Masculinity – Bitch Flicks

‘Moonlight’ and the Radical Depiction of Love

It’s like Plato’s overused allegory of the cave – everything we knew about this world before was shadow and puppetry; now we’ve seen a glimpse of the real thing. ‘Moonlight’ deals with highly politicized content – race, class, sexuality, gender expression, drug use – in a disarmingly nuanced way. It parachutes into territories dominated by stories about hate and dares instead to tell us stories about love.

Written by Katherine Murray.

Moonlight is a serious, introspective, understated film from director Barry Jenkins that’s been an overwhelming hit with critics, winning numerous awards for acting, directing, writing, and Best Picture, including at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, Independent Spirit Awards, and Screen Actors Guild Awards. It’s about a gay, Black drug dealer who lives in Miami — and it doesn’t think that any of those things are either funny or shameful.

The main selling point for Moonlight is that it’s different from other movies. Unfortunately, that also makes it hard to explain – the difference of Moonlight is something you feel while you’re watching it. It’s like Plato’s overused allegory of the cave – everything we knew about this world before was shadow and puppetry; now we’ve seen a glimpse of the real thing.

Moonlight deals with highly politicized content – race, class, sexuality, gender expression, drug use – in a disarmingly nuanced way. It parachutes into territories dominated by stories about hate and dares instead to tell us stories about love. The film checks in with its protagonist, Chiron (played by Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes), at three different points in his life – as a child, growing up in a rough neighborhood; as a teen, struggling with his sexuality; and as an adult, seeking a sense of authenticity. Each chapter ends at a startling point and begins by defying any stereotypes we’ve come to expect.

Hilton Als’ gorgeous essay in The New Yorker unpacks the story in more detail, and offers more insight into what it means to see Black gay men depicted this way on film, but, like Als, I was struck by my own reaction to the film’s first chapter. In that story, the young Chiron makes friends with a neighborhood drug dealer (Mahershala Ali) who becomes a surrogate father to him. I spent the first two thirds of that chapter with my shoulders and stomach clenched, waiting for something awful to happen. I was waiting for the drug dealer to be a bad person. I was waiting for Chiron to be disappointed, or rejected, or hurt somehow by this relationship. I was surprised and moved when I realized I was actually seeing kindness. I was seeing a picture of men with do-rags and pistols who love.

A lot of stories about poor Black communities are stories about either pity or invulnerable hyper-masculinity. Love is a lot more humanizing than pity and a lot more vulnerable than a rap video. Love makes us real to each other – it lets us see each other as kin. There is a shocking tenderness to Moonlight that cuts across boundaries – there is a confident assertion that these are people whose stories matter; that their experiences are worth sharing; that we will feel connected to them and sit with them in their pain, and triumph, and struggle, and caring. It’s an assertion that Black lives are human lives, as rich, complex, meaningful, and worthy as any other lives we see on film. The characters aren’t offered to us as archetypes or clowns – they’re offered to us as our own.

Moonlight isn’t the first film to act like Black people are human, or like poor people are human, or like gay people are human – but it is a beautifully-made movie, with a rich emotional palette and an introspective style. One of its strengths is that, for a movie about love – that is, in many ways, essentially a romance, at its core – it doesn’t fall into the trap of being sentimental. While racism, homophobia, and poverty aren’t the topic of the film, they inform the setting and the characters’ worldview. There’s a powerful scene where Chiron’s mother (Naomie Harris), addicted to crack cocaine, screams at him, yelling words we can’t hear – words he later dreams or remembers as “Don’t look at me.” That sense of shame and self-hatred, manifested in the psychological violence she does to herself and her son, haunts every chapter of this story, but it’s allowed to exist alongside caring and hope, without either cancelling the other out.

The final two chapters of the film, in one way or another, concern Chiron’s relationship with his bisexual friend and primary love interest, Kevin (played by Jaden Piner, Jharrel Jerome, and André Holland), and the way that various pressures in his life converge to mold the way he presents himself to others. In some ways, Chiron comes full circle by growing up to be like the drug dealer who raised him – outwardly tough, physically strong, and kind.

Moonlight is about Black masculinity, and does an exquisite job of dramatizing gender performance, but it’s reductive to say it’s only about gender, sexuality, or identity. Moonlight is a movie that captures the zeitgeist of the early twenty-first century – of a generation that grew up in the 1980s and 90s; of a culture with a lot of bullshit things in it, that still has the courage to risk a vulnerability like love. It’s the kind of film that you want future generations to see, so they can understand what the world was like in the past – the kind of film you want future generations to be confused by, because so much has changed, and the kind of film you want them to connect to, because our humanity cuts across time.

Like many other festival films, Moonlight is a slow burn that requires some patience to watch. I promise you, though, that your patience will be rewarded. This movie stayed with me for weeks after I saw it, persistently tugging at my attention, making me want to watch it again. It’s different in a way you truly have to see to understand.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV, and video games on her blog.

Obsessed with Boyhood: The Latent Misogyny Running Rampant in Richard Linklater’s Films

On the surface, a lot of his female characters reflect strong ideals. … But take a deeper look and Linklater’s female characters tell another story: one of a creator deeply obsessed with ignorant male stereotypes and the women that encourage them. … Looking back through his films, they all contain this running theme of underdeveloped man-children who are routinely validated in their anti-woman approach.

This guest post written by Maya Bastian appears as part of our theme week on Unpopular Opinions.

Disappointed. That would be the first way to describe how I felt after walking out of Richard Linklater’s latest release Everybody Wants Some!!, 20 minutes into the film. Disgusted. That was my second response. These feelings quickly turned to outrage as I realized that I had just played witness to the reversion of cultural ideals that has overtaken our society as of late.

Hailed as “achingly perceptive” by Variety and “utopian” by The New York Times, Linklater himself refers to the film as a “spiritual sequel” to his earlier nostalgia-laden hit Dazed and Confused. In reality, it’s an intensely sophomoric and outdated romp through the lives of five college jocks who bandy around, seducing girls, and partying until they drop. The male protagonists refer to women as “bitches” when they get rejected and intelligent women are thought of as “dykes.” Set in 1980s Texas, it’s a throwback to Porky’s–era films, where the women are idly brutalized and consent is disregarded several times throughout the course of the movie.

What is astounding is that the glaring misogyny that runs rampant throughout is completely brushed aside by just about every critic. The Guardian gave it a rave review, saying, “The attitudes towards women are unenlightened but the freshman of Linklater’s joyful 80’s campus movie reveal occasional complexity.” RogerEbert.com called it a “gentle film” but I would argue the opposite. There is nothing gentle about flouting consent and flaunting camera angles that are meant to denigrate the female form.

The disappointing part is that I’ve been a fan of Linklater’s films for some time, excited by his subversion of narrative techniques and his bold commitment to strong characters that buck the status quo. Waking Life was startlingly moving and profound. Tape was cinematic genius in its execution.

On the surface, a lot of his female characters reflect strong ideals. Sooze (Amie Carey) in Suburbia is a hardcore third-waver and lashes out “angrily” about smashing the patriarchy. The lead female character Amy (Uma Thurman) in Tape presents as a strong woman and an accomplished lawyer. Celine (Julie Delpy) in Before Sunrise and the rest of the Before Trilogy, is intellectual, graceful, and human. Sure, they all seem like feminist role models. But take a deeper look and Linklater’s female characters tell another story: one of a creator deeply obsessed with ignorant male stereotypes and the women that encourage them.

After viewing Everybody Wants Some!!, I had to reassess my devotion to Linklater. It led me to review his earlier titles, only to realize that he is suffering from the classic virgin/whore rhetoric. Every one of his narratives are about male characters running rampant over women’s rights.

Looking back through his films, they all contain this running theme of underdeveloped man-children who are routinely validated in their anti-woman approach. These characters often appear fun and exciting. No one really challenges them on their behavior, most simply laugh it off. A glaring example is Steve Zahn’s character in Suburbia, aptly named Buff. He primarily exists to reflect an attitude that glorifies acting poorly, hurting others, and treating women as objects. Yet no one ever seriously addresses his behavior except for Sooze, the token feminist, who gets quickly shot down by her peers.

While he does include the occasional strong female voice, Linklater tends to tokenize these women. They are often one-note characters who are stereotypes of themselves. Even Celine in the Before Sunrise series falls victim to this pattern. Though she starts off as a thinking, feeling woman with complexity in Before Sunrise, by the end of the series, she has devolved into a bitter, nitpicky wife, treading alongside all of the female “married woman” stereotypes that we fight so hard to deflect and dismantle. In Before Midnight, her character presents as “flat” and one-dimensional, with Linklater adhering to the school of thought that strong, intelligent women are incapable of compromise and empathy.

Linklater marginalizes his female characters in almost every movie that he has made. Tape, while brilliant in its technical prowess, reduces the only female character (Uma Thurman), as an object to be fought over. Dazed and Confused is another glaring instance of hyper-sexualization, where practically every woman lacks definition. The only substantial female character is the nerdy redhead Cynthia (Marissa Ribisi), who ends up being objectified by the much older Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey) in what is considered one of THE classic lines of the film.

As Linklater’s oeuvre evolves, the sidelining of his female characters increases. In School of Rock, the only two adult female characters (Sarah Silverman and Joan Cusack) are both uptight, angry, and only serve as foils to guitarist Dewey Finn’s (Jack Black) brilliant plans. Even in the much lauded Boyhood, we see signs of the director’s tendency to tokenize women. In Linklater’s world, we can only ever be seen on one side of the virgin/whore rhetoric. Either he focuses his camera on our bodies and our loose morals or he martyrs us, as is the case with the long-suffering single mother (Patricia Arquette) in Boyhood. While it’s worth mentioning that Patricia Arquette’s performance is brilliant, it still serves as further proof that Linklater perpetuates male-centric stories where women exist as an afterthought, only putting them front and center when they can fulfill society’s categorization of women into tiny, little boxes.

Which brings us back to his latest effort. Shockingly produced by a woman, Megan Ellison of Zero Dark Thirty fame, Everybody Wants Some!! continues to receive rave reviews. Apparently bro culture has reached its cultural apotheosis.

Salon writer and self-proclaimed feminist, Joanna Novak, even professed that she didn’t see anything wrong with the throwback and glorification of bro culture, though she jokes that looking past the “casual sexism” and enjoying the “bro-centric ideology” might make her a “bad feminist.” But here’s the thing. The longer we as a society continue to glorify boys acting badly, laugh at a bunch of jocks using women and lying to get them into bed, jeer along with them at so called “imperfect” bodies, the longer rape culture will exist and the objectification of women will reign supreme. Why is it so hard to convict a rapist? Perhaps it’s because the media sees handsome, swagger-ful boys as cute and cheeky as opposed to predatory. Perpetuating this social construct of masculinity in a time when we need desperately to dissect it and deflect it instead, is a dangerous path.

While the reviews of this pointless, nostalgia-saturated narrative are shocking, the response isn’t surprising. The current swath of the films’ reviewers are primarily men who seem to be joyfully reliving their youth.

One shining light in this otherwise woeful collection of reviews is Jill Richard’s article in the Los Angeles Review of Books. She delineates that as a culture, we are past the age of Animal House style fraternity. Richard writes:

“If one is a bro, the bro squad looks like a great time. But I suppose I feel like that squad wouldn’t have me as a member, or would rape me, and that makes all the difference. […] …There is no non-sinister defense for the ‘American male birthright’ as a conceptual category.”

On a larger scale, Linklater has not just disappointed me as a filmmaker, but as an artist. We have reached an apex in our society, where art must be a voice for the under-represented. Artists have an obligation to create pieces that speak to the condition of our culture and of the world. The time to laud ego-centric films that glorify the glory days of its maker have passed. We no longer need to see work that makes us laugh but that does not make us think.

During the release of Boyhood, one Los Angeles Times critic refused to pander to the flow of warm reviews. While just about everyone was hailing the film as genius, Kenneth Turan took a solitary stance against the film, amid consternation from fellow critics. What he said rings profoundly true in our age of hyperbole and over-hyped cinema. While he did not end up reviewing the film, he did write an incredibly astute article on the nature of genius and the way our society creates cultural impunity by lauding films that don’t deserve it. Turan writes:

“…The fuss about ‘Boyhood’ emphasized to me how much we live in a culture of hyperbole, how much we yearn to anoint films and call them masterpieces, perhaps to make our own critical lives feel more significant because it allows us to lay claim to having experienced something grand and meaningful.”

As Indiewire‘s Sam Adams writes in response to Turan’s perspective, asserting the need for diverse opinions in film criticism:

“Masterpieces, however, are not made so by unanimous praise, but by careful scrutiny. Criticisms, and the extent to which they illuminate the fascinating imperfections beneath those ‘masterpieces’ surfaces, only make them stronger.”

Turan’s and Adams’ points ring true to many socially conscious ears. Richard Linklater is no longer a genius in my eyes, but simply a talented filmmaker who has achieved success by pandering to societal norms, sadly failing to use his indefatigable intelligence to see through them.

Disappointing at best, destructive and debilitating at worst.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

The Flattening of Celine: How Before Midnight Reduces a Feminist Icon

The One Night Stand That Wasn’t: Before Sunrise and Before Sunset‘s Jesse and Celine

Boyhood (Featuring Girlhood)

The Bad Mamas of Contemporary Cinema

Maya Bastian is a writer and award-winning filmmaker who focuses on socio-political issues. She sits on the board of Breakthroughs Film Festival, a short film fest championing new generation female filmmakers. Follow her on social media @mayabasti or check out her website for more info: www.mayabastian.com.

Bisexuality and Masculinity in ‘Y Tu Mamá También’

‘Y Tu Mamá También’ points out the elastic, freeing nature of femininity compared to the toxic, fragile nature of masculinity. Over the course of the film, Luisa only becomes a month or so older and finds truth, or at the very least solace for herself, while Julio and Tenoch go from brash young adults to estranged, closed-off adult men, refusing to come to terms with their bisexuality.

This guest post written by Andy Herrera appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation. | Spoilers ahead.

At first glance, Y Tu Mamá También looks and feels like a classic American sex comedy. You have two ostensibly straight young men desperate for sex who, when suddenly faced with the horrible predicament of not being able to have sex with their girlfriends while they are out of the country, befriend an attractive older women, lie to her about a beautiful beach destination, and both have sex with her. Even from this facile reading of the film, Y Tu Mamá También still invigorates that sometimes tired genre. Unlike American sex comedies, the sexual antics that our main characters, Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael García Bernal), get into are funny by virtue of how oversexed they themselves are and not the sex acts themselves, and the sexual humor is often at the expense of the men, not the women they have sex with.

The camerawork during the sex scenes often feels as lively as the people having sex on-screen as it moves in and out, creating a kinetic feel to each scene. When the movie is not explicitly about sex and sexuality, it’s a lovely travelogue of Mexico, shot beautifully by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki and interspersed with small visual reminders of political unrest juxtaposed with the natural beauty of the country. Director Alfonso Cuarón not only created a visually stunning sex comedy, however, he also created a complex character study that often points towards a bisexual subtext between our two leads.

Cuarón specifically cast Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal as the leads, as they have been friends since childhood, and this shows in their natural chemistry on-screen. It’s clear why these two characters are friends and how they compliment each other. Going along with the film’s visual political commentary, there is also classism prevalent in the relationship between Tenoch and Julio. Tenoch’s father works for the Mexican government and Julio’s family is leftist and middle class, already setting up clear political and class conflict between the two boys that they nonetheless have managed to ignore in their friendship. As with other issues laid dormant in their relationship, Tenoch’s classism only comes out during a shouting match late in the film, as he calls Julio “a hillbilly.” The woman they go on a road trip with, Luisa (Maribel Verdú), proves to be the catalyst in unearthing the many repressed issues within their relationship, whether political or sexual.

The trope of an older woman teaching young men about life and love became ridiculous pretty much after Weird Science and it’s strange here too, yet is justified in retrospect at the end of the film, when Tenoch informs Julio that Luisa died a month after the trip and that she knew she had cancer the entire time. While Julio and Tenoch go on that journey with her, just for the virtue of being around an attractive woman that may have sex with them, Luisa went on that journey to find peace and truth within her life and impart wisdom on to someone, anyone, as her entire family is deceased and her husband repeatedly cheated on her. Luisa ultimately succeeds in finding truth for herself and for Julio and Tenoch, but for them the truth permanently fractures their relationship.

At the beginning of their journey, as Julio and Tenoch get to know Luisa, Julio states that “truth is cool but unattainable… the truth is totally amazing but you can never reach it.” Their trip to the beach allows Julio and Tenoch to come close to unearthing deep sexual truths about themselves, but his words become a self-fulfilling prophecy as they never reach the truth. At the beginning of the film, Julio and Tenoch start out as brash and sexually pompous (despite both of them admitting they’ve only had sex with their current girlfriends) young men. Out of a need for sexual intimacy with men she trusts more than her cheating husband, Luisa has sex with both of them and sexual dysfunctions are revealed: Julio reaches climax too quickly; Tenoch has a habit of saying “Mama” when he reaches his own climax. These idiosyncrasies are pointed out to them by Luisa, exemplifying their sexual immaturity and inexperience. It’s soon revealed that both Julio and Tenoch have slept with each other’s girlfriends in a scenario that’s first presented as dramatic and potentially friendship ending, but then is reframed as comedic as more of their sexual dalliances are revealed in farcical fashion. Their friendship remains intact.

As Julio and Tenoch come to a head in their argument over who had sex with whose girlfriend, Luisa becomes angry and leaves, exclaiming, “What [they] really want to do is fuck each other!” This statement, while humorous within the scene, gains weight when read in context with scenes before and after this one. Earlier in the film, Julio and Tenoch play around naked while showering, masturbate together, and even note a picture of a penis together. They remark that they never see a friend anymore since he came out of the closet, but are nonetheless accepting of him, despite their heavy usage of homophobic slurs throughout the film.

After they reconcile, Julio, Tenoch, and Luisa all have sex while intoxicated, which leads to Julio and Tenoch passionately kissing. The revelatory aspect of this threesome scene is that Tenoch and Julio’s kiss isn’t played for gay panic humor as it typically would be in other sex comedies, but rather as tender, loving, and a natural growth of their sexualities. There’s never a doubt that they’re attracted to women, but this scene confirms they are also definitely attracted to each other as more than friends (even Diego Luna can’t stop thinking about it). Luisa, once again, is the catalyst that leads them to this truth, it’s up to them whether or not they accept it.

Due to society’s (and their own ingrained) heteronormativity, Julio and Tenoch do not accept this truth, however. The morning after their tryst, they choose to go home immediately, with Luisa staying behind voluntarily. The narrator states that their girlfriends later broke up with them, they found new women to date, and they eventually stopped seeing each other. Julio and Tenoch only meet once again a year later, to discuss Luisa’s fate, before never meeting again. Luisa finds peace in nature and with her true self, and while she pushed Julio and Tenoch towards some harsh truths, they ultimately rejected them.

Y Tu Mamá También points out the elastic, freeing nature of femininity compared to the toxic, fragile nature of masculinity. Over the course of the film, Luisa only becomes a month or so older and finds truth, or at the very least solace for herself, while Julio and Tenoch go from brash young adults to estranged, closed-off adult men, refusing to come to terms with their bisexuality. The children are Mexico’s (and every country’s) future but even they cannot survive in an oppressive society without obscuring some fundamental truth about who they are.

Andy Herrera was born in New York, raised in Florida, and is now back in New York again. He was raised on TV shows and movies and now all he does is write about them.

‘Boys in the Trees’ Is the Best Movie You Might Not See Next Year

The first feature film from Nicholas Verso, ‘Boys in the Trees’ is a coming-of-age story focused on questions of masculinity and wrapped in a delightful – and visually stunning – cloak of Halloween. …They explore what it means that their friendship fell apart – what childhood loses to adolescence, what adolescence loses to adulthood, what we gain in either case, and what we give away when we stop hoping that something amazing could happen to us.

Written by Katherine Murray.

By the time I walked into my screening of Boys in the Trees, it had a little frowny face beside it in the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) mobile app, and there was a “buy one, get one” sale on tickets. Since premiering at Venice earlier this month, the film hasn’t received more than a handful of mixed reviews. While it’s slated to hit Australian theatres in time for Halloween, I haven’t been able to find any news about distribution in North America. This is very disappointing, because Boys in the Trees is one of the best films I’ve seen in recent years, and I left the theatre wanting to share it with everyone.

The first feature film from Nicholas Verso, Boys in the Trees is a coming-of-age story focused on questions of masculinity and wrapped in a delightful – and visually stunning – cloak of Halloween. I was in love with every part of it, right from the start – the details in the costuming, the weirdly specific soundtrack (which Verso explained was built out of songs that had personal meaning for him), the charismatic performances from its young actors, the incredibly vivid colors in a movie set almost completely at night. Mostly, though, I loved the dark emotional palette the story draws from, and its fearlessness in letting itself and its teenage characters be uncool enough to care about things.

The story takes place in a stylized, hyper-real version of 1997, in which a bully and his victim go on a supernatural adventure together on Halloween night. Corey (Toby Wallace), the bully, is also the film’s protagonist, trying to figure out whether following his dreams is worth exposing himself to scorn and ridicule. Jonah (Gulliver McGrath), the victim, used to be Corey’s best friend, before Corey started trying so hard to fit in. Over the course of a night, they explore what it means that their friendship fell apart – what childhood loses to adolescence, what adolescence loses to adulthood, what we gain in either case, and what we give away when we stop hoping that something amazing could happen to us.

The film’s greatest trick is that there’s a false ending roughly 80 minutes in, in which it seems like Corey’s learned everything he needed to learn and wrapped all of his problems up neatly… only to discover that there’s still half an hour in this movie, nothing is as simple as it seems, and sometimes you can’t take back what you’ve done.

At the screening, Verso explained that he’s received mixed reactions from men watching the film. Some hate it passionately, and others told him it’s precious to them because of how it reflects their experiences. In exploring masculinity, Boys in the Trees brushes against sexism, homophobia, latent homosexuality, aggression, vulnerability, kindness, friendship, and strength at various times without seeming like a Public Service Announcement. It’s a story about bullying that isn’t as simple as saying, “Bullies are horrible people,” and a story about friendship that isn’t as simple as saying, “Your friends are the people you always get along with.” The film takes a more layered view of what people can be to each other – what boys can be to each other – and how relationships can change from moment to moment.

Verso’s view of Halloween is also – except for one jump scare – less rooted in terror than in carnival – the idea that there’s one night a year where the regular rules are suspended; when the veils between worlds, both real and imagined, become permeable, and people can cross over. This is the most delicious form of Halloween, and it’s on full display from beginning to end.

The only weakness worth mentioning is a subplot in which Corey earns a girlfriend almost completely at random. This plot line has no relationship to anything else in the movie, slows down the action in confusing ways whenever it appears, and seems to happen just because it’s expected. The girl, Romany (Mitzi Ruhlmann), seems pretty cool, but is also made to speak for her entire gender at various points, and literally only ever appears so that she can be a good influence on Corey. Since Jonah’s already a good influence on Corey and more integral to the plot, it’s not clear what Romany’s adding besides proof of Corey’s heterosexuality.

That’s important, because the much more interesting relationship in the film exists between Corey and the leader of his little gang, Jango (Justin Holborow). Jango’s an asshole, but he also values his friendship with Corey, who draws out a gentler side of his personality. Justin Holborow’s performance captures the sense of someone whose entire demeanor can change depending on whether or not he sees the people before him as human, and there are homoerotic undertones to the frustrated sense of ownership he displays toward Corey. It’s not that Boys in the Trees needs to be an LGBTQ movie in order to tell a good story – it’s just that the film seems a lot more interested in the boys’ relationship than it does in Romany, and it might have been nice if the story had leaned into it more.

Even with the extraneous heterosexual romance running interference, Boys in the Trees still presents a remarkably strong sense of voice, and displays the same strength of its characters in daring to leave itself vulnerable through nerdy acts of caring. Verso took risks with this story and poured himself into it rather than holding back, and that’s something I’d always choose to watch over a perfectly executed, perfectly ordinary film.

Boys in the Trees may or may not ever come to a theatre near you, but, hopefully, we can all stream it online one day.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies, TV and video games on her blog.

The Vietnam War Through a Teen Girl’s Eyes in ‘In Country’

This guest post written by Caroline Madden appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. | Spoilers ahead.

Norman Jewison’s 1989 film In Country is based on Bobbie Ann Mason’s young adult novel by the same name. The story revolves around eighteen-year-old Samantha Hughes (Emily Lloyd), a.k.a. Sam, during the summer after high school graduation in Hopewell, Kentucky. Sam struggles to understand her Vietnam veteran uncle as she tries to learn more about her father, who died in the Vietnam War before she was born. Sam’s Uncle Emmett (Bruce Willis) wrestles with the symptoms of his PTSD, but refuses to tell Sam about his triggers or experiences. She barely knows anything about her father; her mother only knew and was with him for a few months before he was sent off to war and now she rarely discusses him. Sam spends the summer trying to solve the mysteries of the Vietnam experience and the patriarchal figures in her life.

Sam is an underrated, if not widely unknown 1980s heroine. She serves as a symbol for America’s 1980s attempt to reconcile with its most controversial war. The 1980s experienced a boom in Vietnam War films, as the temporal distance from the war allowed filmmakers to fully deconstruct the experience. Rarely is the locus of these films a woman. Sam’s character manages to break through the barriers of a primarily masculine film genre. In Country uniquely explores both the female and child experience of the Vietnam War and its aftermath. This is a departure from the wide variety of films depicting the male veteran’s assimilation into post-Vietnam life, such as Born on the Fourth of July (1989) or First Blood (1982).

The exclusion of the female is central to both real life and cinematic Vietnam War narratives. As laid out in Susan Jeffords’ seminal gender study of Vietnam, The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War, she discusses this idea of male bonding, or male collectivity. Men’s fellowship is predicated upon the segregation of the woman — they must bond together to reclaim their lost masculinity from the war. “Why don’t any of the vets I know get along with women?” Sam asks Emmett’s friend Tom. Sam hears the same mantra from various veteran characters throughout the film, “You ain’t never going to understand it. You don’t want to,” Emmett says. “Well, you weren’t there. So you can’t understand it,” says Tom. To the veterans of In Country, Sam will never share in their communal brotherhood of war and thus they must always exclude her. Sam frequently witnesses the impairment in the veteran’s post-war masculinity that keeps them from connecting and actively disengaging from women in primarily romantic and even friendly ways, such as her uncle’s rejection of Sam’s set-up with a local nurse and Tom’s inability to sexually perform.

Women in Vietnam War films are often pushed away from men who refuse to discuss the war. However, many of these characters remain passive and do not pressure them to divulge information. In Country portrays a woman as an active investigator that truly longs to understand the men’s minds. Sam constantly engages with her uncle and his friends about the war, but any of her sincere questioning about their wounds or memories are met with sarcastic jokes or proclamations that she would not understand. Just as Emmett and his friends dismiss Samantha, her father, Dwayne, also excludes her from the dead. Her friend Dawn finds a box of his letters, photographs and war memorabilia. The text of the letters revolves around soldier camaraderie, emphasizing the bonds of brotherhood. Dwayne excludes his female reader by insisting, “Don’t ask me to tell you how it is here. You don’t want to know.” This feminine segregation, a key component of most Vietnam narratives, is mobilized by all the men in In Country.

These letters begin to change Sam’s idea of her father, who was once a phantom figure in her life, now becomes idealized and heroic. Since Sam is not able to see the ramifications of Vietnam in her father’s post-war life, she can only picture him as a romantic war hero with a good heart. She pins his photograph onto her mirror and speaks to it, “You missed everything. You missed Watergate, E.T., the Bruce Springsteen concert. You were just a country boy and you never knew me.” By defining him as a ‘country boy,’ she envisions him as the embodiment of wholesome heartland America, a beacon of innocence who was harshly victimized after being thrown unwittingly into the dangers of Vietnam. The image of her father becomes as revered as that of a pop star — akin to the Bruce Springsteen posters that loom over her — an unattainable figure which exists as a pure, steadfast body of goodness that is constantly present but ultimately unreachable.

Sam mourns that her father has not only missed her entire life, but that her father never got to see what life has been like for Americans in 1980s post-Vietnam. She prioritizes Watergate, which changed American political culture forever, and iconic 1980s pop culture. Sam particularly engages with the rock icon Bruce Springsteen, whose career skyrocketed in 1984. Although his presence is more prevalent in the novel, the film still positions Springsteen as important to Sam. It is necessary to consider In Country’s engagement with the text of Springsteen’s hit song “Born in The U.S.A.,” which no doubt speaks to Sam’s observations of the Vietnam veteran’s predicament. The song discusses veterans’ disillusionment and disappointment upon returning to America after fighting its unpopular war, which Sam sees daily living with Emmett. Part of the song’s lyrics reflect his state of being, “You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much/Till you spend half your life just covering up.” Emmett has been both literally and metaphorically covering up. He fears the outside world, confining himself to the home, remaining unemployed, and refusing to work at the tire plant. He is plastered to the couch playing Pac-Man or spends his time digging a hideaway hole under the house. To Sam, Emmett is a living embodiment of Springsteen’s struggling small-town and blue-collar protagonist.

Another song off the iconic 1980s album is used non-diegetically in the film, “I’m On Fire.” The lyrics play as Sam jogs throughout the town. The lyrics, “Hey, little girl is your daddy home?/Did he go away and leave you all alone?” is an on-the-nose reference to Sam’s absent father. The amalgam of the song’s sexual nature and reference to a patriarchal figure reflects Sam’s complex sexual relationship with the significantly older Vietnam veteran Tom, who she attempts to sleep with after a dance. Tom is both an agent of her growing sexuality, as she develops into a young woman, and a platform for Sam to mediate her lost childhood role of father’s daughter, for Tom can be seen as more of a father figure than a potential boyfriend. Her connection and relationship to him can be read as a strange way for her to reconnect with her father. Sam is torn, particularly in this relation to Tom, between seeing herself as the little girl within the family she never got to have and growing up as a young woman.

In addition to understanding the Vietnam experience, In Country depicts a young woman at a crossroads in her life that many can relate to. All throughout the film, characters ask Sam if she is going to marry her boyfriend Lonnie. Her mother married her father and got pregnant at a young age, and now that Sam is freshly graduated from high school, many expect her to follow in those footsteps. Sam repeatedly tells her interrogators she has “other things on her mind.” It never occurs to them that she could have other ideas for her future, such as college or a career. Sam’s conflicts of these feminine roles are embodied in the character of Dawn, her friend that deals with an unplanned pregnancy. Dawn serves as a reflection of Sam’s alternate path, to marry Lonnie and start a family, and of the past, her mother’s young marriage and pregnancy.

Interactions with Dawn also trigger Sam’s unrest about her familial relationships. In one scene, Dawn pierces her ears and asks if her mother will be upset. Sam insists that her mother is “provincial and misguided” and brags that Emmett lets her do anything she wants to do, including let her boyfriend sleep over. Dawn responds that her father would never let her do that. Dawn’s insistence at having a protective father rubs salt in Sam’s wound about her own father’s absence. Sam does not truly celebrate her absent and misguided parental figures, (as her mother lives with her stepfather and half-sister in the city) they have left her unmoored and bereft. There are no parental figures that care enough to stop and discipline Sam from having sleepovers with her boyfriend. Sam is torn between attending college in the fall and marrying her boyfriend — two seemingly disparate feminine ideals. But overall, she is conflicted because she has never been able to see herself as a daughter within a nuclear family.

Sam’s volleying between the female roles of daughter and independent young woman and her struggle to relate to the Vietnam veterans in her life are resolved within the finale. Throughout the film, Sam had been constructing an idealized picture of her father as a perfect war hero. She obtains his war diaries from her grandparents, and their candor causes her to confront the reality of his wartime experiences and his ultimate humanity. The diaries describe his unremorseful killings of the Vietnamese enemy. Up until now, the letters she has read have only been of fraternizing with his war buddies or fantasizing about home. It never occurred to Sam that her father had to kill, the equation of murder and war was far from her mind as she envisioned her heroic father fighting for his country. Sam spent the majority of the film trying to determine why the Vietnam veterans she knows are so troubled, what happened over there to cause their problems. But when the truth of Vietnam is exposed to her through her father’s experience, she recoils, frightened and upset. It tarnishes her sainted image of the innocent ‘country boy.’ As Sam reveals this to Emmett, he finally unloads the memories that he has been keeping inside, the wounds in which he spent the film “covering up.” The uncovering of these wounds allows Sam to recognize just how Vietnam’s turmoil affected those she loves, unraveling the romantic notions of her father while allowing her to fully support her troubled uncle. Through this confession, the Vietnam veteran’s feminine exclusion, regulated through silence and hostility, is finally closed off.

In the final scene, Sam and Emmett travel to the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. Sam leaves a portrait of herself at her father’s spot on the wall. At the end of one of his letters, Dwayne said he wanted to see a picture of his child. This gesture allows her closure in the lack of connection she felt to him. Now, Dwayne is able to “see” the picture of his child, fulfilling his wish and thereby “acknowledging” her as his daughter. This allows Sam to fully heal and move on. We learn that she decides to attend college in the fall, pursuing her passion for higher education instead of others’ wishes for her to become a young housewife.

What is important about In Country is that it depicts a 1980s female protagonist with agency who carves out a path for herself, makes choices amidst the confusion and pressures of dominant ideologies and complex relationships. Sam Hughes is neither iconic nor well-remembered, but she should be. In Country depicts perhaps the most delicate time in a woman’s life: the transition from girl to young woman. Furthermore, it places the feminine experience within the canon of the Vietnam veteran film, a genre in which male narratives are overwhelmingly present and female characters are often reduced to largely invisible or supporting characters.

Caroline Madden has a BFA in Acting from Shenandoah Conservatory and is currently an MA Cinema Studies student at Savannah College of Art and Design. Other writing can be found on Screenqueens, Pop Matters, and her blog Cinematic Visions. Film and Bruce Springsteen are two of her most favorite things.

‘Game of Thrones’: Is Jon Snow Too Feminine for the Masculine World?

Whilst ostensibly male in terms of gender, Jon Snow’s character is arguably definably feminine through his actions, motivations and interactions with both female and male characters. … This is not to suggest that Jon’s character is not masculine; certainly his actions in battle signal him to be a hero in the archetypical sense, but I am suggesting that Jon Snow’s masculinity coexists with a feminine expression…

This guest post written by Siobhan Denton appears as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones. | Spoilers ahead.

“There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; … identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.” (Butler: 1999, 25). Judith Butler’s concept of gender as being performative and defined by actions rather than a universal identifiable notion is entirely apt when we consider the gender of Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow. Whilst ostensibly male in terms of gender, Jon Snow’s character is arguably definably feminine through his actions, motivations and interactions with both female and male characters.

The majority of critique and discussion on Jon’s character has, thus far, focused upon either his overt masculinity or his progressive feminism. This is not to suggest that Jon’s character is not masculine; certainly his actions in battle signal him to be a hero in the archetypical sense, but I am suggesting that Jon Snow’s masculinity coexists with a feminine expression, and it is this coexistence that leads to the events at the end of season five.

Interactions with men

Jon’s interactions with men clearly demonstrate this sense of coexistence. He is both intensely masculine, respected by the men of The Night’s Watch, and thoroughly feminine in his interactions with both Sam and Olly.

Take for instance, Jon’s first interaction with Sam Tarly. Jon is already respected by the men of the watch, and we witness him intelligently coaching and instructing his fellow men in how to improve their fighting technique. As Sam arrives, his appearance is openly ridiculed by the men as they comment both on his weight and his subsequent perceived weakness. As Sam is beaten and humiliated, Jon rapidly steps in and requests that the actions cease. His interruption draws comment from Ser Alliser Thorne who remarks, “Alright then, Lord Snow, you wish to defend your lady love?” This comment, in which Thorne attempts to highlight a male and female dichotomy between the two is notable. For Thorne, Jon’s defence of Sam marks him as explicitly male with Sam fulfilling the female role, but for me, this defense highlights a feminine and in turn a maternal nature to Jon. His connection with Sam is based on pure emotion at this point: he has no knowledge of his character but has responded to him on a visceral level.

While some may comment that such a defense links to Jon’s sense of nobility and honor (a trope that is regularly linked to masculinity), there is no real honor in stepping in for a man who cannot defend himself. At this point in the narrative Sam is pitiful and Jon’s interception further marks out Sam’s current pathetic nature. Thus, Jon has not acted upon honor, as he would be all too aware of the manner in which this interaction would be interpreted, rather he has acted upon a desire to care and look after others, a quality more stereotypically linked with femininity. After Jon has successfully defended Sam, Thorne orders Jon to “clean the armory as that’s all [he’s] good for,” further reducing him to a typical feminine role of the domestic. Thorne’s disdain for Jon seems to stem from his clear desire to protect and tend to others, as there is no place for such behavour in The Night’s Watch (women are banned from remaining at Castle Black).

Jon places himself in direct conflict with both Thorne and the overtly masculine men of the Watch when he later notes that the men should no longer bully or humiliate Sam. As Jon informs the men of his desire for Sam to be cared for, his motivation is once again linked to a romantic interest as Sam is referred to as Jon’s “girlfriend.” Here, Jon’s embodiment of masculinity and femininity is clearly apparent: his motivation stems from a feminine connection but his manner of dealing with the situation is violent and thereby stereotypically masculine. This intent, combined with such action, clearly marks him as different from the other men. Jon is unique in his approach and, whilst initially respected for it, it is soon apparent that for the other men who simply embody masculinity, Jon Snow cannot remain.

This coexistence of intent and action is again apparent in Jon’s interactions with Olly. Interestingly, this happens once again in a moment in which Jon is acting his most typically masculine and coaching Olly in developing his fighting technique. Notably, Jon’s focus in this interaction is his desire to ensure that Olly is able to protect himself, instructing him on numerous occasions to “keep your shield up.” Olly is not being coached in how to kill, but rather how to defend. Jon’s aim is to ensure the safety of the young boy rather than training him to become an efficient killer.

Interactions with women

Jon Snow’s most formative female relationship is that with Ygritte, the Free Folk (Wildling) woman with whom he falls in love. It is worth nothing that Jon, formally directed to being the masculine counterpart in his relationship with Sam, is here relegated to the feminine role. Ygritte’s superior hunting knowledge and her difficulty in understanding why any girl should ‘swoon’ immediately mark her out as functioning in a conventionally non-feminine manner. Her focus in this interaction is upon violence and possession, remarking to Snow that, “You are mine,” whilst Jon’s focus is once again on seeking to protect the lives of others. Ygritte is unfazed by the prospect of their death and in her possession of her lover, expects him to remain her possession beyond death.

Her constant refrain of, “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” highlights the hierarchy in their relationship. It is useful here to utilize Deborah Tannen’s difference theory, in which she highlights the variances between male and female conversation. Indeed, much of Tannen’s theory, in which she highlights six contrasts between male and female language, are particularly pertinent in the discussion of Jon’s nature. Take for example, her discussion upon the concept of independence (the male characteristic) and intimacy (the female characteristic). Tannen notes that men are more concerned with status and thus focus more on gaining independence. Men risk losing their status if asking for permission and thus reducing their independence, but through his allegiance with the Night’s Watch, Jon has lost all independence, as Ygritte readily points out to him. It is she that is truly free and she recognizes this, whilst Jon has neither sought independence nor recognized that it is lacking.

In a similar manner, we can see that when considering Tannen’s concept of conflict (the male characteristic) and compromise (the female characteristic), Jon once again aligns himself more with the female characteristic. He seeks a compromise with the Free Folk (Wildlings) after their defeat at the hand of Stannis Baratheon, identifying and understanding that conflict and violence is futile. Ygritte, prior to her death, is entirely focused on conflict: she sees no sense in compromise regardless of Jon’s interjections. She questions his lack of conflict when he informs her that he is a Stark, unable to understand or even identify with his approach.

Ultimately, it is this notion of compromise that results in Jon’s apparent death at the end of season 5. The men of the Night’s Watch are unable to reconcile themselves with his approach to dealing with the Free Folk (Wildlings). For the men, who only embody masculinity, a compromise signals weakness. In order to coax Jon into the trap set for him, the men appeal to his emotional, and thereby feminine side, by attempting to engage him emotionally (informing him that news of his uncle has arrived). Is this to suggest then that a character who readily embodies both masculinity and femininity cannot exist in this patriarchal world? Sam, another character who arguably exhibits both genders in his actions, perhaps recognizing the precarious nature of such an existence, has physically removed himself from Castle Black, and in doing so has, thus far, survived. For Jon Snow, whose emotions ever connect him to Castle Black, there could be no such escape.

References:

Butler, J. (1999). Gender trouble. New York: Routledge.

Siobhan Denton is a teacher and writer living in Wales, UK. She holds a BA in English and an MA in Film and Television Studies. She is especially interested in depictions of female desire and transitions from youth to adulthood. She tweets at @siobhan_denton and writes at https://theblueandthedim.wordpress.com/.

Why I Will Miss Ygritte’s Fierce Feminism on ‘Game of Thrones’

Ygritte was fierce, she was vibrant, and she didn’t take any shit. Ygritte’s feminism was multi-dimensional, and for me she will always be missed.

This guest post written by Jackie Johnson appears as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones.

I broke the rule. You are never supposed to get attached to a character in Game of Thrones; George R.R. Martin will kill them and enjoy your anguish. Despite seeing Ned, Catelyn, Robb, and a host of others perish or just disappear (can we get a status check on Gendry, Osha, and Rickon?), I had real hope for Ygritte, the warrior beyond The Wall. It was a naive hope, but a hope nonetheless. There are plenty of female characters for a feminist to fall in love with on Game of Thrones; so many that Ygritte gets drowned out among the cheers for Arya and the Mother of Dragons. She was fierce, she was vibrant, and she didn’t take any shit. Ygritte’s feminism was multi-dimensional, and for me she will always be missed.

Paramount to Ygritte’s storyline was her relationship with Jon Snow. Despite her purpose in the narrative structure (and the fact that she gets fridged), Ygritte never felt like she was merely a love interest for Jon. She was interesting to watch on her own. Further, her status as a Wildling/Free Folk holds a mirror to both Jon Snow and the audience’s internalized understandings of the role of women, female capacities, and our understanding of “the other”. Jon has lived his whole life in a strict, patrilineal society and consistently been told that the Wildlings are savages, which leads him to underestimate Ygritte time and time again. The Wildling tribes/Free Folk are no Herland; the patriarchy is alive and well throughout the land beyond The Wall (just look at Gilly’s father). However, Ygritte shows both Jon and the audience that a woman can fight and excel at it, like sex, love fiercely, and kill without flinching, all in the same day.

Though there are a plethora of reasons to look up to a girl like Ygritte, her complexity as a character, her ability as a warrior, and her sex positivity earn her a slot alongside Oberyn Martell as the hardest loss so far (sorry Ned).

Ygritte is a multi-dimensional Bad-Ass:

It can be exhausting looking for female characters who are fully realized human beings in the fantasy genre. George R.R. Martin has surprised me again and again with the range of female characters and the range that exists within the characters themselves. They exist on a spectrum of femininity and express their feminism in a variety of ways. It would have been incredibly easy for Ygritte to occupy the same place on this spectrum as Arya or even Brienne. Like them, Ygritte is first and foremost a fighter, but Ygritte never falls into the tomboy stereotype Arya embodies. Tomboys on screen are frequently de-sexed, given masculine attributes, and have no interest in romantic relationships or anything remotely coded as feminine. Lastly, they are young girls, who grow up to be the “real woman” they were meant to be. Though not traditionally feminine, Ygritte doesn’t fully fit this mold. In addition to the displays of Ygritte’s sexuality, we see her capacity to love and scenes where she expresses both empathy and vulnerability.

Most notably, at the end of Season 4 when the Wildlings raid Mole’s Town south of The Wall and kill basically everyone in sight, Ygritte spares Gilly and her baby. She recognizes Gilly as a fellow Free Folk and tells her to keep quiet. Anyone else would have killed her and the baby, too. It’s not that Ygritte can’t kill; we see her do so time and time again with precision and ease. Instead of the scene demonstrating that Ygritte is the “weak” member of the pack, who can’t kill a girl and her baby, it shows strength in Ygritte. Despite being committed to the cause, she is not blindly fighting a revenge mission. She is fighting to take back what was stolen from her people and to create an opportunity for them to be safe when winter comes. Gilly is in some ways kin, and Ygritte sees inherent value in her life that the men alongside whom she fights surely wouldn’t.

Lastly, she loves. Ygritte sees both the joy and the pain of being in love. Jon is a man of duty, and when he chooses his duty to The Night’s Watch over his love and promises to Ygritte, it’s a devastating blow. Despite the pain, Ygritte continues on the mission and eventually faces Jon in battle. Ygritte’s pain is both visceral and real, so is her love. Game of Thrones shows strong women in love, shows them with crushes, and shows how love and trust in men has caused them pain. Despite having a fierce tongue and a strong sense of self, Ygritte never becomes a trope because her vulnerabilities round her out.

You Know Nothing Jon Snow or There’s Nothing to Read Beyond The Wall:

The Wall is an unjust place. Men and young boys are sent there because they lack access to opportunity in this classist, feudal society. Jon Snow’s superiority complex from his wealthy, noble upbringing goes with him North of The Wall. Ygritte cuts him down to size fairly quickly. Her catchphrase “You know nothing Jon Snow” is used in a variety of situations to showcase that despite Jon Snow’s education and refinement, which is both valued in Westeros and by the audience, his form of intelligence lacks importance in “The Real North”, and Jon lacks the competencies that allow The Wildlings/Free Folk the ability to survive (he doesn’t even know what warging is).

As soon as either Jon or the audience wants to dismiss Ygritte as simple, she proves that not only is she intelligent, but her view and understanding of the world might even make more sense than ours. Below is an exchange that proves that Ygritte is practical, honest, and not here for your gender essentialism.

Ygritte: Is that a palace?
Jon: It’s a windmill.
Ygritte: Windmill…Well who built it? Some king?
Jon: Just the men that used to live here.
Ygritte: They must’ve been great builders stacking stones that high.
Jon: If you’re impressed by a windmill, you’d be swooning if you saw the Great Keep at Winterfell.
Ygritte: What’s swooning?
Jon: Fainting.
Ygritte: What’s fainting?
Jon: When a girl sees blood and collapses.
Ygritte: Why would a girl see blood and collapse?
Jon: Well, not all girls are like you.
Ygritte: Well, girls see more blood than boys, or do you like girls who swoon? *Gasp* It’s a spider. Save me Jon Snow. My dress is made from the purest silk from Tralalalalalede!
Jon: I’d like to see you in a silk dress.
Ygritte: Would ya?
Jon: So I can tear it off you.
Ygritte: Well, if you rip my pretty silk dress, I’ll blacken your eye.

She’s completely right. Feminine weakness is contrived BS. Masculinity and femininity, both social constructs, were created in opposition to each other and dictate a lot of our rigid gender norms. They have taken years to create and maintain, and in seven words Ygritte shows them for what they really are: bullshit.

A Skilled Archer:

There is no doubting Ygritte’s skill with a bow. It makes me proud to see Ygritte fighting alongside men. As a woman, she doesn’t just have to fight Westerosi Northerners and Crows at The Wall, she has to fight sexism within her own ranks. She rebuffs their sexism with skill and braggadocio. When women fight sexism on screen, we never expect them to be “crude”; crude women aren’t “likeable”. Ygritte does not care if the sexist, cannibal Styr who makes lewd comments at her thinks she’s likeable (Her line “You been thinkin’ about that ginger minge” comes to mind). No woman should feel the pressure to be “likeable.” Watching Ygritte not give a fuck feels incredibly liberating.

Ygritte is a bad ass, but she’s the only Wilding/Free Folk woman we see for many seasons. This reminds us that though it may seem that The Wildlings/Free Folk might have more access and opportunities for women, women are never completely safe or completely free.

“You Pull A Knife on Me in the Middle of the Night”:

Ygritte might talk about sex as much as Tyrion Lannister, and that’s no easy feat. While Game of Thrones is full of sex scenes, few women not employed as sex workers frequently talk about sex and sexuality. Ygritte often taunts Jon about his inexperience or discomfort around sex, and we see that she thinks sex is both fun and funny. I’m not advocating teasing virgins, but Ygritte and Jon’s exchanges illustrate how much of our societal understandings of sex and sexuality are linked to gender identity. Further, their role reversal forces us to question how our ideas about sex have been constructed. Though our larger cultural understandings about sex have evolved over time, we can see parallels between Westeros and our present day society.

Jon’s understanding of sex has always been linked to his status as a bastard. While he knows Theon and other men visit brothels, for men of their stature they are supposed to be concerned with knocking up their future wives. Growing up as a bastard, Jon knew that his brothers’ futures of marrying noblewomen and having children might not be available to him. Moreover, when he joins The Night’s Watch and takes a vow of celibacy, he does so hardly knowing any girls or women he’s not related to. Jon knows little to nothing about sex or love and has lost the one parent he’s ever known. Enter Ygritte.

By contrast, Ygritte understands that sex is a natural, normal part of human existence and doesn’t quite understand what Jon’s hang up is (it’s a special brand of duty, honor, and angst). There is a lot of sex on Game of Thrones, and there is unfortunately a lot of rape (even when it’s not in the books). There are few scenes like Ygritte and Jon’s playful, tender, and loving first time. It was a love story I invested in, and I felt a loss when it ended.

In a show where women characters are frequently treated as disposable (see treatment of sex workers), it was truly terrible to see one of the best characters die, and by the weapon they wield with such power. Sometimes I curse George R.R. Martin in my head, and other times I put my feminist hopes in Daenerys and Margaery. It’s always hard to lose a character you love, but on a show where women have such few avenues to power and are restricted by the men that surround them, Ygritte was a hero.

Jackie Johnson is a writer combining her love of sociology and pop culture. You can find her drinking chai and trying her darndest not to spend any money. She blogs at https://blackpopsocial.wordpress.com/.

‘Jessica Jones,’ The Kilgrave Mirror and the Distancing Effect of Negative Masculinity

The result is that while many viewers are no doubt cishet white men, few will truly identify with what Kilgrave illustrates not just about rapists and abusers, but about negative ideas about masculinity itself.

This is a guest post by Scott Remington.

When Netflix announced their new series Jessica Jones featured a villain who was not just evil, but an actual emotionally abusive manipulator, there was a rush on various social networks to remind fans that despite being a superhero show, his actions would not be unlike ones real people have experienced. In Jessica Jones, they seemed to suggest, we can see more than just a superhero trying to triumph over a villain, but reflections of real people’s struggle with the emotional wreckage of abuse and rape and the difficulty survivors face in having to move past it while the abusers remain at large. The show has been praised for its ability to illustrate what abusive techniques like gaslighting, victim-blaming, and emotional coercion can feel like, thanks to the way viewers identify with the title character and her struggle to overcome her PTSD. Yet Jessica Jones falters in one key area, and that is with viewer identification with the negative aspects of masculinity displayed by the abuser, Kilgrave.

Kilgrave’s ability is mind control, but within the context of the show it’s not just how he can make anyone do anything, it’s how getting anything he wants simply by asking for it has led to him growing up with an enormous sense of entitlement to the world and the people in it. Series creator and showrunner Melissa Rosenburg reflected on this in an article where she drew parallels from Kilgrave’s power to the privilege and entitlement white men have normalized for themselves through media and the principle of American bootstrap logic. When he’s denied what he believes is his (Jessica’s love), Kilgrave becomes fixated on changing her mind much the way men try to reason with women who reject their advances.

Throughout the series, Kilgrave obtains money, fancy dinner reservations, and yes, even people, with barely a thought to whether he should have them. His manipulation results in trauma and death for many of those around Jessica. While this makes him a powerful avatar of privilege and colonialism, it also has the consequence of making Kilgrave and all he represents into “the other.” As long as his actions so clearly violate laws of viewer’s morality, and are portrayed as such by the main character, it’s unlikely viewers will reflect on what they mean coming from a man motivated by ideas about masculinity and not just free will. The result is that while many viewers are no doubt cishet white men, few will truly identify with what Kilgrave illustrates not just about rapists and abusers, but about negative ideas about masculinity itself.

Kilgrave does many things representing male fantasies, such as when he joins a high stakes game of poker and forces all the other men to let him win. He eggs them on with emasculating insults, (“Where are your balls?”) and boosts his ego even further by compelling the non-participating women in the room to echo his words at them. When threatened by a man for leaving without giving them a chance to win their money back, Kilgrave slips out by getting him to pound his head against a pole. It’s a twist on the “underdog outwits the bad guys” formula, the masculine idea of triumphing against the odds through brains, not brawn, but given a bad taste when we later learn Kilgrave will use the money to buy Jessica’s old house to enact a disturbing parody of a marriage and the American Dream.

No less disturbing, but far more culturally relevant is Kilgrave’s ability to blackmail Jessica into sending him photos of her under fear of reprisal against those she cares about. While male viewers no doubt see his actions to control her via the threat of violence as abusive, it’s unlikely many would associate his desire to have them with the way men casually request similar from women on dating sites as though it were a normal and not potentially dangerous request (see the celebrity photo hack). A phenomenon often observed in scenes where women fight sexism is how male viewers identify with the character “triumphing” yet don’t see how they have more in common with the male perpetrator than the character.

Jessica Jones features several examples where men’s seemingly innocuous entitlement to a woman’s body or her attention is shown as an annoyance, such as when a man harasses Patsy and Jessica in the bar with suggestive comments, to actively dangerous, such as Simpson’s insistence that he be allowed to make up for trying to kill Patsy while under Kilgrave’s control. Simpson’s struggle to overcome his mind control manifests in increasingly dangerous ways, yet overlooks the fact that as a white male in a position of authority his insistence on being “forgiven” by Trish is a function of privilege and abuse and not just personality. When the perspective shifts to actions, viewers are often given an excuse not to identify with the masculinity the character expresses, or else they excuse it by suggesting the characters’ actions are “not what I would do.”

This is nothing new however, as the cognitive flip that allows viewers to enjoy watching and rooting for male anti-heroes/villains while ignoring their own ties to the message is so common it’s basically accepted as part of the cishet white anti-hero character. The distance viewers establish from the characters is present in the so called “morally grey character,” a simultaneously cautionary tale/wish fulfillment vessel who follows a path of masculinity leading them to make terrible decisions most viewers innately reject. Often the characters justify this as being either about “surviving” or “protecting,” two feelings viewers identify with even when the result twists into something amoral.

For examples of the dark side of control and protection, look no further than the darkly comedic serial killer drama Dexter. The series urged viewers to root for and identify with a white male anti-hero who compartmentalized his life in order to exercise the ultimate form of control by killing those who the viewer saw as “monstrous” as their actions made them unforgivable. It’s notable that the titular character always painted his targets in black and white terms based on their actions, while he (and many viewers) dismissed his own horrendous behavior as not under his control, thus absolving him from similar judgment. A closer look often revealed Dexter’s “good” side to be both a shield, as well as genuinely relatable in how he struggled with being a father and husband while hiding his need for homicidal behavior.

Throughout the series, Dexter faced other murderous men who reflected parts of him — men equally control obsessed and claimed just as many lives — yet viewers were always allowed to identify with Dexter’s paternalism and vigilantism enough to brush off lies and deceptions. This distancing from his obsession with control remained so strong that it was only by the end of the series that people saw the true damage wreaked by his attempts to hide his secret from his loved ones. Dexter’s killer masculinity may have been an exaggeration, but his selfishness is all the more dangerous because of how easily men identify with lying for the “sake” of others’ safety.

The theme of “protecting” is central to the masculinity of the “good” anti-hero, even when that protection is not necessarily wanted. For a shining example, look no further than the forever-entitled patriarch Walter White (See what they did there?) in Breaking Bad. Viewers were quick to identify with Walter’s meek, emasculated everyman who nonetheless possessed an aptitude for the sciences that made him capable in entertaining yet deadly ways. Like Dexter, the fun was seeing how Walter could regain control when under pressure. However, where Dexter kept his life secret from his loyal wife Rita, Walter’s wife bore the brunt of Walter’s anger and dissatisfaction. Skyler White was accused of second guessing and belittling her husband on numerous occasions, even while she tried desperately to free her family from the dangerous life he made them a part of. Viewers identified with Walter’s amoral antics while despising Skyler for talking back or lashing out against her husband’s poisonous control “with such venom” that actress Anna Gunn wrote an entire essay on how easily the annoyance with Skyler conflated annoyance with her in real life and what this indicates about our perspectives on gender and misogyny.

When viewers analyzed Walter’s pathological refusal to take “charity” or his pride and belief he DESERVED to be more than a high school science teacher, they rarely scrutinized the connection to masculinity. When he manipulated his former student Jesse Pinkman under the guise of security and partnership, viewers excused it as necessary to keep him safe, and rarely saw it as the same kind of entitlement that Kilgrave practiced. When Walter himself admitted he’d done what he’d done not just for his family, but because he enjoyed the power and control he got, viewers saw him as a figure consumed ambition, not a man like themselves who had grown up believing they had a right to wealth and fame simply by growing up in the “land of opportunity.”

But the most unnerving example of these toxic avatars whose critique of masculinity goes unacknowledged is the one whose popularity is itself evidence of how far male viewers will identify yet differentiate themselves from negative masculinity. Tyler Durden of Chuck Palahniuk’s ode to lost manhood and twisted revolution, Fight Club, and portrayed by Brad Pitt in the much-lauded David Fincher film. Acting as both a charismatic cult leader to young men who feel emasculated and beaten down by corporate culture, and a dangerous realization of the Alpha Male archetype, the narrator, like the audience, is at first captivated by the controlled presence of Tyler.

In Tyler’s own words he is: “smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not,” a real life masculine fantasy being sold to the yearning men of the world, including the young cishet white viewers. Yet, the narrator’s relationship with Tyler is not portrayed as a healthy one, ranging from him excusing bruises on his face with explicit reference to domestic violence, to him tricking his boss to let him leave work by making himself look like a victim of him. As corporate skyscrapers fall, male viewers reject Tyler’s actions, but have they really understood how Tyler Durden’s masculinity exists all around us? In the white terrorism from the rage at not feeling recognized? Or in the men who see women as only virgins or whores?

Melissa Rosenberg referred to Kilgrave as “Jessica’s Chinatown,” alluding to the legendarily bleak film by the convicted sex offender Roman Polanski, whose most haunting scene is the failure of the male hero Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) to save Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) and her sister/daughter from the clutches of her predatory father. What the film doesn’t dwell on is how Jake learns this information: a desperate interrogation wherein his masculine desire to “find the truth” motivates him to hit a woman and (unknowingly) an abuse survivor, while ignoring her tears and pleas.

Movies are mirrors, and just because we don’t like the reflection they display doesn’t mean viewers can shatter them and then claim it’s not accurate. Because movies aren’t mirrors individually: they represent diverse people’s experience of the world and the people in it. If we’re willing to accept Jessica Jones as the story about one woman’s struggle with a male abuser, why can’t we accept that, on some level, it’s just as much a story about women’s experience with harmful masculinity as it is about “monstrous” abusers?

Scott Remington is a TV aficionado and prospective writer, currently examining privilege and gender via social media. Graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English and multiple credits in religious studies, he analyzes movies at (https://myfearfulsymmetry.wordpress.com/) and provides support to others at @RemingtonWild on Twitter. He has no cats but would like to someday own several.

Patty Jenkins’ ‘Monster’: Shouldering the Double Burden of Masculinity and Femininity

In this narrative we see masculinity float free from any ties to the male body, femininity float free from any easy connection to frailness – we see them meet in the one body of this working class woman to excruciating effect.

This guest post by Katherine Parker-Hay appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

When film explores the lives of women who kill, the audience is well-versed in where to locate their corruption: femininity. Think Fatal Attraction’s Alex (1987), Gone Girl’s Amy (2014), the woman shaped alien of Under the Skin (2013). If these figures are evil it is because they choose to act out in ways that contradict traditional views of women. As such they linger on the outside of what is knowable. Again and again, the audience is asked to make intelligible these creatures that don’t quite belong to this world but, as they never quite belong to us, unravelling the secrets of their inner selves is a task that – no doubt intentionally – will forever elude. Patty Jenkins’s Monster is therefore refreshing, bemusing even, because it doesn’t resort to this logic. It refuses this well-worn trope of a female killer whose mysterious inner core we are all so relentlessly on the tail of.

Monster is based on the real life story of Aileen Wuornos, a homeless serial killer who received the death sentence after murdering seven men that picked her up as a prostitute. Wuornos is an enigmatic figure that haunts the public imagination as “America’s first female serial killer” but, rather than rehashing the trope of a mysterious/failed femininity, Jenkins locates Lee’s (Charlize Theron) violence in the fact that she is under pressure to perform both classic femininity and classic masculinity at the same time. Coerced by girlfriend Selby (Christina Ricci), Lee has to be both sole provider and an object endlessly open to exploitation. This pressure is too great for one person. Jenkins’ film charts the excruciating process of Lee crumbling, unable hold the most toxic attributes of both genders together in one body.

The final murder: unable to contain both

Lee finds herself falling for a woman unexpectedly when she stumbles into what happens to be a gay bar and is approached by a naïve and wide-eyed Selby. In the scenes that follow we witness a spellbinding vacuum of roles and Lee, dizzy with first-time desire, soon promises to offer more than she can realistically provide. After a first kiss on the roller skate rink, we quickly cut to the street where the couple are in a hurried embrace behind buildings. Selby has to stop Lee in her tracks, warning that they should find somewhere less public to continue. After offering a nearby yard as a realistic option Lee quickly backtracks, realising that to be with Selby she needs to be ready promise the world. This is an ominous sign of what is to come. Willing to shoulder the burden of classic masculinity, Lee promises to do whatever necessary and they arrange to meet the following evening.

As this scene of erotic discovery transitions into the next, we witness Lee tumbling along the full spectrum of gender – from classic masculinity (unshakable provider, picking up the bill) to classic femininity (vulnerable, able to draw out chivalry from all those around). With the musical score sweeping in to capture the heights of her elation, Lee quite literally spins into the next scene; we roll with her: music still playing from the night before, we see her “hooking” with newfound determination. Her face is steely, ready to take on any role that she might need to in order to accommodate her newfound desires and stay true to her promise. Charlie Shipley makes the point that the musical score of this film doesn’t merely heighten tension as traditionally understood – pop music comes from the world of the characters themselves and marks points where their fantasy lives begin to stretch the bounds of what is ordinarily possible. This certainly appears the case for the poignant transition between these two scenes. In order to surmount the impossible heights of classic masculinity that are now laid at her feet, Lee gathers momentum to beyond herself in an embrace of the hyper-feminine.

Steely with determination: “They had no idea what I could discipline myself to”

Lee understands how to tap into conventional femininity in order to make money. Importantly though, this femininity is not hers in the sense of being derived from some inner core – Lee is able to tune into well-worn tropes circulating society more widely, indeed she is an expert reader of these formulas and draws together a perfect damsel in distress narrative to solicit clients. Her routine is to walk the highway as if a vulnerable hitchhiker and, once inside the cars, she tells of how she is trying to make enough money to get back to her children. She then shows the driver a picture of the kids, his cue to make the chivalrous proposal of an exchange of sex for money. Lee has an exact understanding of how stylised femininity works and pounces upon it, knowing that this is just about the only means, for a woman of her class with dreams as big as hers, to get the money she needs. Hyper-femininity is simply an act that she has trained herself into and this has nothing to do with a mysterious essence that the reader has to bend over backwards in order to comprehend. “The thing no one ever realised about me, or believed, was that I could learn,” she reflects later in the film, “I could train myself into anything.”

However, as the film progresses it becomes clear that Selby is not content living within their means and, at the same time, Lee’s clients are not satisfied by a performance of vulnerability on Lee’s own terms. The men who pick her up are not interested in sexual intercourse alone. They feel entitled to titillating performances of conventional femininity and what’s more they expect her to improvise this free of charge. In one scene we see Lee and a client sitting in the front seats of a car and to Lee’s distress the man is delaying undressing. He badgers her: “Do you have a wet pussy?” Lee looks away and answers with a compliant, “Yeah sure.” “Do you like fucking?” he persists and, unable to draw out the right level of enthusiasm, he says, incredulous, “Jesus Christ, you’d think nobody ever talked dirty to you before.” Lee reassures him with all the energy she can muster: “I just like to settle first you know.” She is unable to keep going to these lengths, yet she is equally unable to disappoint Selby who is waiting for her to return to their motel room cash-in-hand. It is the impossibility of embodying these polar extremes of gender expression that leaves Lee ensnared and desperate. Rather than admit defeat Lee chooses to act out with murderous violence, killing the men who pick her up so that she can take their money.

Roger Ebert has celebrated the way that Theron perfects body language to capture the persona of Lee, writing that the character “doesn’t know how to occupy her body.” As the film goes on, Lee increasingly struggles to hold things together and this discomfort is evoked with every flinch, with every time she meets another’s eye for just that little bit too long. Lee is uncomfortable in her own skin and unable to endure being pulled in both directions. Monster shows a body increasingly stretched, pulled apart by a toxic clash of roles.

Interview: unable to act naturally

Through the character of Lee, Jenkins achieves a dazzlingly fresh approach to women and violence on screen. Watching one woman try and contain so much, trying to be so many different people just to get by, is what makes this film so fascinating. In this narrative we see masculinity float free from any ties to the male body, femininity float free from any easy connection to frailness – we see them meet in the one body of this working class woman to excruciating effect. This is a woman who kills because she is required to embody what so many of us cannot even handle the half of. She takes on all of it, and this proves to be much too much.

Katherine Parker-Hay has a BA in English from Goldsmiths University of London and an MA in Women’s Studies from University of Oxford. She writes on queer theory, women’s cultural output, temporality, and comic serials.

The Angry Young Man in Horror

These films work to varying degrees, and the circumstances are diverse, but the core of each story is the same – one violent little boy. In a society where privileged young men (i.e. heterosexual, white, young adult males) are committing heinous crimes like date rape and mass shootings on an alarmingly regular basis, a fear of angry young men seems valid, and reason enough for a trend in horror.

This guest post by Claire Holland previously appeared at Razor Apple and is cross-posted with permission.

Be warned: This post is full of spoilers for Goodnight Mommy, Cub, and The Boy.

More often than not, horror movies reveal the fears of our time. In Axelle Carolyn’s excellent book, It Lives Again! Horror Movies in the New Millennium, the author illustrates how our collective fears end up reflected in different ways on screen. Carolyn makes the argument (and backs it up) that the popularity of every big horror trend originated somewhere in our collective consciousness, connecting trends to a country’s political climate, terrorist attacks, and other big events that resonant deeply throughout cultures.

As the late and great Wes Craven said, “Horror films don’t create fear. They release it.”

Carolyn’s book came to mind recently as I watched a crop of new films, each about the potential for violence in young boys: Goodnight Mommy, Cub, and The Boy. These films work to varying degrees, and the circumstances are diverse, but the core of each story is the same – one violent little boy. In a society where privileged young men (i.e. heterosexual, white, young adult males) are committing heinous crimes like date rape and mass shootings on an alarmingly regular basis, a fear of angry young men seems valid, and reason enough for a trend in horror.

Of course, these are horror movies, not case studies. As much as horror reflects society’s fears, it distorts them, making them ever more monstrous. In Goodnight Mommy, a young boy, Elias, suffers from a break with reality, imagining his dead twin brother is still alive and the woman living in his house is merely masquerading as his mother. In Cub, Boy Scout Sam stumbles onto the lair of Kai, a feral child living, and killing, out in the woods. The Boy takes the most realistic tack by far, examining the lonely childhood of a budding murderer, Ted, growing up in the middle of nowhere. These are the origin stories of the Angry Young Man, told through the lens of the horror genre.

There are numerous parallels between the three boys, who all engage in gradually escalating forms of violence: they kick chickens, kill dogs, and eventually wind up super gluing their mothers’ lips together or setting buildings full of people aflame. They’re all isolated: Elias’s brother and father are dead, his mother distant; Sam is a foster child without friends, a kid whom even the Boy Scout troop leader disdains; and Ted lives in a desolate motel with only his alcoholic father and a few passing guests for company. Most importantly, though, their attempts at connecting with others are constantly thwarted, or even actively discouraged.

When Elias, out of grief and guilt, insists that his mother speak to Lukas or make him breakfast, his mother reacts furiously, verbally and physically berating Elias. She slaps him and makes him to repeat aloud, “I will not speak to Lukas,” over and over again, when what Elias clearly needs is his mother’s love and understanding – and therapy. Bafflingly, Elias and his mother live in a lavish house that seems completely sequestered from the rest of the world, making the boy’s isolation all the more palpable. Given no one to talk to or work through his feelings with, Elias lashes out at the only person he can, creating an elaborate fantasy wherein his mother is an evil imposter who must be tortured until she can bring back his real mother and, presumably, the rest of his family.

In The Boy, Ted seems like a fairly normal kid, albeit one who is very comfortable with death. His father pays him pennies for picking up road kill, a pastime that eventually morphs into Ted luring animals onto the road. This is troubling, but the sort of behavior that might be curbed by an involved parent (preferably one who doesn’t demand road kill in exchange for attention). Under the nonexistent supervision of his father, however, Ted’s interest in death blooms, as does his inferiority complex – a dangerous combination. As with Elias, when Ted reaches out for companionship and acceptance – first to his father, and then to a kind but troubled drifter – he is beaten down, emotionally and physically. His pain and anger eventually culminate in murderous arson. This doesn’t seem like the story of a cold, calculating sociopath, no matter how much the filmmaker bills it that way. Ted is full of feelings, but because those feelings are never validated, he can only find destructive ways to express them.

Cub carries out this same model, but to cartoonish heights. Sam is the odd kid out in his Boy Scout troop, so when he encounters feral Kai on a camping trip in the woods, he feels an immediate kinship with the outcast and the two form a cautious rapport. At one point, the troop leader sics his dog on Sam as a mean joke, so Kai kidnaps the dog and hangs it from a tree so that Sam can kill it. Kai, a boy who has been used and abused by those bigger and stronger than him, considers this a gift. Sam is initially shocked and repulsed, but when he tries to help the dog and is bitten for his trouble, he retaliates, sick of being hurt by those he reaches out to again and again. Unable to truly forge a bond with anyone, Sam finally kills Kai so that he can take over the feral boy’s malevolent, vengeful persona.

The shared element in these three stories of angry young men is an unwillingness of the guardians and role models to nurture, or even condone, sensitivity in these boys. They constantly demand that the boys be tougher, thicker-skinned, less vulnerable, regardless of their actual feelings or needs. When Ted’s father allows a prom afterparty to take place at the motel, sans parents, he tells Ted, “The boys’ll be boys and the girls’ll be girls; good, harmless fun. You get what I’m sayin’?” One can easily imagine the kind of behavior Ted’s father is allowing, and tacitly condoning. “Boys will be boys” encompasses all manner of sins. When those same boys hurt Ted and his father blames him, Ted sees no other option than to become a stronger (read: hyper-masculine) version of those cruel boys in order to survive.

We can’t excuse violent criminals for their actions just because they may have had bad childhoods, but our society’s emphasis on the masculine above everything else is a real problem. Forcing young boys to “toughen up” before they’re ready only forces them to give up their empathy, and that benefits no one. These three stories are horrific, but they are, after all, just stories. Unfortunately, the real crimes committed by angry young men – Sandy Hook, Steubenville, Aurora – are as gruesome as fiction.

Claire Holland is a freelance writer and author of Razor Apple, a blog devoted to horror movies and horror culture with a feminist bent. Claire has a BA in English and creative writing, but she insists on writing about “trashy” genre movies nonetheless. You can follow her on twitter @ClaireCWrites.

‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’: Childhood Is The Pits

The heroic journey of Short Round is the catalyst for both Willie’s and Indy’s own growth and transcendence, as Willie becomes proactive and Indy becomes responsible.

Ke Huy Quan as Short Round, facing the pits

Written by Brigit McCone.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the coolest kids’ movie ever made about severe child abuse. Just as Roald Dahl’s Matilda does for daughters and mothers, so The Temple of Doom affirms that the good father must empower his son, and defends the child’s right to reject and resist abusive behavior. Critics who strive to dismiss the film as the original trilogy’s “weakest” often snark about the allegedly annoying chirpiness of Ke Huy Quan’s heartfelt performance. I suspect they are actually uncomfortable that Spielberg’s film narratively centers Short Round as its protagonist, while casually assuming that an adult audience identify with him. From his hero-worship of Indy to his glee at the film’s thrill rides, Short Round’s emotional responses cue our own, including an assumed desire to break up kissing couples and see squealing girls get giant millipedes down the back of their necks.

The film embodies the sensibility of a twelve-year-old boy, wholeheartedly and without ironic distance. The mighty Indiana Jones himself is regularly “fridged,” disempowered by the mind-controlling Black Blood of Kali Ma (Mother Kali) and voodoo dolls, to further Short Round’s heroic journey. As much as Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, his Temple of Doom showcases the director’s extraordinary empathy for a young boy’s worldview, though it conjures a nightmare of parental abuse rather than E.T.‘s fantasy playmate, leading to accusations that the film is “too dark”. Validating a child’s experiences by confronting the terror of abusive parents is apparently less acceptable than Nazi torturers to mainstream (adult) viewers. Just as audiences can only fully appreciate Spielberg’s film by identifying wholeheartedly with Short Round, so Indy must learn to identify with the child’s perspective to grow into the role of good father, from careless and selfish beginnings. His newfound identification is showcased when begged to flee the hellish Thuggee lair. Harrison Ford turns, jaw set in iconic resolution, and growls “right! All of us” before battling for the cathartic liberation of every last one of the film’s abused children. Coolest. Dad. Ever.

"Left Tunnel, Indy!" - good father. Crap navigator. — “Left Tunnel, Indy!” – good father. Crap navigator.

Because Short Round is positioned as the protagonist of the film in terms of agency, I don’t read it as a conventional White Savior narrative. Indy’s swaggering Fedora the Explorer is repeatedly punished for assuming he knows better than the film’s Asian boys. As Short Round puts it, with a frustration familiar to any child, “I keep telling you, you listen to me more, you live longer!” Interestingly, the Prime Minister of Pangkot explicitly accuses British colonials of viewing Indians as children, while the Thuggee appropriate the village’s power source and indoctrinate their children like nightmare colonizer-fathers (yes, Indians are the film’s primary representatives of Patriarcho-colonialism. “Projection” has many cinematic meanings). The film’s paternalist Brits monitor and stifle, but fail to figure out what’s really going on until it’s too late. Only the holy fire of Short Round’s torch, that awakens Indy as Indy’s fiery wrath awakens the Sankara stones, can defeat the Thuggee menace.

Where British colonizers infantilize adults, Indiana Jones lets children drive (a powerful metaphor, if inadvisable from a vehicular manslaughter standpoint). The supernatural power of the stones confirms that Indiana Jones operates in a syncretic universe, in which the divine can manifest equally as Shiva or Jehovah, marking no culture as inherently superior. However, the failure of The Last Crusade to even mention Short Round’s fate, in its meditations on the meaning of fatherhood, reinforces the vilest stereotypes of interracial adoptees as disposable rent-a-kids. Indian culture is also caricatured and distorted by the film, even granted the disturbing true history of the Thuggee death cult. Where in Hinduism the god Shiva and goddess Kali are consorts, each representing forces of combined destruction and creation, Spielberg and Lucas create a simplistic opposition between a heroic Shiva and an evil Kali.

The historical Thuggee did kill in Kali’s name, indoctrinating young boys into their cult, but did not target women. The film’s plot, with Indy possessed by his skull-faced mother goddess and compelled to destroy his blonde love interest, therefore resembles a Bollywood reimagining of Hitchcock’s Psycho more than Hinduism. Spielberg’s Thuggee are a cult that brutally enslave children, both boys and girls. The boys are terrified that their puberty will force them to become mindless abusers themselves: “will become like them. Will be alive, but like a nightmare. You drink blood, you not wake up from nightmare”. We see no adult women among the Thuggee which, along with the attempted sacrifice of Willie, forces us to conclude that the enslaved girls have their hearts torn out and are fed to the flames when they hit puberty. The film’s vision of the Thuggee is thus a nightmare caricature of patriarchy: consuming women heart first, enslaving children and turning terrified boys into inevitable replicas of their abusive fathers, for fear of sharing the sacrificial woman’s fate (“projection” has oh so many cinematic meanings). How appropriate, then, that the surrogate family at the film’s heart – Indy, Willie and Short Round – caricature traditional gender roles. Indy is an overtly macho leader who lusts after “fortune and glory”; Willie is a squeamish, passive beauty who seeks to control violent men with sex appeal; Short Round is a colonized kid who models his whole identity on his father-figure. When Indy is forced to drink the Kool-Aid of Kali Ma, this substance abuse terrifyingly alters his personality, becoming a violent and unloving nightmare father. It is up to Short Round to break this cycle and fight back (dun-ta-dun-tah, dun-ta-daaah!)

Kate Capshaw as Willie, facing the pits of Mommy-goddess issues — Kate Capshaw as Willie, facing the fiery pits of patriarchy’s Mommy-goddess issues

Willie is a perfect deconstruction of the myth of female sexual power, and Kate Capshaw plays her with tongue firmly in cheek. She attempts to secure her position in Shanghai by her sexual power over an influential mob boss, but he hardly cares if she dies. She tries to bolster her shaky self-worth by accusing Indy of being unable to take his eyes off her, only to be humiliated as he pointedly pulls his fedora over those eyes and naps. Further outraged as Indy seems more interested in feeling up a statue than in making love to her, the objectified Willie is reduced to being farcically jealous of a literal object. After Indy becomes evil through drinking the Black Blood of Kali Ma (what is it with women and their wicked bleeding, amirite?), Willie attempts to cure him using traditionally female strategies of appeasing, pleading and crying, that are shown to be totally ineffective. The audience is lured into a contemptuous “girls are stoopid” view of Willie, that reflects the typical psychology of children in abusive families, who cope with their own terrifying helplessness by identifying with the seeming strength of the abuser, and redirecting their angry frustration at the apparently weaker, appeasing parent. If you are one of the many feminists who hate Willie, ask why you intensely dislike a woman who struggles to secure her safety nonviolently, and is out of her depth in a situation where we would be likewise. Battling to be more than some man’s Willie, Willie shows great guts, becoming a partner in adventure who courageously fights for Short Round, braving hideous bugs to free him and forcefully stamping on the fingers of the villainous Mola Ram as he climbs to get them. Willie even develops a sense of humor about being hosed by Short Round’s elephant. Coolest. Mom. Ever.

Of course, there are problems with this model. The Indiana Jones trilogy follows the usual pattern of male-authored feminist empowerment, in proposing that women can become equal to men by proving that they can be masculine, with no self-scrutiny or uncomfortable adjustments necessary in the underlying ideology of male domination. Insecurity over female sexuality pervades these representations. If a woman tries to get her way using sexual power, like Kate Capshaw’s Willie, she is ruthlessly mocked. If she succeeds in getting her way using sexual power, like Alison Doody’s Elsa of The Last Crusade, she is dropped screaming into a bottomless abyss. Only Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood, of Raiders of the Lost Ark, is a truly Cool Girl, because she can drink more than men, doesn’t dress too sexy and has no problem with violence. By contrast, many Asian philosophies teach that our full humanity is a balance between the forces of shiva and shakti, yin and yang. To impose a rigid gender binary, society must code shiva/yang as exclusively male, and shakti/yin as exclusively female. Each of these exclusions, enforced by strict gender policing, serves to suppress full human potential. Yet, just as Spielberg and Lucas reject the positive potential of shakti in their distortion of Hinduism, so they reject the positive potential of femininity in their distortion of women. Through Cool Girls like Marion Ravenwood, the trilogy accepts that the female is not necessarily feminine, but does nothing to question the demonization of femininity itself.

"Kali Ma Shakti De!" - Mola Ram summons his feminine side — “Kali Ma Shakti De!” – Mola Ram summons his feminine side

As for the boy-child, Short Round is repeatedly shown humorously mirroring Indy, underlining his hero worship, which is also expressed in his contempt for Willie: “you call him Dr. Jones, doll!” Trapped in the nightmarish Thuggee model, however, in which Indy has become corrupted into a violent Thug, Short Round breaks his identification with him and, with tears in his eyes, symbolically rejects him by burning him, before fighting to save mother-figure Willie from the sacrificial pit. Spielberg’s Temple of Doom resembles a Euro-American vision of hell, that Short Round must escape by braving its fires and learning to wield them himself. The abused child’s empowerment fantasy allows Short Round to locate the voodoo doll that is controlling his parent, and remove the pin, so that Indy can be magically admirable again. Indy’s own fury, at being manipulated into a mindless slave of the wicked Temple of Patriarcho-colonialism, can then awaken Shiva’s righteous flame and destroy Mola Ram’s arch-abuser. Only through such painful awakening, not appeasement, can the cycle be broken and the nightmare escaped.

The heroic journey of Short Round is the catalyst for both Willie’s and Indy’s own growth and transcendence, as Willie becomes proactive and Indy becomes responsible. Ultimately, Indy renounces “fortune and glory” in favor of giving back to the community. A reconciliation with feminine values, after all? Since community values are represented by Shiva’s Penis… perhaps not. By breaking his chains and rejecting the abusive father, it is Short Round who single-handedly turns the film around. If Ke Huy Quan doesn’t break your heart as he croaks “I love you! Wake up, Indy!” before swinging that torch, you may need to check your pulse. Annoying? Bah! Give that kid an Oscar.

Short Round and the Father Figure of Doom

The Indiana Jones trilogy commands a rabid devotion that none of its many imitators can match, because its thrill rides cover a masculine psychological journey of archetypal power. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy must defeat his shadow self in Belloq, and reconcile with his female counterpart in Marion, by embracing humility and accepting his limits. In The Temple of Doom, he must accept the responsibilities of the father and confront his fear of becoming the abusive father. Finally, in The Last Crusade, Indy must forgive his own father, and consciously walk in the footsteps of his father’s teaching. The films have less to offer female audiences: a promise of equality through rejecting femininity, and an opportunity to overidentify with an Asian boy. But societies are defined by the freedom and dignity granted to their most vulnerable members. By unabashedly celebrating the empowerment of children, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom becomes a manifesto for the liberation of Shorties everywhere. Wake the hell up, Indy.

Brigit McCone has a lingering fondness for fedoras, writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and pretending The Crystal Skull never happened.

Masculinity: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Masculinity Theme Week here.

Outlander and A Modern Man by Alize Emme

“What is her power over you?” Randall chides Jamie during his psychological torture. As manly as Jamie likens to be, he long ago surrendered himself to Claire’s power over him. In his deteriorated state, only a woman can heal this broken man. While Jamie’s brokenness is wholly justifiable, his extremist way of thinking shows his ideas of masculinity will need to continue to evolve if he wants to fully regain his soul.

Mad Max: Fury Road Allows Audiences to Both Enjoy and Problematize Hypermasculinity by Elizabeth King

As the evil dictator of the territory he occupies in a post-apocalyptic world, he demands more and more gasoline (which is in rare supply), while withholding water from his starved and sickly citizens. He also has a collection of women that he imprisons and uses for breeding purposes. In this single character we see some of the worst aspects of rampant hyper-masculinity condensed into one truly horrifying man.

Masculinity and the Queer Male: There’s Nowt So Queer as Folk by Rowan Ellis

Yet this very concept of shaming queer men for their sexuality while society is praising straight men for their sexual conquests as a key element of “successful” masculinity demonstrates the way homophobia intersects with a devaluing of the feminine.

Strong in the Real Way: Steven Universe and the Shape of Masculinity to Come by Ashley Gallagher

Steven, the title character, isn’t the troublemaking, reckless, pain-in-the-butt Boy-with-a-capital-B I feared I’d have to watch around to get to the powerful women and loving queer folk I really wanted to see. He’s unreserved, adventurous, and confident – all good traits that are fairly typical for boy leads in kids’ shows – but he is also affectionate, selfless, very prone to crying, and just plain effin’ adorable.

The Three Questions That Divide Breaking Bad Fans and What They Tell Us About Masculinity by Katherine Murray

Breaking Bad is one of those well-written, well-acted shows that somehow inspires people to scream at each other in CAPSLOCK. The debate about Walter White and his wife and their drug-trade boils down to your answers to three deceptively simple questions that act as a rorschach test on masculinity in American culture.

The Conflicting Masculinities of Frank and Claire in House of Cards by Tilly Grove

It is this point at which things significantly begin to shift in Frank and Claire’s relationship. This entire situation, which occurred in a succession of embarrassments for Frank, clearly served as a challenge to his dominance and an infringement on his masculinity, especially coming from his wife. For Claire, meanwhile, it is evident that while Frank is fighting desperately to enforce his masculinity and remain in power, she has lost all of hers.

The Blind (Drunk) Leading the Blind (Drunk): Masculinities and Friendship in Edgar Wright’s Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy by Tessa Racked

Two distinct masculinities pull the Trilogy’s heroes in different directions. Given Wright’s frequent use of pop culture references, I’ve opted to borrow Dungeons and Dragons’ terminology and describe these extremes as lawful and chaotic. Lawful masculinity is characterized by competency and order; it is the hallmark of the responsible (but rigid) adult. Chaotic masculinity is characterized by hedonism and anti-authoritarianism, usually embodied in the series by characters in a state of adolescence (whether age-appropriate or not).

A Fragile Masculinity: Genderswapping Male Characters by Alyssa Franke

Part of this belief comes from the assumption that casting women in these roles is always an attempt to tone down the masculine-coded characteristics associated with these characters. Vaguely omnipotent feminist forces are conspiring to emasculate hyper-masculine characters by recasting them as women, so the argument goes.

I Think We Need a Bigger Metaphor: Men and Masculinity in Jaws by Julia Patt

The life Brody has lived is utterly different, if not entirely sheltered. What dangers or dilemmas he’s faced in his life simply haven’t left the kind of marks Hooper and Quint bear. And their lack prevents him from engaging in any stereotypical masculine posturing. He is, by that criteria anyway, untested.

Female Masculinity and Gender Neutrality in Dexter by Cameron Airen

Knowing that his son had and would continue to kill, Harry taught him to follow a strict code that only allowed Dexter to kill “bad” people. Instead of being chaotic, spontaneous, and killing out of pure rage, Dexter developed a more methodical approach. He is a neat monster who creates a pristine kill room with everything clean, tidy and in its place. All of this could be seen as a more feminine kind of control.

The Complex Masculinity of Outlander’s Jamie Fraser by Carly Lane

It’s a surprising twist on the trope. Jamie is undoubtedly a force of man to be reckoned with, though the fact that he is a virgin and thus relatively inexperienced in terms of sex when he encounters Claire – the older, more experienced woman – attributes some unexpected “feminine” qualities to his character.

Mad Men: Masculinity and the Don Draper Image by Caroline Madden

Upon viewing the series after knowing the show’s finale, we see that the Don Draper arc reflects a small change in gender perspectives during that era. The Don of Season 1 would never act as the Don in the Season 7 finale. We see that Mad Men was all about shattering the hyper-masculine Don Draper mythos that he built and trapped himself within.

How Avatar: The Last Airbender Demonstrates a More Inclusive Masculinity by Aaron Radney

All of them, even those that have more traditional male expressions than the others, end up rejecting more toxic expressions of masculinity.

Misogyny Demons and Wesley’s Tortured Masculinity in Joss Whedon’s Angel by Stephanie Brown

Not only does the characterization of this violent misogyny as “primordial” imply that violence toward women is the natural state of men, it also implies that gender itself is an essential and natural state of being. Men are men and women are women. In a universe that generally operates in gray areas, such a distinction is uncharacteristically black and white.

Tough Guise 2: Disrupting Violent Masculinity One Documentary at a Time by Colleen Clemens

Narrator Jackson Katz uses visuals and film clips to argue that such a view of masculinity is creating a crisis in young boys as they grow up being made to feel that violence=agency and that rape is just fine because you should get what you want—and if the answer is “no,” then you just take it.

Off the Fury Road and Without a Map: Masculine Portrayal in the New Mad Max by Zev Chevat

Wrapped in a hypermasculine Trojan Horse of violence and war custom is a heady lesson about the dangers of ceding to those expectations, and about the road away from them and toward something like redemption. Here is a film where women are shown to be men’s combative equals. Even more so, it is a film where the only way the men can escape their own oppression is to join up with, and occasionally defer to, these women.

Negotiated Identities and Gray Oppositions in Ridley’s American Crime by Sean Weaver

With that said, even the traditional gender binary is flipped on its head—the women of the show uphold the patriarchal system that controls them, while the men are often portrayed as effeminate and oppressed by the same system that is supposed to give them power. Yes. Take a second while you process that.

Masculinity in Game of Thrones: More Than Fairytale Tropes by Jess Sanders

Boys are judged on their ability to swing a sword or work a trade, criticised for showing weakness, and taught to grow up hard and cold. Doesn’t sound unfamiliar, does it? Masculinity is praised in Westerosi society, as it is in our own.

Bigelow’s Boys: Martial Masculinity in The Hurt Locker by Rachael Johnson

The movie also, however, offers ideological and anthropological readings of masculinity which are, arguably, a little more complicated. Bigelow appears to have a deep interest in, and respect for, martial masculinity.

Moving Away From the Anti-Hero: What It Means to Be a Man in Better Call Saul by Becky Kukla

Slippin’ Jimmy was to James McGill what Heisenberg was to Walter White–a hyper-masculine alter-ego. OK, Slippin’ Jimmy was only conning a few business men out of their Rolexes, but essentially both men created an alternative, more masculine version of themselves in order to survive and gain success.

The Loneliest Planet and the Fracturing of Masculinity by Cal Cleary

Alex is, in many ways, the ideal of the modern man: Handsome, athletic, intelligent, well-traveled, well-off financially but still environmentally sensitive, and with a romantic partner he treats as an equal. Because of this, he has no trouble shrugging off the gendered stereotypes expected of his relationship in the first half of the film. But as soon as he is given reason to doubt his own traditionally defined masculinity, it all falls apart.

Entourage: Masculinity and Male Privilege in Hollywood by Rachel Wortherly

Turtle reminds Vince that “the movie is called Aquaman, not Aquagirl.” This line is indicative of the “boys club” that continues to thrive in Hollywood. An actress’s livelihood in the industry is dependent on her co-star.

The Courage to Cry: Men and Boys’ Emotions in Naruto by Jackson Adler

However, when boys are told that “boys don’t cry” and that men should “man up,” their emotions are not respected, and they often internalize this stigma, sometimes with devastating consequences. Of course, simply crying won’t cure a condition as severe as PTSD, but men being shown that they are not “weak” for experiencing emotions and needing help will undoubtedly aid in the road to recovery.

Man Up: How VEEP Emphasizes the Value of Masculinity in Politics by Shannon Miller

Because he doesn’t display the same aggressive temperament (he’s actually rather sweet and nurturing) nor does he have a similar function as the rest of the group, his value is regularly questioned and his masculinity is nearly erased. Walsh broaches this issue in the second episode of the series, “Frozen Yoghurt,” when Egan flippantly claims that the famous bag is full of lip balm: “Everything you say to me is emasculating.” And it’s true!

Mr. Robot and the Trouble with the White Knight by Shay Revolver

This is another one of the problems that I have with White Knight syndrome. The types prone to exhibiting this behavior tend to have a lower opinion of women that than their outwardly sexist counterparts. White Knights take up the causes of the women in their lives and speak out for them, but it is usually done in a manner that seems to suggest they think that these women are incapable of speaking up for themselves.

Let’s Hear It for the Boy! Masculinity and the Monomyth by Morgan Faust

As the monomyth evolves, the question is: will it evolve to include the “everywoman” hero archetype, or will the nature of myth itself change to embrace not just the messaging of individualization, but the representation of unique stories for unique people?