Helena Bonham Carter – Bitch Flicks

Rewritten History: Affecting in ‘Brooklyn’, Not So Much in ‘Suffragette’

I was surprised at how enjoyable and skillfully made ‘Brooklyn’ is: I cried when everyone else did and gasped when the rest of the audience did too, but in spite of its excellent art direction and affecting performances the film is mostly hokum. New York in the 1950s is a place where no one the main character hangs out with smokes (when all of the men and the majority of women were smokers). Most of the characters barely drink (just one glass at Christmas) and, except for a child’s brief outburst at a family dinner table, (“I should say that we don’t like Irish people”) none of its white, working-class, ethnic characters have any problem with any other ethnic group.

I’m never enamored of the cleaned-up, ambiguity-free nostalgia that movies, especially mainstream ones, serve to their audiences in the guise of “history” so I avoided John Crowley’s Brooklyn (written by Nick Hornby from the novel by Colm Tóibín) about an Irish immigrant, Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) in the US. The Irish have been romanticized in films as early as The Quiet Man (a new release when the film takes place) and romanticized among Irish Americans for as long as the Irish have been coming to the US. But when Brooklyn began raking in awards (especially for Ronan) I decided to see it.

I was surprised at how enjoyable and skillfully made Brooklyn is: I cried when everyone else did and gasped when the rest of the audience did too, but in spite of its excellent art direction and affecting performances the film is mostly hokum. New York in the 1950s is a place where no one the main character hangs out with smokes (when all of the men and the majority of women were smokers). Most of the characters barely drink (just one glass at Christmas) and, except for a child’s brief outburst at a family dinner table, (“I should say that we don’t like Irish people”) none of its white, working-class, ethnic characters have any problem with any other ethnic group. In the actual 1950s, my mother, just a few years younger than Eilis is in the film, lived in an Irish American neighborhood in Boston, much like the one the film shows in New York and wasn’t allowed to date Italian boys because, her father explained, “They beat their women.” We never find out what the main characters in Brooklyn think of Jewish people (since the church still taught then that the Jews killed Christ, that opinion probably wasn’t favorable) because none of them encounter any, even though plenty of Jewish people lived in Brooklyn in the 1950s. And Black people in this film are at the farthest periphery: two women in a crowd crossing a street and a Black couple is shown on the beach at Coney Island.

Eilis’s family in small-town Ireland is prosperous enough that her sister works as a bookkeeper and they live with their mother in a decent house, but Eilis immigrates anyway to a sales clerk job, arranged by a kindly priest (Jim Broadbent), at a department store in New York. In other words, she’s the kind of immigrant even the Republican party of today would like: white and “respectable.” She’s not the kind who comes to the country without papers, or has to learn English, scrub floors or work as a nanny and she doesn’t have an impoverished family in her home country to worry about. When being well-cared-for in her new home becomes too much for Eilis, her suddenly sympathetic boss (Jessica Paré) has the priest swoop into the store break room and tell Eilis he’s signed her up for bookkeeping classes at Brooklyn College. He tells her, “Homesickness is like most sicknesses. It will pass.”

Priests in the US at the time took collection money from their parishioners and gave them very little in return so to have one dole out college tuition after arranging a sales clerk job seems far-fetched, and for the recipient of both favors to be a young “marriageable” woman the priest barely knows seems like something from a parallel universe. For women in the 1950s, especially those in the working class (even ambitious ones like Eilis) the endgame was marriage, not a career. “Real” men (especially working-class ones) didn’t let their wives work outside the home (unless the family was poor), but Eilis’s middle-class, Italian-American, plumber boyfriend (Emory Cohen, a standout in a very good cast) walks her home from her night classes and loves hearing about her studies. His parents and his brothers seem equally charmed instead of exchanging nervous glances and asking, “You’re not a career girl, are you?” The only way a daughter-in-law in that type of family in the 1950s could work would be in her husband’s business — and even then she probably wouldn’t be given a salary for the first decade or so.

What priests did then (and for decades afterward) was browbeat women for working when they had children at home: if they encouraged women to go to college, the goal was for the women to find husbands there and never work outside the home again. If their husbands then beat or neglected them, the priests told the women they must be at fault (this mindset was a secular one at the time too) and they must never, ever get divorced. At the boarding house where Eilis lives she talks about marriage with a woman whose husband has left her for “someone else.” We never have a clue, in all of Eilis’s longing for her old hometown that a woman in that same situation wouldn’t be able to get divorced in Ireland until the very last part of the 20th century, a detail that a woman screenwriter or director probably wouldn’t leave out.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15syDwC000k” iv_load_policy=”3″]

Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette (with a screenplay by Abi Morgan) is another film I put off watching, because even with its creaky plot device of seeing historical events through the eyes of a fictional “composite” character the film apparently still managed to leave women of color out of the fight for British women’s suffrage as well as omitting another integral element, the queerness of some of the most famous suffragettes.

The film isn’t as bad as I feared it might be (or perhaps it just looked good compared to the film I saw just before it: The Danish Girl) but its problems are not just because it’s about white, straight women. Carey Mulligan does what she can with the lead role, Maud, who works at the laundry and is radicalized by a coworker–and by witnessing police beating up “Votes for Women” protesters. The film could do a much better job of integrating present-day concerns with what happened to “radicals” then, with its scenes of not just police brutality and political groups using bombs and violence as a means to bring about change, but the treatment of political prisoners and the force-feeding of hunger-strikers.

We see Helena Bonham Carter in another old-fashioned role: the audience/main character’s guide to the movement but we don’t see what we do in Brooklyn’s portrait of the women in the boarding house: the sense of the group of women as a clique, a cornerstone of the women’s suffrage movement which needs to exist in any radical political movement. If a woman’s family and old friends think her ideals are anathema, she needs to find peers who share those ideals and who will be her new friends — and new family. Except for a few, not very compelling scenes, we don’t get the sense of Maud as part of a group that supports her, just that she’s an outcast from her old life. The film contains very little we haven’t seen before and what’s new in it is allowed onscreen only very briefly: like the idea that Maud, who has worked most of her life including her childhood, would find motherhood her first opportunity to engage in play.

The film instead becomes a guessing game of what horrible thing can happen to Maud next. Suffragette has the chance to contain more dramatic tension when a police captain asks her to be an informant in exchange for dropping charges (another situation with present day parallels). He tells his men, “We’ve identified weaknesses in their ranks. We’re hoping one of them will break.”

But instead of considering the offer or pretending to inform while acting as a double-agent, Maud just writes an impassioned letter to him about the righteousness of her cause. In the end, Maud is just as dull and unimaginative as the film is, which is a shame, because the real-life figures in this fight were never boring.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=056FI2Pq9RY” iv_load_policy=”3″]

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

‘Fight Club’: From Marla Singer’s Viewpoint

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched Fight Club. Every time I view it, I end up noticing something new. How did I miss that before? This time, Marla Singer (played by Helena Bonham Carter) captured my attention. What would the situations in the movie look like from her viewpoint?

This guest post by Jen Thorpe appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

Fight Club was released in 1999. It has some spectacular quotes, a great deal of violence, and an awesome cast. When people write about this movie, they tend to focus on the Narrator (played by Edward Norton) and Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) and the connection between the two.

I’m going to assume that everyone reading this has already seen the movie. For those who haven’t, be warned, there will be spoilers here.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched Fight Club. Every time I view it, I end up noticing something new. How did I miss that before? This time, Marla Singer (played by Helena Bonham Carter) captured my attention. What would the situations in the movie look like from her viewpoint?

Perhaps the easiest way to describe Marla would be to do it from a chronological viewpoint. There is a scene where Marla and Tyler have just finished having loud and vigorous sex. The two are lying on the bed, with satisfied looks on their faces, when Marla reveals something incredibly shocking about her past.

She says: “My God. I haven’t been fucked like that since grade school.” Let that sink in for a second. Grade school (or Elementary school) typically has students that are in kindergarten through fifth or sixth grade. That means that Marla could not have been more than eleven years old when she had a very active sexual experience of the type that she was now having with Tyler.

In the movie, nothing more is said about it. She would have been well below the legal age of consent. It is clear she was raped. Most people don’t go from being a complete virgin directly to having the type of sex that Tyler and Marla had in Fight Club. I worry that she was sexually abused when she was even younger than eleven, and that the abuse continued for years.

Marla shares what would be, for most people, an incredibly difficult and traumatic childhood experience, as if it were normal. She doesn’t seem to be trying to shock Tyler. There is no need for her to do so – she already had his full attention at the moment. Instead, it seems like she is trying to give Tyler an incredibly awkward compliment on his skills in bed.

As an adult, Marla spends every night attending self-help groups for diseases that she doesn’t have. She walks into a room filled with people who are dying from cancer while smoking a cigarette. Marla doesn’t just sit there; she actually participates in whatever therapeutic situation the group chooses to do. It is as though she is daring someone to confront her, to call her a liar, to notice her.

People who are emotionally healthy do not spend every night in the basement of a church in an attempt to cope with a disease that they do not actually have. But, Marla isn’t emotionally healthy. On some level, she realizes that she is damaged and needs help. Unfortunately, she has no idea how to reach out for the help she needs.

She had to have noticed that there was a guy who was also showing up at the same self-help groups that she was. She doesn’t know his name because these groups are anonymous. The two stare across the room at each other, but never speak.

One day, the guy walks up to Marla and begins a conversation with her. Finally, someone reached out to her! Someone wants to talk to her – maybe about why they both feel the need to go to all these self-help groups. The two accidentally end up as each other’s partner at the self-help group for testicular cancer.

Tyler and Marla at the testicular cancer group

Somehow, they actually share a moment together. This, despite the fact that this guy is trying to convince Marla to go away – to stop going to the groups. The testicular cancer group ends with two partners sharing their feelings, hugging each other, and crying.

How long had it been since somebody hugged Marla? She, and the guy whose name she doesn’t even know yet, actually share something meaningful about how they feel, deep down inside. For a few, brief, seconds, they speak from their hearts.

Narrator: When people think you’re dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just…

Marla Singer: instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.

I believe that brief conversation is what made Marla become interested in him. This, despite the fact that he follows her after the self-help group ends and reiterates that he never wants to see her again. This guy insists that they split up the self-help groups between the two of them so he won’t have to be in the same room with her. That must have really hurt Marla.

The first time I watched Fight Club, that scene amused me. Two people, both of whom are physically healthy, are fighting over diseases that they want to have. “No, I want cancer!” It’s preposterous.

Look a little closer, and there is so much more going on. Marla is angry at him. She fights with him about which self-help groups she gets, and which he gets, the entire conversation. It’s like she is trying to hold on to them because being there gives her something she is not finding in her life.

The two walk into a laundromat, yelling and screaming at each other. Everyone in the place had to have taken notice of them. They probably looked like a couple who was having the type of fight that ends with a breakup.

Marla walks directly over to the dryers, and pulls out more than one load of jeans. She bundles them up in her arms and leaves the laundromat, still yelling. At first glance, it looks like she must have put her laundry in the dryer before the self-help group, and was going back to pick up her clothes. No one else in the laundromat seems to think anything is amiss.

But then, she walks into a shop and sells all of the jeans. This shocks the guy (whose name she still doesn’t know), so he asks if she is selling her clothes. Meanwhile, the woman behind the counter is assessing the value of the jeans. Yes, Marla insists, I am selling my clothes.

Here’s the thing, though. Does Marla ever wear jeans? Those aren’t her clothes! She brazenly marched into the laundromat and stole them, with complete confidence that she would get away with it. I think this is how Marla makes money. She never once, in the entire movie, talks about having a job.

Yet, she does, somehow, have an apartment. The electricity works, and so does the phone. Perhaps Marla is an incredibly talented “fence.”

By the time Marla is done selling the jeans, she, and the guy whose name she doesn’t know, have sorted out who will be attending which self-help group. He obviously doesn’t want anything to do with her. Marla basically throws herself into traffic. She crosses a busy street, as vehicles honk, without slowing down. This is the first clue we get that Marla is suicidal.

She stops somewhere in the middle of the street, turns around, and asks the guy his name. He stayed on the curb (as most people would do). Viewers do not get to hear his answer, but we later discover he told Marla his name was Tyler Durden.

This is significant. You’ve seen the movie, so you are well aware that the narrator and Tyler Durden are the same person. Or, rather, Tyler is a second personality who is sharing the same body with the Narrator. Marla doesn’t have any way to realize this. To her – he was always Tyler Durden.

Eventually, Marla notices that Tyler stopped going to the self-help groups that he fought so hard for. Instead of just letting him go, Marla decides to reach out to him. She calls him on the phone, out of the blue, and tells him that she has “a stomachful of Xanax.” It is a desperate attempt to get his attention. It also isn’t fake; she really did take too many pills.

She wraps the phone cord around her throat as she talks to Tyler, wondering aloud if he would hear her death rattle from over the phone. At the same time, she insists this is not a real suicide attempt – it’s one of those “cries for help.”

Long story short, Tyler goes to Marla’s apartment and knocks on the door. She pulls him inside, and it is clear she truly has taken way too many Xanax. The two leave the apartment together shortly before an emergency crew storms down the hallway. They pass by Tyler and Marla, as they ask where the apartment they are looking for is located.

Tyler and Marla run away together. All the while, she is screaming to the emergency crew about the woman who lives in the apartment they are trying to enter. I cannot recall her exact words, but it is to the effect that they shouldn’t try to bother saving her. That woman is a lost cause, a waste. Marla is literally shouting about how much she hates herself – shortly after attempting suicide.

This is the state she is in when Tyler takes her back to the run-down house he is squatting in. She sits on the dirty floor, drugged almost beyond comprehension, as she tells him that he will have to keep her up all night. He does, by having loud and vigorous sex with her. Once again, Marla is not in a state where she is able to give consent.

The next morning, Marla wakes up, puts her clothes back on, and goes downstairs. Tyler sits at the kitchen table, and seems shocked that she is still here. He kicks her out. From her viewpoint, he saved her life, had sex with her all night long, and now… wants nothing to do with her.

Someone loved this dress intensely, for just one night... and then threw it away. — Someone loved this dress intensely, for just one night… and then threw it away.

Marla makes several attempts to connect with Tyler anyway. One time, she arrives at his house wearing a bridesmaids dress that she got at a thrift store for one dollar. She notes that someone loved that dress, intensely, for just one night… and then threw it away. Again, she is talking about herself. Tyler is not able to pick up on it, and rejects her after she starts touching him.

After Marla leaves, Tyler appears and talks to the Narrator about her. Tyler says that the Narrator has some “fucked up friends,” and describes Marla as “limber.” The Narrator’s alternate personality is able to identify that Marla is a train wreck, while, at the same time, implying that she is interesting to have sex with.

Time passes, and Marla stays away from Tyler. One night, she takes the bus and arrives at the house he lives in. To her shock, there are tons of guys in the yard, and in the house. The air smells badly, and Tyler looks upset.

He tells Marla that Tyler is not here. Imagine, having the guy you are (more or less) dating tell you that he isn’t there. He’s standing right in front of you! She must think he is messing with her head, and she storms off to get back on the bus.

Toward the end of the movie, the Narrator finally figures out that he is Tyler Durden. He does some fact checking, travels around, and puts it all together. Now, it’s his turn to call Marla, from out of the blue. He insists that she say his name – and she does – Tyler Durden. After that, he hangs up the phone.

Marla and Tyler sort of breakup. Marla meets him in a restaurant, where he insists that she must leave town. Of course, the person in front of her is the Narrator, not Tyler. Even so, Marla says that he is just too messed up and she’s “done.” She takes the money he’s been trying to give her, says she won’t pay it back (“consider it asshole tax”) and gets on the bus.

Holding hands while the world come tumbling down

The scene that begins the movie is the same one that ends it. This time, Tyler’s army have kidnapped Marla and are bringing her, kicking and screaming, to Tyler. The two hold hands as they share the perfect view of the buildings around them blowing up and crumbling. That image is Marla’s entire life. She has always been searching for one, small, meaningful connection with someone, who will be there when the world falls apart.

Jen Thorpe is a freelance writer, podcaster, and gamer. She is the cofounder of the No Market website (nomarket.org) and writes for it frequently on a wide variety of topics and subjects. You can keep up with everything she does by following her @queenofhaiku.

‘Les Miserables’: The Feminism Behind the Barricades

Written by Leigh Kolb

Feminist ethics typically defines feminist philosophy as focusing on morality and relationships and not just traditionally masculine justice.

While Les Miserables features female characters who do exist largely to save men, this larger feminism vs. patriarchy dilemma is at work between the ideologies of Jean Valjean and Javert.

A Washington Post writer bemoaned how anti-feminist Les Mis truly is, with its stereotypical women who “exist not to drive the plot but to sacrifice for the men, the real stars of the show.” She refers to them as “bit players” in the musical, and notices that the women are all “abused” and “marginalized.” Yet as a feminist, she can’t help but love it.

While the female characters indeed do suffer to save men, there is much more at play in this film (an adaptation of the stage adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 19th century novel).

From the very beginning, we know that the hero’s journey belongs to Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), and that his path of self-realization will be the heart of the plot. After being “saved” by a compassionate priest, he vows to change himself (literally and figuratively, as his convict papers limited his employment possibilities). Eight years later, he has a new name and is mayor of a new town and a factory owner.

Fantine (Anne Hathaway) is a worker in a factory when she is introduced to the audience. The group of women–in sweatshop conditions–sing “At the End of the Day.” The lyrics showcase poverty, a lecherous foreman, hungry children and dismal working conditions. Fantine is fired for hiding that she has a child (the assumption is that she is immoral, which her co-workers pounce on). Valjean does not fight the foreman to keep her employed, and she is fired.

Fantine, in pink, works to support her child.

Fantine is the ultimate suffering mother, and Hathaway does a remarkable job at portraying her suffering when she chooses (out of necessity) to sell her hair, necklace, teeth and body. “I Dreamed a Dream” was incredible, especially considering the actors sang live during filming. Fantine’s plight is clearly the fault of awful men–the man who impregnated and then left her, the abusive foreman, the disgusting johns–she is a fighting victim, and she has the audience’s sympathies.

When Valjean saves Fantine from Javert (Russell Crowe), who was arresting her because he believed her abusive customer over her, and takes her to the hospital, he realizes that he’d let this happen, albeit passively, and pledges to take care of her daughter.

Fantine’s transformation into a dying prostitute.

Valjean realizes that he hadn’t done what he should have in the first place, and makes up for it (this is really Valjean in a nutshell). Unlike the strict Javert, who lives rigidly within a patriarchal code of justice, Valjean’s morality grows and evolves, as he questions himself and the world around him.

The film introduces a new song, “Suddenly,” placed after Valjean rescues Cosette from the Thenardiers (Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, in roles that seem made for them). As she sleeps, he expresses her transformative effect on him. Having a child gives him new hope and life. He sings, “Suddenly I see / What I could not see / Something suddenly / Has begun.” This stereotypically feminine maternal love for a child changes Valjean.

Cosette and Valjean save one another other.

Javert identifies Valjean by his brute strength, because that is all he can see in his fight for black and white justice.

In “Stars,” Javert’s ode to order and righteousness, he subscribes to a religion that is authoritative and patriarchal. His views of justice contrast Valjean’s and are deeply rooted in traditional masculinity. Valjean’s religion is about grace, empathy and compassion, and his justice is not about man’s law, but about morality and care–typically feminine virtues.

Javert, after the revolt.

Many of us fell deeply in love with Les Mis as young girls and “tweens,” and the plights of Cosette dreaming about a castle on a cloud, or Eponine longing for someone in a different world who doesn’t love her back, tugged on our pubescent heartstrings. The music never ceases being beautiful, but as we get older, we understand the larger implications of Fantine’s suffering, Valjean’s existential crises and Javert’s clinging to justice without morality.

The class issues that drive the story are introduced with Valjean and Fantine, and come to a head with the revolt led by university students against the injustice of poverty. Eponine’s (Samantha Barks) unrequited love for Marius (Eddie Redmayne) is painful, but she is still a strong female character. She leads Marius to Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) and fights behind the barricades. The film shows her binding her breasts during “One Day More,” and when she pulls the rifle away from Marius so she is shot, the audience sees it up close. She’s sacrificial, obviously, but independent and strong, doing what she needs to do for her community, herself and Marius. Her plight symbolizes an oppressive system of social classes more than it does weak womanhood.

Eponine, a victim of poverty, terrible parents and unrequited love.

When Gavroche sings about “little people,” and is eventually killed, he also is a symbol of the evils of oppression.

Cosette and Marius are equally smitten with one another (no games, no desperation). When Valjean learns about their love for one another, he’s in the midst of wanting to flee to get away from Javert. When he hears of the revolt, he goes, largely to protect Marius. He doesn’t know Marius, but he knows his daughter loves him, and that’s enough. He pleads with God to “bring him (Marius) home,” and protect him. When Marius is shot, Valjean saves him anonymously. He loves Cosette so much that he is willing to risk his life for a man who she loves, and he trusts her judgment. Women aren’t the only sacrificial figures here.

Valjean has the opportunity to kill Javert, but refuses. Javert commits suicide when he is faced with an inner conflict that he can’t resolve. Javert sings:

“Damned if I’ll live in the debt of a thief!

Damned if I’ll yield at the end of the chase.

I am the Law and the Law is not mocked

I’ll spit his pity right back in his face

There is nothing on earth that we share

It is either Valjean or Javert!”

This dualistic view of mankind’s nature and society loses–at its own hand. Valjean’s morality overcomes Javert’s strict code of justice.

When Marius and Cosette reunite in “Every Day,” Valjean sings “She was never mine to keep / She is youthful / She is free.” This epiphany should lift up any feminist’s heart, because that’s a pretty refreshing thing to hear from someone, much less a 19th-century father.

Marius and Cosette.

After they are married, Cosette and Marius find Valjean (who has exiled himself again and is staying in a convent). Valjean gives Cosette a letter with his life story, and as he’s dying, he sees Fantine and the priest and goes toward them.

The ending is a gorgeous reprise of “Do You Hear the People Sing,” as Valjean goes toward an enormous barricade and sees all those who have died. While there has been a great deal of loss throughout the film, this ending is uplifting. The message is that love has prevailed–platonic love, familial love and romantic love.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines feminist ethics as questioning traditional ethics:

“…traditional ethics overrates culturally masculine traits like ‘independence, autonomy, intellect, will, wariness, hierarchy, domination, culture, transcendence, product, asceticism, war, and death,’ while it underrates culturally feminine traits like ‘interdependence, community, connection, sharing, emotion, body, trust, absence of hierarchy, nature, immanence, process, joy, peace, and life’ … it favors ‘male’ ways of moral reasoning that emphasize rules, rights, universality, and impartiality over ‘female’ ways of moral reasoning that emphasize relationships, responsibilities, particularity, and partiality (Alison Jagger, ‘Feminist Ethics’).”

Javert clearly embodies traditional, masculine traits and an obsession with rules. Valjean, on the other hand, grows into a sympathetic hero by developing a more feminine morality (putting a priority on connection, questioning hierarchy, working for peace and developing relationships). Valjean is our hero.

While Javert’s Christianity drives his actions (he sings “Mine is the way of the Lord” in “Stars”), Valjean’s stumbling toward Christianity is more authentic and is portrayed as preferable, with a focus on forgiveness, sacrifice and giving. As he’s dying, he sings along with the ghost of Fantine, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” This is the truth we’re supposed to walk away with–not the truth of laws and authority, but the truth of emotional vulnerability and mercy.

The women of Les Miserables suffer and sacrifice for men, and their plights certainly propel the men’s stories. Cosette, who is more one-dimensional than the other women, survives and thrives. She had the privilege of having a good parent and being in love, which again shows the importance of good relationships.

The only way, then, that Les Miserables could be anti-feminist is if Javert and his worldview had won. But he doesn’t; instead, the audience is supposed to celebrate what are often considered culturally feminine traits and morality. Les Miserables is critical of social injustice, poverty and oppression. And at the end of the day, that sounds like feminism.

The barricades are erected and are triumphant at the end of the film.

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

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: The Reception of Corpse Bride

This review by Myrna Waldron previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on September 13, 2012.

Corpse Bride Poster (Source: Wikipedia.org)

Corpse Bride is that odd film that is both original and derivative at the same time. Based on a Yiddish folk tale, it is a stop-motion animated film directed by bizarre auteur Tim Burton, and featuring his three favourite people: Johnny Depp plays Victor, Helena Bonham Carter plays Emily, and Danny Elfman writes the score and the musical sequences. (The film also features other Burton mainstays such as Christopher Lee and Michael Gough.) Burton also worked with Laika Entertainment, which is a studio that would later release Coraline and ParaNorman. (Apparently they are unable to make films that are not horror-comedies.) Although it is stylistically similar to The Nightmare Before Christmas (to the point where the theatrical trailer used music from “What’s This?), Burton was NOT the director of that film – he only wrote the original poem that inspired the film, and had a producer credit. Henry Selick was the director for both Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline.

Corpse Bride is generally a charming film, with some interesting themes centered around acceptance of death, arranged marriage, and the differences of women. The score and musical sequences are catchy, and the stop-motion animation is top-notch. I often found myself thinking, “How did they DO that?” I was particularly pleasantly surprised at how well the women were developed in the story. This is something I think Tim Burton does fairly well, at least judging from the films I’ve seen of his based on original stories – the women in his films are generally proactive, multi-dimensional and serve an important role in his films. He may have started to become a parody of himself in his later years, but he is one of the few mainstream directors whose personal style makes an indelible impression on the film.

Emily, looking uncharacteristically spooky. (Source: TimBurtonCollective.com)

One aspect of the story that I want to discuss is its treatment of arranged marriage. We know that the film takes place in a European village in the Victorian era – everyone speaks with British accents (which, as we all know, is just movie shorthand for “European” and not necessarily “English”). Because the film is based on a Yiddish folk tale, I’m going to assume it takes place in Eastern Europe. Western aversion to arranged marriage is a fairly recent development, as it was a normal occurrence (especially for rich families) at least up to the beginning of the 20th Century. One can also look at the story of Fiddler on the Roof to see how important arranged marriage was to Jewish culture.

One of the first conflicts of the story is centred around Victor van Dort’s shyness and nervousness about his impending arranged marriage to the sweet but sheltered Victoria Everglot. The Van Dorts are nouveau riche social climbers, the Everglots are penniless aristocrats. It is quickly established that although their marriage would be arranged, Victor and Victoria genuinely like each other and their marriage is likely to be a happy one. This contrasts with the Everglots’ own arranged marriage – they bluntly tell Victoria that marriage is a partnership, and that they don’t like each other at all. Whether this is because they are badly matched or because they are very unpleasant people (the latter being more likely) remains to be seen. This also contrasts with Victoria’s forced marriage to Lord Barkis Bittern, who is a gold digger bragging to the Everglots about his riches. Although she is distraught by it, Victoria is forced to marry Barkis because her family is destitute. It is heavily implied that Lord Barkis planned to murder and rob Victoria just as he had done to Emily.

Victor and Emily about to (re)marry. (Source: Digitalrendezvous.net)

A further contrast to the arranged marriages are the marriages (or intended ones, anyway) made for love. Emily’s backstory reveals that she fell in love with a poor stranger, but was banned from marrying him by her wealthy (and probably snobbish) father. She makes plans to elope with the stranger, who instead robs and murders her, leaving her for dead in the forest where Victor unwittingly discovers her. Another marriage for love, though more in the agape sense than the eros, happens after Victor and Emily learn that their marriage is invalid since death has already parted them, Victor makes the incredibly loving choice to sacrifice his life so that he can make Emily happy. He is heartbroken at the time since he thinks he has lost Victoria forever, but it is a tremendous sacrifice on his part for someone he has only known for a few days. Emily halts the marriage after realizing that she cannot take the dreams away from someone else after having her dreams of love and marriage taken from her.

It is convoluted, but it is easy to interpret that the moral perspective of the film is that arranged marriage is acceptable, and love within an arranged marriage even better, but impulsively marrying for love is dangerous. However, Victoria’s two marriages and the contrast therein present a very feminist message of agency. Although distraught, Victoria is going along with the marriage to save her family. It turns out to be a sham marriage to a murderous gold digger, so Victoria’s fortuitous and quick widowing allows her to make her own choice. She may have chosen the man she was going to marry anyway, but it’s obvious that Victor truly cares about her AND will help her family (whether or not they deserve it).

Another aspect of the story I wish to discuss is the characterizations of Emily, the Corpse Bride, and Victoria, the very prim and proper Living Bride. Although there is a subtle “Betty and Veronica” dichotomy, neither is expressly presented as the “ideal” match for Victor in the love triangle. The only reason Emily does not end up with Victor is simply because she is dead – not because she is conniving, nasty, or not as attractive as Victoria. Oddly enough, it’s implied that Emily was more attractive, as she’s surprisingly cute for a corpse. She’s also got…rather defined curves for someone so otherwise decayed. When she becomes jealous of Victoria, there is a legitimate reason for her to feel this way – she points out that she is married to Victor. And notably, her anger is mostly directed at Victor, not at Victoria, which is important since the woman tends to get the blame in love triangle/cheating situations, regardless of which partner is the one who does the cheating. When Emily’s friends try to cheer her up by pointing out her presumably superior traits, she is not swayed by this – her heartbreak is not that Victor loves another, it is that as a dead woman she can never truly win his heart. However, it is implied near the end that Victor is the true love of both women. In the “Remains of the Day” sequence, it is said that Emily was waiting for her true love to come set her free. Victor’s intended sacrifice, and Emily’s realization that she can’t take away the dreams of marriage and love from Victoria after having her own dreams taken, are the catalysts that allow Emily to be set free and “move on,” so to speak.

Victoria looks at Victor after catching Emily’s bouquet. (Source: Drafthouse.com)

There is also a strong contrast in the upbringing of the women. Victoria has a severely strict mother, with the most stereotypically draconian morality of the Victorian era. She has been banned from playing the piano, as music is “too passionate” and “improper” for a young lady – a curious contradiction to social norms, as young women in the 18th and 19th centuries were expected to know how to play piano, sing, and otherwise entertain their guests. She is also dressed in a severe black gown, and forced to wear a corset tied so tightly that her mother expects her to speak while gasping. Emily, on the other hand, is wearing a rather anachronistic wedding gown, with ample cleavage and a long slit up the thigh. (Though the slit in the skirt of the dress may have just been damage from the murder/decay) She also plays piano enthusiastically, dances, and sings. She’s wholly passionate, a true capital R Romantic. Both came from rich families, but it is obvious that Emily was raised with far more love and freedom than Victoria was. It is a miracle, then, that Victoria did not turn out like her sour and nasty parents – she is shy, but sweet and strong-willed. Notably, neither woman is afraid to stand up to those who hurt them (and Emily gets the rare opportunity to confront her own murderer).

The film is fairly feminist for a horror-comedy, but it’s not perfect. There are at least two fat jokes in the story – a mean-spirited form of discrimination that needs to just end already. I was particularly annoyed that Mrs. Van Dort is portrayed as not being aware just how fat she is. Let’s set the record straight – if someone’s fat, they KNOW, thank you. There are also no people of colour in the cast at all. I suppose this is partly justified in that it takes place in Victorian Eastern Europe, and the aesthetic of the living village is severe whites, blacks, and greys, but there’s no reason there couldn’t have been minorities in the underworld village. The closest thing we get to POC representation is a skeletal parody of Ray Charles during the “Remains of the Day” sequence. I suppose Bonejangles, Danny Elfman’s showcase character, could have been black. It’s not really easy to tell when someone’s a skeleton, of course.

Emily talks with Victor’s skeletal dog, Scraps. (Source: Allmoviephoto.com)

I do recommend Corpse Bride to fans of stop-motion animation, supernatural horror, fairy tales and British-style comedy. It’s yet another Tim Burton film where he does more of the same, but it’s far more watchable than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Alice In Wonderland. The music is great, the performances are great, the humour is great. I also really like the message that death is nothing to be afraid of, that we all face it someday and the best we can do is to live our lives the best way we can. Fans of Corpse Bride should also check out Tim Burton’s early film Vincent, Henry Selick’s films like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline and Monkeybone, and Laika’s films like Coraline and ParaNorman. I hope to see more films about a love triangle where both women are portrayed positively, and appear to genuinely care about each other. It’s about time that Hollywood realized that women are not split into two distinct types, nor are they always likely to blame one another for a love triangle.

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Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.

The Reception of ‘Corpse Bride’

Corpse Bride Poster (Source: Wikipedia.org)

The Reception of Corpse Bride

By Myrna Waldron

Emily, looking uncharacteristically spooky. (Source: TimBurtonCollective.com)

Victor and Emily about to (re)marry. (Source: Digitalrendezvous.net)

Victoria looks at Victor after catching Emily’s bouquet. (Source: Drafthouse.com)

Emily talks with Victor’s skeletal dog, Scraps. (Source: Allmoviephoto.com)

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: The King’s Speech

The King’s Speech: An Intimate, Winning Look into a Powerful Male Relationship

This is a guest review by Roopa Singh.

Prince Albert is “Bertie” to his inner circle (Colin Firth), and has a debilitating stutter, but the British Empire needs him to step up into his father’s Kingly shoes (George V, played by Michael Gambon), and be a powerful orator. Bertie’s ability to lead is intricately linked to his ability to speak, particularly as the World War approaches, and the changing tides of technology make worldwide radio broadcasts ubiquitous for all rulers. With quirky but powerful help from speech therapist Lionel Logue (an inspiring Geoffrey Rush), and the charismatic support of his wife (Helena Bonham Carter as Queen Elizabeth), Bertie overcomes his speech impediment and goes on to, as a final title card states, become a symbol of resistance against the tide of Nazism. Or so the movie would have us believe. What’s also true is that The King’s Speech is a lovely, ingratiating film about the lavish family behind a violent colonialist empire erupting in a tide of human protest during the very period of the film.

I live in New York City, and when I went to see the film in Union Square, it had already been nominated for a whopping 12 Academy Awards. It was a packed movie house, and even in the midst of the most diverse locale in America, the audience was almost exclusively older, white couples. To be clear, I liked the film, and I’m not suggesting it needed to broaden its treatment of the King as, say, the British Raj. But if this audience was any indication, most people walked away from The King’s Speech without understanding to whom exactly we’ve been so adeptly ingratiated.

The film is book-ended by two pivotal public speaking engagements for Prince Albert, who later ascends to the throne as King George VI. The film opens in 1925 at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium, and closes in 1939 with a global radio broadcast declaration of war with Germany. To contextualize this time period, in 1925, M.K. Ghandi had recently been released from a two-year prison sentence awarded by order of the British Raj for his galvanizing leadership in the anti-colonialist Indian Independence movement. 1930 saw M.K. Ghandi leading the galvanizing Salt March through an economically crippled India, a strategic moment in sovereignty struggle. As I watched, laughed, and rooted for Bertie to speak with all his might, I couldn’t help but reflect upon the worldwide impact of his every word. It is always worthwhile to qualify any fawning, particularly in a rather segregated western popular culture market. That being said, The King’s Speech is a loveable film framed around acute performance anxiety, something we can all relate to.

It took a solid team led by Director Tom Hooper to create this uniquely intimate period film. Period films can come off stuffy, but here the outdoor shots glint with bracing, misty energy and the indoor shots are defined by palpable, direct-gaze intimacy. Recall the intriguing approach of Elizabeth’s chauffered car creeping along cobblestone streets towards Logue’s home, horse drawn carriages and other period mise-en-scene coming in and out of fog. There was the dewy sunlight of the sculpted garden scene where Bertie, nursing wounds from a scathing run-in with popular brother David (Guy Pearce as King Edward VIII), walked away from Logue in a fit of defensive anger, his sharply outlined shadow trailing him like an afterthought of remorse. Internal shots are palpably and unusually intimate. Take for example, the film’s numerous peeks into Bertie’s mouth, gargling, inadvertently spitting in effort, or full of marbles. There is the stark, dignified honesty of the curling turquoise decay that marks the wall in Logue’s speech therapy room.

Notably, the film tends towards flat, pictorial frames, direct eye gazes, and close-up, slightly de-centered frames. Manohla Dargis, in her New York Times review, bemoaned Hooper’s “unwise” use of the fish-eye lens as a too literal metaphor for Bertie’s life in a fishbowl. But I found the close-ups ultimately supportive of the film’s overall tone. A direct gaze shot of Logue at the head of his family dinner table suitably emphasizes how this very place, from where he is now looking at us, is perhaps the only place where this talented yet under-employed therapist retains a sense of power.

It cannot be said that this film has any meaningful roles for women, who are simply not the focus in this story. No matter how much is written about Helena Bonham Carter’s canny and compassionate Elizabeth, the film boils down to cinematic basics when it comes to women. There are two doting wives (Jennifer Ehle as Myrtle Logue), one frowned upon mistress (Eve Best as Mrs. Wallis Simpson), and three rather doll-like daughters. Aside from a small battle of wills between Bertie and Elizabeth (in which we taste a tiny bit of her wry cunning as the Red Queen in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland), there is not a hint of nuance for any female role. No, you don’t watch this film to see women shine. Instead, what makes The King’s Speech unique is its tender treatment of a relationship between two men, Logue with his power to heal, and Bertie with his power to rule.

Rarely have I seen such exploration, such daring vulnerability in the portrayal of male relations on the contemporary western cinematic screen. Perhaps being the King of an Empire allows for this intimacy, because regardless of how vulnerable Bertie reveals himself to be, he still rules. The King and his unlicensed speech doctor navigate class differences adeptly, heartbreakingly, on their way to foraging the trust needed for Bertie’s impediment to heal. While Logue is humble, he never concedes honor, and it is this adroit balance that allows us to willingly follow where he may take us, especially when the road is audacious (casually calling him Bertie! making the King cuss and roll about on the floor!). For Bertie’s part, it is painfully evident that he rarely, if ever, had a truly intimate relationship with another man. His father nit-picked and neglected him, his older brother demeans him with ferocious skill, and a stuttering would-be King is born. The awards Colin Firth is racking up for his portrayal of Bertie surely have to do with his ability to embody the process by which a rock of defenses sincerely and helplessly cracks open.

By all pre-Oscar indicators, The King’s Speech is securely in line for recognition at the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony. The question is, what will the film garner stateside, given stiff competition from critically fawned-over flicks like The Social Network and Black Swan?

The King’s Speech swept in five major categories at the UK Oscars, otherwise known as the BAFTA Awards (British Academy of Film and Television Arts). This was a resounding showing despite an arguable snub by the British Film Institutes monthly magazine, Sight and Sound, in their popular top ten poll.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the film hasn’t fared as well stateside, but it’s still getting some shine. Lead actor Colin Firth won a Golden Globe and a SAG Award (Screen Actors Guild), and the film earned another SAG for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. If I had to predict, I’d say The King’s Speech will at best win in one major category (that won’t offset the domestic darlings from their perch), such as Best Supporting Actor, and in one or two less high profile awards such as Best Original Score. If you haven’t already seen it, go see it while it’s still in the theater, especially if you know what it’s like to quake a little before a public performance of speech or song. The film’s intimate look at the somatics of sound and breath will get you in the gut, and before you know you’ll be laughing and rooting hard for the King. But do me one favor, just don’t forget who you’re rooting for.

Roopa is finishing her Masters in Cinema Studies at Tisch/NYU, and got her law degree from UC Berkeley in 2003. She loves writing and teaching about the political context of contemporary popular culture, and often blogs at her site, http://politicalpoet.wordpress.com. And truly, she can’t believe how much The King’s Speech had her empathizing with the damn Raj.