‘Pencils Down!’ chronicles the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike that largely brought television production to a standstill, through a combination of footage shot at the time, and reflective interviews shot in 2014-15. … In exploring the WGA strike, and the economics of how TV writers are compensated for their work, ‘Pencils Down!’ circles back to the same core issues of fairness and greed.
Sometimes, I get fooled into believing that film sets are happy, magical places where artists immerse themselves in the joys of their craft and feel nothing but a deep sense of satisfaction at doing the work they love. Then, I watch a documentary like Pencils Down! The 100 Days of the Writers Guild Strike and remember that, for most people, this is a workplace like any other.
Pencils Down! chronicles the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike that largely brought television production to a standstill, through a combination of footage shot at the time, and reflective interviews shot in 2014-15. In his director’s note, Brian S. Kalata – a member of the WGA – explains that he originally envisioned this content as part of a larger project about labor unions in the U.S., and it’s clear that the seeds of that idea are still here. Pencils Down! is most invested in explaining why Americans need unions to protect their interests at the bargaining table (which they do), and somewhat less invested in what the WGA strike, specifically, accomplished (which is, arguably, not much).
The early parts of the documentary explain what the WGA strike was about – officially, residuals for work distributed over the internet; unofficially, residuals for work distributed on home video and DVD. Like every strike, though, the motivating factor is a sense of unfairness – of being exploited, cheated, and taken advantage of. It’s weird to see middle-class writers on strike, but whether you’re in a blue or white collar job doesn’t matter – even monkeys stop working if they find out they’re making less than everyone else. There’s something about being cheated that insults our basic sense of dignity.
When the Sony hack in 2014 last year revealed the gender wage discrepancies between the actors on American Hustle, Bradley Cooper went on record as saying that what Amy Adams was paid for her work was “almost embarrassing” and that he hoped she would speak up. It’s that sense of embarrassment that underlies many disputes over pay. What happened to Amy Adams (and to many other actresses, particularly women of color) is familiar to womenin many workplaces – the sickening moment you realize that, the entire time you thought you were doing just fine, you were really sitting at the bottom of the pay bracket while all your male coworkers got more. Right now, it’s fashionable to blame women for that – negotiate more, try harder, do a power pose in front of the mirror, be more like a dude – but the problem isn’t people who are too humble. The problem between studios and screenwriters is people who are too greedy and snatch up all the profit they can, as if they had earned it alone.
In exploring the WGA strike, and the economics of how TV writers are compensated for their work, Pencils Down! circles back to the same core issues of fairness and greed. In a nutshell, many people felt that the writers union had been tricked into accepting a bad deal on home video residuals and, even though that wasn’t on the table during the 2007 strike, their sense of justice wouldn’t allow them to be forced into accepting a similar deal on online distribution. It’s not a question of whether they’re being paid middle-class wages – it’s a question of whether the studio’s offer was insulting within the larger context of the industry. Not working in that industry, I don’t have an opinion about whether or not that was the case. But Pencils Down! is a reminder that, for people who do work in the entertainment industry, it’s a business like any other business and a workplace like any other workplace – the struggles that play out in office buildings and factories also play out in production studios, and the fundamental tensions between employers and employees are the same.
One interesting facet of the writer’s strike explored in the documentary is that the WGA was striking against corporations that owned the mainstream media outlets. Several people argue that that skewed coverage of the strike made it more difficult for the union to explain what was happening to outsiders. I don’t know whether or not that’s true, but it does seem like a conflict of interest.
Another interesting aspect of the strike is that, as the documentary draws to a close, the success of the strike seems unclear. No one is emphatically sure that the stress and lost wages were worth it, and no one is overjoyed with the contract the union eventually signed. In some ways, the most important questions raised by Pencils Down! are whether it’s worth it to strike if you ultimately lose the negotiation – or whether American workers can strike in an effective way anymore, when the toll on them is so much higher than the toll on corporations. Those aren’t questions Pencils Down! ultimately engages with – instead, the triumphant mood of the film’s first three quarters is followed by an uncertain finale as Kalata’s interviewees take an “it could be worse” perspective.
In his director’s note, Kalata also explains that, while he began with a list of over 100 potential interview subjects, almost no one was willing to talk to him on record. Of those who do appear in the film, actor Alan Rosenberg explains that, while he was very outspoken in support of the strike, it may have hurt his career, and he now regrets some of his words.
Workers’ rights, including the right to receive a fair share of the profits from one’s work, are an issue that’s, paradoxically, both public and private. Many people would rather not know if they’re being paid less than their coworkers or less than they’re worth, because they’d either have to live with a feeling of shame or risk the long term discomfort and possible job loss that follows from confrontation. In some ways, the most important part of Pencils Down! is Kalata’s unseen list of hundreds of interview subjects who declined to appear – the story of why it’s so gauche to talk about payment and how many people fear reprisal for speaking out.
Pencils Down! The 100 Days of the Writers Guild Strike is currently available on iTunes and other streaming services.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.
Whatever the other problems might be with this film (and they are many), my focus for this review is the character Tiger Lily, who was originally conceived as a racist stereotype by J.M. Barrie and who has had her Native identity completely erased in this latest iteration. Is this progress? I think not.
Pan has a 26 percent rating based on 152 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and having just come from a matinee viewing, I must say I agree with these critics. The Peter Pan narrative that we all know has been reconstructed as a sort of prequel, and not very imaginatively, while still retaining its racist roots. The Native people are called “natives” and “savages” multiple times and retain their feathers, facepaint, fringe, dancing, and primitive clothing to emulate a stereotypical idea of Native peoples, and even the map that Peter finds guides him to “Tribal Territory.” The actor playing Hook thinks he is Clint Eastwood in a Spaghetti Western, the Neverbirds are just bigger, more threatening versions of Kevin in Up, and the main actors who appear throughout the entire film are all white.
Whatever the other problems might be with this film (and they are many), my focus for this review is the character Tiger Lily, who was originally conceived as a racist stereotype by J.M. Barrie and who has had her Native identity completely erased in this latest iteration. Is this progress? I think not.
When J.M. Barrie’s original stage play, “Peter Pan; Or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up,” first appeared on the cultural scene, Miriam Skancke (stage name Nesbitt) played Tiger Lily. Nevermind the problem of reducing actual, living people to imaginary creatures in a fantasy land. According to Miriam’s father’s birth record, she appears to have been of Norwegian heritage. Certainly not Native American. So the fantasy creature, the “Indian princess,” Tiger Lily, started off in global imaginations as a beautiful white woman.
In 1911, Barrie published the novel version, Peter Pan, and soon more stage productions and the film industry came calling, clamoring for this children’s fantasy tale. From 1955-60, Broadway and the American TV industry brought the story to stage and TV with Sondra Lee playing Tiger Lily. Another white woman playing an offensive racist Native stereotype, with the music and dancing to match:
Here is where we need to be more critical of Warner Brothers, director Joe Wright, writer Jason Fuchs, and the casting staff responsible for adamantly refusing to re-conceive this problematic character into something more culturally appropriate and honorable. They DID take the time, energy, and money to construct a new narrative that explains how Peter Pan came to be; they reconstructed this narrative in myriad ways so as to make it clearly different from Barrie’s original, except where it concerns the “Natives.” Instead, they took the cowardly way out and completely whitewashed the character (while still retaining feathers, costuming, and even an Aboriginal actor as Tiger Lily’s father).
Bottom line here, Hollywood is lazy and greedy. They saw an opportunity to re-envision this narrative from stem to stern, possibly giving us a truly creative and compelling new story, but instead of also eliminating the racist stereotypes from the original, they chose to whitewash because that is the easier choice. From their perspective, it would have been too hard to reconstruct this “Indian princess” into a strong, brave, Native woman. Especially one who seems to be developing feelings for the future Captain Hook, who is white. Instead, they chose white actor Rooney Mara to portray a strong, brave, Native woman who wears beaded and feathered attire, long and dark braided hair, and colorful tribal makeup.
Who exactly do they think is fooled by this? Certainly none of us trying to encourage more respectful representations of Indigenous peoples. Plenty of reviewers, including one at Bitch Flicks, has pointed out the immense problems with the company and crew’s voluntary obtuseness to their heinous choices. In fact, director Joe Wright defended his choice.
So, Joe, you understand our criticisms, but were unable to find a Native woman to play a “badass” Native woman character?
Warner Brothers would rather hire a known white woman (as usual) and to completely whitewash the character than to spend a few minutes asking the writer to re-conceive this character to be more respectful of real, living, Native peoples, and then hiring a talented Native woman to play her. Because with all of the white racist fear out there in the viewing audience, they knew this whitewashed version of J.M. Barrie’s original would make them money. They know their audience.
Thankfully, at 26 percent approval rating, Pan will not be in theatres very long. I predict that Warner Brothers could have made a lot more money doing what I and others have suggested — re-writing Tiger Lily to be a more relevant and vibrant representation of a Native American woman with a family that doesn’t look like the ridiculous, primitive stereotypes of Barrie’s imagination, and then casting a terrific Native actor into that role. The amount of positive publicity and curiosity alone would have driven people to want to see this film. Critics and viewers would be introduced in a big way to a talented Native actor, and all of the negative (and well-deserved) criticism that follows this film might have been reduced. Talk about a missed opportunity and a bad business decision.
Pan is just another in a long line of disappointing versions of this childhood tale. Barrie wrote in a time (1904) when the general populace had accepted the disappearance and death of Native peoples. Everything they read told them that these peoples no longer existed.
That we are still in that same headspace, imagining Native peoples as either racist stereotypes or as long-gone peoples of the past, is pathetic. Shame on you, Warner Brothers, Joe Wright, Jason Fuchs, Rooney Mara, and all of us who accept Hollywood’s standard practice of erasing Native peoples, cultures, and identities.
‘The King and I’ promotes colonialist and “white savior” attitudes. … Adding romantic interest to the story, showing King Mongkut as exceedingly admiring of Anna and portraying her influence in the court as more than it was, paints Western values and morals as superior to others, justifying colonialism by making it seem as though Eastern countries “need” the West.
“Is the King and I racist, and is it time it was put to rest?” [sic] asks Dee Jefferson of The Sydney Morning Herald. While his article is inconclusive, I strongly believe that the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical as it exists now, and other Western media telling the same story, should be “put to rest.” The way that the story of Anna Leonowens teaching at the court of King Mongkut of Siam (now Thailand) in the mid 19th century is told in the West needs to be completely redone if it is to be told, because the way it is presented is both inaccurate and harmful. There is a reason The King and I (staged on Broadway in 1951 and adapted for film in 1956) and many other adaptations of the same story such as Anna and the King of Siam (1946) and Anna and the King (1999) either are or were banned in Thailand – because they are extremely insensitive to Thailand’s history and culture, and promote colonialist and “white savior” attitudes.
To say that The King and I and related media is racist is missing the point. This is because racism is a product of colonialism, often being an afterthought justification for stealing and controlling another peoples’ wealth, labor, and resources, or as a propagandist rallying cry to begin the colonization of another people and their land. Anna Leonowens is painted as the “white savior” in these adaptations, and shown inaccurately as the main influence behind the reforms implemented by Mongkut and his son Chulalongkorn.
Though Mongkut and Leonowens did respect one another and worked closely, a romance between them does not seem to have existed, and the invention of it in the media is a tool to better depict Leonowens “civilizing” Mongkut to the extent that he might be a “gentleman” and a romantic interest – albeit in a bittersweet “it would never work” way. Interracial relationships (however problematically written) are themes in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s work, such as in South Pacific, as interracial marriage was a hot button issue at their time, not nationally legalized until 1967. Under the guise of being “progressive,” these works actually do an incredible amount of harm.
Mongkut hired Leonowens (who was ethnically English and East Indian, but claimed to be Welsh) to teach his children “English language, science, and literature, and not for the conversion to Christianity.” He himself already knew English (and Latin) and was well versed in Western culture. The image of Mongkut in the media is a stereotypical “barbarian” and “foolish” despot, despite the efforts of talented actors such as Chow Yun-Fat and Ken Watanabe to show a complex and thoughtful human being and leader. Women’s rights were improved under his reign. For example, unlike the story of Tuptim in the musical suggests, he outlawed forced marriages and released a large number of concubines to marry whom they chose. He respected the minds and wishes of his wives. When they met, Mongkut and his family treated Leonowens with kindness and respect, while she was often rude, condescending, or sarcastic to them. She strongly believed herself superior to the Thai people due to her being (part) English and a Christian, even telling members of the royal family to their faces, “I am not like you.”
The myth of she and Mongkut emotionally having a romance is quickly debunked due to various instances and examples of her enacting and making plain her biases and self-righteousness. One such instance was when she was asked by some female members of the royal family which prince she would find more desirable to marry were she to choose. She replied, according to her first autobiography, that they “are pagans” (Buddhist) and as such, “An English, that is a Christian, woman” such as herself “would rather be put to the torture, chained and dungeoned for life, or suffer a death the slowest and most painful you Siamese know, than be the wife of either” [sic]. The words “you Siamese” naturally show her condescending tone and attitude towards Thai people, insulting their intelligence and knowledge of the world.
Aspects of Leonowens’ autobiographies have proved to be exaggerated or fabricated, and seem to have been made to make herself look better and Mongkut look cruel. Various members of the Thai royal family, from Chulalongkorn himself to more to the present, have spoken out against both the inaccuracies in Leonowens’ works as well all media representations. One example of this is the alleged execution of Tuptim, featured in many adaptations (though she is whipped in the musical). Much of Tuptim’s story was fabricated, and she in fact was not executed, but became one of the wives of Chulalongkorn. Indeed, according to Mongkut did not believe in executions, considering them not in line with Buddhism.
However, Western adaptations have been more than ready to depict the Thai as “barbarians” or as “foolish” and Anna as the epitome of Western graciousness and, indeed, womanhood. Adding romantic interest to the story, showing Mongkut as exceedingly admiring of Anna and portraying her influence in the court as more than it was, paints Western values and morals as superior to others, justifying colonialism by making it seem as though Eastern countries “need” the West. Of course, Anna and Mongkut never kiss and hardly ever physically show their romantic interest, as to do so would “corrupt” Anna, the white woman, and put someone “lesser than” above her due to gender norms.
The fictionalized versions of this story are not only problematic in how they are written, but also problematic in terms of casting. As of 2014, white men are still being cast as King Mongkut, showing little has changed since Rex Harrison played the role in 1946. When an Asian man is cast, even in film adaptations, it is an actor who is not Thai, playing into the Western myth that all Asians and Asian cultures are the same. Except for Korean-American actress Anna Sanders, who played Anna on Broadway for a total of three performances in two days, the role of Leonowens has exclusively been played by white women, and often portrayed as blonde or redhead, despite the historical figure being part East Indian and having dark hair. This whitewashing is ridiculous, and shows how little white Westerners have changed in their self-righteousness and feelings of entitlement toward other lands and cultures.
All in all, the story of Anna Leonowens teaching at the Siamese court, as it has been told by Western media, remain colonialist and otherwise harmful. Even if Leonowens and Mongkut had a particularly deep and romantic relationship, which they did not, Leonowens’ white savior attitudes and Mongkut’s (historically inaccurate) verbal and physical violence would make that relationship a terribly abusive and volatile one. This would not be the kind of relationship to be valued, making even the most redeeming qualities of these adaptions problematic at best. I am not advocating that Leonowens’ and Mongkut’s stories be silenced and untold, but instead that they be told with honesty. This was a king actively working to keep his country free from colonialism, and this was a woman whose colonialist attitudes — which kept her from interacting well with those who treated her with respect — were probably due to internalized racist biases and fears regarding her East Indian heritage (a heritage she worked hard to hide). This is in fact a story that needs to be told, and hopefully many more (and more accurate) adaptations will be made in the future.
Jackson Adleris a transguy with a BA in Theatre, a Bitch Flicks staff writer, and is a writer, activist, director, teacher, dramaturge, cartoon lover, vegan boba drinker, and proud Gryffindor. His day job is at a theatre (live, not movie), and he uses a pen name as a precaution, since he’d rather not risk getting fired. He is white and middle class, and has to remember his privileges. He is also aromantic bi/pansexual, and has an Auditory Processing Disorder and a Weak Working Memory (which does not excuse when he forgets that he has lots of privileges). You can follow him on twitter at @JacksonAdler, and see more of his writing on representation and discrimination in the media at the blog The Windowsill.
Irene Adler never needed Sherlock Holmes or any man (including the Czech King who hired Sherlock to face her in the first place), and when she finds love (with a man who is neither the king nor Holmes), it’s on her terms. Irene Adler only appears in one of Conan Doyle’s stories because she has her own life, and it does not rotate around nor even involve Sherlock Holmes. She is a clever, intelligent, resourceful, sex-positive woman in control of her own life, her own body, and her own destiny, and deserves not only a writer to do her justice, but a series to completely center her and all her fantastic escapades.
Trigger Warning for the sexual assault, physical abuse, and murder of female characters.
The BBC will soon be releasing its Sherlock Christmas special called Sherlock: The Abominable Bride, and I know I’m not the only person tired of women in Sherlock being portrayed as “abominable,” less-than Sherlock and the other male characters in the show, and forcibly subjugated – often reduced to tears. Sure, the male characters on the show are often shown as far from Sherlock’s intellectual equal, but the female characters are treated far worse story-wise than the men are. However, the BBC’s Sherlock is far from the only Sherlock Holmes adaptation to treat its female characters badly, often far worse than the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories. Not only are women subjugated to make the men look better, women are used as props to heteronormatize Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. But women are human beings, just like men, not objects. And Sherlock Holmes has been adapted so many times, while I’m still waiting for a series on the fabulously infamous Irene Adler, one of the only people to ever “outwit” him.
Sherlock Holmes is one of the most frequently portrayed fictional characters of all time, though most often played by heterosexual White British cismen and anthropomorphic animals, with Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking and the upcoming sHerlock being rare exceptions. Conan Doyle’s famous detective can easily be read as any sexuality, mostly because he prioritizes work over everything else, and therefore has practically no love life whatsoever. Story-wise (ignoring Conan Doyle’s excuses for Sherlock’s singlehood), he could very well be asexual, and indeed he is a hero for the asexual community. He could also be bisexual, homosexual, heterosexual, or any other sexuality, and could be any combination of those with any romantic orientation – aromantic, biromantic, homoromantic, heteroromantic, etc. Collectively, most of the adaptations of Sherlock Holmes result in erasure of sexual and romantic orientations that are not heteronormative. This is particularly damaging to the asexual community, due to their strong identification with Sherlock Holmes and what they see as his queerplatonic relationship with Dr. John Watson.
Whether Holmes’ relationship with Watson is queerplatonic, romantic and/or sexual, or more traditionally platonic is up to speculation or interpretation. However, nearly every adaptation forces heteronormativity onto the character one way or another, usually with female characters, and even while sometimes simultaneously queerbaiting the audience, seemingly for both humor and fanservice. This is particularly evident in BBC’s Sherlock (see Erin Tatum’s amazing Bitch Flicks post), Sherlock Holmes (2009), and Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows (so much queerbaiting, including a lovely choreographed waltz). Meanwhile, in numerous adaptations of Sherlock Holmes canon, including those directly listed above, female characters mainly or only exist to heteronormatize Sherlock Holmes and his friend (or possible “friend”) Dr. John Watson. Occasionally, and more in the past than in the present, Watson’s importance to the narrative is even minimized to make room for Sherlock to have a romance, such as in Sherlock Holmes (1922) starring John Barrymore as the title role, though also in House M.D. (played by Hugh Laurie), to an extent.
In They Might Be Giants (George C. Scott as Holmes/Justin and Joanne Woodward as Watson) and Elementary (Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes and Lucy Liu as Watson), the roles of Watson and the heteronormatizing woman are combined, as a female Watson to a male Holmes ensures that any close feelings between Holmes and Watson can be read as heteronormatively romantic. This is albeit, thanks to good writing and acting, done in a way in which Watson does have some agency, especially in Elementary, as written about in Robin Hitchcock’s post for Bitch Flicks.
Despite female adaptations of Watson becoming more popular, Irene Adler, though having only ever appeared in one of Conan Doyle’s stories, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” and briefly mentioned in a few more of them, is most often used when Hollywood or the BBC desires to heterosexualize the detective. Indeed, Irene Adler is often portrayed as the Catwoman to Sherlock Holmes’ Batman, particularly in Sherlock Holmes (2009) and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), played by Rachel McAdams to Robert Downey Jr.’s Holmes. However, women are often objectified in Sherlock Holmes adaptations to the point that they are often damsels in distress (such what Irene Adler was reduced to in the BBC’s Sherlock, played by Lara Pulver to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes) or women in refrigerators, to which Irene is also not immune. In Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Irene Adler is (infuriatingly!) fridged in order to make Holmes sad and revengeful and oh so heterosexual amidst all the homoeroticism he has with Jude Law’s “Hotson” (as if the detective couldn’t possibly be bisexual…). She is then soon replaced in his (somewhat) heteronormatized heart by a racist depiction of a Roma woman, played by Noomi Rapace.
However, Irene Adler is not the only choice for fridging. For example, in Chris Columbus’ Young Sherlock Holmes, Holmes’ love interest Elizabeth (played by Sophie Ward to Nicholas Rowe’s Holmes) survives until the very end of the film, thereby fridging her for motivational and heteronormative purposes less within the prequel film itself and moreover in the larger Sherlock Holmes storyline. By killing off Elizabeth, this adaptation also seeks to justify Holmes’ singlehood throughout the rest of his life (as Elizabeth was shown to be his one-true-love), as well as to heighten his nemesistic relationship with Moriarty (as he was responsible for Elizabeth’s death).
While usually the focus of heteronormatizing in these adaptations is Holmes, Watson can alternatively be the focus, usually by Watson’s marriage to Mary Morstan, such as in the BBC’s Sherlock (played by Amanda Abbington) and in Sherlock Holmes (2009) and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (played by Kelly Reilly). This often serves the dual purpose of heteronormatizing the Holmes/Watson relationship and showing Holmes as lonely and more sympathetic. This is particularly emphasized in the 2002 TV film Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking (starring Rupert Everett), though in this case Watson (Ian Hart) marries a sex-positive feminist American psychoanalyst named Mrs. Jenny Vandeluer (Helen McCrory).
As producer Elinor Day pointed out in the DVD commentary, a sequel in which the three of them were a team – Sherlock, Jenny, and John – would be amazing (though it sadly seems unlikely to happen now). Though the BBC’s Sherlock gets a similar trio-dynamic with the introduction of Mary, Mary is subjugated and ashamed, while Jenny openly defies Sherlock’s misogyny and heartlessness, and he would not have been able to solve his case at all without her. Sadly, though Jenny is an amazing character, Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking falls short of being a feminist film. Under the guise of critiquing rape culture, the film in many ways fetishizes the physical and sexual abuse of young women and girls, emphasized by the camera movements and the focus on the helpless sounds the girls make while they are being gagged and suffocated.
Though the upcoming sHERlock, starring Helen Davies in the title role, is certainly exciting, I personally think that instead of the message being “women can fill Sherlock’s shoes” (which they most certainly can), the message could be “women don’t need Sherlock, and are awesome on their own,” especially when it comes to Irene Adler. Irene Adler’s character has been tweaked and even completely reimagined numerous times to fit male-contrived adaptations of the (admittedly male-contrived) Sherlock Holmes canon, sadly often coming short of her original depiction – though also not free from its problems. Irene Adler deserves her own series, whatever the story may be, and whatever part of her life is the focus.
Irene Adler never needed Sherlock Holmes or any man (including the Czech King who hired Sherlock to face her in the first place), and when she finds love (with a man who is neither the king nor Holmes), it’s on her terms. Irene Adler only appears in one of Conan Doyle’s stories because she has her own life, and it does not rotate around nor even involve Sherlock Holmes. She is a clever, intelligent, resourceful, sex-positive woman in control of her own life, her own body, and her own destiny, and deserves not only a writer to do her justice, but a series to completely center her and all her fantastic escapades. Women do not exist to heteronormatize men – they exist to lead their own lives. Hollywood and the BBC would do well to learn that, as well as to get over their obvious fear and terrible oppression of anything not heteronormative.
Whatever the other problems might be with this film (and they are many), my focus for this review is the character Tiger Lily, who was originally conceived as a racist stereotype by J.M. Barrie and who has had her Native identity completely erased in this latest iteration. Is this progress? I think not.
Pan has a 26 percent rating based on 152 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and having just come from a matinee viewing, I must say I agree with these critics. The Peter Pan narrative that we all know has been reconstructed as a sort of prequel, and not very imaginatively, while still retaining its racist roots. The Natives are called “natives” and “savages” multiple times and retain their feathers, facepaint, fringe, dancing, and primitive clothing to emulate a stereotypical idea of Native peoples, and even the map that Peter finds guides him to “Tribal Territory.” The actor playing Hook thinks he is Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western, the Neverbirds are just bigger, more threatening versions of Kevin in Up, and the main actors who appear throughout the entire film are all white.
Whatever the other problems might be with this film (and they are many), my focus for this review is the character Tiger Lily, who was originally conceived as a racist stereotype by J.M. Barrie and who has had her Native identity completely erased in this latest iteration. Is this progress? I think not.
When J.M. Barrie’s original stage play, Peter Pan; Or, The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, first appeared on the cultural scene, Miriam Skancke (stage name Nesbitt) played Tiger Lily. Never mind the problem of reducing an actual, living people to imaginary creatures in a fantasy land. According to Miram’s father’s birth record, she appears to have been of Norwegian heritage. Certainly not Native American. So the fantasy creature, the “indian princess,” Tiger Lily, started off in global imaginations as a beautiful white woman.
Miriam Nesbitt plays “Tiger Lily” in J.M. Barrie’s original stage play, Peter Pan, in 1904
In 1911, Barrie published the novel version, Peter Pan, and soon, more stage productions and the film industry came calling, clamoring for this children’s fantasy tale. From 1955-60, Broadway and the American TV industry brought the story to stage and TV with Sondra Lee playing Tiger Lily. Another white woman playing an offensive racist Native stereotype, with the music and dancing to match:
Here is where we need to be more critical of Warner Brothers, Director Joe Wright, writer Jason Fuchs, and the casting staff responsible for adamantly refusing to re-conceive this problematic character into something more culturally appropriate and honorable. They DID take the time, energy, and money to construct a new narrative that explains how Peter Pan came to be; they reconstructed this narrative in myriad ways so as to make it clearly different from Barrie’s original, except where it concerns the “Natives.” Instead, they took the cowardly way out and completely whitewashed the character (while still retaining feathers, costuming, and even an Aboriginal actor as Tiger Lily’s father).
Bottom line here, Hollywood is lazy and greedy. They saw an opportunity to re-envision this narrative from stem to stern, possibly giving us a truly creative and compelling new story, but instead of also eliminating the racist stereotypes from the original, they chose to whitewash because that is the easier choice. From their perspective, it would have been too hard to reconstruct this “indian princess” into a strong, brave, Native woman. Especially one who seems to be developing feelings for the future Captain Hook, who is white. Instead, they chose white actor Rooney Mara to portray a strong, brave, Native woman who wears beaded and feathered attire, long and dark braided hair, and colorful tribal makeup.
Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in Pan
Who exactly do they think is fooled by this? Certainly none of us trying to encourage more respectful representations of indigenous peoples. Plenty of reviewers, including one on this site, has pointed out the immense problems with the company and crew’s voluntary blindness to their heinous choices. In fact, director Joe Wright defended his choice.
So, Joe, you understand our criticisms, but were unable to find a Native woman to play a “badass” Native woman character?
Warner Brothers would rather hire a known white woman (as usual) and to completely whitewash the character than to spend a few minutes asking the writer to re-conceive this character to be more respectful of real, living, Native peoples, and then hiring a talented Native woman to play her. Because with all of the white racist fear out there in the viewing audience, they knew this whitewashed version of J.M. Barrie’s original would make them money. They know their audience.
Thankfully, at 26 percent approval rating, Pan will not be in theatres very long. I predict that Warner Brothers could have made a lot more money doing what I and others have suggested – re-writing Tiger Lily to be a more relevant and vibrant representation of a Native American woman with a family that doesn’t look like the ridiculous, primitive stereotypes of Barrie’s imagination, and then casting a terrific Native actor into that role. The amount of positive publicity and curiousity alone would have driven people to want to see this film. Critics and viewers would be introduced in a big way to a talented Native actor, and all of the negative (and well-deserved) criticism that dogs this film might have been reduced. Talk about a missed opportunity and a bad business decision.
Pan is just another in a long line of disappointing versions of this childhood tale. Barrie wrote in a time (1904) when the general populace had accepted the disappearance and death of Native peoples. Everything they read told them that these peoples no longer existed.
That we are still in that same headspace, imagining Native peoples as either racist stereotypes or as long-gone peoples of the past, is pathetic. Shame on you, #Warner Brothers, Joe Wright, Jason Fuchs, Rooney Mara, and all of us who accept Hollywood’s standard practice of erasing Native peoples, cultures, and identities.
Dr. Amanda Morris is an Associate Professor of Multiethnic Rhetorics at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in Indigenous Rhetorics.
It’s therefore unsurprising that the character who most drives the plot of the film is Riley’s dad (voiced by Kyle MacLachlan). In fact, the film is largely one big piece of advice for fathers from fathers.
(SPOILERS for Pixar’s Inside Out)
As pointed out by Natalie Wilson on Bitch Flicks, Pixar’s latest film, Inside Out, about a preteen girl and her characterized emotions, has plenty to enJoy. It’s a female-centric film, with three leading female protagonists – the 11-year-old Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias), her leading emotion Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), and Joy’s least favorite co-emotion, Sadness (voiced by Phyllis Smith). There are also many other female characters, such as Disgust (voiced by Mindy Kaling) and Riley’s best friend Meg (voiced by Paris Van Dyke), and unnamed but still important characters such as Riley’s mom (voiced by Diane Lane). So many female characters with leading or otherwise key roles in the story means that the Bechdel Test is passed in multiple scenes. Nevertheless, while there is much gender diversity, and to a lesser extent ethnic divsersity, there is much less diversity offscreen.
All four producers were men. Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen, a White man and a Man of Color, co-directed and came up with the story. Of the three people who wrote the screenplay, there was one woman (Meg LeFauve), and the music, film editing, and art direction were all done by men, and most of the rest of the crew is male. This is despite the fact that not only does the film feature many female characters, but most of the film actually takes place inside the mind of a girl. And yet, not only was the film mainly created by men, but even the scientific and psychological consultants who were brought on board to help Pixar create an accurate and authentic portrayal of the workings of a girl’s mind, were men. Sure, the daughters of the film’s creators provided the “inspiration” for the story, but it’s not their names on the film. It’s therefore unsurprising that the character who most drives the plot of the film is Riley’s dad (voiced by Kyle MacLachlan). In fact, the film is largely one big piece of advice for fathers from fathers.
Riley’s dad is the one who moves the family from Minnesota to San Francisco for the sake of his start-up business, and it is this move that is the impetus for the plot and the changes that take place in Riley. Though not portrayed as an actual villain, the film puts a fair amount of blame for Riley’s unhappiness on Riley’s mother. It is Riley’s mom who brings in the dad to reprimand Riley’s “attitude,” and the argument between Riley and her dad escalates quickly. It is Riley mom who most encourages Riley to “keep smiling” and be “happy,” putting pressure on Riley to show happiness and optimism whether she feels them or not for the sole sake of making the move easier on her parents. It is this pressure that hurts Riley the most. She feels such pressure to be happy that she even attempts to run away in order to find happiness, and steals money from her mother for her bus ticket.
This pressure on Riley to provide her parents with happiness is emphasized by the subtle but present fact that Riley is adopted, and by her mom’s line, “What did we ever do to deserve you.” Riley is blonde and blue-eyed, while both her parents have brown hair and eyes. When baby Riley “meet[s]” her parents, her mother does not look like she just gave birth, and isn’t sitting in a hospital bed. Riley’s parents adopted Riley to make them happy, and inadvertently put pressure on her to continue to make them happy by feigning constant happiness herself. At the end of the film, it is Riley’s father who gives the strongest lines of comfort to Riley, assuring her that it’s all right for her to miss Minnesota and to be sad. This elevates the role of the dad, while at times even condemning the mother. Though this is slightly balanced by portraying the mother as more intelligent than the father at times, this too emphasizes the kindness and innocence of the father and making the mother look like a downer and someone fast to criticize others.
The film serves a dual purpose: beautifully letting children know that it’s OK to feel sad sometimes, while also encouraging parents (especially fathers) to be more understanding of their children. The bond between fathers and daughters, and the inspiration for the film itself, is emphasized by the fact that while Riley is a complex character, much (if not most) of what makes her that way is her similarity to her father. Her father daydreams about hockey, and Riley plays hockey. Her father at first condemns her anger in their argument despite his leading emotion being anger. (Interestingly, the emotions in the mother’s head are female and the emotions is the father’s head are male, while Riley has emotions of both genders. Evidently, this was done so that the cast was more “diverse” because goodness knows that men need more roles in film…) The toll of the move is shown to be harder for Riley and her father, while her mother encourages Riley to make the move easier for her father by showing herself to be happy. At the end of the film, Riley and her father reunite due to their shared feelings of sadness, while mother’s emotions are given less consideration.
At the end of the film, Riley is problematically put into the male gaze, as not only Riley’s parents but a boy who instantly develops a crush on her watch her play hockey, and the male emotion Anger (voiced by Lewis Black) guides her actions. Despite there being many, many other ways to continue Riley’s story, when the DVD of Inside Out is released, it will contain a short about Riley’s first date (which will be with a boy) and the anxiety that her father feels about it. This further emphasizes Riley’s role in relation to men and boys, and arguably takes autonomy away from her by focusing on her father and the boy.
Male sacrifice is also emphasized by the film. Riley’s imaginary boyfriends constantly state that they would “die” for Riley, and there words are proven to be true statements. A more heartbreaking instance of male sacrifice is the one carried out by Riley’s imaginary friend Bing-Bong (voiced by Richard Kind). So emotional is the character’s storyline that more than one article has been dedicated to him, such as BuzzFeed’s humorous one and Slate’s interview with a child psychologist about Bing-Bong’s role.
I and many others loved Inside Out, and viewed it in theaters more than once due to liking it so much. Its female characters are well-developed and engaging, and pass the Bechdel Test often. The maternal role that Joy feels for Riley is beautiful, especially when Joy is watching a memory of Riley skating, and pretends to skate along with her. However, the film emphasizes the need for women behind the camera, and Hollywood can only ignore the voices shouting for diversity for so long.
Turtle reminds Vince that “the movie is called ‘Aquaman,’ not ‘Aquagirl.'” This line is indicative of the “boys club” that continues to thrive in Hollywood. An actress’s livelihood in the industry is dependent on her co-star.
This guest post by Rachel Wortherley appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.
“Ultimately, the show’s theme is friendship and family. The characters may have bling, but they’re grounded guys who look out for each other. That’s the backbone of the show. If it was just about fantasy lifestyles, it wouldn’t be relatable” – Doug Ellin, creator and director, Entourage.
The HBO series Entourage (2004-2011) focuses on four men, born and bred in Queens, as they navigate the tough terrain of Hollywood. The show revolves around actor and superstar Vincent Chase. Rounding out his entourage are: Vince’s best friend and manager, Eric “E” Murphy (Kevin Connolly); childhood friend, assistant, and driver Sal “Turtle” Assante (Jerry Ferrara); and Vince’s older half-brother, personal chef, and C-list actor, Johnny “Drama” Chase (Kevin Dillon). The story and characters are inspired by actor Mark Wahlberg, his manager Stephen Levinson, and various members of Wahlberg’s entourage during Wahlberg’s rise to fame. Entourage has often been criticized for its portrayal of male fantasy lifestyles. Their lives consist of buying expensive cars, attending exclusive parties and movie premieres, and hot girls. Ellin’s estimation is correct. Entourage is not a portrayal of the male fantasy. Instead, it reinforces the harsh reality that being a male, especially in Hollywood, equals power.
Each episode appears to end with a satisfying resolution. Seasons one and two consist of the guys finding Vince a new role that will propel him to stardom. In season one, Vince is coming off of a mediocre debut film and now wants a role with substance, while his equal opportunity offender and hardball agent, Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven), wants Vince to take a blockbuster film. At the end of season one, Vince films the indie and season two depicts Eric and Ari through the trials, tribulations, schmoozing, and negotiations of making Vince well-known to director James Cameron.
In season two, episode seven, “The Sundance Kids,” the guys end up fracturing a movie deal with producer Harvey Weingard (Maury Chakin) in the hopes of James Cameron casting Vince as Aquaman. At the end of the episode, when James Cameron leaves the film early, their hopes are dashed. That is, until Vince receives a phone call from James Cameron asking him if he wants to be his Aquaman. It is made clear that at this point, Vince is largely unknown. He fails to reach the superstardom of Tom Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Will Smith, yet Cameron is willing to take a chance. In season five, Vince’s film flops at Cannes and he is out of work for the next six months. In the reality of Hollywood, six months is a vacation for male stars, while it is a death sentence for actresses. Despite the rollercoaster of events, Vince and company still manage to stay on top.
Throughout the series, women are disposable. This notion is solidified in the pilot by Turtle when the guys invite Vince’s groupies over for a pool party: “Sweetheart, look around. Vince is gone. So’s your sister and your best friend. Come on, just make out with me, I’ll show you where Vince eats breakfast.” This can be seen as males using women–or “girls” as the guys refer to them—as a source of status and service. However, there is an equality in the leeching that occurs. Women are for consumption and allow themselves to be consumed. The next day, Turtle gives the girl a fresh pair of Vince’s jeans as a gift and all is well.
However, the most telling episode occurs in season two, episode eight, “Oh, Mandy.” After receiving news that actress and singer Mandy Moore has been offered the role of Aquagirl, Ari, the studio, the guys, and Vince’s opinionated and brass publicist, Shauna (Debi Mazar), scramble. Vince’s past romance with Mandy has the potential to hurt the movie. As a result, Vince has to make the decision as to whether or not she stays on the movie or not. Turtle reminds Vince that “the movie is called Aquaman, not Aquagirl.” This line is indicative of the “boys club” that continues to thrive in Hollywood. An actress’s livelihood in the industry is dependent on her co-star.
While there are notable women in the series, they are largely present to elevate the males. For example, the fact that Ari’s wife, Mrs. Ari is referred to as such and it is the character’s name, until the series finale, demonstrates how her identity clings to being the wife of Ari Gold. Yet she is the figure whom we see a different side of Ari through. While she tolerates his adolescent tantrums, Melissa is able to go toe-to-toe with Ari. In the pilot, as a way of solidifying his masculinity over Eric, Ari boasts about sleeping with supermodels. After audiences meet Melissa, they know this is false. As Ari attempts to skip out on his son’s birthday party to reign in Vince, Melissa calls him an “asshole.” His counter argument is to make a laundry list of everything he has provided for her: the means to contribute to charities, go shopping, and support her deadbeat brother. She simply replies, “Hey little agent boy, you better be back here for the cake,” and his only response is “OK.” His dynamic with Melissa, as well as, Lloyd his assistant/whipping boy, saves his character from being completely unsalvageable.
Women are also seen as the saviors when the stakes are high. In season one, one of Vince’s girlfriends provides a weed dealer to an uptight producer whose dealer is dry. As a result, the producer takes a liking to Vince and accepts his casting in the indie Queens Boulevard. In season two, porn stars rush to Vince’s aid when a journalist at comic-con (Rainn Wilson) threatens to ruin Vince and Aquaman before it has been filmed. Shauna—who calls Vince “Vincent”—acts as Vince’s west coast mother who tells him what to wear, how to act, and attempts to talk him off a ledge when his heart is broken by Mandy Moore. In addition to Melissa, the other women of Entourage, Sloan McQuewick (Emmanuelle Chriqui) and Jamie Lynn Sigler (playing herself), allow for the men to mature from boys playing with toys to men—who continue to play with toys, but have responsibility—at least in their romantic lives.
What is fascinating about Entourage is the timing of the premiere. Two months before the premiere, HBO had just come off the wave of the hit series Sex and the City. While it is not fair to compare the two series, there are areas in which they are similar. Each series has four friends who look out for each other and keep each other grounded and we see an air of extravagancy that is not afforded to the average viewer: shoes, homes, cars, etc. While romance and relationships is the focus on Sex and the City, the men of Entourage spend a fair amount of time talking about women. Eric’s relationships with women is usually the point of discussion.
While Eric’s story and character arc is establishing himself as a viable manager, Eric’s growth throughout the series is arguably the most relatable and interesting. The definition of masculinity—money, power, girls, brute strength—is not necessarily synonymous to Eric. If he were to be compared to a Sex and the City character, he is Miranda Hobbes. Miranda is successful, but her style does not eclipse that of Carrie Bradshaw. Miranda is the everywoman. She is career-driven, maintains a healthy relationship (formerly cynical about men and love), and is the practical voice of reason in their circle of friends. Eric, a former Sbarro pizza boy, is not as handsome as Vince, he drives an old car—until Vince gifts him one—and wears his heart on his sleeve. These two characters are likable because they are not the famous writer or movie star. So, is Miranda a male in women’s clothes, or is Eric a female in male’s clothes? The fact that Miranda, a woman, and Eric a male, can be compared concludes that our ideas of masculinity and femininity are not exclusive.
The reality of Entourage is that their environment allows for adolescent and offensive behaviors amongst men. Males are allowed to make power plays against each other and win. If they lose, their next opportunity is around the corner. This is not afforded to women who either need to be sexy and “bangable” while maintaining the visage of the “cool” girl next door to survive. Ellin is correct that the friendship amongst males is the theme of Entourage, but so is the fact that outside of the family dynamic, the “backbone” of their industry calls for males who look out for each other.
Rachel Wortherley earned a Master of Arts degree at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. Her downtime consists of devouring copious amounts of literature, films, and Netflix. She hopes earn an MFA and become a professional screenwriter.
It likes to think of itself as a progressive, meritocratic industry, but I don’t think any thoughtful person would dispute the fact that Hollywood remains a racist cultural institution. It continues to produce racist films, and it continues to shut out talented people of color. In fact, even those of us who have not bought the myth that Hollywood’s a liberal place full of cool, open-minded individuals have not fully recognized how deeply ingrained its racism really is. Here are just a few sobering reminders from history and the recent past.
It likes to think of itself as a progressive, meritocratic industry, but I don’t think any thoughtful person would dispute the fact that Hollywood remains a racist cultural institution. It continues to produce racist films, and it continues to shut out talented people of color. In fact, even those of us who have not bought the myth that Hollywood’s a liberal place full of cool, open-minded individuals have not fully recognized how deeply ingrained its racism really is. Here are just a few sobering reminders from history and the recent past.
Poster of Birth of a Nation
Promoting a White Supremacist Ideology
The two most repellent films I have ever seen are Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) and D.W. Griffith’s TheBirth of a Nation (1915). Both films have been long recognized by film critics and scholars as technically innovative and both prompt feelings of overpowering nausea. Triumph of the Will is a German propaganda film that (re)produces Nazi discourse. Experiencing the terrifying soullessness of Nazi ceremony on display is a simultaneously sickening and numbing experience. Praised by generations of film scholars as a masterpiece, The Birth of a Nation is the most rabidly racist movie ever made in the United States. Set in the Civil War and Reconstruction era, it is, in fact, a revisionist, white supremacist movie that portrays the Klan as the good guys. The story of the The Birth of a Nation’s reception is also astonishing. One of the first films to be screened at the White House, it reportedly received this response from President Woodrow Wilson: “It was like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is so terribly true.” The racism in The Birth of a Nation is of the vilest kind: Black men are portrayed as rapacious creatures fixated with white women while the Klan are celebrated as gallant saviors. Promoting a Fascist racist ideology, the film seeks to normalize ideas of white superiority. Its poisonous impact cannot be overstated. The Birth of a Nation was a huge commercial success and hugely influential. In fact, it was used as a recruiting tool by the Klan. Think about this: this was one of America’s first “great films.”
Tippi Hedren
Propagating Racist Norms and Ideals of Feminine Beauty and Sexuality
Alfred Hitchcock is one of the accomplished directors in cinema history but he has also played a dominant role in constructing and reinforcing Anglocentric norms and ideals of female beauty and sexuality. It is well known that Hitchcock preferred blonde actresses to play his leading ladies–they were part of his sadomasochistic aesthetic vision and the object, it is said, of a quite pathological obsession in his personal life–but I have yet to read any film scholar or critic underscore the director’s essential racism. In an interview with fellow director Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock explained, “You know why I favour sophisticated blondes in my films? We’re after the drawing room type, the real ladies who become whores once they’re in the bedroom.” There is, you can see, a strong linkage between Hitchcock’s racism, sexism, and classism. The director, moreover, espouses a very specific white self-love. Consider the following statement: “I think the most interesting women sexually are the Englishwomen. I feel that the Englishwoman, the Swedes, the northern Germans, and the Scandinavians are a great deal more exciting than the Latin, the Italian, and the French woman. Sex should not be advertised. An English girl, looking like a schoolteacher, is apt to get into a cab with you, and to your surprise, she’ll probably pull a man’s pants open.” His take on Anglo-Saxon and Nordic women is an expression of his own fantasies but he also advocates here the chauvinistic, Anglo notion that non-WASP European women are sexually vulgar. Women of color are noticeably absent from his misogynistic erotic musings, as they were from his films. Hitchcock’s blonde, WASP female characters–slender blonde women, I should add–typified by Tippi Hedren in The Birds should not solely be seen as fetishistic products of his imagination. They are a product of a racist, sexist, and classist mindset. It could be argued that Hitchcock played a key role in Hollywood in propagating narrow, racist ideals of feminine beauty. The attitudes he propagated have had a toxic, long-lasting influence on the American cultural imagination.
John Wayne
Romanticizing Racist Stars
John Wayne was not only one of the most popular movie stars of his time; he also represented a romanticized kind of robust, individualistic American masculinity. Wayne, indeed, personified the country itself for both compatriots and viewers internationally. Behind the mythic America the star was intended to embody, are, however, the historical truths of genocide and slavery. The icon himself never recognized these truths. In a 1971 Playboy interview, John Wayne stated, “I don’t think we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. Our so-called stealing of this country from them (Native Americans) was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.” This mind-blowing comment is worth breaking down. Wayne employs a Darwinian justification for the atrocities of his ancestors, an ideology devoid of morality and humanity. It is also, quite simply, as perverse as siding with a rapist calling his rape victim the aggressor. In the interview, he also shifts attention away from contemporary American atrocities in Vietnam, namely the My Lai massacre. On the civil rights struggles of Black Americans, he ever so vaguely acknowledges the anger of his fellow citizens before making this statement: “I believe in white supremacy until blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.” Here we have a Hollywood icon clearly articulating white supremacist thinking as late as 1971.
Black Hawk Down
The Utter Indifference to the Deaths of Enemies and Civilians of Color in Hollywood War Movies
You can find numerous illustrations of American exceptionalism and selective empathy in Hollywood movies. The wildly popular, revisionist American Sniper (2014) is only the most recent dangerous example. From The Deer Hunter (1978) to The Hurt Locker (2008), there are many unsettling cases but there is one that I would like to presently highlight–the racism informing Black Hawk Down (2001). Directed by Ridley Scott, Black Hawk Down concerns the 1993 raid on Mogadishu. Like the vast majority of American war movies, Black Hawk Down never attempts to explore war from the perspective of the enemy soldier or civilian. It is solely dedicated to glorifying the sacrifice of American blood. The close of the film perfectly sums up white Hollywood’s absolute indifference to the deaths of enemies and civilians of color. We are told, “During the raid over 1,000 Somalis died and 19 American soldiers lost their lives.” Black African Somali Muslim deaths are solely an afterthought.
Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman
Erasing Interracial Relationships
Over the years, Hollywood has done an effective job in erasing interracial relationships from mainstream American culture. The lack of interracial relationships in Hollywood movies not only shows shameful cowardice on the part of the studios; it also reinforces racist norms and denies an increasing demographic reality. Every kind of relationship–sexual, romantic, and marital–has been deliberately obscured. With movies like 5 Flights Up (2015) and Focus (2015), there are indications that this may be changing but current depictions only serve to highlight the shortage. Certainly TV programs such as Grey’s Anatomy have depicted interracial relationships with greater regularity but Hollywood still has a long way to go. At the moment, they are not fully representing intimate human relationships in America.
Hollywood is, as you can see, an industry that has, from its very infancy, regurgitated racist cultural products, as it has shamelessly sought to provide narcissistic identification for white people. If there was ever an industry that needs to face its past and recognize its essentially backward, intolerant nature, it is America’s dream factory.
Thus, theatre erases the histories of People of Color in Europe by claiming that they use “colorblind casting” instead of just “casting” when they cast a Person of Color in a role that, historically, could have been a person of color. Meanwhile, TV and film European period pieces erase that history by Whitewashing it, not casting and thereby not providing employment to, or visibility and representation of, actors who are People of Color at all.
According to Wikipedia (please, just go with me), “Colorblind casting” is “the practice of casting a role without considering the actor’s ethnicity.” This definition (and the first that many people will read when they first Google it) is problematic, as that is rarely how “colorblind casting” is carried out. In theatre, “colorblind casting” is most often used for European period pieces, in which at least one Person of Color is cast as a role that the White public has usually thought of as White, regardless of whether people of that actor’s ethnicity were prevalent in the character’s location and social standing. While often used in the theatre, “colorblind casting” is rarely used in TV and film, supposedly because TV and film claim to be more concerned with historical accuracy, despite the fact that People of Color of various groups have had long histories in Europe. Thus, theatre erases the histories of People of Color in Europe by claiming that they use “colorblind casting” instead of just “casting” when they cast a Person of Color in a role that, historically, could have been a person of color. Meanwhile, TV and film European period pieces erase that history by Whitewashing it, not casting and thereby not providing employment to, or visibility and representation of, actors who are People of Color at all.
The film Les Miserables, featuring White people.
An excellent example of both “colorbind casting” and Whitewashing is the musical Les Miserables, which takes place in early 19th century France. In the film, most all of the cast, from the leading characters to the background characters, were White. In its various London, Broadway, and other stage incarnations, “colorblind casting” has been used. The film was historically inaccurate in its Whiteness, because, particularly in Paris where trade was incredibly prevalent, there were many People of Color of various groups, with Black and Chinese people being particularly large minorities. For the stage productions to claim that they use “colorblind casting,” especially when casting Black and Chinese actors, is ignorant and racist because it is erasure of the history of People of Color in France. Did the dramaturges not even do the bare minimum historical research? Did the newest revivals not even use Google or Wikipedia to look up French history? These creative teams of the stage production are, unknowingly, not employing “colorblind casting”; they are employing “casting.” Meanwhile, the creative team behind the film was just racist, as well as unknowingly historically inaccurate.
Vanessa Hudgens as the titular Gigi
A more recent example is in the casting of Vanessa Hudgens as the titular Gigi on Broadway. Vannessa Hudgens is Filipina, as well as Chinese, Spanish, Irish, and Native American. While rare for a girl of Gigi’s social standing in Paris in the year 1900, it would not be impossible for Gigi to have had the same exact ethnic heritage as Vanessa Hudgens, and very possible for Gigi to have had an ethnic heritage similar to Hudgens’. Also, in the original novella, Gigi’s maternal side of the family is Spanish, with her grandmother in particular being described as “dark.” The rest of Gigi’s ethnic background is not described in the novel. Not only is it historically accurate to cast Hudgens as Gigi, but it is supported by the original text off of which the musical is based.
Norm Lewis as Javert in Les Miserables
It should also be noted that even creative teams who claim to be “colorblind” are not. An actor’s appearance, possibly even more than their performance skill level, is always taken into account. It is always “seen.” Few creative teams would cast Cosette and Eponine as 6’1’’ and Marius as 5’4’’, for example, due to stigma against tall women and short men. In fact, when theatrical creative teams use “colorblind” casting, usually Eponine is more likely to be a Woman of Color (take note that she DIES, and in the service of Marius, no less), than is Cosette (the girl Marius marries). It is also rarer to have a Person of Color play the protagonist Valjean than the villain/morally ambiguous Javert. But it’s totally not racist, everyone. The creative team doesn’t see color! …right? (Sigh.)
Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido in Belle
It is not only the poor and middle class in Europe who had ethnic diversity, but even European royalty, especially in Spain and Portugal. Queen Charlotte, wife to King George III of England, was visibly biracial/mixed race. Needless to say, Amma Asante’s Belle, starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, should not be the only film, or one among a few films, to present these stories of upper class People of Color in Europe.
“Colorblind casting” is not entirely the fault of the creative teams behind these projects, however, as it is also largely the fault of White historians Whitewashing and revising history, especially in school textbooks. However, dramaturges and creative teams should be expected to do their research well. The creative team behind the TV miniseries The Bible (not a European story in origin, but a story important to many ethnic Europeans, so please go with me) felt they had to justify its casting of (only a very few) Black actors as Biblical figures in a special that gave its viewers a (very) short history lesson. The creative team did their homework, and applied (some of) it, even knowing that they would still get criticized by White viewers for not having an all White cast (though many, if not most, of the actors they cast were still White, with Joseph even having a Cockney/Estuary dialect). However, in reality there would have been even more People of Color, and it wouldn’t have been historically inaccurate to even have cast no White actors. No one should feel they have to justify depicting Mary Magdalene as Black. Meanwhile, how many Arab or Black actors have played Jesus? While how many White actors with light hair and blue eyes have played Jesus? Hollywood has also Whitewashed the stories and characters of Noah, Moses, and Cleopatra, and shows little sign of stopping this long-time trend.
Even in European folklore, there are People of Color. An example of this is the Black or Arab Arthurian knight Sir Palamedes, who was a rival to Tristan for Isolde’s hand in marriage. However, most film adaptations of Arthurian legends leave out that character, and have an all White cast. Many of the fairy tales in “Into The Woods” have origins outside of Europe, such as Cinderella, elements of the story having origins in Chinese history and Ancient Egyptian history and folklore. The setting of Disney’s Into the Woods was purposefully made to be vague, but even if it were set in a specific time period and place, it would not be historically inaccurate for even The Princes to be played by People of Color. However, while the background characters of the film Into The Woods were ethnically diverse, the main and supporting characters were all White.
Cast members, including those playing The Genie, Aladdin, and Jasmine, in Disney’s stage musical Aladdin
The Bible is far from the only example of non-European stories being Whitewashed both in film and onstage. The story of Aladdin has a problematic background, with it being “discovered” in France, but probably taking place in China, and definitely having Arab characters. The creative team behind Disney’s stage musical of Aladdin, originally cast no Arab performers at all, despite the Disney film clearly setting it in the Middle East (albeit with many ethnic stereotypes and depicting Aladdin and Jasmine as light-skinned and more European-looking than other characters). Similar to the situation with Les Miserables, it is not “colorblind” casting to cast someone light skinned and White-passing (in this case, biracial Filipino and Ashkenazi Jewish) as Aladdin, while casting someone who is Black as the comedic and literally tap-dancing Genie. These actors were specifically chosen for these specific roles, and there is nothing “colorblind” about it, nothing about their appearances that was ignored. Meanwhile, even contemporary works such as Avatar: The Last Airbender and Ghost in the Shell are and have been Whitewashed by Hollywood.
People of Color, historical and contemporary, in Europe and outside of it, are still being silenced, as well as colonized and erased, by Europeans, even onstage and on film. There is no excuse that can back it up. Even though historians Whitewash history, there is still a lot of material available to dramaturges and creative teams, whose jobs require them to do that research. Whether racism is intended or not, whether it is through ignorance or not, it is still racism, and still erasure. It is still wrong.
‘Starry Eyes’ is a bloody, brilliant horror spectacle, about a desperate starlet who makes a dark deal for the promise of fame. Creepy, gross and well observed, complete with a complex female character and a crazy good performance from star, Alex Essoe, it is a film you have to see to believe, as long as you’ve got a strong stomach, that is. I spoke with writer-directors, Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer about their film, their inspirations and the universalities about struggling to make your way in Hollywood.
Poster for Starry Eyes
Starry Eyes was the kind of film that stuck with me.
It’s a bloody, brilliant horror spectacle, about a desperate starlet who makes a dark deal for the promise of fame. Creepy, gross and well-observed, complete with a complex female character and a crazy good performance from star, Alex Essoe, Starry Eyes is a film you have to see to believe, as long as you’ve got a strong stomach, that is.
As soon as I saw it, I had to write something about it, which I did in December for our Reality TV theme week. It stuck with me and I wanted to talk about it, I needed to share it with other people.
The great things about being a writer is sometimes, just sometimes, when you have questions about a movie, you get lucky enough to ask some of them. I spoke with writer-directors, Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer about their film, their inspirations and the universalities of struggling to make your way in Hollywood.
Bitch Flicks: Where did the story of Starry Eyes come from? What were some of you inspirations?
Dennis: I guess it came from us, Kevin and I, wanting to do a story about transformation, something about the metamorphosis in it. We always wanted to have a sequence in a film where a person slowly goes through a change. So we first approached it with that basic concept but then we also knew that we wanted to really focus on a strong character, a person who also just mentally goes through a change throughout the whole movie and that the mental choices and decisions and changes are just as big as the physical ones. So it really started there and then it was just about the decision of what she would be changing into. We decided, with the kind of scenes and themes that really interested us, that it might be a good Los Angeles story, and if it was going to be a Los Angeles story it might be really interesting if she began a star or celebrity and we could look at the industry. As filmmakers there’s a sense of being on the outside of the industry and scratching to get in, waiting for your big break. Actors often go through the same thing. It was really about having a message to the film and trying to say something, finding an exciting, really viseral way to tell that story
Kevin: As for influences, we were very influenced by Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession , that was a big influence on the performance, we wanted Alex [Essoe] to capture that raw energy that Isabelle Adjani has in that film. That and other things like Polanski films, such as Rosemary’s Babyand Repulsion, and things like Carrie and The Entity, even things outside of the genre like Boogie Nights were great, those rise and fall stories of people desperately trying to make it in the industry. They might do things in that situation that they never thought they would.
BF: Sarah is a fascinating and complicated character, even when we first meet her, she is not entirely likable. She’s vain and believes she is superior to a lot of the people around her. Can you tell me a bit about the character of Sarah?
Dennis: There’s an unspoken rule sometimes in screenwriting that you have write likable characters, you hear this a lot from people, and in recent years that rule has kind of gone by the wayside. What we feel is that you have to write interesting characters and if someone is interesting and compelling you’ll follow them through all the choices they make, as bad as they are. Look at a show like Mad Men or Breaking Bad and the characters those shows follow, people love to watch characters like those. Strangely in movies this doesn’t happen enough and it should, particularly in independent cinema where you can get away with a lot more and break more rules. So, we like the idea of pulling the wool over the audience’s eyes. At the beginning of the movie you think you’re watching the girl next door, the girl fresh off the bus, that she’s innocent and sweet and she’s going to be corrupted. You think that you’re watching that person and that all of her friends are just terrible terrible people out to get her, and it definitely seems that way because the movie is very subjective. But we are very conscious of that arc at the halfway point of the movie. As the movie goes along to start to realize that maybe Sarah, the person you’re following is not such a good person. There’s a trail of bread crumbs along the way and the choices she makes that start to define the person that she really is and you start to realize that you’re watching a person who is figuratively a monster and is literally going to become one. In the end, the friends that you perceived as being bad people are just, people who at the end of the day want what’s best for her. The movie cons you in an interesting way and every time we’ve shown it to people there’s usually a point where we realize that the audience is really on Sarah’s side and by the end of movie, no matter what she’s doing and how terrible it gets, they are always siding with her.
BF: In addition, Sarah may be a little unhinged–we see her fits early on and they serve as a prime for the grotesque things we will see happen to her later. Why were these fits important to the character? Can you tell me a bit about your portrayal of Sarah’s self hatred and her violent fits?
Kevin: It’s not that this company takes her and corrupts her. It’s like the company sees this in her, they see that she’s a little unhinged and there’s this rawness within her, that’s what attracts them to her. That’s what gets her what she wants in the end, by acting out this cult’s will. It was sort of like a statement of how a lot of people, in order to make it in these industries that are very dog eat dog, they’re willing to step all over everybody else and do whatever needs to be done, and sometimes they do some horrible things to people. In order to make that statement we wanted to show that the people who are willing to do these things might not be the best put together people. The cult sees this and exploits it to her advantage.
Sarah yearns for an Old Hollywood where she can be discovered
BF: Besides Sarah, many other characters are difficult to like such as Sarah’s boss and her friends Can you tell me a bit about this? Though you suggest character as “Hollywood types” we also learn they three dimensional human beings. Her boss at the restaurant ogles her, but later gives her heartfelt advice, her friends are catty but seem to genuinely care. Why was this important?
Dennis: I think the mistake that a lot of horror movies make is that they feel like if somebody going to be killed or if somebody’s going to be killed or if somebody’s going to be the competition of a villain, then they shouldn’t be three dimensional. We never approach anything like that, every character had to be real. When we were writing that ending of the movie, that violent climax, we really were very conscious of the fact that these needed to be feel like very real people that she was doing this thing to. Because the movie is very subjective, you’re siding with Sarah, she’s in every sense of the movie, Alex Essoe gives a great performance, so its very easy to side with her but if you stop for a moment as an audience member and put yourself in the perspective of any of the other characters, you really can see it from their side. If you put yourself in Erin’s position for instance, that’s the bitchy friend, she clearly likes Danny, the filmmaker friend, feels that Sarah is trying to move in on Danny or Danny’s trying to move in on her, they’re both actors, they’re both the same age, competing for the same parts, and she might be kind of catty to Sarah but Sarah is already standoffish and kind of cold to her. If you put yourself in Pat Healy’s shoes, the restaurant owner, this is a guy who’s just trying to run a business, it’s his dream, it’s what he believes in and he has this girl that’s coming in late, that’s talking on her cell phone, that’s bad at her job and she’s kind of disrespecting him, she quits, she comes back, she slaps him at work, she’s sick at work. It’s kind of funny when you realize that, though you’re in Sarah’s worldview the entire time, there are these moments where you can step outside of her world and realize that everyone is just caught up in her wake. So these characters had to be three dimensional to reinforce the idea that she’s not a good person and there are these people that seem bad but again, they’re just caught up in her wake.
Kevin: It was important that at the halfway point where she goes to the producer’s house and decides that she’s going to give up her pride or self respect in order to achieve her dreams, from that point on the tables get reversed. When she does this one big thing, it clues the audience in that, okay she’s actually not the best person, and from that moment on, watching her you notice these other people aren’t so bad. It changes your perspective. And she actually gets sick physically so you can see her friends are going like “OK, what’s going on, are you alright?” When things get serious, they turn off all their competitive little shots at Sarah and turn on their concern and Sarah’s just getting worse. So at that moment she reveals her true self.
BF: There is a great reverence in the film for Old Hollywood. Sarah has a collage of classic actresses on her walls and aspires to be just like them. Astraeus Pictures seems to have once had golden years and the Producer’s office is decorated like a scene from an old film. What is old Hollywood legend’s place in the story?
Dennis: It’s really about how Sarah is sort of naive. She’s a person who has talent but she’s also a person living in a very modern world where things are done differently but thinking that she can go about them in a very traditional nostalgic way. She’s probably the type of person who thinks she’d be on Hollywood Boulevard at Starbucks and think that she would be noticed by a producer and the producer would cast her in a big movie. So that was to make her feel like a little girl sometimes. She had these dreams of being like these old starlets from the golden age, but the reality is she’s basically being exploited by this company. We like the idea that she would sneer and look down at her friends who just wanted to go out on the weekends and make Kickstarter videos and would look at things and think I’m doing things the traditional way, I’m doing it the way that you’re supposed to do it, I’m paying my dues, and then the irony is that she doesn’t. She basically sells out and takes the easy way out.
Kevin: I would add to that that its sort of the idea that if you look at Hollywood in say the 1930s and whatnot, production companies used to have exclusive deals with actors, and they were like an MGM actor and they worked exclusively for MGM. We wanted her to have that sort of “I’m doing it the traditional way” feel because in the end Astreus Picture kind of owns her.
BF: The basic story of selling your soul for fame is not a new one. Do you feel this story particularly speaks to us today?
Dennis: We did that consciously. The Faustian idea of selling your soul is a very old idea and you can see it in basically any genre of movies. We definitely wanted a short hand to the concept so people were able to wrap their heads around it quickly and that wasn’t overly complicated. This freed us as filmmakers to really dig a little deeper into that theme. I think as filmmakers, especially with movies about movies, you don’t get into the grounded reality of the situation, we usually focus on the machinations of the studio system, the actual making of the movie. Whereas with Starry Eyes we wanted to show younger people today, working a shitty job and coming home to your apartment and crying with the door shut and you have friends right outside in your living room, and going to parties and hiding in the bathroom. We wanted to show a different side of that whole concept.
Gore is used to highlight the horror of Sarah’s transformation
BF: The film can be read as an allegory, for how someone might be corrupted by their desire for fame as Sarah makes a choice to sever her relationships with the people she believes are holding her back. Was this intentional?
Kevin: That was pretty much why we set out to do it. The whole point of taking a transformation tale and putting it in Hollywood was to make it an allegory. A celebrity’s not a kind of monster we’re seen in a horror movie. People ask us all the time, what was she at the end, what was that creature, they almost want some real world answer, like was she a demon, was she a vampire, something like that. And we say, no she got the role, she’s on her way to becoming a star at the end. Sometimes they walk away not satisfied with the answer but the answer works on an allegorical level. The allegorical level of the film is almost more important than what’s going on at the surface level of the film, it’s what’s actually wrapped up in the end, the allegory.
Dennis: I think if you watch the film a second time, you’re see that the film basically bookends itself. It begins with a girl starring at herself in the mirror in her underwear, kind of hating herself and really unhappy with her body, and she’s beautiful and talented and she should be happy but she’s not. She feels like she’s at the end of her rope and she needs to get discovered now before it gets too late. And then through out the movie you’ll see that she constantly returns to that room and kind of beats herself up, looking at the pictures of stars on her walls, and at the end of the movie its the same thing only she’s now gotten what she wants only she’s a phony version of it. Now she’s gotten the role but she’s this bald, shell of a person, she’s come full circle. If you look at the end of the movie she’s completely happy but if you look at her at the beginning of the movie, she’s not. So the movie might be this very bleak tragedy in some ways but not for Sarah, she’s gotten what she wants. As the audience, you realize she just didn’t get it the way you thought she would.
Kevin: The whole movie’s about choice and ambition and what people will turn into a weapon and what people will be willing to do to achieve their dreams. The second she looks in the mirror and likes what she sees, her journey’s complete
BF: This story seems so familiar to young actresses. Did any of the actresses you worked with have their own personal Hollywood horror stories? Did any of them inform the story with their own experiences?
Dennis: Nothing that bad but it seems like actors, men and women, women more so, there’s always this prevailing sense something that when you’re on certain sets or around certain people that there might be a sleaze factor. As far as competition goes? We had actors who told us they had best friends and roommates who were up for the same roles they were, who got the roles and they didn’t. LA is a very big town but it’s also a very small community, I think a lot of actors will relate. With a lot of the actors who came in to read, the second the looked at the script they had a story to tell us about something that happened to them or why it spoke to them so much. We had a guy who came to the premiere in LA and stopped me in the lobby and and told us it spoke to him a lot because he was up for a role and one day the producer took him out and started to kiss him and basically just molested him. I think that stuff, maybe you don’t hear about it as much any more but I think it still goes on.
BF: Why were you drawn to this story? Particularly as men when it focuses so much on Sarah’s experiences as a young woman trying to be a star?
Kevin: I think we knew beforehand, writing it that this was an issue women dealt with more in Hollywood. As far as someone struggling to start their career before they get to old or feeling like there’s a ticking clock, like they have to get going before it’s too late, I feel like that pressure is put on women a lot more than it is on men. You watch movies and you’ll have a 50 year old man and his wife will be played by someone who’s 23. I feel like male actors can continue to have a career as they get older, they can play character roles or even leading men roles and their female counterpart is two decades younger than them. I feel like that pressure to strike while the iron is hot or get your career going before you get too old is real issue that women in Hollywood have to deal with.
BF: What is the film’s stance on Sarah’s decision to perform sexual acts to get the role? Are we meant to judge her for this?
Dennis: It’s tough because if you look at the movie, every decision she makes is her own, this is not a person who is being corrupted. We were really conscious of the fact that if you look at the movie closely, you’ll see that Sarah is always in the driver’s seat. If you’re judging anyone you’re judging Sarah, you judge the people around her but you’ll see that they’re only presenting her with options and she’s choosing the wrong ones. We didn’t want her to feel like a victim, the people around her are victims. I think even from the opening shot of the film if you look closely you can see that something is not right with this girl and as it moves on, there’s a series of situations, like when the girl breaks her nose at the pool and she laughs, that she’s just not a great person.
BF: I enjoyed that Sarah was not coerced or tricked into her decision. Though she becomes a victim, with horrific things happening to her body, she continues to have some agency as she has made a conscious decision to do whatever she can for fame. Indeed, instead of killing random people, in the end, she kills the people who she saw as holding her back. Why did you feel it was important to give Sarah this agency?
Kevin: I think a lot of times women characters get exploited in movies like films like this, things are constantly being done to them and they’re helpless to deal with it, and that’s just a form of exploitation, which is fine but we weren’t really interested in dealing with that.
Dennis: I don’t think you see enough movies where a female character really owes her own decisions. She doesn’t have to be sweet, she can be terrible. There’s something kind of fun to make a character like this who makes her own decisions and allows herself to be corrupted, who allows herself to be exploited and is be fine with it in the end. There’s something a little bold about how Sarah does all that in the movies. It’s terrible and you can judge her but its her own choice in the end.
In Sarah’s job at Big Tators, she feels exploited each day.
BF: It was interesting that Sarah is already used to being objectified. She works as a waitress at a Hooters-like restaurant which invites customers to ogle her. Why give Sarah this particular day job? Because of this, there is minimal different between Sarah’s daily life and the initial creepiness of her audition process. Tell me about this contrast?
Kevin: It’s like what she says when she’s talking to Danny, “I feel like I’m selling my soul already, it might as well be for something I love.” It kind of helps push her in the direction she makes in movie and also kind of helps seal the believability of her making that decision, that she’s the kind of person who already in her life is taking jobs or doing what she needs to to survive and sometimes it’s not necessarily where she wants to be and she hates it there and feels exploited but she needs to pay her bills- we hear later in the movie that she needs to pay her rent- so it’s sort of like when she took this job at Big Tators you see already that she’s not like one of the other waitresses that’s happily singing the birthday song and stuff, so its clear already she’s not the type of girl who thinks its fun to work in a place like this. so she must feel like she’s exploited working there and that’s why she lashing out at the bosses. She’s doing what she needs to to survive and that job really sets out that character element that she’s someone who will do things that she might not like or might be below what considers her standard but she will do them to survive or if its to get what she wants.
BF: Starry Eyes is not a film for the squeamish, there are several scenes of gore and brutal violence. The film also employs body horror to show Sarah’s transformation. Sarah vomits bugs and disintegrates until she looks like a badly strung-out junkie. Can you tell me a bit about Sarah’s transformation and your use of gore to accomplish it?
Dennis: I think body horror is one of the most effective sub-genres of horror because there’s something coming from inside you that you can’t escape. With a werewolf there’s a way to kill werewolves, with a haunted house movie there’s a way to escape a haunted house but with body horror, you can’t escape your own body and I think because the metaphor of this movie was about this actress feeling like she’s at the end of her rope and she had to make it as a star or its too late, for all the reasons of why we chose to focus on a woman instead of man, if you add body horror into that equation it’s ten times worse, especially if you focus on a character who already has bod issues. You can see in the beginning scene of the movie that she thinks she’s too heavy even if she’s very thin. She pulls her hair out when things don’t go right, this is a person that already has a lot of psychological triggers so to introduce body horror into the movie and to hopefully do it effectively, which I hope we did, to us was just physically unnerving and psychologically unnerving. As horror fans, Kevin and I have seen a lot of what there is to see but there’s something about seeing a person pulling their hair out or pulling their nail of that never ceases to kind of skeeze us out.
Kevin: It’s also like when she vomits up worms that’s coming from inside of her, it’s almost like she’s dying from the inside out, so this whole idea of what we call selling her soul, is really her giving up her self respect and we’re just watching her old body crumbling, but in the end she’s going to be rewarded with this beautiful new body that doesn’t have any imperfections or concern for others. That’s sort of what the body horror was representing here.
BF: Starry Eyes was partially funded through Kickstarter. What is it about this story that people will relate to?
Kevin: I think it works as a Kickstarter film because the whole film is really about someone banging their head against the wall trying to get into an industry that’s very hard to get into and here me and Dennis have been working together for 20 years making films and this is the first one that’s ever gotten a real release. We put a lot of that in the movie, our feelings of trying to get into this industry, so I think this story was a great project to be funded, at least in part, on Kickstarter because everyone on Kickstarter is making films at an independent level or a crowd source level because they’re not getting that money or through the traditional means of the Hollywood system. That’s basically what you’re doing on Kickstarter, it’s people trying to make a film without the Hollywood system.
Is Sarah a victim or a villain?
BF: Part of the reason the film works so well is Alex Essoe’s knockout performance in the physically and emotionally demanding role of Sarah. Tell me about Essoe.
Kevin: Working with Alex was great. This is a film where an actor has to use everything in their toolkit. It goes from a girl being insecure and looking in the mirror at the beginning, insecure and emotional, to the monster she becomes at the end. She really goes the full gamut and does just about everything. It was really important when we were looking for somebody to play this role that it wasn’t about talent, we needed somebody who really understood the material and was game to do this. If you get somebody that is going to have to be in every scene of the movie and do the things that you have to do in this movie from four hours of make-up to crawling out of the ground to freaking out on the floor, there’s a lot of things in here that people might shy away from and if you’ve got somebody that’s not down to take on that performance or doesn’t understand the material, and they’re in every scene of the movie, you’re never going to make your schedule because in a low budget film like this, we really had a tight schedule. If somebody doesn’t understand what you’re doing or is going “why” or “I don’t get it” or saying “I’m not going to do that it,” you’re not going to make your schedule. So it was really important to have someone who really understood the material and was game to do it. Alex, she knew all the references, all the films we were going to tell her to see, she had seen them all already, she loved them all, she saw this as a chance to do the full spectrum of acting, like “why wouldn’t I want to do this movie, I get to do every thing that I’ve learned how to do as an actor” and we were like, yes, totally. So she was great, she never complained she was down to do everything, she brought a lot of her own stuff to the role, she really elevated the role. It’s tough when you have a script, you have a character on a page that you wrote, you look at people and there’s a lot of talented people out there and they may give a good reading but that’s just two scenes, you never know are they doing to come and set and be this character. And she just came and she brought her own ideas and added a lot of nuance to the character, she just became the character. I watch the movie now and think, yeah, Sarah Walker now exists through Alex Essoe.
BF: What is your next project?
Kevin: We are constantly writing every day. I like in the same apartment complex as Dennis and everyday we work on our scripts. We have a few things we’re working on but getting a film off the ground if very difficult and a lot of elements factor into it. We’ve got a few scripts we’re working on and we would like to do and its all dependent on everything falling in the right place to see which one comes together.
Starry Eyes comes out on Blu-Ray on Feb. 3.
Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.
I know the nineties are over, but I’m still a fan of Tom Green and his eccentric brand of humor. When critics and filmgoers dismiss ‘Freddie Got Fingered,’ I feel it’s for the wrong reasons; to pass the movie off as a cinematic abortion of sorts is narrow thinking. People probably still wonder, “Who gave Tom Green money to make a movie?” I know, it’s like writing a kid a blank check and sending him into a candy store. However, if we’re not receptive enough to uncover the ideas and themes Green presents, and to assess their relevance to Hollywood ideals, celebrity status, and family politics, we need to re-evaluate how we watch film. There’s good stuff to be found in ‘Freddy.’
I know the 90s are over, but I’m still a fan of Tom Green and his eccentric brand of humor. When critics and filmgoers dismiss Freddy Got Fingered, I feel it’s for the wrong reasons; to pass the movie off as a cinematic abortion of sorts is narrow thinking. People probably still wonder, Who gave Tom Green money to make a movie? I know, it’s like writing a kid a blank check and sending him into a candy store. However, if we’re not receptive enough to uncover the ideas and themes Green presents, and to assess their relevance to Hollywood ideals, celebrity status, and family politics, we need to re-evaluate how we watch film. There’s good stuff to be found in Freddy.
In the trailer for Freddy, Green tells us, “If you like acting, then you’ll like Freddy Got Fingered.” The film itself works as a commentary on the movie-making process and essentially laughs in its face. Green’s declaration is meant as a sneer at the generic nature of not only popular film, but the reasons behind that popularity: that many viewers hold low expectations when evaluating movie quality. The mantra throughout Freddy seems to be “I’m a 28-year-old man”: Green’s character asserting his maturity to his parents, who are well aware that their baby is still very much a baby at 28 years old. While his mother would prefer her baby boy to stay at home, Gordy’s father (played by the incomparable Rip Torn) wants to see his son succeed and make something of himself.
When Roger Ebert reviewed this film, he had this to say: “This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. The movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.” Then why mention it? It’s clear that Green doesn’t want to be taken seriously. He spends his time satirizing movie tropes and evading the cinematic qualities that define film as a meaning-making process. To discuss Freddy alongside Hollywood blockbusters is apples and oranges.
Even the film’s cover–Green mimicking the gesture filmmakers use when describing their creation or cinematic vision–pokes fun at itself.
When we meet Gordy, his placement as an overgrown child is solidified when we watch him laying in bed, describing the absurd backstories that accompany the comics he’s drawn, which are actually quite good and show a great deal of artistic talent. Gordy’s job at the cheese sandwich factory is a satirical commentary on the struggling artist who works the meaningless, manual labor job while attempting to aspire to something greater in this life. Gordy’s departure from this job also serves to confirm his authentic identity as an animator.
The comical depiction of extended adolescence, especially in men, is seen often in film (see Step Brothers, Slackers, and Young Adult), yet it rarely seems tackled as a topic for discussion. Green’s lunatic brand of surrealist humor (see Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and The Mighty Boosh) and viewers’ not so warm reception of his film are a reflection of people’s desire for logic and the comfort we find in the assurance that gravity still exists each day when we wake. In an interview on the podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Green even explains that he was trying to make the “stupidest movie ever.”
Green pokes fun at the “feel good” moments we come to expect in films, the moments that inspire us and evoke tears. We see such a moment when Gordy spontaneously delivers a baby and has a revelatory moment about his life (see Mixed Nuts and Saved!), and again when Betty (Gordy’s love interest) invents a rocket-powered wheelchair.
Signature of Green’s absurd humor, he shows up at a swanky L.A. restaurant to track down bigwig Dave Davidson (Anthony Michael Hall) to see if he can score his own television series based on his drawings, all dressed as an English bobby.
The head of Radioactive Animation Studio patiently explains to Gordy, “Your drawings are pretty good, but it doesn’t make any sense, OK? It’s fucking stupid,” which incidentally describes Green’s humor as well as the general theme of Freddy. We have these moments of raucous laughter, but we can’t explain the bizarre satisfaction we gain from watching Green’s stunts, which includes a fair amount of physical comedy in the same vein as Jackass, such as crashing into people and doors as he awkwardly moves around in the film, very much resembling a clumsy, pubescent boy. When Davidson tells him that his characters are lame, Gordy pulls out a gun and puts it in his mouth: more satire relating to the extreme measures artists take when their art goes unrecognized or they fail at becoming rich and successful (see Airheads).
“I’m a loser! I wish I was dead!!!”
Freddy is a hyperbolic look at the consequences of extended adolescence, and several scenes exemplify this theme, particularly those involving Gordy and his dad. When Gordy is forced to move back home, he insists he’s going to eat a fast food chicken sandwich at the dinner table after his mother has made a lovely roast beef dinner. He argues with his father, citing his age as the reason that he can do as he pleases–a sure sign of adolescence–and his father sarcastically tells him how “impressive” it is that he can eat the food he chooses independently. This scene of family dysfunction is so telling and significant; the child-parent relationship is just that: between parents and a temperamental child who desperately wants to convince his parents that he’s not worthless. Gordy’s insistence to his father that he’s an adult and can make his own decisions–at the very least, what he chooses to eat for his dinner–serves as proof that he’s in fact not an adult at all.
Amongst his antics, Gordy dons scuba gear in the shower, where he pretends he’s diving for buried treasure, and he dresses as “the Backwards Man,” a tragic inversion of the savvy businessman his father dreams he could become.
When Gordy decides to quit the “sandwich business” once and for all to fulfill his dreams of becoming an animator, his father even tries grounding him and sending him to his room. Ironically, Gordy’s fed up dad propels his son into success by showing up at his pitch and trashing the office of Davidson, who’s under the impression that it’s all a creative act. Although Gordy spends most of his million dollar check to drug his father and bring him to Pakistan, he finally proves himself by selling his “doodles” and taking on a job.
Aren’t we thankful there’s a movie out there where we can see Rip Torn spanking Tom Green like a naughty child?
The title, admittedly, has very little to do with the plot of Freddy, if we can get away with claiming that the film does indeed have a plot. Gordy accuses his father of molesting his brother, Freddy, which is, of course, untrue. In accordance with this theme of extended adolescence, the 25-year-old Freddy–ambitious and cocky, and hence Gordy’s polar opposite–is taken into custody by Child Protective Services, and we see him in an orphanage watching television with young children. Gordy also makes sure to downplay his little brother’s success by telling him over breakfast, “You work at a bank. Am I supposed to be dazzled? You live in a tiny little shit hole, and you can’t afford breakfast, so you come here and eat for free.” Gordy has a point and manages to cast doubt on Freddy’s pride and sense of accomplishment. Despite Gordy’s talent as a troublemaker and Freddy’s work ethic, Gordy somehow remains the favored of the two sons.
Gordy tries to impress Betty by pretending that he works as a stockbroker.
The role of Gordy’s love interest, Betty, is interesting. Betty is in a wheelchair and is called a “retard slut whore” by Gordy’s dad, representing a demographic that mistakes physical disability with mental impairment. Gordy purchases a ridiculous bag of jewels that he presents to Betty after stepping off a helicopter on top of a building, and she rejects them, claiming, “I don’t care about jewels. I just want to suck your cock.” We’re confronted with an image of female sexuality that many viewers find problematic; disabled female characters tend to be desexualized in film and TV, and we’re also faced with the challenge of negotiating Betty’s voracious sexual appetite with our own misgivings about kink, foreplay, and sadomasochism.
While attempting to give Gordy a blow job, Betty finds his umbilical cord taped to his stomach, a clear reference to his permanent infantilization, which he seems to simultaneously embrace and loathe.
So why watch Freddy? How does the “stupidest movie ever” redeem itself for viewers unwilling to understand surrealist humor? The meta moments we find in the film culminate in the grand conclusion that “the Hollywood movie” can be interpreted as a pretentious joke, and Green is not taking his own film seriously enough to even stumble upon any form of success. Green’s treatment of this concept undermines critics’ ability to evaluate his film.
If you’re still skeptical, watch Freddy if only for Julie Hagerty’s performance. Hagerty, who’s always fabulous as “the mom” (see Just Friends, She’s the Man, and Storytelling) plays Gordy’s nervous, overprotective mother, even though Gordy is practically 30 years old.
At the advice of Gordy, Julie Brody leaves her husband and begins sleeping with Shaq.
Green explains that the point of the movie was to be polarizing and that he found further humor in the highly divisive viewer responses. Green makes us question our own sense of rationality and how we’ve constructed reality thus far in our lives. Freddy is funny for its unpredictable and nonsensical nature, not its inability to paint a picture of logic and reason. If viewers feel violated after watching a subversive film that simply cannot be explained away or dismissed, there are plenty of movies that contain tired tropes and stereotypes (see The Women–Bechdel Test, anyone?–and every Tyler Perry movie ever).
In the film’s trailer, Green even tells us, “I don’t really know how to make a movie.” When Gordy shows Davidson his drawings, he schools Gordy on narrative structure: “There actually has to be something that happens that’s actually funny. What the fuck is happening here?” We may ask that very same question about Freddy. What’s going on here? Using surrealist humor to question social contracts and deride an audience that is too entrenched in the trite, the cliche, and the creatively irresponsible, that’s what.
Moments before the film ends, a self-deprecating meta reference.
Any “hard-hitting” criticism of Freddy or movies like it is like judging the lasagna some nut brought to the National Pie Championships. Ebert was right: Freddy doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel, because Tom Green is too busy wearing the barrel on his head and making everyone uncomfortable to notice. Green’s movie inherently resists critique, which in fact makes this review, in a certain philosophical sense, nonexistent.
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Jenny holds a Master of Arts degree in English, and she is a part-time instructor at a community college in Pennsylvania. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema. She lives with two naughty chihuahuas. You can find her on WordPress and Pinterest.
