Tag: In Theaters Now

‘Neighbors 2’ May Not Be Feminist in Name, But It’s Feminist in Nature

‘Neighbors 2’ doesn’t explicitly state that sororities are misogynist, but the goal of the alternative sorority (essentially an all-female share house, right?) at its center to create a space where the women can make their own fun outside of the patriarchy — that wants them to be well behaved and perform their sexuality for men — is feminist, whether the movie states it or not.

Neighbors 2

This guest post is written by Scarlett Harris.

Andi Zeisler, founder of Bitch magazine and author of the new book We Were Feminists Once, criticizes “choice feminism” in which every choice women make is deemed feminist. This could also be extended to Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising and movies that marginally pass the Bechdel test: they don’t openly hate women, therefore they’re feminist, right?

The premise of Neighbors 2 centers on a trio of rebellious female college students played by Chloë Grace Moretz, Kiersey Clemons, and Beanie Feldstein who start their own, party-hardy sorority in the formerly vacant mansion next door to Mac (Seth Rogen) and Kelly (Byrne) with the help of the original antagonist, Teddy (Zac Efron). Much is made of the Greek system allowing frat houses to host parties while sororities need to remain chaste, which doesn’t fit with the increasingly progressive notions of today’s teens and, particularly, Shelby (Moretz), Beth (Clemons) and Nora (Feldstein). They are skeeved out by the obvious attempts of fraternities and their members to get young women drunk enough to possibly sexually assault at parties, invoking memories of the University of Virginia’s rape scandal and The Hunting Ground, amongst many other instances of rape on campus. To attend these parties, they are pressured to wear skimpy outfits instead of the hoodies they’re more comfortable in. Their male dorm supervisor berates them for smoking weed in their dorm rooms and if they can’t do it there, they sure as hell wouldn’t be able to if they successfully rushed a traditional sorority.

Neighbors 2 doesn’t explicitly state that sororities are misogynist, but the goal of the alternative sorority (essentially an all-female share house, right?) at its center to create a space where the women can make their own fun outside of the patriarchy — that wants them to be well behaved and perform their sexuality for men — is feminist, whether the movie states it or not. Mac and Kelly frequently utter the word sexism and ponder how hard it is to navigate being a woman in the world as they realize (spoiler alert) that taking down the sorority is antithetical to how they want their daughters to grow up in a world that already treats them differently from men. In addition to Neighbors 2’s central premise, these plot points add more checks to the feminist column. Could Byrne’s encouragement of hiring women writers for the sequel be to thank? Possibly. Although it’s awful that co-writers Amanda Lund and Maria Blasucci, as well as other women writers who worked on the film, are not even credited.

Neighbors 2_2

Furthermore, feminist principles are evident in the newly crowned sorority Kappa Nu’s party themes, such as sad movie night in which they cry into their jumbo sized tubs of ice cream, feminist heroines including Oprah, Joan of Arc, and Hillary Clinton (both Senator and future President iterations), and a celebration in honor of Shelby’s impending virginity loss, commemorating the shedding of something many young women see as a burden these days as opposed to a gift or virtue.

Neighbors 2 acknowledges femme feminism and that some women enjoy putting a lot of effort into their appearance while Shelby and her besties prefer a more relaxed style.

There’s also a scene in which Shelby, Beth, Nora, and their friends are so distracted and turned on by a dancing, oiled up Zac Efron (and if you’re attracted to men, who could blame them?) that they allow the large amount of weed they’re selling in order to raise money for their sorority to be stolen. While the celebration of young women’s sexuality isn’t seen in a lot of comedies (more often young women are portrayed as sex objects, not subjects), one of the opening scenes in which Shelby reveals she’s a virgin did feel like an excuse to get a joke in about “everything but” being about eating out a guy’s butt instead of being truly revolutionary.

Neighbors 2_5

In that way, why make it about sexual experience at all? The above-mentioned dancing scene was enough to establish that young women are sexual beings but, crass and overt sex jokes take priority. I suppose it could also be seen to be an effort to show that women can be just as badly behaved as men (which isn’t necessarily a good thing), but surely the selling of weed, the trashing of their neighbors’ home, and the trapping of Mac, Kelly, and Teddy in order to protect their right to party is testament enough to that. (In an earlier scene Teddy’s bestie and roommate Pete explains to him that there is no legal right to party.)

Speaking of Teddy, Meg Watson at Australian pop culture website Junkee writes, in her review of the movie, of the covert discomfort with showing male affection exhibited by Mac and the gay acceptance shown in Pete’s engagement and subsequent wedding:

“This same-sex relationship is used as an integral part of the plot and is never once exploited for an uncomfortable #nohomo joke. This shouldn’t be a big deal, but for a Rogen/[Evan] Goldberg production (which regularly use gay sex as a punchline), it’s enormous. At one point Mac’s mild anxiety around male intimacy is even diffused on-screen as Teddy explicitly asks for a hug because he ‘needs to feel valued’. The laugh isn’t on Teddy’s over-sentimentality; instead it’s on Mac’s initial reluctance. The hug is good! They feel better! It’s silly guys don’t do it more!”

So, while movies have been made about far more feminist things than creating a new sorority — an archaic, hierarchical relic in itself — Neighbors 2 is important because it introduces a different audience to a topic they may not have thought about before or, like Teddy, have noticed rumblings of gender inequality but don’t have the language to discuss. The Neighbors franchise is still created by and for men but it’s important to give praise where it’s due, and Neighbors 2 tries with all its might to address sexism and misogyny, almost painstakingly.

Scarlett Harris is an Australian writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about femin- and other -isms. You can follow her on Twitter @ScarlettEHarris.

Why All Our Daughters Need to See ‘Maleficent’ Right Now

We need heroines who tell girls that they are strong and capable entirely on their own, that they don’t need a family and ESPECIALLY don’t need a lover in order to become themselves. We need heroines who prove in action that no one ever—EVER—has the right to take your livelihood or body or home away from you, as well as that—if it happens—it doesn’t have to destroy you forever. Girls need to see that it’s okay to seek and use power, that there is nothing at all wrong with being a strong, emotional, powerful leader as a woman.

Maleficent-Poster

 

This is a guest post by Melissa Cordner. 

***Sole warning: contains all the spoilers.*** 

Reviews and friends will tell you that Maleficent was predictable, at times slow, and seemed to be primarily an excuse for the artists to show off their CG skills (that dragon though!). In terms of action-based plotlines, this is fair, but those who are bored by the film are overlooking one key factor: character development. Maleficent is a classic stereotypical “total bitch”—and THAT’S PORTRAYED AS A GOOD THING.

Maleficent was a sweet little girl, adored by her community and brave enough to defend it peaceably. She fell in love, as we are prone to do, and had her heart broken when the object of her affections left to chase fame and fortune, as we are also prone to do. This heartbreak made her cautious, but it did not destroy her. No, it was when he came back, soothed away the pain of years with his sweet talk and cuddles, and then drugged her and brutally hacked off and stole her wings, that she went a little crazy with pain and rage.

Angelina Jolie as Maleficent
Angelina Jolie as Maleficent

 

The importance of the wing theft seems a little underplayed in the film; at no point does Maleficent come out and say “the person I was in love with broke my body and spirit by taking away my main source of pride, mobility, and identity.” She spells it out a little for Aurora when she explains that her wings never faltered and were always dependable, but that doesn’t quite get to the heart of it either. On one level, her wings were what made her a fairy and made her the protector of the moors; without them, she is landlocked and crippled, incapable of work and even play. This would destroy anyone, but the fact that her wings were stolen not in battle but under the guise of romantic love adds another more complicated layer to the trauma. This man felt entitled to her body; he felt it fair to drug her and take what he wanted with no respect for what she wanted or needed or how she would survive afterwards. He took away her identity, her pride in her body, and her livelihood. He never asked permission, he never apologized, and she was left with trust in nothing and no one—not even herself.

It is interesting to note that he could not bring himself to kill her, but chose to cause her a lifetime of pain and suffering instead. Like Maleficent in the Sleeping Beauty saga, Stefan is easy to read as evil and malicious; however, we see he still has a bit of compassion when he can’t bring himself to drive the blade into her back. Of course he still destroys her in every way possible by tearing off her wings; does this make him better, or worse, than a murderer? He also could have used the knife and let her bleed to death from the experience but chose instead a chain which (we can guess) was made of iron and therefore cauterized the wounds; is this compassion, or cruelty? Even here, Maleficent shows that things are not always black and white.

maleficent

It is also important to note that her wings—which Stefan keeps locked under glass as a bizarre morbid trophy—come to life and return to Maleficent when she is about to die, immobilized by her inability to fly away from the power-sapping iron (another secret her once-lover has used against her as a way to destroy her, for those of you keeping track). It is no accident that those wings lay dormant behind that glass for sixteen years while Maleficent’s heart was consumed by a bitter storm of resentment and revenge. It is no accident that they came to life when Maleficent was about to die, AFTER she had told Aurora to run, using close to the last of her strength to protect what her heart cherished most. It is no accident that sixteen-year-old Aurora is who topples that trophy case and frees the wings to return to the fairy. Maleficent’s wings return because her heart does when she puts Aurora before herself, just as they disappeared when her faith and ability to love were stolen. You don’t erase a rape or betrayal—ever— but it IS possible to get your livelihood back and become proud of your body again.

The fact that Aurora— the child upon whom Maleficent cast a vengeful curse so powerful even she could not undo it—is the reason Maleficent’s heart (and wings) return to her is hugely important. This shows audience members that we don’t only deserve love, even when we run from it; we also deserve forgiveness. Maleficent was bitter and hurting and angry and made a bad decision. She made a huge mistake that destroyed an innocent person’s life for the sake of revenge… and that person LOVED HER ANYWAY. If Aurora hadn’t loved Maleficent as much as Maleficent loved her, even after finding out the source of the curse, the kiss would not have been of true love and the spell would not have been broken. We know this because the kiss from Phillip didn’t work; they didn’t know each other well enough, they didn’t love each other truly enough. As in Frozen (and Enchanted now that I think about it), Disney finally gives us the message that love at first sight is not all it’s made out to be.

Maleficent and her wings
Maleficent and her wings

 

This generation of girls has had sassy, brave and strong heroines before Maleficent, of course, but all these heroines have left us wanting more complexity. I grew up with Hermione, the cleverest girl at Hogwarts—who solved riddles for the main male character and played a vital-but-still-merely-supporting role to his adventures. Teenagers now identify with Katniss, the badass figurehead of the rebel movement in The Hunger Games—an emotional, confused girl who bravely defended her sister and then forevermore served as a puppet for the movement rather than a leader. Disney’s movies have participated in this movement as well. Tangled’s Rapunzel dared to question authority but was still fulfilled by finding love and a throne; Brave’s Merida valued herself as more of a person than a princess and learned the value of bravery without a supporting man but remained a princess and even—painfully enough—underwent a “makeover” to become more stereotypically beautiful/soft/feminine later on. Frozen gave us female characters with a bit more emotional complexity, but even Anna—who proved that true love does not have to be romantic love—was sweet and a little bumbling and would never hurt a fly… and even she ended up with a boyfriend. All of these women show girls that it’s okay to be emotional and scared, it’s okay to rely on others, and it’s possible to be brave and strong and true to yourself while you do it. That is a message that our girls, who still dress up like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella, need desperately to hear.

Screen-Shot-2014-01-26-at-11.54.58-PM

But I, for one, think it’s time to take the “you don’t need to be helpless and dependent to be feminine” theme a little further. We need heroines who tell girls that they are strong and capable entirely on their own, that they don’t need a family and ESPECIALLY don’t need a lover in order to become themselves. We need heroines who prove in action that no one ever—EVER—has the right to take your livelihood or body or home away from you, as well as that—if it happens—it doesn’t have to destroy you forever. Girls need to see that it’s okay to seek and use power, that there is nothing at all wrong with being a strong, emotional, powerful leader as a woman. It’s time we tell our girls that you can fight back, even using defensive violence, and still be a good person. It’s time to tell our girls that they can make mistakes and even hurt the people they love, and still deserve that love. Yes, Maleficent DOES have a slow plot, instead centering almost entirely on the character development of one woman—and it is about damn time.

Recommended Reading:

“Monsters and Morality in Maleficent“ by Gaayathri Nair

“Angelina Jolie: Yes, That Scene in Maleficent Is About Rape” by Dodai Stewart

Mel Cordner is based in Connecticut, USA with her two cats and a car full of rubber ducks. She spends a lot of time writing about queer issues, fighting the system, and supporting local parks and restaurants. For more of her work, check out http://www.permissiontowrite.tumblr.com/

 

The Sex Scenes Are Shit, and the Director’s an Asshole, but You Should Still See ‘Blue Is the Warmest Color’

A three-hour art film about two queer women with subtitles is like a dream come true for me: I’ve sat through arty, subtitled films twice that long–which didn’t have a trace of queer content. So I’ve obsessively read everything I can about Blue Is The Warmest Color. And I’m puzzled. In an age when writers of color like Wesley Morris and Roxane Gay bring added perspective and insight to their reviews of films like, Django Unchained and 12 Years A Slave, why are straight men the overwhelming majority of people telling the world whether or not the sex scenes in Blue are convincing?

Blue Is the Warmest Color poster
Blue Is the Warmest Color poster

 

This is a guest post by Ren Jender.

A three-hour art film about two queer women with subtitles is like a dream come true for me: I’ve sat through arty, subtitled films twice that long–which didn’t have a trace of queer content. So I’ve obsessively read everything I can about Blue Is The Warmest Color.  And I’m puzzled. In an age when writers of color like Wesley Morris and Roxane Gay bring added perspective and insight to their reviews of films like, Django Unchained and 12 Years A Slave, why are straight men the overwhelming majority of people telling the world whether or not the sex scenes in Blue are convincing?

I saw the film about five months after it had won the top prize at Cannes (in an unusual move the jury awarded the prize to the two stars, Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos, as well as the director, Abdellatif Kechiche) just prior to its US release. Julie Maroh (the queer author of the original graphic novel on which the film is based) prepared me to not love the sex scenes, which she described as “porn,” ” brutal and surgical,” and “cold.”

What I didn’t expect, in a film that is told almost entirely in close-ups on faces, was the director  (who also co-wrote the script) framing the sex scenes so they have as much tits and ass–especially ass–in them as possible. The actresses (Seydoux as Emma and Exarchopoulos as Adèle: the director named the main character and the film itself–the French title is La vie d’Adèle—after the woman playing the lead) do a beautiful job of making us believe in this romance–during the rest of the film. But here they are stuck playing a joyless game of naked Twister. We can practically hear the director shout, “Put your hand there! Put your face there! No, there! Now slap her ass! Again!” The ass slapping reminded me of the moment in male-directed, girl-on-girl porn clips, in which, to keep the audience from getting bored and give the actresses something to do, one woman is directed to slap (or tap: it makes a noise like slapping) the vulva of the other woman–even though: I don’t want my vulva slapped, and I’ve never met another queer woman who wants her vulva slapped nor one who gets pleasure from slapping the vulva of another woman.

The director frames a scene in a museum much like the sex scenes, so we get an eyeful of the breasts and buttocks from the nude artworks, as if the scene takes place at a peepshow. If the director had been able to stop ogling women’s body parts, he could have redeemed himself. A woman (who has never had sex with another woman) seeing nudes in the company of the woman to whom she has a strong sexual attraction is a situation rife with possibility. And part of what makes Adèle and Emma’s bond believable is the instant and electrifying attraction they have to each other: Adèle literally stops traffic when she first sees Emma and fantasizes about her that night, though the two haven’t even spoken. Every other moment of their relationship feels genuine (except when one woman hits the other during a fight, which also feels like a man’s version of what two women do when they’re alone), so we feel cheated during the naked sex scenes.

We see what the nude scenes could have been later in the film when the characters have a sexual moment but stay fully clothed–which is maybe why the director doesn’t ruin the mood. The camera focuses on their faces and the emotion that plays across them. Perhaps Kechiche finally learned that no one is able to act with her ass. 

Besides being a creep, Kechiche is an asshole. He cheated his crew out of overtime pay and continued a long tradition of male directors harassing their very young, very naked actresses on the set. When the two women had the temerity to complain, well, you can read for yourself his translated public statements at at Flavorwire. In spite of himself and those ten bad minutes (out of 180), Kechiche’s Blue Is The Warmest Color is a great film everyone should see.

Although the filmmakers (I am including the actresses since, according to all parties, improvisation played a big part in the finished film) and straight reviewers are quick to describe the film as being a universal one of first love, and as Maroh has pointed out no queer women had a prominent role in the creation of the film, it captures queer life and love well, especially the intensity and desperation of a teenager’s first relationship with another woman. When the two have their big fight I cringed in recognition–as I did during many other moments.

The isolation Adèle experiences in her relationship with Emma is nothing like the peer-pressure romance she has at the beginning of the film with the sensitive, good-looking, older boy at school. Her high school friends (most of whom have the same neat, fashionable haircut; Adèle’s hair is messily piled on her head but at the same time always gets in her face) seem more eager about the relationship (“He likes you!”) than Adèle does.

After she breaks up with the boy, we see Adèle walking away from the high school friends who are calling her name to be with Emma. Adèle is opening her life to the elements, to a tornado, knowing nothing will be the same afterward and not caring about the consequences. So we’re not surprised that Adèle clings to Emma like a life preserver. And we’re also not surprised to see that later in the film, without Emma, she starts to sink.

After she’s finished with school, Adèle doesn’t talk with straight coworkers about her personal life, even though she gets along with them and likes her job. She wants to avoid coming out to them. She even hides her true address, so none of them find out she lives with a woman. When heartbreak comes she can’t tell the people she works with why she doesn’t feel like dancing with the preschoolers they look after, so she goes through the motions, letting her real feelings surface only after everyone has left, and the day is done.

Lea Seydoux
Lea Seydoux (Emma)

 

Seydoux (whose previous roles are nothing like the one she plays here) makes Emma a beautiful butch, especially in her later scenes in which she seems lit from within, as if she stepped out of a Renoir painting. Emma is an artist herself and so stunning even those of us who are art-snobs can almost forgive her shitty paintings: the director seems to know as much about the art world as he does about sex between women.

Even in the mainstream films queer women love, we usually have to ignore the discrepancy between how non-character actresses in mainstream films are supposed to look and how butches look. Popular films will sometimes feature a butch who wears makeup heavy enough to be visible on camera, or we will see a woman who is supposed to be butch who has obvious breast implants. Though individual butches may have these attributes, they don’t signal “butch” to other queer women, including those in a film audience.

With her pale lashes and unpainted mouth Seydoux is one of the most recognizable butches I’ve seen in any movie, including those made by queer women. And her Emma pleasantly surprises us in the way that people in real life sometimes surprise us. We expect flirtatious, teasing, older Emma, who has her arm around another woman when she first sees Adèle, and a posse of admirers at the women’s bar, to break Adèle’s heart, but Emma turns out to be a serial monogamist who genuinely cares about Adèle. When Adèle first sees the inevitable cracks forming in her relationship with Emma she does the one thing guaranteed to destroy it (without consciously admitting what she is doing). Adèle ends up breaking her own heart.

Seeing the two actresses play the scene in the café toward the end is like watching two great musicians play together. Some viewers have complained the film is too long, but Blue takes time to unwind the way relationships take time, the way heartbreak takes time, the way life takes time. Even at three hours we just want more.

The film also excels in capturing the experiences of queer women who are femmes. At one point, we see Adèle (who wears skirts and heels) cook for, serve and then clean up for a large group of people she barely knows while her butch girlfriend (whose friends are the party guests) literally lies back with her hands under her head. I’ve played a similar “wife” role to a butch partner–and seen too many other femmes I know do so too.

In a long scene at the party, a man corners Adèle into a conversation about her sexuality, his eyes glittering (he could be a stand-in for the director!), and she’s too polite to tell him to fuck off. I’ve been to that party, met that man, and been that woman.

Adele Exarchopoulos
Adele Exarchopoulos (Adèle)

 

 Adèle is beautiful in the conventional sense (with her hair down, she resembles a younger, more well-fed version of Angelina Jolie), but we see that she doesn’t fit in either at the women’s bar, where she first speaks to Emma or later at the party among her girlfriend’s arty, more conventionally queer-looking friends. She is always, always getting attention from men, even the ones who know she is with Emma–but garners hardly any notice from other queer women.

Though Blue Is The Warmest Color is directed by a straight guy (and one who is, let’s not forget, a creepy asshole) it is, I would argue, a feminist film. It’s centered on one woman and takes her seriously. And Exarchopoulos gives the role (as Adèle jokingly tells Emma she will give her “study” of sex with women) her “all.”  Exarchopoulos’s face here is like a landscape in a Terrence Malick film and Blue, like the works of Malick, should absolutely, positively be seen in a theater, so the experience can wash over us, the way we see seawater wash over Adèle’s face when she is on a working holiday at the beach.

In Blue we see every aspect of Adèle’s life: as a schlumpy teenager, a student of French literature, a daughter, a girlfriend, a protestor, a “friend,” a teacher and finally a stylish twenty-something, alone. Films that cover this range in a man’s life are commonplace, but this week I was supposed to see three acclaimed American movies before their release (some of which competed with Blue at Cannes and may very well compete with it again at the Oscars), and the women in them are, according to even the glowing reviews, types and stereotypes: cute old ladies who talk dirty (and get cheap laughs for doing so) and bitchy ex-girlfriends who show that though the male protagonists may be losers, they aren’t gay losers. So sitting through three hours in a movie theater and focusing on one woman’s life (especially a queer woman’s) was a relief and something I could use a lot more of.  SEE THIS FILM.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2OLRrocn3s”]

 

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. She almost dressed as “Emma” for Halloween, but then decided to be “zombie Lou Reed” instead.

‘Despicable Me 2’: One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

Despicable Me 2 poster

This is a guest post by Margaret Evans.

I really enjoyed the first Despicable Me movie. The characters were all a lot of fun, the bond between Gru and his adopted daughters was believable, and the world that the movie built was interesting. When the sequel came out, I saw it in the cinema, and it was just as good as the first, if not better. However, one scene in the movie troubled me.

 

At one point, the main character, Gru, is set up on a date with a woman, and the date doesn’t go well. When Shannon (his date) threatens to reveal his wig, he is “saved” when Lucy (one of the female leads) tranquilises her. Gru and Lucy drop Shannon off at her house, and slapstick humour ensues on the way.

 

So, why does the slapstick humour aimed at Shannon bother me when I have no problem with either slapstick humour as a concept or even the slapstick humour inflicted upon Gru, his minions, or later the main antagonist? I believe that the answer to this question can be found by taking a look at how the characters react when they are the focus of slapstick.
Lucy spies on Gru during his date with Shannon
In the case of Gru, the best example of slapstick is when he gets hit by Lucy’s lipstick taser. His response is to start frantically moving; he even does a little bit of the dance from Saturday Night Fever. He is very animated and clearly in pain.

 

Shannon’s experience, on the other hand, is very different from Gru’s. The major difference between the two is that Gru is conscious …  whereas Shannon is out for the count the whole time. Because of this, the humour doesn’t come from her reaction to the injuries that she is experiencing–but from her lack of reaction.

 

When Gru and Lucy take Shannon home, they don’t put her in the car or call for a taxi; they put her on the roof of the car, the same way you would put your luggage on the back of the car. When they arrive at Shannon’s house, she is unceremoniously thrown off of the car, and the other characters laugh about it. Now, imagine this scene again and–instead of Shannon–picture any inanimate object that you think fits. If you play this scene again in your mind with the changes, it will still make sense and be funny for the same reason.
Lucy and Gru
That is what troubled me about the scene with Shannon. In the case of Gru being tasered, the joke was his reaction and his pain, but in Shannon’s case, it was how she showed the exact same “reaction” that an inanimate object would (because she was unconscious). In Gru’s case, the humour has a humanising effect, but in Shannon’s case, the humour very literally objectifies her.

 

Now, it has been suggested to me that the reason Gru and Shannon are treated differently in this regard is that we are meant to sympathise with Gru because he is the good guy, and we are rooting for him, whereas we are meant to take delight in Shannon’s pain because she is cruel and obnoxious.

 

To counter this argument, I would like to take a look at the main villain. Near the end of the movie, the villain is defeated, in part by Gru using the same lipstick taser that Lucy used on him. The villain reacts in the same way that Gru did, and we can very clearly see the pain that he is experiencing because of the electricity. Yet, the humour still comes from his defeat rather than our feeling sorry for him. The movie does not use the character’s villainy as some sort of excuse to treat him as anything less than human.
Shannon from Despicable Me 2
Therefore, the fact that we are meant to strongly dislike Sharon and be rooting against her can’t be pinned down as the reason that her experience is so noticeably different from Gru’s. Neither can it be used as justification for the problematic elements.

 

The slapstick involving the other characters throughout the movie only serves to show that if the writers really wanted to pull some humour at the expense of Shannon, they could have easily done so without the need to reduce her character to the level of a piece of luggage.
The scene with Shannon is, for me, the sole off-putting scene in the movie. It is a scene in which being an irritating person and a bad date is used to justify knocking someone out–and in which a character gets treated the same way someone would treat an object that they felt didn’t need to be particularly handled with care. We, the audience, are meant to laugh along with Gru and Lucy, to view this all as an evening of comedic antics rather than what it actually is, complete disregard for her as a human being.
Gru, Lucy, and Shannon’s unconscious body
This scene didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the movie, but the rest of the movie doesn’t give this scene a free pass. Personally, I thought it was a real shame to see the direction that the movie temporarily took considering how good the movies had been up to that point at humanising its characters, (especially Gru, who played an archetype traditionally demonised in the first movie). I just wish that the people behind this movie could have put the same thought into writing the character of Shannon, however personally irritating they intended her to be.

 

Margaret Evans is a blogger from Godalming, a small town in south England. She contributes to the website www.paranerds.com. When she isn’t writing she volunteers as a receptionist for the local Citizen’s Advice Bureau and works as an admin for a local building firm.

There’s a New "Final Girl" in the House—and She’s a Beast: A Review of ‘You’re Next’

Movie poster for You’re Next

Written and Lovingly Spoiled by Stephanie Rogers.

Crispian: Where’s Felix?
Erin: I put a blender on his head and killed him.

You’re Next is sick, and I mean sick like “disgusting” and sick like “badass” because somewhere in my 34-year-old brain, I’m also 12.
It’s no secret if you’ve been reading my posts over the past 6 years that I love horror films and, more than anything, I adore the Final Girl in horror films. I want to be the Final Girl, tripping my way through the woods with a shard of glass sticking out of my leg while the audience roots for me to kill the bad guy. The Final Girl, in fact, might be my favorite iteration of the Strong Female Character in that the writers allow her to show weakness—which makes her desperate acts of murder to save herself even more appealing; she gets to be both the freaked out damsel in distress and the hero of the story.
Erin, the Final Girl, wielding an ax
From a feminist perspective, the Final Girl’s combination of strength and weakness accompanied by the (often male) audience’s ability to identify with her plight, further emphasize her importance. The horror film genre in general affords men an opportunity to identify with a female protagonist, and that rarely occurs in other genres. Go horror.
In Carol J. Clover’s book, Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, she argues—to quote Wikipedia—“that in these films, the viewer begins sharing the perspective of the killer but experiences a shift in identification to the Final Girl partway through the film.” And in You’re Next, I couldn’t help but smile when Erin bashed in the head of a masked bad guy with a meat tenderizer while the audience cheered. (I smiled because the audience clapped for a female lead, not because I’m a sociopath.)
The quintessential animal masks
The film starts off like an average, run-of-the-mill horror film. The first woman character appears during what looks like pretty unfulfilling sex. My first thought? She’s about to die. Because women characters in horror films always get the death punishment for having sex—which is, I’ll admit, a problematic element of the genre. (A tiny part of me wondered if she might survive given that it wasn’t a steamy sex scene as much as a gross dude getting off while she lightweight grimaced.) Alas, she succumbs to the trope; then the words “You’re Next” appear in blood on the wall before the shitty bedfellow bites it … and so begins the latest incarnation of the Home Invasion journey. 
Get ready for your sex punishment

It may take place in a mansion, but the kitchen and the basement are where shit gets real. The weapons include kitchen knives, blenders, meat tenderizers, and a slew of screwdrivers, as well as a machete (duh) and for some reason a fucking crossbow like it’s The Hunger Games. I liked that the terrorized family members needed to defend themselves with household appliances rather than a random gun they’d hidden for a rainy day. (I almost never buy it when victims pull out their stowed away guns, and those films lean a little too close to a dangerous message: Buy a gun to protect your home, America; otherwise you’ll die at the hands of lunatics, and it’ll be all your fault. The NRA told you so!)
Thank you, You’re Next, for avoiding that convention and making me look at blenders and meat tenderizers in entirely new ways. 
Dude, you are SO next
The film follows a very rich, white, nuclear family whose matriarch (Barbara Crampton) and patriarch (Rob Moran) invite their children (and the significant others of their children) over for a nice, functional (ha) 35th Wedding Anniversary celebration and to see the brand new mansion they purchased. This brand new mansion happens to sit in the middle of nowhere with very limited cell phone service. Oops! And it also becomes clear almost immediately that the three brothers borderline despise one another, and the lone sister Aimee (Amy Seimetz), a total Daddy’s Girl, has been pretty much pampered her whole life. Of course the matriarch, Aubrey, hears a loud-ass noise that shakes the chandelier before the kids arrive, and the husband does that whole, “You’re a crazy bitch, but I’ll check it out anyway just to humor you” thing that always cracks me up in horror films. The message? Listen to women, dumbasses, because they know what’s up. 
Little Sister and Daddy’s Girl, Aimee, freaks out when everyone starts dying
Aubrey, portrayed as a hysterical mess who can’t stop crying, gets a pass from me. I found her response to the creepy loud noises and then the subsequent deaths of her children via crossbow (and a slow-motion sprint that ended with a clotheslining to the jugular) the most normal response of the whole bunch. These take-charge mofos who mindlessly cover their dead family members with a sheet and move on need some serious psychoanalysis. 
One of the masked men looks down on Erin after she jumped through a fucking window on purpose
The father, Paul, the former Man of the House, completely loses his shit at one point, going into a catatonic sob-state that made me chuckle in delight. The witty, suck-up, kind of dick oldest bro Drake (Joe Swanberg) makes incessant condescending comments to the middle brother, Crispian (A.J. Bowen), about his inability to do anything with his life; and Felix (Nicholas Tucci), the youngest, sits back with his girlfriend, rolls his eyes, and observes the dysfunction.

Just your typical dudbro family emasculation sesh.

It took me approximately ten minutes into the movie to realize this home invasion violence was all about money. Specifically white people with money. And the punishment of white people with money, a la The Purge. Can I just say kudos to Hollywood for taking a step back from the Mancession narrative for five seconds? Before the audience can identify with these rich white people and feel bad for their plight, we’re already laughing at them. They’re ridiculous. And the only seemingly respectable person of the lot is a darker-skinned young Australian woman named Erin (Sharni Vinson) who grew up in a Survivalist Camp and has a crapload of student loan debt.
Sorry, murderers. Your crossbow suddenly don’t mean shit. 
Erin (Sharni Vinson) looking a little worn out
Erin rocks. Erin is possibly my favorite Final Girl ever. That’s right; I’m putting her right up there with Ellen Ripley in Alien and Laurie Strode in Halloween. This Final Girl, while more advantaged than her predecessors with her Survivalist Camp superhero skills, also doesn’t get boxed into what has become a Final Girl trope: a young virgin, or a woman who’s never shown having sex, who’s rarely sexualized, who often appears as the “androgynous nerd” stereotype—Jena Malone in The Ruins is a good example of this—and who plays a straight-laced nondrinker or drug user (Erin insists they stop for alcohol). Erin is the new and improved Final Girl 2.0; the home invaders may run around in creepy Fox, Lamb, and Tiger masks, but Erin is the most animalistic of the bunch.
And that brings me to the women in the film. 
Zee, Felix’s girlfriend, tries some sick shit in this scene
I didn’t like that Felix’s girlfriend Zee (Wendy Glenn), the mostly non-speaking goth chick, turned out to be a villain. Why couldn’t the sweet, blond sister, Aimee, be a villain? Change it up, Hollywood! But I did like, for what it’s worth, that a woman got to be a villain—a somewhat likeable villain in the end—and that the filmmakers gave the audience an opportunity to identify with both a woman protagonist and a woman antagonist … who, for once, weren’t fighting over a fucking dude.
All in all, I very much enjoyed every dude’s “um wait whut” reaction to Erin’s skillz with a meat tenderizer. I liked that many deaths at the hands of Erin took place in a kitchen, a space where women were—and occasionally still are—forced to serve and clean up after men and children. You’re Next makes Erin queen of the domestic space but in a way that gives her power over her captors. The entire film could, in fact, be read as a cautionary tale for keeping women locked up in the domestic sphere or otherwise. Erin may not have served them in the conventional sense, but they definitely got served. 

 “Lookin’ for the Magic” by Dwight Twilley Band: the theme song from You’re Next

Top Ten Reasons Why I Am Thankful for Lake Bell’s ‘In a World’

Movie poster for In a World …
This is a guest post by Molly McCaffrey.

1) Number one and most important of all, I’m thankful this movie was written and directed by a woman and that it’s a story about a strong, smart, interesting woman.

Director and screenwriter Lake Bell at the Sundance Film Festival

I am incredibly thankful about that.

2) I’m thankful this movie stars an actress who doesn’t look like every other Hollywood actress. Yes, Bell is beautiful, but she also doesn’t have the button nose, full lips, perfect posture, and blond hair that has become so annoyingly ubiquitous among our female movie stars.

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) sing their guts out in In a World …

And neither do her co-stars…

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Cher (Tig Notaro) watch Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) record a voice-over.

(You also gotta love a movie that has both Tig Notaro and Geena Davis.)

3) On a related note, I’m thankful Bell’s protagonist, Carol Solomon, doesn’t always act like a leading lady—she shuffles, lurches, and acts generally spazzy. She doesn’t always look glamorous either—she doesn’t always wear makeup or look perfectly primped and often wears regular-people clothes (sweatpants, thermal underwear, t-shirts, football jerseys, overalls, ill-fitting dresses, etc.)—just like the rest of us.

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) hatch plans to take over the voice-over industry.

At the same time, I’m glad Carol looks attractive when she wants to without looking trashy or showing off all the goods.

4) I’m also thankful that several men are attracted to Carol even though she doesn’t know how to dress or stand up straight (and that the men who are drawn to her are attractive but not perfect either).

Carol Solomon’s love interest, Louis (Demetri Martin)

5) I love, too, that this film shows an intelligent, driven, attractive young female protagonist in a relationship, but it isn’t what defines her. Let me say that again: Thank God her relationship doesn’t define her!

I was equally thrilled that Carol had casual sex with some random guy she met at a party and celebrated it. And that she didn’t end up regretting her actions or have something bad happen to her as a result. In this movie, sex was just part of life—no big deal—much like it is in real life.

Louis (Demetri Martin) and Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) karaoke the night away in In a World …

6) I was also head over heels over the fact that the two sisters—Carol and Dani—were so close and leaned on each other for everything.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) and her sister, Dani (Michaela Watkins)

I was glad, as well, that the person who had an “affair” in this movie was a woman (rather than a man) and that she didn’t actually go all the way.

7) I really appreciate, too, that this movie shows a young person living at home with a parent and that she isn’t doing so because she’s a lazy, lost, unmotivated slacker.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) and her father (Fred Melamed) argue about her career.

And I was truly blown away by the film’s characterization of Carol’s family—a real family having down-to-earth, regular problems.

No, nobody is dying of cancer, nobody is mentally ill or disabled, nobody is in prison, nobody is an alcoholic. The characters in this movie are just average people with average problems—like jealousy, resentment, miscommunication, and selfishness.

I am very grateful about that.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) and her father (Fred Melamed) on the way to an industry party.

8) I’m thrilled about several things relating to Carol’s job…

I’m relieved Carol works in a non-glamorous industry that we don’t usually see featured in movies—the voice-over industry.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) records a voice-over.

I love, too, that she cares so much about her work even though it doesn’t pay the bills.

And I’m glad that the film shows her having some success in that field without totally dominating it a la every other movie ever made (Erin Brockovich, Jerry Maguire, The Devil Wears Prada, Working Girl, etc., etc.).

9) I’m downright ecstatic about the fact that Carol didn’t have to trip or fall to make us laugh, avoiding the ridiculous formulas that often dominate movies about women.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell) surrounded by her work notes in her bedroom at her father’s house.

Thank you for that, Lake Bell!

Tangentially, it was also awesome that Carol was irritated by stupid people doing stupid things and didn’t apologize for that.

10) And last but not least, I’m incredibly thankful this movie made me laugh and feel and, for God’s sake, think.

Carol Solomon (Lake Bell)

If only all movies did the same.

 

 
Molly McCaffrey is the author of the short story collection How to Survive Graduate School & Other Disasters, the co-editor of Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There, and the founder of I Will Not Diet, a blog devoted to healthy living and body acceptance. She has worked with Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple and received her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Currently she teaches at Western Kentucky University and designs books for Steel Toe Books. She is at work on her first memoir, You Belong to Us, which tells the story of McCaffrey meeting her biological family. 

A (Bad) Teacher

Written by Max Thornton.
  
Movie poster for A Teacher
People sure like to make movies about teacher-student relationships. It’s always incredibly skeevy, of course, to watch someone in a position of authority abuse their power, but cinematic representations are rarely as nakedly awful as the reality.
A Teacher consciously downplays the really appalling aspects of intergenerational classroom romance without ever intimating that it’s anything other than a very bad idea. As suggested by the title, the film focuses entirely on young English teacher Diana Watts (played by Lindsay Burdge), for whom the relationship is at least as destructive as it is for Eric, the pupil (who is, if it makes a difference, a high-school senior and significantly bigger physically than she is).
The total focus on Diana is signaled from the opening classroom scene, where the camera stays fixed on her, regardless of who is speaking. This directorial choice recurs throughout the film, and it serves to highlight her naïve solipsism. It’s tricky to maintain audience empathy for a viewpoint character while also drawing attention to her self-centered immaturity, so props to director Hannah Fidell for finding a deft way to put us inside Diana’s head (hearing other characters’ dialogue from her perspective) while still maintaining an outsider’s gaze (looking at her face).
Lindsay Burdge as Diana.
Overall, both style and acting contribute to an odd sense that Diana is not the one doing the victimizing in this circumstance. Factor out her job, and this movie would just be the story of dumb puppy love, a young woman so hopelessly smitten with the very idea of romance that she’s heedless of the realities of the situation. But, of course, her job is the point – the movie’s called A Teacher – and the experience, knowledge, and wisdom implied by that position are dramatically at odds with her incredibly adolescent attitude toward the whole relationship.
Early in the film, while hooking up with Eric in his car, Diana reminisces about similar trysts from her own high-school days. It’s a tellingly sad and uncomfortable little moment that kicks off a spiral of nonstop sadness and discomfort: Watching a grown-ass woman sext and Facebook-stalk a teenage boy is both tragic and kind of disturbing. There’s something Carey Mulligan-esque about Burdge’s face when she’s in bed with Eric, evoking (as does the title) another film in which the questionable sexual relationship is the other way around, age- and power-wise.
Perhaps the echo is deliberate. Diana never seems to have any power in this relationship, never acts like the teacher or the one giving the education. Even in the bedroom, Eric calls the shots (“Take your clothes off.” “Come here.”), and, while driving his car, he describes feeling as though his penis is getting bigger, coming into its own, “powering up.” For him, sex with an attractive young teacher is a power fantasy come true. The lovelorn look of the infatuated is notably absent from his face throughout the film, even as Diana is distracted from grading papers by soft-focus fantasies of him.
Oh girl.
Diana doesn’t have to be alone in these delusions of romance. The hand of friendship is consistently extended by her coworker and her roommate – both of whom are women, the latter of whom is even named Sophia– but she ignores this potential salvation in order to continue down the self-destructive path of reliving her high-school sexuality and daydreaming of underage man-meat.
That’s not really an unfair assessment of Eric, who is little more than a cipher. He’s just there to be strong and silent and sexy, a backdrop for Diana’s nostalgic projections, whose actual personality she never seems to take into account. Almost everything he says to her is to do with sex. By contrast, Sophia tells Diana she cares about her. In a heartbreaking pre-Thanksgiving scene, Sophia monologues anxiously about the upcoming holiday with her family, and Diana completely ignores her in order to text topless selfies to her teenage boyfriend.
Ultimately, the film’s lesson is of the value of companionship and empathy, and the danger of total self-absorption. Someone who only chases empty nostalgia for her former self (check her name, Diana, and in case you didn’t get it her brother’s called Hunter), and never bothers with the richness of female friendship that is right there in her life, is not going to end happily. A shallow focus on finding hunkitude in all the wrong places, instead of paying attention to your friends, is not the pathway to a fulfilling life. 
Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax. He can never format this bio line correctly.

‘Touchy Feely’ Explores the Link Between Physical and Emotional Contact

Written by Lady T.

Josh Pais and Rosemarie DeWitt in Touchy Feely

A free-spirited massage therapist develops a powerful aversion to touch, alienating herself from her clients, her boyfriend, and even her own body. Meanwhile, her straitlaced, reserved brother develops an almost miraculous ability to heal jaw pain in the patients of his dental practice.

This is the premise of Touchy Feely, a new film by writer-director Lynn Shelton (Humpday, Your Sister’s Sister). Rosemarie DeWitt plays Abby and Josh Pais plays Scott in a story where sister and brother find themselves abruptly switching roles. Abby becomes isolated from the people around her, and Scott connects with his patients for the first time and finds a new source of energy and inspiration in his life.

Abby examines her hands after developing her aversion to physical contact

Shelton uses extreme close-ups of the human body to show the source of Abby’s fear of contact, focusing on thin, fine hairs and cracks in the skin. Her approach to depicting Scott’s sudden gift for healing is a little different, giving us a montage of grateful patients hugging the awkward dentist after he cures their problems.

As the film progresses, it becomes clear that Abby and Scott, though sharing relatively little screentime together, are two sides of the same coin. Their emotional health and sense of well-being are directly linked to their comfort with physical contact. Abby is emotionally connected to others and at peace with herself when she can make physical connections with people, and cut off and withdrawn when physical contact sends her running into the bathroom.

Sometimes, actual touch isn’t necessary to feel a connection. Inspired by his recent successes at work, Scott meets with Abby’s friend Bronwyn (Allison Janney) to learn about the Japanese art of reiki, where little hand-on-skin contact takes place. Abby, meanwhile, experiments with ecstasy, and while it doesn’t immediately cure her aversion to touch, she experiences the world in a different way, with her senses of sight and smell heightened. Jenny (Ellen Page), Scott’s daughter, is one of the only characters who can put her desire for human contact into words, saying, “Do you ever want to kiss someone so badly that it hurts your skin?”

Scott learns about the practice of reiki from Bronwyn (Allison Janney)

Shelton’s direction is careful, patient, and intimate, lingering on her actors’ faces and bodies, letting their physicality do the talking rather than overwhelming the viewer with dialogue. It’s a wise choice in a film that’s so focused on the relationships the characters have with their bodies and their comfort with physical contact.

What’s missing from Touchy Feely is the motivation. We know

Lady T is a writer with two novels, a screenplay, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com.

An Emotional Response to ‘Lovelace’

Amanda Seyfried as “Linda Lovelace”
This is a guest post by Gabriella Apicella.
When was the last time you cried in a movie theatre? The last time you were so moved by a film you needed everyone else to leave before ungluing yourself from the seat and attempting to process what you’ve experienced? Or the last time you saw something that made you feel that if enough people saw it, the world could be changed for the better?
None of these things happen to me too often, but this evening while watching Lovelace, I experienced all three.
I’ve been following the release of this film with some interest. As a dedicated feminist with a fiercely anti-porn stance, I was certainly not expecting anything particularly groundbreaking when I saw the movie posters plastered on the walls of my local underground station. Showing an objectified Amanda Seyfried in a lacy bra with wide eyes and an innocent pout, I very quickly assumed this would be a film for me to try and forget existed (much like the endless Fast and Furious rehashes). And then I heard that Gloria Steinem and Catherine Mackinnon were involved. For those who hadn’t heard, they were both consultants on the film, in their roles as caretakers of Linda Boreman Marchiano’s estate. 
Linda Boreman Marchiano (aka Linda Lovelace)
(This excellent article by Catherine Mackinnon explains a bit more about their involvement and is well worth reading.) 
Dreadful acts of abuse feature all too regularly on our screens. Even on television it has become increasingly common to see ever more graphic gore and sadistic violence. As Lovelace has an 18 certificate (equivalent to R in the US) and being superficially familiar with the story beforehand, I had braced myself for a barrage of scarring images, expertly shot and edited and due to reappear in my nightmares for weeks to come. This is one of the quandaries that I have wondered about as a screenwriter – how to depict scenes of distressing acts without compromising your viewer, or making them complicit with the abuse, or, in fact, abusing them as well. However, it may be that by their sensitive and elegant handling, the filmmakers of Lovelace have actually revolutionised an area of storytelling that has prevented some of the most shocking and distressing yet crucially important films from either being made or from being seen.
The film intelligently portrays a great deal of what Linda Boreman Marchiano experienced and yet does not subject the audience to the horror. Not only does this make it a safer viewing experience, it also puts the audience’s emotional identification with the protagonist first. Linda remains a whole character throughout rather than becoming a body upon which hideous acts are carried out. We do not shift into passive voyeur or spectator, as traumatising scenes in The Accused, Monster, Straw Dogs, Irreversible, or any number of other films depicting domestic and sexual violence force the audience to do. 
Adam Brody and Amanda Seyfried in Lovelace
One of the defending arguments the Director Michael Winterbottom employed when graphically depicting the violent beating of both female characters in his film, The Killer Inside Me was that: 
“It was intentionally shocking. The whole point of the story is, here is someone who is supposed to be in love with two women who he beats to death, and of course the violence should be shocking. If you make a film where the violence is entertaining, I think that’s very questionable.”

What Lovelace opens up is the possibility that it is not actually necessary to show violence – shocking, entertaining or otherwise, in order to interrogate these issues on film.
For people affected by domestic or sexual abuse and violence, either personally or otherwise, films about these subjects are of huge interest. The matters are of enormous concern, and knowing the power of the media, it is only natural that these same people would wish to watch any major productions tackling these issues. And yet, viewing violence onscreen has the potential to trigger traumatic responses, so this same audience frequently stays away from this material and is thereby excluded from the conversations (as if they need to be silenced any more than they are already!) 
Amanda Seyfriend as Linda Boreman Marchiano in Lovelace
As I attempt to process the devastating story of Linda Boreman Marchiano, only a fraction of which is actually covered in the film Lovelace (her activism and later years are not depicted), I am struck by the excellent performances, my enduring loathing for uber-pimp Hugh Hefner, and the exceptional influence of two feminist icons on the making of this important film.
What kept me sobbing in my seat throughout the credits and for some time in the lobby after the film, however, was the knowledge that this is not a one-off case, nor was it the worst case scenario. Porn has grown in both financial terms and in the levels of violence and degradation performers endure. What Linda experienced was horrifying. It continues, on an industrialised scale, and yet we are so very far from ensuring the safety of those who are exploited by it. Linda Boreman Marchiano’s mission was to raise awareness around domestic violence and the realities of the porn industry so that people who are being abused can reach safety. As part of realising her legacy, I urge you to watch this film and take a skeptical friend: they may just start to think differently after seeing it … 

Gabriella Apicella is a feminist writer and tutor living in London, England. She has a degree in Film and Media from Birkbeck College, University of London, is on the board of Script Development organisation Euroscript, and in 2010 co-founded the UnderWire Festival that aims to recognise the raw filmmaking talent of women. Her writing features women in the central roles, and she has been commissioned to write short films, experimental theatre and prose for independent directors and artists. 

 

‘The Mortal Instruments’: City of Mansplaining

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
Written by Erin Tatum. 
It looks like I’ll be taking the hipster side of things in Women in Sports Week with The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. Shadow hunting may not be considered a mainstream sport yet, but then again, most people said that it would be impossible to turn Quidditch into a sport. Those naysayers severely underestimated the number of college kids that would be willing to run around with a broomstick chafing their crotch. I eagerly anticipate the inevitable hordes of geeky/drunk college kids lighting their shadows on fire and stamping them out. Anyway, it’s not like athleticism or any other hobbies are required in City of Bones. If you’re a girl, you barely need to have a functioning brain! Any man within a 50 mile radius will come running to dictate everything you ever wanted to know about life.
Clary and Simon.
Before I get too deep into sarcasm, let’s back up and set the stage for the impending testosterone-saturated wasteland. Full disclaimer that I haven’t read the books, so don’t expect any comparisons. Clary (which sounds suspiciously close to Cassandra Clare, the author) is just a Normal Teenage Girl who has recently been doodling strange symbols everywhere. Her mother Jocelyn (Lena Headey) notices and nervously tries to stop her from going out alone, but Clary (Lily Collins) blows her off to hang out with Simon (Robert Sheehan). Judging by the glasses and khaki jacket, Simon is going to be the geeky friendzoned sidekick. He follows her around like a hopelessly lost puppy, and I’m preemptively gagging at the Anguished Declaration of Love that seems to already be ebbing at the surface. Man, if I could take a second to be shallow, Robert Sheehan is consistently gorgeous, and they have to try really hard to make him frumpy. His career confuses me because he either plays hedonistic pricks or overly romantic saps. Either way, his characters always have lady issues in that he either objectifies them as a Casanova or demonizes them as a nice guy. In case you haven’t guessed, this is clearly going to be a case of the latter.
Jace is 2 pretty 4 u.
Clary drags a reluctant Simon into a club because she recognizes the symbol on the sign as the one she can’t get out of her head, even though no one else can see what she’s talking about. A stranger overhears her and convinces the bouncer to let them through. Inside, Clary sees some odd looking patrons. She watches a mysterious blonde boy kill the stranger and releases a bloodcurdling scream, causing the rest of the club to stare at her in alarm because they once again don’t see what she’s looking at. Clary is rattled, but goes to a coffee shop with Simon the next day. Meanwhile, thugs break into her house and corner her mom, demanding to see an unspecified cup. Jocelyn beats them over the head with a frying pan and barricades herself in the bathroom. She frantically calls the kids. Clary is having a very intense conversation with the blonde boy, Jace (Jamie Campbell Bower). Neither Simon nor Clary picks up her call, which is quite a heavy-handed commentary on how teenagers aren’t emotionally attentive enough to their parents and yada yada. “Kids, pick up calls from your parents on the first ring! You never know if they’re having a near-death experience!” Clary finally answers and Jocelyn tells her she loves her before presumably committing suicide by drinking poison. Kiss that last sweet drop of estrogen goodbye, because it’s more or less a sausage fest from here on out.
“I wonder how soon we can start fighting over her after she wakes up.”
After racing home to save her mom, Clary finds the house abandoned with Jocelyn nowhere in sight. Jace saves her from the last of the demons, brushing off her bewilderment and describing as much of their supernatural world as he can. He and Jocelyn are shadow hunters. This is where the mansplaining starts and it only goes downhill from here. Jace and Clary try and rescue Clary’s family friend Luke from torture, but Clary feels betrayed when Luke tells his captors that he was only cozying up to her family for the cup. Jace tells Clary that they need to go to The Institute, which seems like a poor man’s holographic Hogwarts with more ghosts and less British people. Simon winds up getting dragged along too by coincidence. We can’t have that awkward teen love triangle angst unless all three spokes are shoehorned into the same contrived spectacular battle! Shoving a girl between her socially constipated best friend and a hotter, usually supernatural/sociopathic lust object (or two) has never been done before! Putting a girl in the middle of a heterosexual love triangle may feel progressive in giving the illusion of female agency, but really it just sets her up for failure. Masculine entitlement remains intact; it’s just a question of who she’ll end up with. It’s property ping pong. Clary tearfully collapses on the way to The Institute, reacting quite normally to her life disintegrating in the past 36 hours. Luckily, Jace is there to deliver a rousing monologue about why she needs to do what he tells her, complete with pseudo-eskimo kissing in the pouring rain. They make it to The Institute, where Clary immediately passes out from a demon-inflicted wound. She dramatically faints onto Simon, and then both boys watch in concern as she loses consciousness. Gee, I sure am excited to deal with their circle jerk dynamic for the next 90 minutes!
Alec threatens Clary to keep his secret safe.
Clary’s survival confirms that she’s supernatural. She meets Jace’s tutor, Hodge (Jarred Harris, nearly unrecognizable), who fills her in on the shadow hunters. Everyone seems to like her except Alec (Kevin Zegers). Alec is very possessive of Jace and doesn’t want Clary at The Institute. At this point I joked to my mom that Alec probably had a crush on Jace. What can I say, I try to find homoeroticism in everything when I’m bored or frustrated with a plot. Alec’s sister Isabelle confirms the crush to Clary in the next scene. As excited as I was that one of my crackpot queer angst ideas came true, not even a bisexual love triangle could shake up this hetero snooze fest. It’s a sad day when I type that sentence. For the most part, Alec is portrayed as deeply ashamed of both his orientation and his attraction to Jace, who is oblivious. This might be more sympathetic if they interacted enough to support the original best friend premise. Alec just sort of follows Jace around and tells people to stay away from him but is always belligerent about his motives. Using assumed incompatible orientation as a means for setting up your Alpha couple and fueling Clary’s entitlement complex is lazy and vaguely homophobic in that it establishes Clary as a doe-eyed beacon of femininity wrongfully pitted against the delusional, predatory gay.
Looking hot while defeated is a complicated art form.
The gang has to go to a party at Magnus Bane’s to get answers about why Clary’s memory is blocked. This conveniently involves dressing very provocatively. As the only other remaining female cast member, Isabelle gives Clary tips on how to sex it up. Clary proves her identity as a Good Girl by complaining incessantly that she looks like a prostitute, an opinion immediately confirmed by the men as soon as they leave Isabelle’s room. Nonetheless, Jace compliments her and Simon stares at her dry mouthed. Simon cements his emasculation by being roofied at the party and kidnapped by vampires. Of course, Jace engineers a dramatic rescue because Clary is too distraught to think clearly. Those silly women and their emotions! The vampires attack Jace and company on their way out, leading to some elaborate sword fighting while a weakened Simon pathetically stumbles around in the background, his weight supported by Clary. As soon as Simon loses his claim to masculinity, he also loses his humanity. The worst thing you can be in this movie is feminine or effeminate, unless you’re Clary, and even then you have to have a truck load of special powers to compensate for it. I choose to ignore the gendered fuckery of this scene and focus on the fact that Robert Sheehan is shirtless.
“This is not the sleeping arrangement I imagined.”
While Simon recovers, Clary and Jace take the opportunity to celebrate Clary’s recent birthday because they’re both vapid, self-absorbed people. Jace takes her to some sort of garden room with incredibly crappy CGI effects. They have an Almost Kiss, but Jace cuts it off, which seems anticlimactic until Clary trips and falls into him, leading to a gratuitous make out session. A fantastic drinking game for City of Bones would be to take a shot every time Clary gasps. Girl has an excellent and/or terrible set of lungs. Simon predictably opens his door just as Jace and Clary are leaning in for the farewell kiss. An epic stereo geyser of friendzoned tantrums ensues. Jace is offended by Clary’s attempts to downplay their relationship to Simon, storming off and shouting, “the kiss wasn’t that special to me either!!1!1” Oh, just shut up and kiss Alec already. Simon piles on by giving Clary the profession of love she’s been avoiding the entire movie. As annoyed as I am with the romanticization of male entitlement, my biggest issue lies with what makes people like Jace and Clary worthy of such tortured admirers in the first place. They’re both just pretty faces with zero substance and a bunch of informed attributes. There is no there there. Simon and Alec should hook up instead.
“I’ll never drink from a red solo cup again!”

Every guy continues to tell Clary how she should act and how she should feel and about her past and what she can and can’t handle until some plot has to happen. The implications of deliberately denying a young woman knowledge about her own abilities through memory suppression out of mercy has startling echoes of rape culture and is therefore glossed over by the excitement of the romantic tension in Jace and Clary’s mentor–student dynamic. Alec is gravely wounded by the only prominent woman of color in the film who turns out to be an evil witch because I guess they’re just going for a stereotype smorgasbord at this point. Magnus Bane arrives to heal him, but it will take the rest of the movie, freeing up Jace to go be a hero and avoid any serious discussion of Alec’s feelings. Jace also barely interacts with Alec after his injury, in contrast to Clary, who the narrative would like you to believe almost single-handedly nursed Simon back to health. Some best friend. Also, Clary stole the Mortal Cup back from the witch, and some dude named Valentino comes back, which the audience knows is bad because the whole reason Jocelyn drank the poison was to avoid him.

“Halt! I will smite you with my inexplicable appeal!”

I apologize that my summary of the finale will be somewhat brief and scattered. My estrogen-addled brain must not have been complex enough to understand it and I didn’t have a man with me to explain what was happening. The final climax goes on for what feels like years and it just refuses to die. We get some backstory diarrhea in a last-ditch effort to turn Jace and Clary into compelling characters. Basically, Valentino pulls a Darth Vader on Clary and says that he is her father. Hodge is apparently evil and in cahoots with Valentino to get the cup. There is a Seaworld-esque water portal of great significance, which Clary manages to dive into without issue despite the fact that you supposedly need years of training to do so. She’s just that special. Her mom is in suspended animation a la Hercules on the other side. Valentino tells Jace that he’s his father as well, making Jace and Clary brother and sister. This is probably a lie because Hodge pulled the suggestion of said truth bomb out of his ass when he didn’t want Valentino yelling at him, but it might be true, and there’s some flashback evidence to support it. Either way, Jace and Clary’s near sexytimes just became very awkward. Simon and Isabelle have been hanging out a lot and fighting together, so I’m sure he will be settling for her in the future. Clary saves the day when she carves another unknown symbol into her hand to stop the shadow monsters because she realizes she can manipulate anything she points the symbol at. This is both a weird glorification of self harm and a cringe-inducing level of Mary Sueness. No one has ever seen her power before! She patches up things with Luke and rouses her mom from her coma with an apologetic monologue of love. Yawn.

“My head says incest, but my heart says yes!”

All seems well as Jocelyn recovers from the hospital with Luke by her side. Simon says (ha!) sorry for being a pouty douche and delivers the death knoll for his own relevance by voluntarily opting out of the love triangle, at least for now. Clary returns home and uses the same power that she just saved an entire building of people with to tidy the house. Supernatural abilities – good for salvaging humanity and preparing to be a housewife! Jace appears to compliment her domestic skills and calls her an angel. That’s likely foreshadowing, but I threw up in my mouth regardless. The problem with female exceptionalism is it really loses its luster of empowerment if it’s only affirmed by the approval of the male gaze. Jace admits that he doesn’t think the sibling allegations are true and Clary hesitantly wraps her arms around his waist as they ride off on a motorcycle to contemplate their potentially incestuous future.

‘Elysium’: A Sci-Fi Immigration Parable

Elysium Movie Poster
I was surprised that I not only liked, but was impressed by Elysium. I had my doubts because it’s a Hollywood blockbuster, and their interpretation of the tenets of sci-fi usually leaves much to be desired. Also, I just really, really don’t like Matt Damon and his…face. The film centers around a poverty-stricken dystopian Earth and the lavishly constructed off-world satellite habitat, Elysium, where only the rich and powerful are allowed to live. Elysium doesn’t do much that’s interesting with gender, but its focus on class and race relations, particularly on immigration, is the heart and soul of this film.
There are only three women of note in Elysium. Matt Damon’s character, Max, is an orphan raised in a religious orphanage. There is one nun who doesn’t see him as a hopeless trouble-maker with no hope of a future. The film implies that many impoverished children who turn to crime have little in their home lives to bolster them and give them a sense of self-worth. This nun instills in young Max a sense of purpose, insisting that he has a destiny every bit as important as anyone on Elysium. Though this nun is compassionate, she exists primarily to show why Max is at his core a good person despite the hardness of his life and in spite of his path of crime. 
Then there’s Alice Braga’s Frey, a nurse who was Max’s childhood sweetheart. Frey has “made something of herself” and has a daughter, Matilda, who is dying. Frey, too, exists only as Max’s love interest and a symbol of motherhood. Frey is constantly under threat of rape by psychotic ex-military Kruger (played by Sharlto Copley) and his men who have kidnapped her in order to force compliance from Max. The looming threat of sexual violence only exists to showcase the effect such an eventuality would have on our hero. Frey would also risk everything to get her daughter to Elysium where healing machines are readily available in every home to cure her daughter of her terminal illness. The selfless, sacrificing mother is not a new or even interesting trope in cinema.
Frey becomes increasingly distressed as her daughter slips into a coma.
Finally, we have Jodie Foster’s Delacourt, Elysium’s Secretary of Defense. Delacourt is cold and casually cruel. Her power is not only emasculating, but she is a dangerous nationalist who resorts to illegality in order to protect the purity of Elysium from “illegals” who land on the satellite’s surface in rogue shuttles before scattering in the hopes of blending with Elysium citizens or at least acquiring medical care before being deported back to Earth. Delacourt has a great deal of power that she exercises freely, and she is extremely intelligent and even brilliant in the machinations of her overblown patriotism. However, the severe, emotionless, tyrannical female power figurehead is also not a new trope, and there’s little that makes Delacourt a complex or engaging character.
Jodi Foster’s sterile white pantsuit blends with the sterile white walls of Elysium’s “Administration.”
What is interesting about Elysium, however, is its overwhelmingly non-white cast. Most of the characters are Latino or Black, and it seems the primary language on Earth is Spanish. Our Earth setting is Los Angeles. Many of these disenfranchised inhabitants of Earth (including Max) are employed in manufacturing, spending their days making the very robots that secure Elysium against them. (They were pretty fucking cool robots, though.) Aside from Matt Damon, most of the white characters are either privileged people of wealth or figures of authority who are shown in a negative light. In fact, all the white characters with speaking roles are coded as “bad guys.” The racial dynamics in this film crystallize its sci-fi allegory for immigration. 
Technological genius and champion for immigrant citizenry, Spider, proposes a dangerous job to Max and his friend Julio.
After showing the desolation of Earth and the dire, unequal plight of its inhabitants, what is the solution Elysium poses to the so-called “immigration problem”? Indiscriminate citizenry for all. The tale becomes a fantasy of upending a brutal system that favors the wealthy few over the needs of the many, of destroying a government that privileges whiteness, denying rights and quality of life from people of color. That is a powerful, subversive fantasy that strikes very close to home. That, my friends, would mean revolution.

It certainly bothers me that Hollywood thinks our hero, Max, must be a white dude in order for his story to resonate with audiences, in order to lay bare the atrocities of the U.S’s immigrant situation (with Mexico in particular) in such a way that audiences can understand it. Without completely shifting the racial dynamics, Elysium becomes a version of White Man’s Burden, assuming that audiences can’t empathize with a hero of color and cannot put themselves in the hero’s shoes unless they can racially identify with him. There are two fallacies in this notion, 1.) that the default human being is a man, and 2.) that the default human being is a white man.

Elysium orbits Earth.

I can only hope that one day, Hollywood will realize it’s wrong about its insistence on white male leads in films…and that Hollywood will actually be wrong about it.  Hey, a blockbuster that wears its immigration agenda on its sleeve is something you don’t see very often, so maybe we’re getting closer to the day when we don’t have to hide behind genre to tell a topical political tale and the day when we don’t need to have a white man tell us such an important story.

Black Masculinity in ‘Lee Daniels’ The Butler’

Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Written by Erin Tatum.
My experience going to see Lee Daniels’ The Butler made an impression on me even before the film started playing. I don’t think I have ever been to a movie where every single preview featured a protagonist of color. It reminded me just how whitewashed Hollywood is. Why are films about people of color only marketed through the platform of other films whose primary audience is anticipated to be people of color? Maybe I’m naive – I had forgotten how big of a factor racial demographics are for advertising. All of the previews were spectacular and left me wanting to see more. It’s a shame that these gems don’t get more publicity.
Lee Daniels’ The Butler is a tall order to say the least: it runs a staggering 132 minutes and spans eight presidential administrations with an all-star cast including Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey, Mariah Carey (blink and you’ll miss her), David Oyelowo, Terrence Howard, and Cuba Gooding Jr., just to name a few. It’s to the point where one article calls the film a “cameo roulette.” The amount of history covered is absolutely breathtaking in scope. The script can feel uneven at times because of this, especially in the beginning. You might spend 20 minutes in one year and then cover the next five years in 10 minutes. I applaud the tenacity of the casting director, as I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many cast changes to reflect characters aging. Of course it is a little ridiculous that 52-year-old Forest Whitaker plays Cecil from approximately age 25 into his 90s, but the magic of makeup does wonders. The attention to detail in this film is meticulous, from the clothing to the decor to the hairstyles. The differences and subtleties of each presidential personality are also captured thoroughly even if briefly. There is even a particularly funny scene where Dwight Eisenhower gruffly asks Cecil for… toilet paper assistance… as his beagles sit loyally by the toilet.
Cecil and Gloria.
At its core, the film chronicles the cross-generational struggle to define black identity and masculinity in a racist American society. Little Cecil learns that subservience is the best policy after his father is shot dead for uttering a simple monotone “hey” at the ruthless cotton farm owner, Thomas (Alex Pettyfer), who had likely just raped his mother. Thomas’ elderly mother (Vanessa Redgrave) takes pity on Cecil and allows him to become a domestic servant, where he quickly adapts to being neither seen nor heard. These skills come in handy when he leaves the South and begins serving wealthy white clientele at various DC hotels, leading to his recruitment as a White House butler. Before starting the job, he is reminded that “there are no politics in the White House.” He thus resolves to continue to be painstakingly neutral on any potential political conflict, even if he is explicitly asked for his opinion. His commitment to his career soon borders on obsessive as he works long days and nights, leaving his marriage to wife Gloria (Winfrey) in a perpetual state of decay. Although he watches her battle alcoholism and strongly suspects her affair with the neighbor, Cecil’s commitment to family values and tradition never wavers.
Gloria is unhappy and has an affair.
Cecil’s attitude of racial uplift through hard work starkly contrasts to the restlessness of his older son Lewis (Oyelowo). He is shown to be scornful of and perhaps embarrassed by his father’s position from the time he is a teenager, a disconnect that is all the more exacerbated when he begins to participate in nonviolent civil rights protests while in college. The scenes of the diner sit-in and the Freedom Rides are some of the most emotionally resonant of the film. You can actually feel the burning hatred of their attackers and a few well-timed close-ups ensure that you’re up close and personal to some of their most inhumane and humiliating tactics. One girl has ketchup smeared on her face. Lewis has hot coffee thrown in his eyes. On that note, I’ve never been more disgusted by saliva. You watch one of the attackers lean in and spit a loogie on the cheek of one of the girls protesting and it is vile. Lewis continues to participate in the civil rights efforts despite multiple arrests, much to his parents’ chagrin. Cecil remarks that he “doesn’t understand how Lewis can’t see that the president is going to make things better for us,” particularly after witnessing slow but steady changes in racial policy.
Cecil and Gloria with Lewis (right) and Charlie (left)
What we are witnessing here is friction in the generation gap over ideas about the best means to achieve racial uplift. Cecil espouses the belief in assimilation through passivity and diligence. He grew up in an era where discrimination was benign and silence was survival. In contrast, Lewis believes that discrimination means disrespect and silence equates to, dare I say, emasculation. When Lewis’ generation came of age in the 60s, what was really at stake was the question of the reputation and respectability of black masculinity. Cecil views his way of life as making the best of the limited parameters available for the fulfillment of black manhood, whereas Lewis perceives such servitude as a shameful complacency with histories of racial power dynamics and as an insult to black integrity. In what is arguably one of the most dramatic moments of the film, Cecil snaps on Lewis and his hippie girlfriend Carol (Yaya Alafia) essentially for being apathetic flower children with no respect for the sacrifices of their parents, prompting Lewis to call him an Uncle Tom. This insult provokes an epic slap from Gloria and I must say Oprah has one hell of a backhand. The freeze between father and son becomes permanent and only deepens after Lewis fails to attend his younger brother Charlie’s funeral following his death in the Vietnam War.
Cecil confronts Lewis after he is first sentenced to jail.
Inevitably, the ideological rifts between them soften over the decades. Cecil finally gets the recognition he deserves when he successfully advocates for equal compensation and promotion opportunities for black White House employees during the Reagan Administration (it’s appalling that it took that long). The Reagans invite him and Gloria to the state dinner as guests, but something isn’t sitting right with Cecil and he finds himself increasingly dissatisfied with his job. He decides to patch things up with Lewis and joins him in protesting the imprisonment of Mandela, even getting a taste of Lewis’ life by being arrested and briefly incarcerated. As an old man, Cecil retrospectively feels a great sense of pride for Lewis’ contributions to the civil rights and black power movement. Masculinity is therefore reaffirmed as having the persistence to make your mark on society in the face of great adversity.
Things come full circle as Cecil and Gloria eagerly campaign for the election of Obama in 2008. Gloria passes away, leaving Lewis as Cecil’s last surviving family. Father and son watch the election results with tears in their eyes. Cecil is invited to meet the new president and is warmly greeted by the butler, who is also an African-American man. As Cecil walks stiffly but proudly to meet Obama, there is a definitive sense of collective triumph. Eight decades later, black masculinity is allegedly getting the respect it deserves. Although masculine privilege remains unquestioned and racial dynamics will always be a work in progress, the poignancy of the ending does bring a smile to your face.