornwall Prep, has eliminated the girls soccer team, leaving them without a way to showcase their skills for prospective college scouts. (Viola harbors dreams of wearing the Carolina blue at UNC Chapel Hill, no doubt a nod to the women’s soccer legends like Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly, among others, who played there.) If this were a very different movie, Viola would have brought a Title IX claim against Cornwall, and we would have been treated to courtroom montages instead of training scenes. But Viola takes a different route: after Justin laughs in her face at the idea of the girls trying out for the boys’ team—and gets himself epically dumped—Viola hatches a plan to impersonate her twin brother Sebastian (secretly in London with his bandmates) at rival high school Illyria, make the boys’ soccer team there, and beat Justin at his own game. Literally.

Hell hath no fury like a girls soccer team scorned

Complications ensue, as they must. Viola-as-Sebastian finds herself in the middle of a messy love triangle between her hunky roommate Duke (Channing Tatum, at his most bro-with-a-heart-of-gold) and Duke’s object of affection, Olivia (Laura Ramsey), who begins falling for “Sebastian” during intimate chats over dissected animals in science lab. Circling this sticky wicket are Monique (Alexandra Breckinridge), the real Sebastian’s horrid girlfriend who refuses to be dumped, and Viola’s mother (Lynda Byrd), who cherishes dreams of seeing her little tomboy walk across the stage as a debutante. Oh, and there’s a tarantula.

Even in the midst of all the hullabaloo, the movie does manage to devote a fair amount of time to soccer. Viola tries out for the boys’ team and makes second string, after informing Coach Dinklage, played by real-life footballer/testicle-grabber Vinnie Jones, that she is unable to play on the “skins” team in shirts v. skins because she is “allergic to the sun”—and yes, you can buy that phrase on a hoodie. Second string, however, isn’t good enough to get Viola on the field against Cornwall, so she strikes a bargain with Duke: he’ll help her up her game enough to make first string in time for the Cornwall game, and she’ll convince Olivia to give Duke a date. They both succeed, but when the real Sebastian returns from London the night before the big game, Viola’s tangled web begins to unravel. But still—I’m sure you can guess where this is going, in the end, right down to the final game-deciding penalty kick awarded to Viola against—surprise!—Cornwall goalie Justin.

Who is that handsome fellow?

Viola’s conquest of her gross ex is facilitated through this penalty kick, on a pitch where the winners and losers are clearly delineated. This isn’t a symbolic victory: Viola literally puts the winning point on the board. Unlike the weak, intolerable Monique, who is destined to storm in and out of scenes in a constant state of prissy frustration, Viola uses soccer to transcend her status as a girl, which otherwise would mark her as an idolized object of desire (Olivia), a walking punchline (her unfortunately headgeared classmate Eunice), or tokens of sexual conquest (her former teammates Kia and Yvonne, who pretend to be her desperate exes to increase her cred with the Illyria boys). Through her athletic talent, Viola gets to vanquish the boy who insulted and belittled her on a playing field where the subsequent victors are easily recognizable.

Amanda Bynes as Viola in She’s the Man

Interestingly, although Justin almost immediately becomes the villain who Viola must overcome, it didn’t start out that way. In fact, the first lines of the movie are Justin’s, emphatically celebrating Viola’s goal during the beach soccer game, before telling her that she’s better than half the guys on his team. Here is a perfect example of the affirming boyfriend that sunny, sassy Viola deserves. It’s only when Viola threatens to encroach on Justin’s (literal) turf that he changes his tune, agreeing with Cornwall coach Pistonek that girls can’t play sports at the same level as boys. Obviously we’re meant to revel in the downfall caused by his misogyny, and I certainly did, but we’re also meant to celebrate the willingness of Duke—and Coach Dinklage—to give Viola a spot on the team despite her gender once she’s found out. Yet I find myself unable to believe that the eminently “no homo” Duke we met in the first half hour of the movie would have reacted any differently than Justin did, if he knew that “Sebastian” was a girl all along.

In the end, She’s the Man is ambivalent about the role of soccer in Viola’s life. On one hand, Viola does prove that she can play with the boys, and at times even exceed them. She conquers Justin and Coach Pistonek, who doubted and mocked her. But everything about her soccer career is irreparably tangled up with her relationships with boys. When she decides to impersonate her brother, she’s doing it just to stick it to Justin—no UNC Chapel Hill scouts will come to see her as a boy. Even the side volley she uses to score on Justin in the final game wouldn’t have been possible without a setup from Duke (who taught her the move in the first place).

Viola (aka Sebastian) hanging with the guys

The last shot of the movie shows Viola and Duke together on the field in Illyria red, seemingly bearing out Coach Dinklage’s rather touching commitment to equality on the pitch. But whether this equality can be sustained long term—especially on a team of guys who were so impressed when Viola-as-Sebastian cruelly humiliated Monique in front of an entire restaurant—remains to be seen. And even if it can be, what happens to the rest of Viola’s former teammates, still stuck at Cornwall without a team or a twin brother to impersonate? Don’t they deserve a revenge penalty kick as well? For real-life Violas—and Kias and Yvonnes—the importance of Title IX protection can’t be overstated. What the movie could have done was show that all female athletes—not just the ones good enough to play with the boys—deserve their day on the pitch. Perhaps there will be a sequel—She’s the Man: Title IX Lawsuit. Now that’s a sports movie I would pay to see.

Caitlin Moran is a textbook editor with a penchant for sassy footnotes. After spending many years battling Western New York winters, she now lives in Queens with a cat and too many books for her apartment. Her work has appeared in Post Road, Pleiades, Pure Francis, and the Women’s Media Center blog.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘Farewell My Concubine’

Official movie poster for Farewell My Concubine

This is a guest post by René Kluge.

[Trigger Warning for rape and sexual violence.]

The protagonist in Farewell My Concubine (PR China, 1993) is a woman. Or is it? On the one hand the lead role is played by the famous male Hong Kong actor Leslie Cheung. On the other hand, since being a little boy in a Bejing Opera training school, Cheng Dieyi gives up his male identity and plays the female parts in renowned Beijing Operas. The rest of the movie shows him adapting femininity not only on stage but also in real life. In fact, he struggles with telling the Opera world and real life apart. Even his stage name – Dieyi, which loosely translates to Butterflydress – has a female connotation. His femininity is contrasted with the hyper masculinity of his stage partner Duan Xialou. Between him, Xialou and Xialou`s wife Juxian, a complex ménage à trois with changing relationships develops. According to some commentators[1] the asserted analytical solution to this scenario is to take Dieyi as a symbolic woman. Dieyi is male, but in the context of the movie, he performs the function of a woman.

Leslie Cheung as Cheng Dieyi

The interesting part is how he becomes that symbolic woman. It is not his own decision based on sexual preferences, as in known trans* movies like The Birdcage or Boys Don´t Cry; it is also not cross-dressing as in Some Like it Hot or Mulan. Instead, Dieyi suffers through a violent process, which forces him to adapt a female identity and give up his masculinity. Right in the beginning of the movie, Dieyi´s own mother cuts of his sixth finger with a butcher knife in order to make him acceptable for the opera school admission standards. Dieyi´s mother is a prostitute and even in the brothel there is no place for him. He has to go through this act of “straightening” to be fit for any kind of social community. While the sexual connotation of this brutal amputation is not outright obvious, the next initiation Dieyi has to endure has a clear symbolism. Dieyi starts training to become a Bejing Opera actor. It quickly transpires that he is exceptionally gifted in all the required skills and talents. The only problem is, when asked to recite a passage from a traditional play, he refuses to sing the correct line I am by nature a girl and not a boy and stubbornly sings, I am by nature a boy and not a girl. In the presence of an influential opera producer, this behaviour risks the future of the whole company. Consequently Xiaolou, who is by now Dieyi´s close friend, forces a pipe down his throat. He does this so vigorously that a small stream of (defloration) blood flows out of Dieyi´s mouth. As a result, Dieyi dutifully sings the role and uses the correct words: I am by nature a girl. Dieyi has to submit to this procedure in order to become a successfull Opera actor – a Dan, male actors who only play female roles. After Dieyi´s and Xiaolou´s first big and successful opera performance, the two get seperated. Dieyi is led to the chamber of an old eunuch who rapes the still very young boy. Right after this, Dieyi finds an abandoned baby on the street side, which he decides to take with him. Continuously disciplined with brutal beatings by the harsh opera teacher, Dieyi runs the gamut from castration, penetration rape, and accidental motherhood to complete his way to a female identity. The symbolic woman is not born, but the product of (violent) social conditions. It is therefore not completely absurd, as some commentators argue, to see Farewell as a filmic interpretation of the feminist philosophies of Judith Butler and Simone de Beauviour.

The young Deiyi after the penetration with a pipe

To get a broader view of the filmic representation of femininity in Farewell we have to take a closer look at Juxian, the other (biological) woman in this movie. Juxian is played by Gong Li. As with other movie stars, Gong Li brings with her the aura of her prior roles. She is particularly known for starring in Zhang Yimou’s so-called Red Movies. In Red Sorghum, Judou, and Raise the Red Lantern, she playes women who are unwilling to passively accept the rigid social roles that the traditional Chinese society reserved for them. Whether through deceit, protest, escape or inner refuge, all those female protagonists fight against the oppression of women by men. Juxian herself is proud and strong. She is a prostitute, but buys herself out of a brothel to marry Xialou. While Xialou is unemployed and suffers from depression, she runs the little inn they own by herself, and when Dieyi struggles to overcome an opium addiction, she is the one who brings up the emotional and physical strength to lead him through detoxification. In an enigmatic scene at her wedding, she takes the red veil – which serves as the symbol of domestic oppression in all the Red Movies – off herself, signaling that it is she who initiated the wedding and that she is no victim of an arranged marriage. But if we look closer, it becomes obvious that her goal is not independence, but rather seeking Xiaolou´s love and companionship. The women in the Red Movies were trapped by the social institution of marriage and struggled to get out. Juxian, on the other hand, is a social outcast and seeks to find her way into mainstream society and into marriage. She needs Xiaolou; she needs the male to accomplish this goal. The emancipatory impetus of Juxian is therefore a double-edged sword.

The same double-edgedness can be found in the portrayal of homosexuality in Farewell. There is no mention or depiction of homosexuality in Farewell, but the connotations are very clear. While there seems to be some underlying homoerotic tensions between Dieyi and Xiaolou, Dieyi engages in an escapade with an influential opera patron. Homosexuality was virtually absent from Chinese cinema up to that point, so having a homosexual protagonist in a big and expensive production movie seems like a big step forward. Sadly, this protagonist is teemed with homophobic stereotypes: he is timid, soft, and jealous. In contrast to A Lan, the protagonist in the Chinese independent movie East Palace West Palace, that premiered just three years later, Dieyi is not openly homosexual. He has no self-confident homosexual identity. Instead he hides his preferences from society and from himself. Most importantly, he plays the role of a woman. Probably the most common prejudice that gay men have to tackle is the imagined coherence between femininity and homosexuality. Dieyi becomes gay when he takes on the female identity. Masculinity and homosexuality still seem to be mutually exclusive phenomenons. Zhang Yuan, the director of East Palace West Palace is not a homosexual. In an interview, he explained that he still felt capable of identifying with the stigmatization and hardship that gay men in modern Chinese society have to endure because he himself, being an underground artist, often faces similar problems. On the other hand Chen Kaige, the director of Farewell is not an underground artist. The commercial and critical success of Farewell made him one of the most popular Chinese directors today, who seldom has problems with funding, obtaining filming permits, etc. One could argue that Zhang Yuan´s marginalized social position enabled him to show an attitude of solidarity toward homosexual men and create a filmic image of them, which is free of discriminating stereotypes. In contrast, Chen Kaige was incapable of obtaining this position of solidarity. Thus his portrayal of homosexuality is more abstract and artificially detached.

Gong Li as Juxian

A gender conscious reading of Farewell hence raises a question that seems to play a big role in many contributions on Bitch Flicks: In light of a film history that has in big part either ignored women or made them the objects of the male gaze, is the sheer visibility of women and/or trans* people already a step forward, or must we pay closer attention to the substance of the representation? This is a question that is not easy to answer, especially for me being a white heterosexual male with no shortage of role models and media idols. Maybe this question is actually very personal and revokes an abstract theoretical analysis. Maybe every female, trans* and/or homosexual person has to choose for her/himself. If they can relate to Dieyi or Juxian, identify with them and understand their personal emancipation and empowerment through them, then no detached scholarly interpretation could argue with that.

[1] For example Wendy Larson: The Concubine and the Figure of History. Chen Kaige´s Farewell my Concubine. In: Sheldon Lu: Transnational Chinese Cinema. Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu: 1997.

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René Kluge is a German PhD. student. He studied Philosophy and Chinese Studies in Berlin, Potsdam and Beijing. His main interests lie in questions of labour, gender and interculturality.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘Farewell My Concubine’

Official movie poster for Farewell My Concubine

This is a guest post by René Kluge.

[Trigger Warning for rape and sexual violence.]

Leslie Cheung as Cheng Dieyi

The young Deiyi after the penetration with a pipe

Gong Li as Juxian

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René Kluge is a German PhD. student. He studied Philosophy and Chinese Studies in Berlin, Potsdam and Beijing. His main interests lie in questions of labour, gender and interculturality.

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and the Pitchfork of Puritanism

The lips in the opening sequence–the biting action has sexual and fearful connotations.

We will see this image again. It will never really leave us.

The actors who will appear later as Magenta and Riff Raff play American Gothic in the first scene at the church.

Riff Raff welcomes Brad and Janet to the castle; the American Gothic painting looms behind him.

Dr. Frank-N-Furter introduces himself to Brad and Janet.

Frank-N-Furter, seated, flanked by (from left) Columbia, Magenta and Riff Raff–all of whom he as used for his gain.

In the middle of the night, Rocky escapes the wrath of Riff Raff and Magenta (he has chains on his ankles as he attempts to flee).

Janet and Brad have been put in separate rooms, of course, so they may retain their pre-marital chastity.

After a lustful night with Frank-N-Furter, Janet embraces her sexuality with Rocky (she places his hands on her breasts).

“It’s not easy having a good time,” Frank-N-Furter laments.

The floor show that follows is a spectacle of gender and sexuality. The stone figures are “de-Medusafied” one by one, and all are wearing kabuki face makeup and Frank-N-Furter-style fishnets, heels, garters and bustiers. They each sing a stanza exploring their current state of drug dependence, uncontrolled libido and freedom in “Rose Tint My World.”

Columbia, Rocky, Janet and Brad have all reawakened in Frank-N-Furter’s gender-bending image for the floor show.

Frank-N-Furter floats in the pool, meticulously placed above Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam.

Riff Raff and Magenta appear again as a futuristic American Gothic; his laser pitchfork will kill those whose “lifestyle” is too extreme.

The narrator closes the film with the words: “And crawling, on the planet’s face, some insects, called the human race. Lost in time, and lost in space… and meaning.”

LGBTQI Week: "I’m Not Running, I’m Choosing": ‘Pariah’ and Gender Performance

Warning: spoilers ahead!!

“Who do you become if you can’t be yourself?” Pariah, my absolute favorite film of 2011, tackles that question.

Written and directed by Dee Rees and produced by Nekisa Cooper, the powerful Pariah tells the story of Alike (Adepero Oduye in an astounding performance), a 17-year-old black lesbian in Brooklyn. Studious, artistic and sensitive, Alike is a writer who knows who she is but hides her sexuality from her family. We so rarely see positive portrayals of black women and queer women on-screen. Here, we have the privilege to see both. With subtlety and grace, it’s an exquisite and achingly beautiful female-centric coming-of-age film about a young woman discovering her sexuality and asserting her identity.

Carrie Nelson already wrote an articulate and intelligent review of the award-winning film. You should seriously go read it! But I want to touch on a few points that particularly struck me while watching, particularly about gender performance and identity.

Most films don’t address teenage sexuality. Sure they may objectify women or poke fun at raging hormones. But they don’t often explore how teens’ discover their sexuality, especially women’s sexuality, people of color’s sexuality, or queer sexuality.

Throughout the film, we receive visual cues to Alike’s gender performance. When we first see Alike in a club, she’s wearing a loose men’s jersey, baggy jeans and a baseball cap. She’s emulating her butch best friend Laura (Pernell Walker). On the bus home, Alike removes her hat and shirt, revealing a form-fitting top. She puts on earrings. All for her overprotective, lonely and overbearing mother Audrey (Kim Wayans). When she’s around her mom, Alike wears stereotypically feminine clothing. Flouncy skirts, dresses, snug blouses – all clothing that “shows off her figure” like her mother wants. Her mother buys her these clothes, knowing full well that Alike abhors wearing them. Yet refusing to accept her daughter, she tries to orchestrate her daughter’s identity.

Alike’s mother can’t handle the fact that her daughter is a lesbian. Audrey shows a colleague at lunch a fuchsia sweater she bought for Alike. She tells Arthur (Charles Parnell), Alike’s father, that she’s “tired of this tomboy thing she’s doing.” Yet Alike tries to express herself, telling her parents that the sweater “isn’t me.” Alike’s identity contradicts her vision of her daughter that she imposed on Alike. Alike’s father is more protective of her as she’s a “daddy’s girl.” Yet he refuses to admit or see the signs that Alike might be a lesbian. Between the two is Alike’s sister Sharonda (Sahra Mellesse) who knows about her sexuality and loves her regardless.

Whenever Alike leaves home, she transforms herself into the identity she chooses. At school, we see her rush to the girls’ bathroom to change. She adopts a more masculine appearance to coincide with her gender non-conformity. Laura buys Alike a strap-on to have sex with a woman. But Alike’s uncomfortable wearing it (it’s white, it pinches her) and ends up throwing it away.

For Alike, both sets of clothing – the hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine – are a costume. She rebels from the princess wardrobe her mother wants for her by going to the other extreme, exploring if it’s who she is. But neither appearance encapsulates Alike. Both the butch and the femme identities are disconnected from her personality.

In an interview, Rees, an out lesbian herself, said Pariah is about identity and finding your place in the world:

“Alike’s a woman who knows she loves women, and is sure in that, but her struggle is how to be. Her struggle is a more nuanced struggle of gender identity within the queer community. She’s not the same person that (her friend) Laura is, neither is she this pink princess that her mother wants her to be. She falls somewhere in between. Finding the courage to carve out that space is her journey.”

Audrey suspects her daughter is a lesbian or at the very least is attracted to women. But she tries to derail Alike’s sexuality. Audrey forces Alike and the charismatic Bina (Aasha Davis), the daughter of a work colleague and one of Alike’s classmates, to spend time together in a vain attempt to separate Alike from hanging out with Laura, who’s own mother has disowned her for being a lesbian. Alike tells her mother that nothing is going to change, Audrey replies, “God doesn’t make mistakes,” as if homosexuality is a mistake. But Audrey’s plan backfires as Alike and Bina bond over music and share a growing attraction to one another.

Drawn to one another, Alike and Bina have sex. Despite their shared intimacy, Bina rejects Alike. Breaking Alike’s heart and devastating her, Bina tells her she’s not “gay-gay” and asks her to keep their encounter secret. We see that Bina possesses sexual fluidity yet is afraid to commit to a woman, perhaps due to society’s heteronormative standards. Or maybe she doesn’t want to commit to anyone, male or female. Or maybe she’s an insensitive asshole.

Whatever Bina’s motivations, Alike’s heartbreak ushers in her refusal to bury her identity any longer. Amidst a huge fight between her parents, Audrey angrily tells Arthur, “Your daughter is turning into a damn man right before your eyes.” Alike tells her parents she’s a lesbian, which enrages her mother. Audrey hits her repeatedly, her father trying to restrain her, after Alike finally confirms what her mother already knew.

Alike turns to Laura (who tries again to reach out to her mother after she earns her GED) for solace and support. Both women are able to commiserate as friends and as lesbians rejected by their mothers’ gendered expectations.

By the end of the film, we see Alike’s clothing change again. Adopting some of Bina’s style fused with her own – perhaps to convey that she’s learned from her heartache or it may be her acknowledgement of her sexual transformation – she wears scarves and earrings with jeans. No longer shadowing Laura and no longer conforming to her mother’s gendered expectations, Alike rejects the gender binary of butch and femme, a symbolic balance of her identity, a unison of femininity and masculinity.

Alike divulges her feelings through spoken word. Her poem at the end of Pariah is hauntingly stunning (making me weep uncontrollably), echoing her painful yet ultimately freeing journey towards self-acceptance:

“Heartbreak opens onto the sunrise for even breaking is opening and I am broken, I am open. Broken into the new life without pushing in, open to the possibilities within, pushing out. See the love shine in through my cracks? See the light shine out through me? I am broken, I am open, I am broken open. See the love light shining through me, shining through my cracks, through the gaps. My spirit takes journey, my spirit takes flight, could not have risen otherwise and I am not running, I am choosing. Running is not a choice from the breaking. Breaking is freeing, broken is freedom. I am not broken, I am free.”

Pariah shattered my heart with its aching beauty, uplifting my soul. We are allowed a window to witness her journey and self-discovery. Through her wardrobe and poetry, Alike eventually expresses herself as a lesbian in the way that she wishes. Alike insists she’s not running, she’s choosing. While she means this literally, there’s meaning beneath the surface. No longer running from who she is, Alike chooses to embrace her identity. Watching Alike discover and assert herself is beauty, poetry in motion.

LGBTQI Week: Sleepaway Camp

This piece by Monthly Guest Contributor Carrie Nelson previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on October 24, 2011.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

(Everything that follows contains significant spoilers. Read at your discretion.)

But Angela’s not deceiving everybody because she’s a trans* person. She’s deceiving everybody because she’s a (fictional) trans* person created by cissexual filmmakers. As Drakyn points out, the trans* person who’s “fooling” us on purpose is a myth we cissexuals invented. Why? Because we are so focused on our own narrow experience of gender that we can’t imagine anything outside it. We take it for granted that everyone’s gender matches the sex they were born with. With this assumption in place, the only logical reason to change one’s gender is to lie to somebody.

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Carrie Nelson is a Bitch Flicks monthly contributor. She was a Staff Writer for Gender Across Borders, an international feminist community and blog that she co-founded in 2009. She works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit, and she is currently pursuing an MA in Media Studies at The New School.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Gorillas in the Mist

Gorillas in the Mist (1988)

This piece is from Monthly Contributor Carrie Nelson.

This post contains spoilers about the film Gorillas in the Mist.

For nearly 20 years, zoologist Dian Fossey lived and worked among the mountain gorillas in Africa. Her work as a researcher and animal rights activist is responsible for raising awareness about Africa’s gorilla population and the threat of their extinction. Gorillas in the Mist, a film directed by Michael Apted in 1988, follows Dian (Sigourney Weaver, in an Oscar-nominated role) as she works in the Congo and Rwanda to study the behavior of mountain gorillas and protect them from poaching. As the film was produced after Dian’s untimely death (she was murdered in 1985; to this day, the precise circumstances and perpetrators remain unknown), it is impossible to know how she would have responded to the film. However, based on what I understand about Dian’s real life, I believe she would appreciate the film. I believe she would see it as an honest portrayal of her life, and I also believe she would be happy to see that the film avoids common clichés that are typically found in mainstream films about the lives of women.

Over the course of the film, Dian experiences a radical transformation in gender presentation. At the beginning of her travels, she is incredibly conscious of her appearance. When she meets her mentor, Dr. Louis Leakey (Iain Cuthbertson) at the start of her mission, he explains that there isn’t room for all of the luggage she’s brought with her, to which she stubbornly replies, “Those cases contain my hairdryer, my makeup, my underwear and my brassieres. If they don’t go, Dr Leakey, I don’t go.” I thought this was a throwaway line, so I was surprised that there were several additional mentions of her interest in make-up, hair products and clothing soon after this exchange. I was frustrated with this focus on materialism, thinking that the writer was using these moments as shorthand to remind the audience that the protagonist is, indeed, a woman; I felt as if the filmmakers were saying, “Well, what woman wouldn’t want to bring her cosmetics to the jungle?”

But as the film goes on, the references to beauty cease, and it becomes clear that these lines are not comments on Dian’s gender identity but on the materialism that she gradually gives up as she becomes committed to living among the mountain gorillas. The lines about clothing and make-up eventually stop, and Dian lets go of the previous signifiers of her femininity. It isn’t that she becomes masculine, as Weaver’s character in the Alien series is often perceived – it’s that she no longer needs these material possessions and outward signifiers to feel comfortable in the world and convey her identity. Dian’s transformation is subtle, but it adds significant depth to her characterization as she becomes comfortable in her new surroundings.

A similar transformation occurs in Dian’s romantic life. When she moves to Africa, she leaves behind her fiancé, David. Over the course of the film, her mentions of him become fewer and fewer, until a passing remark reveals that they have ended their engagement. She does, however, meet photographer Bob Campbell (Bryan Brown). Bob is married, but his and Dian’s shared passion for studying the gorillas leads them to start a passionate love affair. His work as a photographer makes him travel frequently, but he always returns to visit Dian, until he finally reveals to her that he is divorcing his wife to marry her. Initially, Dian is thrilled with this proposal; though she is devoted to her career, she often expresses an interest in wanting a family. But ultimately, she chooses her career over Bob anyway. He is offered a job that would take her away from Africa and the mountain gorillas, and she tells him that if he accepts the job and leaves, he should never write or come back to her. It’s a tragic moment, as the film demonstrates how much Dian and Bob love each other, but it is ultimately a refreshing and honest one. Given how many films feature women sacrificing ambitions and goals in order to preserve romantic relationships, Dian’s lack of compromise is a welcome change of pace.

Fossey represented as maternal

The most fascinating and complex depiction of Dian’s gender identity, however, is her portrayal as a maternal figure. Dian never has children of her own, and her interactions with children in the film are troubling. At one point, she catches a young boy found among gorilla poachers, and in an attempt to uncover information about the poachers, she has his hands tied and dresses as a witch to scare him into talking. Dian is not above torturing children to get what she wants; it would seem, therefore, that she is not particularly maternal. However, this is not entirely accurate or fair. Rather than being maternal in a traditional sense, Dian channels that energy toward the gorillas. At one point, she saves baby Pucker from capture, and she takes care of her in her home until Pucker is healthy and taken away to a zoo. In the moments when she is seen taking care of the gorillas, particularly the young ones, it is clear that there is a certain maternal sensibility to Dian that remains constant throughout all of her other personal transformations. Though it is common to see women presented as mothers and caretakers in cinema, Dian’s role as one is untraditional. It may echo common tropes, but it remains a unique facet of her life and work.

Gorillas in the Mist does not always paint Dian Fossey in a positive light. It does, however, present her in a realistic one. She’s often portrayed as stubborn, unfriendly and even abusive; these traits, however, reflect the reality in which she lived. Dian did not have time to be feminine or nice or accommodating. She was too busy focusing on her work and dedicating her life to ensure the protection and well being of the mountain gorillas. Gorillas in the Mist constantly references the usual clichés of films about women – namely, an overwhelming focus on beauty, romance and children – but rather than reaffirming them, the film counters them. Dian’s characterization proves that there is no single way in which to be a woman and that, often times, it is women who step outside of the boxes of conventional femininity who are able to create the most radical change in the world.

Carrie Nelson is a Bitch Flicks monthly contributor. She is a Staff Writer for Gender Across Borders, an international feminist community and blog that she co-founded in 2009. She works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit, and she is currently pursuing an MA in Media Studies at The New School.