Tag: Meryl Streep

The Hours: Worth the Feminist Hype?

Movie poster for The Hours
Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Disclaimer: I must admit to being somewhat at a disadvantage because I haven’t read Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, which The Hours plays heavily upon, or Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours upon which the film is based. In a way, however, my lack of exposure to these background materials makes me a keener reader of the actual “text” of the film. I will not be imposing insights, scene developments, or character interactions that do not occur in or are not derived from the film itself.
There’s no denying that The Hours is a powerful and richly complex film, meditating on mental illness, inter-generational connections, sexuality, and the inner lives of women. Because the film is, indeed, so subtle and intelligent, I won’t insult its nuances with a black-and-white, definitive reading. Instead, I will examine the three heroines and draw conclusions in order to tease out what lies beneath all the layers to what I believe is the heart of the film: women’s inability to be truly happy. 
Firstly, there is Virginia Woolf portrayed by the prosthetic nosed Nicole Kidman. 

Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf in The Hours
She is a brilliant, troubled writer suffering from mental illness (symptoms: hearing voices, depression, mood swings, multiple suicide attempts, etc.). Her husband, Leonard, is a good, kind, patient, and devoted man whom Virginia loves very much; she even says of their relationship, “I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.” He has made every concession for her happiness, recovery, and wellness. On her doctors’ orders, Leonard relocates the household to the countryside and starts up a printing press in order to give Virginia the space needed to heal and to write, as it becomes clear that writing is her greatest passion. However, nothing Leonard can ever do will make Virginia happy. No sacrifice, no indulgence, no gesture of his has the power to unravel her complexity and give her the internal peace that she so desperately craves. This fact is proven when Leonard agrees to move the household back to London because Virginia claims she is suffocating and will die in the suburban hell of Richmond, but she still ends up killing herself. She says to him, “I wrestle alone…in the dark, in the deep dark and…only I can know…only I can understand my own condition.” This is the crux of the film, positing that women are such complex, unknowable creatures that men cannot hope to understand them, make them happy, or meet their needs.

Virginia even has an incestuous, lesbian relationship with her sister Vanessa (Nessie).

Virginia Woolf and her sister Nessie

At the end of her sister’s visit, Virginia and Nessie kiss passionately, and it is clear that this sexual familiarity is not new between them. This behavior has two possible implications: 1) that a man can’t make Virginia happy because she is a lesbian and much of her misery and mental distress is due to her societal oppression as a woman and her inability to engage in an openly romantic relationship with another woman, or 2) that Virginia’s needs and desires are incomprehensible and without boundaries, transgressing homosexuality taboos of the time as well as sibling relational bond boundaries. As we examine the next two female characters, it becomes obvious that the film is implying the latter, asserting that the female internal landscape is too vast and incomprehensible to accommodate happiness.

Next up is Julianne Moore’s Laura Brown, the quietly trapped pregnant 1950’s housewife who turns out to be Richard’s mother who abandoned him as a child.

Julianne Moore as Laura Brown in The Hours

The soft-spoken Laura feels trapped by the domesticity of her suburban life. Though she loves her son, Laura (much like Virginia) does not want the life that she finds herself living. She doesn’t want to be a housewife in suburbia, a homemaker, a mother, or a caregiver. This inability to conform or to adapt to this picturesque 50’s lifestyle is encapsulated in Laura’s struggles to bake a birthday cake for her husband, Dan (she ruins the frosting, agonizes over the measurements, and literally sweats while she’s preparing it). Not realizing that Laura almost committed suicide that day and has planned to leave him and their two children, Dan says about his love for his wife and their life together, “I used to think about this girl. I used to think about bringing her to a house, to a life pretty much like this. And it was the thought of the happiness, the thought of this woman, the thought of this life, that’s what kept me going. I had an idea of our happiness.” In his simplicity, he has no comprehension of the depth of the woman he’s married and that this simple life cannot ever make her happy.

Similar to Virginia, Laura shares a lesbian kiss with her distraught neighbor, Kitty.

Laura Brown kissing her neighbor, Kitty, in The Hours

Like Virginia’s kiss, the scene takes place in front of a small child to emphasize the inappropriateness of the act. The passion of this kiss is contrasted with the quiet despair of the rest of Laura’s life, gesturing at repressed homosexuality as the cause of Laura’s misery. Kitty pretending that the mutually enjoyed kiss didn’t happen could easily be interpreted as the catalyst for Laura’s near suicide attempt and ultimate rejection of her life, replete with her deciding that very day to abandon her family.

However, at the end of the film when Laura visits Clarissa, we find that we know little of the life from which Laura runs away other than that she works in a library and is still not happy.

Julianne Moore as an older Laura Brown in The Hours

Laura says to Clarissa of her decision to leave her family, “What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It’s what you can bear. There it is. No one is going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life.” There is no talk of happiness or fulfillment here, only guilt, regret, and a finding a life one “can bear.” Not only that, but she does not confess to Clarissa, a woman in a lesbian relationship, that she, too, is a lesbian or that she found peace when she found a female lover because, as far as we know, that is not the case. Laura’s youthful searching sexuality becomes just another facet of her more encompassing yearning for happiness along with her inability to embrace it. 

Finally, we have Meryl Streep’s Clarissa, an intelligent woman who’s lived a full, bohemian life.

Meryl Streep as Clarissa in The Hours

Clarissa is a book editor who is financially self-sufficient, has been in a lesbian relationship for a decade, and chose to be a mother despite not having a partner at the time of her artificial insemination or her daughter’s birth. Not only that, but Clarissa plans and throws famously beautiful, wonderful parties, and yet she is still unhappy. (Incidentally, her party organizing inclinations are trivialized by the film, devaluing her community-building qualities.) Clarissa’s dilemma proves that sexuality is not the true problem; it is not the root of all three women’s female-centric unhappiness because she has been in an openly homosexual relationship for ten years. Like both Laura and Virginia, Clarissa wants that which she does not have; in her case, this is the love, affection, and approval of her dear friend and ex-lover, Richard, who is dying, presumably of AIDS. Like the other two women, she clings to an unattainable, intangible idea of happiness, specifically for Clarissa: the past. 

Clarissa having a breakdown after visiting with Richard and deciding her life isn’t worth anything

She says of her relationship with Richard, “When I am with him, I feel, yes, I am living, and when I am not with him, yes, everything does seem sort of…silly.” The only thing that Clarissa identifies as truly making her happy is a condescending invalid who is on the verge of death; he is a symbol of her lost youth, which she can never regain. When speaking of her job, her parties, her partner, and her entire life, Clarissa refers to them all as “false comfort.” This perspective begs the question: If her love life, social life, and professional life can’t give her fulfillment and happiness, then what will? After speaking with Laura, who is Richard’s mother, and hearing Laura’s perspective on finding a life that one can “bear,” Clarissa and Sally, her partner, embrace and kiss passionately in their bedroom. We are left with the questions: In the end, does losing Richard and meeting with his mother make Clarissa appreciate her loving partner, Sally, their home and their life together more? Or does she simply turn to Sally for comfort as she’s always done? Is her story one about settling down or just plain settling?

Clarissa and Sally kissing in The Hours

The Hours leaves me with the distinct impression that this is a story written, told, and interpreted by a man. Though the film pays homage to the beauty and complexity of women, it gets bogged down in the mystery of their desires. The male characters (Virginia’s husband, Leonard, Laura’s husband, Dan, and even Richard and Lewis, Clarissa’s ex-lovers) are at a loss as to how to make the female characters happy, but the men are drawn to them and willing to sacrifice for the hope of that happiness. The underlying sense of female bottomlessness is ever present, as if women are always trying to fill an unfulfillable emptiness inside them (cue Freudian jokes here). This is also a function of race and class, as all three of our heroines are fairly well-educated, financially stable white women whose problems do not center around basic human needs, personal safety, traumatic events/childhoods, etc. That lack of diversity among our heroines also proves to be a limitation of the film itself because it is a limited exploration of the female experience.

Though The Hours is masterfully layered, exuding a remarkably visceral sensation of being trapped, the pervasive notion that women are unknowable not only to their lovers, but to themselves does not truly advance a feminist agenda. The lesbian kisses between Laura and Kitty and especially between Virginia and Nessie become sensationalist and borderline exploitative. The way that Clarissa pines for her male ex-lover despite having a loving female partner also undercuts the potential progressiveness of the film’s sexual politics. Is the film saying that the world is not ready to give women all the agency and happiness of which they are intellectually and emotional capable? Perhaps. Does the way the film is saying it feel like a male indictment of the incomprehensibility of women? It does to me. What do you think?

Gender and Food Week: Trophy Kitchens in Two Nancy Meyers’ Films, ‘Something’s Gotta Give’ and ‘It’s Complicated’

Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give
Guest post written by Emily Contois, originally published at her blog. Cross-posted with permission.
Nancy Meyers’ “older bird” chick flicks, Something’s Gotta Give (2003) and It’s Complicated (2009), provide both escape and hope to middle-aged female audiences, whose views on love, sex, and relationships are both informed and complicated by life experience — including marriage, motherhood, and divorce — and the stereotypes that accompany being middle-aged.
Something’s Gotta Give is the story of fifty-three-year-old Erica (Diane Keaton), the successful, divorced playwright who in the setting of her luxurious Hampton beach house falls in love with both her daughter’s sixty-three year old boyfriend, Harry (Jack Nicholson) and a handsome thirty-something doctor, Julian, (Keanu Reeves). It’s Complicated also tells the story of an accomplished, divorced woman in her fifties, Jane (Meryl Streep), but in this version of the story, she is caught not between a man her own age and a younger man, but between her ex-husband, Jake (Alec Baldwin), and her new boyfriend, Adam (Steve Martin), the architect she has hired to build her dream home.
Food and cooking serve as symbols and narrative devices in these two films, representing and communicating the multidimensional nature of middle-aged women in not only the traditionally feminine roles of mother and housewife, but also the pro-feminist roles of career woman and lover. These different roles need not be in conflict within Meyer’s leading women, however. The “older bird” genre tells stories of sexual reawakening, a process that thus shifts the balance and requires ongoing negotiation of the self within the characters’ heretofore established identities.

Meryl Streep in It’s Complicated
In a delightfully palatable twist, this process is played out through the sub-text of food. In scene after scene, food, cooking, eating, feeding, and food-centered settings progress each film’s narrative and provide depth to the exploration of middle-aged female identity. Kitchens in particular serve as both symbols of identity transformation and meaningful settings for significant narrative action, specifically as spaces for romantic relationships to progress. The kitchen in each film personifies the female lead, transcends the screen to capture the aspirational hearts of viewers — and the professional eye of designers and bloggers — and finally, embodies Meyers own life experience and trademark visual style.
Kitchens that Personify Female Leads 
When surveying sets for Something’s Gotta Give, Meyers noted that homes in the Hamptons all featured “blowout kitchens” — large kitchens equipped with commercial appliances, custom cabinetry, granite countertops, and other high-end, expensive features. Thus, Erica’s magnificent kitchen is realistic for her character. Beyond fact-checking realism, however, Meyers also says, “The house had to reflect Diane’s character, who is a very successful, accomplished New York playwright in her mid-50s” (Collins 2003). Meyers describes the kitchen itself, saying, “It was a cook’s kitchen, a bountiful kitchen” (Green and Baldwin 2006) and “a little too big” (Collins 2003).
Kitchen from Something’s Gotta Give
Just as Meyers herself finished her dream home following her divorce from Charles Shyer, Meyers outfits both Erica in Something’s Gotta Give and Jane in It’s Complicated with their own “blowout kitchens” that serve as self-gifts for achieving professional success and surviving divorce. In addition, while some individuals furnish lavish kitchens for show, both Erica and Jane love to cook, making the kitchen a space where what is a domestic chore for some women, is elevated as a hobby and creative endeavor for Erica and Jane.
Beyond markers of status and functional spaces for cooking, Scott Rudin, a producer of It’s Complicated, suggests that Meyers’ sets also reveal meaning and further develop characters. He says, “Everything — the silverware, the food in the fridge — is part of the narrative” (quoted in Merkin 2009). Indeed, Meyers represents and negotiates character identity within kitchen spaces. For example, while Erica’s preference for all white clothing and white stones are construed as part of her controlling personality, her gleaming white kitchen bursting with sunlight is an ideal representation of who she is. As she negotiates her newfound sexual self, she is always comfortable and in control within her kitchen.
Rudin also discusses the set design for It’s Complicated, saying, “We had a lot of conversation about the size of Jane’s house. Her bedroom is a small bedroom and her kitchen is a small kitchen that’s falling apart. She’s saved for 10 years to change it. Nancy’s worked hard to [create a kitchen that would] justify the plot” (Merkin 2009). Jane takes a longer road than Erica to establish her identity and develop self-worth after her divorce. This state of prolonged negotiation and struggle is personified in her “small kitchen that’s falling apart.”
Kitchen from It’s Complicated
Kitchens that Transcend Film: Viewer and Blog Attention 
These two set kitchens not only progress the narrative and support character development, but also provide fecund fodder for design enthusiasts and aspirational viewers. The kitchens in both films garnered significant attention from viewers, home décor magazines, blogs, and designers alike. The attention garnered by the It’s Complicated kitchen reveals that Meyers may have missed the mark creating Jane’s “before kitchen,” which many viewers actually enjoy and aspired to as it appears. For example, the design website, Remodelista, highlighted the kitchen in its “Steal This Look” feature, applauding it for its attention to detail. Following the blog entry are 122 comments that have been posted since it was published on December 22, 2009 that share a desire to copy the look and feel of Jane’s kitchen, which Meyers tries to portray as too small and requiring renovation.
While some viewers desired Jane’s “before” kitchen, the gleaming white English Colonial kitchen in Something’s Gotta Give all but revolutionized kitchen design. The Fran Jacoberger blog describes it as, “flooded with milky white hues, soft finishes and subtle detailing, its clean design packs universal appeal.” Erica’s kitchen is called the “most copied kitchen of all time” (Killam 2010) and Lee J. Stahl, president of the Renovated Home, a design-and-build company serving Manhattan’s most posh ZIP codes, confirms, “It’s the No. 1 requested style” (quoted in Green and Baldwin 2006). “Julia” the blogger responsible for Hooked on Houses, agrees, saying, “I copied as much of it as I could! I later found out I wasn’t the only one inspired by it. Every home show I went to the following year seemed to have its own version of this look.”
The set home, including the kitchen, was even featured in an issue of Architectural Digest, after which the set’s kitchen became one of the most searched features on ArchitecturalDigest.com (Friends of the Kitchen…). Meyers claims to have been annoyed by this set-centric press, saying:
“It got to the point where I started to resent the whole house. It seemed like people were giving it more attention than the movie (quoted in Green and Baldwin, 2006).”

Unpacking the Meyers Mark 
But perhaps Meyers ought not to have been surprised by this attention. In her New York Times cover story, Daphne Merkin chronicles the evolution of Meyers’ “trademark aspirational interiors,” which take center stage in both of these films. This Meyers mark has also been termed “architecture porn,” the “gracious home aesthetic,” and “the cashmere world of Nancy Meyers” (Merkin 2009). Merkin concludes that Meyers “prefers for her movies — for life itself — to have a rosy, unconflicted presentation. My sense is that whatever warts exist, she airbrushes out, the better to come away with a happy ending” (2009).
Living room in Something’s Gotta Give
And this is indeed part of the fantasy that Meyers creates within the “older bird” chick flick genre in which she is building a monopoly. Meyers creates not only romantic fantasies, but also magazine-worthy dream homes in which these fantasies unfurl. Even Harry utters, “Wow, it’s the perfect beach house,” when he first arrives at Erica’s home in Something’s Gotta Give. Merkin’s word choice is interesting, however, as she attempts to pin point what it is about Meyers’ films that appeal to “older bird” audiences, saying:
“But in the end she’s dipping deep into the bourgeois mainstream, with its longing for Oprah-like ‘closure,’ its peculiarly American belief in personality makeovers and its abiding love for granite kitchen counters (2009).”
The symbol of the trophy kitchen and the luxe life that Meyers incorporates into her films are certainly part of the equation.
Conclusion
As Meyers creates fantasies in which older women have it all — including career, family, financial success, love, and sexual fulfillment — this state of fantastical bliss is manifested within the film sets, particularly within the kitchens, which her viewers love as much, if not more so, than the films themselves. With so much emphasis placed on the kitchens, these two films function as food films where food is far more than a prop, but rather an element of characterization, plot development, and social critique. Through food — and juxtaposed with food — socio-cultural beliefs about middle-aged love and sexuality are explored in new ways. While Nancy Meyers’ packaging of middle-aged love includes considerable fantasy, it also reveals and affirms the very real conditions, desires, and hopes of a growing demographic of American women. As foodie culture and food films also continue to garner increasing attention, food-centered narratives provide unique sub-text to explore the multidimensionality of women of a certain age.
References
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Emily Contois works in the field of worksite wellness and is a graduate student in the MLA in Gastronomy Program at Boston University. She researches all things food in popular culture and blogs on food studies, nutrition, and public health at emilycontois.com.

Gender and Food Week: The Fork Fatale: Food as Transformation in the Contemporary Chick Flick

Julia Roberts as Liz Gilbert in Eat Pray Love

 
Guest post written by Jessica Habalou, excerpts from her unpublished Master’s thesis. Reprinted with permission.

“Every word in Italian is like a truffle:” Eat Pray Love and Food for Pleasure 
Based on the extremely popular memoir of the same name, Eat Pray Love is the story of Liz Gilbert, who embarks on a year-long stint abroad to help her recover from a bitter divorce and torrid love affair. Her marital malaise is a prime example of the Friedan’s “problem with no name;” she knows that having a big house and being a good wife and one day mother is not enough to satisfy her, and in fact render her desperately unhappy. So she leaves her husband and tried to discover what will bring her satisfaction. Initially, and under the influence of her new lover, Liz turns to religion to help ground herself. She devotes newfound time and energy to meditation, ruminating on God and studying the teachings of an Indian guru. But her holy immersion is misguided, for as Liz’s friend notes: “[Do] you remember a couple years ago when you threw yourself into the renovation of your kitchen? You were completely consumed with being the perfect wife and cook? Well, I think chanting and meditation are the same thing in a different costume.” Tapping into her innate wander-lust, Liz decides to travel to Italy, India and Bali. She announces in her friend’s office the full extent of her unhappiness: “I used to have this appetite for food, for my life, and it’s just gone. I wanna go someplace where I can marvel at something. Language, gelato, spaghetti, something. I have not given myself two weeks of a breather to just deal with, you know, myself.”

Eat Pray Love

In Italy, Liz treats herself with complete abandon to the gastronomic pleasure therein, and in so doing, makes strides in her attempt at personal growth. Food and eating come to replace some of her vices and offer her the comfort of friendship and self-preservation. The visualization of food and the act of eating in the film go to great lengths that they are her supplement to sex. Through close shots of her eyes rolling back in delight as she takes her first bite of a Napoleon, extreme close-ups of her lips wrapped around a forkful of pasta, or detailed shots of her cutlery probing into a plate of fried prawns to release a mini-explosion of juices, there is little subtlety applied to the sensual and erotic role of food. In one scene, Liz is at an outdoor cafe, and the camera cuts between a young couple kissing and fondling each other and Liz at her table, watching them, then her plate of spaghetti appear. The camera continues to shift between the couple and Liz advancing on her plate, grinning with each bite. When the plate is cleaned and the couple is gone, Liz smiles deeply as if she has a secret – the act is finished. Visually, food is heavily sensualized, in a way rivals and often surpasses the sensual display of food on the Food Network. While this is likely do in part to the film appealing to the Food Network demographic, and therefore complying with a certain expected visual aesthetic, the eroticization of food in Liz’s Italy also helps to emphasize that she is single, celibate, and finally experiencing pleasure outside of romance. 

The sensual connection to Italian food and Italian language is another important component of Liz’s experience in Italy. Before her departure, she declares to her friend after studying an Italian dictionary that “every word in Italian is like a truffle.” She finds and becomes friendly with an Italian language tutor, with whom she is often seen at a cafe, eating and drinking. In one scene, the two are at an outdoor cafe (a common motif), eating and sipping red wine. At this point, her tutor introduces her to an idiom meaning “to cross over:” “attraversiamo.” Student and teacher repeat the word several times, and each time to camera zooms tight on the lips of the speaker, similarly to how Liz is shown eating on camera. The word itself, then, and the language, are like food in the sense that they fulfill her physical, emotional and sensual desires.

Eat Pray Love
What is unique about Liz and her relationship with food is that for her, it is not a mere comfort, means of escape, or potential nemesis. Food and the pleasures of eating bring Liz closer to herself, and to other people. Given the frequency with which she dines with companions in Italy, it is difficult to believe that Liz would feel utterly despondent and isolated. The only moment in which she seems to regress to her emotionally fragile, post-breakup self is when she is alone in her apartment, once again pursuing her Italian dictionary, and repeating to herself: “io sono sola,” or, “I am alone” (in this moment, the camerawork shows the dictionary’s words from Liz’s vantage point, blurred as if seen through tears). But all told, she enables her own self-worth through food, and that of her friend’s as well. All the talk about eating and indulging is not without commentary about the effects it has on the figures of the women doing most of the indulging, Liz and her friend, Sofi. In a scene depicting a day trip to Naples, Liz and Sofi are seated across from each other at a crowded, chaotic pizza shop. Per usual, Liz takes a bite and rolls her eyes in pleasure, saying “I am having a relationship with my pizza.” Seeing Sofi with her hands in her lap, she says “You look like you’re breaking up with your pizza. What’s the matter?” “I’ve gained, like, ten pounds,” she says, her eyes shifting guiltily. Rather than trying to amend the situation by offering to start dieting or visiting the gym with her tomorrow, Liz says: “I’m sick and tired of saying no and waking up in the morning and recalling every single thing I ate the day before . . .so I know how much self-loathing to take into the shower. I’m going for it . . . I’m just through with the guilt.” Sofi smiles and eats. Afterward, the scene cuts back and forth between split shots of the women at a crowded bar watching the soccer and in a dressing room attempting to button multiple pairs of jeans. The scene culminates in a Lucille Ball-style moment of comedic excess, with an aerial shot of Liz on the floor of the dressing room, Sofi hovering over her and successfully snapping the button into place, and the image of men at a bar cheering at the soccer game while Liz and Sofi applaud their own “victory.”

Eat Pray Love

Liz’s chapter in Rome concludes with a Thanksgiving celebration with her Italian community of friends. The scene is shot in the cozy quarters of her Italian tutor’s mother’s house, somewhere recessed from the hubbub of the city. It is evening, and the group is preparing vegetables, talking and laughing, when they discover that the turkey is not thawed to roast. In the same “devil-may-care” attitude of which Liz has become so fond, they eat the rest of the meal and save the turkey for later. Around the table, Liz instructs her friends on the American Thanksgiving custom of announcing one’s gratitude. “This,” says Liz, gesturing to the table, “all makes me feel so grateful.” The next shot depicts the friends strewn across the living room, sleeping with heads on laps, across couches and chairs and the floor. Early morning light creeps in the windows, revealing bottles of wine and half-finished plates about. The scene is tranquil. An alarm rings, and Liz wakes to remove the turkey from the oven. The group gathers again around the table for the breakfast bird, and Liz arrives as if out of the Rockwell painting, holding an archetypically dressed bird on a platter. Through her divorce (and severance from marital and familial obligations), she has found all the normative, American comforts of home and family.

“What is it you really like to do?” Julie & Julia and Domestic Ambition 

Amy Adams as Julie Powell in Julie & Julia

Julie & Julia, directed by Nora Ephron, is based on two textual, real-life accounts: Julie Powell’s weblog project where she spent a year cooking ever recipe in Julia Child’s seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Julie Child’s My Life in France, co-authored and published posthumously by her nephew Alex Prudhomme. The film garnered popular and critical acclaim, particularly for Meryl Streep’s performance as Julia Child, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Since Julia Child’s life was so publicly oriented around food, one might expect the “Julia” portion of the film to be as well. On the contrary, food is a secondary function to Julia’s relationship to her husband and professional ambition, particularly when compared to the Julie narrative. No doubt that Julia’s love for food is a driving force in the film – when musing with her husband Paul in a Paris restaurant over how to fulfill her personal void, Paul asks “what is it you really like to do?” “Eat,” she replies, with gusto. Julia’s seemingly charmed life – replete with a loving husband, a girlish exuberance, and a steadfast resolve in the face of setbacks – is surrounded by food. The viewer sees that Julia’s time in Paris is played against the background of crowded outdoor markets brimming with bright, fresh produce and pigs’ heads. She stops at street vendors for chestnuts, hosts dinner parties with friends, and doggedly chops, flips, dices, and whisks her way through her education at the esteemed and deeply traditional Le Cordon Bleu. She is seen offering Paul a plate at lunchtime before he whisks her off to the bedroom. But more important than the food in these sequences is her relationships with the characters – she charms the vendors, listens to her instructor, plays a proper hostess while images of plates and the sounds of clicking silverware occupy the backdrop, and a good wife who both offers food to her husband and forgoes it in the interest of satisfying their sexual desires. In this sense Julia is a free spirit, a professional, a lady, and a lover. She is motivated by food, but not controlled by it.

Meryl Streep as Julia Child in Julie & Julia

While food supplements Julia’s already rich life experience, it seems to define Julie’s. Food serves to enrich a visual backdrop in Julia’s world, it is a primary focus in Julie’s. Julia’s time in the kitchen cooking her way through Mastering the Art is visually expressed through multiple tight, close-up shots of the ingredients she is prepping, the food in various stages of cooking, and the finished product. These are much like the shots viewers are accustomed to seeing on the Food Network, with food shown in stages of preparation: butter sizzles in the pan, mushrooms turn in the butter, cream and port gush into the works, chicken browns in the fat, all to the soundtrack of sizzling and cracking. In fact, Susan Spungen, former art director or Martha Stewart Living magazine directed the food styling in both Julie and Julia and Eat Pray Love (Kingston 2010). In these tight, close shots, food is the focus, and occasionally the hand that cooks it. The viewer becomes completely engaged in the cooking, much like Julie is completely immersed in her project.

Julie’s obsession renders her more flawed than Julia’s character, even to the point of being unlikable. As Benson-Allott suggests, “[b]ecause Child is an idealization…Powell seems deeply flawed in contrast.” She concedes that “Adams makes a bold choice to allow her character at times to become quite annoying” (85). She bumbles her way through her marriage as she becomes selfishly consumed by the popularity of her blog. The couple fights over her selfishness, prompting him to storm off in a rage. In a separate incident, her husband diagnoses their marital problems as being symptomatic of “too much food, not enough sex,” as if to suggest that she is neglecting her conjugal and marital obligations in the interest of pursuing her own gain.

Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and Eric Powell (Chris Messina) in Julie & Julia

Julie’s obsessive relationship with food manifests itself not only through her marriage, but physically as well. In one scene, Julie goes on a spending spree at the gourmet goods store Dean and Deluca. She wedges herself and her parcels through a turnstile, then lugs her bags and parcels with her down the subway stairs, bangs into exasperated commuters and runs to catch a train while her voiceover explains “[I was] sweating like a pig, which is not surprising because I’ve been way too busy cooking fattening foods to bother exercising.” This claustrophobic environment reveals some of the ill effects of her personal and gustatory indulgences. The frustrated looks on commuters’ faces while she tries to navigate her way through rush hour while bearing the load of consumerism both on and in her body is like society’s judgmental gaze at a women’s overindulgence. Like the characters of Sex and the City and post-9/11 New York-based chick flicks that Negra analyzes, Julie is navigating through the anxious, often dissatisfying climate of “cultural dilemmas and stigmas.”

Julie & Julia

Julie’s high points are reflected in the success and visual quality of the food she produces – and vice versa. When she initially hatches her blogging idea, she is making bruschetta. Hunks of bread sizzle and brown, and she chops impossibly red tomatoes and verdant basil leaves. The combined dish is a food stylist’s masterpiece, as if to verify that Julie not only has the chops to take on her idea, but that only good, delicious things will come as a result. Things are looking up when she learns that Knopf’s powerhouse Judith Jones will be dinning at her house; in preparation, Julie prepares boeuf bourguignon, a dish whose rustic charm is deliberately revealed in a close shot, exposing the parsley-flecked stew’s deep, earthy tones, enrobed by a Le Creuset pot. The shot radiates authenticity and perfection. Of course, as evidenced above, Julie’s ambition is not without its flaws. Her short-tempered in the kitchen coincide with some of the ugliest food in the film: aspics. As the brown, gelatinous mess slips off the plate and into sink, she rails against the inadequacies of the kitchen space in her apartment. And after a raw chicken stuffed with liver and cream cheese hits the floor with a sickening splatter, she splays out on her back on the tile, kicking her feet and weeping like a petulant child. Despite her blog despite her self-conscious weight gain, her strained marriage, her overwrought schedule, her tenuous start, she continues to blog. Interestingly, she maintains a generally ambivalent attitude toward eating itself. Her husband, her friends, and her guests are the ones who seem to enjoy the fruits of her labor. For Julie, the satisfaction is in the effort, and the perceived control. “I love the after a day when nothing is sure and when I say nothing I mean nothing you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk it will get thick. It’s such a comfort.” The pleasure for Julie is not in consuming, but in producing. The act of production is what fulfills her, and for it she sacrifices conventional domestic obligations.

Works Cited 

Benson-Allott, Caetlin. “Mastering the Art of Feminist Mentorship.” Gastronomica: A Journal of Food and Culture. Spring 2010: pp. 83-85. Print.

Negra, Diane. “Quality Postfeminism? Sex and the Single Girl on HBO.” Genders Journal. Issue 39, 2004. Web. Google Scholar.

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Jessica Habalou works with food and wine at Boston University, and is a degree candidate for BU’s Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy. Her research interests include food, feminism, and popular culture, which involves lots of eating, drinking, and watching movies.

Women in Politics Week: Roundup of Feminist Celebs’ Political Videos

Screenshot of Amy Poehler in the Center for Reproductive Rights’ Draw the Line campaign


This post by Megan Kearns originally appeared at Bitch Flicks on November 5, 2012.

Many assume Hollywood is a liberal nirvana (or I guess a hellhole if you’re a Republican). But that’s not exactly true. Not only do films lack gender equality, they often purport sexist tropes. While many participate in fundraisers or ads for natural disasters or childhood illnesses or breast cancer, most celebrities remain silent when it comes to supposedly controversial human rights issues like abortion and contraception. But not this year! Because of the GOP’s rampant attacks on reproductive rights (gee thanks, GOP!), more celebs are adding their voices to the pro-choice symphony dissenting against these oppressive laws.
Now some people say, “Who the hell cares what celebs think??” Okay, sure. But I care. I care that people with money, visibility and power use their sway to speak out against injustice.
As I’m kind of obsessed with feminist celebs (aren’t we all??), I thought I would post a roundup celebrating some of the awesome videos featuring Hollywood celebs advocating for reproductive rights and women’s equality and speaking out against “legitimate rape” bullshit and discriminatory voter ID laws. So kudos to Amy Poehler, Meryl Streep, Kerry Washington, Tina Fey, Eva Langoria, Joss Whedon, Martha Plimpton, Lena Dunham, Sarah Silverman, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Audra McDonald, Scarlett Johannson, Tea Leoni, Mary J. Blige, Julianne Moore, Kathy Griffin and Cher for taking an unapologetic stand and speaking up for our rights.

Women in Politics Week: Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams

Of the Best Actress nominations at the Oscars this year, two stand apart from the rest. Not because of the skill of the actresses, but because they depict real-life figures. Through these portrayals much can be learned about the ways women are represented on screen: The Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, and My Week with Marilyn with Michelle Williams playing Marilyn Monroe.
Characterisations in fiction can always be dismissed with a flippant “it’s only a story,” remark. However, both of these depictions come with the burden of hours of footage and innumerable documentary evidence to inform our perception of how “believable” and accurate the portrayals are. We can directly compare scenes from these films with original footage, and clearly see how both actresses must have studied relentlessly for their roles. Nevertheless, while the intention may have been to throw light onto the motivations and private psyches of these icons, the films have in fact revealed how far there is to go before female characters on screen are reflective of what women are really like.
Margaret Thatcher became the first (and so far, only) female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.  One of the most controversial politicians of the twentieth century, she was loathed by much of the country when she was eventually ousted from her position by her own party. She is now 86 years old and suffers from Alzheimer’s.
Marilyn Monroe remains the greatest female film icon 50 years since her death at the age of 36. During her career she walked out on her contract with the most powerful studio in Hollywood to form her own production company in a bid to be taken seriously as an actress in an unprecedented move that foreshadowed the downfall of the studio system.
Meryl Streep and Margaret Thatcher
In The Iron Lady we are introduced to Baroness Thatcher as she is today – frail, widowed and in the grip of dementia. For the first 20 minutes of the film, her vulnerable position is made clear as she holds conversations with her long-deceased husband, and her care-worn daughter attempts to help her with simple daily tasks. The ravages of her devastating illness present a character so feeble and subjugated that it is impossible to feel anything but pity for the predicament she is in. From this starting point of total empathy, we are then invited to look back over her life in a series of flashbacks.
The ferocity of the woman’s ambition is tempered with reminders of her weakened state, as the film intersperses present day scenes of awkward dinner parties and domestic banality, between expositional recreations of famous public moments. Most fascinatingly, once the role of Thatcher has been assumed by Meryl Streep, her husband Denis, played with almost farcical humour by Jim Broadbent, is always shown at the age he was when he died; it is her memory of her dead husband that appears. His presence serves both as a reminder that it is the memories of an infirm woman we are seeing, and to emphasise her dependency on him (symbolically when she is being interviewed outside Downing St after having won the Election, Denis is shown in the background, standing on the doorstep of Number 10). 
Most troublingly however, is that so little time is spent showing the woman’s character. The well-known facts are retold economically – grocer’s daughter decides she will enter politics, bucking class and gender stereotypes, etc. Yet even her decision to run for Leader of the Opposition is a decision she is coerced and then fashioned into (by senior male colleagues). The time spent with her in private spaces is entirely set during the present time when she is deeply unwell, and is so heartrendingly sentimental that it lacks any insight into the complex sides of her personality.
At times during her tenure, Margaret Thatcher was despised by many, and revered by others, and it is the reasons for this that hold most interest. Yet even some of the most crucial and controversial points in her career (miners’ strikes, poll tax riots) are glossed over in montage footage. Her regrets and conflicts of conscience are briefly alluded to in confused nightmares during the present day, with no depiction of their effect on her at the time they were occurring. What is truly fascinating about a woman such as Margaret Thatcher, or any controversial political figure, is what the motivations were behind the controversies: how did she handle being so despised; what was her logic behind the audacious policies she initiated; what were those decisions were based on; how did the consequences of her decisions make her feel? The answers to these questions may not endear her to an audience, but they are vital to developing an understanding of her, and to giving a rounded portrait of the woman dubbed “The Iron Lady.” Central characters do not need to be likeable after all, but they should be believable.
Meryl Streep’s astonishing performance recreates with expertise Thatcher’s most famous public moments, her mannerisms, and speech. However, this interpretation does not deepen our understanding of the woman who led the UK into war with the Falklands, and remains the country’s longest serving Prime Minister to date.
By choosing to focus on the elderly Thatcher, The Iron Lady sanitises her by using domesticity. Her strength is simplified into stubbornness and her forthright opinions and brutally impersonal policies are diluted by the bantering affection she shares with her dead husband. The writer Abi Morgan has stated how it is the loss of power that she was most interested to depict, but as a viewer, it seems an opportunity has been missed.  Time and again women are depicted in ill health, tackling menial domestic chores, mourning loved ones, and being powerless. Margaret Thatcher was a truly fearless and defiant female character, uncompromisingly ambitious and divisive. It is an insight into the challenging aspects of her personality that this film had the potential to show. However, it seems there is no film language to portray these facets of a female character.  Strength, intelligence, charisma are denoted in relation to male counterparts, and it is only through the prism of her relationships with men that Thatcher is depicted – most obviously through her connection to her dead husband.
Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe
My Week with Marilyn, based on the bestselling book of the same name, recounts the experiences of “gofer” Colin Clark (the book’s author) during the filming of The Prince and The Showgirl. There is much to suggest that Colin Clark and Marilyn Monroe never even spoke, let alone ended up sharing a bed, and it is widely believed the book is entirely fictional, written along with many others to cash-in on Monroe’s legacy. However, regardless of the veracity of the book, it is interesting to look at the way the filmmakers have chosen to portray Monroe.
There is much anticipation built up in the opening scenes as excitement increases with the prospect of Marilyn Monroe arriving in England. She was the biggest movie star in the world at this time, and The Prince and The Showgirl was the first film to be made by her production company that she set up in defiance of the type-casting she received in Hollywood. As a naïve and star-struck young man, Colin is desperate to be involved with the production, and manages to secure a junior position as a gofer on the film.
The hoopla surrounding her arrival is depicted with startling accuracy when compared with the original footage, and Michelle Williams delivers a trademark “Monroe-ism” with flirtatious delight when asked if it is true that she sleeps in nothing but Chanel No 5: “As I am in England let’s say that I sleep in nothing but Yardley’s Lavender” she declares. It may be that a casual viewer would not notice that the portrayal of Marilyn Monroe is undermined from this very first sequence: however, the question is posed to her by Toby Jones, playing Arthur Jacobs, Monroe’s publicity man. The implication is that, far from coming up with her witticism spontaneously, she has been fed a line. Throughout her career, many who worked with Monroe remarked on her natural intelligence, comedic timing and incisive wit, and yet this cynical scene immediately suggests that is not the case.
As Colin finds himself indispensable to Marilyn Monroe during the course of the film’s shoot (cue to suspend disbelief) the pair take off around some of the UK’s beautiful countryside and historic sites. In the library of Windsor Castle, a wide-eyed Marilyn gasps, “Gee, I wish I could read this many books!” Such astonishingly naïve a line, it literally draws snorts of amusement at the woman’s ignorance, and is followed by, “Isn’t he the guy who painted the lady with the funny smile?” when presented with a Da Vinci etching. Yet Marilyn Monroe’s study of literature throughout her lifetime – she took up night-school classes at the beginning of her career instead of attending Hollywood parties – as well as her passion for renaissance art, are well documented in biographies. So the decision to disregard these facts, and to choose instead to exaggerate the “dumb blonde” image is no accident. No mention is even made of the fact that on this film she was a Producer, and therefore Laurence Olivier’s boss: this and their conflicting approaches to acting were reasons why their relationship on set was so fractured.
Marilyn Monroe
Although devastatingly insecure about her talent and notoriously late on set Marilyn Monroe was no victim – especially at this point in her career. Known to moments of rage, and fiercely passionate about her craft, the depiction of her as a weeping child-woman too frail to articulate her emotions is to undermine the complexity of an actress who has continued to captivate audiences five decades after her passing. That she would find solace in the arms of any young man that found himself captivated by her, is to assume not only her complete disregard for the new husband for whom she converted to Judaism to wed, but serves to perpetuate myths about her sexual promiscuity.
When looking at the characterisations of Marilyn Monroe and Margaret Thatcher in My Week with Marilyn and The Iron Lady it is crucial to remember that the way they have been portrayed is not by accident. Nor are these the only ways in which they could have been depicted, and neither should they be considered exact or entirely true. These characterisations have been constructed and depict women stripped of their complexity, strength, intelligence, wit, and dynamism: the very things that made them so successful and iconic. This inevitably raises questions about why.
Consistently the call comes for more interesting and diverse female characters in film, yet too often that means showing women who have been victimised and exploited. Even when historic figures have demonstrated extraordinary courage, making remarkable achievements in their lives, they are diminished when characterised on film. It is not because stories of amazing women do not exist, but the perspective their tales are told from. Perceptions of women as reactive and submissive stereotypes will remain in place when even the most extraordinary females are reduced to clichés, and it is up to producers, directors and writers to be fearless enough to show women as active participants in their own lives to ensure this is changed.  

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

Roundup of Feminist Celebs’ Political Videos

Screenshot of Amy Poehler in Center for Reproductive Rights’ Draw the Line campaign

Election Day is tomorrow, people! So I’m going to chat a bit about politics.

Many assume Hollywood is a liberal nirvana (or I guess a hellhole if you’re a Republican). But that’s not exactly true. Not only do films lack gender equality, they often purport sexist tropes. While many participate in fundraisers or ads for natural disasters or childhood illnesses or breast cancer, most celebrities remain silent when it comes to supposedly controversial human rights issues like abortion and contraception. But not this year! Because of the GOP’s rampant attacks on reproductive rights (gee thanks, GOP!), more celebs are adding their voices to the pro-choice symphony dissenting against these oppressive laws.

Now some people say, “Who the hell cares what celebs think??” Okay, sure. But I care. I care that people with money, visibility and power use their sway to speak out against injustice.

As I’m kind of obsessed with feminist celebs (aren’t we all??), I thought I would post a roundup celebrating some of the awesome videos featuring Hollywood celebs advocating for reproductive rights and women’s equality and speaking out against “legitimate rape” bullshit and discriminatory voter ID laws. So kudos to Amy Poehler, Meryl Streep, Kerry Washington, Tina Fey, Eva Langoria, Joss Whedon, Martha Plimpton, Lena Dunham, Sarah Silverman, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Audra McDonald, Scarlett Johannson, Tea Leoni, Mary J. Blige, Julianne Moore, Kathy Griffin and Cher for taking an unapologetic stand and speaking up for our rights.
And don’t forget to get out and vote!

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Amber’s Picks:

GOP women contribute importantly to the political landscape — with their looks via About-Face

The Man Who Loved Movies (and Women) Andrew Sarris Honored by MoMA, American Academy of Arts & Letters by Penelope Andrew via HuffPost



Megan’s Picks:

Amy Poehler and Meryl Streep Are Pissed About Attacks on Reproductive Rights by Amanda Marcotte via Slate’s XX Factor

Yes, There Are Fat Women Getting Hollywood Roles…But We Still Treat Them Like Crap by Lindy West via Jezebel

Nashville, and Why All Female Rivalries Aren’t Catfights by Alyssa Rosenberg via ThinkProgress

Middle of Nowhere and the Black Independent Film Movement by Roya Rastegar via The Huffington Post

“Your Women are Oppressed, But Ours Are Awesome”: How Nicholas Kristof and Half the Sky Use Women Against Each Other by Sayantani DasGupta via Racialicious

Women on TV Step Off the Scale by Allessandra Stanley via The New York Times

Could Issa Rae Save the Black Sitcom? by Jason Parham via The Atlantic 

10 Reasons We Won’t Participate in the Lena Dunham Backlash by Emma Gray and Margaret Wheeler Johnson via The Huffington Post

Why Dredd Is Really a Superheroine Movie by Alyssa Rosenberg via ThinkProgress

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



Guest Post: Can ‘Hope Springs’ Launch a New Era of Smart, Accessible Movies About Women?

Meryl Streep in Hope Springs

Guest post written by Molly McCaffrey originally published at I Will Not Diet. Cross-posted with permission.

If you watch the movie trailer for Hope Springs, you’ll see a lot of comical moments set against the backdrop of some lighthearted happy music…

…including Meryl Streep’s character telling her kids that she and her husband—played by Tommy Lee Jones—got each other a new cable subscription to celebrate their 31st wedding anniversary.
…Streep smiling happily when Jones joins her on the plane to go to “intensive couples therapy.”
…Jones cracking wise about the experience: saying things like “I hope you’re happy” when he boards the plane and “that makes one of us” when their therapist—played with both understated gravity and empathy by Steve Carrell—says he’s happy the two of them are there.
…Streep asking a bookstore clerk for a book called Sex Tips for a Straight Woman by a Gay Man. (A book, by the way, I would like to have.)
…Streep sitting on a toilet eating a banana while reading the aforementioned book (rather than using said banana for its intended purpose).
…Streep laughing bashfully when salty bartender Elizabeth Shue gets a bar full of locals to admit they’re not having sex either. (Shue’s only appearance in the film, I must sadly note.)
…Streep and Jones laughing together over their therapist’s formal way of talking about sex.
…Streep shaking her head in a lighthearted manner at Jones while Jones dances in front of her.
And while all this is happening, the screen reads:
From the director of THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA … comes a comedy about love…and the things we’ll do to get it.
Finally, the trailer closes with Streep and Jones running into the neighbor with whom Jones admitted in therapy he’d like to have a threesome. The woman has just adopted her third Corgie, and the trailer ends with her saying,”Three’s the limit!”
It all feels very light, funny, silly, and—this is important—optimistic, even hopeful, an idea of course reinforced by the title, Hope Springs.
But this trailer is completely misleading because Hope Springs is not a comedy—unless you’re talking about the tradtional Shakesperian definition of a comedy, which assumes that on the way to finding happiness the characters suffer through some incredible tragic experiences.
No, the majority of this movie is more dark than light, more pessimistic than hopeful. In fact, sometimes it’s so dark that it’s hard to watch. (Not The Hurt Locker hard to watch, but still hard to watch.)
This is because Hope Springs is a movie about two people who are desperately unhappy—in marriage and in life. And it is their unhappiness that dominates most of the movie. They certainly spend more time feeling alienated or alone than they do being happy—whether they are together or apart.
And that makes me happy.
It makes me happy because it is so rare that we see a mainstream movie showing average Americans who are desperately unhappy, a condition that sadly affects more of us than it should given how relatively easy most of our lives are.
In most mainstream movies, we are shown something wholly different from these two miserable people … not their polar opposite, but still people who are mostly happy but have a tiny sliver of unhappiness in their life, a sliver which is usually located in their romantic life. As the movie progresses, these mostly happy people, of course, find romance and then all is well in the world.
In other words, most mainstream movies about couples are not at all realistic and not really all that interesting.
But Hope Springs, thankfully, isn’t that simple-minded.
At the beginning of the film, the unbelievably talented Streep and Jones are shown wallowing in the mud puddle of routine and mediocrity. Their lives are horribly mundane—they wake every day at the same time, they eat the same meals and watch the same TV shows, and, most importantly, they spend their time not interacting in the same frustrated fashion.
And some of the clips that look cute and comical in the preview—like when they mention their new cable subscription to their kids at their anniversary dinner—are much darker inside the actual movie, where it seems that absolutely nothing is able to even temporarily lift their suffocating misery. Even on their anniversary, they can’t even look each other in the eye, much less speak to each other, a scene that reads as more tragic than funny when you see it in context.
These tragic occurences continue throughout the movie. From the moment when Streep is packing her suitcase for couples therapy, crying as she thinks about the fact that Jones has said he doesn’t want to join her, to the two different scenes when they each run out of therapy on different occasions after becoming completely overwhelmed by the problems they face as a couple. *SPOILER ALERT* To the brutal scene when they finally try to have sex but ultimately fail, leaving Streep to wonder out loud if Jones is no longer attracted to her because she’s overweight and old. It’s obvious to the viewer that this is not the case, but watching Streep wimper about the baby weight she never lost after her husband stops banging her mid-coitus is utterly heartbreaking. *END OF SPOILER*
These are the kinds of moments that dominate the film, clearly demonstrating that these people are miserable in a way that is not at all happy or light or silly.
But rather is very real.
And the things they talk about in therapy are real too—why they no longer have sex, why they don’t sleep in the same bed, why they play out the same ignore-each-other script every day of their lives, why they never do anything for each other anymore, why their gifts are for the house and not each other, and even more hard-to-talk-about issues like what they fantasize about and whether or not they still masturbate.
The latter discussion made me wish—for a split second—that I wasn’t sitting between my husband and my mother while watching this scene unfold, but ultimately I was so thrilled the film didn’t flinch from the emotional honesty of these uncomfortable moments that I was able to get past the awkwardness of the situation.
I had invited my mother to see the movie with us because I’d had the wrong impression—from the misleading trailer—that it was going to be a well done but cliched and light-hearted rom-com.
But as I said, Hope Springs is far from light entertainment. It’s a movie that makes you think.
It makes you think about what it means to have a healthy relationship and about how you can lose that even with someone you love. It makes you think about how important sex and romance are to a successful relationship. It makes you think about the problems with falling into stereotypical gender roles. And, most importantly, it makes you think about how happiness is more important than being in the wrong relationship.
In that way, Hope Springs feels more like Sex and the City for seniors than a rehash of some of Streep’s other rom-coms—like It’s Complicated and Mamma Mia!—both of which were fun and had some thoughtful interludes, but were still, in the end, just light entertainment.
The woman who wrote the screenplay for Hope Springs—Vanessa Taylor—is new to film but has written for critically-praised television shows such as Game of Thones and Alias, making me wonder if maybe, just maybe, Hope Springs is a sign Hollywood is finally willing to let more serious writers take on comedy, something we’ve seen with only a handful of other screenwriters such as Alexander Payne and Diablo Cody. And if this were to happen even more, it makes me wonder if we could move away from the predominantly vacuous junk that has passed as comedy about women for the past decade—the so-called rom-com—so that we can finally return to our more Shakespearian roots.
At the very least, this movie gives me that hope.

Molly McCaffrey is the author of the short story collection How to Survive Graduate School & Other Disasters, the co-editor of Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There, and the founder of I Will Not Diet, a blog devoted to healthy living and body acceptance. She teaches English and creative writing classes and advises writing majors at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Bitch Flicks Weekly Picks

Megan‘s Picks:
Read the Definitive Meryl Matrix by Eliot Glazer via Vulture
Street Harassment Fuels a Viral Documentary by Holly Kearl via Ms. Magazine Blog

Quote of the Day: Viola Davis on Women of Color, Dreams & Her Life’s Mission

Viola Davis at the 81st Academy Awards
Viola Davis at the 81st Academy Awards (Photo credit: Wikipedia; Image by: Chrisa Hickey )

The internet has been abuzz over Meryl Streep’s badass statement at Women in Film (WIF)’s Crystal + Lucy Awards condemning the “underrepresentation of women” in film and Hollywood’s preoccupation with “big tent-pole failures.” She went on to question, “Don’t they want the money?” since women’s films like The Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia have been box-office blockbusters. And the divine Streep couldn’t be more right. We desperately need more women on-screen (and behind the camera), especially considering women comprise only 33% of speaking roles in film.

Streep presented Viola Davis with the 2012 Crystal Award for Excellence in Film. Journalists and bloggers have also been busy reporting on the sisterly camaraderie and “love fest” between the two friends at the awards ceremony.
But what the media seems to have overlooked is the ever poised and articulate Viola Davis’ moving acceptance speech. Davis spoke about her mom, acting as a vehicle for expressing the pain and joy in her life, women of color’s dreams, and the legacy she hopes to leave:
“I realized I spent my entire life trying to be better than my mom. That I am the daughter and the granddaughter and the great-granddaughter and the great-great-great-granddaughter of so many women whose dreams are in the graveyard. They’re women of color who worked in the tobacco fields and the cotton fields and had children by the time they were 15, left school in the 8th grade and a dream was just ambiguous to them. 
“And I realized that I wanted to have a dream. And I think that I chose acting because all my life has been filled with stories of people of color that have been filled with so much complexity and duality. And so much of my life has been filled with so much pain and humor and joyous moments that I felt the need to express that. And I couldn’t do it in a 9 to 5 [job]. 
“I believe unlike my mom and my grandmother and my great-grandmother that the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are, truly being who you are. 
“And I’ve spent far too long apologizing for that — my age, my color, my lack of classical beauty — that now at the age of…well at the age of 46 I’m very proud to be Viola Davis, for whatever it’s worth. 
“And I never want to look in the face of a young actress of color and think to myself, “What’s out there for her?” The only thing worse than a graveyard, artistic graveyard, filled with women…[Davis undoubtedly said something awesome here but the video cut out]
“The higher purpose of my life is not the song and dance or the acclaim, but to rise up, to pull up others and leave the world and industry a better place.” 
Words cannot capture just how much I adore this woman. She is truly a role model and inspiration to us all.
 

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Stephanie‘s Picks:

Christina Hendricks Talks Joan, Feminism, and Bitches in The Hollywood Reporter by Kelsey Wallace for Bitch Magazine

Is There a Male Equivalent to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl? by Elisabeth Rappe for Film

Emma Cowing: The Brave New World of Movie Feminism for Scotsman

‘Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding’: Finally, a Film Gets New Feminism by Chloe Angyal for The Atlantic

Woman: The Other Alien in Alien by Tom Shone for Slate

Ten Reasons NOT to See Snow White and the Huntsman by Natalie Wilson for Ms. Magazine

Crying Sexism as the Answer to an Under-Performing Film by Melissa Silverstein for Women and Hollywood

Quote of the Day: “Why? Why? Why? Don’t They Want the Money?” by Melissa Silverstein for Women and Hollywood

Study Confirms That TV Makes All Kids, Except Little White Boys, Feel Bad by Heather Klem for About-Face

Megan‘s Picks:

How Girls Challenges the Masculine Expectations of “Good TV” by Todd VanDerWerff for The AV Club

Audra McDonald Becomes First Black Actress to Win Five Tony Awards by Jorge Rivas for ColorLines 

Good Riddance, Offensive GoDaddy Commericals by Connor Simpson for The Atlantic Wire

Violence Against Women Disguised as Fashion by Jenna Sauers for Jezebel

Dear the Internet, This Is Why You Can’t Have Anything Nice: Antia Sarkeesian’s Project to Expose Stereotypes in Video Games Attracts a Maelstrom of Hate by Helen Lewis for The New Statesman

Best Actress Oscar Nominees: Meryl Streep and Michelle Williams

Of the Best Actress nominations at the Oscars this year, two stand apart from the rest. Not because of the skill of the actresses, but because they depict real-life figures. Through these portrayals much can be learned about the ways women are represented on screen: The Iron Lady starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, and My Week with Marilyn with Michelle Williams playing Marilyn Monroe.
Characterisations in fiction can always be dismissed with a flippant “it’s only a story,” remark. However, both of these depictions come with the burden of hours of footage and innumerable documentary evidence to inform our perception of how “believable” and accurate the portrayals are. We can directly compare scenes from these films with original footage, and clearly see how both actresses must have studied relentlessly for their roles. Nevertheless, while the intention may have been to throw light onto the motivations and private psyches of these icons, the films have in fact revealed how far there is to go before female characters on screen are reflective of what women are really like.
Margaret Thatcher became the first (and so far, only) female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.  One of the most controversial politicians of the twentieth century, she was loathed by much of the country when she was eventually ousted from her position by her own party. She is now 86 years old and suffers from Alzheimer’s.
Marilyn Monroe remains the greatest female film icon 50 years since her death at the age of 36. During her career she walked out on her contract with the most powerful studio in Hollywood to form her own production company in a bid to be taken seriously as an actress in an unprecedented move that foreshadowed the downfall of the studio system.
Meryl Streep and Margaret Thatcher
In The Iron Lady we are introduced to Baroness Thatcher as she is today – frail, widowed and in the grip of dementia. For the first 20 minutes of the film, her vulnerable position is made clear as she holds conversations with her long-deceased husband, and her care-worn daughter attempts to help her with simple daily tasks. The ravages of her devastating illness present a character so feeble and subjugated that it is impossible to feel anything but pity for the predicament she is in. From this starting point of total empathy, we are then invited to look back over her life in a series of flashbacks.
The ferocity of the woman’s ambition is tempered with reminders of her weakened state, as the film intersperses present day scenes of awkward dinner parties and domestic banality, between expositional recreations of famous public moments. Most fascinatingly, once the role of Thatcher has been assumed by Meryl Streep, her husband Denis, played with almost farcical humour by Jim Broadbent, is always shown at the age he was when he died; it is her memory of her dead husband that appears. His presence serves both as a reminder that it is the memories of an infirm woman we are seeing, and to emphasise her dependency on him (symbolically when she is being interviewed outside Downing St after having won the Election, Denis is shown in the background, standing on the doorstep of Number 10). 
Most troublingly however, is that so little time is spent showing the woman’s character. The well-known facts are retold economically – grocer’s daughter decides she will enter politics, bucking class and gender stereotypes, etc. Yet even her decision to run for Leader of the Opposition is a decision she is coerced and then fashioned into (by senior male colleagues). The time spent with her in private spaces is entirely set during the present time when she is deeply unwell, and is so heartrendingly sentimental that it lacks any insight into the complex sides of her personality.
At times during her tenure, Margaret Thatcher was despised by many, and revered by others, and it is the reasons for this that hold most interest. Yet even some of the most crucial and controversial points in her career (miners’ strikes, poll tax riots) are glossed over in montage footage. Her regrets and conflicts of conscience are briefly alluded to in confused nightmares during the present day, with no depiction of their effect on her at the time they were occurring. What is truly fascinating about a woman such as Margaret Thatcher, or any controversial political figure, is what the motivations were behind the controversies: how did she handle being so despised; what was her logic behind the audacious policies she initiated; what were those decisions were based on; how did the consequences of her decisions make her feel? The answers to these questions may not endear her to an audience, but they are vital to developing an understanding of her, and to giving a rounded portrait of the woman dubbed “The Iron Lady.” Central characters do not need to be likeable after all, but they should be believable.
Meryl Streep’s astonishing performance recreates with expertise Thatcher’s most famous public moments, her mannerisms, and speech. However, this interpretation does not deepen our understanding of the woman who led the UK into war with the Falklands, and remains the country’s longest serving Prime Minister to date.
By choosing to focus on the elderly Thatcher, The Iron Lady sanitises her by using domesticity. Her strength is simplified into stubbornness and her forthright opinions and brutally impersonal policies are diluted by the bantering affection she shares with her dead husband. The writer Abi Morgan has stated how it is the loss of power that she was most interested to depict, but as a viewer, it seems an opportunity has been missed.  Time and again women are depicted in ill health, tackling menial domestic chores, mourning loved ones, and being powerless. Margaret Thatcher was a truly fearless and defiant female character, uncompromisingly ambitious and divisive. It is an insight into the challenging aspects of her personality that this film had the potential to show. However, it seems there is no film language to portray these facets of a female character.  Strength, intelligence, charisma are denoted in relation to male counterparts, and it is only through the prism of her relationships with men that Thatcher is depicted – most obviously through her connection to her dead husband.
Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe
My Week with Marilyn, based on the bestselling book of the same name, recounts the experiences of “gofer” Colin Clark (the book’s author) during the filming of The Prince and The Showgirl. There is much to suggest that Colin Clark and Marilyn Monroe never even spoke, let alone ended up sharing a bed, and it is widely believed the book is entirely fictional, written along with many others to cash-in on Monroe’s legacy. However, regardless of the veracity of the book, it is interesting to look at the way the filmmakers have chosen to portray Monroe.
There is much anticipation built up in the opening scenes as excitement increases with the prospect of Marilyn Monroe arriving in England. She was the biggest movie star in the world at this time, and The Prince and The Showgirl was the first film to be made by her production company that she set up in defiance of the type-casting she received in Hollywood. As a naïve and star-struck young man, Colin is desperate to be involved with the production, and manages to secure a junior position as a gofer on the film.
The hoopla surrounding her arrival is depicted with startling accuracy when compared with the original footage, and Michelle Williams delivers a trademark “Monroe-ism” with flirtatious delight when asked if it is true that she sleeps in nothing but Chanel No 5: “As I am in England let’s say that I sleep in nothing but Yardley’s Lavender” she declares. It may be that a casual viewer would not notice that the portrayal of Marilyn Monroe is undermined from this very first sequence: however, the question is posed to her by Toby Jones, playing Arthur Jacobs, Monroe’s publicity man. The implication is that, far from coming up with her witticism spontaneously, she has been fed a line. Throughout her career, many who worked with Monroe remarked on her natural intelligence, comedic timing and incisive wit, and yet this cynical scene immediately suggests that is not the case.
As Colin finds himself indispensable to Marilyn Monroe during the course of the film’s shoot (cue to suspend disbelief) the pair take off around some of the UK’s beautiful countryside and historic sites. In the library of Windsor Castle, a wide-eyed Marilyn gasps, “Gee, I wish I could read this many books!” Such astonishingly naïve a line, it literally draws snorts of amusement at the woman’s ignorance, and is followed by, “Isn’t he the guy who painted the lady with the funny smile?” when presented with a Da Vinci etching. Yet Marilyn Monroe’s study of literature throughout her lifetime – she took up night-school classes at the beginning of her career instead of attending Hollywood parties – as well as her passion for renaissance art, are well documented in biographies. So the decision to disregard these facts, and to choose instead to exaggerate the “dumb blonde” image is no accident. No mention is even made of the fact that on this film she was a Producer, and therefore Laurence Olivier’s boss: this and their conflicting approaches to acting were reasons why their relationship on set was so fractured.
Marilyn Monroe
Although devastatingly insecure about her talent and notoriously late on set Marilyn Monroe was no victim – especially at this point in her career. Known to moments of rage, and fiercely passionate about her craft, the depiction of her as a weeping child-woman too frail to articulate her emotions is to undermine the complexity of an actress who has continued to captivate audiences five decades after her passing. That she would find solace in the arms of any young man that found himself captivated by her, is to assume not only her complete disregard for the new husband for whom she converted to Judaism to wed, but serves to perpetuate myths about her sexual promiscuity.
When looking at the characterisations of Marilyn Monroe and Margaret Thatcher in My Week with Marilyn and The Iron Lady it is crucial to remember that the way they have been portrayed is not by accident. Nor are these the only ways in which they could have been depicted, and neither should they be considered exact or entirely true. These characterisations have been constructed and depict women stripped of their complexity, strength, intelligence, wit, and dynamism: the very things that made them so successful and iconic. This inevitably raises questions about why.
Consistently the call comes for more interesting and diverse female characters in film, yet too often that means showing women who have been victimised and exploited. Even when historic figures have demonstrated extraordinary courage, making remarkable achievements in their lives, they are diminished when characterised on film. It is not because stories of amazing women do not exist, but the perspective their tales are told from. Perceptions of women as reactive and submissive stereotypes will remain in place when even the most extraordinary females are reduced to clichés, and it is up to producers, directors and writers to be fearless enough to show women as active participants in their own lives to ensure this is changed.  

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