Tag: Guest Writers

2013 Oscar Week: ‘Les Misérables’: Some Musicals Are More Feminist Than Others

Guest post written by Natalie Wilson, originally published at Ms. Magazine. Cross-posted with permission.
While Les Misérables is not your typical musical–or, as this Guardian review puts it, “There’s no dancing, there are no jazz hands and there is next to no speech”–it is typical of the genre in that, like opera, it includes more female characters than do many plays, movies and novels. Regardless if this is due to the fondness for female voices or to the swoon-inducing love ballads adored by so many, this viewer is thankful for the diverse female characters so wonderfully played by Anne Hathaway(Fantine), Amanda Seyfriend (Cosette), Samantha Barks (Éponine) and Helena Bonham Carter (Madame Thénardier).
The film adaptation, based on the musical (seen by over 60 million people), which is itself based on Victor Hugo’s novel, arguably heightens the proto-feminist elements of the original narrative as it allows for a more close-up, more harrowing depiction of the key female characters, all of whom are “miserable” for justifiable reasons.
Though the film has been referred to as a “lobotomized opera,” it can more aptly be described as an operatic musical that not only focuses on macro problems of human existence–morality, freedom, power, forgiveness–but also on how these problems play out at the micro level, particularly how the macro power of men effects women on a micro level. As noted at Democratic Underground, Victor Hugo gets:
“…the plight of women in his society, especially the grisettes (working class young women) and prostitutes, and how they were helpless against not just men of power, but men in general, and how nice poor girls could so easily be discarded and have [their lives] ruined because of becoming pregnant or rebuffing sexual advances.”

Fantine is the key character to have her life ruined in such a manner. Abandoned by the man who impregnates her, she is working in the 19th century version of a sweatshop when we first meet her in the film. She ultimately turns to sexual slavery so as to continue sending money to the unscrupulous caretakers (the Thénardiers) who, unbeknowst to her, are abusing and exploiting her young daughter, Cosette.

Anne Hathaway as Fantine in Les Miserables
Fantine is portrayed sympathetically in the text and musical, but the film adaptation emphasizes the horrors of forced prostitution, something the musical renditions of the song “Lovely Ladies” frequently belie. Often performed in an upbeat, jokey manner, in the film the song instead becomes a battle cry against sexual slavery, with the costuming, make-up, sets and lighting bringing the horrors behind the lyrics to life as the sickly, starving, cold, tattered and abused women sing:
Lovely ladies
Ready for the call
Standing up or lying down
Or any way at all
Bargain prices up against the wall

After her hair has been cut, her teeth removed and sold, Fantine joins the song, singing,
Come on, Captain
You can wear your shoes
Don’t it make a change
To have a girl who can’t refuse
Easy money
Lying on a bed
Just as well they never see
The hate that’s in your head
Don’t they know they’re making love
To one already dead!

Widely lauded in the role (as here, here, and here), her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” further encapsulates the pathos and desperation of her character–something which is sometimes lost in more “Broadway” renditions of the song (a la Susan Boyle).
Of playing Fantine, Anne Hathaway notes,
“What I did was I tried to get inside the reality of her story as it exists in our world. … I read a lot of articles and watched a lot of documentaries and news clips about sexual slavery. And for me, for this particular story, I came to the realization that I had been thinking about Fantine as someone who lived in the past, but she doesn’t. She’s living in New York City right now. She’s probably less than a block away. This injustice exists in our world, and so every day that I was her, I just thought—this isn’t an invention. This isn’t me acting. This is me honoring that this pain lives in this world and I hope that in all our lifetimes — like, today — we see it end.”

Anne Hathaway as Fantine in Les Miserables

Regardless of what can be said about Hathaway’s weight loss for the role (critiqued here), her framing of Fantine as a sexual slave, NOT a prostitute, is key, as it refuses to glorify or joke about what is so often swept under the rug regarding sex work: that the majority of women do not “choose” it but are forced into it–a realization emphasized by Hugo but often lost in musical renditions. Hugo writes of Fantine,

“What is the history of Fantine? It is society buying a slave. From whom? From misery. From hunger, from cold, from loneliness, from abandonment, from privation. Melancholy barter. A soul for a bit of bread. Misery makes the offer, society accepts … it is said that slavery has disappeared from the European civilization. This is a mistake. It still exists: but it weighs now only upon woman, and it is called prostitution.”

The film, like Hugo’s novel, blames society for sexual slavery, rather than individual men or women. Each also portrays her “choice” as that between life and death for her and her daughter.
Hugo’s progressive view of sexual politics, as well as his critical attitude towards “polite society” (discussed here) imbue his work in other Les Mis plotlines as well–as with his depiction of the vengeful Inspector Javert (Russell Crowe) and the valiant prisononer 24601, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), imprisoned 19 years for the crime of stealing bread. Though these two males are at the center of the story, the females are just as (if not more) memorable (and certainly outperform and out-sing Crowe in his bombastic version of Javert).

Amanda Seyfried as Cosette in Les Miserables
Cosette, both as the child abused by the Thénardiers and then as the adult who falls for the revolutionary Marius (Eddie Redmayne), is also a micro picture of a macro problem — the abuse of female children, especially those in foster care and/or poverty, and the fact that one of the few “escapes” offered to such women is love and romance. The same “escape” is the only one that similarly maltreated Eponine is forced into. As noted here, she is “Raised by sociopathic parents and then forced into a life of poverty and crime” and “only wants the man she loves to love her, and sacrifices all to prove her love.”

Samanta Barks as Eponine in Les Miserables

The Funny Feminist takes issue with this plotline in particular, noting that Eponine has sadly become “the international spokeswoman for girls crushing on their male best friends, who swoon over the richer, more popular girl.” Like a 19th century Bella Swan, Eponine is hopelessly devoted to her Edward, in the form of Marius, but he only has eyes for Cosette. If the musical falters in its quasi-feminist politics anywhere, it is here, with the strong , resilient Eponine belting out her song of unrequited love, “On My Own,” while the male revolutionaries prepare to fight for a more egalitarian France–or, as the Funny Feminist puts it “when the poor folk rally against the 1 percent and the Mitt Romneys,” Eponine is busy singing a  “pity me, my life is so sad” song. To be fair, while she is indeed lovestruck, she also disguises herself as a boy in order to join in the revolution, and ultimately gives her life to save Marius.
While some reviews slam the film for not being political enough, as here (where the film is described as “a picturesque 19th-century version of Occupy Wall Street” lacking political context), I would counter that the film drips with politics, especially the micro politics captured in the feminist mantra “the personal is political.” From the tragic Fantine to the orphaned Cosette to the maltreated Eponine, the film depicts a story that is still all too true, and does so better than any musical version I’ve seen, showing that women–revolution or no–are all too often beaten, abused, exploited, raped and murdered. While it’s long ranked as one of my favorite musicals, it now holds the number one spot in this feminist heart for best musical film ever.
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Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if …? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate.

Guest Writer Wednesday: "Girls Make Movies Too": Riding on Kim Swift’s Call to Arms

This is a guest post from the New York Film Academy Faculty.
A few weeks ago, the incredibly talented Kim Swift wrote an outspoken blog post which resonated with people who are keen to see a positive shift in the industry. 
Now rightfully recognized as a creative powerhouse in the industry, Swift notes that it was only down to parental support and determination which got her so far in a male-dominated industry rather than any notable female role models. “I didn’t see a person with two X chromosomes that I could point and go ‘Yes, if she did it, so can I!’” 
Swift went on to add: “So, I have a secret wish. Whenever I’m in the public eye, whether it’s doing PR or giving a talk – and this is going to sound amazingly corny — I hope that there’s a little girl out there that sees me and thinks to herself, “Oh look! Girls make games too.” 
And save for the last two words of that quote, or any prior knowledge of Kim’s work, you’d think she was talking about the film industry.
Although the gaming and film industry has many parallels, none are more prevalent than the male-centricity which run deep in both. If anything, girls in gaming have had a rougher ride over the past few decades than chicks in flicks, especially since leading ladies in film are often treated in reverence whereas their virtual sisters are nearly always sexualized to the point of banality. Either way, we can still borrow a lot of Kim’s wisdom when it comes to women driving the engine behind the curtain.
Is it Getting Better Anyway?
Arguably, yes. There has been a big paradigm shift in the last five years in gaming and the same is true – of an arguably lesser scale – in Hollywood. Even if the possibility of direct intervention is slim, the more the community writes on feminist issues in film, the more we raise consciousness amongst the general moviegoer and studios gradually move to meet demand. Although they had a few minor issues, movies like last year’s Brave and Hunger Games were a step in the right direction and proved to the establishment that they won’t be punished in the box office for empowering female leads.
So that’s the front of the house seemingly in order, or at least on the up. But what about the back of the shop? 
It’s not looking good. 
Around a decade ago, the figures were extremely grim. The representation of women in the fields of writing, directing, production and cinematography have always been shocking – bouncing up and down by a couple of percent points every year for the last decade – but as of 2011 (the latest figures we have) show that things are about as worse as ever. 
According to long-windedly named (but totally brilliant) Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film, only 5% of the top grossing films of 2011 were directed by women. That’s the lowest its been in… well, we can’t find statistics for any year in which we’ve had less female directors. Women wrote 14% of the top grossing films for 2011, a four-point improvement over 2010, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. A good overview of all the figures available was posted on Indiewire which, when collated like this, posts a pretty embarrassing picture. 
And there’s no excuse for such shockingly low numbers. The Center itself published an illuminating study into box office returns back in 2008 (well worth reading in full), demonstrating that: when women and men filmmakers have similar budgets for their films, the resulting box office grosses are also similar. In other words, the sex of filmmakers does not determine box office grosses.
Blowing The Winds of Change 
It would be very easy to look at such figures and become despondent. But this is where a touch of positivity – a la Kim Swift – rather than negativity comes into play. 
As she rightly points out, in such competitive industries it can be career suicide to put your head above the parapet too much or too often. But we need female professionals to wax lyrical about their craft in a public forum now more than ever. We’re not talking about the film writers and reviewers – heck, we’ve always been out to make as much noise as possible, and always will. We’re also not talking so much about the actresses who are already doing fine PR work. 
What we want to see is every ‘invisible’ female film professional being more vocal about what it means to be a female working in a male-dominated industry, even if it’s someone who considers themselves to be ‘just a sound editor’ starting up a blog to talk about how much she loves her job. Only with a focus on all- inclusive film making, be it on a college level or higher, can we expect a positive swing into the next generation of creatives over the next couple of decades. 
And if you’re not in the industry but a film fanatic nonetheless, be sure to spread the above figures (or this blog post) anywhere you can. 
Change comes from the bottom up. 
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At New York Film Academy, all programs are based on the philosophy of “learning by doing.” NYFA offers an intensive, hands-on, total immersion approach to learning. The academy maintains an unparalleled faculty and one of the largest film and production equipment inventories in the world. Courses offered include Filmmaking, Acting for Film, Producing, Screenwriting, Documentary, Cinematography, Game Design, Animation and Photography.

Guest Post: ‘Women Without Men’: Gender Roles in Iran, Women’s Bodies and Subverting the Male Gaze

Guest post written by Kaly Halkawt.

The author Sharnush Parsipur wrote 1989 a novel that would become what could be called a modern classic in contemporary feminist literature. The book entitled Women Without Men is a story about how five women living in Iran during the 1950s end up in exile from the male-dominated society they live in that has in different ways deprived them their freedom. Although along their path into exile is not a simple one. They must all go through a painful metamorphosis and accept that the freedom they ask for alienates their bodies from society. All five protagonists come together in a garden which serves them as a space free from male domination.

This story has been visualized once as a video art installation consisting of five different videos by the artist Shirin Neshat. The video installation went under the name “Women Without Men” and was created from 2004-2008. The five different videos where entitled after the characters names; Mahdokht (2004), Zarin (2005), Munis (2008), Farokh Legha (2008) and Faze (2008). However the content of the entire constellation has varied based on where the installation has been exhibited.
Based on these five videos, Neshat retold the story once again but this time in a more linear narrative film. However this time she choose to exclude the story of the character Mahdokt, although one could argue that she appears in the film in form of a tree, but before we go into that I want to share my experience of the video installation that I saw at the Stockholm Culture Institute in 2009.
The video for Mahdokht was told through three different screens. Mahdokt fantasizes about planting herself like a seed in the garden and growing into a tree and literally erasing her body into the idea that manifests her spiritual character. Her desire is to through detaching her body from civilization, intellect and culture touch the freedom that seems impossible to gain with a female body in the world the way she experiences it. Mahdokt’s story can also be seen as a comment to the myth about the nymph Daphne who figured in Roman mythology. The myth of Daphne has been told in many different ways, but basically it goes something like this: The god Apollo is captivated by the beauty of Daphne. She refuses to give in for his sexual desire and as punishment the god Zeus transform Daphne into a tree.
A still image from the video Mahdokt

Mahdokt’s character can here be read as a representation of the female body and an attempt to erase the values and symbols the female body has embodied in mythology as the object. Parsipur/Neshat has rewritten the myth of the female body by making it the subject and not the object of the story. Mahdokt is the narrator of her story and she is not a victim. She actively chooses to offer her body to her ideal by becoming a tree in contrast to Daphne who is a victim who is being punished for not sacrificing her body.

Mahdokt’s action is stating that we can imprison bodies, but not ideas.
From a book to video installation and narrative film, Women Without Men is a work in motion. The adaptation for the screen that was directed by Neshat was highly praised by film critics all around the world and won the Silver Lion at the 2010 Venice Film Festival.

The film takes place in 1953 which politically is an unforgettable year in Iran’s history. The democratically chosen Prime Minister Mossadghe was overthrown by the CIA which created enormous protests. The political background story serves as a tool for creating what will be the revolution in the mind of the characters.

Shabnam Toloui (Munis)

In the first shot we see the character Munis committing suicide by jumping down from a roof, however she lives on in the story as the narrator. Later on in the film, we learn that one of the reasons for why she committed suicide was because she lived with a conservative brother who aggressively wanted her to stop following the protests by listening to the radio. He encouraged her to instead get married and “start a real life.”

The day of Munis’ suicide, we learn that her brother organized a suitable man that would come and ask for her hand in marriage. When Munis’ brother refuses to let her go out of the house, she decides to take control over the situation. By sacrificing her body for the sake of her integrity and political conviction, her death does not necessarily need to be read as a forfeit. Munis’ death leads to her freedom and becomes her politics. Its through her eyes after her death that we get to see the protests and demonstrations on the streets of Tehran.

 Pegah Feridony (Faezeh)

It is also Munis action that leads to the awakening of her friend Faezeh. From the beginning, Fazeh is portrayed as a traditional girl who wants to live a “normal life” aka get married and have children with Munis’ brother. However when she finds Munis’ dead body on the street and sees how her brother digs it down in his garden to prevent the news of her suicide spreading and leading to an official shaming of the family name, Faezeh’s world is turned upside down. She gives up the idea of marriage and men and just decides to look for her own piece of mind. Munis’ ghost serves literally as the guide and takes Faezeh to the garden and leads her into exile.

Arita Sharzad (Fakhri)

Fakhri is the eldest of the gang and arguably embodies what Second Wave feminism has criticized: upper-middle class ladies who are bored serving as some sort of poupée (doll) for their husbands. Fakhri’s journey towards change starts when she meets an old friend who reminds her of the freedom that can be the price of getting married. She remembers how she used to write poetry and hang out with people who believed in culture as a political tool for change, an opinion that makes her husband laugh. So in her own “eat-pray-love” escapade, she buys a big house in the garden and leaves her relationship so that she can put energy and time into rediscovering and recreating herself.

Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres’ The Turkish Bath via Amiresque

The fourth character Zarin is a prostitute who decides to escape the brothel when she sees a client’s deranged face while they are having sex. Zarin never talks during the film and like Munis, she uses her body to free herself from the societal norms. Zarin is just her body, we don’t get her background history. I think one possible reading of why she is just reduced to a body in this film is a comment on the stereotypical images of women that have been created within the frames of Orientalism.

Some of the films key scenes are focused on Zarin. In one of the most visual scenes, Zarin is in a Turkish hamam (Turkish bath) and scrubbing her body until it starts bleeding. The misé-en-scene is an exact copy of Jean-Augustue Dominique Ingres’ painting The Turkish Bath (1862). This is a direct comment on the representational prevail of white upper-middle class men. This painting, among others, led to the creation of myths about women from the Middle East. Neshat literally tries to erase this myth in this particular scene.

Orsolya Toth (Zarin)

Another important scene that serves as a commentary for the male gaze is an image of Zarin floating in a river, alluding to John Everett Millais’ painting Ophelia (1852). In Millais’ painting, we see the suicide of Hamlet‘s Ophelia where she falls into the river and dies. Ophelia has been the subject of a lot of debate. How should we interpret her character? What values does she embody? This Shakespearian character is either referred to as a sick young damsel in distress or completely ignored and just seen as an object for male dominance in Hamlet. I think Neshat is trying to criticize the fact that Ophelia is almost never seen as her own character and only read in relation to Hamlet. Once again, Neshat tries to turn the female object into the subject.

Neshat uses Zarin’s body to criticize the stereotypical imagery of women in a few key scenes of the film by reproducing the exact same scenery as some historical paintings. However Neshat transforms Zarin’s body from object into subject, thus giving her the tools to go through a metamorphosis and take control over her body so that she can erase the values and ideas represented by men.

By giving each character their own voice to tell their story, Neshat questions the classical representation of women in Arab and Persian cultures. These women start off by being dominated in the patriarchy they live. Socially and politically, Munis is restricted by her brother. Intellectually, Fakhri does not have the freedom and the hope she had before she got married with an idiot (ie a man with power) and Zarin, before entering the garden, is just reduced to a sexual body used as a tool to control her position on a bigger scale since being a prostitute doesn’t always receive a lot of respect from society. But they all find their way to reinvent themselves in space free from male dominance. In case it’s not clear enough, this film is the queen of awesome films about women.

However one thing a bit fuzzy in Women Without Men is the portrayal of men. To sum it up, this is how Iranian men are characterized: men that live in Iran are uncultivated, uneducated rapists who crave control over women with no nuance of humanity in them. This contrasts with the Iranian men who have moved abroad, cultivated by the Western World and who see the value in educating women and treating them equally. But this is a post about the female characters so I won’t comment further other than to say the stereotype of men from Iran is not being questioned.

I never thought I would write an essay where I would find the female characters more well-written then the men. Deux point, Neshat.

———-
Kaly Halkawt is 24 years old and has a BA in Cinema Studies. Before starting work on her Master’s, she moved to Paris for two years, working as a Montessori Teacher and studying French at the Sorbonne. Planning a big academic comeback this semester, she is currently writing her Master’s thesis on a geneology of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope in Cinema Studies at Stockholm University.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: The Roundup

“The Depiction of Women in Three Films Based on the Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen” by Alisande Fitzsimons

I rather like this ending to a film because despite not sticking to the original story, it offers viewers a chance to see something that is still relatively unusual on-screen: a successful male character giving up his life for the woman (mermaid) he loves. He sacrifices everything for her, with no real guarantee that he’ll be happy, and absolutely no way back. In that way, the male lead (Tom Hanks) is more like the little mermaid of HCA’s original story, who gave up her life below the sea for the human she loved, than Daryl Hannah’s character.

“Ballet Shoes“ by Max Thornton

Much of the story’s genius lies in the characterization of the three sisters. Beautiful Pauline is a talented actress who feels the responsibility of being the eldest sibling; dreamy, waifish Posy thinks of nothing but dancing, to the point of complete otherworldliness; Petrova is the tomboy, the middle child, and the odd one out, who loathes being onstage and is happiest around engines. This set-up creates a lovely interplay of strong, distinct personalities who are united by the loyal bonds of sisterhood, which is really the heart of the story.

“For Colored Girls Reveals Power of Sisterly Solidarity & Women Finding Their Voice” by Megan Kearns

The theme of a woman’s voice echoes throughout the film. Women being silenced…by shame, fear, abuse, their mothers, the men in their lives, society…is threaded throughout. Shange’s play and Perry’s film testify the power of women finding solace, self-acceptance and strength in themselves and reclaiming their voice. It’s time we listened to women’s voices and hear what they have to say.

“Farewell My Concubine“ by René Kluge

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.

“A New Jane in Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre (2011)” by Rhea Daniel

The central story of the complex lone woman, unloved and unwanted–matched with the world-weary hero set in a background that’s far from sumptuous–is in great danger of turning into a great depressing drag of a tale, so it’s incredibly important for that spark and pull between them to work. The script by Moira Buffini aids this, taking only the relevant bits from the novel and chipping away at them so that they shine at the significant parts of the movie, avoiding the verbal diarrhea that can come with being loyal to a classic novel.

“‘John Would Think It Absurd’: How ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ Fails in Translation to the Screen” by Marcia Herring

One of the many lessons here is that literature, like history, has become another commodity in which the male perspective and experience is privileged. In case it was left to doubt, I do not recommend “The Yellow Wallpaper;” in fact, the scariest thing about Thomas’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is that two men apparently read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story and thought: “But what about the husband? What about the men?”

“Hellraisers in Hoop Skirts: Gillian Armstrong’s Proudly Feminist Little Women“ by Jessica Freeman-Slade

These young women talk openly about money, politics, education, love, and above all, the expectations set upon them. Jo (Ryder) drives the movie, narrates and controls its pace, and she gives the perfect period performance by a contemporary actress—in part because she doesn’t hide just how modern and unnatural she is in the heavy skirts she’s obligated to wear. She seems genuinely uncomfortable, just as Jo would be, slouching, hunching, galumphing about, talking with her mouth full, stomping her feet in the snow. Jo has bigger ambitions than to be pretty or charming: she has a bright mind, a passion for writing, and a dream of sharing her stories with the world. Ryder’s passion, the gusto with which she delivers every line, sings out, and makes this one of her best performances.

“A Love Letter to Anne of Green Gables“ by Megan Kearns

Children need role models. But girls especially need strong female role models because of the inundation of sexist and misogynistic media. Children’s (and adults’) movies and TV shows too often suffer from the Smurfette Principle, revolving around boys. In our pink sea of princess culture saturating girlhood, it’s refreshing to watch and read a bold, intelligent and unique – and feminist – character like Anne.

“Titus the Tight-Ass: Julie Taymor’s Depictions of the Virgin and Whore” by Amanda Rodriguez

Julie Taymor’s Titus (based on Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus) is a highly stylized production, involving elaborate costumes, body markings, choreography, era prop mash-ups, and extravagant violence. I tip my hat to Taymor for the scope and splendor of her vision, and I also applaud her for paving the way for other talented female directors in Hollywood. Though Taymor updates much of the Shakespeare play (using cars, guns, and pool tables alongside swords, Roman robes, and Shakespearean language), Taymor does little to re-interpret the female roles in an effort to make them more progressive and complex.

“Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston” by Martyna Przybysz

Although I find it thin and slow in places, I struggle to dislike Darnell Martin’s adaptation of Hurston’s novel. After all, it manages to carry a powerful message, despite it not being in favour of the current feminist perception of gender roles and female identity. Yet remembering that it is set in the early 20th century reality of African-Americans, one has to admit that it does a fair job at depicting a woman who goes beyond her time. Even if it does so not without pretense, and in a more simplistic way than Hurston’s beautiful novel.

“The Uninvited (1944) and Dorothy Macardle’s Feminism” by Nadia Smith

Overall, The Uninvited reflects a range of tensions and negotiations that intersected with contemporary discourses about gender, sexuality, feminism, and film censorship. While it falls prey to some hostile and stereotypical female characterizations common in the 1940s and later, it is complex and multilayered enough to allow for a range of readings and interpretations as it attempted to speak the unspeakable and represent the unrepresentable.

“Helen Mirren Stars in Julie Taymor’s Gender-Bent The Tempest“ by Amber Leab

Mirren embodies Prospera with fierceness and control, sort of like she does in every role she plays–or at least in all of her performances I’ve seen. Her books, her learning, is the source of her power. Perhaps her people in Milan had a real fear of such an educated and powerful woman, and their only way to deal with her was to get rid of her. Our society still has trouble with smart and powerful women, after all.

“Slut-Shaming in the 1700s: Dangerous Liaisons and Cruel Intentions“ by Jessica Freeman-Slade

The stakes in each of these dramas are not only sexual, but obsessed with honor, power, and who gets to claim it. And in both adaptations, the performances by Close and Gellar show that it’s Merteuil’s grudges (and not Valmont’s impulses) that lay the groundwork for the sexual manipulation. It’s less than ideal to have women as such villains, but Laclos left us one of the strongest and most complex female characters in all of literature—for better or for worse—and these ladies sink their teeth into all of Merteuil’s depravity.

“How BBC’s Pride & Prejudice Illustrates Why the Regency Period Sucked for Women” by Myrna Waldron

The 6 episodes of the miniseries grant far more lenience in terms of time constraints, and thus one of the most important themes of Austen’s novel is retained: Her feminism. The protagonists in her novels were all women, and she wrote them for a mostly female audience. Her primary goal was to create sympathy for the status of women and the little rights they retained. Reminder: This is an era where women could not vote, had no bodily autonomy, could not freely marry whomever they chose, were restricted to domestic spheres, and, in some cases, could not even inherit their father’s estate.  Pride & Prejudice, and the BBC adaptation, touch on several of these issues, subtly and sometimes directly condemning them from a feminist outlook. In addition to this feminist subtext, part of Austen’s social satire is pointing out the ridiculous class restraints in which the characters had to endure.

“Comparing Two Versions of Pride and Prejudice“ by Lady T

I had a bad feeling about the 2005 adaptation even before I saw it, because Keira Knightley said something in an interview comparing Darcy and Elizabeth to two teenagers who don’t realize how much they actually like each other…and that’s exactly how she plays it. It’s such a disservice to both characters, especially Elizabeth, to describe them in that way. Elizabeth’s problem is not that she’s SEKRITLY IN LUUV with Darcy from the very beginning but in denial about her feelings. Her problem is that she’s almost as arrogant as Darcy is, so impressed with herself for being a wonderful judge of character, that she doesn’t revise her opinion of him until given evidence that she’s wrong.

“Gendered Values and Women in Middle Earth” by Barrett Vann

The value system in Tolkien’s Middle Earth consistently favours “softer” strengths, putting emphasis on gentleness, scholarliness, empathy, and patience as qualities that heroes possess. Indeed, it’s written into the very mythology of the legendarium. In The Silmarillion, one of the mighty of the gods of Middle Earth is Nienna, who “is acquainted with grief, and mourns for every wound that Arda has suffered in the marring of Melkor. … But she does not weep for herself; and those who hearken to her learn pity, and endurance in hope” (Tolkien, p. 19). Gandalf in his younger days is described as having learned pity and patience from her. This value placed upon empathy, of sorrow as a virtue, endurance of the spirit rather than the body, resonates throughout all of Tolkien’s works.

“Shades of Feminism in Othello“ by Leigh Kolb

As for the feminist themes of Othello, they are clear from the very beginning. Desdemona goes behind her father’s back to marry Othello–a celebrated general but not a native Venetian (he is a “Moor,” a black man of African/Muslim descent). She goes before the senate to prove Othello didn’t win her by “witchcraft” (see: racism) and she requests to travel with him to Cyprus. She stands up to her father convincingly, and while she is dutiful to the men in her life, she clearly has an independent spirit. Parker’s Desdemona is also sexual (he includes a sex scene between Othello and Desdemona, and shows flashbacks of their courtship and intimate relationship).

“The Tragedy of Masculinity in Romeo + Juliet“ by Leigh Kolb

Juliet is continuously more mature than Romeo. While she falls for him as he does for her, she wants to know that he’s serious. Romeo stumbles, he’s clearly much more juvenile than Juliet is. They represent youth, yes, but also a departure from not only their fathers’ patriarchal social order, but also the gendered expectations placed upon them. Juliet’s world is protected and arranged for her; she’s expected to have a life like her mother’s (arranged and out of her control). Romeo’s effeminate nature goes against his father’s powerful corporate position and his cousins’ violent outbursts.

“Mrs. Danvers, or: Rebecca“ by Amanda Civitello

These perplexing editorial choices in the novel’s adaptation for the screen make for a viewing experience which leaves audiences with a distinctly different perception of the characters and the story. The viewers are denied the absolutely disquieting story of the novel. What’s so disturbing – and so Gothic – about Rebecca isn’t Rebecca herself, and not even the image of Rebecca, the spectre of her, that the different characters construct, but the moral ambiguity surrounding the characters we’re supposed to like and dislike. If a novel – or a screenplay – is meant to be a constructed world, one that functions according to its own rules, then du Maurier’s Rebecca wreaks havoc with that framework.

“We Need to Talk About Kevin“ by Amanda Lyons

And this is what was so terrifying to me about Kevin—its worst-case scenario of motherhood. The woman enslaved, powerless, first by the very presence of the baby growing inside her and then trapped in the four walls of the home, slave to a psychopathic child who is the ultimate tyrant. Disbelieved by her partner, having to cope alone, cut off from the socially accepted positive experience of motherhood. Forced to nurture a child that has nothing but hate and contempt for you.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: Gendered Values and Women in Middle Earth

This is a guest post by Barrett Vann.

Several weeks ago, I was trawling the internet for reviews of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, when I came across this one, by Rhiannon at Feminist Fiction. In it, she says:

The film was … a retelling of one of the oldest, most classic, and so most male and white modern fantasy tales we have. And in that context, the film was actually quite an interesting achievement.

I’m not going to try to argue that The Hobbit was a feminist movie — with only one female character in the whole film, that feels a bit of a stretch. I’m not even going to claim that the film was perfectly executed, because I think it had many flaws. But I think it presented the all-male fantasy adventure in a somewhat new way, valuing strengths other than sheer might and blunt, obvious bravery.

… I’m not going to claim that these are “feminine” strengths. But I think they are traits that many other adventure movies would brush over, or present as weaknesses, a lack of proper, adventurous masculinity. The fact that the Hobbit focuses on these traits and integrates them into its adventure is admirable.

The fact that Rhiannon drew attention to this gave me pause, not because it’s not true—quite the contrary—or because I hadn’t noticed it myself, but because that is something so consistently true of Tolkien’s works that it would never have occurred to me to mention it. The value system in Tolkien’s Middle Earth consistently favours “softer” strengths, putting emphasis on gentleness, scholarliness, empathy, and patience as qualities that heroes possess. Indeed, it’s written into the very mythology of the legendarium. In The Silmarillion, one of the mighty of the gods of Middle Earth is Nienna, who “is acquainted with grief, and mourns for every wound that Arda has suffered in the marring of Melkor. … But she does not weep for herself; and those who hearken to her learn pity, and endurance in hope” (Tolkien, p. 19). Gandalf in his younger days is described as having learned pity and patience from her. This value placed upon empathy, of sorrow as a virtue, endurance of the spirit rather than the body, resonates throughout all of Tolkien’s works.

In The Lord of the Rings, whilst there is a war to be fought, and manly men like Aragorn and Éomer to fight it, the true heroes of the story are Frodo and Sam—a scholar and a gardener. In Fellowship, Frodo and Gandalf have this telling exchange in the Mines of Moria:

Frodo: It’s a pity Bilbo didn’t kill him when he had the chance!

Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. Many that live deserve death, and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or evil before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many. [1]

Indeed, characters who embody more traditionally masculine values are more often the ones at moral fault, more apt to fall prey to the deceptions of evil or act rashly and in pride. To take things back to The Silmarillion once more, Fëanor, the Noldorin prince and gemsmith, is “the mightiest in all parts of body and mind: in valour, in endurance, in beauty, in understanding, in skill, in strength and subtlety alike: of all the Children of Ilúvatar” (Tolkien, p. 109). Fëanor is characterised by his might, but he is also rash, prideful, selfish, quick to wrath, and heedless of consequences. His actions result in horrific civil war and centuries of bloodshed and pain.

In The Lord of the Rings, a lesser example is Boromir, who is Captain of the Tower of Guard, and widely regarded as a great warrior among men; large and strong, doughty in battle, and fiercely patriotic. In The Two Towers and Return of the King, he is posthumously contrasted to his brother Faramir, who is the more gentle and scholarly of the two, and who, it is said, is “more Númenórean” than his brother. Boromir possesses many “masculine” virtues, but it is he who first of the Fellowship falls prey to the Ring, as it plays on both his fears for his city and his pride in his own skill. [2]

So, if we’re looking at traditionally gendered values and strengths, Tolkien’s works (and subsequently Jackson’s movies) often subvert them. Which is great! But what about the actual women of Middle Earth? Here, for those readers less geeky about Tolkien than I, I shall cease reference to The Silmarillion, and focus solely on The Lord of the Rings, and the differences between women in the books and the movies.

The Lord of the Rings books are not exactly overflowing with women; Galadriel, Éowyn, Arwen, Goldberry, Rosie Cotton, and a few bit players like Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, and Ioreth the Gondorian healer. The three most significant of these, and those who survive into the movies, are Galadriel, Arwen, and Éowyn. The first two have their roles expanded for the movies, sometimes with more success than others.

Galadriel is the character who stays closest to her book incarnation, and is, let’s make no bones, awesome. The Queen of Lothlorien, Galadriel is one of the oldest Elves in Middle Earth, and a powerful sorceress who bears one of the three Elf-rings. In the book, she appears only once, when the Fellowship stops in Lothlorien after losing Gandalf in Moria. She is a reader of thoughts, and speaks to the hearts and minds of each member of the Fellowship, testing their weaknesses. She also possesses the Mirror of Galadriel, in which can be seen “things that are, things that were, and some things that have not yet come to pass.” She invites Frodo and Sam to look into the Mirror, something which foreshadows events to come and helps to harden their resolve. She is tempted to take the Ring when Frodo offers it to her, envisioning a future in which “Instead of a Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All will love me and despair” (Tolkien, p. 356). The Ring tempts those of power, and as an immensely powerful woman, it is a hard test, but she overcomes it. She also gives gifts to the Fellowship, many of which are of immense use later, particularly the ones given to the Hobbits.

Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) is tempted by the Ring

It is of note, I think, that the Ring Galadriel bears is Nenya, the Ring of Adamant. Through her ring, she is characterised as a figure of strength.

The movie’s Galadriel is little changed, but her role is expanded. She provides the voiceover at the beginning of Fellowship, as one who was there and remembers the events of ages past, and in Two Towers, she and Elrond converse on the subject of the rising evil of Sauron and Saruman, and how best to subdue it. She also sends a host of warriors to the battle at Helm’s Deep. In Return of the King, Frodo imagines he sees her as he struggles through Cirith Ungol, and her reminder, “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future,” serves as a sort of tagline for the trilogy. She embodies strength, wisdom, and experience, and is seen frequently in a role of support for other, more obviously active characters.

“Will you look into the Mirror?”
It can be said without much argument, I think, that Galadriel is an excellent feminist character. Though she is married, it is she who is the leader of the galadhrim; she is powerful, compassionate, and wise, but she is not without flaws; temptation, and a certain withdrawal from the events of the world which Tolkien implies is the result of mistakes made when she was younger.

Arwen is a different case. Aragorn’s love, she is the daughter of Elrond, and in the books is more or less a nonentity. Frodo sees her at dinner in Rivendell, and she is described as fair and wise, dark-haired and grey-eyed, and she appears again, at the end of Return of the King, to marry Aragorn. Her only dialogue is a short exchange with Frodo in which she gives him a pendant to wear, to draw strength from when his experiences are too hard to bear. She is meant to be an echo of Luthien, the elf-maid in the First Age who married a mortal man; Luthien was an enchantress who, among other things, glamoured herself to look like a vampire, snuck into the fortress of Angband and put the Dark Lord Morgoth into an enchanted sleep so she could snatch a Silmaril from his very crown. However strong and fabulous Luthien was, though, all the resemblance we see in her descendant is that Arwen also loves a mortal man. Her entire character centres around Aragorn.

Now, Peter Jackson knew, at least, that if you’re going to have a love story, the other half of that love story has to show up more than once before she gets hitched. The way he goes about that, however, doesn’t always work.

In Fellowship, she takes the role of Glorfindel from the books, showing up to bring a wounded Frodo to Rivendell, outrunning Black Riders and summoning the flood of the River Bruinen to drown them after she crosses it. She’s competent, fearless, she even teases Aragorn at one point. Later on, the two of them share a romantic moment, reminiscing about the moment they met; Arwen assures him that she has faith in him, and pledges to forsake immortality for him. All that is fine.

Arwen (Liv Tyler) faces off against the Ringwraiths

In Two Towers, things start getting a little wobbly. With the introduction of Éowyn, a pseudo-love triangle is formed, and Aragorn spends a lot of time being woeful and having flashbacks about Arwen, in one of which he gives her back her Evenstar pendant, the symbol of her choice to become mortal for his sake. Unfortunately, this memory serves only to show Aragorn completely ignoring the agency of the woman he loves and adopting a paternalistic role in which he knows what’s best for her. Never mind the fact that they both knew this was always in the cards. The one element of this scene which might salvage it is the perfect chill of Liv Tyler’s delivery of the line, “It was a gift. Keep it.”

There are also scenes of Arwen and Elrond, in which Elrond takes on this same role, attempting to convince Arwen that there is nothing for her in Middle Earth, and that she would do best to stay with her family and depart to Valinor. Again, Arwen’s agency is undermined, and further, though she is a mature woman—indeed, over two-thousand years old—she is made childlike, as she trembles and weeps in her father’s arms.

In Return of the King, she is on her way to the Grey Havens until she has a vision of the child she might one day have with Aragorn, and rushes back to accuse Elrond of keeping his foreknowledge from her. It is then that the weakest element of the Arwen subplot commences; her mortality has (apparently) taken a very immediate form, and her fate somehow tied to that of the Ring. She is reduced to lying on cushions and weeping whilst Elrond rides to tell Aragorn that she is dying, and will die unless Aragorn wins this war for them. It’s utterly illogical, and worse, practically turns Arwen into a Sleeping Beauty figure.

Like a Victorian consumptive, Arwen dies prettily

All in all, the movies’ version of Arwen is a curious thing. She is shown to be competent, wise and compassionate and loving, but all that is largely undermined by extraneous plot points which strip her agency from her and serve to make her into merely a motivation for Aragorn. This is unfortunate, as she has the potential to be so much more—someone old and wise, strong and brave enough to willingly accept her own death, when death is something so alien to her.

The third of these women, Éowyn, is one of my favourite characters in The Lord of the Rings, because she is a mass of contradictions. She is a young woman, only twenty-three, whose parents have died, whose uncle has sunk slowly into dotage, whose country is being encroached on by enemies; she is fragile, injured, deeply sorrowful—indeed suicidal—but she responds to this by being as strong as she possibly can—and the way she knows to be strong is the way men are strong. She is trained as a warrior, but because she is a woman (more likely, because she is a royal woman), she is not allowed to fight. And so she rages, furious at herself for her uselessness, and at everyone else for making her so. The metaphors through which she is described are of ice and steel—beautiful, but cold, sharp, distant. When she rides to war, hers is “the face who rides seeking death, having no hope.” She is at once strong and deeply vulnerable.

Though the movies do at least allow her a few rare moments of happiness

In the books, she appears to develop an infatuation with Aragorn, but it is clearly grounded more in the fact that Aragorn is someone she wishes to emulate; he symbolises strength, and also the possibility of escape. She would follow him, but as a soldier follows his captain, not a girl pining for love. This is one respect in which the movies misstep. Miranda Otto’s Éowyn is much tearier, more delicate, where the Éowyn of the books is stubborn and dignified, and in introducing the love triangle element, her feelings for Aragorn are depicted as more genuinely romantic, and therefore she also becomes jealous of Arwen. There is, of course, nothing wrong with a woman having romantic feelings for someone she cannot have, but I feel that in this case, it rather misses the point.

Éowyn (Miranda Otto) weeps over the death of her cousin and the treachery of Wormtongue

In the books, Éowyn is left to rule at Edoras when Aragorn, Theoden, and his men ride off to war, and in a touch I appreciate, is actually nominated for the position by one of Theoden’s guards when Theoden is left in doubt over whom he ought to entrust with the role. ‘‘’I said not Éomer,’ answered Háma. ‘And he is not the last [of the House of Eorl]. There is Éowyn, daughter of Éomund … She is fearless and high-hearted. All love her. Let her be as lord to the Eorlingas, while we are gone’” (Tolkien, p. 512). Though she is young, she is known by her uncle’s men to be strong and intelligent enough to command, to be entrusted with defending the capital of their realm. Éowyn, however, does not take it as such, and chafes that she is not allowed to ride with the men.

Concerning war, there are a few points to make concerning the movies’ depiction thereof. Éowyn tells Aragorn, “The women of this country learned long ago; those without swords can still die upon them.” The implication here ought to be that there are other shieldmaidens of Rohan; perhaps not in the court, but in the smaller hamlets away from Edoras, that Éowyn is not an anomaly. However, the only other women of Rohan we see seem to be either old women or young children, fleeing from burning settlements or cowering in the caves at Helm’s Deep. I was disappointed that they only nominally normalised the idea of women fighters, rather than actually showing it.

Éowyn after the defeat of the Witch King

Éowyn’s best known moment, understandably, is her defeat of the Witch King; riding to the battle of the Pelennor Fields disguised as a man, she faces off with an immortal creature so terrifying he can fell men with a mere scream, beheads his draconian mount, and then, with the assistance of Merry the hobbit, kills him. My personal preference is for the book’s version of that scene, but that’s only because I have an unabashed fondness for Éowyn’s speech before she beheads his steed.

But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him. (Tolkien, p. 823)

The movie, perhaps understandably, shortens that to “I am no man!,” but the point remains. Éowyn is strong here not because she’s trying to be a man, but because she is a woman. It’s a triumphant moment.

Overall, I would say women in the movies actually come off rather worse than they do in the books, if only by a little. While scenes like Lothlorien and the Battle of the Pelennor fields are truly excellent, the writers seem to struggle in knowing how to depict women who aren’t strong or powerful in obvious ways, as shown in the unfortunate choices made regarding Arwen, and the way Éowyn shines less than she does in the books when she’s not cutting the heads off monsters. Considering the books, Tolkien’s world, although it is not a feminist one by any stretch, does to some extent restructure a gendered value system, and does contain dynamic and thoughtfully written female characters. If only there were more of them.

[1] This is the movie’s version of this dialogue, though a similar one occurs in the book.

[2] Note: I am not hating on Boromir! I feel I have to point this out, because people so often do, but he is actually one of my favourite characters. All those delicious flaws and a redemptive death; I’m a sucker.

———-

Barrett Vann has just graduated from the University of Minnesota with degrees in English and Linguistics. An unabashed geek, she’s into cosplay, literary analysis, high fantasy, and queer theory. Now that she’s left school, she hopes to find a real job so in a few years she can tackle grad school for playwrighting or screenwriting, and become one of those starving artist types.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘The Uninvited’ (1944) and Dorothy Macardle’s Feminism

Movie poster for The Uninvited
This is a guest post by Nadia Smith.
[contains spoilers]
When I told a horror-fan friend in his early twenties that I was writing about The Uninvited, he said he had seen it. This came as a surprise, since it’s mostly older viewers and film historians who are aware of it. It turned out that he thought I was referring to the recent Korean film The Uninvited: A Tale of Two Sisters, and not the classic haunted house movie that had audiences screaming in the 1940s and drew comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940).
The Uninvited (1944), directed by Lewis Allen and released by Paramount Pictures, is an adaptation of a popular Gothic novel by the Irish writer Dorothy Macardle (1889-1958), also a playwright, historian, journalist, and prominent feminist campaigner. It was adapted for the screen by the British writer Dodie Smith, best known for 101 Dalmatians. The Uninvited, which easily passes the Bechdel Test, features some sexist characterizations and a conventional ending, stemming from Macardle’s complex views on gender as well as the demands of commercial romantic fiction and film production. Nevertheless, the film opens itself up to alternative readings and valuations of the characters.
In the film, siblings Rick, played by Ray Milland, and Pamela Fitzgerald, played by Ruth Hussey (who might at first be mistaken for a married couple), learn that the old house in Cornwall they have just purchased is haunted by two ghosts, one warm and benevolent and one cold and dangerous, and investigate the mystery surrounding the house’s previous residents in an attempt to end the hauntings. Rick falls for the much younger Stella Meredith (Gail Russell), whose parents, artist Llewellyn and his wife Mary, had once lived in the house with Carmel, an artist’s model from Spain who had an affair with Llewellyn. The Merediths and Carmel died when Stella was a small child, Mary by falling off a nearby cliff, and the shy, repressed, immature Stella, who idolizes her late mother, lives an isolated existence in the village with Commander Beech (Donald Crisp), her stern, morbid maternal grandfather. The Commander has an unhealthy obsession with his daughter’s memory, and Stella is virtually imprisoned in the house as the Commander tries to mold her in Mary’s image. So far, so Gothic. Local informants, as well as Mary’s friend Miss Holloway (Cornelia Otis Skinner), praise Mary’s virtue and angelic beauty to the Fitzgeralds, and denounce Carmel’s depravity. Rick’s frustration grows as he worries that Stella’s intense emotional investment in her mother’s ghost will lead to a psychological breakdown and prevent her from ever caring for him.
The Fitzgeralds initially think that Mary is the warm ghost, and Carmel the cold ghost endangering Stella, but a séance proves them wrong. Carmel, the warm ghost and Stella’s biological mother, refused to be silenced and unfairly maligned, instead returning to tell the truth, while Mary, the cold malevolent ghost, tried to prevent the exposure of family secrets about her true nature and adoption of Stella after Carmel gave birth in secret. In life, Carmel had been a nurturing mother who truly loved Stella, and Mary had been cold and uncaring, as well as asexual. Rick symbolically kills the “evil mother” Mary, banishing her ghost through ridicule, while Stella’s acceptance of the truth about her biological mother’s identity allows her to move forward and ensures that Carmel will no longer haunt the house. Commander Beech dies, and the film concludes with Rick announcing that he and Stella will marry, while Pamela will marry a local doctor who helped solve the mystery. The final frame shows the two couples together in the drawing room; Stella appears rather uncomfortable, with a forced smile, recalling her discomfort when Rick forcefully kissed her earlier in the film. Whether this was a directorial decision or simply reflective of the limitations of the young Gail Russell’s acting remains uncertain, but it opens up the happy ending to alternative interpretations, as is often the case in Gothic romances.
Dorothy Macardle used a ghost-story plot and Gothic conventions to frame a narrative about troubled marriages and mother-daughter relationships, family secrets that haunt the present, and transgressive sexuality, thereby setting up a critique of domestic ideology. The unsettling implications of such a critique in Gothic romances, though, are foreclosed by conventional endings in which the heroine embraces marriage and domesticity. While the novel refers to several alternative relationships and domestic arrangements, these are closed off at the end in favor of “normalization.” Although Stella has been traumatized by her upbringing—her grandfather was overbearing and repressive and her parents’ marriage was characterized by hatred and power struggles—her impending marriage to Rick is a foregone conclusion that meets the narrative demands of the Gothic romance. However, some readers and viewers of Gothic romances find the endings unconvincing and read beyond the ending, and may imagine that the naïve, inexperienced Stella, like the nameless narrator of Rebecca, will find that her real problems begin with her marriage to an older man she hardly knows, leading to a new Gothic narrative in the formerly haunted house they intend to live in. 
Dorothy Macardle
The Production Code affecting films in the 1940s meant that homosexuality, extramarital affairs, and out-of-wedlock births were referred to cryptically in The Uninvited to meet the imperatives of censorship. Viewers learn that Mary “feared and refused motherhood,” and is therefore blamed for her husband’s affair with Carmel. Mary, Carmel, and Miss Holloway are all punished for their respective sexual transgressions – asexuality, heterosexual promiscuity, and lesbianism – with death or, in Miss Holloway’s case, a mental breakdown. The character of Miss Holloway was recognized as a lesbian by the Legion of Decency, whose (male) leaders complained to Paramount executives about the scenes in which she speaks romantically to Mary’s portrait. Lesbian audiences in the 1940s also grasped the inferences and characterizations in The Uninvited, and film scholars note that it became a cult hit with lesbian communities in wartime America. Mary is depicted as asexual or possibly a lesbian by being non-maternal and too close to Miss Holloway, and the novel describes her as “unnatural,” tying in with discourses about motherhood and gender essentialism. Later film scholars have seen even more lesbian connotations, suggesting that the mother-daughter trope in the film can be a cover for lesbianism, since Stella has been in love with another woman, Mary, her whole life, much to Rick’s frustration.
Dorothy Macardle’s views on gender roles and motherhood were crucially shaped by her own family dynamics, and reflected in her Gothic novels. She perceived her English mother, Minnie, as a classic late-Victorian hysteric, or fake invalid, who used her fragility as a weapon to prevail in marital power struggles and prioritize her own needs, and viewed her Irish father, Thomas, as Minnie’s helpless and long-suffering victim. Her fiction is inattentive to alternative power dynamics in marriage; husbands are depicted as generally chivalrous figures vulnerable to abuse by manipulative women feigning fragility, rather than subjecting fragile, vulnerable women to abuse. Her novels all end with the metaphorical destruction of a malevolent maternal figure and her baleful power, suggesting that Minnie, like the vampires to whom a prominent Victorian doctor compared hysterical women, took a lot of killing. Macardle’s fiction overturned sentimental and politically useful Victorian notions of the mother’s gentle influence in the home, as her feminist convictions stemmed from the belief that women’s exercise of power should be transparent and directed outside the home. It enraged her that outwardly conformist women like her mother and the fictional Mary Meredith were praised for their virtue, and she tried to show the transgression and complexity behind simplistic notions of good and bad women in a novel in which an icon of conventional womanhood is exposed as a fraud.
The tensions and limitations of Macardle’s feminism and her use of hostile sexist tropes about predatory lesbians, frigid wives, and bad mothers in her fiction seem to stem not only from her understanding of her family dynamics, but also from her sense of herself as an Exceptional Woman, informed by social class privilege. She never married and spent years living alone or with other women, and spent some of her early life in female institutions, including an all-girls school and a women’s prison (for her Irish republican activism). While she enjoyed being a university-educated, professionally successful unmarried woman with no children, she thought most women should be wives and mothers, with their sexuality safely contained within marriage, a view shared by many interwar-era “maternal feminists” in Europe and the United States.
The two main (living) female characters in The Uninvited are Pamela Fitzgerald and Stella Meredith. Pamela demonstrates wit, assertiveness, and intelligence, especially when she solves the mystery of the two ghosts that had confounded the others. Stella is fragile and childlike, which greatly appeals to the older Rick. The circumstances of her upbringing have created a repressed, insecure personality who idealizes the vague memory of a loving mother. Despite Stella’s timidity, she demonstrates courage at the novel’s end when she confronts and reassures Carmel’s ghost. While normative heterosexuality is restored in the conclusion with plans for marriage, Rick’s love for Stella in the novel is unsettling, as he has constantly infantilized her and describes her as a child.
Miss Holloway, an “unfeminine” single woman and nurse who had been infatuated with her friend Mary and still worships her memory, is significant as a lesbian character in the days of the Production Code. Her name recalls London’s Holloway Prison, where suffragists were incarcerated earlier in the century, and the convalescent home she operates is a prison of sorts where female patients lose agency and autonomy. While Miss Holloway’s narrative seeks to contrast Mary’s moral perfection with Carmel’s depravity, the Fitzgeralds are so put off by this stereotypical sinister lesbian that they begin to think that things were not all that they seemed. The character of Miss Holloway shows The Uninvited’s indebtedness to Daphne du Maurier’s popular Gothic novel, Rebecca (1938; released as a film in 1940), as she bears a strong resemblance to Mrs. Danvers. Both are portrayed as sinister lesbians who idolize the dead woman at the center of the mystery and play a key role in reinforcing her iconization.
Overall, The Uninvited reflects a range of tensions and negotiations that intersected with contemporary discourses about gender, sexuality, feminism, and film censorship. While it falls prey to some hostile and stereotypical female characterizations common in the 1940s and later, it is complex and multilayered enough to allow for a range of readings and interpretations as it attempted to speak the unspeakable and represent the unrepresentable. Now that it’s finally available on DVD, maybe it will become at least as well known as The Uninvited: A Tale of Two Sisters.

———-
Nadia Smith is a historian and writer based in the Boston area. She is the author of Dorothy Macardle: A Life.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: A New Jane in Cary Fukunaga’s ‘Jane Eyre’ (2011)

Movie poster for Jane Eyre (2011)
This is a guest post by Rhea Daniel.

The ghosts of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë have suffered several film adaptations of their most famous works, and the problem with multiple film adaptations of the same novel, however well-meaning or loyal to the text, is that watching three versions of the same story before reading the book can numb one out to the brilliance of the original. I’ve seen this scene before, I’ve heard this dialogue before, I’ve had enough of this famous line because I got to see the three versions of Pride and Prejudice before I hit fifteen. Thankfully, Jane Eyre falls way below Pride and Prejudice in the best 100 books list, so its adaptations didn’t have as much reach or appeal of the latter. I did get to read articles and see films on the Brontës though and they were terribly interesting and creative people, their suffering contributing to the achey longing that filled their books. Lowood School with its pitiful conditions, for one, took its characteristics from the school where the writer lost two of her elder sisters.

The film uses a nonlinear timeline, choosing to begin with Jane’s long trek through the moors after she runs away from Thornfield Hall, her past played out as she is questioned by St. John, making her trudge down the unhappy path of memories again. This actually makes the film more interesting and we need that, because the story of a governess falling in love with her (much older) employer is one overdone in romance novels.

Mia Wasikowska awed us as Alice by blooming from an anxious young girl running away from an undesired proposal into a sword-wielding Jabberwock-killer. As Jane Eyre, she manages to convey the character of the (on the surface) insipid and sexless governess quite well. Blanche Ingram‘s blatant disrespect for her only reinforces the image of the dry governess, but the audience already knows that the deeply passionate Jane is more than that. As for Rochester, Brontë describes him as such: 

I traced the general points of middle height, and considerable breadth of chest. He had a dark face, with stern features, and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now; he was past youth, but had not reached middle age; perhaps he might be thirty-five.

As Byronic dudes go, Michael Fassbender is close with the stern features and heavy brow, but who are we kidding, both the stars have painfully good looks. Mia’s trademark furrowed brow only makes her more appealing. Michael Fassbender makes a great Byronic dude with his wrinkles. The match seems perfect. In fact the entire movie is terribly perfect; it lacked the rawness of the book, and that’s the only thing I could find wrong with it.

In the beginning, Adèle tells Jane the story of the vampire-woman haunting Thornfield hall, with Adèle’s doll pressed up against the window of a dollhouse in the background.

Jane Eyre (2011) screenshot
The doll represents the watchful presence of Bertha, not revealed as yet, keeping a close eye on the occupants of Thornfield Hall, whenever she manages to escape her prison at least.

Rochester assumes Jane is a bit of a weirdo after seeing her fanciful paintings, telling her as much. Her response, implying that she’s even weirder than he thinks, arouses his curiosity. Her gaze is direct, she is not cowed by him, she possibly hates his (initially) overbearing nature because she’s had her fill of men like him. In their second conversation he reaches out to her almost desperately, bringing his hidden vulnerabilities to light. He finds a kindred spirit in Jane and the inexperienced Jane is moved. We can tell because when she first arrives at Thornfield hall, she curiously glances at a nude painting and after her second conversation with Rochester, she dares examine it more closely. Jane is a decent artist; but for the prudery of the times, she would be practicing human anatomy, but she can’t of course. And considering the reactions to the presence of the painting in the film even in this day and age, one can have plenty of reasons to imagine why*. There’s is more to this painting: Jane’s latent sexuality is aroused, and the presence of the painting is a way of showing a fleshly desire for Rochester. I know this is obvious, but being an artist myself I tend to disagree about equating the two.

The kissing scene in the movie plays itself out exactly as I imagined in the book. Immersed as I was in the tale my reaction was in keeping with the times: what a little strumpet. She’s so enamored by the kiss that she barely notices Mrs. Fairfax’s horror, beaming happily from ear to ear before running off to her room. The insipid governess blooms; she is not so sexless after all. Suddenly she’s a biological creature, and it’s almost vulgar for the audience.

This is just a weak moment for Jane. She is stronger than Rochester. Rochester makes two wrong choices and pays dearly for them. He’s taken in by a profitable, loveless marriage. He falls for a woman’s charms before he is betrayed but he adopts her daughter; both choices stretch his misery yet Rochester is a man with a conscience. Jane has no money or physical charms to speak of, and he finds that simplicity “becoming.” He thinks she won’t cause him any problems. He doesn’t however, speak a word in the defense of Jane after Blanche’s acidic remarks about her profession. Is he spineless and afraid to mess up his courtship with Blanche, or is he trying to make Jane jealous? Would it be patronizing and tiresomely chivalrous of him to speak out on Jane’s behalf? Would Jane be insulted if he shushed Blanche and came to her rescue? We don’t get to see that resolved; all we have to settle for is his rejection of Blanche.

After Bertha’s presence is revealed, Jane refuses to go through with the illicit marriage. There is more for Jane to fear than loneliness with this decision. In Lowood school, there was one thing that kept her passions in check: physical chastisement. Later when Rochester begs her to stay, she is faced with her physical vulnerability again when he says “I could bend you with my finger and my thumb! A mere reed you feel in my hands.” Jane keeps her individualism intact at yet another level in spite of the memory and trauma of past physical violence. If she had said yes she would have to live with the specter of the first wife lurking in the background for the rest of Bertha’s life. As an unloved child, she is not lured into the comforts of heart and hearth, compromising the laws of societal convention that Rochester, who obviously has been burned by both love and marriage, is willing to put aside. Though Rochester’s revulsion for all manmade laws is understandable and his story worthy of pity, she does not hitch her fate to his, and for the abandoned child not to lunge at such an offer is surprising, for why should Jane worry about societal convention? In the book, it’s because it’s ethically wrong. In the movie it is because she must respect herself (thank you Cary, Moira). In spite of being confronted with the fear of loneliness once again, accentuated by her cold and the endless trek through the moors, Jane manages to make a decision well-balanced by intellect and intuition. She does it once again, refusing the offer of marriage from St. John, not giving in in spite of him berating her “lawless passion,” and in spite of owing him her life, because it would go against her nature and thus “kill” her. Jane is a classic proto-feminist**; she controls her passions enough to work out her priorities, but not at the expense of her deepest desires.

When Jane returns after the fire, she finds what remains of the painting is but the frame, the canvas burnt out and the half-burnt doll sitting inside it (symbolism much?). Jane has been jolted out of her brief experience with earthly pleasure (burnt nude painting), and her love for Rochester has matured. Bertha (the doll) is gone; no hurdles remain between Rochester and Jane’s union. Jane picks up the doll with some sadness when Mrs. Fairfax finds her. In spite of Bertha being Rochester’s ball and chain, neither of them blames her. Considering the lack of knowledge in the field of mental health, Rochester was being kind for the time by locking her up. She was still the madwoman in the attic though, standing like a rock between Jane’s and Rochester’s happiness, and once she was gone, they could all breathe a sigh of relief and move on. Perhaps she represents the wild, passionate part of Jane’s psyche that is now released, but I’m not going to stretch that one out…

The central story of the complex lone woman, unloved and unwanted–matched with the world-weary hero set in a background that’s far from sumptuous–is in great danger of turning into a great depressing drag of a tale, so it’s incredibly important for that spark and pull between them to work. The script by Moira Buffini aids this, taking only the relevant bits from the novel and chipping away at them so that they shine at the significant parts of the movie, avoiding the verbal diarrhea that can come with being loyal to a classic novel. The music too, soars lonesome and yearning to match the tormented souls of the main characters. The lighting is superbly planned, muted and misty in the day and full of deep flickering shadows in the night, the house dark and creaky just like the gothic Thornfield of the book. From what I saw of the deleted scenes (those are always interesting) Helen’s ghost arrives to guide Jane through the moors. This coupled with Jane’s hearing Rochester’s voices would have been clairvoyant overkill, so I’m glad that was edited out. Jamie Bell is amazing as St. John, a warmer version than the book. Judi Dench plays Mrs. Fairfax, sticking to the role of a secondary character and not pressing her presence, the trait of a self-assured and experienced actress***. The claim to the horror element by the crew though, I can’t really place. This movie wasn’t remotely nail-biting or scary.

Whether Jane Eyre purists agree with me or not, there’s little not to like about Jane Eyre (2011), and I eagerly anticipate the release of director Cary Fukunaga‘s next film.

*It’s art, barely pornographic, get over it people.

**Not sure if the term applies, but I love it so I’m using it!

***For who can forget the woman who called James Bond “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur“??

———-

Rhea Daniel got to see a lot of movies as a kid because her family members were obsessive movie-watchers. She frequently finds herself in a bind between her love for art and her feminist conscience. Meanwhile she is trying to be a better writer and artist and you can find her at http://rheadaniel.blogspot.com/.

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.

———-

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.]
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.

———-

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. 

"Wickedly" Disappointing

Official website for Wicked
This is a guest post by Marilyn Recht.

Besides being stale and lackluster from running overlong on Broadway, with a dull cast that runs on automatic, the musical Wicked (unlike the much more intelligent and complex book) is laughable from a feminist perspective.

As it opens, Glinda the Good Witch admits to her admiring audience that she was once friends with Elphaba the Wicked Witch in college. The flashback scene that follows is a predictable faceoff of the “popular” kids led by a dazzlingly white Glinda vs the very green dumpy Elphaba and her wheelchair-bound sister Nessarose (the future Witch of the East).

Performance of “Defying Gravity” from Wicked
Glinda is horrified to be chosen as Elphaba’s roommate but eventually takes her on as a personal project to popularize her (much like the star of the movie Clueless), inflated by her own sense of goodness. Elphaba meekly agrees and her attempts at being coy—flicking back her long black hair, tittering and twitching—are ridiculous. But rich boy Fiyero is struck by her independent spirit and advocacy for the less fortunate, when their goat-man teacher suffers under new rulings that animals may no longer speak and is removed from the school.

Elphaba insists to the headmistress that Glinda join her in sorcery class. However, we never see this interesting bit develop. What ensues is a meh secret rivalry between good and bad witch for the affections of Fiyero. Glinda assumes he belongs to her, since they are each the gleaming epitome of style and superficiality. When Elphaba asks Glinda to accompany her to Oz to seek an audience with the Wizard, Glinda is befuddled by Elphaba’s quest for power to free the animals.

After intermission the tedium continues with the town turned against Elphaba and in favor of Glinda. Fiyero passively agrees to marry Glinda but when Elphaba turns up he instantly drops Glinda. Elphaba stages her own liquidation (the audience can see Dorothy pouring water on her behind a screen) then [spoiler alert] is mysteriously reunited with Fiyero who is now a scarecrow thanks to her spell to make him immortal.

Cast of Wicked
The witches’ friendship is so threadbare that Fiyero’s choice is hardly felt to come between them. And any illusion of Elphaba as an independent woman is dashed in the service of her desperate triumph as a love object. Further, there’s no indication that Fiyero’s fate as a straw man is meant to be ironic.

It should be noted that the alternative backstory as adapted from the book is itself interesting. The Wicked Witch, exemplar of the unconventional, becomes a powerful sorceress exploited by the Wizard. And the Good Witch is a narcissistic beauty enslaved by public opinion. But as it’s played out in the musical, with the cast breaking into torturous song every 10 seconds, the original plot is watered down to a simple morality tale for eager overpaying tourists.

———-

Marilyn Recht is alternately a prose writer and poet. She has written science fiction, children’s stories, drama, and experimental pieces. Most recently she was a columnist and copy editor for the fashion magazine Creative Sugar. Web sites featuring her writing include NYCfoto and Examiner. In the late 1980s she participated in downtown Manhattan’s performing arts scene with poetry readings and a short play entitled Cowboys. In 1996 she published her poetry book, She Must Have Been a Giant. Marilyn has worked in most aspects of publishing, marketing, and advertising, as a writer, editor, proofreader, digital production artist, and manager. She is currently a senior medical editor. Marilyn can be reached at mazrecht@gmail.com.
 

Guest Post: Feminism in ‘Aiyyaa,’ and Why It Ain’t Such A Bad Movie

Aiyyaa

Guest post written by Rhea Daniel.

Aiyyaa shows how a perfectly loving Indian family, specifically a Marathi family (but this sort of traditionalism runs right across this arranged-marriage loving country so an Indian woman can relate) can make their female offspring miserable over the subject of her single-hood up to to the point where she’ll resort to taking any low-paying job as an excuse to stay out of home as long as she can. But leave home on her own terms she won’t, she needs a man first. She keeps fantasizing about packing up in the middle of the night, grabbing her mum’s gold jewellery and running away with her dream-man. Yes, she’s a romantic, a Bollywood fan and her ambitions extend thus far to falling in love and living HEA.

So why is this even feminist? I’ll explain:

Understanding the Arranged Marriage:

Speaking from my own observations, the concept of an arranged-marriage works well when the network of well-informed relatives can tell you what kind family you’re marrying your daughter/son into. This well-informed network will let you know if the family is traditional enough and boy isn’t of the wife-beating breed (that is if you care). Ancestral records are generally exchanged.
For the girl, if she’s marrying into an Indian family, she’s marrying the entire extended family of sisters, brothers, sils, bils, cousins, grandmas and grandpas, who feel they have a right freely express their opinion on your shape, colour, behaviour, job, hobbies, sexuality, dress sense, reproductive capabilities, domestic skills and also your parenting skills. This could happen to a triple PhD. or an aeronautical engineer, it don’t matter, because a brilliant career is only good to up one’s resume in finding the perfect mate of equal or more ped-degree. Smart people are generally expected to produce higher quality offspring. Yeah, however organized… this stuff gets intensely patriarchal. That’s why it’s okay if the entire family lands up at the dissecting table, not just the dude. Plus, it’s a good investment to have a Dil who’ll take good care of you when you’re old (another good reason to have at least one son). It’s archaic, but there you have it. Feelings can be manufactured.

Also, get ready to take on the roles Meenakshi’s already faking, you have very few moments to be yourself. Meenakshi dresses up seemingly voluntarily for the sit-downs, seems to be making an effort, but the audience knows that it’s an act. So why can’t she just say no, right? To understand why being in such a situation is like being stuck between a rock and a hard place take a look first at this fascinating TED talk by Sheena Iyengar on how Asians view choice:

I’ve come across people who are super-ready to marry whoever their parents choose for them, make their choice within an hour of meeting, marry within the week and go back to their jobs. I don’t really get it and I guess they have a great relationship with their parents, but the closest thing that explained it for me was this study by Sheena Iyengar. There’s no such thing as individual choice, there is only The Best Choice. While the system works well for the collective it wrecks havoc with individual desire. For some people stuck in this system it’s a leap in light-years to choose one’s own partner without the whole family acting like it’s criminal, or with threats that the family will fall apart of you do such a thing*. So Meenakshi‘s parents put an ad in the newspaper to attract potential grooms. The sexism begins. The boy gets First Choice, the girl can be Convinced. As far as cultural imperatives go with boys, they need be good providers, (and reproduce capably, I suppose).
Sabotage:
Her parents are getting desperate. None of the boys like her, but then finally comes the nice boy who likes her within ten minutes of the meeting. He likes her crazy family too. She knows she’s fucked, because she’s not allowed to say no, so her only recourse is sabotage. She tries to drive him away with her singing. He likes her even more. He remembers to ask her whether she’s okay with it too, she doesn’t get the opportunity to answer, but the parents are ecstatic, even more reason not to open her mouth. Thanks to the director for making this a hard decision for Meenakshi: her fiancé is incredibly nice, he respects her choices, he likes her the way she is. It’s the sort of subtlety the directors of Brave failed to employ when creating their potential grooms. His only failure is his inability to tell that under that mask, she doesn’t really like him at all.
The Patriarchal Mother:
Meenakshi indulges a small rant that her mother laughs off as melodramatic. Don’t expect any sympathy from the Patriarchal Mother (a woman who subscribes willingly to patriarchal views), a daughter married off to a man her parents deem suitable only gives them a sense of continuity, they don’t consider their children’s lives separate from theirs, even if they suffer the same misery. “I did it too, it didn’t kill me” “You’re so selfish, he’s such a good boy!” “You’re mad!” are perfectly justifiable responses to a daughter’s unhappiness. Nobody in her family seems to get it, but then comes the only opposing voice from wheelchair-bound Grandma, who shouts: “Run away, Meenakshi, I couldn’t!”–when she makes a leap to freedom from the balcony of her fiancé’s house, providing a contrast to Meenakshi’s mother’s subservient simpering.
‘Man-hunting’**:

She falls for Surya, a Tamilian artist who visits the library she works in. She does her own version of the arranged-marriage research, asking people he’s acquainted with all sorts of questions about his personality etc. Her colleague informs that he is rumoured to drink and do drugs, that’s why his eyes are so red, but it doesn’t faze her. She tries to find out more about his culture. She’s advised to watch Tamil movies. She learns the language, beginning with sexually suggestive compliments, learning how to say “please leave your shirt button open” in Tamil. She goes dreamy-eyed every time he passes and swoony over his after-shave (or body-odour, whatever it is). It might help to know that the entire movie is the based on one of stories from the Marathi movie Gandha (2009) (translated to ‘smell’ or ‘fragrance’) by the same director. Meenakshi seems sensitive to any noxious type smells. Her olfactory sense seems to be her love-guide. She hates the smell of the college toilets, but there’s a scene where she trance-walks into the men’s loo because she can smell Surya in there. Lucky for Surya he was just washing his face. Imagine someone standing outside your toilet cubicle smelling your farts.

Anti-feminism:
While the research she does is justifiable, the stalking is not. Granted, she’s shy and he treats her like wallpaper, even when she tries speak to him directly in Tamil (we find out later he’s doing this deliberately) so she has to find other means to approach him. As the day of her engagement draws closer she grows more and more desperate to see in him an ideal partner, so her investigation leads her down some unsavoury roads. She then escapes her home on the eve of her engagement and follows him to his incense stick factory (that’s why he smells so good), finds out he’s not such a bad dude, and his eyes are so red because of the incense fumes. He finally confronts her, knows she’s been following him, says he likes her guts and wants to marry her. There’s another cute scene where they happily share their mutual academic failures. I know the stalking’s a play on role-reversal considering Bollywood’s long history of stalking-as-romance, many girls and women are victims of this imitative ‘romance’ in real life, but entering his home under false pretences and stealing his t-shirt crosses a line, even though she is portrayed as harmless. Stalking is a recourse in a society where there is firm divide between the sexes, and it’s one of the primary things that has to go with archaic notions of love and romance, boy or girl. In this movie Surya knowingly strings her along to see how far she’ll go. Very well, but the sooner we get to enthusiastic consent or polite decline (and acceptance), the better for both parties.

Anita Date as Maina in Aiyyaa
I don’t care if Meenakshi’s librarian-colleague Maina is an an exaggerated comic-relief character, I found her funny. I couldn’t find much on Anita Date, the actress who plays her. She serves as advisor to Meenakshi, encouraging her to marry Maadhav, because he’s good ‘husband material’ and later on have an affair with Surya. Meenakshi prefers to go by the direct route. Poor Maadhav, her fiancé, gets the raw end of the deal when she lands up at her own engagement ceremony with her preferred love Surya. He takes the rejection sorrowfully but gracefully, and refuses her patronizing offer to remain ‘just friends’. In the midst of all the madness director Kundalkar gives his minor characters their dignity.

Despite this movie’s sprinkling of annoying Bollywood fantasy numbers (which I skipped) and occasional mind-numbingly loopy, loud scenes, most of it was gratifyingly funny. In Meenakshi’s declaration of love for dark people (technically what she says translates to “I don’t like light-skinned people, I like black people”) she’s referring to her love for South-Indian Surya, but it comes across as a taunt to the Indian majority that views ‘fairness’ as as a prerequisite for attractiveness. The only incongruity of this statement is that Malayali actor Prithviraj doesn’t qualify as ‘dark’ by any Indian standard, so it makes her declaration specific to his race (South-Indians are stereotyped as dark-skinned) and her willingness to integrate with them. Dreamum-wakuppam, a parodied version of South-Indian dance numbers (not to mention the language) can seem insulting at first***, but by the end of the movie she’s transformed into a traditional Tamil bride, and speaks Tamil like she can’t help it. Her exclamations of ‘aiyyaa!’ change into the South-Indian ‘aiyyoo!’ Having visited a traditional Marwari household in Pondicherry and Gujarati household in Chennai who regularly feast on idli–dosa made by their super-traditional sari-clad wives, I’d believe the integration is not just for survival, it’s embraced.

I know that wives have cheated on their husbands in Bollywood before, I know they’ve also shown cheating husbands the door, but these stories have remained distant scandals before. Caught between one’s desire for freedom and one’s cultural call of doody ie., to marry and reproduce, is a common cross to bear in this country, and I’ve never come across a Bollywood movie that didn’t conveniently villainize the parents/society in order to dramatize the girl or boy’s situation. So despite all the mayhem Ayyiaa manages to make itself a predominantly feminist film, and had some subtle observations to make that shone like little jewels through the script.

*Preferring to remain single is an alien concept, let’s not even go there.

**Didn’t really like the way that was advertized, man-hunting seems to refer to a search ranging across several men, when she quite obviously interested only in The One.

***I thought it was hilarious.
———-
Rhea Daniel got to see a lot of movies as a kid because her family members were obsessive movie-watchers. She frequently finds herself in a bind between her love for art and her feminist conscience. Meanwhile she is trying to be a better writer and artist and you can find her at http://rheadaniel.blogspot.com/.

Upcoming Theme Weeks for 2013

At the end of every month, we publish reviews and feminist commentary surrounding a specific theme. Our upcoming themes for 2013 are shown below. We publish our official Call for Writers at the beginning of each month, but feel free to get a head start if a particular theme appeals to you. Shoot us an e-mail (btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com) if you’d like to contribute an original piece or a cross post from your own blog!

January: Women in Classic Literature Adaptations


February: Women of Color in Film and Television


March: Women and Gender in Foreign Films

April: Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss in Film and Television

May: Feminist Travel Films

June: Women in Wedding Movies

July: Women with Disabilities in Film and Television

August: Women in Sports

September: Older Women in Film and Television

October: Women and Gender in Cult Films and B-Movies

November: Male Feminists/Allies

December: Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists in Film and Television