Tag: Marriage

Wedding Week: ‘Coming to America’ and Coming to Terms with New Marriage Traditions

Coming to America movie poster.



Written by Leigh Kolb

When I was a kid, Coming to America was one of my favorite movies. I’m not quite sure exactly what it was–maybe I just thought Eddie Murphy was really cute–but I’d like to think that I was drawn to its message of valuing female intelligence and independence over subservience. 
Coming to America was released in 1988, and helped round out Eddie Murphy’s rise to stardom in the 1980s, from Saturday Night Live to Beverly Hills Cop. While Murphy played side-kicks in many of his early films, Coming to America was unique because it featured Murphy as a romantic lead, and a cast dominated by African Americans. 
The premise of the film–a wealthy African prince travels to America to live modestly and find true love, not an arranged marriage–isn’t particularly groundbreaking, but the film worked because it was (and is, sadly) rare to find a black man as a romantic lead, especially in a blockbuster-friendly romantic comedy.
The film begins by taking the audience over the sweeping landscape of the fictional African country of Zamunda, while a South African choir sings. As the camera focuses in on a palace, it’s important to note the stark contrast of this depiction of an African country against the frequent portrayals of Africa in American media, which showcase Africa as a continent in need of our saving (after all, they don’t even have snow at Christmas time). 
The royal family of Zamunda: Prince Akeem Joffer, King Jaffe Joffer and Queen Aeoleon.  
Prince Akeem (Murphy) wakes up on the morning of his birthday, and he’s attended to by male and female servants (from royal bathers–beautiful women who clean the “royal penis”–to royal wipers in the bathroom). Akeem doesn’t seem comfortable with any of this, and even requests to use the bathroom alone. At breakfast, his father, King Jaffe Joffer (James Earl Jones), assumes his son must be excited to meet the wife they’ve arranged for him to marry. 
Akeem acts unsure, and finally speaks out against being doted upon and the idea that a woman would be chosen for him for his rank, not because she loves him. The tradition of arranged marriage doesn’t sit well with him, and his youthful rebellion takes the form of wanting to fall in love with a woman on his own terms and to be able to be more independent.
Semmi (Arsenio Hall), Akeem’s friend and attendant, serves as a foil to Akeem’s noble goodness. He is baffled that Akeem wants a woman with an opinion instead of having a woman who would follow his every command. Semmi assures Akeem that his wife need only have a “pretty face.”
Akeem asks him, “So you’d share your bed with a beautiful fool?” Semmi says that that’s the tradition for men in power. Akeem says that it’s also tradition for times to change. 
While the film isn’t a bastion of female empowerment, feminist nuggets like that pop up throughout the film, which is always refreshing within the confines of the well-worn tropes in romantic comedies. 
Akeem asks Imani, his chosen wife-to-be, to speak privately, breaking tradition.
When Akeem is presented with the beautiful woman who is to be his wife, Imani (Vanessa Bell), he asks to talk to her privately. She proudly tells him, “Ever since I was born, I’ve been trained to serve you.” He pushes to find out more about her, her favorite music, food, anything. But all she says is that she likes what he likes and will obey him. He says, “Anything I say, you’ll do?” after she refuses to not obey him, which is what he wants. He tells her to bark like a dog, and she complies, making a fool of herself as he is convinced this is not the woman he will marry. 
The fact that she was “born to serve” this man isn’t an anomaly–in patriarchal cultures steeped in tradition, the idea that women should be indoctrinated to be subservient to men is endemic. (Just last week, a U.S. congressman suggested that young boys and girls have segregated classes to be taught gender norms.)
When Akeem pushes back to his father and tries to get out of the marriage, saying he’s not ready, the king assumes he means sex. “I always assumed you had sex with your bathers,” the father says. “I know I do.” Again, the king is presented as misogynistic and patriarchal, without considering that his son may be trying to break free. He allows Akeem to go and travel for 40 days, assuming he wants to “sow his wild oats,” and that he’ll come back and marry the bride they chose for him.
As they prepare to leave, Akeem tells Semmi that he plans to find a wife during his travels. “I want a woman who will arouse my intellect as well as my loins,” Akeem says. They decide to go to New York City, specifically Queens, because he assumes there’s no better place to find a queen.
Akeem is excited to be in Queens; Semmi is less than impressed.
It’s a priority to Akeem that no one knows he’s royalty. He wants them to stay in the most “common” part of Queens, and asks the landlord to choose the “poorest” apartment for them to rent. When a woman throws garbage out of her window, Akeem exclaims, “America is great indeed–imagine a country so free, one can throw glass on the street!” Observations on wealth and ethnocentrism are also peppered throughout the film.
The two drape themselves in New York sports teams jackets and hats, and are mesmerized by a commercial for Soul Glo. Akeem goes to the barber shop (a gathering place near their apartment, where Murphy and Hall both play other parts). He gets his long princely ponytail cut off. The barber is impressed with his natural hair, and Akeem says he’s never put chemicals in it, just “juices and berries.” Later, the barber would rant and rant when Akeem asks for a Jheri curl, touting the importance of keeping hair natural. Between that and the brief rant by a white Jewish man in the barber shop (played by Murphy) that a person should be able to choose his own name, important facets of African American history and identity are touched upon in the barber shop (which were often official gathering places during the civil rights movement). 
After a night of meeting women of various disaster levels, Akeem and Semmi end up at a Black Awareness Week rally (specifically, the Miss Black Awareness Pageant), where Akeem immediately becomes enamored with Lisa McDowell (Shari Headley), the organizer of the rally and daughter of Cleo McDowell, who owns McDowell’s (a small fast food restaurant that borrows a lot from McDonald’s). She takes the microphone to stress the importance of individual expression (somewhat belittling the pageant, even if tongue in cheek) and asks the crowd to donate to a park for children to be able to express themselves. Akeem puts a giant wad of cash in the collection basket, and the next morning, Akeem and Semmi show up at McDowell’s to get jobs.
Akeem learns how to mop, and tries to flirt with Lisa, who is hard at work on a computer in her office. Akeem clearly, and immediately, values a woman with a sense of identity and purpose beyond serving a man.
Soul Glo heir Darryl (Eriq La Salle) is Lisa’s boyfriend, and the audience immediately knows he’s an ass–he puts no money in the collection basket (and lets Lisa think he was responsible for the large donation), he buddies up to Cleo and is condescending toward Lisa. If Akeem was more like Darryl, or even Semmi, his life would have been easier–he could have simply married his chosen wife and followed in the footsteps of what’s expected of powerful, wealthy men because “tradition.” The film presents these men to be critical of how patriarchy works–or doesn’t–within a culture (or cultures). 
The film continues to present these entrenched ideas: “Is this an American girl? Go through her poppa… Get in good with the father, you’re home free,” the barber tells Akeem. “I don’t know how it is in Africa, but here rich guys get all the chicks,” says a McDowell’s clerk (played by Louie Anderson).
Akeem goes along to a basketball game with Lisa, Darryl and Lisa’s sister, Patrice, who is presented comically as shallow and very interested in sexual conquests and wealthy men, unlike the noble Lisa. Can’t have a romantic comedy without a little virgin/whore dichotomy action!
Darryl makes disparaging remarks to Akeem about being from Africa, commenting about how it must be weird to be wearing clothes, and asking if they play games like catch the monkey. Earlier, the landlord says to Akeem and Semmi that the apartments have an insect problem, “but you boys are from Africa so you’re probably used to that.” When characters reinforce the African savage stereotype, it’s clear that these characters are not good.
Akeem is a good friend to Lisa when Darryl is forceful and misogynistic.
And when characters act like women are to be subservient sexual objects without their own identities, it’s also clear that they are in the wrong. From the king’s bawdy suggestions and adherence to the tradition of submissive, chosen wives, to Darryl pressuring Lisa to quit her job (“My lady doesn’t have to work”) or announcing their engagement without asking her if she wants to marry him (he went through her father, after all), men who don’t respect women are not the good guys–they are the ones who need to change.
When Akeem stands up to a robber at McDowell’s (Samuel L. Jackson doing one of the things he does best–wielding a gun and saying “fucker” as many times as possible), Darryl makes light of the fact that he hid, and suggested that Akeem knew those moves from fighting “lions and tigers and shit.” He then says, “They might not admit it, but they [women] all want a man to take charge–to tell them what to do.” Akeem smiles at him, but knows that’s not true. 
Lisa’s affection for Akeem grows when he quotes Nietzsche and when he is a thoughtful, sensitive listener when she’s angry that Darryl steamrolls their engagement, which she refuses. 
“I’m fine,” she assures Akeem. “I’m just not going to be pressured into marriage by Darryl, my father, anybody.” Akeem says he understands, and that he doesn’t think anyone should get married out of obligation. 
When they go out to dinner, Lisa says how nice it is to be with a man who knows how to express himself and she insists on taking the paycheck. Lisa’s attraction to these stereotypically not-masculine traits serves as a reminder that there is value to these qualities in both men and women. 
Lisa is smart and independent, qualities Akeem isn’t supposed to want.
Cleo pressures Lisa to marry Darryl as he sees her drifting toward Akeem. “You only like him because he’s rich,” Lisa says. Cleo–who has positioned himself as the ultimate bootstraps-pulling American dream–tells her that he just doesn’t want her to struggle like he and her mother did. 
Akeem’s charade begins to unravel as his family arrives in Queens via motorcade. Cleo is elated that Akeem is actually a prince; Lisa is devastated that he’d lied to her (and the fact that the king told her Akeem was only sowing his “royal oats” in America before he got married). 
Akeem chases after Lisa, and begs her to marry him. He offers to renounce his throne, and explains that he only wanted someone to fall in love with him for who he is, not for his money or royalty. She hesitates, but refuses, and runs off.
Queen Aeoleon (Akeem’s mother, played by Madge Sinclair) begins pushing back against her husband, challenging him about how he knows Akeem doesn’t love Lisa, and that the arranged marriage is a “stupid tradition.” “Who am I to change it?” asks the king. “I thought you were the king,” she says. 
Back in Zamunda, a royal wedding has begun, and Akeem is waiting for his bride, looking resigned and sad. A bride in an enormous pink dress and veil walks down the aisle. When he lifts the veil from her face, Lisa’s face is smiling at him. He looks elated, and his parents are smiling (the queen’s logic reigned), and Cleo steps up to join the king and queen. 
Akeem is surprised that Lisa is under the veil.
As they ride off in a carriage among a crowd of cheering partygoers, Lisa asks if she would have really given all of this up for her. “Of course,” Akeem responds. “If you like, we can give it all up now.” She says, “Nah,” and they laugh, and live, I’m sure, happily ever after.

The plot is pretty predictable. Female subservience is challenged, but standards of female beauty aren’t. The characters aren’t remarkably complex, but their motives are clear and almost always understandable. That said, this is a romantic comedy. I don’t mean to demean the genre as a whole, but I think it’s safe to say most blockbuster romantic comedies are pretty damn problematic, so to have a romantic comedy that subverts the notion of valuing wives who are simply beautiful and submissive while featuring a predominantly black cast and depicting Africa positively, I’d say that’s a win. 
Lisa is OK with her royal title.

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

Wedding Week: ‘Father of the Bride’ Values Relationships With Women

Steve Martin and Kimberly Williams-Paisley in Father of the Bride

This is a guest review by Mab Ryan.

Father of the Bride (1991) is aptly named, as its focus is not on the wedding itself or the couple involved but on the titular character’s neuroses and journey to maturity. The wedding is the backdrop and the incident that provokes growth in the main character; it follows the wedding script in toto, so if you’re unfamiliar with any of the conventions of a traditional US wedding, this movie is a great primer. It’s an outrageously expensive, white wedding for thin, wealthy, white folks. People of color and gay men exist as support staff and magical queers. But the movie’s take on gender roles is constructive. Despite its focus on a male character, the movie is really about the affection a father feels for his daughter. He’s always recognized her as an individual person; now he must recognize her as an individual adult person.

The opening credits roll over champagne bubbles, flower petals, and the flotsam of a finished wedding strewn about the house, before honing in on George Banks (Steve Martin), the narrator and protagonist. He speaks directly to the camera, rubbing his weary feet, sitting in a floral armchair, surrounded by pale pink and ecru, a color scheme prevalent throughout the movie. Weddings are womanish, the décor screams. But that’s okay, because femininity is never portrayed negatively.

George narrates amidst girly wedding décor

George reminisces about his daughter Annie (Kimberly Williams), now 22, as a little girl, then refers darkly to her first signs of adolescence. He engages in a little gender essentialism, stating that boys are only after one thing because it’s the same thing he was after at their age; and the only thing worse than a daughter meeting the wrong guy is her meeting the right guy. That sentiment could come off as creepy if it wasn’t followed quickly with: “Because then you lose her.”

George hates change, he tells us, expounding lustfully on his comfortable, familiar life. Banks is not a misnomer; from my vantage point it’s difficult to tell the difference between middle class and rich, but this family falls somewhere in between. Annie has been studying architecture in Rome, George owns his own athletic shoe factory, and the family resides in a large home in Los Angeles. The factory is full of smiling (mostly) white people, so I guess we should think of George as a good guy, keeping jobs in America rather than opening sweat shops in Malaysia, though I don’t know that the filmmakers thought any more deeply about it than indulging in our shared fantasy that the materials we consume are the product of happy white labor, rather than deleterious off-shoring.

The Banks’ million-dollar house

Annie has come home with news she can’t quite figure out how to say. It is just so awkward to come out to your parents as … engaged … in a heterosexual relationship. Sorry non-heteros! If you want a movie that hits closer to home, feel free to imagine that fiancé Brian is a lady. Honestly, it feels like the movie was written about a gay couple, but they couldn’t sell it unless they changed one of the characters to a different gender. (I’m thinking it’s time for an update on this movie, but considering that Behind the Candelabra couldn’t land a theater release, I’m not holding out much hope.)

Despite cleaving to traditional wedding customs with sexist origins, the characters show signs of social awareness. “I thought you didn’t believe in marriage,” George says to Annie, “I thought it meant that a woman lost her identity.” He’s obviously repeating a line of thought she originated. Annie’s feelings have evolved to accept an egalitarian marriage, which is fine. It’s great that she’s thinking about this stuff and that she’s developed in an environment supportive of her aspirations and self-worth.

Supportiveness has its limits, apparently. After a fight in which George declares that Annie is not getting married and that’s final, the two make peace over a game of basketball. As a girl who grew up shooting hoops, it is this scene, more than any other, that I find redemptive of George. Rather than treat sports as a “boy thing,” George has obviously spent years playing with his daughter. Each performs a goofy dance when they score a goal, and slow-mo high fives are de rigueur. It feels real and comfortable.

Annie and George come together by facing off in basketball

Brian scores a good first impression with Annie’s mother Nina (Diane Keaton) when he declares his desire to marry and produce children and grandchildren. Nina is predictably thrilled with his promise to follow a normative script. Annie points out that he’s willing to move wherever her career takes her. Score one, Brian.

If you think the Banks are well off, wait ‘til you meet the new in-laws in Bel-Air. “We could have parked our whole house in the foyer,” George narrates. Yet, he refuses to accept contributions from this family in paying for the wedding because it is traditionally the duty of the bride’s father to pay for everything, including flying some of the groom’s family in from Denmark, one of whom is large enough to require two seats. “She can lop into the aisle for all I care,” says George. This cousin later lifts him off his feet in an unexpected hug. Fat people: always disrespecting peoples’ boundaries, amirite?

George meets the groom’s family in a dark sport coat, while the décor and everyone else’s clothes are pale, muted pastels, making it obvious how out of place George and his feelings about the wedding are. Brian’s father conveniently lays out the lesson that George must learn by the end of the movie: “Sooner or later you have to just let your kids go and hope you brought them up right.” Hijinks ensue as George does some snooping and winds up chased off a balcony by the resident Dobermans. The dogs are deep black, the only other dark color like George’s coat, drawing a parallel between their snarling reaction to an intruder and George’s reaction to this wedding.

Franck is flamboyant

No wedding movie would be complete without an over-the-top, flamboyantly gay character. This movie features two as wedding consultants. Howard Weinstein is actually played by gay Chinese-American actor BD Wong and is the only person of color with a speaking role (and he’s just the assistant to the help). Franck (Martin Short) has an indeterminate European accent that the women have no difficulty penetrating but that George finds unintelligible. Foreign people are so funny! Gay people are also so funny! Of course, neither character’s sexuality is explicitly stated. In 1991 it was perfectly acceptable to laugh at quirky gay people and let them help accessorize us so long as we don’t have to consider them as real people with feelings or desires or (shudder) romantic lives.

The cost and the hassle of preparing for the wedding drives George to freak out and wind up in jail. Nina bails him out but not before reasoning with him to act his age. She has a huge smile on her face and speaks to him patiently, when most women would be rightfully furious. But this isn’t her movie. She exists to coax George along his journey to maturity.

Good news, George! Annie calls off the wedding because that sexist asshole Brian bought her a … blender? Maybe it’s because I never really used a blender until after age 21 that I don’t understand this as an allusion to a 1950’s housewife mentality. All it says to me is daiquiris, and I’d be thrilled to receive a functioning model (Do all of your blenders also break after two uses? Just me?), but Annie has to be reassured that Brian didn’t mean this in a regressive get-thee-to-the-kitchen-wench kind of way before we’re back on again. The highlight is that this is not a bitches-be-crazy message. Instead it’s explicitly portrayed as a character flaw she inherited directly from her father, while Brian provides emotional stability like Nina does. That’s actually a fantastic message, separating personality traits from gender.

The night before the wedding, George shares a moment with his son, apologizing for ignoring him the whole movie. It’s definitely a reversal to see the relationship between father and daughter receive the emphasis over father and son. I think this placing of the (non-sexual) relationship with a woman as central—rather than the wedding theme—is what makes a movie a “chick-flick” and therefore unsuitable for Manly Men™

Wedding in Father of the Bride

George once again daydreams about Annie as a small child, but this time it launches into a montage of her growing into a teen, and then a woman. She’s grown up, and he’s finally recognizing that. But that doesn’t mean their special parent/child relationship is over, which is delightfully represented by Annie walking down the aisle in the pair of wedding sneakers her father designed for her.

Has George grown up as well? It’s hard to say. At the actual wedding, he cares only about being there for his daughter (though events conspire to keep him away). We never do see him return to the chair from which he began narrating the movie as a flashback. But every snide and petulant remark was made after the events of the movie occurred. Perhaps George was just being honest about his feelings at the time. I’m not convinced he’s really changed but merely suffered through one life-altering event. The existence of a sequel seems to confirm this. But if the sequel continues this trend of showcasing the value of relationships with women, I might have to dig up a copy.

Mab Ryan is a fat, geeky, queerish, rainbow-haired feminist currently studying Art and Creative Writing at Roanoke College.

Travel Films Week: Marriage Is A Bumpy Road: ‘Two For The Road’s Difficult Journey

Movie poster for Two for the Road

Written by Myrna Waldron.


Two For The Road’s nonlinear narrative follows the courtship and marriage of Mark (Albert Finney) and Joanna Wallace (Audrey Hepburn) over a period of 12 years. In the present day, the Wallaces are preparing to go to a party celebrating a house that workaholic architect Mark has designed. As they pass by a church holding a wedding, they look inside the car and find the bride and groom looking utterly miserable. Joanna comments, “They don’t look very happy.” Mark replies, “Why should they? They just got married.”
The Wallaces’ marriage is fractured and close to the breaking point. They think back to the various road trip vacations they’ve taken together, and reflect on just where things went wrong, and why. The Joanna of 10 years ago is a conservatively dressed young woman who is a member of a travelling choir. Mark is travelling on his own to do research on European architecture. They are brought together by chance–Joanna’s entire troupe has come down with chicken pox, and Mark was hoping to fool around with one of the more flirtatious members of Joanna’s choir (a one-scene wonder played by Jacqueline Bisset).
Each of their road trips across time serves as a metaphor for the state of their relationship. As they start out as young hitchhikers, there is a feeling of freedom interwoven throughout. Mark talks about how he dislikes marriage because he sees it as a “contract.” He correctly deduces that Joanna is a virgin, and stops just short of bragging about all the casual sex he’s had. It’s important to note that Joanna had never had a lover before she met Mark. She’s completely devoted to him, and he takes her for granted. She impulsively decides to stay hitchhiking with Mark because she believes she’s in love with him–their entire courtship is a string of impulsive decisions. At the end of their week together, after they spend hours frolicking on the beach, Joanna runs off sobbing because she believes that she’ll be nothing but a beautiful memory to him. Mark then proposes to her in a desperate attempt to get her to stay with him. This impulsivity is one reason why, later on, we are meant to wonder whether they should have married in the first place.

Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney in Two for the Road

There is certainly a great deal of agency enveloped in Joanna’s character. Mark might be the dominant one, but she is clearly not going to let him dictate her life or their marriage. It was she who decided to enter into a relationship with Mark and she who decided that she wasn’t going to let Mark turn the memory of her into a meaningless fling. Mark claims to dislike the idea of marriage, but Joanna means enough to him that he will give up his expected bachelorhood for her. Joanna is the glue holding their marriage together, which is metaphorically represented through the running joke where Joanna always locates Mark’s missing passport. As Mark says, she is indispensable.
The next road trip the Wallaces take, chronologically, is with the family of Mark’s former girlfriend Cathy (Eleanor Bron, whom Beatles fans may recognize from Help!). The Wallaces have been married almost 2 years at this point. Cathy has married Howard Maxwell-Manchester (William Daniels), a stogy, neurotic dictator of a man who uses “Communists” as an insult, and makes ridiculously illogical decisions all in the name of sticking to his own predetermined rules. They have a daughter, Ruthie, and they have adopted a childrearing philosophy of “Leaving things to [her] own decision.” This results in a child who is spoiled, bratty, destructive, and nasty. Mark and Joanna’s miserable road trip with the Maxwell-Manchesters illustrates the kind of marriage neither of them wants to have. Mark asks Joanna, “Do you still want to have a child?” Joanna answers, “I still want a child. I just don’t want THAT child.” Howie speaks condescendingly to everyone and has influenced Cathy’s thinking to the point where she mindlessly echoes his philosophies. Instead of disciplining their child when she is obnoxious, they tell off Joanna for being hostile and resentful towards Ruthie. Howie even makes a sexist jab at Joanna and assumes she dislikes Ruthie because she represents the child she wants to have.

Still from Two for the Road

During this road trip, the only thing keeping the Wallaces sane is each other. The crowded car, overly rigid schedule, and horrible parenting metaphorically represent the resentment that the Wallaces have for the Maxwell-Manchesters, and how the Maxwell-Manchesters keep judging the state of their marriage. The Maxwell-Manchesters pry into personal details, dictate how the Wallaces are expected to “behave,” and treat Joanna like a baby factory (and a mere extension of her husband) instead of as a woman. There is particular dramatic irony when the Wallaces have finally had enough (as Ruthie has repeated nasty things that Cathy has said about Joanna behind her back), and Howie accuses Mark of trying to dominate Joanna’s thinking and acting. It is particularly hypocritical for Howie to make this accusation, as he couldn’t be more conservative and dominating if he tried, and Mark is actually doing what Joanna wanted all along, which was to be on their own away from the Maxwell-Manchesters.
Hypocrisy is a common theme in this film, particularly in Mark’s case. I have found it difficult to sympathize with him, as he’s foul-tempered, selfish, irrational, a workaholic, overly ambitious, and, worst of all, ignores his wife and daughter. He claims he hates the idea of marriage and yet impulsively marries Joanna. He says he’ll never ignore a hitchhiker as long as he lives, and 10 years later, he breaks that promise. He has a one-night-stand while on a business trip alone, but writes a letter to Joanna full of lies about how much he misses her. Once he becomes successful, he claims that he has given Joanna everything that she ever wanted, but in truth, has just given to her everything that he wants. (He reminds me a bit of Homer Simpson gifting Marge a bowling ball with his name on it.)

Still from Two for the Road

It seems that the more disastrous the road trip is, the closer it brings Joanna and Mark together. The next time they vacation, Mark has bought himself an MG TD that turns out to be a clunker. The car repeatedly breaks down, and Joanna fixes it. The car is an obvious metaphor for how their marriage turns out. On this trip, Joanna tells Mark that she is pregnant. Once again his hypocrisy comes out, because although in the past he expressed that he did not want children, he is ecstatic at her announcement. Their car eventually catches on fire, and in the process of disposing of it, they meet Maurice Dalbret (Claude Dauphin), a wealthy but demanding man who hires Mark for his architectural talents. Maurice is the fire that threatens to burn their marriage down.
Maurice’s entrance into their lives serves as a turning point on their marriage road, because he monopolizes Mark’s attention to a ridiculous degree. Mark is thrilled to be successful and living the high life, but all Joanna wants is attention from her husband. Money and success go to Mark’s head, and he becomes such a workaholic that he pushes Joanna away. The screenplay was written by a man (Frederic Raphael) but the sympathy of the story clearly lies with Joanna. She has been repeatedly wronged by Mark, so when she makes her own regrettable decisions, they are significantly more sympathetic. This is also notable since infidelity situations in pop culture inevitably end up blaming the woman in the relationship, whether she was the one who did the cheating or not. In each case, it is Mark’s fault–his fault for thinking of sex as meaningless, and his fault for ignoring his wife and child through his endless ambition.
The story makes a very important commentary on marriage. Fighting is inevitable, as are periods of silence. The Wallaces repeatedly comment on how married people can sit at a fancy dinner table and have nothing to say to each other. But honesty, faithfulness, agreement on important matters (such as children), communication and attention are critical to keeping that marriage a success. Joanna and Mark especially repeatedly fail at this, and it stretches their marriage to a near-breaking point. They constantly question each other about why they are still together.

Still from Two for the Road

Mark eventually drives Joanna into the arms of Maurice’s wife’s brother David (Georges Descrieres). Despite his own infidelity, Mark is deeply wounded and humiliated by Joanna’s affair, even though it lasted only one day. Joanna was so desperate for someone to talk to her and understand her that she leapt at the first opportunity. She herself has broken a promise that she would love and be faithful to Mark forever, but because Mark neglected her so profoundly, he is to blame for her affair. Can their marriage survive their mutual infidelities? SHOULD it survive?
The film respects its audience enough not to definitively give an answer. The Wallaces survive the multiple bumps in the road and keep on driving. Both of them need to change for their marriage to work, and fortunately, change is implied metaphorically through their final road trip. Instead of once again driving through France and stopping at the same spots repeatedly, Mark instead drives to Rome to start working for a new client. Instead of staying and enduring Maurice’s demands, he quietly rejects him and explicitly chooses Joanna. No longer being under the thumb of Maurice can only make things better, since it was his entering into their lives that changed the course of their marriage.
In the final moment of the film, the Wallaces share one last exchange. Once again, Joanna has found Mark’s passport for him. In response, he says, “Bitch.” She replies, “Bastard.” Those final words struck me so heavily. Do they mean those insults? Are they being playful? Do they need to snipe and be sarcastic at each other in order to survive? I want to believe that those final words were affectionate, but I found myself feeling ambivalent as to whether this marriage was worth saving.
Admittedly, I have not yet gotten married myself, but I felt as if I was a participant in this marriage as I watched the film. Comparing the heady early days of their courtship to the infidelities and fights of the modern day feels almost as painful as if I’d suffered through the memories myself. Joanna deserves a husband who is wholly devoted to her. Mark is talented enough that he shouldn’t be held back. I can see that there is love there between them, and that they genuinely don’t want to break up. But there is still resentment, selfishness, and infidelity.
Can they work through these problems? Only the road ahead will tell us.

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.

How The Office’s Jim & Pam Negotiated their Conflicting Dreams

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Jim and Pam of The Office
The US iteration of The Office concluded its nine-year run last week with a somewhat mawkish but nevertheless emotionally satisfying finale. We left these characters in a place of personal fulfillment—Dwight and Angela marry, Dwight is regional manager of the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin, Andy has turned his embarrassing experiences into something positive and returned to the site of his glory days, Kelly and Ryan foolishly and selfishly run off into the sunset, Erin meets her birth parents. And Jim and Pam, the emotional core of the series, leave Scranton together for Austin so Jim may rejoin the sports marketing startup he and Darryl began working for earlier this season. 
In case you haven’t been watching The Office in its autumn years, Jim and Pam’s relationship has followed the push and pull of the conflict between their commitment to each other and their own personal dreams. In season 5, aspiring artist Pam moved to New York for a graphic design program. The series mined the pressures of long-distance relationships for both comedy and drama, but Jim and Pam’s partnership stayed strong and they got engaged at the gas station midpoint between Scranton and New York. Shortly thereafter, Pam left New York “the wrong way” because she failed a class and doesn’t want to remain in the city for another three months to retake it. She insists it is not because of Jim, but because she doesn’t actually like graphic design, but the viewer knows it is a complex combination of those two forces. 
Pam and Jim after the birth of their first child.
This dynamic is flipped in the final season when Jim joins a friend in Athlead, a new venture connecting famous athletes to sponsorship opportunities. With Athlead, Jim is finally able to work a job he feels passionate about, in stark contrast to his years as a paper salesman. But Jim’s new job puts an immense strain on his marriage with Pam—with whom he now has two children—as he divides his time between Philadelphia and Scranton and has less attention to give to his family. 
Pam is driven to tears by the growing conflict between her and Jim
This is exacerbated by a lack of communication as Jim inexplicably keeps his initial involvement with Athlead from Pam, and increases his commitment to this new job without consulting her several times over. Jim and Pam’s relationship reaches the breaking point, and Jim finally decides to leave Athlead and return to Scranton full-time to save his marriage. 
Pam is wracked with guilt and fears that she is “not enough” to justify Jim abandoning his new career direction. Notably, we saw nothing of this type of guilt in Jim when Pam left art school. With the help of the documentary crew that is finally explicitly woven into the story in this finale season, Jim presents Pam a video montage of their relationship and tells her “not enough for me? You are everything.” 
The series finale is set some time in the future, after the documentary has aired on PBS and Jim and Pam’s relationship is as important to in-universe fans as it is to those of us watching The Office in the real world. During the public Q&A at a reunion panel, several women criticize Pam for stifling Jim’s career. Jim does a satisfactory job of dissuading these questions, but they clearly affect Pam. She’s also moved by seeing the success and happiness Darryl, who has followed Athlead (now Athleap) to Austin. So she secretly sells her and Jim’s house (secrecy is a recurring and frustrating undercurrent in their relationship; this is the same house Jim bought without consulting Pam first) and tells Jim it’s time for them to move on from Dunder Mifflin and relocate to Austin. 
Pam and Jim decide to move on from Scranton
From a Doylist perspective, this gives the audience closure; without Jim and Pam present, the story of The Office feels complete. But on the Watsonian side of things, it means Jim’s career path decidedly beats out Pam’s after many years of back and forth, which puts a damper on my personal satisfaction as a viewer. 
My personal life is clearly influencing my reaction to this storyline: I moved 8,000 miles away from home so my partner could accept his dream job. Obviously, every couple needs to resolve these issues on their own, and it is dated and heteronormative to think this is always going to be a gendered struggle. But for many mixed-gender couples, gendered expectations of whose career matters more and the importance of career vs. family often play a part. And it’s a bit of a let down to see one of the iconic on-screen couples of the last ten years fall into the traditional resolution of the man’s career coming first.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who works out her personal issues by writing about sitcoms.

When Life Gives You Infertility, Make Your House Fly: Found Family in ‘UP’

Carl and Ellie in their home
This is a guest post written by Talia Liben Yarmush for our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

Pixar’s UP begins with young Carl, an adventure-admiring, imaginative boy meeting his match in young Ellie. The two hit it off instantly with their shared interest in everything adventure, and the first eleven and a half minutes are an ode to their lifelong mutual devotion to each other. They become fast friends; they fall in love, marry, and build a life together. The only thing missing? After Ellie suffers a miscarriage, the two are immeasurably saddened by the loss of this baby. In an attempt to fill the void, Carl establishes an “Adventure Fund,” so that together they may one day be able to live what they always dreamed. However, with each passing year comes a new obstacle, requiring them to deplete their funds over and over again. Until one day, Ellie, old and weak, dies. And Carl is left alone with sadness and regret at not giving Ellie her big adventure. When I saw UP in the theater, I was sitting next to my husband, a man I met when I was 14, became best friends with, married, and was now going through infertility treatments with. So, this intro hit pretty close to home.

As I see it, the two infertility themes in this story are miscarriage and living childfree. Despite my vast experience with infertility, I am not personally familiar with either of these. I have, thankfully, never had a miscarriage (although during one very painful episode of endometrial bleeding, my husband and I were sure that I was in the midst of one), and thanks to IVF, I now have two sons. I can tell you that the first theme, miscarriage, is shown in only seconds, and it is a scene that will remain with you throughout the entire film. In thirty seconds, this animated family film is able to portray the loss in such a visceral way that even if you have never had an experience like it, you will be brought to tears. And I can tell you that the second theme, living childfree, is complicated and filled with mixed emotions. Carl, tormented by his inability to give his wife what she wanted, finally realizes by the end of the film that Ellie’s life with him was her adventure, and that she was happy with it. Many couples must make the difficult decision whether to keep trying, to continue fertility treatments, to hope that the next cycle works, that the next pregnancy sticks, to attempt adoption, or to somehow find a way to come to terms with a life without children. Some couples make this decision. But for some, the decision is made for them.

Carl and Ellie prepare the nursery for their baby
The question is what to do once that decision has been made. Once an infertile couple mourns the loss of a life without children and finds peace with their new reality, can the void ever be filled by something or someone else? Ellie, as we learn, was happy and satisfied with the life she lived with Carl. But once Ellie died, Carl was left alone. No children. Just memories and unfounded regret. Until he meets Russell. Russell reminds Carl of the boy he once was, and of the girl he married. He reminds him of the family he wanted with Ellie, and of the adventures they’d hoped to go on. Some view Russell as the child that Carl never had. In fact, we find out that Russell himself has an absent father, so Russell was searching for a father just as much as Carl was searching for a son. But I don’t see it in those terms. Russell is a friend, he is a companion, he is a playmate. Russell is Carl’s family. Because we don’t always get to live the life that we had planned. But we do get to choose a great many things. We can choose to keep on fighting for what we want. Or we can choose to make peace with the lives that we have. And, most importantly, we can choose our family, even if we can’t create them ourselves.
———-

Talia Liben Yarmush is a freelance writer and editor. She is also an infertile mother who writes her own blog, The Accidental Typist.

Infertility and Miscarriage in HBO’s ‘Tell Me You Love Me’

Tell Me You Love Me poster

Written by Stephanie Rogers as part of our theme week on Infertility, Miscarriage, and Infant Loss.

Before Lena Duhman burst onto the HBO scene and started ruining lives with her depictions of graphic and awkward sex on screen, a show existed called Tell Me You Love Me. Created by Cynthia Mort, and airing on HBO for only one season, the show centered around four upper middle-class white couples in different stages of their lives, trying to keep their shit together and their relationships functional. I tend to enjoy watching people on screen struggle with interpersonal conflict, fail miserably at resolving it, and then end up in intensive psychoanalysis and sex therapy where they experience embarrassing emotional breakdowns. YOLO, right? 

Dave and Katie in Tell Me You Love Me
David (Tim DeKay) and Katie (Ally Walker) represent the typical married couple in their 40s: busy with work, busy with children, who’ve lost the “fire” in their marriage. The sex fire. They manage to talk about it openly with each other, but they eventually end up seeing a therapist to help them work through that year-long lovemaking lull. Carolyn (Sonya Walger) and Palek (Adam Scott), both in their 30s, want a baby but struggle with infertility issues, which also sends them to therapy. The not-yet-married Jamie (Michelle Borth) and Hugo (Luke Farrell Kirby), the youngest members of the ensemble, seem to have the exact opposite problem—they sex it up so much in public, in private, wherever the fuck, that they’re each convinced the other will eventually cheat. Similar to HBO’s In Treatment, the show connects these storylines together by sending all three couples to the same therapist—Dr. May Foster (Jane Alexander), whose own relationship struggles with her partner Arthur (David Selby) occasionally surface. 
Dr. Foster and Arthur in Tell Me You Love Me
The show raised all kinds of eyebrows in 2007 because of the very real sex scenes. The show creators countered any arguments that a cast fuckfest had ensued with “IT’S SIMULATED,” but I distinctly remember seeing penetration. That was six years ago, so, like, Lena Dunham ain’t got nothin’ on Cynthia Mort. 
Of all the couples on Tell Me You Love Me, Palek and Carolyn—and their struggles with infertility—enthralled me the most. 
Jamie and Hugo in Tell Me You Love Me
Sidenote: I love Parks and Recreation, especially Ben and Leslie’s adorable relationship. But before Adam Scott landed the role of Ben Wyatt and became part of the most wonderful couple on TV, he got super naked a million times on Tell Me You Love Me. (According to an interview with Scott, that penis was hardcore prosthetic. Still, sometimes, when I look at Ben Wyatt, I accidentally think about Palek’s fake penis.) 
Admittedly, I haven’t seen the show since it first aired, but I remember finding Palek and Carolyn so compelling. I was 28 years old at the time, but for some reason, I found less interesting the couple in their 20s fucking in cars every five minutes and more interesting the professionally successful couple in their 30s, who deeply loved each other but for whom sex had become a means to an end. They wanted a baby. And each time Carolyn failed to become pregnant—and both Carolyn and Palek viewed their potential infertility as an individual failure—their relationship suffered. 
Palek and Carolyn in Tell Me You Love Me
Perhaps what I found interesting, and even important, especially as a woman starting to understand how feminism fit into my life in a practical way, were the gender dynamics at play in Palek and Carolyn’s pregnancy struggles. Throughout the ten-episode arc, Carolyn basically treats Palek as a sperm donor, and his complaints about the lack of intimacy in their relationship stem from that—he wants feeling and emotion attached to making love with his wife; yet Carolyn sees that as unimportant, often demanding that he provide her with sex whenever she asks for it. 
In one pivotal scene, after an argument about their sex life and possible infertility, Palek and Carolyn get rough on the couch, with Palek saying, “I’ll get you pregnant,” every time he thrusts inside her. I remember feeling sick to my stomach as I watched that scene. The anger Palek felt toward his wife, accompanied by his own feelings of inadequacy as a man unable to perform an exclusively male function, manifested as a borderline violent sex scene that, frankly, scared me a little. 
Palek and Carolyn in Tell Me You Love Me
At the same time, I found the on screen gender dynamics fascinating between them: Carolyn becomes the stereotypical man demanding sex from his wife; Palek becomes the stereotypical woman who desires emotional intimacy with her husband; they end up in therapy as a result, and they’re both sympathetic characters. I like that the show flips this conventional portrayal of married couples, and, while I know this either/or, Mars/Venus shit ain’t true, and that we’re all complex fucking human beings with a spectrum of similar physical and emotional needs, it’s necessary to see a man on screen who’s up in arms about the lack of emotional intimacy in his relationship with his wife. Somehow, it’s still a rarity to see nuanced portrayals of sensitive men. 
I don’t want to give anything else away about this show, particularly about this couple. It ended after only one ten-episode season, and I think people need to revisit it. The best teaser I can give you is the fan vid below. That is all. 

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: ‘The Uninvited’ (1944) and Dorothy Macardle’s Feminism

Movie poster for The Uninvited
This is a guest post by Nadia Smith.
[contains spoilers]
When I told a horror-fan friend in his early twenties that I was writing about The Uninvited, he said he had seen it. This came as a surprise, since it’s mostly older viewers and film historians who are aware of it. It turned out that he thought I was referring to the recent Korean film The Uninvited: A Tale of Two Sisters, and not the classic haunted house movie that had audiences screaming in the 1940s and drew comparisons to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940).
The Uninvited (1944), directed by Lewis Allen and released by Paramount Pictures, is an adaptation of a popular Gothic novel by the Irish writer Dorothy Macardle (1889-1958), also a playwright, historian, journalist, and prominent feminist campaigner. It was adapted for the screen by the British writer Dodie Smith, best known for 101 Dalmatians. The Uninvited, which easily passes the Bechdel Test, features some sexist characterizations and a conventional ending, stemming from Macardle’s complex views on gender as well as the demands of commercial romantic fiction and film production. Nevertheless, the film opens itself up to alternative readings and valuations of the characters.
In the film, siblings Rick, played by Ray Milland, and Pamela Fitzgerald, played by Ruth Hussey (who might at first be mistaken for a married couple), learn that the old house in Cornwall they have just purchased is haunted by two ghosts, one warm and benevolent and one cold and dangerous, and investigate the mystery surrounding the house’s previous residents in an attempt to end the hauntings. Rick falls for the much younger Stella Meredith (Gail Russell), whose parents, artist Llewellyn and his wife Mary, had once lived in the house with Carmel, an artist’s model from Spain who had an affair with Llewellyn. The Merediths and Carmel died when Stella was a small child, Mary by falling off a nearby cliff, and the shy, repressed, immature Stella, who idolizes her late mother, lives an isolated existence in the village with Commander Beech (Donald Crisp), her stern, morbid maternal grandfather. The Commander has an unhealthy obsession with his daughter’s memory, and Stella is virtually imprisoned in the house as the Commander tries to mold her in Mary’s image. So far, so Gothic. Local informants, as well as Mary’s friend Miss Holloway (Cornelia Otis Skinner), praise Mary’s virtue and angelic beauty to the Fitzgeralds, and denounce Carmel’s depravity. Rick’s frustration grows as he worries that Stella’s intense emotional investment in her mother’s ghost will lead to a psychological breakdown and prevent her from ever caring for him.
The Fitzgeralds initially think that Mary is the warm ghost, and Carmel the cold ghost endangering Stella, but a séance proves them wrong. Carmel, the warm ghost and Stella’s biological mother, refused to be silenced and unfairly maligned, instead returning to tell the truth, while Mary, the cold malevolent ghost, tried to prevent the exposure of family secrets about her true nature and adoption of Stella after Carmel gave birth in secret. In life, Carmel had been a nurturing mother who truly loved Stella, and Mary had been cold and uncaring, as well as asexual. Rick symbolically kills the “evil mother” Mary, banishing her ghost through ridicule, while Stella’s acceptance of the truth about her biological mother’s identity allows her to move forward and ensures that Carmel will no longer haunt the house. Commander Beech dies, and the film concludes with Rick announcing that he and Stella will marry, while Pamela will marry a local doctor who helped solve the mystery. The final frame shows the two couples together in the drawing room; Stella appears rather uncomfortable, with a forced smile, recalling her discomfort when Rick forcefully kissed her earlier in the film. Whether this was a directorial decision or simply reflective of the limitations of the young Gail Russell’s acting remains uncertain, but it opens up the happy ending to alternative interpretations, as is often the case in Gothic romances.
Dorothy Macardle used a ghost-story plot and Gothic conventions to frame a narrative about troubled marriages and mother-daughter relationships, family secrets that haunt the present, and transgressive sexuality, thereby setting up a critique of domestic ideology. The unsettling implications of such a critique in Gothic romances, though, are foreclosed by conventional endings in which the heroine embraces marriage and domesticity. While the novel refers to several alternative relationships and domestic arrangements, these are closed off at the end in favor of “normalization.” Although Stella has been traumatized by her upbringing—her grandfather was overbearing and repressive and her parents’ marriage was characterized by hatred and power struggles—her impending marriage to Rick is a foregone conclusion that meets the narrative demands of the Gothic romance. However, some readers and viewers of Gothic romances find the endings unconvincing and read beyond the ending, and may imagine that the naïve, inexperienced Stella, like the nameless narrator of Rebecca, will find that her real problems begin with her marriage to an older man she hardly knows, leading to a new Gothic narrative in the formerly haunted house they intend to live in. 
Dorothy Macardle
The Production Code affecting films in the 1940s meant that homosexuality, extramarital affairs, and out-of-wedlock births were referred to cryptically in The Uninvited to meet the imperatives of censorship. Viewers learn that Mary “feared and refused motherhood,” and is therefore blamed for her husband’s affair with Carmel. Mary, Carmel, and Miss Holloway are all punished for their respective sexual transgressions – asexuality, heterosexual promiscuity, and lesbianism – with death or, in Miss Holloway’s case, a mental breakdown. The character of Miss Holloway was recognized as a lesbian by the Legion of Decency, whose (male) leaders complained to Paramount executives about the scenes in which she speaks romantically to Mary’s portrait. Lesbian audiences in the 1940s also grasped the inferences and characterizations in The Uninvited, and film scholars note that it became a cult hit with lesbian communities in wartime America. Mary is depicted as asexual or possibly a lesbian by being non-maternal and too close to Miss Holloway, and the novel describes her as “unnatural,” tying in with discourses about motherhood and gender essentialism. Later film scholars have seen even more lesbian connotations, suggesting that the mother-daughter trope in the film can be a cover for lesbianism, since Stella has been in love with another woman, Mary, her whole life, much to Rick’s frustration.
Dorothy Macardle’s views on gender roles and motherhood were crucially shaped by her own family dynamics, and reflected in her Gothic novels. She perceived her English mother, Minnie, as a classic late-Victorian hysteric, or fake invalid, who used her fragility as a weapon to prevail in marital power struggles and prioritize her own needs, and viewed her Irish father, Thomas, as Minnie’s helpless and long-suffering victim. Her fiction is inattentive to alternative power dynamics in marriage; husbands are depicted as generally chivalrous figures vulnerable to abuse by manipulative women feigning fragility, rather than subjecting fragile, vulnerable women to abuse. Her novels all end with the metaphorical destruction of a malevolent maternal figure and her baleful power, suggesting that Minnie, like the vampires to whom a prominent Victorian doctor compared hysterical women, took a lot of killing. Macardle’s fiction overturned sentimental and politically useful Victorian notions of the mother’s gentle influence in the home, as her feminist convictions stemmed from the belief that women’s exercise of power should be transparent and directed outside the home. It enraged her that outwardly conformist women like her mother and the fictional Mary Meredith were praised for their virtue, and she tried to show the transgression and complexity behind simplistic notions of good and bad women in a novel in which an icon of conventional womanhood is exposed as a fraud.
The tensions and limitations of Macardle’s feminism and her use of hostile sexist tropes about predatory lesbians, frigid wives, and bad mothers in her fiction seem to stem not only from her understanding of her family dynamics, but also from her sense of herself as an Exceptional Woman, informed by social class privilege. She never married and spent years living alone or with other women, and spent some of her early life in female institutions, including an all-girls school and a women’s prison (for her Irish republican activism). While she enjoyed being a university-educated, professionally successful unmarried woman with no children, she thought most women should be wives and mothers, with their sexuality safely contained within marriage, a view shared by many interwar-era “maternal feminists” in Europe and the United States.
The two main (living) female characters in The Uninvited are Pamela Fitzgerald and Stella Meredith. Pamela demonstrates wit, assertiveness, and intelligence, especially when she solves the mystery of the two ghosts that had confounded the others. Stella is fragile and childlike, which greatly appeals to the older Rick. The circumstances of her upbringing have created a repressed, insecure personality who idealizes the vague memory of a loving mother. Despite Stella’s timidity, she demonstrates courage at the novel’s end when she confronts and reassures Carmel’s ghost. While normative heterosexuality is restored in the conclusion with plans for marriage, Rick’s love for Stella in the novel is unsettling, as he has constantly infantilized her and describes her as a child.
Miss Holloway, an “unfeminine” single woman and nurse who had been infatuated with her friend Mary and still worships her memory, is significant as a lesbian character in the days of the Production Code. Her name recalls London’s Holloway Prison, where suffragists were incarcerated earlier in the century, and the convalescent home she operates is a prison of sorts where female patients lose agency and autonomy. While Miss Holloway’s narrative seeks to contrast Mary’s moral perfection with Carmel’s depravity, the Fitzgeralds are so put off by this stereotypical sinister lesbian that they begin to think that things were not all that they seemed. The character of Miss Holloway shows The Uninvited’s indebtedness to Daphne du Maurier’s popular Gothic novel, Rebecca (1938; released as a film in 1940), as she bears a strong resemblance to Mrs. Danvers. Both are portrayed as sinister lesbians who idolize the dead woman at the center of the mystery and play a key role in reinforcing her iconization.
Overall, The Uninvited reflects a range of tensions and negotiations that intersected with contemporary discourses about gender, sexuality, feminism, and film censorship. While it falls prey to some hostile and stereotypical female characterizations common in the 1940s and later, it is complex and multilayered enough to allow for a range of readings and interpretations as it attempted to speak the unspeakable and represent the unrepresentable. Now that it’s finally available on DVD, maybe it will become at least as well known as The Uninvited: A Tale of Two Sisters.

———-
Nadia Smith is a historian and writer based in the Boston area. She is the author of Dorothy Macardle: A Life.

Guest Post: Feminism in ‘Aiyyaa,’ and Why It Ain’t Such A Bad Movie

Aiyyaa

Guest post written by Rhea Daniel.

Aiyyaa shows how a perfectly loving Indian family, specifically a Marathi family (but this sort of traditionalism runs right across this arranged-marriage loving country so an Indian woman can relate) can make their female offspring miserable over the subject of her single-hood up to to the point where she’ll resort to taking any low-paying job as an excuse to stay out of home as long as she can. But leave home on her own terms she won’t, she needs a man first. She keeps fantasizing about packing up in the middle of the night, grabbing her mum’s gold jewellery and running away with her dream-man. Yes, she’s a romantic, a Bollywood fan and her ambitions extend thus far to falling in love and living HEA.

So why is this even feminist? I’ll explain:

Understanding the Arranged Marriage:

Speaking from my own observations, the concept of an arranged-marriage works well when the network of well-informed relatives can tell you what kind family you’re marrying your daughter/son into. This well-informed network will let you know if the family is traditional enough and boy isn’t of the wife-beating breed (that is if you care). Ancestral records are generally exchanged.
For the girl, if she’s marrying into an Indian family, she’s marrying the entire extended family of sisters, brothers, sils, bils, cousins, grandmas and grandpas, who feel they have a right freely express their opinion on your shape, colour, behaviour, job, hobbies, sexuality, dress sense, reproductive capabilities, domestic skills and also your parenting skills. This could happen to a triple PhD. or an aeronautical engineer, it don’t matter, because a brilliant career is only good to up one’s resume in finding the perfect mate of equal or more ped-degree. Smart people are generally expected to produce higher quality offspring. Yeah, however organized… this stuff gets intensely patriarchal. That’s why it’s okay if the entire family lands up at the dissecting table, not just the dude. Plus, it’s a good investment to have a Dil who’ll take good care of you when you’re old (another good reason to have at least one son). It’s archaic, but there you have it. Feelings can be manufactured.

Also, get ready to take on the roles Meenakshi’s already faking, you have very few moments to be yourself. Meenakshi dresses up seemingly voluntarily for the sit-downs, seems to be making an effort, but the audience knows that it’s an act. So why can’t she just say no, right? To understand why being in such a situation is like being stuck between a rock and a hard place take a look first at this fascinating TED talk by Sheena Iyengar on how Asians view choice:

I’ve come across people who are super-ready to marry whoever their parents choose for them, make their choice within an hour of meeting, marry within the week and go back to their jobs. I don’t really get it and I guess they have a great relationship with their parents, but the closest thing that explained it for me was this study by Sheena Iyengar. There’s no such thing as individual choice, there is only The Best Choice. While the system works well for the collective it wrecks havoc with individual desire. For some people stuck in this system it’s a leap in light-years to choose one’s own partner without the whole family acting like it’s criminal, or with threats that the family will fall apart of you do such a thing*. So Meenakshi‘s parents put an ad in the newspaper to attract potential grooms. The sexism begins. The boy gets First Choice, the girl can be Convinced. As far as cultural imperatives go with boys, they need be good providers, (and reproduce capably, I suppose).
Sabotage:
Her parents are getting desperate. None of the boys like her, but then finally comes the nice boy who likes her within ten minutes of the meeting. He likes her crazy family too. She knows she’s fucked, because she’s not allowed to say no, so her only recourse is sabotage. She tries to drive him away with her singing. He likes her even more. He remembers to ask her whether she’s okay with it too, she doesn’t get the opportunity to answer, but the parents are ecstatic, even more reason not to open her mouth. Thanks to the director for making this a hard decision for Meenakshi: her fiancé is incredibly nice, he respects her choices, he likes her the way she is. It’s the sort of subtlety the directors of Brave failed to employ when creating their potential grooms. His only failure is his inability to tell that under that mask, she doesn’t really like him at all.
The Patriarchal Mother:
Meenakshi indulges a small rant that her mother laughs off as melodramatic. Don’t expect any sympathy from the Patriarchal Mother (a woman who subscribes willingly to patriarchal views), a daughter married off to a man her parents deem suitable only gives them a sense of continuity, they don’t consider their children’s lives separate from theirs, even if they suffer the same misery. “I did it too, it didn’t kill me” “You’re so selfish, he’s such a good boy!” “You’re mad!” are perfectly justifiable responses to a daughter’s unhappiness. Nobody in her family seems to get it, but then comes the only opposing voice from wheelchair-bound Grandma, who shouts: “Run away, Meenakshi, I couldn’t!”–when she makes a leap to freedom from the balcony of her fiancé’s house, providing a contrast to Meenakshi’s mother’s subservient simpering.
‘Man-hunting’**:

She falls for Surya, a Tamilian artist who visits the library she works in. She does her own version of the arranged-marriage research, asking people he’s acquainted with all sorts of questions about his personality etc. Her colleague informs that he is rumoured to drink and do drugs, that’s why his eyes are so red, but it doesn’t faze her. She tries to find out more about his culture. She’s advised to watch Tamil movies. She learns the language, beginning with sexually suggestive compliments, learning how to say “please leave your shirt button open” in Tamil. She goes dreamy-eyed every time he passes and swoony over his after-shave (or body-odour, whatever it is). It might help to know that the entire movie is the based on one of stories from the Marathi movie Gandha (2009) (translated to ‘smell’ or ‘fragrance’) by the same director. Meenakshi seems sensitive to any noxious type smells. Her olfactory sense seems to be her love-guide. She hates the smell of the college toilets, but there’s a scene where she trance-walks into the men’s loo because she can smell Surya in there. Lucky for Surya he was just washing his face. Imagine someone standing outside your toilet cubicle smelling your farts.

Anti-feminism:
While the research she does is justifiable, the stalking is not. Granted, she’s shy and he treats her like wallpaper, even when she tries speak to him directly in Tamil (we find out later he’s doing this deliberately) so she has to find other means to approach him. As the day of her engagement draws closer she grows more and more desperate to see in him an ideal partner, so her investigation leads her down some unsavoury roads. She then escapes her home on the eve of her engagement and follows him to his incense stick factory (that’s why he smells so good), finds out he’s not such a bad dude, and his eyes are so red because of the incense fumes. He finally confronts her, knows she’s been following him, says he likes her guts and wants to marry her. There’s another cute scene where they happily share their mutual academic failures. I know the stalking’s a play on role-reversal considering Bollywood’s long history of stalking-as-romance, many girls and women are victims of this imitative ‘romance’ in real life, but entering his home under false pretences and stealing his t-shirt crosses a line, even though she is portrayed as harmless. Stalking is a recourse in a society where there is firm divide between the sexes, and it’s one of the primary things that has to go with archaic notions of love and romance, boy or girl. In this movie Surya knowingly strings her along to see how far she’ll go. Very well, but the sooner we get to enthusiastic consent or polite decline (and acceptance), the better for both parties.

Anita Date as Maina in Aiyyaa
I don’t care if Meenakshi’s librarian-colleague Maina is an an exaggerated comic-relief character, I found her funny. I couldn’t find much on Anita Date, the actress who plays her. She serves as advisor to Meenakshi, encouraging her to marry Maadhav, because he’s good ‘husband material’ and later on have an affair with Surya. Meenakshi prefers to go by the direct route. Poor Maadhav, her fiancé, gets the raw end of the deal when she lands up at her own engagement ceremony with her preferred love Surya. He takes the rejection sorrowfully but gracefully, and refuses her patronizing offer to remain ‘just friends’. In the midst of all the madness director Kundalkar gives his minor characters their dignity.

Despite this movie’s sprinkling of annoying Bollywood fantasy numbers (which I skipped) and occasional mind-numbingly loopy, loud scenes, most of it was gratifyingly funny. In Meenakshi’s declaration of love for dark people (technically what she says translates to “I don’t like light-skinned people, I like black people”) she’s referring to her love for South-Indian Surya, but it comes across as a taunt to the Indian majority that views ‘fairness’ as as a prerequisite for attractiveness. The only incongruity of this statement is that Malayali actor Prithviraj doesn’t qualify as ‘dark’ by any Indian standard, so it makes her declaration specific to his race (South-Indians are stereotyped as dark-skinned) and her willingness to integrate with them. Dreamum-wakuppam, a parodied version of South-Indian dance numbers (not to mention the language) can seem insulting at first***, but by the end of the movie she’s transformed into a traditional Tamil bride, and speaks Tamil like she can’t help it. Her exclamations of ‘aiyyaa!’ change into the South-Indian ‘aiyyoo!’ Having visited a traditional Marwari household in Pondicherry and Gujarati household in Chennai who regularly feast on idli–dosa made by their super-traditional sari-clad wives, I’d believe the integration is not just for survival, it’s embraced.

I know that wives have cheated on their husbands in Bollywood before, I know they’ve also shown cheating husbands the door, but these stories have remained distant scandals before. Caught between one’s desire for freedom and one’s cultural call of doody ie., to marry and reproduce, is a common cross to bear in this country, and I’ve never come across a Bollywood movie that didn’t conveniently villainize the parents/society in order to dramatize the girl or boy’s situation. So despite all the mayhem Ayyiaa manages to make itself a predominantly feminist film, and had some subtle observations to make that shone like little jewels through the script.

*Preferring to remain single is an alien concept, let’s not even go there.

**Didn’t really like the way that was advertized, man-hunting seems to refer to a search ranging across several men, when she quite obviously interested only in The One.

***I thought it was hilarious.
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Rhea Daniel got to see a lot of movies as a kid because her family members were obsessive movie-watchers. She frequently finds herself in a bind between her love for art and her feminist conscience. Meanwhile she is trying to be a better writer and artist and you can find her at http://rheadaniel.blogspot.com/.

LGBTQI Week: Everything You Need to Know About Space: 10 Reasons to Watch (and Love!) ‘Imagine Me & You’

Movie poster for Imagine Me & You (2005), directed by Ol Parker
This is a guest review by Marcia Herring.
I was still a baby queer in 2005 when Imagine Me & You hit theaters in limited release. I’m sure I had recently watched Lost and Delirious, as baby queers do, and was traumatized by it, as baby queers are, but that didn’t deter me from wanting to see the star, a faux-British Piper Perabo in what looked like the cutest movie ever. I remember watching and re-watching the trailer and flailing around like Agnes in Despicable Me: SO FLUFFY I’M GONNA DIE.

It never came to the sleepy little town where I went to college, at least not on the big screen. But when I got my hands on a DVD copy, I wore that sucker out. I swooned over it in my dorm room. I screened it for the GSA. I made all my friends watch. I left it playing on repeat while I cleaned, crafted, or did homework. I still do.

Directed by Ol Parker, Imagine Me & You is a relatively by-the-book romantic comedy. It starts with a wedding, where lovely Rachel (Piper Perabo) has pre-ceremony jitters, but they’re nothing a bit of pomp and circumstance and a quick pee at McDonald’s can’t cure. Her husband-to-be is picture-perfect Heck (Matthew Goode) who is shy, stuck in a job he hates, and willing to let Rachel take the lead on just about everything. The other shoe is left dangling after the vows are vowed and Rachel meets wedding florist Luce (Lena Headey) who rescues her from a minor predicament involving the ring and a bowl of punch. As Rachel attempts to navigate married life, she keeps returning to Luce and that puzzling little detail called attraction. There. The other shoe. It goes as romantic comedies do, building to the emotional climax where after all loose ends are neatly tied with a bow. There aren’t a lot of layers to unravel, images to deconstruct, and on an objective scale, it might not be the most unique or dazzling piece of film-making. But I’m not ashamed to feature it on my movie shelf no matter how you might feel about romantic comedies, and here’s why.

Note: the following contains links to TVTropes.com (a black hole time suck), spoilers for Imagine Me & You, and spoilers for several other gay-spectrum movies & television, including…. A Single Man, Bend It Like Beckham, But I’m a Cheerleader!, Friends, Kissing Jessica Stein, Lost and Delirious, Notes on a Scandal, Sunshine Cleaning, and Whip It.

They’re just friends. Very cuddly friends.
10 – Marriage Isn’t Happily Ever After

The film realistically introduces the idea that not all women who marry men 1) stay married to them, 2) stay heterosexually identified, and 3) are happy in those marriages. I recently showed the film to a married lesbian couple, one of which had previously been in a relationship with a man. She told me it was refreshing to see that, to see her story reflected on screen. In addition to questioning her sexuality, Rachel also struggles with the expectations of her mother, and then her husband to procreate. Coop brings up the question of whether sex is better after marriage, under the expectation that it continues.

The fact is that real marriage, whether or not one of the parties involved is questioning their sexual orientation, has problems. Through Luce’s profession, we see several people, including Heck, use flowers as a kind of healing balm for the myriad troubles of life. But as Heck discovers, if something actually is wrong, flowers won’t do a damn thing.

9 – It’s Funny!

Oh, Coop. What a sad figure of arrested development. He’s played for laughs as he continues flirting with a known lesbian who, we know, will never give in to his insisting that he’s great in bed. Perhaps he even grows up a little by the end, realizing that getting involved with married folks isn’t as cut and dry as he hypothesized.

There’s Zoey, too, Luce’s sassy gay friend, there to encourage Luce to get out there and date and to point out the sexual tension between Luce and “Barbie-heterosexual” Rachel. As if we didn’t know already.

8 – Lesbian Panic

It’s nice to see a realistic example of this very real phase. After all, Rachel can’t be gay! She just got married to a man! But her denial doesn’t run so very deep (But I’m a Cheerleader!, anyone?) that she isn’t willing to at least entertain the idea. In Imagine Me & You, lesbianism isn’t treated like some disease (Friends) to distance one’s self from. Instead, Rachel tentatively examines the possibility that she might have an attraction that she had previously ignored. She even uses research – very reasonable indeed!

Of course, that doesn’t stop the panic by 20th Century Fox, which cites the same-sex romance as “shocking” on the DVD blurb.*


7 – “Older” people have sex and relationships!

While we might linger in the No Older Gays trope, the film does an excellent job of showcasing “older” romance and the stigmas that come with it. The marriage between Ned and Tessa has grown cold after the birth of their younger, “surprise” daughter. She tends toward verbal abuse and he’s, well, less than exciting. Luce’s mother Ella is on the other side of the spectrum. Depressed either because of or despite being left by Luce’s father some years ago, she expresses interest in finding a life of her own, and a frustration that it should be expected to fit into a certain box of activities appropriate for a woman her age. A “shocking” revelation comes early on – these older characters have and desire sex! – and any discomfort with the idea fades as the humanity of the characters shines through whatever preconceived notions of what a relationship should be.

6 – Lesbians Are People, Too!

While Imagine Me & You doesn’t do much to challenge the way viewers accept how women look (this, I think, isn’t the story to drive home a point about butch presentation or androgyny), it also avoids coding either female lead as lesbian. When we first meet Luce, she comes across as somewhat non-sexual. Her look is shaggy-casual, but she works as a florist!

The film also comfortably side-steps gender roles with Rachel and Heck. Rachel has a professional writing job. Heck, currently working in finance, longs to be a travel writer. Rachel is the one who cheats. Heck is the one who has an emotional breakdown. (And more about Heck in #4.)

It isn’t easy to identify Rachel or Luce as butch/femme, or even as the “man” or “woman” in the relationship.

5 – Not the End of the World

There is absolutely a time and a place for films and media that explore the times when It Doesn’t Get Better; sometimes it’s nice to see a film where coming out isn’t the end of the world. Part of the reason this works in Imagine Me & You is the relationships built between characters. I’ve been told I’m not supposed to use the Bechdel Test when dealing with lesbian movies (hah!) but I think it’s important to point out that there are several scenes between women in the film, not discussing men or the love interest – regardless of gender. The strength of cross-generation connections is one of the highlights of the film, for me. Luce has a wonderful, nuanced, and open relationship with her mother that is a delight to see on screen. This sort of story can offer hope, amusement, escapism and a relatively non-threatening introduction to lesbians for the uninitiated (in fact, I plan on showing the film to my romantic comedy-loving mom).

Of course, the film could also be accused of over-simplifying things. Rachel makes the jump to coming out as gay both quickly and without contemplating the bisexual label (which might make more sense here). But then again, Rachel doesn’t shy from coming out, neatly avoiding the assumption that she might only be gay for Luce.

4 – The Dude Is Not a Douche

While there are times when Heck’s actions and motivations slip dangerously close to that of the Nice Guy(TM), he consistently knows better and when he is behaving like an ass, he takes steps to correct it. After all, Heck is the kind of guy who dances with kids at his wedding, who stands up to his “arse” of a boss, who seems happiest when his wife is taking charge, and who — in a moment I know I connected with — is afraid to ask Rachel if something is wrong because, what if it is?

The suggestion is there, if you look for it, that the hetero-romantic comedy wedding finale isn’t the happily ever after those films would have you believe.

3 – The Stars

Taking a moment to be shallow if I may: Imagine Me & You is a really pretty film. The direction is simple, but filled with clear lines and sharp colors. And the stars aren’t bad to look at either. The supporting cast features British staple Celia Imrie (random fact: she played the first female fighter pilot in a Star Wars film!) and familiar face Anthony Head (Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Matthew Goode, who plays Heck, is no stranger to gay film, having played the dead boyfriend in A Single Man, and the not-naked dude in Watchmen (:cough:).

Then there are the leads. Piper Perabo (Coyote Ugly, Lost and Delirious, Covert Affairs) and Lena Headey (Game of Thrones, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles). Maybe it’s just me, but those acting credits speak for themselves.

2 & 1 – NO ONE DIES, ATTEMPTS MURDER OR SUICIDE, OR IS THREATENED OR THREATENING

So yeah. There’s that.

If you haven’t seen Imagine Me & You, you really should. It never fails to leave me with a smile on my face, and no one I’ve ever shown it to has hated it. That’s not a bad batting average.

*I took a quick look at the other films 20th Century Fox imprint Fox Searchlight has to offer and found what might be a coincidence, but also looks a little suspicious. Of the women-centric/lesbian-oriented films under the Fox Searchlight banner, almost all were problematic:  

  • Sunshine Cleaning‘s lesbian scene fell victim to the cutting-room floor
  • Whip It‘s Ari Graynor cited difficulties in getting roller derby’s queer culture on screen
  • Notes on a Scandal features a psycho lesbian
  • Bend It Like Beckham was originally written as a lesbian romance
  • and feelings about Kissing Jessica Stein range from delight to horror

This is hardly definitive research, but it makes me think harder about Imagine Me & You‘s final scenes. The implication is that Coop and Heck both have sexual happy endings (a child, an in-flight romance) while Rachel and Luce don’t even get to finish the movie with a kiss.

The film is also rated R by the MPAA, something I question because two “fucks,” a few “arses,” and zero nudity hardly adds up to something I wouldn’t allow a 17 year old to see. Even with some sexual discussion and two — count ’em, two — lesbian kisses!

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Marcia Herring is a writer from Missouri. She is still working on her graduate degree, but swears to have it done someday. She spends most of her time watching television and movies and wishes she could listen to music and read while doing so without going insane. She previously contributed an analysis of Degrassi, Teens, and Rape Apologism and a piece for the Best Picture Nominee Series on Atonement, and a review of X-Men First Class.

Feminist Flashback: ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’

Written by Megan Kearns.

When I was young, my mom raised me on classic films: Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, The Great Escape, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I fondly remember watching Elizabeth Taylor on-screen. Hollywood royalty, we often think of her arresting beauty, numerous marriages, struggle with alcohol, philanthropy and perfume commercials. It’s easy to forget she was an amazing actor; a stellar artist who fluidly exuded strength, sensuality, vitality, passion and pain.Starring in over 50 films, Taylor often chose feminist roles.  In National Velvet, she plays a young girl disguising herself as a male jockey to compete. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, she’s a fiery survivor embracing her sexuality. And in the Texas saga Giant, she plays an educated and outspoken woman, challenging sexism. So after years of my mother urging me, I finally watched Taylor’s legendary performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Based on Edward Albee’s Tony Award-winning play (it also won the Pulitzer although it wasn’t awarded it due to its vulgarity and sexual themes), the 1966 film follows Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) and George (Richard Burton), a middle-aged married couple. He’s an assistant professor at a New England college and she’s his wife who happens to be the college president’s daughter. Through their vitriolic and bitter alcohol-fueled feuding, they lash out at each other. When a young couple, new professor Nick (George Segal) and his wife Honey (Sandy Dennis), visit their house after a late-night party, Martha and George continue their battle of wits, interchangeably attacking their guests and using them as ammunition, to further lash out at one another.
Director Mike Nichols wanted to have real-life married couple Taylor and Burton star in the film, a celebrity couple famous for their off-screen turbulent relationship. Known for its acerbic dialogue, Martha and George sling verbal barbs throughout the movie. Martha continually insults George calling him a “dumbbell,” saying he makes her want to “puke.” Critics often focus on Martha’s vicious verbal attacks but George equals her venom. He says she makes him “sick” and equates her voice to “animal noises.” Their guests Nick and Honey initially appear to be the quintessential couple, contrasting Martha and George in appearance, age and demeanor.  But as the night wears on and more alcohol is consumed, the problems both couples face come to the surface.
I’ve read that Who’s Afraid of a Virginia Woolf? is a feminist film.  But when I started watching, I initially thought, what the hell? There’s no way this is feminist as it’s mired in misogyny!  The film follows George’s perspective as there are scenes with just George and Martha, George and Nick, or George and Honey.  George is almost omnipresent. Also, there a few violent scenes in which George attempts to strangle Martha, pushes her, shoves her against a car and pretends to shoot her with a gun (an umbrella pops out instead of a bullet).  But when you begin to peel back the layers, you realize that while it might not be an overtly feminist film, feminist tendencies emerge nonetheless.
In the 1960s, the domesticity paradigm for women reigned.  In the beginning of the film, Martha tells George about a Bette Davis movie she’s trying to remember the name of.  She says, “She [Bette Davis] comes home from a hard day at the grocery store.”  George snidely and skeptically replies, “At the grocery store?” to which she retorts, “Yes, the grocery store. She’s a housewife, she buys things.”  Women were expected to be docile, obedient wives and mothers tending the home. Yet this revealing exchange shows the disdain for domestic duties women in the 60s faced.

Policing of sexuality also appears.  When Martha calls George a floozy in one scene, Honey jovially and drunkenly retorts,  

“He can’t be a floozy.  You’re a floozy!”

The film makes a subtle commentary of the double standard in sexual conduct between women and men.  Men could sleep with whomever they pleased while women who did the same were branded as “sluts.”

A role that earned Taylor her second Oscar, she considered the role of Martha her “personal best.”  A bravura performance, Taylor seamlessly sinks into the part; it’s difficult to ascertain where she begins and the character ends.  A college-educated woman, Martha perpetually humiliates her husband for his lack of ambition and professional failures:

Martha: I hope that was an empty bottle, George! You can’t afford to waste good liquor, not on your salary, not on an associate professor’s salary!

She pushed George to be the head of the History Department and the head of the university.  But why couldn’t she do those things herself?  In an exchange with Nick:

Nick: To you, everybody’s a flop. Your husband’s a flop, I’m a flop.
Martha: You’re all flops. I am the Earth Mother, and you are all flops.

In a time when women weren’t supposed to have jobs beyond wife and mother, perhaps Martha wanted her own career.  As she came from a wealthy family, Martha had money so she didn’t need George to succeed for fiscal security. It seems as if Martha lived vicariously through her husband and his capacity for success which would explain why his lack of ambition was such a blow.
While the play was written a year before the publication of feminist Betty Friedan’s ground-breaking The Feminine Mystique, the play explores the same issues Friedan railed against.  Friedan writes about the “feminine mystique,” where the highest value for women is embracing and maintaining their femininity, and the “problem that has no name,” the unhappiness women faced in the 50s and 60s and their yearning for fulfillment beyond being a housewife and a mother.  Friedan argues:
“They [women] learned that truly feminine women do not want careers, higher education, political rights – the independence and the opportunities that the old-fashioned feminists fought for…All they had to do was devote their lives from earliest girlhood to finding a husband and bearing children.” (58)

“Self-esteem in woman, as well as in man, can only be based on real capacity, competence, and achievement; on deserved respect from others rather than unwarranted adulation. Despite the glorification of “Occupation: housewife,” if that occupation does not demand, or permit, realization of women’s full abilities, it cannot provide adequate self-esteem, much less pave the way to a higher level of self-realization…But women in America are no encouraged, or expected, to use their full capacities. In the name of femininity, they are encouraged to evade human growth.” (435-437)

[Warning: Spoilers ahead!!] Motherhood, a reoccurring theme in the film, comprised one of the few ways society allowed fulfillment for women. Both women don’t have children, Martha is unable to and Honey, whose “hysterical pregnancy” led to her marriage with Nick, takes pills to eliminate any pregnancies as she’s scared to conceive. As women were supposed to be good wives and mothers, society viewed reproduction as one of their vital duties.  If a woman didn’t have children, ultimately she was a failure.  Friedan writes:

“Over and over again, stories in women’s magazines insist that woman can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child…In the feminine mystique, there is no other way she can even dream about herself, except as her children’s mother, her husband’s wife.” (115)
As someone in their 30s who doesn’t have children (and isn’t even sure I ever want them), even in this day and age, people often act as if there’s something fundamentally wrong with you if you don’t have or want children. Martha invented the story of a son probably because she genuinely wanted one.  But I think she also did it to make it easier for her to fit into society. As a woman, I often feel I don’t fit the stereotypical mold of what a woman “should” be. Perhaps Martha, with her abrasive, obnoxious persona, wanted at least one component of her life to fit. While I genuinely believe Martha wanted a child, her yearning may be tempered by the fact that society views her as an inadequate woman. It’s as if she can handle being a non-conformist woman in every way possible except this one.
What makes Martha so interesting is that she’s not merely a bawdy, angry woman.  Taylor imbues the complicated character with fleeting moments of agony and vulnerability.  In a tender rather than simply rage-filled moment, Martha refutes George’s accusation that she’s a “monster.”  She asserts,

Martha: I’m loud and I’m vulgar, and I wear the pants in the house because somebody’s got to, but I am not a monster. I’m not.

George: You’re a spoiled, self-indulgent, willful, dirty-minded, liquor-ridden…
Martha: SNAP! It went SNAP! I’m not gonna try to get through to you any more. There was a second back there, yeah, there was a second, just a second when I could have gotten through to you, when maybe we could have cut through all this, this CRAP. But it’s past, and I’m not gonna try.
To me, this is such a pivotal scene.  Women are supposed to be, especially during that era, docile, proper and well-mannered; the epitome of femininity.  Blond, thin, meek Honey appears to be the perfect wife while bawdy, brash, raven-haired, curvy Martha stands as the complete opposite.  In the equally ground-breaking The Second Sex published in 1949, philosopher Simone de Beauvoir wrote about the treatment and oppression of women.  In her tome, she argues that society teaches us that passivity is “the essential characteristic of the ‘feminine’ woman.”  Society encourages men and boys to explore their freedom while women and girls are taught to embrace femininity, turning their back on what they themselves want. She asserts:

“In woman, on the contrary, there is from the beginning a conflict between her autonomous existence and her objective self, her “being-the-other;” she is taught that to please she must try to please, she must make herself object; she should therefore renounce her autonomy. She is treated like a live doll and is refused liberty.” (280)

 

Wives were supposed to support their husbands, echoing their desires.  While Martha eventually admits that George is the only man who has ever made her happy, she refuses to silence herself. She is loud, vulgar, shrewd, intelligent, assertive, sexual and outspoken; the antithesis to femininity. And in many ways, society punishes Martha and women like her for it. Yet she rails against constraints, struggling to navigate the sexist terrain on her own terms.

The title of the play and film comes from a riff of “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” with the wordplay on Virginia Woolf.  It was a quote that playwright Albee saw scrawled on a bathroom mirror in a bar.  It’s also an allusion to show that people concoct imaginary scenarios and personas in order to cope with their lives, a theme that runs throughout the entire film.  The audience is never quite sure what is fact and what is fiction, the line often blurred.After the pivotal climax and shocking revelations, in the penultimate line of the film, George asks Martha, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” to which she replies, “I am, George, I am.”  Some scholars assert that this alludes to being able to live without illusions, which both George and Martha, with their web of lies and treacherous games, clearly find difficult.  But the play/film’s title is also an accidental feminist reference as feminist author and writer Virginia Woolf famously advocated for women to be able to possess their own money and space to be creative and ultimately themselves.

Captivating yet uncomfortable to watch, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? depicts the brutal deterioration of a marriage and the crumbling of hopes, ambitions and illusions.  Through their cruel taunts and insults, the film exposes the illusory facades people create, while challenging stifling gender roles.In the 60s (and to a large extent still today), society demanded men act assertively and women behave passively. As men wield a disproportionate amount of power over women, people often fear female empowerment.  Despite her brazen outspokenness, Martha might be afraid too — afraid of her own power in a society that doesn’t embrace or accept powerful women.

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Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World.  In addition to Bitch Flicks, her work has appeared at Arts & Opinion, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly and A Safe World for Women. Megan earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. She currently lives in Boston. She previously contributed reviews of The Kids Are All Right, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and Something Borrowed to Bitch Flicks.