Love – Bitch Flicks

This guest post is written by Siobhan Denton.

Now in its second season, Love, starring Gillian Jacobs and Paul Rust, is far more complex and developed than its detractors would have you believe. For those that have failed to truly engage with the show, the central relationship between Mickey (Jacobs) and Gus (Rust) is simply another restrictive addition to a long line of improbable relationships between a manic pixie dream girl and a less conventionally attractive “geeky” lead. While this is understandable to a casual viewer, it must be noted that to define Love as such is hugely limiting and fails to recognize the complexity that is at the heart of the series. Love’s characters, given room to breathe, are problematic and through this, are fully developed and engaging.

Quickly, it is apparent that Mickey and Gus reject the stereotypes that they initially appear to fulfill. Gus, despite presenting as a “nice guy,” is often passive aggressive and dependent. He is desperate to receive praise, and seeks it through attempting to be as amenable as possible, even when it is detrimental to his plans or aims. Gus strongly believes that he is a nice guy, and as such, should be treated accordingly. Similarly Mickey, who initially presents as a quirky, kooky, attractive woman, quickly rejects this image. She is a complicated, imperfect woman who, despite the various demands on her mental health, manages to maintain a successful career. Indeed, her ways of maintaining this career are, at times, questionable, including sleeping with her boss to ensure that she is not at risk of being fired. It’s as if Mickey cannot believe that she is successful within her role, despite the viewer witnessing her ability to multitask and appease colleagues at work, so she feels the need to ensure her success in methods that are more suited to her personal experience.

Mickey Dobbs is not an immediately likable character. Certainly she is engaging, and entertaining to watch, but her selfishness, borne out of her various addictions, often leads to narcissistic behavior. Initially seemingly motivated by self-interest, her interactions with those around her, including her work colleagues, highlights her ability to use and manipulate others. Given the room to develop without clichéd conflict or drama, the viewer soon recognizes that Mickey’s behavior is learned, and she acknowledges and recognizes it as damaging to both herself and the others around her.

Too often, representations of women fall into clichéd binary opposites in the style of Levi-Strauss. Thus, TV shows feature the “good” woman in direct conflict with the “bad” woman, with this clash driving the narrative forward. Mickey encompasses both; she is simultaneously good and bad, selfish and giving, childish and mature. It is this complexity that ensures Mickey’s believability and development as a character. She is real and human, and thus, relatable.

In recent years, this concept of a flawed female protagonist on-screen has gained traction in television series such as How to Get Away with Murder, You’re the Worst, House of Cards, Insecure, Game of Thrones, Empire, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Nurse Jackie, Fleabag, Damages, Jessica Jones, and Orange Is the New Black. One salient example is Girls, which features a cast of difficult and often problematic characters. Each of creator Lena Dunham’s characters is uniquely flawed, but their issues are often borne out of social status, class privilege, and white privilege. Certainly these flaws are worthy of focus, and their issues range from the complex to the superficial, yet the characters often generate their own problems leading to them isolating themselves from the audience. Unlike Girls’ Hannah Horvath, Mickey knows that she needs to work on her flaws. She also recognizes, and tries to rectify, the impact that her mistakes have had on others.

Take her interactions with Bertie (Claudia O’Doherty), her roommate, whose value as a friend Mickey does not initially recognize. Hoping to see Gus after a moment of conflict, she manipulates Bertie into attending a studio tour at the studios where Gus works as an on-set tutor. She knows that Bertie will resent the manipulation, especially when she has relied on Bertie for moral support previously, yet undertakes the ruse anyway. Once confronted by Bertie, she willing admits to her machinations and has subsequently recognized the importance of Bertie’s friendship (attempting to dissect Bertie’s relationship with Randy in hopes of protecting Bertie).

Mickey, in recognizing her issues, has endeavored to ensure that she is honest with those that she cares about. Thus she is honest about her addictions, particularly with Gus, and there is a clear sense that Mickey is consistently and resolutely herself with Gus. After their confrontation in season one, both Gus and Mickey recognize that honesty is crucial in ensuring the success of their relationship. Addictions and flaws aside, both Gus and Mickey offer no pretenses in their interactions with one another, and, in being afforded time to develop (as seen in the date episode in season two) are able to demonstrate their genuine chemistry with one another. Such a representation of a relationship, in which the characters simply enjoy each other’s company, is rare. Indeed, despite the external complications, their relationship thus far (midway through season two) is fairly uncomplicated – they simply like one another.

Ultimately, Mickey Dobbs’ characterization should be praised. She is a character who is allowed to make mistakes, act selfishly, and still be likable. Her representation is grounded in reality and thus makes her relatable and eminently watchable.

Siobhan Denton is a teacher and writer living in Wales, UK. She holds a BA in English and an MA in Film and Television Studies. She is especially interested in depictions of female desire and transitions from youth to adulthood. She tweets at @siobhan_denton and writes at The Blue and the Dim.

This guest post by Gabriella Apicella appears as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

“I seem to be a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I’m working on the foundation.” So said Marilyn Monroe to a reporter just weeks before she died at the age of 36 in 1962.

For the superstructure of Marilyn Monroe to have remained standing over 50 years after her death, the foundations have turned out to be stronger than anyone realised or appreciated during her lifetime. Many reappraisals of her extraordinary talent and appeal have been undertaken since then, and none so vital as the book Fragments, and the documentary Love, Marilyn, in which the woman speaks for herself.

As a fan from the moment I first saw her sheathed in magenta on a 17-inch TV screen when I was just 8 years old, it is difficult to deliver an unbiased account of her appeal, so I won’t try. Nor can I offer the in-depth analysis of Carl Rollyson’s excellent book Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress.

However, as a simple introduction to those yet to understand the fanaticism and devotion Marilyn Monroe continues to provoke from her fans, below are some examples of her less well-known appearances. These prove the woman should be remembered as much for being the fine screen actor she was, just as much as the icon she has become.

Unfortunately, Marilyn Monroe was seldom cast in a truly excellent role.* There was no Casablanca, Vertigo, Anna Christie, or Breakfast at Tiffany’s, though she performed scenes from Anna Christie to great acclaim on stage at the Actors’ Studio, and Truman Capote wrote Breakfast at Tiffany’s for her. Rather it is her presence that lifts otherwise mediocre fare into essential viewing. Her leading men were frequently unable to match her charisma onscreen, so the dynamism of pairings such as Eva Marie St and Marlon Brando, Audrey Hepburn with Gregory Peck, or Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman was also unrealised.

Despite this, even from her earliest roles in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, she delivers nuanced and sensitive performances of rather bland parts, making a forgettable supporting role into a highlight of both iconic films. Most interesting at this point of her career however, are two lesser known B-movies that showcase a very different Marilyn Monroe, and demonstrate how versatile she was. In a small role as a fish-cannery worker in Clash By Night, brawling with her fiancé, drinking beer and talking back, she is the antithesis of what we expect to see from the ultimate Queen of Hollywood. She is also entirely believable with a feisty strength that is downright thrilling to watch her embody, free from glamorous evening gowns and makeup. Holding her own alongside Barbara Stanwyck is no easy feat, yet she accomplishes this with apparent ease, and displayed the potential to one day match her co-star’s critical acclaim.

Months later she appeared as a psychologically disturbed young woman in low-budget thriller Don’t Bother to Knock. Her fragility and desperation throughout is unbearably moving, culminating in a virtually silent yet astonishingly affecting final sequence. Free again from the glamour of her usual roles, her acting and not her physical beauty has the greater importance. Despite the film’s predictability, and the rather clunky pacing, this leading role gives Monroe the opportunity to move from demure to threatening to suicidal via seductive and psychotic. It got favourable reviews, but was not a great hit with the public; it was the studio’s balance sheet that would prevent her tackling such a complex role again.

In the days of the studio system, stars did not pick and choose their parts, and with audiences going in droves to see Marilyn in frothy inconsequential comedies as a dumb blonde, she quickly became typecast. It would be several years before she would take control of her career by walking out on her contract and forming her own production company in an attempt to gain some creative satisfaction. Prompted by the studio’s attempts to cast her in a film called The Girl in the Pink Tights there’s little reason to wonder why she had become so intolerant of the image she had now become constrained by.

Her return to Hollywood in the film version of William Inge’s play Bus Stop was again a chance to shun the glamorous armour of her gold-digger characters, to explore the role of a downtrodden saloon singer with ambitions above her abilities. Not only did her performance stun the film’s director, Joshua Logan, who called her the greatest actress he ever worked with, but it also left critics in no doubt as to her ability. While there is much in the film that dates it terribly, I would urge anyone with doubts about Marilyn Monroe’s extraordinary talent to watch this performance for one of the finest given by any actor. In this role, the potential she had to shape acting history in the same way her contemporary Marlon Brando did for male actors is captured and preserved and sadly serves as a glimmer of what could have been achieved had she remained alive a while longer. As in several of her other roles, it is often when she is not even delivering a line that her performance is most powerful, accessing deep emotions and allowing her facial expressions to convey the character’s innermost feelings, presenting an entirely truthful and believable rendition.

Perhaps because they show a lesser-known side to Marilyn Monroe, these performances are among my favourites, yet there are two more that cannot be missed.

Wearing her sexiness with a sort of naïve unawareness became something of a trademark in her film roles – her characters never seemed to notice how unbelievably gorgeous she was, so at the point when she uses it as a weapon, the result is sensational. As a murderous wife in Niagara, she does just that to stunning effect. Again, it is frustratingly unsatisfying as a film, but contains a thrilling and jaw-droppingly hypnotic performance from Monroe as she sashays, manipulates, seduces, and schemes. This “dangerous” Marilyn shows the stuff of Hitchcock fantasy. While he is to have remarked she was “too obvious” a choice to cast in one of his films, and given his methodical directing methods would likely have made it a horrendous experience for both of them, I have rarely watched Vertigo or Psycho without wishing the blonde was THE Blonde!

Which of course brings us to the most important and successful of all her roles, and the one she will always be remembered for: even today, and undoubtedly for years to come, analysis continues of what aspects of the performance were “real,” and what were not. This was not Lorelei Lee, Sugar Kane, or The Girl, but Marilyn Monroe herself, played by one of the greatest screen actors of all time, named Norma Jeane.

*Some Like it Hot being an obvious exception of a great classic film, the part of Sugar Kane didn’t give her opportunity to show the range of her ability, and she was depressed to be playing a “dumb blonde” once again.

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

Tag: Love

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Another Side of Marilyn Monroe