Laura Power – Bitch Flicks

The Scary Truth About Sisters in Horror Films

So what makes sisters such fascinating subject matter for horror films? What makes them both scary and powerful, yet the most vulnerable, both to outside forces as well as to each other when they are threatened? … Sisters can behave as a single entity and fight for the same things, but there are two bodies — two physical forces — to reckon with.

This guest post written by Laura Power appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood.

Female siblings have been a go-to in horror films since horror films themselves. Sisters have been used as minor characters to fill in a cast: Daisy and Violet, the conjoined twins, and Elvira and Jenny Lee, the “Pinhead” twins, in 1932’s Freaks; the Soska sisters playing twin body-modification gurus in their own film American Mary; as specters that haunt a protagonist (the murdered twins in The Shining); as a smaller pair within a larger community of women (Danielle and Laurie in Trick ‘r Treat); and as protagonists (the Crane sisters in Psycho, Su-mi and Su-yeon in A Tale of Two Sisters, Jay and Kelly Height in It Follows).

Sisters are bound by unconditional forces: love, blood, family. Yet unlike the mother-child story in horror movies (Carrie, The Exorcist, The Babadook), the story of sisters in horror has the potential to be more forceful, more frightening. Sisters can behave as a single entity and fight for the same things, but there are two bodies — two physical forces — to reckon with. Sisters share secrets that no one else is privy to, and those secrets bind them together and make them mysterious and sometimes deadly. And turning on your sister is the ultimate betrayal, scarier and more unexpected than an attack from an outsider, which is why it makes for such effective conflict in film, especially in horror.

Sisters represent a single strong force that is duplicated in another person. Sisters work together, act together, and yet even when forces are driving them apart, they are powerful. In fact, sisters frequently become even more powerful when they are reacting to those forces that are driving them apart: they become more cunning, braver, smarter, stronger, and usually more violent and dangerous. They become even more of the “other” than they are already, and this force can be either terrifying or heroic — and sometimes both.

This power dynamic is exhibited beautifully and thoroughly in the Canadian horror film Ginger Snaps, written by Karen Walton and directed by John Fawcett. The film’s sisters, Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) begin the story as a powerful duo. As children, they made a blood oath because just being sisters wasn’t enough. In school as teenagers, they stick together, even as outcasts, collaborating on a morbid “Life in Bailey Downs” photo project, standing together as though they are a single brooding unit, protecting each other on the field hockey pitch, and wearing a similar uniform of thick, dark, oversized clothing. But when the girls are driven apart — by their biological differences, both natural (Ginger starts menstruating) and unnatural (Ginger becomes a werewolf) — the changes between them that follow only seem to increase each girl’s power.

While Ginger becomes increasingly powerful physically and sexually, taking on the role of male aggressor with Jason, and tackling and beating Trina when she attacks Brigitte in a game of field hockey, Brigitte becomes increasingly powerful physically and emotionally. She is required to problem solve time and time again, and the stakes get higher and higher. Brigitte pierces her sister’s belly button with a silver ring hoping it will curb Ginger’s werewolf traits; Brigitte reacts quickly to Trina’s accidental death in their household kitchen to make sure their parents don’t suspect what has happened (and then she chips away at Trina with a screwdriver, dislodging the girl’s stiff, dead fingers from her hand). And Brigitte problem solves, delegates, and acts with maturity to the ever-increasing drama and violence around her. When the sisters have to dig a grave to bury Trina, Brigitte makes Ginger do the physical labor while she watches. She takes charge to figure out a way to help Ginger by hiding it from their parents, locking her sister in the basement bathroom, and enlisting drug-dealer Sam’s help to cook up a cure. But Brigitte must also decide if trying the cure on Ginger is worth the possibility of killing her, of losing her sister for good. And then, ultimately, Brigitte must make the decision to live and to fight — to the death — the werewolf her sister has become.

And perhaps another relative would have taken this same trajectory to help a family member or loved one. But would they have gone far enough? We see that the girls’ mother, Pamela Fitzgerald (Mimi Rogers), is willing to make major sacrifices to protect her daughters: when she finds out the girls are responsible for Trina’s death, she plans to burn the house down and take them away to “start fresh.” She is protective and proactive rather than scared or angry; but is this mother-daughter relationship stronger than the sisters’ bond? No. It is Brigitte who soothes her mother and then gives her instructions (which Pamela doesn’t follow). It is Brigitte who reenacts the sisters’ blood oath by slicing her palm and pressing it against Ginger’s, knowing that this action likely infects her with the same virus her sister suffers from. It is Brigitte who is willing to try to become a part of Ginger’s “pack” and drinks Sam’s blood. Even though Brigitte ultimately can’t follow that through, she is willing to try, and this bond — this willingness to stand together — is what makes these sisters such a powerful force.

But what happens when one sister is not willing to sacrifice for another? As Brian De Palma shows us with his 1973 film Sisters, the results can be just as powerful and just as deadly.

In Sisters, Margot Kidder plays Danielle, a French-Canadian actress and model living on Staten Island. But Danielle has a sister — a twin sister, Dominique — who we believe is disturbed and violent, and responsible for the death of Danielle’s love interest, Phillip, at the start of the film. But as the story develops we learn that Dominique, who was not just Danielle’s twin sister, but her conjoined twin sister, died a year earlier during an operation to separate them. It is, in fact, Danielle who is the murderer; it is she who has been having violent episodes and “becoming” her dead sister to assuage the guilt at having been indirectly responsible for Dominique’s death. Danielle wasn’t willing to sacrifice her romantic relationship for her conjoined twin, and she asked Emile (her doctor and lover) to “make [Dominique] go away” so that she and Emile could make love. This desire started a deadly chain-reaction, resulting in Danielle getting pregnant, Dominique reacting violently, and stabbing her sister in the stomach to end the pregnancy, and the doctors needing to separate the twins in order to save Danielle’s life, knowing that the surgery would kill Dominique.

The removal of Dominique from Danielle — removing her from Danielle’s physical body, and removing her from Danielle’s life — had such a powerful impact on Danielle that it split her mind in two. The Dominique side of her lashes out at anyone trying to love Danielle; the Danielle side regrets what she has done and calls out for her sister to “come back,” yet cannot admit that she has hurt anyone (as she stands calmly over the body of the man she has just murdered). Danielle is the villain, the monster of the film, but she has become so because her sister was taken from her.

The sacrifice of a sister is approached differently in the 2013 Andrés Muschietti film Mama. Here the sisters are Victoria and Lilly Desange, who are orphaned as very small children after their father murders their mother and then is killed himself by a mysterious creature that the girls come to call “Mama.”

The creature Mama has been living with the sisters — raising them in a way that ensures their survival but turns them near-feral — in a cabin in the woods until they are found and sent to stay with their uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Mama follows the girls and continues to play with them and protect them while getting more and more jealous of their uncle’s girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain). The older sister, Victoria (Megan Charpentier), recognizes Mama’s jealousy and knows just how volatile she is; so she tries to protect Annabel whenever she can, warning her to stay away from the places Mama is likely to be.

As Victoria and Annabel’s relationship strengthens, Victoria and Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse) drift apart. Victoria’s brow is constantly furrowed when she sees her sister acting contrary to their surroundings or continuing to cling to Mama. And Victoria literally turns her back on her sister when Lilly tries to get Victoria to leave their bedroom in the middle of the night to play with Mama: Lilly shakes her head in a warning when Victoria will not go, but Victoria, after telling her sister that she loves her, is steadfast in her refusal, and Lilly goes alone.

Ultimately, Mama steals the girls away to the cliff where she died decades before, and Annabel and Lucas must try to save them. Mama tries to take both sisters off the cliff with her, and Lilly goes willingly, feeling that her place is with Mama, the mother and playmate she has known all her life, rather than with the new guardians Annabel and Lucas. At first Victoria is willing to go, to sacrifice what she can see as a happy family life with Annabel and Lucas for her only sister. Victoria is older and wants to protect Lilly, and she feels that this is how she must do that.

But when Annabel grabs onto Victoria’s robe and doesn’t let go, Victoria reconsiders and decides to let Mama and Lilly go without her: “Goodbye, Mama,” she says. “I love you.” Lilly and Victoria, separated by air as Mama and Lilly hover over the cliff, make a mirror-image as they stretch their hands out towards each other. But Lilly accepts that Victoria is staying, clasps her hands over Mama’s, and the two go over the cliff.

Victoria’s action may seen antithetical to the sister relationship, but it is not. Victoria has seen how Lilly has acted with Annabel — closed off, angry, and unhappy — and this is the opposite of how Lilly behaves with Mama. Victoria can see the unhappiness in her sister’s future if she stays, while she knows that Lilly will be happy if she goes with Mama. Victoria’s sacrifice sits in the fact that she is willing to lose her sister and live without her, so that they may both be happy.

It is in these sacrifices where we can find the true power of sisters in horror films. These sacrifices may drive the sisters apart or pull them together; but whichever way sisters in horror are drawn, the fallout is so intense and potentially destructive that it is a natural pairing with the genre — a pairing that will hopefully continue on both sides of the camera.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Puberty and the Creation of a Monster: ‘Ginger Snaps’

Laura Power teaches English composition and creative writing at a two-year college in Illinois. You can read more of her work at Cinefilles and Lake Projects and follow her on Twitter @chicagocommuter.

How Women Directors Turn Narrative on Its Head

Marielle Heller (‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’), Miranda July (‘Me and You and Everyone We Know’), and the women directors of ‘Jane the Virgin’ are infusing elements of whimsy into their work in strikingly different ways, but to similar effect. The styles they’re using affect the audience’s relationship with their stories and with the characters themselves by giving the viewer an insight that traditional narratives don’t provide.

This guest post written by Laura Power appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.

Marielle Heller, Miranda July, and the women directors of Jane the Virgin are infusing elements of whimsy into their work in strikingly different ways, but to similar effect. The styles they’re using affect the audience’s relationship with their stories and with the characters themselves by giving the viewer an insight that traditional narratives don’t provide.

Marielle Heller’s film, The Diary of a Teenage Girl (based on Phoebe Gloeckner’s hybrid graphic novel of the same name) depicts a coming-of-age narrative — a narrative that film audiences have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of times — in such a way that turns the genre into something fresh and spectacular. Our teenage hero is budding comic artist Minnie Goetze (English actor Bel Powley), who lives in San Francisco with her sister Gretel and her single, swinging mother (played by Kristen Wiig). Heller opens the film with a low angle shot of Minnie’s behind as she walks through a park and her voice-over narration reveals: “I had sex today: Holy Shit.”

Minnie’s narration certainly gives us a glimpse into her mind, her feelings, and her emotions. Heller uses this trope to good effect and doesn’t overdo it. But it’s not the voice-over that shows us our true Minnie. It is Heller’s use of animation that allows the audience insight into Minnie’s mind, because we see things come alive in the instant she feels them. Heller uses Sara Gunnarsdóttir’s original artwork and animation to let us “see” Minnie’s thoughts and feelings. Gunnarsdóttir’s work is certainly inspired by Gloeckner’s early original drawings, and some of those drawings appear in the film itself (Gloeckner was a consultant on the art and animation).

The art itself is excellent, but the way Heller uses it is the real magic. Minnie is a girl whose imagination makes the static things around her come alive — the drawings on her wall and in her diary, the stars painted on her bedroom walls and ceiling, the cover of Aline Kominsky’s comic. It’s an effective and creative narrative tool to develop Minnie’s character. But Minnie doesn’t just animate things she already sees; she also creates objects out of her feelings. Hearts appear in the bathtub as she thinks about Monroe (her mother’s boyfriend with whom she has an affair) and, later, flowers bloom out of the receiver as she talks to him on the phone; feathers cover her hands and body and give her wings as she feels empowered on an acid trip; fireworks light up the sky when Minnie and Tabatha kiss for the first time. These are beautiful, sweet, and romantic additions that emphasize what we already sense Minnie is feeling.

But Heller is smart to not let the animation just be sweet; she also uses it to bring us down to understand Minnie’s lowest points. When Minnie feels rejected after Ricky calls her “intense,” we see her self-portrait animated as a giant holding the tiny boy between her thick fingers and then tossing him down to the ground; when Minnie hears Tabatha and Mike talking, she imagines them as black and white grotesque heads and bodies pressing in on her claustrophobically as she realizes she is not just in the apartment to eat a grilled cheese sandwich. The animations make Minnie round, full, and a character whose emotions we, the audience, can truly know, and a girl whose story we can truly feel.

The women directors of television’s Jane the Virgin also use expected and unexpected devices to infuse whimsy. Max Thornton, writing about the series soon after it premiered in 2014, said that it has a “jocular self-awareness,” and this is absolutely true. But that silliness and breaking of the fourth wall is not only done to make us laugh, but also to tell a story in a way unlike any other.

The show uses an omniscient narrator (voiced by Anthony Mendez) and text that appears across the frame as though it is being typed immediately (complete with clicking keyboard sounds) to give backstory, explain character motivations, and stand in for what we, the audience, might be thinking. It allows us to know so much more than the characters know at any given time, but also to know just what Jane (Gina Rodriguez) is thinking and feeling. We are intimately connected to Jane, her feelings, and her story.

To date, there are thirty-eight episodes, or “chapters” of Jane the Virgin, each one using a combination of stylistic devices that include the aforementioned voice-over and text as well as dream sequences, imagination sequences, and animation. Although not every episode is directed by a woman, almost 60% are, and all episodes include a writing credit for show creator Jennie Snyder Urman. The second episode, directed by Uta Briesewitz, and the thirty-seventh episode, directed by Melanie Mayron, provide a good framework to look at how the show uses unconventional narrative devices to tell a great story with a specific and consistent style.

Whereas the pilot, directed by Brad Silberling, sets up the excellent premise, world, and characters of Jane the Virgin, it’s not until the second episode, “Chapter Two,” directed by Uta Briesewitz, that the women of the show (including Briesewitz herself) really start to fly their true colors. This episode brings up issues of family, class, marriage, and sacrifice — both the male expectation of a woman’s sacrifice as well as the reality of a woman’s sacrifice. These themes are introduced and navigated using flashback, imagined scenes, and animation, as well as, of course, tropes from and conscious references to the telenovela genre.

Michael, Jane’s fiancé, is so focused on the fact that Jane once kissed Rafael, that he mishears Rafael as saying, “I used to make out with Jane a lot.” Playing with reality and fantasy this way, Briesewitz gets us into Michael’s head and reveals his insecurities in a way dialogue doesn’t always do. As Petra, Rafael’s wife, explains the moment she realizes he stopped loving her, a single, magical, animated teardrop falls from her face and onto the ground. We feel for her character and our sympathy is reinforced as the narrator reveals that (after two episodes of lying) she is finally being truthful. All of these whimsical pieces make up an episode that illustrates the true strength and sacrifice of the show’s women: Jane changing her entire life to make her best decision about the pregnancy and telling Michael, “I get to be selfish now, not you”; Xiomara (Xo), Jane’s mother, sacrificing herself during Jane’s quinceañera by doing some embarrassing song-and-dance karaoke in order to save Jane from seeing her date make out with another girl; Xo standing up to Rogelio when he pushes her in an effort to meet Jane for the first time.

A more recent episode, “Chapter Thirty-Seven” directed by Melanie Mayron (who also plays the part of Jane’s new graduate school advisor), employs Jane the Virgin’s tried and true stylistic techniques to cover sub-plots dealing with post-traumatic stress, new motherhood and infant bonding, a woman’s need to be validated by other people, and romance between sexagenarians. Our ever-present omniscient narrator gives us the low-down on what’s going on in our characters’ heads, as well as, possibly, in our own heads as we watch. But there is added whimsy through animation: hearts float from Rogelio’s chest when he hears that Jane and Michael are back together and engaged to be married (nearly identical animation to what Heller used in The Diary of a Teenage Girl); Mayron uses flashbacks to show simultaneous narratives as Michael rescues Rogelio from his stalker-kidnpapper (remember: telenovela!), and then uses animated arrows to point to elements in the frame that Michael sees; green check marks appear whenever a scene has passed the Bechdel Test, and red X’s appear whenever a scene has failed; and finally, in one of the most (or least?) subtle, Mayron the grad school advisor character is telling Jane that she needs a “frame” for her work, and Mayron the director cuts to a scene with a literal frame of a shot on Rogelio’s telenovela. This woman knows how to have fun. (And can we give this episode extra credit for mentioning the Bechdel Test in the first place [as well as for mentioning book clubs and Family Matters]?).

It feels appropriate to leave Miranda July for last, since she seems to exist in her own wonderful world. Her films are both stylistically consistent and unique, and she uses whimsy in her writing and her directing in a way that helps her, her characters, and her audience deal with big, dark ideas.

Some might dismiss July as twee, but they would be making a huge mistake. July’s work is, perhaps, cute sometimes, at least on the surface. In her debut feature film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, July plays performance artist Christine Jesperson, who puts white ankle socks on her ears to get the attention of a shoe salesman named Richard (played by John Hawkes), and July has Richard’s six year-old son Robby catfishing a woman over instant messenger by telling her that he wants to “poop back and forth” with her, forever.

And those things are adorable, but July’s subject matter sure as hell is not. Me And You And Everyone We Know deals with connections and disconnections, with heartbreak and humiliation, with sex, with death. In the first five minutes of the film, Richard sets his own hand on fire in front of his two young sons. Soon later, a middle-aged man woos two teenage girls by posting hand-written signs in his living room window explaining the sexual things he’d like them to do to him, and to each other. And just as soon as Richard and Christine seem to have made an honest connection — a connection that is all Christine wants — Richard immediately turns on her, telling her that she doesn’t know anything about him: “I could be a killer of children,” he says, destroying their connection in a matter of seconds. July uses the sweetness, the innocence to offset the darkness of the film as well as make it an even more striking comment on humanity.

July’s second film, The Future, is even more stylistically interesting and uses techniques similar to Heller’s and the Jane the Virgin directors’ to tell a story about infidelity, depression, and death. And, strangely, it’s even cuter than Me And You And Everyone We Know. It’s narrated by a cat named Paw-Paw (voiced by July). Yes, you read that right: it’s narrated by a cat.

The cat is the marble that starts the entire Rube Goldberg machine that is The Future. Sophie (Miranda July) and her boyfriend Jason (Hamish Linklater) decide to adopt the cat, but he is injured and cannot come home with them for a month. This gives the couple the push to use that month as though it’s their last month living life as they know it: they quit their jobs, Sophie disconnects the Internet to focus on making dance videos, and she begins a secret affair with a man she calls on the phone spontaneously in an effort to pull herself out of a kind of depression.

And Paw-Paw the cat does a voice-over narration as he watches the clock, waiting for Sophie and Jason to pick him up. July turns that particular storytelling device on its head, but she doesn’t stop there. She also creates a personified crawling T-shirt (Sophie’s security “blanket”) that inches closer and closer to her until she must finally put it on (leading to an interpretive dance in the middle of her lover’s master bedroom). July also includes a scene where Sophie must deal with her disconnection from her friends and her former life, and she does this by showing the friends pregnant, then with infants, then toddlers, then teens, and so on until the children stand before Sophie, grown adults with their own children. It is of course, all in Sophie’s head, but the startling absurdity of the scene jars the viewer into understanding how helpless she feels in this moment.

Just as with Me And You And Everyone We Know, The Future tells a story that has been told before: people splitting up and being unhappy and then happy, and unhappy, and then finally — hopefully — happy again. But July uses an unconventional whimsy to show us life’s sweetness, its hopefulness, and, sometimes, its tragedy.

This is what women — at least the women at the helms of these films and shows — are doing so well. They are playing with story, with expectations, and with the genre of narrative film itself. And the playing is not always for fun, and it is not even always successful. But it is always appreciated.

‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ Is Doing Something Right: How One Workplace Sitcom Shows That Interracial Relationships Can Be the Norm

But because the people coming into any workplace in New York City are already diverse in terms of race and sexual orientation, why would a cross-race relationship be bothersome? ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ doesn’t believe it should be. From the first episode, this show presents interracial relationships as an unquestioned norm, and this is what makes it stand out from all other shows of its kind on television.

This guest post by Laura Power appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

The worlds created for workplace television shows are perfect places for people from diverse backgrounds to come together and form a 9 to 5 family. The past decade has brought great workplace comedies to television, shows like The Office, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, and recently Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Although The Office suffered from not enough diversity of its main characters, some new workplace comedies are racially diverse, especially Brooklyn Nine-Nine as four of the seven primary characters are people of color.

It’s because of this diversity that a workplace comedy has the ability to deal with interracial relationships as realistic and normal that race is not an issue for the characters. This approach is not a true reflection of society, and many would argue that race should be a talking point for two people embarking on an interracial relationship. But because the people coming into any workplace in New York City are already diverse in terms of race and sexual orientation, why would a cross-race relationship be bothersome? Brooklyn Nine-Nine doesn’t believe it should be. From the first episode, this show presents interracial relationships as an unquestioned norm, and this is what makes it stand out from all other shows of its kind on television.

A workplace television show has a leg up on other types of shows in terms of the variety of primary characters they can introduce; there is no familial/blood bond that must be adhered to, and a workplace cast, just like an actual workplace, will draw from multiple races, backgrounds, and ages. Other prime-time sitcoms, like Superstore on NBC, take advantage of this opportunity and star people of color, while others, such as the new Teachers on TV Land, fail miserably (Teachers, set in an elementary school in Los Angeles, stars six white women). A workplace television show can also exhibit greater realism in its characters’ personal interactions. Since there is usually such a diverse cast, opportunities exist to exploit conflicts and connections in a realistic way.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine has set itself up for success on all fronts. First, co-creators Michael Schur and Daniel Goor cast their seven primary characters with two Black men, a Cuban American woman and an Argentinian American woman (two white men and a white woman round out the main cast). By starting with this type of diversity from day one, Schur and Goor ensured they would work some kind of interracial romantic relationships into the plot. Dating coworkers is frequently frowned upon (and most people will tell you it’s a bad idea), but the workplace is clearly where people meet, get to know each other, and sometimes hook up. And this makes great fodder for television. But Brooklyn Nine-Nine doesn’t tend to portray its relationships — interracial or otherwise — as unhealthy. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: almost all of the primary characters on the show have been in or are in some kind of healthy and/or monogamous, interracial relationship.

The paternal figurehead in Precinct 99 is Captain Ray Holt (Andre Braugher), who is openly gay, Black, and married to white college professor Kevin Cozner (played by Marc Evan Jackson). Captain Holt and Kevin have a long-term, monogamous, and, frankly, kind of boring marriage. It’s a wonderfully realistic relationship and keeps the tone of the show grounded in the writers’ opinion that there are other, perhaps more pressing problems in any given romantic relationship than race. The goofy man-child of Precinct 99, Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg), also has a history of dating outside of his race. In Season 2 he falls for Sophia Perez (Eva Longoria), an attorney who matches him in goofiness and his love for Die Hard. After Jake and Sophia split up, he and coworker Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero) start a will-they-or-won’t-they dance that is a staple of workplace TV. Jake and Amy finally get together in the last episode of the second season (Amy broke up with her white boyfriend, Teddy Wells [Kyle Bornheimer] mid-season), and the two have spent the majority of the third season enjoying a committed romantic relationship. Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz), for multiple episodes in Season 2, dates Captain Holt’s nephew Marcus (Nick Cannon). Rosa and Marcus’s relationship is especially interesting, since many interracial relationships on television — in comedies and dramas — involve a white man and a woman of color.

Portraying a variety and consistency of interracial relationships is not the only thing that Brooklyn Nine-Nine is doing right; it’s also using these relationships to allow the characters to grow and learn things about themselves. Even when the relationships don’t work out — Jake and Sophia; Rosa and Marcus — the characters mature as a result of the experience. The splitting of both couples is done with a gentle hand, if not with a bit of heartbreak for all involved. Rosa wants to immediately dump Marcus because she doesn’t know how to deal with his interest in her. When she comes to grips with the fact that it’s okay to show affection, she allows the relationship to move forward in a healthy way. Even when Rosa breaks up with Marcus, she tries to go about it as gently as possible (with help from her equally stoic captain) because she realizes that although she doesn’t want to date him, she doesn’t want to hurt him. Captain Holt and Kevin’s marriage grows stronger after Kevin (who was concerned about Holt’s new job leading the 99, given his struggle against homophobia at all levels of the police department) realizes that the other police officers at the 99 are not going to bully, torture, or otherwise discriminate against Holt because he is gay. They are instead going to rally around him because he’s an excellent police officer and leader.

The writers of Brooklyn Nine-Nine focus more on the characters’ needs and motivations than on the social constructs or prejudices that might make an interracial relationship unwelcome or politicized. By writing well-developed instead of flat characters or stereotypes, they let race play second to the characters themselves. For example, in Season 3, Jake brings Amy home to meet his mom, but the idea that they’re an interracial couple doesn’t concern anyone; and why would it? Jake just learned that his estranged father is back and now dating his mother; and people-pleaser Amy is concerned with making a good impression on Mrs. Peralta (Katey Sagal), and helping Jake work things out with his dad. While race is something people of color must think about when navigating the real world (due to racism, white supremacy, etc.), the episode again supports the idea that, as individuals (and as families), we frequently have more to worry about than the color of a significant other’s skin.

Is this approach perhaps more idealistic than it is realistic? Yes, it is. In fact, the show’s optimism stretches to all of the relationships in the show: the marriage of Sergeant Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews) and his wife Sharon (Merrin Dungey) gets tense when Sharon gets pregnant with their third child, but because of their foundational stability, they’re okay; Captain Holt is a true father figure and mentor to everyone serving under him; Amy and Rosa have nothing in common but have slowly become good friends through their workplace bonding; and Jake and Charles have one of the sweetest male friendships on TV (maybe ever). It doesn’t seem that a show full of characters that like each other so much would be so funny, but it is; and this is good news for anyone hoping that television’s approach to interracial relationships (and maybe all relationships) becomes so normal that we have nothing more to write about.

Laura Power teaches English composition and creative writing at a two-year college in Illinois. You can read more of her work at Cinefilles and Lake Projects. Follow her on Twitter at @chicagocommuter.

Nobody Puts Susan Cooper in the Basement: Melissa McCarthy and Skillful, Competent Violence in Film

As McCarthy tousles with her own nemesis in the kitchen fight, Feig uses slow motion to let us savor the violence and bird’s eye shots to let us see the controlled swings of Cooper’s arms and legs as she fights. The violence is not slapstick. The violence is not played for laughs. The violence is just flat-out cinematically terrific.

This guest post by Laura Power appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

I love violent women. Maybe this is an odd thing to say; maybe it’s not. And I should qualify my statement by specifying that I love violent women in TV and film, not at my local grocery store. But oh, how I love a self-possessed Milla Jovovich stomping her thick-soled boot squarely into some thug’s gut, or a zinger-slinging Sarah Michelle Gellar tossing a spike straight through a vampire’s sternum.

But far too often it seems that filmmakers find violent women more acceptable when those women are either victims retaliating against violence (like in almost every horror movie ever made. ever.), psychopaths (Fatal Attraction; Basic Instinct; To Die For), or extorted to choose violence over death (Nikita). The spotlight rarely shines on women who are required to be violent during the course of their (lawful) day-to-day jobs, and who are not only competent, but who excel at those jobs. Yes, we have officers of the law Marge Gunderson (Fargo) and Clarice Starling (Silence of the Lambs); but Marge is part of a male-dominated ensemble, and Clarice is an agent-in-training who is used as a pawn and lied to by her male superior, and who relies on the help of a male criminal for clues and, in a way, mentorship.

Clarice can’t seem to shake Hannibal

But what happens when a woman is in a lawful profession, is competent, and is given the tools and information she needs to do her job? Well, this kind of woman hasn’t starred in many films, which is why the Paul Feig vehicle Spy starring Melissa McCarthy is such a…dare I say revolution?

As I considered Spy and the way McCarthy, playing CIA agent Susan Cooper, uses and responds to violence throughout the film, I asked myself if she truly was a new mold of a violent woman in film:

Is she being hunted? No.
Is she avenging a violence (physical, sexual) done against her? Nope.
Is she used for window dressing as men in the film kick ass? Not a chance.
Is she fully possessed of her faculties (i.e. no memory loss, mental illness)? She sure as hell is.

But I didn’t stop after I’d checked all of the boxes. I wanted to know what made Spy different from Feig’s other film featuring female law-enforcement agents, The Heat (2013). It isn’t just that Spy gives us a glamor—in McCarthy’s hair, makeup, and wardrobe (eventually), the decadent settings, and the European luxury. And it isn’t just that Spy takes its female lead very seriously—though it’s a comedy, Susan Cooper is self-aware and always in on the joke, never the joke itself. Spy is, however, different from The Heat—and from most other female-driven films—in how its main character uses violence in a competent, purposeful, and honest way.

Our first glimpse into Susan’s efficiency and…exuberance with violence is when the deputy director (Allison Janney) plays a decade-old video showing Cooper dive-rolling and shooting expertly through a training exercise. Cooper is fast and accurate, and although she seems embarrassed about the video, her supervisor is openly impressed.

Janney is another female actor I’d like to see kick some ass

Once Cooper’s mission starts, she takes step after step into more and more violence, and with each new challenge—a knife fight with a bomber in Paris; a quick-thinking trip-and-push in Rome; an in-flight spar with an armed flight attendant—she demonstrates both a willingness to be violent and a skillfulness to execute what needs to be done.

But Cooper’s best tricks start in Budapest, where she becomes more violent both physically as well as verbally. Cooper must lie to Rayna (Rose Byrne) to cover her identity, and, in the blink of an eye, she transforms into a filthy-mouthed bodyguard (“good gravy” replaced with “limp-dicked unicorn”). After this transition, Cooper’s quick-on-her-feet actions range from assaulting a man with her cell phone to making an impromptu decoy and smashing a fire extinguisher onto the heads of two bodyguards to escape capture.

Feig, as a director of female violence, and McCarthy, as the subject acting out this violence, shine in their respective roles, but they shine brightest during the beautifully choreographed fight between Cooper and a French female baddie in a green jumpsuit. The fight takes place in the kitchen of a nightclub, and Cooper uses dinner rolls, a baguette, frying pans, and finally a kitchen knife to attack and defend. As she dodges swings and blows, her reactions are sharp and athletic. Cooper grabs her opponent by the waist and brings her to ground like she is just a sack of rice; she plunges a knife into her opponent’s palm. And on the other side of the camera, Feig gives McCarthy the same treatment he gave Jude Law at the start of the movie when Law (playing CIA agent Bradley Fine), perfectly coifed and tuxedoed, does slow motion roundhouse kicks at plate-faced bodyguards. As McCarthy tousles with her own nemesis in the kitchen fight, Feig uses slow motion to let us savor the violence and bird’s eye shots to let us see the controlled swings of Cooper’s arms and legs as she fights. The violence is not slapstick. The violence is not played for laughs. The violence is just flat-out cinematically terrific.

One could make an argument that Susan Cooper must adopt a persona in order to explore this violence, and that it does not represent the “true” woman—the woman who bakes, has trouble getting the bartender’s attention, and might wear a “lumpy, pumpkin sack-dress” out to dinner. But I don’t agree with that argument. Cooper’s violence is not just a persona she wears in the field. The “real” Susan Cooper is the woman who follows the jumpsuit-wearing assassin into the kitchen, seeking out the conflict rather than hiding from it. The “real” Susan Cooper is the woman who head-butts Bradley Fine when she’s tied up in a dungeon. The “real” Susan Cooper is the woman who gets a field promotion because she has, in essence, saved the goddamned day.

Too long have men had the privilege of having so much fun (and looking so good) with violence in film. Let’s hope that more female directors pick up this mantle, and that more women are given the opportunity to shine as the centers of films where they can punch, kick, and shoot without the added context of victimhood or psychopathy. Give us more opportunities to be violent. Because, filmmakers, let’s be honest: it’s about time.

Laura Power teaches English composition and creative writing at a two-year college in Illinois. You can read more of her work at Cinefilles and Lake Projects and follow her on Twitter.