Tag: Michelle Rodriguez

Surfers in ‘Blue Crush’ and Girls in ‘Blue Crush 2’

Michelle Rodriguez, Kate Bosworth, and Sanoe Lake in Blue Crush

Written by Robin Hitchcock

To borrow an observation from my friend Liz, subculture movies are awesome. Well, they have a better chance of being awesome, and an excellent chance of being at least interesting. Focusing on people who build their lives and identities around an activity that many people never even have the chance to try is a pretty good starting point for a story. Passionate characters are interesting characters. Blue Crush credits itself as based on the article, “Life’s Swell” by Susan Orlean, about “the surf girls of Maui.” It’s more of an inspirational source for a loose adaptation, but I’m sure the studio was influenced by the line, “At various cultural moments, surfing has appeared as the embodiment of everything cool and wild and free; this is one of those moments. To be a girl surfer is even cooler, wilder, and more modern than being a guy surfer.”
To its credit, Blue Crush ignores Orlean’s notion that women surfers are “in a tough guy’s domain.” There are some surfer dude characters in the background, but they’re scenery (the way beach babes might be in a movie about male surfers). Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth) surfs with her two best friends/roommates/coworkers, Eden (Michelle Rodriguez) and Lena (Sanoe Lake). Eden dedicates herself to training Anne Marie for a competition at the North Shore’s Pipeline, sometimes angrily trying to push Anne Marie out of her self-doubt (she’s traumatized from nearly drowning while surfing at a previous competition). Anne Marie also is the primary caregiver for her younger sister Penny (Mika Boreem). Blue Crush mainly deals with personal problems rather than conflicts between social spheres. 
While it takes a sort of post-feminist approach to surfing, Blue Crush attempts to work in some subdued class commentary. The girls live in a trailer, drive a beater car, and eat convenience-store candy for breakfast. They work on the cleaning staff of a high-end hotel, getting glimpses into the materialistic and carefree lives of rich tourists. There’s an unfortunately overemphasized romantic subplot between Anne Marie and an NFL quarterback in for the Pro Bowl, wherein Anne Marie is ostracized by the WAGs who also mock him for his propensity for “slumming it” with local girls. While it is superficial and not very sophisticated, it is nice that Blue Crush at least ACKNOWLEDGES some of the class dynamics at play in Hawaii. [Of course, our protagonist is the white Kate Bosworth rather than her Hawaiian co-star Sanoe Lake, because Hollywood hates making movies about people of color.]

Sasha Jackson and Elizabeth Mathis in Blue Crush 2

Which brings me to Blue Crush 2. This straight-to-video “sequel” is just another movie about surfer girls, with no connection to the original film other than someone paying for the rights to the title. Here we have another white girl protagonist, although this one has the opposite amount of class privilege. The first ten minutes of the film are devoted to clunky exposition establishing Dana (Sasha Jackson) as a) richer than chocolate cheesecake, b) spoiled as curdled milk. After a fight with her father she storms off from Beverly Hills to Durban, South Africa, to follow in her dead mother’s footsteps of surfing along South Africa’s Wild Coast. She makes a fast friend when she uses another young girl as a Scary Dude buffer. “I’ve never seen a white girl on the bus before,” says the new friend, Pushy (Elizabeth Mathis). “Well I’ve never seen a black girl who surfs.” Don’t worry, Dana, there won’t be any others in this movie. Or any other black PEOPLE, except that one same “Scary” Dude on the bus—seriously, the same guy, I was worried I was racistly confused but I guess they were trying to save on hiring actors by having THE SAME. EXACT. PERSON. a) “rudely” ask to sit next to Dana on the bus b) steal her things out of her beach locker c) menace her in a dance club d) POACH IVORY. I am not kidding about that last one.

In case you can’t tell, Blue Crush 2 is profoundly terrible. I was trying to figure out why I find it so execrable when I’m so fond of the original despite its flaws, wondering if it was just a matter of basic acting skill and production values. But there is more to it than that: Blue Crush 2 isn’t really about surfing. It’s about a privileged white American girl going to Africa to find her soul (Pushy actually tells her she is on an “uhambo” or “journey” for personal meaning). Dana doesn’t learn ANYTHING; she just experiences more. She visits Africa and leaves with photographs of her in the same places her white mother had been. She visits Pushy’s township and walks away with the experience of having shown everyone that a white girl can dance. She surfs Jeffrey’s Bay not for love of the surf but because it was her mother’s dream break. Blue Crush might inelegantly handle some of the race and class issues inherent to its story, but it’s a movie about SURFING, not a movie about how great it is for a rich white American girl to visit South Africa and happen to surf while she is there.

Robin Hitchcock is a white American girl living in South Africa. She doesn’t surf (yet). 

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

It’s Not Easy for Black Celebrities Like Raven-Symoné to Come Out by Allison Samuels via The Daily Beast

Women Directors Take Record Number of Emmy Nods, If Not TV Jobs by Amy Dawes via The Los Angeles Times

She Did That! Issa Rae Brings ‘Awkward Black Girl’ to HBO via Madame Noire

The Banal, Insidious Sexism of Smurfette by Philip Cohen via The Atlantic

More Leading Roles for Asian Actresses Shows Hollywood’s (Slow) Progress by Vera H-C Chan via Yahoo! Movies

‘Orange is the New Black’ Offers New Opportunity to Discuss Trans* Issues by Mychal Denzel Smith via Feministing

Why Talking About Women Directors Matters by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood
Damsel in Distress (Part 3) Tropes vs. Women by Anita Sarkeesian via Feminist Frequency
What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

Bitch Flicks Weekly Picks

It’s Not Easy for Black Celebrities Like Raven-Symoné to Come Out by Allison Samuels via The Daily Beast

Women Directors Take Record Number of Emmy Nods, If Not TV Jobs by Amy Dawes via The Los Angeles Times

She Did That! Issa Rae Brings ‘Awkward Black Girl’ to HBO via Madame Noire

The Banal, Insidious Sexism of Smurfette by Philip Cohen via The Atlantic

More Leading Roles for Asian Actresses Shows Hollywood’s (Slow) Progress by Vera H-C Chan via Yahoo! Movies

‘Orange is the New Black’ Offers New Opportunity to Discuss Trans* Issues by Mychal Denzel Smith via Feministing

Why Talking About Women Directors Matters by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood
Damsel in Distress (Part 3) Tropes vs. Women by Anita Sarkeesian via Feminist Frequency
What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

Women of Color in Film and TV: The Conundrum of Butch-Hottie Michelle Rodriguez

Michelle Rodriguez, famous for her roles in “Girlfight”, “The Fast and the Furious” series, and TV series “Lost”, is a cinematic conundrum. Much like most Latina actresses, Rodriguez is typecast. Unlike those Latina actresses who are typecast as extremely feminine and sensual, Rodriguez is typecast as the smoldering, independent bad girl who doesn’t take shit from men. In her roles, Rodriguez embodies many traditionally coded masculine traits (she’s strong, aggressive, mechanically inclined, independent, physical, etc). Despite this perceived masculinity, she is not depicted as a lesbian, and her butch attributes are actually designed to accentuate her sexual appeal.

Michelle Rodriguez as Letty: mechanic, car racer, and thief in The Fast and the Furious series
Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Michelle Rodriguez, famous for her roles in Girlfight, The Fast and the Furious series, and TV series Lost, is a cinematic conundrum. Much like most Latina actresses, Rodriguez is typecast. Unlike those Latina actresses who are typecast as extremely feminine and sensual, Rodriguez is typecast as the smoldering, independent bad girl who doesn’t take shit from men. In her roles, Rodriguez embodies many traditionally coded masculine traits (she’s strong, aggressive, mechanically inclined, independent, physical, etc). Despite this perceived masculinity, she is not depicted as a lesbian, and her butch attributes are actually designed to accentuate her sexual appeal. Certainly, several actresses have played this same kind of role before (though, with them, there’s often skin-tight leather or vinyl in the mix), but Rodriguez consistently plays this same role over and over again. Is this role progressive, consistently allowing a woman some measure of toughness despite maintaining her overt sexuality? Or is this role simply a variation on a well-established theme that won’t truly lead to a multiplicity of female characterizations independent from female sexuality?
Rodriguez’s breakthrough performance was in the critically-acclaimed independent film Girlfight where she portrayed an abused, impoverished, angry young woman who finds her peace in the boxing ring. The climax of the film has Guzman facing off with her male lover and defeating him in the ring. She is afforded the rare opportunity to be stronger and better than men at a male dominated sport, and while she’s tough and muscular, Rodriguez never loses her vulnerability and sex appeal. This film set the tone for the rest of Rodriguez’s career.
Michelle Rodriguez as Diana Guzman in Girlfight
Among Michelle Rodriguez’s notable performances is the no-nonsense mechanic by day, car racing thief by night, Letty Ortiz, from The Fast and the Furious series. Though she is an impenetrably tough member of an almost exclusively male subculture, Letty embodies tenderness and self-sacrifice in her heterosexual relationship with Neck Muscles McGee (aka Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto). Rodriguez also plays the traumatized, gritty, untrusting cop with dubious morals, Ana Lucia Cortez, in Lost. Ana Lucia is the unyielding leader of the tail section of the plane, a significant contrast from the compassionate leadership of Jack Shepherd, who guides the remaining survivors on the other side of the island.
Michelle Rodriguez as Ana Lucia Cortez in Lost
Rodriguez also portrays Trudy Chacon, the jumpsuit-wearing pilot who defies orders to defend an exploited people in Avatar as well as the rigid Umbrella Corporation paramilitary officer, Rain Ocampo, in Resident Evil. Not to mention her role as Chris Sanchez in the floptastic flick S.W.A.T where Rodriguez is a single mother who doggedly makes her way into S.W.A.T ranks despite the institutional sexism inherent in the police force.
A pre-zombified Michelle Rodriguez as Rain Ocampo in Resident Evil
Of her acting career, Michelle Rodriguez has said, “Well, could you really imagine me playing the girlfriend that needs rescuing? Or the girlfriend?” She’s also said, “I don’t want people thinking of me sexually…I had a couple of offers to do some hot scenes in the shower with some guy and to make it real hot and sexy. The next thing you know, I’d be the next J.Lo or something. But that’s easy. I want [success] the hard way.” These quotes lead me to believe that she is consciously involved in the selection of her roles to the extent that she purposely eschews the quintessential eye-candy, sexualized parts typically offered to Latina women. Does that mean that the only thing left is shitty action movies that meld her fierceness to her sexuality in an almost paradoxically unique and formulaic way? Is her Otherness what allows her to fit into this strange niche, or does her Otherness essentially force her into this one-dimensionality? Do Rodriguez’s characters represent a link on an evolutionary chain, where she is still exploited for her sexuality but her strength and fortitude are the traits for which she’s truly valued? If so, will her characters eventually be given individuality in a non-exploitative way, or is this an evolutionary dead-end (much like her role as Shé in Robert Rodriguez’s Machete might suggest)?
Michelle Rodriguez’s sexuality is definitely at the forefront as Shé from Machete
I don’t have the answers. I do like to watch movies just because Michelle Rodriguez is in them (which is good for her because, yay ratings, but bad for me because, ew bad movies), but I’m hard-pressed to fancy her roles as outside the patriarchy’s ideals for womanhood. Sure, she may be gritty and badass, but she’s still beautiful and sexy as hell. It seems more likely that patriarchy, like all extremely powerful institutions, continues to adapt in order to contain potential threats to its hegemony. I’ll continue to hope, though, that through her personal choices, a lone Latina actress can help even just a little to change the face of gender inequality.
——

The Resident Evil Series Proves The Bechdel Test Does Not Measure Quality

Resident Evil DVD Cover
Feminist film discussion so often turns to the Bechdel Test—for the uninitiated, it asks if 1) a movie has more than one female character 2) if two female characters have a conversation 3) if that conversation is about something other than a man—that it is easy to forget the test is not meant to be a benchmark of quality. Passing the Bechdel Test does not make a movie good. It does not even make a movie particularly feminist. It’s a bare minimum requirement for movies at all interested in portraying women as part of its story.  
I’d love it if more movies passed the Bechdel test, but don’t count on The Rule as the savior of cinema.  Movies can easily pass the Bechdel test and be beyond terrible. Which is abundantly illustrated by the Resident Evil franchise; which releases its fifth installment, Resident Evil: Retribution, today.  The first four Resident Evil films pass the Bechdel Test.  They even pass the Sarkeesian Corollary—that women characters speak to each other about something other than a man for at least 60 seconds—which is fairly remarkable for action-heavy movies without much dialogue at all.  The first four Resident Evil films also pass Alaya Dawn Johnson’s adaptation of the Bechdel test to evaluate the representation of people of color in movies.
[By the way, it’s very easy to pass the third prong of these tests when there’s a gender-neutral ZOMG ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE! to dominate conversation.] 

Zombies: something to talk about
Additionally, the Resident Evil films pass what I would call The Ripley Test, in that many of the female characters’ gender is not essential to their character or to the plot, and a male character could have filled that “slot” just as easily.  The series protagonist, Alice, played by Milla Jovovich, was not a character in the video game series but was invented for the films.  
The second film, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, starts bringing over characters from the game series, and notably chooses Jill Valentine, the female of the pair of main characters from the original game, over Chris Redfield, who doesn’t appear until the fourth movie (one film after his sister Claire appears as the leader of a band of surviving humans.) [Author’s note: I’ve never played the Resident Evil games and relied heavily on the Resident Evil Wiki to write this piece.] 
Jill Valentine in Resident Evil video game and film
One could cynically dismiss the choice to create the character Alice and select Jill Valentine as one of the first crossover characters as the result of Hot Action Chicks putting butts in movie seats.  They do both make incredibly impractical clothing decisions (or in the case of Alice in Resident Evil, have incredibly impractical clothing decisions made for them). But the first film also has Michelle Rodriguez as badass S.T.A.R.S (think S.W.A.T, but working for an evil corporation) officer Rain Ocampo, who could just have easily been another tough dude to leave Alice our Smurfette.  
Michelle Rodriguez as Rain in Resident Evil
Resident Evil: Extinction finds Alice, Claire Redfield, and secondary female characters Betty and K-Mart (seriously) dressing and acting much more like people whose primary concern is avoiding grisly death by zombie attack, give or take a little eyeliner. 
Spencer Locke as K-Mart and Ali Larter as Claire in Extinction
So the Resident Evil franchise does not have an inclusiveness problem.  Unfortunately, it has a problem with pretty much everything else that makes a movie enjoyable: storytelling, logic, consistent mythology, characterization, visual finesse.  Zombie genre inventor George A. Romero was fired from the first Resident Evil movie over “creative differences.”  Firing Romero from your zombie movie is like firing Zeus from your thunderstorm. His absence is profoundly felt in the Resident Evil films’ total inability to make up their mind about their internal Rules of Zombification (Resident Evil‘s zombie apocalypse is caused by the spread of a biological weapon called the T-virus, which sometimes seems airborne and other times not so much, which when exposed to living tissue either causes superpowers or horrific mutations depending on the will of the plot, and sometimes causes your traditional death and subsequent reanimation as a zombie, or maybe a gigantic Super Zombie if we’ve reached the end of a level an act).  
The Resident Evil movies would also have benefited from Romero’s transparency when it comes to social commentary: it’s one thing to have the primary antagonist be the gigantic and sinister Umbrella Corporation, but that lack of subtlety offers no help in understanding the actual meat of your message when Umbrella Corporation’s apparent corporate mission is to be as moustache-twirlingly eeeeevil as possible, rather than, you know, normal corporate goals like making money. 
Warning: this teaser trailer is infinitely better than the actual movies.
But the main problem with the Resident Evil series unfortunately is one that severely undercuts is Bechdel-busting assets, and that is that series protagonist Alice is a total cipher.  In every film she is re-set, like a video game character reverting to the start of the level.  In the beginning of Resident Evil, she awakes (naked in the shower) with no memories.  In Resident Evil: Apocalypse, she begins and ends the film waking up in Umbrella Corporation lab with new sets of superpowers as the subject of unknown experimentation.  
Alice wakes up in an Umbrella Corporation lab. Get used to it, Alice.
In Resident Evil: Extinction, she’s revealed to be one of hundreds of Alice clones.  In Resident Evil: Afterlife, all the clones are quickly killed off in a massive explosion, and the surviving Alice is somehow stripped over her superpowers, only to act more or less exactly as tough as she was when she still had them. 
Before the consequences of any of these changes to the nature of Alice’s character can be explored, the series hits the reset button yet again. Meanwhile, Alice’s personality can bizarrely and dramatically shift at any time, and we’re supposed to dismiss it because she’s always just had her memories erased or been genetically modified or remotely activated by satellite or cloned or de-powered or something wackadoo and scifi like that. 
While the Resident Evil movies make it abundantly clear that passing the Bechdel Test is not enough to make a movie any good, ultimately I must say I like this series more than I would if it were another male-dominated action franchise.  It’s not like video game adaptations are generally known for nuanced characterization anyway.  I know I’m going to keep watching these terrible flicks because I like zombie movies and action movies, and if I’m going to keep punishing myself with crap movies, it’s at least nice to see some what-passes-for-“characters” of my own gender represented some of the time.  Representing women doesn’t necessarily make a movie any good, but it at least makes it a little different.  

Guest Writer Wednesday: Machete

Machete(2010)

This is a cross post from Heroine Content.

Trigger warning here for a joke from the movie concerning sexual assault, which is mentioned briefly at the end of this post.)
 
Ah, Machete. What I remember best about Machete, unfortunately, is the phone call I got as the credits started to roll. It was my mother in law, telling me my three year old had fallen off a love seat onto a tile floor, landing on his head, and now he was saying his head was buzzing and his tongue felt funny. Everything turned out okay, but now Danny Trejo will likely always be linked for me with my son’s possible concussion and the Dell Children’s emergency room. It’s a shame, because I really like him. If I could re-link that memory to Jessica Alba, I would, but after Fantastic Four that there just isn’t room for more Jessica Alba pain associations in my neural pathways.
Before all of that excitement, though, I’m pretty sure I saw a film that included two things.
First, I saw multiple people of color, including women, as the forces of good in an action film about the concerns of hardworking, decent people who just happen to be one of the most villanized groups in my home state of Texas – Mexicans and Mexican-Americans! In this film, these people are the real heroes, and for a lovely change of pace in media, the U.S. is portrayed with just as much corruption as Mexico, if not moreso because of all the hypocrisy.
I thoroughly enjoyed this aspect of the film, especially when Team Good got to kick major ass.
(This is where some drive-by commenter is going to come along and be all “are you really anti-racist or are you just against white people?” just like happened on my review of Batman Returns. I’m not sure why people do the drive-bys. Do they think I’m going to be struck by the insightfulness of their observations and get therapy to resolve my virulent anti-white-people agenda?)
Unfortunately, in addition to the righteous ass-kicking by people of color for great justice, the second thing I saw while watching Machete was a film that ruthlessly exploited women for the glorification of a male action hero and the satisfaction of the male gaze, and it was really fucking disappointing.
To get this across better, let’s take a look at the nurses:

The nurses
Electra Avellan and Elise Avellan play the nurses, and I love them. They work in a hospital for The Network, an underground resistance movement that assists Mexicans who immigrate into Texas. I’m not sure they have any medical skills, as their main responsibility in caring for the wounded Machete seems to be comforting him with eye candy, but they are on the side of good and they wear fantastic platform heels and shoot things and I have absolutely no problem with any of that. If sexy nurses with machine guns can’t be part of your revolution, then I don’t want any. 
(That’s not what you thought I was going to say, was it?)
In a feminist utopia I think the nurses could still exist in a movie, because I think there are a lot of women who would find that a lot of fun, and for good reasons. When Grace reviewed Grindhouse, which included Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, she said this:
…the whole package pays homage to/makes fun of the “grindhouse,” which is a beaten-down movie theater that plays double-bills of B movies. […] Now that we’re clear that these are supposed to be B movies, that they are hearkening back to and a parody of a specific kind of film, then we can skip all of the ways in which they are typically sexist. Yes, there are copious bare breasts and ass shots, women are called bitch all over the place, sexual violence is threatened (though, and I thought this was telling, never actually enacted) […] If there is any chance of you enjoying Grindhouse, or finding anything about it to be subversive or interesting, you are going to have to consider these things part of the kitsch that Rodriguez and Tarantino are playing with and move on.

To me, the nurses are part of that kitsch. They’re a lighthearted genre trapping. What I DO have a problem with is that almost every other woman with a speaking part in this movie is basically the exact same character as the nurses, just in different clothes. They exist to fawn over the hero, look hot for the audience, and kick ass, without any distracting personal goals or motivations.
From the naked woman who betrays Machete and stabs him in the leg with his own knife to win a drug lord’s favor, to Jessica Alba’s ambitious INS agent whose career ambitions are quickly sacrificed to furthering his quest, to Cheryl Chin’s turn as the Dragon Lady enforcer for the drug lord, to Lindsay Lohan’s drugged out, often naked internet porn star (who gets used sexually by Machete to humiliate her father, in a plotline I thought was beyond atrocious), there there is barely a hint of any female activity that does not revolve around men. Michelle Rodriguez’s Luz comes close, but even she is ready to turn over leadership to Machete as quickly as possible, anointing him leader of her desired revolution. (For all Rodriguez’s talk in the media lately about how she wants to be typecast as the bad-ass instead of the boring girlfriend, I was expecting a little more.) Alba and Rodriguez even get new costumes late in the movie to make them fit better into the nurse paradigm, and the results are not awesome.
Lately I’ve been reading some of the Criminal comic book series by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, and it’s gotten me thinking about women in genre fiction. Criminal is specifically noir crime fiction, and when you read that kind of fiction, you know from the get-go that the dame is going to be trouble. I would argue that action movies are almost as bad for prescribing the roles female characters must play, and B movies doubly so. So if you’re going to create in a genre like that, how do you work with your female characters in a way that’s not horribly sexist? How do you give them agency? How do you give them personalities and missions in their lives beyond their usefulness as plot points for the hero?
Let me tell you, the people who made Machete haven’t asked themselves any of those questions. Or if they have, they’re doing it wrong. “All your babes are belong to our sexy stereotype” is not creating strong female characters, regardless of how many guns you give them. Turning all women into genrelicious Barbie is not staying within the genre, it’s turning them into objects. You could argue that the men in this film are also stereotypes, but damn, at least they get to have clothes on!
I desperately want to give this film some stars. The way the film treats women, though, is appalling. The rape joke made by Machete’s brother when Machete brings two drugged, naked women to his church was also not okay.
No stars.
Skye Kilaen blogs about women kicking ass in action films at Heroine Content, where the unofficial slogan is “Helping feminists with their Netflix queues since 2006.”