Leigh Kolb – Page 3 – Bitch Flicks

Catherine Breillat’s Transfigurative Female Gaze

The grotesque is enmeshed with sexual pleasure and violent death–all images and storylines that patriarchal cultures have been weaving together for centuries. A woman’s sexual desire and her actions stemming from those desires are often presented as horrifying and punishable: “unwatchable.” Much of what Breillat shows supports the reality that female sexual desire is real, and the societies in which we must function are at best, uncomfortable with that desire, and at worst, violently hostile.

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on Representations of Female Sexual Desire.

“… a person who can find the transfiguration of sex in her life is no longer a person who can be directed.”

– Catherine Breillat

French filmmaker Catherine Breillat has spent her career exploring female sexuality. She hasn’t done so in a comfortable, easy way. When The Woman says to The Man, “Watch me where I’m unwatchable” in Anatomy of Hell, this could very well be Breillat’s message to her audiences as she presents female desire in harsh, jarring narratives that completely subvert the male gaze.

Normally, if we talk about subverting the male gaze and focusing on the female gaze in film, it’s cause for celebration. Finally! We scream. We’re coming!

Breillat’s female gaze is different, though. It pushes us to places of complete discomfort and sometimes disgust, and forces and challenges us to think about the deeply twisted cultural expectations surrounding women and sex.

Sometimes a shock is what it takes to bring us to places of transfiguration. We can’t smoothly transition to the female gaze after centuries of being surrounded and objectified by the male gaze. Breillat delivers shock after shock that serve to transfigure how we see ourselves and our culture. This isn’t comfortable, but it’s powerful.

Breillat’s first film, based off her novel, Le Soupirail, was A Real Young Girl (Une vraie jeune fille). Produced in 1976, it was quickly banned and wasn’t released in France until 1999. The film centers around 14-year-old Alice, who is discovering and attempting to navigate her sexual awakening. A Real Young Girl is avant-garde puberty.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4FXxS9VevE”]

There are moments in the film that are confusing and grotesque (most notably one of her fantasies that involves barbed wire and a ripped-up earthworm). While I found some of these scenes disturbing, I like being disturbed. The worm scene horrified me at first, but then I realized that when I was in high school, the hit teen comedy involved a dude literally fucking a pie. Teenage sexuality is weird and when we are faced with a teen girl’s sexuality–something we are not used to seeing (unless she is a sexual object)–in all of its confusion and vacillation between intense desire and disgust, we are uncomfortable. Breillat wants us to be uncomfortable; she wants to push us to the edge to that visceral experience that will challenge how we see both female sexuality and film depictions of female sexuality.

Fat_Girl_poster — *Fat Girl* (*À ma sœur!*)

Fat Girl (À ma sœur!), released in 2001, follows two sisters–Elena, 15, and Anaïs, 12–as they vacation with their parents. Elena is conventionally beautiful, and while she likes boys and has experimented sexually, she wants to remain a virgin until she’s with someone who “loves” her. She quickly develops a relationship with a young man who is frustrated with her desire to not have sex. He pressures her into anal sex (which hurts her), tries to force her to have oral sex, and finally convinces her he loves her and she has sex with him. In all of these instances, Anaïs is in the room–feigning sleep, asking them to stop, or, when they finally have sex, crying.

Anaïs’s views on sex are very different than Elena’s. She is starting to feel sexual–she’s not a teenager yet, but she’s not a child. Her desires range from banana splits to having sex just to get it over with. She has sexual desires, and her responses to Elena’s sexual experiences show both naiveté and jealousy. Their ages, their exterior looks, their sexual experiences (or lack thereof) all inform Breillat’s treatment of the sisters’ relationship with one another, with their own burgeoning sexuality, and with a culture that insists on sexualizing Elena and ignoring Anaïs. Their desires–Elena as internalized (and then disappointed) object, Anaïs as frustrated subject–are common categories for adolescent girls to fall into.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHRJRbM2EAg”]

Fat Girl (read Breillat’s commentary on the title here) is disturbing in its depictions of some of Elena and Anaïs’s experiences. However, the end of the film is shocking and violent. After Elena and her mother are brutally killed at a rest stop, the murderer rapes Anaïs in the woods. The next morning, she tells the police she wasn’t raped, and she looks at the camera, in an ending that clearly reflects The 400 Blows. Like the Truffaut classic, we are saddened and disturbed at the life trajectory of our young protagonists, and have no idea where their lives will go from here. We just have a frozen young face staring at us, implicating us in their fate.

Anaïs, at the end, seems to embrace her rape (as her meaningless loss of virginity that she wanted) and deny its violence. This is made even more traumatic since her rapist murdered her mother and sister (her sister who had just become sexually active, and her mother who wanted to punish her for it).

The message here is that girls cannot win. A patriarchal culture–full of boys who think they’re entitled to sex and men who violently rape and kill women–cares little for female desire and agency. This world is a dangerous place for girls. This world treats pretty girls like objects, and unpretty girls like nothing. Their desires are complicated and real, but are eclipsed by toxic masculinity.

Released in 2004, Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie De L’Enfer) is a film that pulls together pornography, misogyny, and female sexuality in a way that shocks and disgusts (male reviewers in particular wrote scathing, condescending reviews of the film). The Woman visits a gay bar and attempts suicide in the bathroom–she is tired of being a woman and being hated by men, and surmises that gay men hate women the most. The Man, however, saves her and she offers to pay him to stay in her home for four days to “watch her where she is unwatchable.” What follows is, for some viewers, unwatchable.

The Woman is naked for most of the film (a body double is used for vaginal shots), and The Man is played by an Italian porn star. His homosexuality serves to completely upend the typical male gaze. He’s disgusted by much of what he’s seeing and experiencing, and the understanding that this primal, visceral, shocking female desire is at the focus of the film (and has absolutely nothing to do with male desire) reflects a culture that typically focuses only on the male gaze and male pleasure. In this culture, female sexuality isn’t a consideration.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbFSZiT2-a4″]

When The Man drinks a glass of water with a used-tampon teabag, certainly the audience is meant to feel disgust. Perhaps some audience members actually gagged at the sight. How many scenes, however, in porn (explicitly) or mainstream film (suggested), feature women swallowing male excretions? Do we blink? Or is it just part of what we expect it means to be a heterosexual woman?

Jamie Russell astutely observes at the BBC, “For all the shocks, though, this is a stoically serious movie: it’s anti-porn, a transgressive sex movie that’s not against pornography but against the (male-dominated) objectification of women’s bodies.”

Breillat’s complete oeuvre (which certainly demands our attention beyond these three films) delivers continually shocking treatment of female sexuality presented though the female gaze. She wants us to be uncomfortable and to be constantly questioning both representations of female desire and our responses to those representations, and how all of it is shaped by a religious, patriarchal culture.

In an interview with The Guardian, Breillat articulated that her female gaze should directly threaten the male gaze, and that men should examine their own sexuality in the face of female desire:

“It’s a joke – if men can’t desire liberated women, then tough. Does it mean they can only desire a slave? Men need to question the roots of their own desire. Why is it that historically men have this need to deny women to be able to desire them?”

The reporter points out that Breillat had said “that censorship was a male pre-occupation, and that the X certificate was linked to the X chromosome,” and Breillat goes on to discuss the religious and patriarchal reasons to censor female desire, which is directly connected to keeping power away from women.

Breillat’s 1999 Romance was originally given an X rating (or banned in some countries). At Senses of Cinema, Brian Price notes that “Breillat’s statement was echoed in the French poster for the film, which features a naked woman with her hand between her legs. A large red X is printed across the image, thus revealing the source of the trouble: a woman in touch with her own sense of sexual pleasure.”

And that’s always the problem, isn’t it? Breillat’s work pushes boundaries and forces us to live in the intense intimacy and discomfort of a female gaze that we are unused to due to social oppression of women and women’s sexuality (at the hands of patriarchal religious and government systems). The literal and figurative red X over Breillat’s work–and female sexuality–needs to be stripped away to reveal what’s underneath–which isn’t always pretty.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpH-V6kkOwI”]

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

‘The To Do List’: The Movie I’ve Been Waiting For

And then I saw it–a film that extols the importance of female agency and sexuality with a healthy dose of raunch, a film that includes a sexually experienced and supportive mother, a film that celebrates female friendship and quotes Gloria Steinem, a film that features Green Apple Pucker and multiple references to Pearl Jam and Hillary Clinton.
Yes. This is it.

Let’s get to work, vagina. – Brandy Klark, The To Do List

The To Do List

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on Representations of Female Sexual Desire.

I remember leaving the theater after seeing Superbad and asking my friends if any of us could imagine a film like that being made about young women–quirky best friend teenage girls who were on a quest for those things that so many teenagers are on a quest for.

We agreed that we couldn’t imagine it (and then I probably delivered a lecture on the great harm of stifling female sexuality).

That notion–that those teenage “cumming-of-age” stories are reserved for boys only–has been deeply ingrained in us through pop culture. When American Pie came out while I was in high school, the message was clear: there’s a myriad of ways that teenage boys get to claim and act out their sexuality, but if you’re a woman who does the same, you will be singled out and considered an oddity, a freak or simply a prize.

Even before that, I remember always noticing that young adult novels or films about teenage girls that I enjoyed often de-sexed the female protagonist. Teenage female sexuality was either nonexistent or an anathema, set apart to frighten girls or teach lessons. I never saw myself and my feelings truly and fully reflected back to me.

“Sisters before misters”–best friends Fiona (Alia Shawkat), Brandy (Aubrey Plaza) and Wendy (Sarah Steele).

When I saw the trailer for The To Do List, I started to get excited. Maybe this is it–what I’ve been waiting for all of these years.

It’s set in the early 90s. My heart rate quickens.

I see the soundtrack‘s track list. I just can’t even.

Yes. This is it.

It was everything I wanted.

I especially love how the “To Do List” itself wasn’t borne out of peer pressure. Brandy (Aubrey Plaza) is mildly affected when her peers shout “Virgin!” at her, but what makes her want to explore and understand her own sexuality is twofold: she wants to be able to be comfortable knowing what to do with hot guys (she’s the one who is attracted and drawn to the college guy), and it’s explained to her that college is like a sexual pop quiz, and she needs to study to ace it.

Brandy takes notes as her older, experienced sister (played by Rachel Bilson) talks about sex.

She understands studying. She understands her own blossoming sexual desires. So she opens up her Trapper Keeper, lines her paper into a grid, and makes a list of sexual acts she must complete before the end of summer, with the ultimate goal being “Intercourse.” (The fact that the film was set in 1993 is important not only for nostalgia’s sake but also for the fact that Brandy didn’t have the Internet and couldn’t easily look up the definitions of the “jobs” she was writing on her list.)

Brandy’s “To Do List” replaces buying shower shoes for the dorm with sexual exploits.

Early on in her journey, Brandy reads statistics about how few women achieve orgasm, and she’s incensed. She writes “Masturbation” on her list (and does so wearing a “Pro-Choice Pro-Clinton” T-shirt, which writer-director Maggie Carey said she wore frequently in high school). The masturbation scene is important because, as Carey says, “When you do see women masturbating, it’s usually a male fantasy about a woman masturbating, it’s not what actually happens.”

Brandy voices anger over the virgin/whore dichotomy, referencing Gloria Steinem. And yet as much as this film empowers female sexuality and independence, it does not do so at the expense of the men in the film. (Remarkable, how completely possible it is to have fully sympathetic male and female characters in a raunchy comedy.) Even Brandy’s father, a Rush Limbaugh-reading, overprotective man who is uncomfortable talking about sex, is portrayed in a sympathetic light.

The teenage boys have stereotypical sexual desires, but Brandy’s desire is always paramount. For the first time while watching a teen comedy, I got to reminisce and laugh from my own perspective–and oh, how I could taste that Pucker when I saw it on screen and feel those goosebumps when “Fade Into You” started playing–instead of imagining what life must have been like for boys I knew in high school.

The film also really has a “radical” message about virginity–not panicked, not preachy, but reasonable and realistic. Maybe most importantly, Brandy never has any regrets (“Teenagers don’t have regrets,” she says. “That’s for your 30s”). The To Do List is “nonchalantly” feminist from start to finish.

After she read the script for the first time, Aubrey Plaza said,

“When I read the script, I just thought it was funny, be it female or male, but I love that it was from a female perspective, and I’d honestly never seen anything that had explored the specifics of that time in a girl’s life when they’re experiencing all their firsts.”

This film is a first full of firsts.

And unlike most first-time sexual exploits, writer-director Maggie Carey knew what she was doing and made it really pleasurable for the audience.

“It’s a skort!”
(And who doesn’t want to make out to Mazzy Star?)

A teenage sex comedy that subverts what’s usually “reserved for the boys” and shows female sexuality and agency as, you know, an actual thing (while celebrating 90s pop culture)? Check.

And just as Brandy will want more and more of the final exploit she checks off, I want movies like this to keep coming and coming.

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

What Shakespeare Can Teach Us About Rape Culture

In ‘Titus Andronicus,’ Lavinia is brutally raped and disfigured (including having her tongue cut out so she couldn’t speak). This nod to Philomela in Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ echoes the themes of the brutality of rape and the need for revenge. The women needed to name their rapists and share their stories (Lavinia writes in the sand; Philomela weaves a tapestry that tells her story). The women have as much power as they can in the confines of their society, and we the audience are meant to want justice and revenge.

Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee

O, could our mourning ease thy misery! (2.4.56-57)

Shakespeare’s depictions of rape are too familiar today. However, his messages about patriarchy and rape aren’t familiar enough.

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on Rape Revenge Fantasies.

When a story about a girl who was raped and subsequently shunned and blamed breaks, I’m no longer surprised. It’s familiar. Townspeople gathering behind the rapists–just like in Steubenville–seems like the natural course of things in our toxic rape culture. She shouldn’t have been so drunk. She couldn’t say no. These boys are promising young athletes.

The rapists in Julie Taymor’s *Titus*–Demetrius and Chiron–are wild young men obsessed with violence, depraved sexuality and video games.

When Shakespeare wrote Titus Andronicus and The Rape of Lucrece in the late 1500s, women were quite literally the property of men (their fathers, then their husbands). The rape culture that plagues us in 2014 was essentially the same, although laws of coverture have dissolved and women are no longer legally property.

And Shakespeare understood the horror of rape. Shakespeare–more than 400 years ago–seemed to understand that patriarchy hurts women. Patriarchy kills women.

Patriarchy is rape culture.

I read about the Maryville case with the familiar dread that accompanies these too-frequent stories. When it happens in my state in a town that looks like mine, it’s even closer. But I’m never surprised.

As I was watching Titus with my Shakespeare class just a few days later, I readied myself for the rape scene (which Julie Taymor handles brilliantly). When Lavinia’s uncle, Marcus, finds her brutalized, he delivers a long monologue, mourning the sexual violence that she has gone through.

At the end of the monologue, he says as she turns away,

“Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee

O, could our mourning ease thy misery!” (2.4.56-57)

It took my breath away like it hadn’t before, and I checked the text to read the exact quote. I paused the film and asked my students if they’d heard of the Maryville case (in which the victim and her family were basically chased out of town after the case against the perpetrators was dropped). They hadn’t. I explained, and re-read out loud the final couplet of Marcus’s monologue.

Is this how we respond to women who are raped in our culture?

No.

What if we did? What if we rallied behind not the rapists, but the one who was raped? What if we never said, “I am not saying she deserved to be raped, but…“

What if all of this happened immediately and swiftly in our own communities, and not after a case gets national attention?

In Shakespeare’s texts, it’s clear that the rapists are sub-human and villainous. Even when rape isn’t part of the plot, he shows the figurative and literal violence of patriarchy.

Hermia’s father is willing to kill her if she doesn’t marry who he wants her to marry in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (“I would my father look’d but with my eyes,” she says.)

Hamlet‘s Ophelia commits suicide when she descends into madness from being pushed and pulled by patriarchal pressures. (She says to her brother after he advises her to be chaste and virtuous, “Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, / Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; / Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine, / Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, / And recks not his own rede.”)

Emilia’s views on the patriarchal constraints of marriage and sexuality in Othello seem radical today.

Shakespeare understood.

Why can’t we?

In Titus Andronicus, Lavinia is brutally raped and disfigured (including having her tongue cut out so she couldn’t speak). This nod to Philomela in Ovid’s Metamorphoses echoes the themes of the brutality of rape and the need for revenge. The women needed to name their rapists and share their stories (Lavinia writes in the sand; Philomela weaves a tapestry that tells her story). The women have as much power as they can in the confines of their society, and we the audience are meant to want justice and revenge.

Lavinia writes the rapists' names in the sand. The men surrounding her are not unlike Anonymous in the Maryville case. — Lavinia writes the rapists’ names in the sand. The men surrounding her are not unlike Anonymous in the Maryville case.

Shakespeare’s epic poem The Rape of Lucrece also follows a young woman who is raped and seeks revenge (although her speech is left intact).

While the death of the women at the end of the plays seems problematic to 21st-century feminists, we must remember that in Shakespeare’s Roman fictions, self-sacrifice or honor killing was honorable and dignified, thus leaving the women with as satisfying an end as they could hope for. There are cultural differences, of course, but the anti-rape and anti-misogyny messages in these centuries-old texts are gripping.

In these texts, the following messages are clear:

• Rapists are depraved misogynists who want some kind of power.

• Silencing of women is evil.

• Women aren’t always allies (see: Tamora, who mothers and encourages Rape and Murder) .

• Retribution is necessary for justice.

Four-hundred years later, we still can’t seem to grasp these realities.

We look to media for social norms and values. If we see objectification of women on screen, we can clearly see the if this objectification has deeper feminist implications if we are supposed to villainize the objectifiers. (This is, incidentally, why the sexism in The Big Bang Theory makes my skin crawl and Sons of Anarchy–in all of its vengeful Shakespearian glory–is one of my favorite shows.) Shakespeare’s women–who are victims of violent patriarchies–are the ones the audience is supposed to sympathize with. The tragedy of these tragedies is that this patriarchal social order creates hell on earth for many women.

At the beginning of Titus, Lavinia pours a vial of her tears in her father’s honor as he returns home from war. She mourns and rejoices with him and is able to express her emotions surrounding his losses and his victories.

Mourning with him comes naturally. It’s what we expect when men encounter battles.

And just as Marcus says that they must mourn with Lavinia, she must not withdraw, we need to learn to mourn with those whom rape culture affects so deeply.

Four-hundred years later:

• Rapists are still misogynists who do not want sex, but want power.

• Women are still silenced. (And when they speak out, it is not without consequences.)

• Women still aren’t always allies.

• Retribution is still necessary, although we must fight to see it happen (and rely on online hackers and internet outrage to open up cases). Far too often we must wait for justice, if it ever comes.

When we can look to fiction from centuries ago and see common and familiar–almost radical–representations of the violent outcomes of restrictive patriarchies, we are doing something wrong.

Because the masses still don’t seem to understand that patriarchy hurts women. Patriarchy kills women.

Patriarchy is rape culture.

See also at Bitch Flicks: The Fractured Rape/Revenge Fantasies of Julie Taymor’s Titus

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

Forgotten Great Black Actresses: “Race Films” in Early Hollywood

Read more about them. Watch their films. Remember who and what has been too easily forgotten.

Evelyn Preer, who Black audiences would call “The First Lady of the Screen.”

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

In the early 1900s, up until about 1950, roughly 500 films were made featuring all-Black casts for predominately Black audiences. These films, known as “race films,” were typically independently financed and produced by white filmmakers outside of the Hollywood studios. Notably, the first film to feature an all-Black cast (A Fool and His Money, 1912) was directed by Alice Guy-Blanché.

Since these films were outside of the studio system and were not created for the mainstream white gaze, film history has largely ignored their impact, and not even 100 of the films remain intact. Pioneering filmmakers like Oscar Micheaux (whose Within Our Gates was a scathing response to the racist The Birth of a Nation) are not immortalized like their white counterparts have been, but their contributions were remarkable.

In these early days of feature films, Black actors and actresses may not have had leading roles in mainstream Hollywood, but the existence of a booming market of race films allowed for all-Black casts full of complex characters and story lines that differed greatly from the stereotypes audiences would typically see–and would continue to see for decades.

While some actors and actresses got their start in race films and then went on to mainstream Hollywood success (including Hattie McDaniel, Lena Horne, and Dorothy Dandridge), many of the Black actors and actresses found a dearth of roles. After race films ended (due to Hollywood’s conglomerates were broken up in an anti-trust case, leading to desegregation, and World War II gave opportunities for Hollywood to recruit Black actors for propaganda and war films), three-dimensional, leading roles for Black actors and actresses plummeted. I’ve written before about the roles that have won Black actors Academy Awards–maids, villains, con artists, slaves, musicians, athletes, impoverished single mothers, and “helpers” for white characters seem to be the “safe” roles.

However, in early race films, actors and actresses were able to break those stereotypes and be fully realized complex characters.

Here are a few of the actresses–whose names you might not know, but should–and some of their films.

Evelyn Preer

Evelyn Preer (1896 – 1932): Homesteader, Within Our Gates, Birthright, Ladies of the Big House

In Within Our Gates, Preer’s character has to fight a predatory white man, which answered the portrayal of lecherous Black men in Birth of a Nation

Ethel Waters

Ethel Waters (1896 – 1977): Rufus Jones for President, Cabin in the Sky, Pinky

Ethel Waters and Eddie Anderson in Cabin in the Sky

Edna Mae Harris

Edna Mae Harris (1910 – 1997): Spirit of Youth, Lying Lips, Paradise in Harlem, Sunday Sinners

Edna Mae Harris in Lying Lips

Nina Mae McKinney

Nina Mae McKinney (1912 – 1967): Hallelujah, Safe in Hell, The Devil’s Daughter, Dark Waters

Nina Mae McKinney in Hallelujah

When films are able to be made that feature complex women and women of color, actresses are allowed to actually act to their full abilities. Just like I noted about pre-Code female anti-heroes, if many of the above films were made today, we would be aghast and how progressive they were. We tend to think that what happens now, in the 21st century, is breaking barriers. But if we think seriously about our history and our present, we know that Within Our Gates isn’t a film that Hollywood would touch with a ten-foot pole even now–even though it’s our history. Race films (while certainly still products of their cultural context, which could be problematic) provided an opportunity for Black actors to shine, and the women above are just a few of those who were empowered by having acting careers that allowed them to play a myriad of characters.

Read more about them. Watch their films. Remember who and what has been too easily forgotten.

Recommended:

A Cinema Apart: a website dedicated to early Black films

Here is an excellent YouTube playlist of African American films, and it includes Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates, among others referenced. I recommend Elsa Barkley Brown’s viewing guide.

Netflix has the documentary Black Cinema: Silence to Sound .

Amazon offers a few collections of race films.

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

Pre-Code Hollywood: When the Female Anti-Hero Reigned

We agonize over the lack of female anti-heroes in film and television as if women have never been afforded the opportunity to be good and bad on screen. It clearly wasn’t always this way. And in a time when the regurgitated remake rules Hollywood, perhaps it’s time for producers to dust off some old scripts from the 1920s and 1930s so we can get some fresh, progressive stories about women on screen.

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

An Upworthy post is making the rounds in which Shirley MacLaine, in 1975, is telling an interviewer that the disappearance of the Hays Code in the 1960s was when women stopped getting good, solid roles in Hollywood. While it’s an interesting observation–that if the bedroom was off-limits, filmmakers had to get creative–this viral meme is ignoring the crucial fact that before the Hays Code (or Hollywood Production Code) was enforced in 1934, women’s roles in Hollywood were complicated and women were allowed to be sexual, not just sexy, and have sexual agency.

A quick history:

Until 1930, states had their own regulatory/censorship policies that would deal with films.

In the 1920s, Will H. Hays (a Presbyterian elder who was Postmaster General, a former head of the Republican National Committee, and president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America for 25 years) started working on lists and regulations for the film industry to follow in the interest of “decency.”

In 1929, two male leaders in the Catholic church developed a “code of standards,” and studios were expected to adhere to it. The religious overtones in the “Code” (good must prevail over evil and strict rules about morality) were clear.

For five years, the Code had no “teeth,” and filmmakers still, for the most part, did what they wanted.

In 1934, however, the Production Code Administration (PCA) was formed, and all films released from July 1 onward were required to be approved by the PCA before release.

This was what Hollywood studios adhered to until 1968, when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) moved to a rating system, which is still in place today.

The years that spanned 1927 (when The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length film with a synchronized soundtrack and dialogue, was released) and 1934 (when the Production Code was officially enforced) saw feature films that had themes and scenes that would seem shocking and progressive today.

In 1929, Norma Shearer starred in The Divorcee, and kicked off a five-year heyday for women in film. The excellent documentary, Complicated Women (based on the book by Mick LaSalle), delves into the actresses and films of this era. The actresses who brought these complex characters to life–including Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo (both of whom fought hard to play complex characters), Jean Harlow, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck–would go on to act after the Code, but in roles that were much less daring and progressive. Seeing complex women on screen is essential for audiences to get realistic depictions of women, and of course, playing complex women allows great actresses to work to their fullest potential.

When female anti-heroes (rarely) make it on the big- or small-screen now, we act as if it’s revolutionary. However, if we look to film history–before religious white men got control–there is a strong precedent for the female anti-hero.

Simply looking at the IMDb descriptions of some of films from that era show us a great deal about the powerful stories that made it on screen during this time:

The Divorcee (1930, starring Norma Shearer): “When a woman discovers that her husband has been unfaithful to her, she decides to respond to his infidelities in kind.” (Shearer won the Academy Award for Best Actress for this role.)

Anna Christie (1930, starring Greta Garbo): “A young woman reunites with her estranged father and falls in love with a sailor, but struggles to tell them about her dark past.” (Anna Christie was a prostitute, but she is never “punished” for her past; her story ends happily.)

Red-Headed Woman (1932, starring Jean Harlow): “Lil works for the Legendre Company and causes Bill to divorce Irene and marry her. She has an affair with businessman Gaerste and uses him to force society to pay attention to her. She has another affair with the chauffeur Albert.” (Both the book and screenplay were written by women.)

Ex-Lady (1933, starring Bette Davis): “Although free spirit Helen Bauer does not believe in marriage, she consents to marry Don, but his infidelities cause her to also take on a lover.”

Female (1933, starring Ruth Chatterton): “Alison Drake, the tough-minded executive of an automobile factory, succeeds in the man’s world of business until she meets an independent design engineer.”

Baby Face (1933, starring Barbara Stanwyck): “A young woman uses her body and her sexuality to help her climb the social ladder, but soon begins to wonder if her new status will ever bring her happiness.”

Midnight Mary (1933, starring Virginia Davis): “A young woman is on trial for murder. In flashback, we learn of her struggles to overcome poverty as a teenager — a mistaken arrest and prison term for shoplifting and lack of employment lead to involvement with gangsters…”

Queen Christina (1933, starring Greta Garbo): “Queen Christina of Sweden is a popular monarch who is loyal to her country. However, when she falls in love with a Spanish envoy, she must choose between the throne and the man she loves.” (The biopic–about Queen Christina of Sweden–features an on-screen portrayal of Queen Christina’s bisexuality, including a kiss between Queen Christina and her lady-in-waiting.)

Torch Singer (1933, starring Claudette Colbert): “When she can’t support her illegitimate child, an abandoned young woman puts her up for adoption and pursues a career as a torch singer.”

Design for Living (1933, starring Miriam Hopkins): “A woman can’t decide between two men who love her, and the trio agree to try living together in a platonic friendly relationship.” (Note: things don’t stay platonic.)

These synopses are fascinating enough, and the fact that these films were released to popular and critical acclaim 80 years ago is amazing. These films are about complicated, complex women who are not punished for their sexuality or their pasts. These women have careers, these women are leaders, these women have agency. Furthermore, the actresses who portrayed these women truly starred in the films–they weren’t simply supporting male leads. Eighty years later, it’s rare to see a Hollywood film with a female character at the center of the action, much less a female anti-hero.

What the MacLaine sound bite is missing is that, while the Code kept women out of the bedroom, its religious and puritanical strictures equated goodness with subservience and purity. Depictions of homosexuality and interracial relationships were also scrubbed from Hollywood when the Code was enforced. From a feminist point of view, we moved backward when the Code, and even the MPAA ratings system, were enacted. There are still remarkable double standards regarding female sexuality on screen, and mass audiences typically have a hard time with female characters who don’t fit nicely into the virgin/whore dichotomy (since for years, that’s all we’ve really been exposed to). Male characters have always been allowed to be “good and bad,” but the Code (and in a sense, the MPAA), just like the religious dogma it reflected, needed women to be out of the bedroom or in the bedroom–never both without being punished.

We agonize over the lack of female anti-heroes in film and television as if women have never been afforded the opportunity to be good and bad on screen. It clearly wasn’t always this way. And in a time when the regurgitated remake rules Hollywood, perhaps it’s time for producers to dust off some old scripts from the 1920s and 1930s so we can get some fresh, progressive stories about women on screen again.

Recommended Viewing: Complicated Women, This Film is Not Yet Rated (available on Netflix)

Recommended Reading: “Remembering Hollywood’s Hays Code, 40 Years On,” by Bob Mondello at NPR; The Motion Picture Production Code (interactive website); The Motion Picture Production Code – 1930 (PDF); Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood, by Mick LaSalle; “Pre-Code films: the way we really were,” by Mick LaSalle

—–

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

The Unfinished Legacy of Pam Grier

Grier’s legacy has lasted over four decades, but there’s something about her career that leaves me feeling unsettled, as if her filmography is indicative of larger (backward) social trends. She started out headlining action films–an amazing feat for a woman, much less a black woman in the early 1970s. A glance at a few of these films show feminist themes that are incredibly rare 40 years later. Her early films were groundbreaking, but nothing much was built after that ground was broken.

Pam Grier was the first black woman to be on the cover of Ms. Magazine (August 1975). Jamaica Kincaid wrote the article, “Pam Grier: The Mocha Mogul of Hollywood.”

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

[Warning: spoilers ahead!]

The first time I saw Pam Grier in a film, I blurted out, “Why isn’t she in everything?”

I first saw Grier in Jackie Brown, and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t featured prominently in more films (and then I quickly remembered African American female protagonists are few and far between). It wasn’t always this way, though.

Grier’s legacy has lasted over four decades, but there’s something about her career that leaves me feeling unsettled, as if her filmography is indicative of larger (backward) social trends. She started out headlining action films–an amazing feat for a woman, much less a Black woman in the early 1970s. A glance at a few of these films show feminist themes that are incredibly rare 40 years later. Her early films were groundbreaking, but nothing much was built after that ground was broken.

Coffy (1973)

Coffy (Grier) is a nurse with a passion for bringing justice to those who keep drugs on the streets. The film opens with her posing as a seductive addict, and she gets herself in an apartment with a drug dealer and supplier. She brutally kills them, and then reports to her job as a nurse.

Coffy is a vigilante, trying to avenge those who made it possible for her 11-year-old sister to get hooked on drugs, causing her to wind up in a juvenile rehabilitation center. After her friend (a “good” cop, unlike many who are tied into the drug trade) is beaten brain dead after defending her, Coffy has an even deeper sense of purpose in retaliating against the machine that’s fostering corruption in her community.

“This is the end of your rotten life, you motherfuckin’ dope pusher!”

While Coffy uses her sexuality to position herself against her enemies, she does what she need to do to win. When a john is degrading her, she says, “You want to spit on me and make me crawl? I’m gonna piss on your grave tomorrow.” Racism, greed, corruption and masculine shows are evil, and a capable woman undoes it all.

The overall quality of the film, the fashion, the music–it’s clearly dated. However, the strong female protagonist stands out as something that’s all too foreign in 2013.

Foxy Brown (1974)

Probably the most popular of Grier’s blaxploitation films, Foxy Brown follows its protagonist through another journey of violent revenge. Foxy sets out to seek justice for the murder of her boyfriend (a government agent who worked to get drugs off the streets–again, an anti-drug theme). She poses as a prostitute to infiltrate the drug/prostitution/sex slave network that’s responsible for the blight of her community. She outwits her enemies and captors at every turn, and ends victorious.

When she’s going to the neighborhood committee for help at the end, she pleads:

“It could be your brother too, or your sister, or your children. I want justice for all of them. And I want justice for all the people whose lives are bought and sold, so that a few big shots can climb up on their backs, and laugh at the law, and laugh at human decency. But most of all, I want justice for a man, this man had love in his heart, and he died because he went out of his neighborhood to do what he thought was right.”

The group leader responds, “Sister, I think what you’re asking for is revenge.”

She says, “You just take care of the justice, and I’ll handle the revenge by myself.”

“The party’s over, Oscar, let’s go.”

Grier’s body–from the opening bikini-clad sequence to close-up shots of her naked breasts–is objectified more frequently in this film than Coffy. She had become more of a star at this point, and producers decided against it being a sequel to Coffy (as the writer had intended), so her career wasn’t a part of the film. Foxy is still a strong, empowered woman–she seeks help from her peers (the new “anti-slavery” society), helps other women and punishes men who are cruel to women. Foxy’s role seems as revolutionary as Coffy’s (maybe more so, with the increased star power).

Sheba, Baby (1975)

The opening credits to Sheba Baby are set to Barbara Mason’s “Sheba, Baby,” boasting how Sheba Shayne is a “sensuous woman playing a man’s game,” “she’s kicking ass and taking names,” and “she’s a dangerous lady, who is well put together…” Sheba is a private investigator in Chicago (a no-nonsense businesswoman, as she yells at her partner for leaving the office a mess) who is called to her hometown of Louisville when her father is in danger. She’d been a cop in the town before leaving, and an old love interest is in business with her father, who owns a loan company. Themes of police ineffectiveness and corrupt white men at the top of a chain of violence are featured again, and Sheba takes justice into her own hands when the police only step up when it’s too late (after her father is killed). She uses her looks to gain access to a yacht party, where she struggles, fights and overcomes the men who are responsible for her father’s death (as well as shutting down many other Black-run businesses in the neighborhood).

“Now you tell your boss that he is not dealing with my father anymore. He is dealing with Sheba Shayne.”

While the themes in this film are similar–anti-racism, anti-white patriarchal corruption and pro-vigilante justice–Sheba, Baby is unique in Sheba’s even fiercer independence than the previous films. When Brick asks her if she “has anyone” in Chicago, she replies: “If you’re asking if I sleep alone every night, I’d have to say no. If you’re asking if I’m going steady with anyone, I’d have to say no. So what are you asking?” The next shot, they are in bed together. However, Sheba doesn’t rely on Brick’s help (she works without him), and leaves him at the end of the film because their separate careers are too valuable. In the final shot of the film, she’s walking the streets of Chicago, smiling and confident.

The ending of Sheba, Baby should have been indicative of a future of Grier’s style of female protagonist. However, Grier wouldn’t again headline a film until Jackie Brown, Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 film (he wrote it specifically for Grier, and she was nominated for numerous awards for it, including a Golden Globe). She certainly worked in the interim, and has since (including stage work and starring in The L Word). But nothing like the string of films she starred in in the 1970s.

When asked about being the first woman to play this type of powerful character, Grier responded:

“I saw women share the platform with men in my personal world, and Hollywood just hadn’t wakened to it yet. Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn changed the way they saw women during the 1940s, but I saw it daily in the women’s movement that was emerging, because I was a child of the women’s movement. Everything I had learned was from my mother and my grandmother, who both had a very pioneering spirit. They had to, because they had to change flat tires and paint the house—because, you know, the men didn’t come home from the war or whatever else, so women had to do these things. So, out of economic necessity and the freedoms won, by the ’50s and ’60s, there was suddenly this opportunity and this invitation that was like, ‘Come out here with these men. Get out here. Show us what you got.'”

She certainly did. But like so many cultural revolutions, the women’s movement saw backlash in the 1980s and beyond, as did this new kind of feminist, African American cinematic genre.

Grier points out that she’s often criticized for the nudity and violence in her early films.

In regard to the nudity, she says,

“We’ve got $20 million actresses today who are nude in Vanilla Sky, nude in Swordfish. So what did I do different? I got paid less, but that’s it.”

To critics of the violence, she points out,

“I saw more violence in my neighborhood and in the war and on the newsreels than I did in my movies, so it didn’t bother me. Coming from the ’50s, things were very violent. We were still being lynched. If I drove down through the South with my mother, I might not make it through one state without being bullied or harassed. I feel like unless you’ve been black for a week, you don’t know. A lot of people were really up in arms about nothing, and if you challenge them, they go, ‘Well, maybe you’re right.'”

She also notes that although some people objected to the term “blaxploitation,” she didn’t feel the films were demeaning:

“You know, Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone, they can all do shoot-’em-ups. Arnold Schwarzenegger can kill 10 people in one minute, and they don’t call it ‘white exploitation.’ They win awards and get into all the magazines. But if black people do it, suddenly it’s different than if a white person does it.”

Her poignant commentary on the double standards in Hollywood serves as a larger reminder of the double standards in society. The notion of a Black protagonist fighting villainous white people is something that is still uncomfortable. Grier’s nudity in the early films, and her blatant sexiness, felt different than typical female objectification. Even when her cleavage was featured prominently, she had the power–she wasn’t passive, so her sexuality didn’t seem like a marker of weakness simply for the male gaze. It was jarring to feel so comfortable with what looked like female objectification, because it was so different than what we are used to now. Looking at the poster art from her earlier films, one would see her portrayed as an object. However, in the actual films, she is a sexual being, with agency, independence and strength.

Jackie Brown

The Ms. article “In Praise of Baadasssss Supermamas” points out that “…Coffy and Foxy fought against systems that beat up on everyday folk. Imagine what they would do in the 21st century.” It’s a pretty great thought.However, it’s more likely that we get Fighting Fuck Toys (FFTs) in modern cinema, and as Caroline Heldman writes:

“Hollywood rolls out FFTs every few years that generally don’t perform well at the box office (think Elektra, Catwoman, Sucker Punch), leading executives to wrongly conclude that women action leads aren’t bankable. In fact, the problem isn’t their sex; the problem is their portrayal as sex objects. Objects aren’t convincing protagonists. Subjects act while objects are acted upon, so reducing a woman action hero to an object, even sporadically, diminishes her ability to believably carry a storyline. The FFT might have an enviable swagger and do cool stunts, but she’s ultimately a bit of a joke.”

Grier’s heroes are never the joke, and that’s what works. She can carry a storyline, have sex when she wants it (or not) and end up victorious, with her complete agency intact. She’s a subject acting upon the injustices around her.

Pam Grier is an incredible actress, and her most iconic roles serve as a reminder that women can do it all on the big screen. It’s just been too long since they’ve been allowed to.

—–

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

‘Ukraine is Not a Brothel’: Intimate Storytelling and Complicated Feminism

Green’s intimate reporting and the incredible cinematography and editing that makes the film stand out accomplish the goal of respecting, questioning, and empowering these women activists. Green, in examining those fighting against the patriarchy, exposes and dismantles the patriarch who was running the show.

ukraine-is-not-a-brothel-il-poster-del-film-282951 — *Ukraine is Not a Brothel*

Written by Leigh Kolb.

“Ninety nine percent of Ukrainian girls don’t even know what feminism is.”

This is the sentence that opens Ukraine is Not a Brothel, which premiered in the US last weekend at the True/False Film Fest in Columbia, Mo. The film chronicles Femen and uncovers the patriarch behind the movement.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_AysixuBhQ”]

The aim of Femen–the topless feminist protest organization that began in Kiev four years ago–is to shock the masses and raise awareness for that 99 percent of girls who are growing up in a society that treats women as second-class citizens and to dismantle the fact that Ukraine is seen as a hub for prostitution and sex trafficking. Director Kitty Green (who makes her feature-length documentary debut with the film) was struck by the image of a Femen protestor holding a sign over her bare breasts that said, “Ukraine is Not a Brothel,” and Green embedded herself with the group for a year, serving as their videographer while collecting footage for the documentary.

ukraine-is-not-a-brothel-un-immagine-del-film-282961 — In one of the opening shots, one of the Femen activists has her body painted.

Femen says that they fight against the patriarchy and against sexism in all forms. In a Q&A after the film, Femen leader Inna Shevchenko (who was featured prominently in the film and has since moved to France) said that the goal of Femen is “fighting patriarchy and its global weight.”

Inna noted that the way Femen uses their sexuality–by running and screaming while naked, and not by posing or trying to attract the male gaze–is a core part of the protest. “We are trying to provoke,” she said, but in a different context.

Everything about Femen sounds pretty great, and their goals and messages are a shocking but valuable chapter of feminist protest.

But it’s more complex than that.

It's not that simple. — It’s not that simple.

Just as the feminist movement as a whole has its issues, Femen isn’t all that it seems.

During the pre-fest Based on a True Story Conference in conjunction with the Missouri School of Journalism, Green explained to an audience that while she was living with and filming the women of Femen (she was arrested eight times and was abducted by the KGB with them, as well), she started to realize that the movement was actually run by a man who no one knew about. She said that he was abusive to the women, and she had to “shift ideas and expose him,” instead of simply filming the women. She had to secretly film him, and admitted only after she was almost ready to leave the country admit to the women that she was going to expose him.

“They needed to break away from him,” she said, and it was a difficult moment in their relationship, and in Femen. (In an announcement that got cheers from the opening-night crowd, Inna said that it’s been a year since they’ve had contact with Victor.) Green considered the women she lived with to be friends and family, and her “heart broke” when she would hear Victor yelling at them, and the next morning they were holding signs that said “This is the new feminism.”

The film does a beautiful job of dealing with the complexities and paradoxes of Femen–and really, all of feminism. Ukraine is Not a Brothel highlights the Ukrainian protestors–their lives, their struggles, and their goals–while also shining a light on feminism as a whole. Green’s intimate reporting and the incredible cinematography and editing that makes the film stand out accomplish the goal of respecting, questioning, and empowering these women activists. Green, in examining those fighting against the patriarchy, exposes and dismantles the patriarch who was running the show.

The documentary also quietly examines the difficulties that feminism has with other aspects of its modern identity. Worldwide, prominent feminists are often conventionally attractive (white) women. Third-wave feminism grapples with its relationship with sex work. Women are not widely exposed to or immersed in feminist theory. Women’s bodies are still sexualized, even when we try to use that sexuality in protest. Men still think they have the power, even in progressive movements. And oftentimes they do.

It’s all complicated. And Ukraine is Not a Brothel doesn’t offer solutions–except that the women need to be free from the patriarchal influences that are pushing and abusing them.

Green said, “Victor never thought I was capable of this. I was the young blonde girl who sounded like a child when I spoke Ukrainian. I was not taken seriously, and this gave me power.” She pointed out that women in journalism have a perceived weakness that can give them great power. “I want to keep making films about young women,” she said, hoping that this power can help her tell more stories.

If Ukraine is Not a Brothel is any indication, we can be excited and hopeful for the stories that Kitty Green has yet to discover and tell.

Inna pointed out that in all of the unrest and revolution in Ukraine right now, she gets messages from people there who tell her “You were first!” and credit Femen for being a galvanizing force in Ukrainian protest.

In the same way that Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer purposefully vacillates between humor and intense seriousness, between laughing young women and the same smiling faces screaming and being dragged away by police, Ukraine is Not a Brothel highlights the serious and violent struggle women are fighting against worldwide. These are specific, localized fights that have spread their influence around the world.

Women’s power–especially when they break free from patriarchal forces–is on display in this remarkable documentary. From Green’s intimate storytelling to the protesters’ screams, we are reminded that feminism in all its forms needs to be stripped down and critiqued while we respect and humanize the women putting up the fight and figure out ways to fight with them.

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

‘9 to 5’: Still a Fantasy

“Hey we’ve come this far, haven’t we? This is just the beginning.”

“The beginning” was in 1980, when this feminist comedy classic was released. Dolly Parton belted out the title song, which features a “boss man” who is “out to get her”–it’s an uplifting song, though, that echoes the closing celebratory sentiment: this is just the beginning. Things are going to change.

Well how have we done in 34 years?

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on Women and Work/Labor Issues.

“That equal pay thing–that’s got to go.”

At the end of 9 to 5, the Chairman of the Board comes to visit Mr. Hart to congratulate him on his division’s success. He applauds the creative workplace choices that upped productivity by 20 percent. Job sharing policies allowed people to work part time, and an on-site day care, flex time, and equal pay boosted morale and created a “splendid environment,” according to the Chairman. But the equal pay? He whispers to Hart that that has to go.

In reality, Violet (Lily Tomlin), Judy (Jane Fonda), and Doralee (Dolly Parton)–three of Hart’s employees who waged war on him, their “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical, bigot” boss–were the ones who made the changes in the workplace.

Hart is promoted to a job overseas, and the power trio take their place in his office, toasting their success (in both the workplace and in getting rid of Hart) with champagne.

Judy and Doralee express concern over the lack of equal salary policies, but Violet interjects:

“Hey we’ve come this far, haven’t we? This is just the beginning.”

The beginning was in 1980, when this feminist comedy classic was released. Dolly Parton belted out the title song, which features a “boss man” who is “out to get her”–it’s an uplifting song, though, that echoes the closing celebratory sentiment: this is just the beginning. Things are going to change.

Well how have we done in 34 years? While President Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Act in 2009, the National Women’s Law Center reports that “American women who work full-time, year-round are paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts.” Roughly half of employers offer flextime and only about a third of the “best companies to work for” offer child care, even though these policies–as shown in 9 to 5–can increase productivity, profit, and worker morale.

Of course, these policies are typically only available to professional workers at large companies. For working class women, the situation is more dire, and the fighting is up a steeper hill. Domestic workers, retail workers, home care workers, and restaurant workers are fighting hard and “leaning in” (without rich white women telling them to), but the fight is still necessary.

The House and the Senate are gridlocked over raising the federal minimum wage. Of workers who earn minimum wage, two-thirds are women.

That beginning sure has lasted a long time, Violet.

While the fact that 9 to 5 is still so timely is depressing, there’s much to celebrate in this female buddy comedy. For a comedy, the women are complex and well-written, embodying female stereotypes without becoming stereotypes (and at times dismantling them). They work hard, they play hard (what a great scene, when Doralee, Violet, and Judy are drinking and getting stoned), and they get into a bunch of trouble, but they win in the end.

Meanwhile, commentary on misogynist bosses, anti-family workplaces, patriarchy, and sexism and harassment in the workplace is woven throughout the film.

When they get high, the women have separate revenge fantasies about how they would murder Hart. Violet’s is accompanied by animated birds and woodland creatures, and she, Doralee, and Judy end victorious–in princess costumes waving atop their castle, addressing their adoring subjects who they’ve freed from the oppressive (“sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical, bigot”) reign of Franklin Hart. They rewrite the princess narrative something fierce.

And how are we doing, in terms of women and comedy blockbusters, 34 years later?

As Bitch Media pointed out in an article about great female buddy comedies:

“‘Who knew a bunch of ladies could create comedy gold?’ was a common refrain when Bridesmaids first came out. The answer? Oh, I don’t know, maybe ask the millions of moviegoers who made 9 to 5—the 20th-highest-grossing comedy ever?”

It’s a fun comedy that has stood the test of time–which again, is also pretty depressing. What also strikes audiences is how completely female-centric the comedy is, and how much it works. We can imagine for once what it must feel like to watch a film that examines women’s lives and only has one featured male character–who is an (all too realistic) caricature. I can’t speak for male viewers, but I imagine the experience of viewing a film like this is quite similar to what women audiences are faced with constantly. Unfortunately, comedies with women and women’s stories at the helm are still as rare as on-site daycare.

Rewatching this 1980 classic reminds us that women’s lives are complex and have the potential to be made into blockbusters. We’re also reminded that in regard to women in the workplace, we stil have a long way to go. Violet was right–this was just the beginning. Why does the happy ending seem so far away?

If you want a fun, sexist blast from the past, read this New York Times film review of 9 to 5. Workplace policies may not have changed enough since 1980, but I’d like to think that the feminist blogosphere would have eviscerated a review like that. Progress.

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

Pussy Power and Control in ‘Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer’

And it sinks in. We can, half a world away, celebrate Pussy Riot’s name. We can listen to their music and cheer them on. What our challenge as feminists needs to be is to take their cause as seriously as those Carriers of the Cross take it. We must hold on so tightly to our convictions–at home and abroad–that the utter fear and terror of female power that those enmeshed in the patriarchy are emboldened by is neutralized.

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Pussy Riot–the Russian feminist anti-authoritative protest punk band–staged a protest at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour two years ago. Their subsequent arrest, trial, and incarceration has been broadcast to a world both condemning and sympathetic of their cause.

Because of this, we’re hearing the word “pussy” thrown around on the news and in the classroom like never before. Teaching film and journalism, I think I said it in class a half dozen times in the last 24 hours. NPR’s calm deliverance of the word is almost soothing.

It’s hard to not delight in so much “pussy”—the word, as they use it, is threatening, terrifying, and forceful. It’s also a word that is used to belittle women or shame men. There’s power in the word, but there’s also silliness in the reception. The word itself is analogous to women themselves and how we inhabit this world—we often aren’t taken seriously, but us having power (especially sexual power) is terrifying to patriarchal forces. Pussy Riot has shown us this in a loud, brightly colored way.

The documentary Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer–now available on DVD—traces the path of Pussy Riot’s inception and worldwide explosion. The dozen or so women who gathered to form the punk collective in 2011 were galvanized by pro-feminist, anti-capitalist, pro-gay rights, anti-authoritarian, anti-Putin, anti-church/state ideologies. Their guerrilla-style performances with their signature brightly-colored balaclavas became known in feminist circles, but their February 21, 2012 performance was what made them a household name.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acMN8xUWqUQ”]

The documentary shows the group preparing for a concert/protest at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Moscow’s Orthodox church. It feels voyeuristic (in a good way) to watch this guerrilla punk group practice just like any other band.

As the film’s exposition builds, the group plans to storm the cathedral (which they say is the ultimate symbol of the relationship between the church and state), go up to the altar (where they point out women are now allowed, and they believe they should be), and perform “Punk Prayer.” The lyrics to the anthem include the lines,

“Virgin Mary, Mother of God, banish Putin, banish Putin,/ Virgin Mary, Mother of God, banish him, we pray thee!…/ Freedom’s phantom’s gone to heaven,/ Gay Pride’s chained and in detention… /Don’t upset His Saintship, ladies,/ Stick to making love and babies./ Crap, crap, this godliness crap!/ Crap, crap, this holiness crap!/ Virgin Mary, Mother of God./ Be a feminist, we pray thee…”

However, they are only able to perform for less than a minute before being dragged away by security officials and grabbed at by angry cathedral visitors (there was not a service going on at the time). Three of the members were arrested—Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (Nadia), Maria Alyokhina (Masha/Maria), and Yekaterina Samutsevich (Katia)–and Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer delves into their lives and the court case that awaited them.

Pussy Riot performs briefly at the cathedral

The film–directed by Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin—does an excellent job of letting us into the women’s lives. Their testimonies, their words to the press, and their families’ words, along with the footage of their performances, illuminate their entire story. While it’s clear that the filmmakers are pro-Pussy Riot, their allegiance isn’t distracting. For the first part of the film, as they cut between images of church, state, and protest, Pussy Riot’s performances seem like performance art, not acts of all-out revolution. We viewers think to ourselves as they get dragged off and arrested at the cathedral, “Really?”

And that’s the point. Ms. Magazine says,

“Their actual ‘offending’ performance was a quick and amateurish mess. It was a poorly organized and naïve display by the young women, making the punishments placed upon them—two years in intensive labor camps—appear even harsher by comparison. Out of this, the directors are able to show the growing maturity of the women’s court statements as their ‘show trial’ cage inevitably provides them an international platform on which to express their views.”

When the women are shown speaking (whether in detention or in court), they sometimes smirk and smile and certainly use the platform as activists. At one point, they say to each other that the press will use these photos of them smiling to show that they’re happy, and they say that they are actually laughing at the press. We know that their punishment hasn’t started in earnest yet, and so do they.

I found myself wanting, at times, to judge them for those smiles and testimonies that didn’t defend them sufficiently against the charges (“hooliganism motivated by religious hatred”). I realized, in my judgment, that I am part of the problem. Would I have responded that way to a documentary about young male activists? The rarity of seeing women fight and be punished on a national stage feels too rare. We—around the world—notoriously dismiss young women and find them silly. Our response to their name is indicative of that reality.

From left: Katia, Masha, and Nadia await their sentencing in a confined box in the courtroom.

We find them silly, or we find them terrifying. Rarely do we give them power.

The chilling reality of Pussy Riot’s case sets in when the filmmakers follow the anti-Pussy Riot protesters, Orthodox worshipers, and men who belong to “The Carriers of the Cross.” Women holding images of Madonna and child are disgusted with Pussy Riot, and the men say,

“Those girls really offended me… in the 16th century, they would’ve hanged them, they would’ve burned them.”

“The main one, she is a demon with a brain. She’s a strong demon. She is stubborn, you can tell by her lips, her mouth.”

“There have always been witches who won’t repent.”

And it sinks in. We can, half a world away, celebrate Pussy Riot’s name. We can listen to their music and cheer them on. What our challenge as feminists needs to be is to take their cause as seriously as those Carriers of the Cross take it. We must hold on so tightly to our convictions—at home and abroad—that the utter terror of female power that emboldens those enmeshed in the patriarchy is neutralized.

The disgust for female power is palpable in these scenes, and it is familiar. While America doesn’t have the same history as Russia, that vitriol feels familiar.

In the St. Petersburg Times, mere days before the arrest at the cathedral, a lengthy feature was published about Pussy Riot:

“The group cites American punk rock band Bikini Kill and its Riot Grrrl movement as an inspiration, but says there are plenty of differences between them and Bikini Kill. ‘What we have in common is impudence, politically loaded lyrics, the importance of feminist discourse, non-standard female image,’ Pussy Riot said. ‘The difference is that Bikini Kill performed at specific music venues, while we hold unsanctioned concerts. On the whole, Riot Grrrl was closely linked to Western cultural institutions, whose equivalents don’t exist in Russia.'”

We can watch this documentary and the news reels of Bolshevik Revolution and the footage of the original Cathedral of Christ the Saviour being demolished under Stalin. We don’t have the same history. But we have the same enemies.

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer is an excellent documentary that reminds us of the threat women pose to the patriarchy–literally and figuratively. And when the women might seem young and naïve at the beginning of the film, we watch them mature, and we realize how serious both their punishment and the society that accepts such a punishment are. We hear Pussy Riot’s performance at the end of the film (footage from an earlier performance) as brilliant and powerful. And we realize, deeply, that we live in a world that needs Pussy Riot.

Kathleen Hanna said, “Anything is possible, if anything, this band has reminded us of that.”

Katia was granted a suspended sentence during the filming of the documentary, but Nadia and Masha went on to serve almost two years in labor camps. They were released in December 2013, which many saw as a false show of amnesty before the winter Olympics began in Russia.

And they haven’t stopped fighting or being fought against, as footage of them being beaten and detained in Sochi was just released this morning.

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

Ruthless, Pragmatic Feminism in ‘House of Cards’

The women of ‘House of Cards’ are not “Strong Female Characters.” They are well-written characters with a great deal of power, which they wield alongside the men. They are integral parts of the narrative. When female complexity and power is written into the narrative, everything else–including passing the Bechdel Test–effortlessly falls into place.

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Season 2 spoilers ahead!

Novelist Elmore Leonard said, “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” I think about that often when looking for or critiquing the dearth of feminist film and television. We often wring our hands over the Bechdel Test and the lack of “Strong Female Characters.”

Ideal feminist media would be like Leonard’s ideal writing–films and shows that don’t feel like they’re trying to be feminist. They just are. Complex women and women’s stories that aren’t just pieces of the whole, but are woven in seamlessly throughout the narrative–that’s what I want.

House of Cards delivers.

Last year, after season 1 debuted on Netflix to critical and popular acclaim, Amanda Rodriguez and I both wrote about House of Cards and the wonderfully complex female characters (see: “The Complex, Unlikable Women of House of Cards” and “Claire Underwood: The Queen Bee in House of Cards“). The simultaneously awful and wonderful female characters whose stories were essential to the action in every single episode. Nothing ever felt forced, and the fact that these women were both sympathetic and loathsome was an absolute delight for those of us feminist viewers who are tired of “strong female characters” who pay lip service to some kind of surface-level inequality.

House of Cards’s feminism is remarkable, because it feels wholly unremarkable.

Season 2 debuted on Feb. 14, and although Netflix doesn’t reveal exact numbers, Variety reports that the viewership in the first few hours “soared,” with many subscribers watching multiple episodes at once.

And since the only Olympic-style sport we are interested in in our home is the long-form binge watch, we were finished with season 2 by Saturday night. Within the first two episodes, I was fairly certain this was the most feminist TV drama I’ve seen–because what we want (complexity, equality, and representation) is woven in seamlessly. House of Cards is not primarily about a man. It’s not primarily about a woman. It’s about people.

In the promo materials for season 1, we saw Frank Underwood sitting alone in Lincoln’s monument. Ostensibly, he’s the show’s protagonist. And in season 1, I suppose it did often feel that way.

However, the season 2 poster features Frank again sitting in Lincoln’s seat, but Claire is sitting on top of it also. From the first shot of season 2–Frank and Claire running together–we know that Frank isn’t really our sole protagonist at all anymore.

The first two episodes tie up many loose ends from season 1, and introduce new ones for season 2. In the first episode, Claire picks up her appointment with the fertility doctor not, as we learn, to become pregnant herself, but to find out more about the drug that Gillian is on so she can threaten to withhold her insurance from her, thus getting what she wants from Gillian. “I’m willing to let your child wither and die within you,” Claire says to Gillian. Frank pushes Zoe Barnes into the path of an ongoing train, and she is killed. Frank, who has taken his place as vice president, courts Jackie Sharp to be the House Majority Whip. Why? Her military record of having to order strikes and kill people (including women and children) shows Frank that she is a bastion of ruthless pragmatism, which is how he and Claire move forward; and with this, season 2 begins.

In the following episodes, Claire faces her rapist (who assaulted her in college, and now Frank must give him an award for his military service), and honestly tells Frank how she wants to “smash things” and how much she wants to talk about it. These scenes were excellent because she didn’t let Frank be the vengeful husband. She stopped him, and then kept her power by talking about the assault. It wasn’t presented as if her sexuality was Frank’s to protect; the experience was hers. She wants to let her husband in, but she doesn’t want him to avenge her honor. That’s her job.

When she goes on national television and admits to having an abortion, she says that it was to end the pregnancy that resulted from the sexual assault. She named her attacker, and a young woman called in to the show, saying that he had assaulted her as well. This kicks off a season-long story line about a military sexual assault bill that pits women against women and shows the politics of justice as being just that: politics.

Screen-Shot-2014-02-14-at-6.15.18-AM — Claire bares all–in her own way–on national television.

But here’s the rub: Claire had three abortions, not one, and none were from the rape. She is matter-of-fact with her doctor and press secretary that she had three abortions, and we learn that one was during the campaign with Frank, and two were when she was a teenager. One could see these story lines as using infertility, rape, and abortion as plot points.

And you know what? It’s fantastic. I love that these typically silent or exploited topics get so much air time in House of Cards, and that Claire is more human for having gone through so much, yet she uses it all for political and personal gain. (A recent study showed that when female characters consider or have an abortion in film or TV, they are disproportionally killed or at least punished.)

When done properly, I applaud these female-specific plot points. These events are plot points in women’s lives, and they should be used well on screen. House of Cards does just that.

Historically, men have wars and external, political struggles to define and provide fodder for their journeys (both fictional and non). We see this represented with Frank’s visit to the Confederate re-enactors and his war miniatures. Women’s struggles and choices–infertility, sexual assault, and abortion–are widespread and underrepresented. To have Claire live through and use these experiences is refreshing and brilliant (and appropriately villainous).

The season goes on to show the fallout that Claire receives from admitting to having an abortion (even though she publicly says she had one after a rape), including an attempted bomb attack by a man whose wife had had an abortion, and the angry, vitriolic protesters outside her home. (She tells Megan, the young sexual assault victim at one point, “They’re loud, but I think we need to be louder.”) What a great message.

Claire is a horrible human being for many, many reasons–but her abortions aren’t included in those reasons. The show makes that clear.

Jackie–Frank’s replacement and sometimes-ally sometimes-adversary–is a force. She, in her relationship with Remy, is the one who initially isn’t interested at all in a relationship. She gets tattooed to help deal with the pain of the deaths she was responsible for in the military. She’s powerful and political, and we see her as both the enemy and ally throughout the season.

Screen-Shot-2014-02-14-at-5.24.03-AM — Jackie, adding on to her poppy tattoo (symbolic in its remembrance of bloodshed in war, and therapeutic in its pain).

In addition to the complex shaping of women’s stories and the characters themselves, the way the show handles masculinity and sexuality seems revolutionary.

In season 1, it’s evident when Frank goes back to his alma mater that he had had a sexual relationship with a close male friend. There wasn’t much hoopla about this, it just was what it was. In season 2, Claire, Frank, and their bodyguard, Edward Meechum, have a threesome. The next day, Frank says to Meechum as he gets in the car, “It’s a beautiful day.” And that’s all there is to it. Meanwhile, Rachel has developed a relationship with Lisa, and it’s portrayed as a loving partnership (although the camera does linger on their sex scene while it artfully pans away from the aforementioned threesome).

There’s no moral focus or panic about people’s sexuality. It just–is what it is. No fanfare. And the fact that we get to see women having orgasms (in season 2, an especially steamy scene between Jackie and Remy) is a pleasant detour from the norm as well.

In what continues to be one of my favorite articles regarding feminist media, “I hate Strong Female Characters,” Sophia McDougall says,

“Nowadays the princesses all know kung fu, and yet they’re still the same princesses. They’re still love interests, still the one girl in a team of five boys, and they’re all kind of the same. They march on screen, punch someone to show how they don’t take no shit, throw around a couple of one-liners or forcibly kiss someone because getting consent is for wimps, and then with ladylike discretion they back out of the narrative’s way.”

The women of House of Cards are not “Strong Female Characters.” They are well-written characters with a great deal of power, which they wield alongside the men. They are integral parts of the narrative. When female complexity and power is written into the narrative, everything else–including passing the Bechdel Test–effortlessly falls into place.

This is ruthless pragmatism: feminist style, and it is excellent. In a sea of male anti-heroes on TV, it’s time that women share the stage. House of Cards shows its hand, and it’s a royal flush, with the queen right next to the king.

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

Muted Female Power in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and ‘American Hustle’

The men get the most attention for their greed and corruption. However, if we look a bit closer, the films’ women are the ones who can be traced to plant bigger, fatter seeds of avarice. This wouldn’t bother me, as I’m always in favor of more complex female characters (even if they’re unsympathetic), but what strikes me is that we barely notice these scenes. The women become victims and damsels, when oftentimes the ideas were their own.

Is this some kind of 21st century version of the femme fatale? A woman who is coercive–not only sexually, but also financially–but who isn’t taken seriously as a power player? Is it just embedded in us to not notice women’s power or ignore their parts in the narrative?

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Two of this year’s Oscars contenders–The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle–are based on true stories. These stories center around greed and corruption. The characters cheat and lie their way into and out of the American Dream.

The men get the most attention for their greed and corruption. However, if we look a bit closer, the films’ women are the ones who can be traced to plant bigger, fatter seeds of avarice. This wouldn’t bother me, as I’m always in favor of more complex female characters (even if they’re unsympathetic), but what strikes me is that we barely notice these scenes. The women become victims and damsels, when oftentimes the ideas were their own.

In both The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle, women plant the ideas that become the stories themselves. We shouldn’t point at them and scream, “Jezebel!” or blame them entirely for the greed and corruption. Instead, I think it’s important that we recognize them as part of the story, and not as characters who need saving.

The Wolf of Wall Street‘s quiet, victimized femme fatales are harder to identify. In fact, when we watch The Wolf of Wall Street, the power and corruption of bloated, desperate masculinity screams at us from every frame–women are objectified, and men hold the power.

However, some key moments in Jordan’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) professional life are influenced by women. When he loses his first job on Wall Street after Black Monday, his wife Teresa (Cristin Milioti) shows him an ad for a job at the Investors Center, where he goes to sell penny stocks quite successfully. When he starts taking people’s money in earnest, Teresa says, “Wouldn’t you feel better selling to rich people who could afford to lose money?” The rest is history.

Then come the strippers and the marching band, and the scathing “Wolf of Wall Street” article in Forbes. There’s “no such thing as bad publicity,” Teresa says.

Pretty soon, Jordan is hooked on quaaludes. He points out that the history of quaaludes–how they were first prescribed to housewives, and then became recreational drugs (this Paris Review article notes that they were prescribed to “nervous housewives” and went on to be discovered by “curious teenagers” who raided their mothers’ medicine cabinets). Here we have a shift: all of a sudden, what was once a woman’s game was now co-opted, blown out of proportion, and reckless.

Soon, Jordan is with Naomi (Margot Robbie). He goes into her apartment and is beeped by Teresa (“Go home to your wife,” he says to himself). Naomi steps out naked, and they have sex instead.

She didn’t come, though. It’s pointed out that she doesn’t come, which is important–she’s seductive, but not satisfied. She’s sexy, but not sexual. (Or maybe Scorsese was trying to avoid an NC-17 rating, since doing blow out of a prostitute’s ass crack is R material, but female orgasms are just too scandalous.)

The_Wolf_Of_Wall_Street_review_article_story_main — Naomi’s “power”

Teresa and Naomi both are suddenly victims, discarded and consumed by Jordan’s lifestyle. We feel sorry for them, and they seem to be powerless (except for Naomi’s use of withholding sex). Their motivations and their power are erased by misogyny (figuratively in the story, or literally through violence and rape). I suppose this is actually in keeping with history–a history that favors men, and typically erases women’s involvement.

However, in American Hustle, Sydney (Amy Adams) shares center stage. She is a formidable scammer. She fabricates a persona, adopts an accent, and partners with Irving (Christian Bale) as a scam artist. Her power is fairly clear, and her nomination for the Best Actress Academy Award reflects her spotlighted role.

When Sydney and Irving meet, they are both already con artists in their own right. Sydney points out to Irving “how easy it could be to take money from desperate people.” With her involvement, his business takes off. Irving was a small player before Sydney; she takes their business to the next level.

american-hustle-amy-adams-1 — Sydney has control

Before long, though, Sydney is a damsel in distress–needing to be rescued by either Richie (Bradley Cooper) or Irving, and pitted against Irving’s wife, Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence). Her jealousy and cattiness take over, and she and Rosalyn seem at times to be liabilities because of their unbridled passion. All of a sudden, Sydney’s role as a powerful female force is whittled away. I want to be able to look at a female character and fully realize her power and potential, and recognize her role as an agent of change–even if that change is corrupt. It’s unfortunate to watch her weaken because of romantic relationships, and for her adversary to be the wife who almost tears everything down with her jealousy.

There’s a relatively happy ending for Irving and Sydney–they have legal jobs, and share custody of Irving’s adopted son, while Rosalyn has also found a new partnership. I don’t deny that Sydney is a strong character in her own right; however, a viewer could easily see her role as softened, muted somehow because of her jealousy.

It’s simply too easy for viewers to file women away in the “victim” category, or to not take them seriously as power players. Don’t get me wrong–I don’t think the answer to this problem is to always force female characters into leading roles, especially if the story on screen revolves around a male character. But there must be a way to avoid victimizing women and dismissing their motivations and actions, overshadowing them by female tropes. The male supporting characters are able to be seen as complex–American Hustle‘s Richie, Carmine (Jeremy Renner), and Stoddard (Louis C.K.), and The Wolf of Wall Street‘s Donnie (Jonah Hill), Patrick (Kyle Chandler), and Max (Rob Reiner) are likable and despicable, sympathetic and sinister. It’s possible.

I also wouldn’t want viewers to blame the women fully for the men’s actions, seeing them as simply vamps or temptresses who lead men astray. There’s some kind of middle ground that needs to be explored–and that ground is seeing women as complex human beings.

The women in The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle have power in pivotal moments, but it seems too easy for the audience to disregard due to cultural expectations and ideas about women and story lines that have them fade–just enough–into stereotypes. When women have formidable power behind the scenes, it would be nice to see that fully realized on the screen. We need a culture shift to move away from the dangerous dichotomies that wedge women into Madonna or whore, damsel or temptress. It’s up to writers and audiences to make that a reality.

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

The Academy: Kind to White Men, Just Like History

The hunters write history. The hunters glorify themselves. The hunters’ history infiltrates itself into the very fabric of our cultural narrative, so we’re only comfortable with seeing the complexities of the hunters, and the simplicity of the lions.

It is what we’ve been trained for since birth.

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Last year, after Django Unchained was largely snubbed at the Oscars (compared to the Golden Globes), I looked at the history of the Black actors/characters who were awarded by the Academy over the years. The results were troubling, but not surprising–much like the infographic The Huffington Post posted today about what roles that women won for over the years (here is Feministing‘s take on the findings).

It’s fairly clear what roles Hollywood is most comfortable with: for Black characters, passivity, tired stereotypes, and villainy get the highest awards. For women, wives/daughters/mothers/sisters/girlfriends–all roles in relationship to men–are rewarded.

Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. (The Black actors up for 2014 Academy Awards--Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong'o--play a kidnapped freed man/slave and slave.) — Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. (The Black actors up for 2014 Academy Awards–Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong’o, and Barkhad Abdi–play a kidnapped freed man/slave, slave, and Somali pirate, respectively.) *Click to enlarge.*

For men (who are almost all white), the category with the most winners is “Historical.” For men, there are countless historical roles to fill, so filmmakers can tell the stories of those who have shaped our history and culture–or at least, those whom we see and are told about. And this has been a history that has been largely unkind to Black people and women.

In an interview, late author Chinua Achebe quoted the following proverb: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

It is what we’ve been trained for since birth.

This is a history that the lions have had to fight and claw their way out of, yet we don’t see them in Hollywood. The lions write, the lions pitch, but the hunters are not interested. (And the hunters have the money, from generations of oppressing the lions.)

I’d be happy to see the hunters start telling the lions’ history, even just a little bit (I salivate at the thought of Quentin Tarantino taking on suffragettes).

Three of this year’s Best Picture nominations (12 Years a Slave, Wolf of Wall Street, and American Hustle) are films that are based on real stories–and each of these stories, on some level, is about white men fucking people over so they can get rich. And at the end of these stories, the white men don’t really get punished. This is our history.

This is our history.

So how can we blame the Academy for reflecting this history back at us? Art is imitating life, and life keeps imitating art. If the two are so inextricably related (which they are), where do we go from here?

I’m not one who argues that it’s all about the Bechdel Test, or that we need to demand the Perfect Feminist Film. Some of the most potentially empowering films that I’ve seen (that feature female and Black protagonists) would be solidly placed in the “exploitation” category (Blaxploitation especially). We need to demand female and Black anti-heroes if we want true, complex characters and stories.

See this, this, and this. (Who gave the lions a dictation machine, anyway?!)

As I argued in regard to 12 Years a Slave, we have barely started to deal with our country’s history, and we need to, desperately. But still–the only white American actor who is prominently featured in the film was Brad Pitt, who plays a heroic Canadian. It’s hard to face.

In American Hustle and Wolf of Wall Street, the white male protagonists are complex–they aren’t good, but they are whole. They are criminals. They are cheaters. But audiences kind of like them–or at the very least, accept them.

Our goal as lions, then, may not be to just tell our stories. We need to become hunters, and find those stories and demand that they be told. We need to face a history in which Black hunters and female hunters have been punished, and white male hunters have prevailed. We may not be able to rewrite that history, but we can live within it, and force it into our cultural narrative. (Or, as my husband said after we sat through previews last weekend, “They could just quit telling World War II stories for a while.”)

But here we are, in 2014, facing how the Academy’s choices clearly reflect our history. What do we do with this? We should get angry at history, and attempt to rewrite our future. We should be angry at an American history that has oppressed women and Blacks since its inception.

If Wolf of Wall Street reflects modern history, which it does, we see that white men are still winning (case in point: I can’t use the term “winning” without thinking about a white male actor who “allegedly assaulted, threatened, harassed, abused, and—in one incident—shot women” and yet still was the highest-paid actor on television in 2010).

If we want to tell revolutionary women’s and Black people’s stories, we’ll have to settle for a lot of tragedies. There aren’t slaps on the wrists or a few months in a cushy white-collar prison for these historical figures. There’s torture, lynching, and shame. And the villains are almost always white men.

So we’re back to the hunter. And what we know about hunters is they don’t come back bragging about their losses; they brag about their wins. It’s time for them to stop winning, and for the lions to be heard. Then, and only then, can we expect the Academy to reflect a new reality.

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