Mental Illness – Page 2

Disabilities Week: The Patronizingly "Adorable" Side of Schizophrenia in ‘Benny & Joon’

Movie poster for Benny & Joon

This is a guest review by Carleen Tibbetts.

When Bitch Flicks put out the call for reviews regarding the portrayal of “disabled” women, I had a mixed reaction. Most of the suggested films and TV series deal with both physical disabilities and mental illness, but there’s far greater stigma attached to anything psychological, especially when women are involved. The words “crazy” and “insane” get thrown around far too often and get a lot of mileage when it comes to women. It’s easy and dismissive to tell a woman her “craziness” is just a byproduct of her gender, and even more callous to tell a woman with a mental illness that she is thus, and seemingly unable to be helped, bettered, et cetera.

Jeremiah Chechlik’s 1993 film, Benny & Joon is the story of Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson), a twenty-something artist who lives under the care of her older brother, Benny (Aidan Quinn). Benny works full-time as an auto mechanic and has hired a string of “housekeepers,” as he calls them, to keep an eye on Joon during the day. When the last caregiver quits after Joon has an outburst, Benny must leave Joon home alone, where she is content to go about her routine that involves painting and making Captain Crunch and peanut butter smoothies.

Mary Stuart Masterson as Joon and Aidan Quinn as Benny in Benny & Joon

At first, it appears as if Joon is just a bit quirky, or perhaps a stereotypical “temperamental artist.” Aside from the manic rate at which she produces her paintings, her need to adhere to routine, her idiosyncrasies, and her flat mannerisms suggest she might present as Autistic. Her extreme pickiness regarding food would be another indicator of being somewhere on the spectrum when, at one point in the film, she refuses to eat raisins in her tapioca pudding, claiming that they were “humiliated grapes” that “had a their life stolen.” When she leaves the house with a ping-pong paddle and scuba mask to direct traffic, however, this is more characteristic of a schizophrenic or bipolar episode.

Benny knows he can’t leave her unsupervised, but he’s torn about how to handle the situation. Joon’s psychiatrist suggests he place Joon in a group home that would enable her to socialize and perhaps even get a part-time job. His initial reaction is extremely defensive, and explaining that he is Joon’s only family, that he’s always cared for her, and that he’s not “farming her out.” Glimpses of Joon’s medical information (note the screen shots) don’t even indicate what condition or disorder she has been diagnosed with. All we know is that she is on some form of medication, and perhaps it isn’t working too well given her tantrums and erratic behavior. Joon tells Benny not to “underestimate the mentally ill,” yet he continuously undercuts her, treats her like a child, limits her autonomy and decision-making capacities. Further, Benny uses his situation with Joon as a convenient excuse to avoid any kind of romantic entanglements or committed relationships. Potential love interest waitress/apartment manager Ruthie (Julianne Moore) is extremely patient and understanding in her interactions with Joon, yet Benny initially shies away from anything too serious, claiming his life is too complicated and that there really isn’t any room for a woman in his life other than his sister.

Joon’s medical intake form

Another part of Joon’s routine involves her tagging along to Benny’s regular poker nights with several friends. One night when she fills in for him, she ends up “winning” Sam (Johnny Depp), the barely literate, Buster Keaton-obsessed cousin of one of Benny’s friends. Benny agrees to take Sam in for an unspecified amount of time, hoping that Sam could take over “housekeeper” duties and babysit Joon. It really is a wonder that Benny has apparently taken care of her since they were teenagers. He’s so emotionally well-equipped! His thinking is so clear! He doesn’t need to take advice from mental health professionals! He can have an adorable vagabond with no credentials look after Joon!

Sam’s a different sort of socially awkward. He has a penchant for horrible slasher films, which he memorizes word for word, and has an almost sixth sense when it comes to knowing film trivia. It’s as if his brain functions like the IMDb database. Perhaps he’s somewhere on the spectrum. He also has a charming little Chaplinesque physical comedy routine going, complete with top hat, baggy trousers, and cane. Benny’s so impressed he tries to get Sam an agent to book him in comedy clubs. Sam’s blissful naivete serves as a complete counter to put-upon, worry-wart Benny. His presence in the house has a calming effect on Joon, and her whole demeanor changes. She’s met someone who “gets” her. Sam and Joon are kindred spirits. Sam gives Joon a sense of companionship and joy she’s been lacking for most of her adult life. Sam allows Joon to ease up on her routine, takes her out of the house (where Benny keeps her trapped and isolated), running little errands, socializing, basically integrating her into society in little baby steps.

Joon directs traffic with a ping pong paddle

So, for a short time everything is hunky dory. Benny can work without worrying about Joon; he can date a woman who doesn’t demand he put her emotional needs before his responsibilities to his sister; Sam gets a job at a video store; and he and Joon begin to know each other. Biblically. When they break the news to Benny, it sends him into a rage. He tells Sam to get out of the house (being homeless, he just ends up living in a tree in their front yard…), and tells Joon he wants her to live in the group home. He turns all protector father figure, and Joon rebels as would any teenage girl. She tells Benny he wants to keep her sick, doesn’t want her to be happy, and the moment she is left alone, she sneaks out of the house and runs off with Sam.

The two quirky lovebirds get on a bus bound for “anywhere but here,” when Joon starts having an extreme anxiety attack. She starts crying and screaming, and her episode forces the driver to get everyone off the bus and call the paramedics. In a truly heartbreaking scene, Sam watches Joon pace the bus and scream until the paramedics escort her off and take her to a psych ward. She refuses to see anyone, yet Benny and Sam manage to break into the ward. Benny agrees not to put Joon in a group home but have her live in her own apartment (conveniently managed by his now-girlfriend, Ruthie) with Sam. EVERYTHING IS SUPER AWESOME FUN TIME! LOOK HOW ADORABLE SCHIZOPHRENIA CAN BE! The credits roll with Sam and Joon making little grilled cheese sandwiches with an iron! Yes! They’re going to make it on his video store wages and illiteracy, and she’s presumed jobless and in the care of another male authority figure! She doesn’t need professional treatment! She just needs a boyfriend!

Benny watches Joon paint

Here is where the criticism beings … Benny & Joon deals far more with Benny’s “unfortunate” situation of having to care for his sister than it does with Joon herself. Yes, although it does speak to Joon’s creativity, her spirit, etc., it doesn’t address the fact that Benny’s kept her infantilized most of her adult life. It was suggested that Benny place her in a home where she’d be supervised and be able to look for work, yet we don’t know if Joon has a history of trying to unsuccessfully hold down jobs, or if Benny prevented her from ever trying to be responsible and autonomous in the first place. I can’t even begin to address his ridiculous decision to have Joon babysat by a series of non-credentialed “houskeepers” instead of attempting to integrate her into society. I wonder if he was granted power of attorney, legal guardianship, etc. I find it hard to believe that in a situation like that, he was allowed to care for Joon since they were teenagers. How did Social Services not step in at any point? How was he not charged with abandonment and neglect?

Benny sneaks in to see Joon at the mental hospital

This movie is less about Joon herself than it is about her in relation to the men in her life. Yes, at the close it gives the impression that she’s going to be happy and productive but only under close watch of her boyfriend, her brother, and her brother’s girlfriend. Fine, maybe she doesn’t need to live in a group home, but it’s important that she go to some form of therapy and see positive examples of highly-functioning schizophrenics, and this is never brought up in the film! She can’t just have medication thrown at her and not pair it with any sort of cognitive and behavioral therapy. Making grilled cheese sandwiches with Johnny Depp doesn’t count.

When I searched for images to include in the piece in addition to the screen shots I took, the movie poster images I came across presented another issue: Joon herself is sidelined and literally sandwiched between the two men in her life: her lover and her brother. Alternate posters depict Johnny Depp alone on a stool. In fact, the Google image search yields more pictures of Johnny Depp than anything else! Where is Joon in all of this? The screen time given to Depp and all his quirky little gimmicks far outweighs scenes that focus on Joon’s interests, her paintings, etc. She’s a talented artist, yet Benny is more concerned with getting Sam work than he is with getting Joon’s art out in the world or enrolling her in an art therapy program, which would have been ideal for her.

Sam and Joon make grilled cheese sandwiches with an iron

There is NOTHING adorable about mental illness. I take huge issue with this film. It trivializes and downplays a serious, crippling disorder. As a woman who was diagnosed bipolar roughly ten years ago and who has been hospitalized, watching scenes in which paramedics tranquilize and forcibly escort a woman to a psychiatric ward is particularly painful and all-too familiar. You cannot have your family members spring you from a psych ward. You cannot check in for a staycation and leave when you feel like it. You are there until the mental health professionals get your cocktail of meds just right, bring you back to a functioning level, and deem you fit for release. In this case, I would think Joon’s psychiatrist would not want to release her into the care of two men who broke into her room and who flagrantly disregarded her professional advice in the first place.

Living with mental illness means constantly having your state of mind questioned. It means family members and long-term friends not being able to understand or relate to your struggles, your episodes. This often leads to strained romantic relationships where genetics are even called into question. Say Joon and Sam keep going strong. If they chose to have children, is she capable of being a parent? Could she stay off her meds during her pregnancy without having another episode? My ex’s parents asked me at one point in our eight-year relationship if I could even have children, because they wanted grandkids in the worst way. It was one of the most callous, insensitive, and derogatory things anyone had ever said to me in relationship to my disorder. Obviously, the mentally “ill” are capable of having children, or else these conditions would cease to exist.

Joon has a panic attack on the bus

Benny & Joon, despite all its charm and whimsy, really glosses over a serious, potentially debilitating condition. I’m not saying it doesn’t have its delightful moments, but it fails to realistically address Joon’s history or possible outcomes for her future well-being. Joon is defined in by the men in her life, and as a result, is stifled, crippled, and unable to break out on her own. She needs to be taken care of, coddled. Apparently, to quote the Proclaimers theme song that opens and closes the film, Joon just needs a man to fall down at her door. Yes, it’s Hollywood, and we all want happy endings, but the underlying message that all Joon really needs is a stable romantic relationship rather than a stable relationship with herself, especially in relation to functioning in the outside world, is completely misguided.

Carleen Tibbetts lives in Oakland and edits at Similar:Peaks:: Her work has appeared in kill author, Word Riot, Metazen, Monkeybicycle, Coconut, H_NGM_N, horse less press, Boog City, The Rumpus, HTMLGIANT, and elsewhere.

Disabilities Week: Crazy Bitches Versus Indulgent Little Girls: The Binary of Mad Women in ‘Girl, Interrupted’

Movie poster for Girl, Interrupted

This is a guest review by Sarah Domet.

At first glance, Girl, Interrupted appears to be Hollywood’s version of feminist nirvana. It’s a veritable oasis in an industry where only 23% of speaking roles belong to women, an industry that tends to only depict women as supporting characters for the ever-important leading men. This 1999 film adaptation of Susanna Kaysen’s memoir of the same title features a strong core cast of women, some of whom went on to bigger stardom in the aftermath of the commercial success of the film.

Set to the backdrop of the late 1960s, Girl, Interrupted chronicles a fictionalized Susanna’s (Winona Ryder) year-long stint in the woman’s ward at Claymore, a private mental institution, after her attempted suicide and subsequent “break” with reality. Susanna is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a diagnosis she reluctantly accepts and from which she eventually “recovers.” Throughout the year, Susanna comes face-to-face with the “real” crazies in the form of sociopathic Lisa (Angelia Jolie), pathologically lying Georgina (Clea DuVall), schizophrenic Polly (Elizabeth Moss), and cocktail-of-issues Daisy (Brittany Murphy) who grapples with eating disorders, OCD, and a history of sexual abuse. The film suggests, sometimes overtly, that Susanna, by comparison to her ward-mates, isn’t doing so badly. In fact, Nurse Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg), in one of the most emotionally resonant scenes of the film, declares Susanna is “not crazy” but instead “a lazy, self-indulgent little girl who is driving herself crazy.” At this point, viewers are likely nodding their heads. Certainly, we’ve all met that girl. Or maybe we are that girl.

Winona Ryder as Susanna Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted

Thankfully, Girl, Interrupted decidedly positions itself as not a love story. In fact, all of Susanna’s romantic interests are purely sexual, involving little emotion, a ”symptom” that gets her labeled as a borderline in the first place. Instead, Girl, Interrupted explores a young woman’s coming of age as she struggles in an uncertain world, meditates upon what it really means to be “mentally ill,” and, ultimately, discovers her sense of self. The equation is simple: the almost all-female cast + a story of female self-discovery = a feminist victory in a male-dominated Hollywood, right?

Well, yes and no.

At its core, Girl, Interrupted strives to be a feminist film. However, I find the film’s representations of “mad women” problematic, particularly the ways in which mental illness becomes so closely linked with eroticized otherness. And here is where the film’s deep ambivalence comes into play: it attempts to dispel the myth of what it means to be a mentally ill woman, while at the same time reinforcing cultural stereotypes that portray mentally ill women as hypersexual, dangerous, amoral, or inherently unfeminine. In the end, Girl, Interrupted posits mental illness as a choice from which one, like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, can always return.

As Susanna checks into Claymore, she catches a glimpse of her doctor’s case notes that indicate her “promiscuous” tendencies as one symptom of her ailment. Yes, she had an affair with a married man, and, yes, she slept with the brother of one of her classmates; she loves neither of these men. At one point Susanna notes, “What kind of sex isn’t casual?” Certainly, her disavowal of love as a necessary component of sex is a feminist gesture. In the free-loving 60s, that sweeping diagnosis—promiscuity—encompassed nearly every rally, march, or peace protest in America, or at least modern-day viewers might suspect from the comfort of our viewing couches.

The women of Girl, Interrupted

Yet, her “promiscuity” continues, even at Claymore where Susanna engages in a physical relationship with a doting orderly. When challenged on this point by her therapist, Susanna becomes indignant, and rightly so. She argues, “How many guys would a girl have to sleep with to be considered promiscuous? Three, four, ten? How many girls would a guy have to sleep with? Fifteen? Forty? A hundred and nine?” Feminists across America high five each other.

At several junctures, such as this one, Girl, Interrupted positions itself firmly as a feminist film, shattering assumptions that there exists one “proper” behavior for women. We sympathize with Susanna and with her plight against The Man, against a gendered, cultural understanding of what is and is not appropriate sexual behavior for a young woman. In many ways, her “illness” manifests itself in the typical American teenage coming-of-age way. Susanna asks herself questions we all have asked, at one time or another: Where do I fit in? Who am I? What do I value?

Throughout the film, Susanna’s character works to unravel stereotypes about what it means to be a woman with a mental illness: she’s beautiful; she’s smart; she’s never threatening. She’s much like any other young woman as we watch her negotiate friendships, write in her journal, sneak out at night with her friends, smoke cigarettes, and, generally, protest authority. In most ways, she’s an ordinary girl, just like you might find on the “outside.” The viewer begins to question if Susanna even really needs to be at Claymore in the first place.

Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) and Nurse Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg)

Yet, if Girl, Interrupted creates a binary with Susanna on one side, dismantling preconceived notions about mental illness and female sexuality, on the other side lies Lisa, who reinforces cultural narratives about “crazy bitches.” Let’s face it: Lisa is the real villain of the movie, a sociopath with no real moral compass, a young woman who is manipulative and unnervingly magnetic all at once. The moment she enters the film, returning from one of her many attempted escapes, we’re to understand that she’s a threat. She pins Susanna in the corner of her room shouting at her, demanding to know where her friend Jamie had gone, until she is physically restrained.

However, like many “crazy bitches” of cinema (Nina Sayers in Black Swan, Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction) she exudes sexuality and charisma, deepened only by her sense of danger. As Susanna and Lisa spend time together, their growing friendship feels more like a courtship. Susanna herself can’t help but be drawn in by those pouty lips, her playfulness, her rabble rousing and bravado. At one point, as Susanna and Lisa are on the lam from Claymore, the two share a kiss. The moment is innocent enough, but the implications become clear. Lisa represents the eroticized other, the taboo, the forbidden, dark and amoral mad woman.

Angelina Jolie in her Oscar-winning role as Lisa in Girl, Interrupted

This stereotype becomes clearer a few moments later, in a pivotal scene of the film, when Lisa and Susanna crash at the apartment of Daisy, who has been newly released from Claymore. Susanna sits mute as Lisa taunts Daisy, exposing her deepest vulnerabilities. Lisa points out the cuts on Daisy’s arm, accuses Daisy of enjoying the sexual abuses of her father: “Everyone knows your father fucks you, what they don’t know is that you like it.” Lisa speaks the unspeakable, and Susanna watches doe-eyed, stunned at Lisa’s capacity for cruelty. The next morning, upon witnessing Daisy’s limp and lifeless body—she hanged herself—Lisa calls her an idiot, then picks her pocket for cash. Lisa, Susanna finally learns, has no capacity for emotion, no nurturing feelings at all. If anything makes her less than human—less than woman—it is this fact.

This scene in the movie, arguably the most important one, pits Lisa and Susanna against each other. But it also pits “good” against “evil,” and “feminine” against “unfeminine,” which is tied up in representations of mental illness. Susanna is faced with a choice: continue life with Lisa, a life that will certainly lead to chaos and casual sex and countercultural adventures, or return to Claymore to truly invest in her recovery. It’s a choice.

Brittany Murphy as Daisy in Girl, Interrupted

But is mental illness always a choice? And if so, between what and what?

Here’s a statistic: nearly 1 in 5 Americans suffers from mental illness of some sort, and a majority of these cases are women. This alarming number becomes even more important when recognizing that the film industry plays an important role in shaping public or cultural perception. In light of this, I wonder how detrimental a film such as Girl, Interrupted might be when questioning the legitimacy of mental illness and perpetuating stereotypes of those who suffer from these invisible diseases. Susanna’s renewed commitment to get better situates itself as a choice, and not necessarily one between health and illness or between one treatment and another. Instead, Susanna’s choice is oddly contingent upon morality, what’s right and wrong. Will she choose to return to Claymore? Or will she tread the darker path, represented by the villainous Lisa?

Which brings us back to Nurse Valerie’s diagnoses that Susanna is “not crazy” but, instead, “a lazy, self-indulgent little girl who is driving herself crazy.” The idea that Susanna is not really sick—that her invisible illness is a complete manifestation of her imagination or her culture—may be true. But it may be equally true that she, and young girls like her, are not just lazy and self-indulgent. That no amount of “trying harder” or “choosing to be well” necessarily helps, without the proper intervention. The movie wants to suggest that, yes, Susanna is a little confused, uncertain, depressed, even, but at least she doesn’t burn her face, or hide chicken bones under her bed, or require the padded room for her outbursts. At least she’s not crazy-crazy. Not like “them.” Girl, Interrupted paints a world where mental illness is not an invisible illness. Invisibility means conformity means health, and only when one adapts more culturally-sanctioned “moral” or “feminine” behavior will she be considered well again.

Susanna (Winona Ryder) and Lisa (Angelina Jolie) share a kiss

I wonder, too, why films depicting men with mental illness rarely cast their subjects in the same light. Films like A Beautiful Mind, or One Flew Over the Cuckcoo’s Nest, for example, present their flawed heroes as just that: heroes. Sure, these flawed fellows need treatment, but they are brilliant, misunderstood, complicated men. They are sympathetic precisely because of their mental states, not despite them. Viewers are never lead to question the sexuality, morality, or masculinity of these leading men. Moreover, films such as these don’t portray mental illness as a choice or a course of action, but as a circumstance. Hollywood afflicts male protagonists with insanity as a cross to bear, which makes them all the more heroic.

Susanna’s heroism, however, comes distinctly from her choice to overcome her diagnosis. To be fair, in real life, choice does play a legitimate aspect in the treatment of diseases. One can choose to be in treatment, or not to be. However, Susanna doesn’t simply learn to live with her personality disorder, she defeats it entirely. Toward the end of the film, the TV in Claymore’s living room flashes a scene from The Wizard of Oz as Glenda the Good Witch says, “You’ve always had the power to go back home.” Here, the film’s message reveals itself clearly: the power of recovery has always been with Susanna.

Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted

Susanna’s declared “recovered” by her doctors and ultimately joins the ranks of the “outside” world where she now belongs. It’s fitting that her penultimate scene at Claymore shows her applying make-up to look more suitably feminine. Her final act at Claymore is to polish the nails of a now drugged and restrained Lisa. “I’m not really dead,” Lisa says—and so the movie leaves us with a glimmer of hope that she, too, can choose to go home. If only all women could be cured of mental illnesses by clicking their heels together three times, painting on some Cotton Candy No. 7—and believing.

Viewers should be happy for Susanna, and I think most root for her. I know I do. But even as she’s being driven away from Claymore in the final scene, I wonder if she, herself, downplays the magnitude of the year she’s just spent under professional care. Perhaps she’s doing this because in the “outside” world, it’s still not okay to talk about such things or to admit to a mental illness without suffering stigmatization, or sideway glances, or nervous, sympathetic looks.

Lisa (Angelina Jolie) confronts Susanna (Winona Ryder) on her first day at Claymore

She notes, “Being crazy isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me, amplified.” That’s a nice thought. Mental illness is a reality for many, a part of their very composition, what makes many individuals unique, or creative, or sensitive. But the problem in the film—just like the problem in our real world, our post-Adam Lanza world—is that we must find ways to have conversations about mental illness, and not just within the confines of hospitals or therapy rooms. In real life. In the “outside” world. Susanna calls herself a “girl, interrupted,” and not a girl with a history of mental illness. What might the need for this euphemism say about the world that she’s rejoining? If 20% of Americans suffer from mental illness, a majority of these women, this issue is not just a cultural problem, but a feminist one.

Sarah Domet is the author of 90 Days to Your Novel. She writes fiction and nonfiction and currently teaches at Georgia Southern University.

A Day In The Life Of A Disabled Writer

Written by Myrna Waldron.

Lyrics from The Beatles’ Help!: “When I was younger, so much younger than today”

I’m disabled.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at me, but my body is pretty much attacking me from the inside. My blood tests have revealed a severe inflammatory condition, and x-rays and MRIs have indicated early signs of spinal arthritis. I have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia syndrome, which is a lifelong condition under the same umbrella as multiple sclerosis and lupus. I am relatively lucky in that my FMS will not kill me…but there’s no promise that the cyclical depression won’t kill me instead.

I continue to write because I have nothing else to offer of myself. I couldn’t finish my degree, and I couldn’t return to the civil service job I was really good at. Instead, I live off of a small disability income (well under the poverty line, I might add) provided by the Ontario government. Sometimes I have to use the services of my local food bank. Conservatives act like those living on disability are just lazy people sucking up tax dollars, but I can assure everyone reading this that a person cannot feel lower than when they have to beg friends and strangers to feed them and lend them money. It’s a position of utter desperation and degradation. So fuck you, conservatives. Until you have lived like a disabled person lives every fucking day of their lives, you have no right to say a goddamn word. You have no right to judge. And, I’ll remind you–I PAID THOSE FUCKING TAXES TOO.

I write to keep myself going, and to keep myself sane. But there are some days, and some weeks, where I can’t write. I have severe chronic joint pain. Imagine the aches and pains you get when you have the flu. Now imagine dealing with those pains all day, every day. I cannot stand for longer than 10 minutes. I cannot walk without pain and stiffness. I cannot sit up without a pillow and/or an ice pack or heating pad, and even then I need to take breaks to move around every half hour. I am dizzy. I get migraines. I am exhausted all the time–and I’m talking “I have to go to sleep NOW” exhausted. My medication gives me severe side effects.

Lyrics cont’d: “I never needed anybody’s help in any way”

This is my life. This is my future. And I’m only 26.

When I prepare to write a review for my blog and/or Bitch Flicks, although the pieces are usually short, they often feel like a major university assignment because of the amount of effort it takes for me to finish them. I would write more often if I could. But sometimes, after finishing writing, I feel like I’m going to faint. If I push myself too hard, I can easily end up in the hospital.

First, I have to come up with a film or TV show I can babble feminist theory about. I fortunately have a knack for this sort of thing, but it’s harder than it looks. Back to the Future is my favourite film, but there is literally nothing feminist I can note about it besides pointing out a Bechdel Test fail. And I don’t exactly feel like condemning something that I love. The reality is that the vast majority of films and TV shows lack feminist themes/representation. And that’s a hard reality to write around, because I hate giving negative reviews.

I always do a rewatch of the film/TV show, and take notes, before I write about it. If you’ve ever wondered why I review so few TV series, it’s because they take so long to watch–even the short BBC ones. There is a good chance I will pass out while I’m watching a film. Imagine being in a university class and trying to take notes, and then falling asleep right in class. That’s what I have to struggle against. Every week.

Then I have to make sense of my notes and decide what direction I’m going to take in the blog post. Do I do a character analysis? Do I discuss representation of minorities? Do I praise the media? Do I condemn it? Do I write formally? Do I write satirically? Do I have anything to say about this film whatsoever?

Lyrics cont’d: “But now these days are gone I’m not so self assured”

Then I write. I almost always write the entire review in one sitting. I did that in university too. I find that if I take breaks while writing something my train of thought goes in completely different directions, and I like to try to keep my thoughts and tone consistent. But then I get the side effect of my body absolutely hating me for giving effort on anything, even mental effort. I have to nap or take a shower immediately after finishing a review. This is what FMS does to me. It attacks me for living.

I gave myself a little extra work by deciding to incorporate animated gifs into my reviews. They don’t really take too long–10 minutes per gif, on average. The real time sucker is when I add captions to the gif, because I have to edit every single frame and make sure the text is consistent. I could just stop doing them, but I actually have something unique to offer. For once. The gifs don’t exhaust me nearly as much as the writing does, which is nice, but I’m likely to make mistakes when I’m fighting off sleep.

Then I post the review, and hope people will read it. The majority of my reviews get ignored, especially if I review a film that is older and lacks a cult audience. It’s demoralizing and damaging to the ego. I should get used to it when something I write isn’t noticed. I still have no idea why or how some of my reviews became popular, but others didn’t. The Sailor Moon and Last Unicorn reviews continue to get thousands of hits on Bitch Flicks. The Addams Family review continues to get passed around on Tumblr. I love that some of the things I have written are successful. But when I have just busted my ass on something that nobody besides family and close friends bothered to read…it makes me not want to try anymore. I mentally beg to those readers, “This is not all I have written. Please don’t just move on. Read what else I have to offer. Or else I have nothing.”

And I think that reaction is the depression talking. I have so much trouble finding joy in things that I start to take the good things for granted. I have something I can give to the world, but sometimes no one wants it. Why continue to write? Why not continue to write? I could just say “I’m done, buh bye” and begin an existence of sleeping all day and listlessly consuming media. But that’s not enough for me. Even if no one reads my work…it’s something I was born to do. It’s the last thing that my broken body can give.

Lyrics cont’d: “Now I find I’ve changed my mind, I’ve opened up the doors”

I wouldn’t wish my condition on my worst enemy. The thing I fear most is my depression. It may have been a cause of the FMS in the first place. But then living with FMS causes depression. On and on, around and around. I’m on a ton of medications. I’ve tried to reach out for professional help and gotten none whatsoever. The top Rheumatology doctors in Toronto can do nothing for me. I’m scared. I’m scared that this pain is my life. That I will be too tired, achy, and poor forever. I’m angry. I curse whatever fates decided to strike me with this condition, because I have already suffered more than enough. I’m ashamed. Because mental illness is still so stigmatized. Because FMS is still poorly understood, and some doctors even believe it’s psychosomatic. Look at my blood and MRI tests and then tell me it’s all in my head, assholes.

So if I miss a week when I write a blog post, please forgive me. I don’t do it on purpose, because, despite it all, I still love to write. There are so many thoughts in my head, I have to put them down somewhere. I’ll do the best that I can. There is little hope for me, but at least my mind still works and my fingers can still type. I’ll work myself to exhaustion just so I can get some thoughts out there.

All I ask is that you read them.

All gifs from Help! (1965)

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

Wedding Week: ‘Bride Wars’: When Weddings Drive a Bitch Crazy

This is a guest post by Alisande Fitzsimons.

In Gary Winick’s 2009 film Bride Wars, two best friends pit themselves against each other in order to both have their dream wedding day. If this thoroughly unfeminist – not to mention unlikely – premise doesn’t put you off then pull on your spanx, pin up your hair, and settle in to enjoy some fun so light and frothy it may as well be a specially designed valium-laced cupcake.

It pains me to state that a rare successful Hollywood film featuring a rare two female leads (Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway) orientates itself around the wedding industry, an industry that feeds on female insecurity, causing otherwise sane and sensible women to spend a fortune on a single day in a quest for a level of perfection that probably only exists on cinema screens.

Best friends turned worst enemies

It also pains me to admit that the film is a firm favourite of mine because the lunacy that is fused to its girliness means it fits very well into that hallowed space known as “comfort movie.” Feel free to judge. I know you have one too.

Written by the female comedy duo Casey Wilson and June Diane Raphael, Bride Wars can be read as a much lighter companion piece to Kristen Wiig’s infinitely dirtier Bridesmaids, were Wiig’s depiction of how women behave when their closest friendship is self-immolating not far more realistic (yes, I do include the part where she hallucinates on the plane) and – let’s be real – funnier.

Bride Wars depicts both its brides – friends since childhood – as beautiful, successful in their careers and in stable relationships. It also depicts their descent into venomous harpies when it emerges that their wedding planner (a dignified and ice-cool Candace Bushnell) has booked both of their weddings to take place at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel on the same day.

The Plaza, we understand, has been both of the women’s dream venue since childhood visits with their mothers, who were also BFFs. This may be a side issue but, realistically, how many women’s best childhood friend remains their closest friend into adulthood, particularly when they became friends because of their mothers’ friendship?

Also, how realistic is it that both of these women would remain fixated on the goddamn Plaza from the age of six through twenty-six? Yes, the Palm Court is divine but I maintain that at some point at least one of them – probably Hathaway whose character Emma is a teacher – would have looked round and said, “You know? I don’t think it really is worth the money.”

Liv in Vera Wang

Bride Wars, then, is a film about madness. Emma and Liv (Hudson) are arguably experiencing a folie a deux bought on by that well-known contagious disease, wedding fever. Since before the Great Depression there have been studies showing that even in times of dire need, people in the West will still spend the equivalent of a down payment on a home on their weddings. Tell me that’s not crazy.

Bride Wars is a film that aims to capture its audience, which I think we can take for granted is made up entirely of women, by highlighting the worst side of what Hollywood likes to depict as the nature of women. Rather than solving their planner’s error in a dignified, or even organized way, the brides turn on each other, exploiting each other’s vulnerabilities and weaknesses in ways that only a former ally ever can.

And though it’s amusing to watch the pair go at each other in increasingly underhanded ways – a dye job gone brutally wrong, a fake tan turned neon, deliveries of cakes and sweets causing one bride to gain so much weight that she can no longer fit into her bridal gown, a Bachelorette crashed and dance-off performed – there is also the fact that these acts have consequences so far-reaching that it’s hard to imagine the pair hugging out at the end of the film (which, of course, they do).

Liv’s dress, for example, was by Vera Wang, meaning it probably cost in the region of $25,000. That’s a lot of money to make a former friend waste. The bad dye job turned her locks blue, causing a disastrous day at work that very nearly costs her the job that’s paying for that fancy frock and, one suspects, her wedding as her fiancé is shown to earn less money than her.

But worse than all of this is the fact that, while the women go at each other like thirteen-year-olds with enough money to act out their most schadenfreude-filled fantasies, the men in it are doing nothing. Not strictly nothing. Both the grooms have jobs and seem like OK dudes, but neither of them is running around the city in a vengeful huff because his soon-to-be-wife’s former-bestie is trying to best their wedding day and destroy his woman’s life.

The madness at work

No, in Bride Wars that brand of madness is entirely female. This says nothing good or particularly realistic about the state of mind of the modern adult female. I mean, yes, we get hurt and pissed off when our friends do something that seems designed to cause pain to us, but how many of us who are not mentally ill follow them around, actively trying to ruin one of the most significant and expensive days of their lives?

For one thing, who would have time, especially if they were trying to plan the happiest day of their own lives at the same time?

So, once again, even though I doubt the writers were trying to make a serious point about how the pressure and expectations of the wedding industry can direly affect women’s mental states, I think the film is about mental illness. You decide.

Alisande Fitzsimons is a writer and stylist from Dublin. She can be found tweeting about weddings and clothes @AlisandeF.

"Would You Have Treated Her Differently If She Was a Man?": A Review of ‘Side Effects’

Movie poster for Side Effects

Written by Stephanie Rogers. Includes massive spoilers. Massive.

When I saw Side Effects about a month ago, I found myself eye-rolling my way through the entire second half of the film. I liked the first half, mostly because I like looking at Channing Tatum, but when he left the film, so did my desire to stay. As is almost always the case with me, if I spend too much time thinking about a movie, I usually decide that I 50% loved it and 50% hated it and could really go either way in my review of it. Since (I think) I mostly hated this one, allow me to illustrate those reasons first.

First, am I really supposed to take seriously an indictment of Big Pharma when Rolling Rock product placement shows up every five seconds? Honestly, if Jude Law had turned out to be a scheming Big Alcohol Lobbyist instead of a super likeable psychiatrist, I would’ve thought, “What a not-that-surprising twist!” I was just waiting for Jude Law to smile his Jude Law smile into the camera and say, “Why take Ablixa when you can numb your psychological pain with Rolling Rock!”

In addition to undercutting its attempt to take down the American Corporation Shitshow, the film manages to also undercut its initial critique of Rich White Dudes Ruining the Universe. How? The old-fashioned way: by throwing a couple of manipulative bitches in there to make Rich White Dudes sympathetic.

Oh no, Martin, what have you done?!

If you hate spoilers, for real stop reading now; I’m about to ruin EVERYTHING.

So, Rooney Mara plays Emily Taylor and fakes her suicidal depression so convincingly that I felt horrified when I realized the scam. I spent a significant part of that first half of the film identifying with Emily—her search for the right medications and dealing with their inevitable shitty side effects; her public crying jags, her complete lack of self-care, the desire to set up shop under the fucking covers forever—I mean, major depressive episodes are serious business. And her depression makes sense. Side Effects shows in flashbacks how her once Rich White Dude husband, Martin (Channing Tatum), ended up in prison for five years because of an insider trading scandal. The juxtaposition of their old life together—a giant mansion-esque home, expensive cars, 2000-dollar bottles of wine poured into diamond-coated glasses while Emily and Martin play doubles tennis in slow motion (not really)—makes their new tiny apartment and that whole scraping-by-for-cash thing that happens in the rest of Amurica look absolutely mortifying by comparison. I felt pretty bad for her.

SINGLE TEAR

But then Jude Law (Dr. Banks) rolls in to save the day! I seriously couldn’t get over the niceness of this dude. He first meets Emily when he’s the on-call doctor in the ER after she deliberately drives her car into a fucking parking garage wall. They talk for a minute, and he eventually agrees to see her again on an outpatient basis instead of sending her to a mental hospital for her suicide attempt. He then prescribes a few medications that unsuccessfully treat her “depression” before settling on a newly developed drug, Ablixa, which comes with an unmentioned sleepwalking side effect. (Hi, Ambien lawsuits!) Of course murder ensues because SIDE EFFECTS, and shit gets real.

I hated pretty much everything after this.

Rich White Dude being all sympathetic and nice

In general, I enjoy watching the (albeit rare) punishment of Rich White Dudes onscreen, especially given that this film takes place during one of the worst economic downturns in Amurican History, and I hope we can all agree that Rich White Dudes caused it and never suffered any actual real-life consequences. Unfortunately, Side Effects wants us to feel bad for these Rich White Dudes and successfully accomplishes that. Because these are the NICEST RICH WHITE DUDES EVAR. Like, Channing Tatum paid his dues. He went to prison and got out and spent the rest of his five minutes in the film apologizing incessantly for ruining his wife’s life. He took her to the doctor and tried to understand her depression and how best to care for her. By the time Emily pretended to sleepwalk a knife through his kidneys, I FUCKING LIKED HIM.

And poor Jude Law! Seriously, this bro made about zero questionable decisions in the first half of the film—other than being reasonably shitfaced on Rolling Rock during all his interactions—so he deserves about zero of the bad things that happen to him at the hands of Emily and her partner in crime (and previous psychiatrist) Dr. Victoria Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones). I mean, look at him:

Why are they doing this to Jude Law?!

SERIOUSLY WHY ARE THEY DOING THIS TO JUDE LAW?! Turns out, Dr. Siebert and Emily wanted to get White-Dude Rich themselves! And in order to make that happen, they bought a shitload of stock in the Ablixa competitor, then tanked the Ablixa stock by blaming it for causing murder and mayhem. SIDE EFFECTS. Or something along those lines—my stock situation consists of a 401K from a job I lost in 1999, and I just keep letting it sit there because I’m not an adult yet. They did somethin’ real bad with stocks & stuff, is what I’m sayin’.

So, to recap my recap, in the process of Getting Rich or Dying Trying, these two ladies—in addition to, you know, committing murder, doing some questionable stock market shit, perjuring themselves in court, making a mockery of actual mental illness, and mind-fucking every person they come in contact with—ruin poor Jude Law’s life for no reason. He prescribed the Ablixa, after all. Does it matter that when Emily first “complained” of sleepwalking side effects he immediately said STOP TAKING IT? Nope. Does it matter that he dropped everything to console Emily every time she needed his help, even when she showed up looking like a stalker during his lunch date with his girlfriend-wife? Nope. Does it matter that he remained a staunch ally on her behalf throughout her entire murder trial? Nope. His medical practice crumbles; he loses patients; and his girlfriend-wife leaves him. Now all we’ve got is Jude in his apartment with the Rolling Rock, you know? I’ve never seen a more sympathetic character onscreen.

Dr. Banks in the process of unraveling the tricky scheme

Luckily he’s a Nice Guy™ so he eventually unravels the tricky scheme and of course manages to outsmart the ladies, who, in addition to being total assholes also happen to be—wait for it—LOVERS. So much duh right now, right? Like, could this film have worked at all if Catherine Zeta-Jones and Rooney Mara didn’t have a hot make out scene for no reason? FUCK NO IT COULDN’T HAVE.

Emily seducing Dr. Seibert because … ?

Now, let me take a step back and talk about the one part I managed to not hate.

Once the Dr. Banks/Jude Law medical practice begins its downward spiral, one of his colleagues asks to speak with him. It’s a Rich White Dude, too! He and Dr. Banks and the audience have yet to figure out that this entire situation is a hilarious-suicidal-depression-not-really scheme. His colleague, concerned for how this Ablixa sleepwalking murder incident will impact him, looks at Dr. Banks and says, “Would you have treated her differently if she was a man?” Dr. Banks, appalled, refutes this and maintains his stance that he prescribed Ablixa only when other medications failed to effectively treat Emily’s depression. It’s convincing enough, but it got me wondering.

Catherine Zeta-Jones as The Evil Dr. Siebert

Is there any way in hell a man could’ve pulled this off the way Emily did? The success of this scheme relies mainly on one thing: believability. Dr. Banks needs to believe her. He needs to believe she’s suicidal. He needs to believe the medications he initially prescribed for her didn’t work. He needs to believe her depression is severe enough to warrant prescribing an experimental drug. Most importantly, he needs to believe Emily doesn’t require hospitalization while somehow also believing she isn’t a danger to others. Essentially, the success of this scheme relies on what is commonly referred to in feminism and in other intelligent –ism groups as Medical Sexism.

Dr. Banks knows what’s up. Finally.

BOOM—I guess I don’t entirely hate you, Side Effects.

Medical Sexism exists because doctors and other members of the medical community often dismiss women’s very real physical symptoms as psychological. For instance, a woman experiencing shortness of breath is more likely to receive an anxiety diagnosis than a man with similar symptoms, who might be referred for more tests to rule out stuff like, oh I don’t know, SERIOUS HEART PROBLEMS. This is some documented shit—with statistics to back it up and everything—and it has a lot to do with that whole HYSTERIA and Bitches Be Crazy thing still hanging around from the 19th century.

So, when Rich White Dude colleague asks Dr. Banks, “Would you have treated her differently if she was a man?” the correct answer, Dr. Banks, is “FUCK YUS I WOULD HAVE.” The reality is that Emily looked like a drugged, mopey, fragile, broken little girl, and Dr. Banks wanted to swoop in and touch her tiny hand and look into her watery eyes and say, “I can help you.” I dare a dude to throw his Honda Civic in drive and smash into a fucking cement wall. How long do you think it would take for Dr. Banks to personally roll Ol’ Dude’s ass up to the Bellevue Psychiatric Ward strapped to a fucking gurney?

Dr. Banks didn’t do that with Emily because, in his eyes, she looked like a sopping, hysterical lady-mess that The Lord Our God placed on this earth for him to fix all by hisself! And as a result, he accidentally glossed over Emily’s I’mma Murder My Husband situation. And you just know if it had been Ol’ Dude in the Honda Civic instead of Emily, he’d be failing the fuck out of The Dr. Banks “Is This Bro a Homicidal Maniac?” Test.

Okay, maybe THIS was a questionable decision, Dr. Banks

So should I call this a cautionary tale? Like, maybe Soderbergh’s all, “Listen. You should never let a woman’s supposed suicidal depression mask that bitch’s killing instinct.” Or maybe he’s all, “Listen. Stop Medical Sexism Now! Or Else!” I don’t know. But the simple fact that the Rich White Dude colleague spoke up about Emily’s gender, and how it might’ve impacted Dr. Banks’ treatment decisions, gives Side Effects a touch of complexity that it most certainly lacks otherwise.

Of course, thinking so much about the correct answer to “Would you have treated her differently if she was a man?” got me thinking about the correct answer to “Would you have hated this movie if it were about two men?” And then I laughed for ten minutes and choked from not breathing because this ludicrous shit became the plot of my new movie:

A man named Tommy Bronson reunites with his wife after her five-year stint in prison for insider trading. He becomes depressed and attempts suicide; after all, his wife lost their life savings and forced him to move into a small apartment where he struggled to make ends meet. He begins seeing a psychiatrist—Dr. Sheila Nori—after his first suicide attempt, and Dr. Nori agrees to see him as an outpatient, even though he’s clearly a danger to himself and possibly others. She puts him on an experimental new drug that causes Tommy to sleepwalk. He mentions it to Dr. Nori who immediately says, “You should stop taking the drug.” When he refuses—because his sex life is so much better now!—Dr. Nori drops the subject. Little does Dr. Nori know that Tommy is planning to revenge-murder his wife in a Sleepwalking While Stabbing Event.

Dr. Nori stands by Tommy after the murder, but soon, Dr. Nori’s life starts to crumble. Her medical practice loses business; her colleagues question her ethics; her boyfriend-husband leaves her and takes the kid, too. She sits in her apartment alone, drinking Rolling Rock in the dark. Eventually, she puts some clues together and discovers that Tommy and his past psychiatrist, Dr. John Lerner, had planned the whole thing! And also, they’re lovers! She finds a way to ruin both their lives by having Tommy seduce John in the hopes that John will spill the beans because—get this—Tommy is wearing a wire! They get jail time and/or life in an asylum. Tommy and John fucked with the wrong shrink. (That’s the tagline.)

The end.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Oz the Great and Powerful Rekindles the Notion that Women are Wicked by Natalie Wilson via Ms.

What ‘Oz’ Owes to Early Radical Feminism by Michelle Dean via The Nation

Why ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’ Is A Major Step Back For Witches and Women by Elisabeth Rappe via Film.com

Where Were White Feminists Speaking Out For Quvenzhané Wallis? by Kirsten West Savali via Clutch Magazine

On Quvenzhané Wallis by Jessica Luther via Shakesville

Can Women in Hollywood Lean In? by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood

What Happened in the Last Episode of ‘Girls’ Was Not “Uncomfortable Sex” by Samhita Mukhopadhyay via Feministing

‘Girls,’ Women and Mental Health by Kathleen Pye via Fem2pt0

Damsel in Distress (Part 1) Tropes vs. Women in Video Games by Anita Sarkeesian via Feminist Frequency

The ‘Veronica Mars’ Movie Kickstarter And Why Fans Need To Start Thinking Of Themselves As Investors by Alyssa Rosenberg via ThinkProgress

‘Girl Rising’ Makes the Case for Worldwide Girls’ Education by Anita Little via Ms. Magazine

Why is The Mindy Project so Funny? Because it Inverts the Rules of a Rom-Com by Zoe Schein via Bitch Magazine

Comedy Central Orders 10 Episodes of Broad City by Jesse David Fox via Vulture

Enough Feisty Princesses: Disney Needs an Introverted Heroine by Lindsay Lowe via The Atlantic

Why The Fearful Hero Is A Good Thing For Video Games (On Lara Croft in Tomb Raider) by Becky Chambers via The Mary Sue

The Happy Girl vs. The Cool Girl: Why People Don’t Like Anne Hathaway by Karensa Cadenas via Women and Hollywood

Theatrical Slut Shaming: Daily Caller Attacks Ashley Judd For Nude Scenes by Alyssa Rosenberg via ThinkProgress

Why I Hacked Donkey Kong for My Daughter by Mike Mika via Wired

A Love Letter to Quvenzhané Wallis by Moyazb via The Crunk Feminist Collective

What have you been reading this week?? Tell us in the comments!

2013 Oscar Week: More Royal Than Affair

A Royal Affair (2012)

Guest post written by Atima Omara-Alwala.

Anyone reading the synopsis of A Royal Affair wonders if it will be more of the same. I mean what else can be said about a high-born woman trapped in loveless marriage to an awful unsophisticated idiot who finds love in the arms of an enlightened dashing sensitive man? (Looking at you Keira Knightley, in The Duchess or let’s be real, any movie about Marie Antoinette). However it is saved by actually not being about the affair but a story of the fight for enlightenment and freedom. These ideals are at the center of Danish director Nikolaj Arcel’s film, which is based on the lives of Danish King Christian VII, his wife and Queen Caroline, Mathilde, and their royal physician, Dr. Johan Streunsee.

The protagonist is Caroline Mathilde (Alice Viksander), who is the primary orator of the movie. We find her in exile in an undescribed place where she begins to write her story to her children. Caroline, who is English by birth, is betrothed at a young age to the equally young King Christian VII (Mikkel Følsgaard) of Denmark. Though the story does not go into great detail about her family origin, she is the youngest child of the then-ruling British royal family.

Being a young woman of royal birth, the best that women of Caroline’s station can hope for is a powerful marriage, with love as a luxury. This expectation is driven home in the scene where Caroline frets over whether her husband should like her. Her mother, actually trying to be very kind, says, “Dear, if you are able to get your husband into your bed on your wedding night, you will be a great success.”

And so with that Caroline’s married life begins as she is sent to a foreign land she has never visited to a place with a language she barely speaks. King Christian the VII as a husband leaves much to be desired. He is relatively childish and awkward but, beyond that, something is mentally off about him. His mental instability is made apparent in a scene where King Christian’s stepmother, the Queen Dowager Juliane Marie (Trine Dyrholm), warns him his wife’s prettiness and artistic abilities can eclipse his reign. Very suddenly, Christian moves from happiness to anger, as he takes his insecurity out on Caroline in front of their guests and demands that she “move her fat thighs” away from the piano she is playing for guests. A real Prince Charming, to be sure. Caroline, justifiably, is horrified into shocked silence as is everyone else in the room. The King’s mental capability and his mercurial nature becomes an important player in the film later.

The following wedding night scene is so painfully awkward you can’t help but feel sorry for Caroline right away. Thankfully, the filmmaker saves us from the rest of the inartful consummation by fading to black. The unhappy marriage is summed up very quickly in the next few scenes as her only solace is her friendship with lady-in-waiting, Louise Von Plessen who is sent away eventually. Christian VII is revealed to not only be verbally abusive but a heavy drinker, carouser and frequenter of Copenhagen’s finer houses with ladies of ill-repute. All of which rightfully disgusts and angers Caroline but she endures with relative matriarchal silence. Eventually, Caroline completes her most important royal duty and becomes pregnant with her first child and heir to the throne Frederik.

Around this time, enters Dr. Johan Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen, a former Bond villain in 2006’s Casino Royale!). What is interesting about Johann is that besides being a doctor he is also a man of the Enlightenment movement that is sweeping the continent. A well-read man, Johann bonds with the king over their mutual love of Shakespeare. It is for this major reason he is selected to be the royal physician and then elevated to overall trusted adviser.

King Christian’s irritation with his wife’s continued moodiness over their marriage leads to him encouraging Johann to give his wife a checkup to find out what exactly ails her, so she can be more “fun” in the King’s words.

In her own right, Caroline has an excellent education and it is revealed before she came to Denmark that she also enjoyed the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, and other idols of the Enlightenment. Her bond forms with Johann, whom she has regarded with suspicion and complicit in her husband’s behavior, when she realizes he has smuggled and hidden many of these banned writers’ books into Denmark. In Johann, Caroline finds someone who can understand her, and in her Johann instantly respects a woman he greatly underestimated as clearly just another pretty and mindless royal wife. The bond is further cemented when Johann convinces the King and Queen that their son and heir, Frederic,k needs to be vaccinated from smallpox, something never done, but Johann successfully does also gaining him admirers at Court.

While Johann and Caroline eventually enter into the expected royal affair, the story becomes more about what their illicit partnership cultivated. Johann often accompanies the King to his Council meetings where the conservative Council men enact oppressive rulings of the state of Denmark. Due to his clear mental incapabilities, the Council treats the King like a puppet. And Johann and Caroline are both frustrated by the Council’s anti-Enlightenment, conservative, aristocratic policies of censorship and the unequal rights of men etc. It is Caroline who reminds Johann of his power over the impressionable King. And it is then that the light turns on for Johann of how the King can be used to promote a greater good.

And so it unfolds, King Christian, through the influence of Caroline and Johann’s affair, becomes the arbiter of the Enlightenment movement in Denmark. He abolishes the conservative Council, establishes freedom of the press, ends prison torture, etc. Denmark becomes a pioneering country in freedom even at the notice of Voltaire himself. Like Caroline and Johann, strangely even King Christian appears most happy during this time, as Johann is careful with his power over the King encouraging him to think actively and use his power as king but for enlightenment ideals. The political intrigue and fight for power is at the heart of this film as both Caroline and Johann fight for control from the conservative council with the King as their proxy.

Like all movements challenging the status quo, the conservative Council challenges the ideals of the Enlightenment celebrated by Caroline and Johann and their informal salon they have gathered around them. For US viewers the conservative Council’s arguments against social reforms is very familiar.. “Where is the money?” “Must be paid for” etc. And certainly viewers around the world can related to the ideals of equality and freedom. The unfolding chess match, with the mentally unstable King as its chess piece, has its consequences finally as the conservative council reaches a major checkmate against Queen Caroline and Dr. Streunsee. Caroline and Christinan’s enemy at the court, Queen Dowager Juliane Marie discovers her infidelity through the questioned birth of Caroline’s second child, Louisa.

The consequences of political infighting and manipulation even for a greater good plays itself out in a less than idealistic fashion and as a result we find Caroline back as we did at the start of the movie, in exile, penning the final pieces of her story to her children, in hopes they at least understand, if not accept her motivations. What the children do with that knowledge makes for an interesting ending.

This movie is Oscar worthy and passes the feminist smell test because A) Despite the title has “affair” in it has surprisingly little gratuitous sex in it, especially at the expense of Caroline. B) She controls the narrative and not someone else which is often the case with women who end up in her situation (read: Henry VIII’s unlucky wives) C) She is an equal partner in the Enlightenment discussion with Johann. D) it is less about an affair and is more about the coming together of two unlikely revolutionaries whose intellectual partnership became a major historical turning point for a nation’s history and political system.

While Alice Viksander didn’t carry a ton of emotional range as Queen Caroline she does command your respect, and your interest in the movie to the very end.

———-

Atima Omara-Alwala is a political strategist and activist of 10 years who has served as staff on 8 federal and local political campaigns and other progressive causes. Atima’s work has had a particular focus on women’s political empowerment & leadership, reproductive justice, health care, communities of color and how gender and race is reflected in pop culture. Her writings on the topics have also been featured at Ms. Magazine, Women’s Enews, RH Reality Check.

2013 Oscar Week: ‘A Royal Affair’

Guest post written by Rosalind Kemp.

Rather than merely bringing European history to the screen A Royal Affair is an effective character drama of three people and their relationships with each other. It begins with Caroline Mathilda leaving her English home to join her husband King Christian VII, whom she’s never met, in Denmark. It is clear at their first meeting that all is not quite right with the king and despite her best efforts at performing her duty Caroline finds his eccentric behaviour hard to bear. The court labels the king as mad and while he’s on a European tour German doctor, Johann Friedrich Struensee, is convinced to become his personal physician. Struensee manages to gain the king’s trust with kindness and patience and by indulging the King’s fancies. Along with the development of a friendship with the King, Struensee discovers a political affinity with Caroline; both share the same radical, enlightened political ideas and what begins as an intellectual bond becomes a love affair. The film has sublime visuals without being frilly or fetishising historical dress and design, and the central trio of actors are powerfully affecting and all engage the viewers’ sympathies despite the conflicting motivations and desires of the characters.

Mads Mikkelsen as Johann Friedrich Struensee and Alicia Vikander as Queen Caroline Mathilde in A Royal Affair

At first A Royal Affair seems an unusual choice for Denmark’s nomination for the Academy’s best foreign film. The cultural products from Denmark we’re used to seeing in the UK and USA tend to be modern, sparing and noirish rather than lavish period dramas. But Queen Caroline has kindred spirits in Sara Lund of Forbrydelsen and the female characters of Borgen and The Bridge. All of these stories have people struggling with the power (or lack of) that society has bestowed on them. All are commentaries on contemporary Danish society. The relevance of A Royal Affair to the melodramas within politics today increases its value beyond historical fantasy or indulgence while still offering us the pleasures of period drama.

An interesting element to the film is how the characters are all shown sympathetically as humans making compromises to stay alive in a world that restricts them from being themselves; Struensee, whose opinions correspond with the film’s message, states “some of society’s norms prevent people from living their lives.” They all must create strategies to deal with a difficult world that is hostile to them due to their gender, their position, their “madness”, or their beliefs. Before she is married, Caroline is sober but positive about her future. But she doesn’t suffer fools gladly and hasn’t the temperament to put up with her husband’s behaviour. Once she realises the restrictions upon her she becomes steadily more melancholy until she starts to talk with Struensee. He first tries to enliven her at the order of Christian who fed up with his “grumpy” wife asks Struensee to “make her fun! I want a fun queen.” It is clear to us that her behaviour and conduct is not dull by choice but the result of a lifetime’s training in how to be a queen and of the correct femininity. Trying to cheer her Struensee asks if she rides and when she says no he replies “That is because you use side-saddle”. In this way her suffering is explicitly shown as being a result of her conforming to femininity and her joy at rebelliously riding astride is clearly visible.

Alicia Vikander as Queen Caroline Mathilde in A Royal Affair

Of course her husband could have treated her better but he too is suffering under societal expectations. He is king and expected to rule but is also seen as an idiot and a madman so is ridiculed and patronised. Struensee explains that “some people are so sealed inside their fate that they hide – deep within their mind” thus Christian’s “madness” is a coping strategy for a role he doesn’t wish to act. Once Struensee takes over Christian’s responsibilities in court, he no longer has the time to be his friend. He supplies Christian with Moranti, a black child, to play with in his place. It’s particularly sad and sickening to see the silent boy being given like a toy to an infantilised man. Despite escaping from a slave ship, Moranti hasn’t escaped his otherness and it seems that even though Struensee and Christian make moves to end slavery and serfdom in Denmark, on an individual basis people’s liberties can’t always be won. Struensee it seems has a healthier strategy for coping with the injustice of his position. He uses his influence on the king to bring about changes to society more in line with his radical enlightened beliefs. Of course the punishment Struensee receives for his transgression is harsher than the others’ suggesting that the privileges of aristocracy over the common person is more powerful than those of gender, education or sanity.

As this is supposedly a story of a love triangle (though it’s so much more) a lot of the film focuses on relationships. Romance is actually a long time coming with the friendships between Struensee and Christian, and Struensee and Caroline being more clearly established. Struensee manages to identify both of their sufferings and provide support when neither have other friends. This could make his alliances seem suspiciously convenient to his political and social goals but the relationships are at no time presented as being insincere. We’re also inclined to wonder if each person’s isolation adds to their sorrows. When Caroline first arrives in Denmark she develops a strong bond with her lady in waiting Louise until Christian viciously attacks her and removes her from the queen’s service. This leaves Caroline without a confidante until she’s sent away after being accused of plotting treason and is reunited with her. Each character suffers on their own and in this unjust world, to negotiate a place for yourself there can be no unity or sisterhood. The only time we hear Caroline speak to her mother-in-law Juliane Marie is when she is begging not to be separated from her son Frederik the crown prince. Both women understand each other’s love for their children and the need to protect them but in the royal household they cannot both succeed.

Mikkel Boe Følsgaard as King Christian VII and Mads Mikkelsen Johann Friedrich Struensee in A Royal Affair

The relationship between Christian and Struensee is depicted touchingly with Christian’s boorish manner becoming kinder in his friend’s presence. Their betrayals of each other (though it must be said that Christian’s was unwitting) are painful demonstrations of the impossibility of transgressive friendships. It is the removal of Christian’s power and autonomy that marks Struensee’s betrayal rather than his affair.

A Royal Affair shows that sometimes friendship is more important than sex, which is refreshing for melodramas such as this, and that’s perhaps what makes it more disappointing when we see less of Caroline on-screen once her relationship with Struensee becomes sexual. She may discuss politics with him in her bed-chamber but when it comes to putting their ideas to council it has to be enacted by the men. There is no doubt that Caroline’s influence is powerful but it is so often behind the scenes, it’s pleasing in any case that her fascinating story has now been shown in film.

———-

Rosalind Kemp is a film studies graduate living in Brighton, UK. She’s particularly interested in female coming of age stories, film noir and European films where people talk a lot but not much happens.

‘Silver Linings Playbook,’ or, As I Like to Call It: FuckYeahJenniferLawrence

Movie poster for Silver Linings Playbook

Written by Stephanie Rogers.

It went down like this: My sister and I were visiting my mom for Thanksgiving in the tiny but lovely and water-surrounded town of Solomons, Maryland. This was like a four-day adventure, and after spending one day eating, another day sleeping and watching football (don’t judge me), and another day accidentally setting off the entire alarm system at the college where my mom teaches Labor Studies, we thought … why not take a break from almost getting arrested and see a movie?

I wanted to see Life of Pi, mainly because it was right down the street, and the next closest movie theater was a two-hour drive, or, as my mom likes to say, “It’ll only take us 45 minutes to get there.” That’s apparently code for two hours. But my sister was all, “I want to see Silver Linings Playbook because Bradley Cooper!” And I was all, “I don’t even know what that is!” And she was all, “You get to see whatever you want all the time because you live in New York and never hang out with anybody and have no life!” And I was all, “Fine, Asshole. Fine.” So that’s how I ended up bitterly walking into a movie theater after seething in a car for two hours to see a movie starring one of those bros from ApatowEtcetera. I didn’t expect much.

But OMG!

(I have no idea why I’m writing this review like a 34-year-old 14-year-old, but this is how it’s going down, and I can’t stop it.)

Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook

If my sister had merely said, “That chick from Winter’s Bone is in it,” I would’ve been all, “You had me at Bone,” and we could’ve avoided a two-hour passive-aggressive insult-fest loosely refereed by my mom, who should really know the difference between 45 minutes and two hours by now, so don’t feel bad for her.

Look, Bradley Cooper isn’t The Worst. I kind of liked him in Limitless, and I could probably write a feminist analysis of Wedding Crashers if I felt like intellectually torturing myself for a minute, and The Hangover movies aren’t real (they fucking aren’t), and he did help out Sydney Bristow on a few episodes of Alias, so I’ll give the guy a break for all those things, but mainly for asking Sean Penn a question on Inside the Actors’ Studio in like 1992.

Tell me that’s not adorable.

But, who cares about Bradley Cooper when Jennifer Lawrence exists. I mean. Right? Winter’s Bone. The Hunger Games. And yes, say it with me: Silver Linings Playbook.

God I loved this movie. I’m not sure I know exactly why yet, or how it managed to incorporate elements of Dirty Dancing, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Goodfellas, He’s Just Not That Into You, Rain Man, and Rudy into one cohesive-ish film that seems to both celebrate and critique the embarrassing clichés inherent in each of those movies, but I know I loved it. I know Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper will deservedly get Oscar nods for their performances, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Best Picture Nomination bestowed upon it. I know the film felt—as most do these days—occasionally problematic in its representations of gender, but I also know that I left this particular film giving way less of a fuck about those problems than I normally do. That isn’t to say I’m letting it off the hook for its failures; I’m just saying let me love it for a minute.

Jacki Weaver and Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook

Here’s the premise: Bradley Cooper plays Pat. He gets committed to a mental hospital for eight months after he brutally attacks the man who’s sleeping with his wife (Nikki). He gets diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He gets out. He moves in with his parents because Nikki left him and got a restraining order against him. He tries to get his illness under control in the hopes that Nikki will take him back. Because his married friends Ronnie and Veronica (Nikki’s friend) realize that the probability of Nikki taking him back is, like, no, they decide to introduce him to Veronica’s sister. Enter Tiffany aka fuckyeahjenniferlawrence.

Lawrence plays Tiffany, a young woman whose husband died unexpectedly the previous year (and we don’t find out the details of his death until a heart-wrenching scene toward the end of the film). I worried at first that Tiffany might veer into Manic Pixie I-must-save-this-dude-from-himself-so-hard territory, but that doesn’t entirely happen. What prevents it from happening? Tiffany is a depressed, lonely mess herself, and she’s in just as much need of “saving” as every other character. The film doesn’t name a specific mental illness for her, but we know she takes medication and “goes to a lot of therapy,” as some dude warns (read: SHE’S CRAZY).

Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook

One could write a full-length book about whether this film accurately portrays mental illness or if it relies too heavily on conventional on-screen mental illness stereotypes. Most reviews I’ve read tend to focus on the fact that Silver Linings Playbook at least attempts to depict the strains mental illness places on the sufferer’s interpersonal relationships. (I will say, for the record, that Pat does start taking his meds once he realizes he needs them to manage his bipolar disorder, and he also consistently goes to therapy. I don’t understand how so many reviewers keep missing this, as it’s a pretty significant argument against the idea that Silver Linings pushes some kind of superficial, new age-y pop psychology agenda that promotes “the power of positive thinking” as the exclusive treatment for mental illness. It does not do that.)

What it does do, though, is take a subtle jab at the cult of masculinity in America. The conflicts in the film are often caused by male anger and aggression, and several scenes even conclude with male violence—like when Pat’s rage fit with his dad (DeNiro) leads him to (albeit accidentally) hit his mother in the face, or when he throws a book through a window because he hates the ending, or when he gets arrested for intervening in a brawl at a football game. The film makes it perfectly clear that this style of hyper masculine conflict resolution ain’t getting anybody anywhere. Pat begins to succeed and really change in Silver Linings only when he agrees to take his meds and become Tiffany’s partner in a local dance contest—and it doesn’t get less traditionally masculine than the phrase “local dance contest.”

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook

But, like Helen Hunt in The Sessions, it’s Jennifer Lawrence who grounds this film. Her performance as the emotionally disturbed Tiffany could’ve easily turned into a parody of women with depression (hi!), and the often absurdist nature of Silver Linings certainly lays a foundation for that. Tiffany never goes there, though. She fights to stay above ground, by dancing, by trying to forge a connection with Pat, and, as the film clearly indicates early on, by experimenting with medications to treat her (unnamed) illness.

Yes, she sleeps around. Yes, she manipulates Pat into entering the dance competition (eventually telling him a big ol’ horrible lie about Nikki). Yes, she buddies up with Pat’s over-nurturing mom (an excellent Jacki Weaver) to get information about Pat’s jogging routes so she can track him down—most of Pat and Tiffany’s initial conversations take place during exercise, ha.

And I didn’t love a lot of that.

Jacki Weaver and Robert DeNiro in Silver Linings Playbook

I understood it, though, and even within the lack of believability at times, the emotions driving Tiffany’s decisions rang true for me. Who hasn’t been lonely and desperate to connect with another person? Who hasn’t made questionable choices in order to do that? I want to see those women on screen, women who I get to adore and despise, who make me feel uneasy and ecstatic, who I’m rooting both for and against. Why? Because I get to see dudes like that on screen all the time. We don’t expect our dude heroes to be perfect, and we shouldn’t expect it of our women heroes either. Where’s the fun—or truth—in that?

(Let me add, though, that I did not like the fact that Pat’s wife Nikki, who we see exactly one time in the movie, acts as nothing more than a vehicle to move the plot forward. Can we do away with that fucking women in refrigerators trope already?)

Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro in Silver Linings Playbook

True story: I’m mentally ill. That’s probably the worst transition in the history of anything ever written, so I’mma just ignore it and keep on going. I’ve struggled with bipolar II for the past fifteen years, and I spent a good portion of that time undiagnosed (which is much scarier than the actual, very stigmatized diagnosis). Perhaps that’s one reason I loved the movie so much. The director, David O’Russell, mentions in an interview that his son is bipolar, so his desire to make the film stemmed from personal experience. That comes through wonderfully, in the actors’ performances especially, but also in the tragic comedy of it all. Silver Linings Playbook reminded me of one long obligatory party, with every mentally ill member of my family trying to interact with one another without snapping.

There might be fights, accusations, and the occasional horrific anxiety attack, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t understanding and love.

Women in Politics Week: Homeland’s Carrie Mathison

To quote The Awl’s headline from December 2, 2011, Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison is a woman on the verge of a nervous breakthrough.

Carrie Mathison burst onto our television screens in October of 2011 as the central narrator to Showtime’s superbly riveting political thriller, Homeland. Based on Israel’s Prisoners of War and driven by the question what homecoming means to the lives of those formerly held captive, Homeland centers on Carrie Mathison, Nicholas Brody, and the cell of people who weave throughout their personal and political spheres. In “Homeland’s Roots,” a short extra via Showtime’s On Demand, series creator Gideon Raff says, “We had really interesting conversations about the differences between American and Israeli societies in terms of their approach to prisoners of war.” Series developer and producer Alex Gansa adds, “We had to find another avenue to tell the story and what we really found was this idea that Brody may have been turned in captivity.”

Nicholas Brody, played by Damian Lewis, is a returned POW held for 8 years by Al-Qaeda. He comes under Carrie’s radar because she had, ten months prior, received a tip from the bomb maker of Abu Nazir (leader of Homeland’s fictitious terrorist cell) that an American POW had been turned. Carrie adamantly believes that Brody is the man in question and, with little to no assistance from colleagues, begins a tireless trek to bring him to justice and prevent any further acts of terror on American soil.

Homeland is working with a hefty plotline and tropes often left undiscovered on our televisions. Hunting terrorists or any other version of the bad guy often makes it to our weeknight tubes, what separates Homeland is that not only are we dealing with a specific area of the political sphere (The CIA) with a woman in an important, central place of power, but also our main character is herself suffering: waging a constant battle against her bi-polar disorder and what it means to her as not only a woman but a successful career woman. Homeland writer, Meredith Stiehm, says on writing Carrie, “Carrie being bipolar does make her an unreliable narrator…I think it is interesting to ask the question through her character can you be really functional at the same time as having a serious illness?”

The answer to this question is the ride that is Homeland. A post by “filmschooled” via Persephone Magazine succinctly summarizes the role of mental illness among women in films like Sucker Punch and The Ward: “These films showcase mental illness both as the affliction of the untrustworthy (see the plea of “I’m not crazy!”) and as a vulnerability, which in turn is framed as an attractive trait.” These are just two examples of the ways in which women in media have often been compartmentalized and sexualized because of mental illness. Watching Claire Danes so exquisitely portray vulnerability, strength, and intelligence is a mesmerizing feat. Carrie Mathison is a character refusing to be sidelined, refusing to be pitied or fall into any of the traps set by society and the men who surround her. We watch Carrie, and throughout season one, trust that she is on to something, while, at the same time, giving pause to the idea that she could, potentially, be wrong. However, we root for her and none of this undermines Carrie because her passion for her job and, eventually for Brody, are the real passions of a woman who, though vastly intelligent, poised, and skillful still has not figured out exactly how to get her shit together.

We watch Carrie so sure of herself at the beginning of the series and, like the jazz music that accompanies the show’s opening credits and underscores Carrie’s ethos, we ride along the waves as her environment unravels reaching crescendo when she finds a sublime intimacy with Brody. This plotline, allowing both Damian Lewis and Claire Danes to come alive and show their full talents, worked and continues to drive the Homeland story because, as impractical as a union would seem at first, Carrie Mathison is a woman who can and does make her own choices. The plotlines that weave throughout Homeland meet at a crossroads that bridge Carrie’s personal and professional lives in a very dangerous, raw, and enigmatic triangle. In less deft hands than Ms. Danes’ Carrie’s flaws may be standoffish, peevish even, but the exceptional work she puts into bringing this dynamic woman full circle never falter. To the credit of the writers and producers of the show as well, dramatic irony is put into effect at all of the right moments, allowing us to know what Carrie does not: she is right. Even better, as I type this I am watching the most recent episode (12/25) and still find myself asking questions about what is fact and fiction. The one truth I know as a viewer of Homeland is that I trust Carrie and I am more than willing to go along for her ride, wherever it may take us.

Claire Danes, in British GQ, was asked about her character. She responded, “She’s like my kinky superhero alter ego now. Because as disturbed and troubled as she is, she’s always fucking right. Which is so nice because I so rarely am.”

It seems even Danes herself is not above the Carrie Mathison catharsis. Responding to writing Carrie for season two, Meredith Stiehm said, “…after we’ve seen her cut so low I take heart in seeing a character who is strong and has an important job and can maintain that as well as handling this illness that she has and after the first two episodes she is the old Carrie that we know.” Where Carrie is headed perhaps only the writers know, but I rest assured as a ready consumer of this Showtime delicacy that watching this character’s evolution will stay with me long after the series ends. As the opening credits relay, in response to Carrie’s mentor Saul’s stoic wisdom “everyone missed something that day” not everyone is Carrie Mathison.

Cali Loria tweets @realcaliloria.

Women in Politics Week: ‘Homeland’s Carrie Mathison: A Pulsing Beat of Jazz and ‘Crazy Genius’

Carrie Mathison, a haunted yet brilliant CIA analyst

This post, by Leigh Kolb, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on October 10, 2012.

Warning: spoilers ahead!

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.
— Billie Holiday

In the pilot episode of Homeland, Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), hurries back to her Washington D.C. apartment after a night out, and the audience sees a photo of jazz musicians and pieces of artwork emblazoned with the word “Jazz.” Jazz–the nebulous, wholly American musical genre–is improvisation. It is individualism and collaboration. It is color-outside-the-lines, boundary-pushing rhythm. It is Carrie, a CIA analyst who must push and navigate her way around the patriarchal CIA and her brilliant and bipolar mind.

When adapting an Israeli drama for an American audience, the show’s writers immediately knew they wanted to make their hero a female. While Carrie’s gender is never an explicit issue in the series, the viewer can discern that many of her challenges (and some veiled advantages) are related to her womanhood.

Carrie shows very early on that she doesn’t strictly play by the rules. In the opening scene of the pilot, she is driving around the streets of Baghdad, headscarf down, and talking on the phone with her superior back in D.C. When she gets stuck in traffic, she simply gets out of the car and starts walking, pulling up her headscarf. She doesn’t hesitate to improvise, and is constantly navigating to make inroads that seem impossible.

The Ken Burns Jazz documentary website states,

So while it is true that jazz is a demanding and competitive field for both men and women, it is also true that a woman who shows up for an audition or jam session with a tenor sax or trumpet in her gig bag is greeted with a special variety of raised eyebrows, curiosity and skepticism. Is she serious? Can she play? Time-worn questions about women and jazz buzz through the room before she blows a note.

Carrie’s personal and professional lives weave together–the professional trumps the personal, but her private battles threaten her career.

When Carrie is questioning the American POW Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) for the first time, she is calm and firm, yet her pressing questions make her supervisor question her, as Brody is clearly uncomfortable. The CIA has moved past its extreme “woman problem” of the 80s and 90s, but certainly it’s not immune to continued gender bias.

The audience knows that Saul (Mandy Patinkin) has been Carrie’s mentor, and he continues to be one throughout the series. This older man, who helps guide and protect a young female protagonist, is a popular trope (Ron Swanson, Jack Donaghy and Don Draper, to name a few). It makes sense to the audience that a young woman doesn’t break into the boys’ club alone, so oftentimes these male mentors serve as powerful gatekeepers to gendered worlds. Whether this trope is realistic or reductionist, or somewhere in between, is an important point of discussion (much like the fact that Carrie’s mother is an absent character and her father shares an intense connection with her as they share the same bipolar disorder–this recurrent “absent mother” trope for female protagonists is problematic to say the least).

Saul serves as a mentor to Carrie. (Patinkin has been outspoken about issues of television and feminism.)

While the audience can assume that Carrie has seen and felt many “raised eyebrows, curiosity and skepticism” in her rise through the ranks, her creativity and improvisational talent give her power.

It’s ill-becoming for an old broad to sing about how bad she wants it. But occasionally we do.
— Lena Horne

In the aforementioned scene, when Carrie rushes home after a night out, she strips down to a slip and wipes her crotch with a damp washcloth while brushing her teeth. She hurriedly slips off a wedding ring as she leaves to go to work at CIA Headquarters.

Later, she goes to a jazz bar (after laboriously–not pleasurably–putting on black lace) and tells a man in a suit that she wears the ring to “weed out guys looking for a relationship.” After some obligatory flirting, she suggests they leave and go elsewhere.

When Carrie strikes up a sexual relationship with Brody later in the first season (after drunken, raw sex in her backseat), it’s always mildly unclear whether she’s doing so for professional gain. The relationship ebbs and flows in and out of her favor, and the audience realizes that Carrie enjoys sex and some level of human connection. Even when it looks and feels like a chore (as she puts on her black lace, for example), sex is something that Carrie needs. Period.

No strings, no clear ulterior motives, no obsession with marriage. Carrie’s sexual persona is as startling–and as normal–as the crotch-wipe after a night out.

The complexity of relationships and marriages is a central theme in many subplots (Brody’s wife, Jessica, believing her husband dead, has a serious relationship with his best friend; Saul’s wife struggles with his work schedule, although she is a highly successful professional herself). The relationships all reflect very realistic scenarios, and the women–supporting characters, even–are complex and whole.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things — all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.
— Nina Simone

When Carrie gets up to leave the jazz bar with her catch of the night, she stops and notices Brody and his family on television. She observes the finger movements of the trumpeter, pianist and bassist, and connects them to the finger-tapping motions Brody is making on his televised press conferences. She leaves her date behind and rushes to Saul’s house, more convinced that Brody has been turned.

Carrie has a wall in her apartment dedicated to unraveling the al-Qaeda terror plot she believes Brody to be operating in. Her personal life and professional life have few boundaries (and her only clear pleasures–jazz music and sex–bleed into her career as well).

Her thought processes are very rarely black and white, as are her male colleague’s. She always seems to be trying to connect new and different dots, and looking at other pieces of stories. When Aileen Morgan and Raqim Faisel were being hunted as prime terrorist suspects, the male agents assumed Aileen was the “terrorist’s girlfriend.” It was Carrie who finally said, “Maybe she’s the one driving this…” And she was. The blonde white woman was the catalyst to their involvement with a terror plot, and Carrie had to point out the possibility that their assumptions (white woman tricked and trapped by a Middle Eastern extremist) were wrong.

A Guardian blog post connected the fact that a Thelonious Monk song was playing as a backdrop when Carrie drove to attend a meeting at the CIA Headquarters. The writer notes,

Monk was hospitalised at various points in his career due to an unspecified mental illness and there has been some debate about whether he could have had a schizophrenic or bipolar disorder. (In fact, jazz and schizophrenia have long been linked. It is argued that New Orleans cornetist Buddy Bolden, the ‘inventor of jazz’, improvised the music he played as his schizophrenia did not allow him to read music, evolving ragtime into a more free form of music in the process.) It is an association that positions Carrie, who takes anti-psychotics, as a ‘crazy genius’ like Monk.

Carrie’s mental and emotional well-being, as is exposed in the first season, is held together by those non-aspirin pills she takes out of the aspirin bottle every morning. Her sister gives her anti-psychotics illegally, since she would not be able to be a CIA agent if they knew she had bipolar disorder. Her tenacity, her genius and her fragility (she sobs to her sister at one point, “I’ve been on my own for a while now…”) are in constant battle. She is, very often, on the edge.

Nick Brody and Carrie develop a complicated relationship, although her theories of his terrorist involvement were correct.

When she got (many) drinks with Brody before they first had sex, she told him,

“When I was a girl, my friends and I used to play chicken with the train on the tracks near our house and no one could ever beat me, not even the boys.”

One can see Carrie’s life as an endless game of chicken, whether it’s with trains, sex, surveillance without warrants or hiding a mood disorder. That constant challenge–not unlike a call-and-response jazz pattern that encourages louder and faster feedback–both energizes and limits Carrie throughout the series.

One day a whole damn song fell into place in my head.
— Billie Holiday

Carrie’s right. She knew Brody was turned, though no one would listen. Brody’s teenage daughter, Dana (in all of her teenage angst), with Carrie’s help, figured it out as well (and some argue it was Dana who really stopped Brody).

However, Brody stopped himself (his conscience and a malfunctioning bomb stopped him, rather, or even Dana’s phone call). He reigns in the public eye as the good guy, the rising politician, and the complexities of his terrorist motives (connected to drone strikes that killed a young boy) are difficult for the audience to make right and wrong out of. (This is, of course, what good storytelling does.)

Carrie, however, has been found out. A hospitalization left her without her medication, and she chooses to undergo electroconvulsive therapy (ECT, or shock treatment, which is becoming more popular in the US, mostly with female patients) to “heal” her mental disorder. The treatment makes her forget much of what she knew, and she can’t realize that she’s helped thwart another terrorist attack. Her intense guilt after “missing something” on 9/11 certainly drove her mania deeper, yet she is compelled to give up the part of herself that drives her forward with the ECT.

Just as the song is truly falling into place in her head, she loses it.

Not to discount the real and debilitating nature of Carrie’s bipolar disorder, one must also reflect upon women’s history in terms of mental illness and the diagnosis and treatment plans women were subjected to. Carrie enters into Season 2 a more domesticated woman (teaching English, gardening, attempting “domestic normalcy”). Treatment for women’s emotional disorders–or perceived disorders–in the late 1800s and early 1900s was often the “rest cure,” when women were isolated and kept away from mental and physical stimulation. This harmed more women than anything, and Carrie being kept from her challenging mental stimulation and work is not, most viewers would argue, good for her. This feminine fragility at the hands of a mental illness isn’t new, nor is the treatment. She’s consistently second-guessed and made to feel insecure, which leads her to doubt herself. However, Saul understands their need for her at this point in Season 2, and will hopefully continue to be her cheerleader and help her navigate the waters.

Carrie’s inner conflicts, starting from her girlhood, are repeated every episode in the show’s opening credits. Dissonant jazz trumpets play in the background, and scenes showing a little girl’s hands playing the piano and trumpet are cut with professionals’ playing. As the audience sees pictures of a young Carrie growing up–in a mask, in a maze, smiling for the camera–news footage from America’s recent history is spliced in (from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama, with sound bites from numerous domestic tragedies). Her sleeping eyes dart, and her panicked adult voice repeats her guilt and fear of “missing” something from ten years before. Even from this opening sequence, the audience is left tense and uncomfortable feeling and seeing Carrie’s thought patterns.

Improvising is much more difficult than reading sheet music. Jazz musicians must perform on a much different plane than classical musicians–the uncertainty, the complexity and the unexpectedness of what your fingers, or your band mate’s fingers, might do next is nothing short of terrifying. But in this game of “chicken,” the end result is a masterpiece.

Momentarily, Carrie has been relegated to the padded room of elevator music, soft and predictable.

Carrie chooses to undergo ECT, as she convinces herself in Season 1 that her suspicions about Brody are delusions.

Former CIA covert-operations officer Valerie Plame Wilson, who wrote “The Women of the CIA” nearly two years before Homeland first aired, says of Carrie Mathison:

Carrie does not suffer from the common female need-to-please trait and, in fact, insists she is usually right. She is impulsive in a job that rewards patience and lies to the few people who can tolerate her…You root for her because those very despicable qualities also make her extraordinarily good at her mission. Danes breathes life and realism into a character who, for once, goes against the clichés of what a female CIA officer is supposed to do and look like.

Carrie is back in action in Season 2, and Saul is listening.

Carrie, much like the female jazz musicians before her, does her best to break boundaries and succeed in the boys’ world. Perhaps she could, and hopefully she will, as long as she can both overcome her bipolar disorder while at the same time retaining the impulsive, creative, compulsive thinking that makes her brilliant.

Horror Week 2012: The Roundup

The Final Girl Gone Wild: Post-Feminist Whiteness in ‘Scream 4’ by Jeremy Cornelius

Wes Craven’s 1990s Scream trilogy completely rewrote the slasher genre in a postmodern meta-film. In March 2011, Scream 4 was released, ten years after Scream 3 was originally released, starring the original trio: Neve Campbell, David Arquette, and Courtney Cox-Arquette along with some new teen stars to apparently spur a new trilogy. Yet again, this film rewrites the genre, only this time the film plays with concepts of post-racial, post-feminist girl power by making Ghost Face [SPOILER ALERT!!!] a white sixteen-year-old girl, Sidney Prescott’s cousin Jill (played by Emma Roberts). Craven portrays Jill as the most violent and aggressive killer of any of the other serial killers in the Scream films. Jill kills mostly other white teenage girls (her best friends), a black police officer who is depicted in a racist fashion, and her own mother. Jill’s vitriolic aggression is fueled by her neoliberal pursuit of media fame and self-consciously performing the role of victim while veiling herself as the white-faced killer draped in a black shroud.

A Brief Feministory of Zombie Cinema by Max Thornton

As well as being a zombie aficionado, I spent my teen years deep in confusion and denial about sexuality and gender – and these two things are perhaps not unrelated. Vampires and werewolves are explicitly sexual and very gendered, but my movie monster of choice erases sex and gender entirely by its very nature. There are no alluring seductions, no monthly cycles, no explosions of pent-up masculine rage in the zombie: only a creeping sameness and inevitability, all social categories dissolved into nothingness, all physical difference literally consumed in the nightmarish Eucharist of undead cannibalism. Of course, this erasure of sex and gender does not mean that sex and gender are not explored in zombie films. On the contrary, there are some very interesting things going on, as we shall see in our whirlwind tour of the Three Eras of Zombie Cinema.

‘The Strangers’: The Horror of Home Invasion and the Power of the Final Girl by Mychael Blinde

Not only is Kristen (Liv Tyler) the film’s protagonist, she’s a woman who is not presented as a helpless idiot…It is Kristin who loads the shotgun after James confesses he’d lied about going hunting with his father and doesn’t know how to work it. Ultimately, James fires the gun, but by loading it Kristin proves she isn’t an incompetent damsel-in-distress. Throughout the film she strives to fight back…The Final Girl phenomenon is problematic because it is predicated on society’s sexist notion that women are the weaker sex. But scream time results in screen time, and while watching a movie like ‘The Strangers,’ with whom is the viewer being asked to identify? The masked maniac? Or the woman frantic to survive? (Hint: it’s not the maniac.)

The Failure of the Male Gaze in ‘The Vampire Lovers’ by Lauren Chance

In both the novella and The Vampire Lovers, Carmilla (Ingrid Pitt) exclusively stalks female victims, showing little interest in the male characters as anything other than fodder or a means to an end; Ingrid Pitt’s Carmilla never looks quite as comfortable with the lone male in the film she interacts with in a sexual manner as she does with the various women she seduces and bites…indeed the appreciation of Carmilla is seen in the faces of the female characters and it is with tentative exploration that they approach the mysterious woman.

‘Absentia’ Showcases Terror, Strong Female Characters and Sisterhood by Deirdre Crimmins

While I could continue on about the remarkable characterization of Callie and Tricia, it saddens me a little bit that strong non-sexualized female characters in horror films are such a unique phenomenon. While there are plenty of ass-kicking final women in slasher films, and many smart lady doctors who help stop the spread of a zombie outbreak, it is rare to feature a realistic female friendship, or a complicated sibling rivalry, in a horror film. Both Callie and Tricia are attractive, but that is not why they are there. The purpose that they are serving goes so far beyond their gender and their bodies that the contrast to other horror vixens seems like night and day. And neither of them plays the victim, or the unnaturally stoic heroine. They are both complex, and with long histories that they carry with themselves, and impact their judgments.

7 Great Heroines from Scary Movies by Candice Frederick

ELLEN RIPLEY (Aliens): This is perhaps the only scary movie where the villain (a 7-foot alien) was actually slightly intimidated by the intended victim, in this case a female lieutenant trapped on board an alien-infested ship. If she was ever frightened by the aliens, Ripley rarely showed it. As one of the only women on the ship, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) often swooped down to save her fellow male shipmates from becoming dinner for the aliens without hardly breaking a sweat. This is why we love her.

‘Jennifer’s Body’: Portrait of the Artist as the Demon’s Best Friend Forever by Erin Blackwell

The central pleasure of Jennifer’s Body — the confusing love Needy feels for Jennifer, and the trouble she takes to clarify that feeling, and act on it (revenging Chip), then act on it again (revenging pre-demon Jennifer) — might be precisely what turned off male reviewers. For all the promise of eye candy going in, this is a story about young women negotiating the horrors of the adolescent-to-adult obstacle course with some dignity, loyalty, and social conscience intact. The infamous male gaze has to work harder to appropriate a film told from the p.o.v. of cute but bookish, shy but self-respecting Needy, whose closest bond is, and might ever be, her friend Jennifer.

‘American Horror Story’ and the Evils of the Sexual Woman by Paul and Renee

When Moira is not around a living straight man, a target for that sexuality, she is an old woman displaying a damaged eye where she was shot. She is presented as completely lacking in sexual attractiveness — not only in appearance but in demeanour as well. Her sexual nature is reserved for straight men…Moira does get to be seen as a tragic figure for this. We see her pain and her loss when her mother dies in a nursing home. We get to see her fear and frustration over trying to be free from the house and having her plans thwarted. We get to see her pain and anger in the face of Constance’s constant taunting and needling of her, still holding a grudge for her husband’s infidelity. But in all these instances we’re expected to sympathise with the older Moira — the good Moira, the non-threatening Moira and, tellingly, the non-sexual Moira. Sexual Moira is not a person to be pitied or a person due sympathy or who feels pain.

‘The Walking Dead’ and Gender: Why I’m Skeptical the Addition of Badass Michonne Will Change the TV Series’ Sexism by Megan Kearns

For those who haven’t read the comics (like me), Michonne…seems to be a strong, powerful, complex character. She’s clever since she uses two incapacitated walkers to hide from other zombies. She appears to be a fierce and fearless survivor. But what’s even more exciting is that she’s a woman of color. Yet I’m skeptical as the show hasn’t done a great job portraying gender so far…I’m sorry, did the zombiepocalypse also signal a rip in the fabric of time where The Walking Dead characters now live in fucking 1955?! So Lori, women shouldn’t be “playing” with guns or hunting for food or protecting the camp. Nope. Women are only good for domestic duties like cooking, cleaning and child-rearing. Leave the tough stuff to the men. Silly me for forgetting. Thank god Andrea told Lori and her bullshit off…While blaming it on Lori’s “irrational behavior” due to her pregnancy and “going through a lot of stuff” (um, aren’t they all?), writer/creator Robert Kirkman ultimately defends this exchange and the show’s depiction of traditional gender roles…Why must we constantly see a rearticulation of sexist gender stereotypes?…Why is everyone on the show struggling to maintain white male patriarchy??

Patriarchy in Crisis: Power and Gender in ‘The Stepfather’ by Allison Maria Rodriguez

The Stepfather (the 1987 version) is not like most slasher films; it is a uniquely feminist horror film. Carol J. Clover’s theory of the “final girl,” the trope in horror cinema that leaves one unique girl as the sole survivor, is brilliant and generally accurate. But our heroine, Stephanie, is not like other final girls. For one, she is one of the ONLY girls in the film. The film is full of empty, impotent signifiers of male power: the male lieutenant, the male therapist, the male high school teacher, the male hero/amateur detective, the male reporter and, of course, Stephanie’s dead father. More importantly, throughout the duration of this film no women are killed. Let me repeat that: NO women are killed. It may not be obvious to some viewers, but it is strikingly obvious to me, a feminist who loves horror films. When the film opens, Jerry (or Henry Morrison, his identity before Jerry) has already killed his previous family, which we know contained a wife and at least one daughter, but during the film only men are slaughtered. They are men who attempt to rescue Stephanie and her mother Susan, but the only person who actually rescues Stephanie is Stephanie.

The Terror of Little Girls: Social Anxiety About Women in Horrifying Girlhood by Leigh Kolb

Instead, these little girls embody society’s growing fears of female power and independence. Fearing a young girl is the antithesis of what we are taught — stories of missing, kidnapped or sexually abused girls (at least white girls) get far more news coverage and mass sympathy than stories of boy victims. Little girls are innocent victims and need protection…Their mere presence in these films spoke not only to audiences’ fears of children losing innocence, but also the intense fear that little girls — not yet even women–would have the power to overthrow men. These girl children of a generation of women beginning a new fight for rights were terrifying — these girls would grow up knowing they could have power.

The Nervous Wife: Horror Stereotype or Statement on American Masculinity? by Tamara Winfrey Harris

Call it The Nervous Wife, which is more concise than “women are super emotional, illogical and fearful and cannot be trusted.” The Nervous Wife is a staple of the haunted house film genre, and now that paranormal shows are slowly taking over the small screen, it can be found there, too. In the first season of the FX channel’s American Horror Story, the character Vivien Harmon had to be committed and impregnated with a devil baby, and her teenage daughter dead and haunting the family abode, before her husband would believe that something spooky was going down. Yes. Yes. I know. Science says ghosts and goblins and such don’t exist. True enough. It is natural for a body to be skeptical of supernatural claims. Would you believe it if you were told the portal to hell was in your laundry room? Likely not. The problem is that women in horror films are rarely, if ever, the skeptical ones. Logic is portrayed as a man thing. Little ladies are quick to believe the unbelievable. And to be frightened by it.

‘V/H/S’: The New Face of Horror by Marcia Herring

But really, I think that the guys who made this film have no idea what kind of culture they are feeding into. I think that V/H/S is a horror film, not because it is well-made, or clever, or scary, but because these are the stories we expect to hear. Girls are murderous. Girls are sluts. Girls won’t give it up. Girls can’t be trusted. Girls are victims. Girls. Are. The. Worst. Those girls? They’re even worse than those guys. But you know what, guys who made this film? When you feed into this culture, when you populate your brains and ours with these images, with these narratives, you make it more and more likely that the only option girls have when date raped, when stuck in a loveless marriage, when victimized, when traumatized is to strike out. To strike back.

Gender Roles in ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ by Lady T

I started thinking about the five college students in The Cabin in the Woods and how their roles ar e defined by gender. The two women, Jules and Dana, are defined as The Whore and The Virgin – two opposite ends of the spectrum whose deaths are meant to serve as bookends for the others. The order of deaths is irrelevant except in the case of the women. Jules, as the corrupted Whore, has to die first, and Dana, the Virgin, has to die last, if she dies at all. As Hadley (Bradley Whitford) says, “The virgin death is optional as long as it’s last.” The female characters are defined only by their sexuality – nothing else about them really matters. Still, the men don’t fare much better…What I find particularly interesting, though, is how the “puppeteers” (as Marty calls them) recognize that the five people they’ve selected for the sacrificed don’t easily fit into the prescribed archetypes.

‘Sleepy Hollow’: Deeply Shallow: A Review in Conversation by Bexy Bennett and Amanda Civitello

[Bexy Bennett]: Strong women don’t necessarily need to be role models, though. I certainly wouldn’t want my children to raise the headless horseman from the dead to exact revenge for previous injustices, but I can admire Lady Van Tassel’s forbearance – she and her sister are left alone, as children, in the Western Woods, yet she ensures their survival and raises herself to a position of some importance in the village. Of course her motives are questionable but does that diminish her strength?

[Amanda Civitello]: Given the way that the other lead female character is portrayed, I have the impression that it’s a deliberate editorial decision to make the one strong female character into the antithesis of a role model. The audience is meant to identify – or if not identify, at least feel for – sweet Katrina Van Tassel, who does all she can to save the man she loves. But Katrina isn’t nearly as well-rounded a character as Lady Van Tassel. She’s more of a generic type of filler than anything else; to compensate for the lack of development of Katrina’s character, it’s as if they wanted to ensure that Lady Van Tassel would be so offensive and so off-putting that they made her into something bordering on a monstrous caricature.

‘Paranormal Activity’: The Horror of Waiting, of Watching, of Things Unseen by Mychael Blinde

The horror genre has a tradition of terrorizing women, of chasing them through the woods and attackingthem in houses. It also has a tradition of The Final Girl, a trope that is simultaneously empowering and reductive: the only survivor is a virginal woman who wields a phallic weapon and destroys the monster. The ‘Paranormal Activity’ trilogy features a different kind of Final Girl: she doesn’t kill the monster — she becomes it.

That “Crazy Bitch”: Women and Mental Illness Tropes in Horror by Megan Kearns

Ableist and sexist stereotypes of women and mental illness abound in horror movies and TV (American Horror Story, Orphan, Gothika, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, The Ring and Misery)…Society polices women’s appearances, language and behavior. We can’t let the ladies get out of control. Who knows what could happen??? Calling a woman “crazy,” doubting not only her veracity but her very sanity, is offensive. It’s also an attempt to control women, demean them and strip them of their power. Women with mental illness are often silenced, invisible from the media aside from victims or villains in horror. When we do see them on-screen, they instill fear as they are depicted as violent, volatile and uncontrollable…The “crazy bitch” trope and label — in both pop culture and reality — silences and dismisses women while simultaneously shaming and stigmatizing women living with mental illness.

“We work with what we have,” The Subversion of Gender Roles in ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ by Amanda Rodriguez

Without a doubt, the movie is doing many exciting, transgressive things. I find particularly important the way the audience is analogous with “the gods” because we are the ones demanding these elaborate, repetitive sacrifices that push people into these stereotypical roles. It’s not only an indictment of the horror genre but of the voyeuristic spectatorship that perpetuates these horror tropes. However, I expected more from the feminist powerhouse team that created Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I find myself wishing Marty had been cast as a woman, and the two women, the fool and the non-virgin virgin, would be the pair of survivors who finally say “no more” to a horror genre that dismembers, kills, and punishes them for being women.

Women’s Terror Vocalized in Horror Films by Erin Fenner

The woman’s scream has been an essential part of horror. Women play a fundamental role in horror films – possibly more than other genres. Women function as a foil. They are wrought by terror. They scream the way we, in the theater, want to…The problem is that we are still dealing with an either-or sort of situation. Women can be preternaturally courageous and stoic. Or, they can be spastic screeching machines that fall to pieces.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon by Libby White

And while my confession at the start of this remains the same, upon closer inspection, I realized that Leslie Vernon’s treatment of women is left to be desired. While there is a lot of discussion about empowering the survivor girl to become a strong woman, it is described from a mocking male’s perspective. One scene in particular especially rubbing me the wrong way, in which Leslie discusses with Taylor how the faux survivor girl, Kelly, will imminently end up at an old shed to find a weapon. He describes her choice of weapon as “empowering herself with cock.” The axes, sledgehammers, and other long handled devices purposely phallic.

Top 10 Best Female-Centered Horror Films by Eli Lewy

Horror films are commonly seen as one of the most sexist film genres; utilizing the voyeuristic male gaze, objectifying the female body, and reveling in helpless women being victimized. I am not discounting these claims, but horror has the potential to be more than that: films which subvert the genre’s sexism and incorporate strong, distinct female characters do exist.