Tag: Natalie Portman

Alienated Women: The Terror in Mica Levi’s Scores for ‘Under the Skin’ and ‘Jackie’

Jackie’s deeply emotional outbursts may stand in stark contrast to the alien’s lack of empathy, but both women share a troubling alienation from the people around them. Mica Levi’s scores make this alienation audible, the grim discomfort of her music allowing the audience to feel, even for 90 minutes, the terror of such a solitude.

Under the Skin and Jackie

This guest post written by Zoë Goodall originally appeared at Cause a Cine. It is cross-posted with permission.

When I saw the trailer for Pablo Larraín’s Jackie (2016), my first thought was, “Why do I feel so afraid?” I was unsurprised then, to discover that the woman behind the music was Mica Levi, who composed the score to Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013). After seeing Jackie, it occurred to me the two films that Levi has composed music for have more in common than it initially appears. Under the Skin is a sci-fi angle on the femme fatale, where Scarlett Johansson plays an alien who seduces and kills men in Scotland. Jackie is the Oscar-ready biopic of Jackie Kennedy, centered on a masterfully emotive performance by Natalie Portman. Yet both films feature women who are lost, distanced from others and profoundly alone. Those around them cannot understand them, and so they are alienated. It is the haunted feeling of such alienation that Levi’s scores illuminate.

Johansson’s alien in Under the Skin is of course the more literal embodiment of alienation. She blankly visits human settings such as shopping centers and nightclubs, never sure of how to arrange her face to fit in with those around her. She lacks human empathy, illustrated starkly in a scene where she leaves a baby on a beach with a tide coming in. When she experiences sex with a human man, she is so overwhelmed that she flees. Levi’s score is fittingly otherworldly, pulsing with unidentifiable noises, the viola screeching like a wounded animal. It’s utterly unlike other film scores, giving the audience no easy emotional cues. The nails-on-chalkboard discomfort it conjures makes audible the colossal distance between the alien and humanity. One cannot relax when listening to the score, instead feeling a constant sense of dread at what this unknowable creature might do next.

Under the Skin 6

This constant dread, this grim unease, are present also in Levi’s Oscar-nominated score for Jackie. Jackie, in contrast to the alien, is utterly, familiarly human. Her grief and trauma over her husband’s death is the bedrock of the narrative. The audience knows how she feels, due to Portman’s highly expressive face. Jackie is also privileged, famous, and powerful. But as the narrative demonstrates how quickly Jackie loses her power, Levi’s score highlights the instability of Jackie’s world in the aftermath of her husband’s death. The score is more lush and regal than the score for Under the Skin, in part because there’s an orchestra and in part to reflect the high-class American world that Jackie inhabits. But the discomfort that Levi brought to Under the Skin is present in Jackie, too. Many times when the score begins, it sounds light, almost cheerful, before being undercut by low, ominous strings that lurk obtrusively in the background. The result is a feeling of disturbance, that something familiar and romantic has been polluted by a grim terror.

Just as Under the Skin showed how Scotland was a completely foreign world to the alien, Jackie displays how the First Lady losing her title and home throws her into a world that’s entirely unfamiliar. Visually, this is represented through particular, subtle moments: the look of shock on Jackie’s face when Lyndon B. Johnson is greeted as “Mr President” hours after JFK’s death; the camera lingering on Lady Bird Johnson picking out new White House curtains while Jackie watches, unseen. Jackie is constantly filmed on her own, without even the presence of bodyguards or servants to lessen the impression of her alienation. Her friendship with her assistant, Nancy, is shown to be of great value to her, but the film’s repeated shots of a solitary Jackie make clear that she feels cut off from everyone around her. In the film’s final minutes, a happy sequence of her playing on the beach with her children is concluded with a close-up of her grief-stricken face, and her children out of the frame. Then, she sits alone on the couch while the Life interviewer talks on the phone. Then, at the burial of JFK, she stands starkly apart from everyone else. The final shot is of her dancing at a party in JFK’s arms, placing her feelings of joy and belonging firmly in the past.

Jackie movie 2

Angelica Jade Bastién writes that Jackie uses horror movie techniques to illustrate Jackie’s grief. Levi’s score is an integral part of this, the relentless, ominous strings suggesting that life has changed for Jackie in a most terrifying way. When she finally returns to the White House from Dallas, the score is fundamentally eerie, sadness undercut with grim foreboding. It’s a score suited to a dangerous expedition into unknown territory, rather than a return home. Levi’s score communicates what doesn’t need to be said through dialogue; the White House isn’t home anymore, and Jackie’s power has disappeared with her First Lady title. The terror of being cut off from a familiar world, and the subsequent alienation, are made salient in Levi’s grim, uncomfortable music.

The alien in Under the Skin has no possessions apart from her classic predator’s white van, and the outfit she chooses to resemble the common woman. Although dressed in the finest of outfits, Jackie finds herself similarly dispossessed, telling the Life reporter that the White House and her current house never belonged to her. “Nothing’s mine, not for keeps anyway,” she tells him. Separated from the home planet or the White House, both women are anchorless, adrift. Even when surrounded by revellers in metropolitan Glasgow, or watched by thousands at her husband’s funeral, the alien and Jackie remain fundamentally alone. Haunted by their inability to connect with others, to slot in to this world, they stand lost and detached. Jackie’s deeply emotional outbursts may stand in stark contrast to the alien’s lack of empathy, but both women share a troubling alienation from the people around them. Levi’s scores make this alienation audible, the grim discomfort of her music allowing the audience to feel, even for 90 minutes, the terror of such a solitude.

Zoë Goodall is currently an Honours student and Media Coordinator for an Australian not-for-profit organization. She likes feminist film analysis, dogs, and reading Batwoman comics. She lives in Melbourne, Australia.

‘Birdman’ Is ‘Black Swan’ for Boys

‘Birdman’ bears striking similarities to ‘Black Swan,’ both in the broad strokes—each follow their protagonist’s slipping grip on sanity in the days before a high pressure stage debut—and in a strange number of superficial details—hallucinations of menacing black winged creatures, “surprise” lesbian scenes, and ambiguous suicides at least partially showcased on stage.

This review contains spoilers for both Birdman and Black Swan.

Michael Keaton in 'Birdman'
Michael Keaton in Birdman

 

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s new film Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) bears striking similarities to Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film Black Swan, both in the broad strokes—each follow their protagonist’s slipping grip on sanity in the days before a high pressure stage debut—and in a strange number of superficial details—hallucinations of menacing black winged creatures, “surprise” lesbian scenes, and ambiguous suicides at least partially showcased on stage. Of course, these two films differ in many ways, most significantly in tone (Birdman is a black comedy, Black Swan is a chilling psychodrama if not an outright horror movie). It is in these departures that we see the significance of gender in stories about identity, art, and mental illness.

1. Phase of life

Riggan in front of his dressing room mirror in 'Birdman'
Riggan in front of his dressing room mirror in Birdman

 

Birdman‘s Riggan Thomson is a fading movie star, years after playing the title character in a series of superhero blockbusters (casting Michael Keaton in the role deepens the character tenfold). The play at the center of the film is his own adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, which he is also directing and starring in. This vanity project is Riggan’s hope to change his legacy, to transform from the kind of has-been actor who gets attention from tourists to the kind of eternally relevant artist who gets respect from theatre critics.

Nina in front of a mirror in 'Black Swan'
Nina in front of a mirror in Black Swan

Where Riggan is in the twilight of his career, Black Swan shows Nina Sayers is at the dawn of hers, as she ascends from the corps to play the Swan Queen in Swan Lake.  Nina’s transformation over the course of the film is partially a metaphor for her belated sexual awakening and maturation from girl to woman. This becoming is the crucial moment in Nina’s life; she will never face Riggan’s struggle to stay relevant. As we see from the prima ballerina Nina replaces, Winona Ryder’s Beth Turner, there is no option to age gracefully. This is why, even as Nina apparently dies at the end of the film, it is “perfect.”

 

2. Perfection vs. Superpowers

Riggan's first appears in Birdman impossibly levitating
Riggan’s first appears in Birdman, impossibly levitating

It is the pressure to be perfect that pulls Nina apart in Black Swan. Not only the physical rigors and intense competition of professional ballet, but the paradoxical obligations of womanhood as represented through her dual role as the Swan Queen and Black Swan.  But Riggan doesn’t want to be perfect, he wants to be exceptional. His delusions of his superhuman abilities are his way of reassuring himself that his existence is noteworthy, that he matters, that he deserves to be remembered.

Nina finds herself sprouting feathers
Nina finds herself sprouting feathers

Nina hallucinates body horrors and birdlike transformations reminding her of the separation between her human self and the perfection required for her role. Riggan has easily incorporated superhuman abilities into his sense of self. As a man, he is entitled to do so. Nina’s are horrific transformations as she loses her sense of self.

 

3. Rivals

Mila Kunis as Lily in 'Black Swan'
Mila Kunis as Lily in Black Swan

 

Although early marketing for Black Swan played up the “rivalry” between Nina and Mila Kunis’s Lily, Lily is not so important to the plot as she is a character foil for Nina. Lily represents the raw sexuality and effortless grace that Nina’s drive for perfection precludes her from acheiving. Lily is the Natural Beauty, the girl who can eat hamburgers and stay ballerina slim, party all night and still be perky and gorgeous in the morning, who you’ll never see touching up her lipstick but she’ll always have a perfect glossy pout. No matter how hard Nina works, she’ll never best Lily, because she’s less than her just by having to work for it at all.

Ed Norton as the difficult Method actor Mike Shiner in 'Birdman'
Edward Norton as the difficult Method actor Mike Shiner in Birdman

 

In Birdman, Riggan’s “rival” is a hotshot actor named Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), even though he is known to be difficult to work with. Mike, a rigorous method actor, is the opposite of Lily: his talent comes from his dedication to his craft. And it is Mike’s well-honed skills that make him threatening to Riggan, who landed his career through charisma, good looks, and luck. That’s not the fame Riggan wants. It is the fame of a woman, and he knows he cannot carry it into old age and beyond (see Beth Turner). As a man, Riggan is not only allowed to “work for” his success, he even more respectable for doing so.

Just before opening night, Riggan faces off with theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan), who resents a movie star for taking up Broadway stage space that could go to a real artist. Riggan throws back the usual barbs against critics labeling art without making it: “None of it costs you anything. You risk nothing.” Putting on the airs of the hardworking artist he knows he is not, Riggan sounds just like someone denying their male privilege played any role in their success. Because achieved greatness is the highest virtue for a man.

 

4. Conclusions (the films’, and mine)

Both Birdman and Black Swan end ambiguously, with their protagonists appearing to die by suicide. In Black Swan, we see Nina’s apparent murder of Lily was not real, and that Nina rather stabbed herself. At that point in the film we’re neck deep in duality symbolism and pretty much all accept Nina attacking herself with a shard of mirror glass is a metaphor for killing the innocent side of herself, especially because girlfriend is one heck of a dancer for a stab victim.  But in the final moments first Lily, then director Thomas and the other dancers also see the wound and the audience is left thinking Nina’s suicide must have been real. Because, as I mentioned before, dying after a brilliant debut performance is actually perfect for Nina, because she has nowhere higher to go from there.

 

Nina's apparent suicide in 'Black Swan'
Nina’s apparent suicide in Black Swan

 

In Birdman, Riggan first attempts suicide by replacing a prop gun with a loaded pistol on stage. Apparently, he only shoots off his nose (earning him a superhero’s face mask of bandages). Then, after hearing Tabitha gave him a glowing review and finding personal resolution with his estranged ex-wife, his best friend, and his troubled daughter, he leaps from his hospital room window. When his daughter Sam (Emma Stone) returns to his empty hospital room with an open window, we see her horrified realization that her father probably jumped. But when she looks down to the street level, she appears confused. Then she looks up, to the sky, and her face fills with wonderment.  There’s ambiguous hope where Black Swan offers only ambiguous despair. Even in the darkest interpretation, that Riggan actually killed himself on stage and these final scenes aren’t real, we see that Riggan has successfully circumvented his fade to mediocrity. He “wins” in a way that Nina never could.

The more hopefully ambiguous final moment of 'Birdman'
The more hopefully ambiguous final moment of Birdman

 

Looking at Birdman and Black Swan as two versions of the same story highlight the immense differences men and women face in life and in art, in expectation and in reality.  It is in large part the significance of gender that makes these two movies that seem to have so much in common ultimately turn out to be quite different.

 

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who cannot fly nor grow feathers.

The Very Few Women of ‘Star Wars’: Queen Amidala and Princess Leia

With cast members Daisy Ridley, Carrie Fisher (reprising her role as the iconic Princess Leia), Lupita Nyong’o and Gwendoline Christie, these women quadruple the number of female leads that typically appear in a ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. That’s right. Until now, space has apparently been no place for women, especially strong women with more than one or two lines.

Mother and daughter: Padme and Leia
Mother and daughter: Padmé and Leia

 

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.

As buzz builds around the upcoming and presumably final Star Wars trilogy following the announcement of the Episode VII’s cast, I’m relieved to see that, with the recent addition of Game of Thrones‘ Gwendoline Christie and 12 Years a Slave‘s Lupita Nyong’o, the Star Wars franchise is trying to overcome its reputation as a sausage-fest. With Daisy Ridley on board (I’m guessing to play Han and Leia’s daughter) and veteran Carrie Fisher, who’ll be reprising her role as the iconic Princess Leia, these women quadruple the number of female leads that typically appear in a Star Wars trilogy. That’s right. Until now, space has apparently been no place for women, especially strong women with more than one or two lines. Now we just have to hope that Christie and Nyong’o won’t be used as Othered alien cameos and that these women’s considerable talents will be used, instead, to enrich the flagging franchise.

Consider the way the questionable way George Lucas has dealt with the very few women of Star Wars from the beginning. For the original Episodes IV-VI, we have Fisher as the tough rebel leader, but still royalty, Leia Organa…the only female character of note in the entire trilogy.

Leia in camouflage uniform on the forest moon of Endor
Leia in camouflage uniform on the forest moon of Endor

 

In the prequel Episodes I-III, we have Natalie Portman playing Padmé Amidala, Luke and Leia’s mother as well as a strong, independent, politically savvy queen…the only female character of note in the follow-up trilogy.

'Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace' featured an ass-kicking Amidala
The Phantom Menace featured an ass-kicking Padmé

 

Basically, despite the fact that entire Star Wars trilogies feature only a single female lead, each trilogy starts off with promise because that lone lady happens to be an empowered women who leads others with compassion, but isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty by firing a few blasters.

Mother and daughter both start off as forces to be reckoned with
Mother and daughter both start off as forces to be reckoned with

 

Though Leia is the apex of yet another insipid (and incestuous) cinematic love triangle, her role as a critical leader in the rebellion is far more defining of her identity. In A New Hope, Leia is captured by Imperial forces and tortured. Not only does she not reveal the location of the rebel alliance, she is also integral in the success of her own rescue at the hands of Han and Luke. She also displays remarkable bravery, intelligence, and an innate talent for The Force (shown in both Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi through unexplained knowledge, strength, and a supernatural connection to her twin, Luke).

A deceptively helpless imprisoned Leia moments before her escape
A deceptively helpless imprisoned Leia moments before her escape

 

Interestingly enough, one of Leia’s most seriously badass scenes is also, conversely, her most iconically objectifying one as well. When Leia poses as a “ruthless” bounty hunter to infiltrate Jabba’s Palace to rescue Han in Return of the Jedi, her cool points went through the roof. I love the idea of the woman organizing a team to go in and rescue her male love interest. However, women being in love within the Star Wars universe never goes well, and Leia is captured and forced to don scanty clothing and lounge beside Jabba. The film is vague about whether or not she has been raped or forced to engage in sexual acts with Jabba, but from here on out, Leia’s image as “Slave Leia” has gone down in pop culture as well as sexual fetish history and continues to be a popular cosplay for nerd gals and others.

I hate that Leia is best remembered for her "Slave Leia" outfit
I hate that Leia is best remembered for her “Slave Leia” outfit

 

Though Leia is demeaned, harassed, threatened, and disgusted by her captor, in the end, she’s able to take charge. With nothing but the chain around her neck, enslaving her, she kills Jabba, one of the most iconic villains of all time before aiding the rest of her friends in their escape. Her self-liberation, that she’s integral to her team and their escape, and that she fucking killed Jabba the fucking Hut goes a long way to distract us from the fact that for two films, we didn’t even see Leia’s wrists or ankles and suddenly, now that she’s in love, she’s a prime target for grossly sexualized objectification.

Though scantily clad, Leia is heavily armed
Though scantily clad, Leia is heavily armed

 

Later in Return of the Jedi, things get even dicier for Leia when she’s befriended and essentially held hostage by the furry Ewoks (I wonder if Lucas has some sexual fetishes he was indulging in this film). They give her a rustic dress, braid her hair and make her wear it down for the first time in the trilogy. They protect her and ignore her. Essentially, the Ewoks relegate Leia to a traditional female role, removing her agency. Leia is rescued by her friends yet again. The fact of the matter is that Leia, our only female character, is captured and rescued more than any other character in the trilogy. In the end, the film gives her back a measure of agency, and she is allowed to fight in the final battle.

Leia’s mother, Padmé, is a more extreme example of Lucas’ at best confused, at worst fucked-up attitude toward women in that her highs are higher, but her lows are so very, very much lower. On the positive side, Padmé is a popular and well-respected ruler-turned-Senator who is courageous in her dedication to her people. She generally wields her power for good, in defense of her planet and is never power hungry, nor is she a mere figurehead (despite the ridiculous ornamental nature of her wardrobe). She is alternately a diplomat and a warrior when the need arises.

Amidala doesn't shirk from necessary conflict
Padmé doesn’t shirk from necessary conflict

 

Though considerable, that’s where Padmé’s awesomeness ends. Throughout all three films, she is treated like a doll with her parade of outfits and her elaborate face painting. There’s even a Star Wars wiki page dedicated to her extensive wardrobe. Much of her Naboo state attire is even offensive with its appropriation of Asian cultural aesthetic.

So...many...costume...changes
Does Lucas also have an Asian fetish?

 

Despite the focus the films place on her body via her endless stream of costumes, Padmé mostly remains a badass (except for her vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum that opens the door for Palpatine to take control of the Senate, ushering in the tyranny of the Empire for decades to come…except for that). All agency slips from her, though, when Padmé falls in love with the atrociously acted Anakin Skywalker.

Padmé becomes little more than a love interest and a pretty face
Padmé becomes little more than a love interest and a pretty face

 

Her story ceases to be one about political advocacy, diplomacy, and her struggles to keep her people’s liberties and safety intact. Instead, Padmé becomes little more than a love interest and a pretty face. Ignoring the fact that the love story is painfully trite and stilted with zero chemistry and wooden acting, this romance becomes all that Padmé is about. She marries Anakin in secret and becomes pregnant, and her personality totally changes. She becomes a simpering, deplorable character who dies of a broken heart. I mean, who cares that Anakin has been a childish wanker from the beginning and that she’s got a newborn set of twins? Life, I guess, is just too unbearable for a once strong and independent woman once she realizes she made a bad choice in love.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfX01lURXFk”]

Interestingly enough, Lucas did a better job in the 70s and 80s with his depiction of Leia than he did 20 years later when he brought Padmé to life.

Of the renderings of Skywalker women, Leia wins the prize for badassery
Of the renderings of Skywalker women, Leia wins the prize for badassery

 

It’s a sad state of affairs when representations of women become progressively less feminist as time goes on. Despite the fact that certain parties are involved: Lucas with his growing record of bad judgment and J.J. Abrams with his habit of taking all the substance out of sci-fi franchises, I can’t help but be hopeful that the new Star Wars trilogy will get it right where its predecessors failed. Though the series has let me down before (Episodes I-III were, frankly, Bantha fodder), having several actresses on the cast for this new trilogy, women known for their strong female characters is a bright spot in a franchise that’s rapidly turning towards the Dark Side.

Of George Lucas, I, like Luke, can only say, “There is good in him. I’ve felt it.” And I, like Luke, will continue to have faith until it is perhaps too late.

Read also: Women in Science Fiction Week: Princess Leia: Feminist Icon or Sexist Trope?

Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

 

The Horror of Female Sexual Awakening: ‘Black Swan’

What disappointed me most, I think, was that Black Swan could easily have been a progressive film with a positive, young woman-centered journey out of repression at its center. It could have recouped that gender-centric childhood ballerina dream of so many little girls into a message about determination, hard work, personal strength, and emotional growth. Instead, Darren Aronofsy has produced an Oscar-winning horror film. That’s right: I said HORROR. While that might seem like a stretch, it seems clear to me that the horror I refer to is the possibility of changing an age-old story. The horror of Black Swan is the absolutely terrifying idea that a young woman might make it through the difficult process of maturation, develop a healthy, multi-faceted sexuality, and be successful at her chosen career at the same time.

Natalie Portman in Black Swan
Natalie Portman in Black Swan

 

This guest post by Rebecca Willoughby appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

I don’t know what I was expecting when I settled in to watch Black Swan, long after its theatrical release and subsequent meteoric rise to Oscar stardom.  I knew there would be ballet (that quintessential representation of femininity and near-unattainable physical characteristics), and there had been much talk about a lesbian scene.  Plus, it wasn’t as if I didn’t know that Swan Lake ends in a suicide; there’s quite a lot of that in ballet, opera, or virtually any other artistic, dramatic work produced over a wide range of historical periods.  In the words of Tomas, the pretentious (male) genius ballet company director in the film (Vincent Cassel): “in death she finds freedom.”  Yep, I can see where this is going.

So I saw the tragic ending of Swan Lake coming, but the tragic ending of the film was kind of a surprise.  Or, maybe not so much a surprise as a disappointment. What disappointed me most, I think, was that Black Swan could easily have been a progressive film with a positive, young woman-centered journey out of repression at its center.  It could have recouped that gender-centric childhood ballerina dream of so many little girls into a message about determination, hard work, personal strength, and emotional growth.  Instead, Darren Aronofsky has produced an Oscar-winning horror film.  That’s right: I said HORROR. While that might seem like a stretch, it seems clear to me that the horror I refer to is the possibility of changing an age-old story.  The horror of Black Swan is the absolutely terrifying idea that a young woman might make it through the difficult process of maturation, develop a healthy, multi-faceted sexuality, and be successful at her chosen career at the same time.

Natalie Portman is no stranger to this maturation process, and she’s done most of it in the spotlight.  She has been acting since age 13, and in her first starring role she portrayed an orphan captured by a hit man in Leon: The Professional (1994).  It might also be worth noting that this first role, even, was a strange one in terms of sexuality: Mathilda is quite a precocious young girl, and in a fit of Stockholm syndrome does, weirdly, “fall in love” with her much older (though admittedly endearing) kidnapper, played by French actor Jean Reno.  Older man, French accent, I can understand.  We might say that she “rocketed” to stardom, however, due to her casting in the Star Wars prequels as Queen Amidala, a role encompassing conventions of action, romance, and motherhood.  While those films were slowly driving sci-fi fans mad, Portman was working on a Bachelor’s degree in psychology at Harvard, and it’s impossible to ignore the historic links between psychology, madness, and horror when watching Black Swan. We also need to remember, however, that Portman’s character Nina’s journey is viewed through the cinematic lens of a male director, and that seems to only lead… well, nowhere new.

Portman does not portray a young girl in this film, as much as she portrays a woman who has left her sexuality at the door in pursuit of being “perfect” at ballet.  When the film opens, she is “getting older,” which, in the world of ballet, means you’re about 25 with no body fat, which makes you look like a young girl.  But you certainly don’t feel like a young girl: you are a woman.  Nina seems to have missed that memo.  She is arguably already imbalanced when the film begins (not to mention frighteningly infantilized by her mother), but when she is cast as the Swan Queen in her company’s production of Swan Lake–a role that must embody both the “beautiful, fearful, and fragile” nature of the White Swan alongside the “dark impulse” of the Black Swan–her delicately constructed vision of herself begins to disintegrate.  She sees herself—clad in a pink coat and white scarf— stroll past herself—wearing a black coat and heels— in an alley.  Her reflection in the dance studio mirror stops mirroring and takes on a life of its own.  These are just some of many moments throughout the film where Nina is faced with her shadowy double.  Sometimes that double takes on horror-film qualities, as when she imagines herself as Beth, the ballerina whose place she has taken in the company, stabbing herself in the face with a nail file while screaming, “I’m nothing!” At these moments, things get a little harried in the genre department.

caption
Power play

 

Even given Nina’s sometimes horrifying hallucinations, it might be a hard sell to classify Black Swan as a horror film.  When we discuss films as horror, we’re usually talking about narratives chock-full of gore, jump-scares, suspenseful music, shadows, violence, and “stupid girls running up the stairs when they should be running out the front door.”* We get some of those conventions in Black Swan, but only because, in her stressed mental state, Nina imagines them.  Horror films also typically give us a heaping helping of misogynistic, male-gaze visuals, though that might be changing, albeit slowly.  I suppose we could say that there are a lot of female bodies to be looked at in a variety of ranges of sexual objectification in this film.  Dancers are, after all, performing.  The intent is that someone watches.

But these aren’t the real reasons I think it’s a horror film.  It’s a horror film not because Nina slowly descends into madness from the pressure of portraying the starring role in Swan Lake.  It’s not even because Aronofsy makes use of this madness in amazing visuals that leap over the bounds of realism into the realm of the surreal with scenes where Nina appears to literally be transforming into a swan.  It’s because at the very moment when it seems that Nina might recover from this nightmare and become a whole, happy person, the film kills her off in a twist of tragedy that is narratively as old as the hills. Isn’t there any other female story to be told? 

All the cracks in Nina’s psyche, which are brought to visual life by the film’s surreal images as well as real-world physical disintegrations—she constantly scratches at herself, picks at hang-nails, bandages her abused feet— viewers can see sympathetically as Nina struggles to find balance between the two sides of her leading role.  Some of these struggles manifest themselves in her relationship with fellow dancer Lily, with whom she forms a tenuous bond.  When she leaves her house to go “out” with Lily (Mila Kunis), her foray into social nightlife is encouraging— yes, I know she does drugs in this scene, and that we generally want to frown on potentially destructive behavior. But I was happy that in this scene Nina is, in some small way, controlling her own destiny for once, even if it means recognizing that she can use a bit of chemical assistance to escape the many forms of repression and oppression of which she finds herself a victim.  Though the drugs could be said to promote a few more slips between Nina’s reality and her fantasy world—where she has a satisfying sexual encounter with Lily, but where she also begins to sprout black swan feathers from her back—I would argue that those fantasies allow Nina to explore her budding sexuality.

It doesn’t help that Nina’s mother (Barbara Hershey) is the ultimate helicopter parent and, it seems, Nina’s only friend until she begins her relationship with Lily.  I cheered Nina as she literally bars her mother from her life (read: bedroom) so she can have enough privacy to even fantasize effectively.  The mother/daughter relationship in this film reminded me of Brian DePalma’s Carrie (1976)—another horror film about a young girl becoming a woman.  Nina’s mother not only lives vicariously through her daughter’s success in the ballet, but also tries to control her and prevent her from being a success, a competition stemming from the fact that Nina’s mother was never cast in a starring role.  These realities, as well as the creepy portraits her mom paints of her, and that bedroom decorated for a ten-year-old show that the maternal relationship does nothing but stifle Nina, and compound her problem with coming to terms with any type of sexual desire.

For Portman, this role is a mix of childlike body type and pubescent girl growing pains.  The casting choice brings to mind the warped sense of ageism experienced by dancers, as well as the stunted emotional development often suffered by young performers transitioning into adulthood.  Portman would ostensibly know the latter well. It’s a character that is both stuck in girlhood and desperately coveting the transformation that signifies becoming a woman.  That transformation is made flesh in the visual shifts that equate Nina with the swans she tries to portray through dance.

Nina's dark double
Nina’s dark double

 

On the opening night of the ballet, Nina apparently kills Lily, her understudy, in a jealous rage after almost being replaced.  As Nina chokes Lily (and then stabs her with a bit of shattered mirror), she exclaims, “It’s MY turn!” and partially transforms into a swan.  Surreal and horrifying: check.  A few moments later, she thrillingly dances the Black Swan, and comes completely out of the repressive shell she’s been trapped in for the whole movie.  As she moves, she “loses herself” in the dance, her arms transforming into wings, freed from her oppressive prison.  These scenes are the climax of the film, employing dizzying 360 shots, dazzling lighting effects, close-ups on Nina’s face, and stunning CG.  When she leaves the stage exhilarated, a good few moments are devoted to Nina’s ecstatic face and heavy breathing—it is an emotional orgasm.  So imagine my horror when she realizes that rather than stabbing Lily in the dressing room before the performance, she has actually stabbed herself, significantly with that piece of mirror.  She becomes not a whole, realized being, but her own fragmented, shattered worst enemy.  When she returns to the stage to dance the finale of Swan Lake, she is dancing to her own death.  While Swan Lake’s narrative is already known to include a suicide, slowly we learn that Black Swan also requires one.  For each to be “perfect,” Nina can live just long enough to complete one perfect performance.

Just for the record, there is a part of me that digs the catharsis and frustration in this ending.  I get it.  Really.  But I am classifying this film as horror for a few reasons: the disturbing imagery, the dark implications of Nina’s downward spiral, her obsession, her crazy mom, and the fact that the poor girl isn’t allowed to have a sexual awakening without dying.  Or, more accurately, it’s because she actually HAS that moment of fulfillment and is able to embrace her sexual nature for even an instant, the film punishes her.  Aronofsky’s narrative seems, therefore, to argue that women—especially those temperamental dancer-types—are perennially unbalanced, unable to maintain a healthy equilibrium between the Black and White Swans; the virgin and the whore.  Once Nina has felt the power of the Black Swan, her signifier for sexual assurance and agency, she can’t escape it; can’t return to the innocence and fragility that society prefers, so she has to be eliminated.  She is too dangerous, because she wants to tell another story: the story of a whole woman.  You could argue that it’s the classical tragic form I’m railing against, and you’d be right.  But this form has repressed and oppressed female characters for hundreds of years.  The very use of Swan Lake (circa 1875, people!) as a narrative to tell the story of a contemporary woman points to the fact that we’re revisiting a problem we can’t escape, rehashing the same gendered issues.  I hoped maybe this film could move beyond that.  Or, we could give it an Academy Award.

*A phenomenon pointed out by another female horror heroine, Sidney Prescott of Wes Craven’s Scream (1996).

 

Rebecca Willoughby holds a Ph.D. in English and Film Studies from Lehigh University.  She writes most frequently on horror films and melodrama, and is currently a lecturer in Film/Media Studies at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.   

 

 

The Women of ‘Thor: The Dark World’

Superhero movies often get better in their sequels because the repetitive and time-consuming business of an origin story has already been taken care of. Some of the greatest beneficiaries of this greater narrative freedom are the secondary characters, a group which, because these are comic book movies, generally encompasses every female character.

And yes, the women are for the most part given More To Do in Thor 2. But is it any more satisfying for the feminist viewer? Read more to find out.

Superhero movies often get better in their sequels because the repetitive and time-consuming business of an origin story has already been taken care of. Some of the greatest beneficiaries of this greater narrative freedom are the secondary characters, a group which, because these are comic book movies, generally encompasses every female character.

And yes, the women are for the most part given More To Do in Thor 2. But is it any more satisfying for the feminist viewer? Read more to find out. Spoiler alert #1: Not Really. Spoiler alert #2: There are spoilers for the film in this review.

Jane Foster could feel it. She was perfect.
Jane Foster could feel it. She was perfect.

 

Jane Foster Goes All Black Swan on Us

I know next to nothing about the character in the comics, but I really like Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster. I love how passionate she is about her work (possibly because I married a scientist). And Natalie Portman, with real life academic bona fides, brings invaluable credulity to her role as a brilliant astrophysicist. She also pulls off the character’s social awkwardness convincingly and endearingly, despite “good at science, bad at people” being something of an overdone trope. And my favorite thing about Jane Foster is how embarrassed she is by her romance novel-esque love affair with a godlike superhero from another realm. But while her character was nicely three-dimensional in the first Thor, she wasn’t given much in the way of plot.

So in the sequel, Jane gets plot, but it’s only by coincidentally being possessed by the MacGuffin (some kind of universe-destroying energy called the Aether). This results in her having some self-defending superpowers which are barely called into play (less action than Pepper Potts got with her temporary superpowers in Iron Man Three), and a handful of spooky moments where her eyes turn dark and she grows feathers out of her back. We don’t actually get to know how Jane FEELS about this potentially fatal possession, though. It’s clearly just a plot device to get Jane to Asgard, and a waste of an opportunity for real character development.

Also, that “for New York” face slap she gave Loki in the trailer? Much less effective in the actual film because it comes well after a DOUBLE face slap for Thor for not calling her when he was on Earth to save New York. If I think about that any longer I will actually have a stroke, so let’s move on to…

 

Rene Russo as Frigga
Rene Russo as Frigga

 

Frigga? More Like Fridge-a

Even though I watched the original (or two-thirds of the original before I fell asleep, no slight on the film, just a side effect of a busy week) on Friday night, I can’t remember what Frigga, mother to Thor and Loki and Queen of Asgard, did in the first movie other than provide the audience with a pleasant moment of, “Hey, Rene Russo!” and offer the camera concerned looks.

It’s not much better for our Queen in Thor 2. She gets one good tactical move and around thirty seconds of “see, strong women!” swordplay before getting killed off by the main baddie, all the better to fuel Thor’s  broodiness. Loki clearly had a stronger bond with Frigga, but the only way we see her death affect him is when he rages out in his prison cell. Which, you know, he probably does when he has a stubborn tangle in his hair, so it’s not all that compelling. With the actually dramatically interesting parts of Frigga’s death left unexplored, it feels all the more egregious a case of the character being fridged.

 

Sif
Jaimie Alexander as Sif

 

Sif, also present.

Sif actually gets LESS to do in this movie, and a couple of suggestive edits imply she’s in one corner of a love triangle with Thor and Jane, which I could SERIOUSLY do without (although my Thor expert Ben tells me that in some runs of the comics, Sif loves Thor “big time”). But if they MUST go down that path, at least let us have some meaningful dialogue between her and Jane during their escape from Asgard.

I also get sad when Sif is on screen because she makes me want a Wonder Woman movie even more, but that isn’t Marvel or Jaimie Alexander’s fault, so let’s move on.

 

Kat Dennings as Darcy
Kat Dennings as Darcy

 

And Kat Dennings as “Darcy”

Kat Denning’s Darcy is a Miracle Whip character: you either love her or hate her. She worked better for me in the first film, partially because the atrocious sitcom 2 Broke Girls pretty much has the same effect on Kat Denning’s signature shtick as sunlight does on Miracle Whip. Nevertheless, Darcy made me laugh, she helped the film pass the Bechdel Test by leaps and bounds, and, best of all, she reacted to the absurd goings-on the way a normal person would. I wanted to stand up and cheer when she called the police after Jane went missing from a creepy abandoned building, because that is what normal people would do, even when it seems pretty clear she’s missing because she’s in another realm, because there’s no 999 for that.

Even though I realize Darcy isn’t for everyone, I do wish there were more characters like her in the Marvel universe. By which I mean interesting, well-developed human civilian characters. So keep the Darcys coming, Marvel, and try to make some of them people of color, wouldya?

 

Thor 2's take on women: partly cloudy, some showers
Thor 2‘s take on women: partly cloudy, some showers

 

In conclusion? Thor 2 isn’t TERRIBLE to its women, even though it isn’t exactly great. Moreover, the treatment of women in the movie is good enough that it doesn’t detract much from the rest of the film, which is for my money very enjoyable and a substantial improvement on the (already pretty good) first installment.  It’s definitely worth seeing–at least so I have more people to talk to about it.
 

Luc Besson: Hero of the Feminist Antihero?

For the uninitiated, Nikita was the often too realistic story of a drug-addicted young woman who finds herself in jail after a robbery gone horribly wrong. Most filmmakers would have ended there, a cautionary tale of the woman led down the wrong path who ends up punished for her sins. But Besson took the story further; this broken young woman gets turned into an assassin that is used by her government to kill. The killing takes its toll on her, but she values her life and freedom over the other option provided her: death. She meets a guy, falls in love, and at the end of the day Nikita turned out to not be the same story I was used to.

Luc Besson
Luc Besson

 

This guest post by Shay Revolver appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

From moment I laid eyes on the first frame of ET I have loved movies. I will watch anything on celluloid , breathe it in , just so that I can examine and explore every bit of awesomeness exuding from the screen. Good or bad, every film has something to offer. It’s kind of guaranteed, unless of course you’re a woman; then it sometimes can become a crap shoot. Having been born a woman, a minority woman at that, the chance of watching a film and identifying with the main character is slim to none. Sometimes that can be off putting, and I have learned to manage as best I could without taking myself out of the experience. Being a true lover of the art, I’ve learned to be forgiving and try to find the spot of light in the midst of the gender polarizing mess. I tend to go for complexity in art and for a very long time, I watched a parade of less than complex women be carted out in front of me on screen with a sole purpose of filling a very specific and stereotypical role. As a woman, most filmmakers will portray us as a prize to be won, an undeveloped side character, the quirky friend of the queen bee or the bitch. Growing up it was a jarring contrast to my real life where the women I was surrounded by were some of the strongest women I knew. I was raised a feminist. I was taught that my frilly dresses and love of pink were just as valid as my love of playing pool, video games, and climbing trees. I was raised to believe that everything was gender neutral, but that was never what I saw on screen. By the time I was close to hitting puberty, I had all but given up on the fantasy of seeing a strong, complex, multifaceted woman (of any race) on screen.

Most of the time when I get into this debate or lament the lack of strong female characters in media, fellow feminists speak of Joss Whedon. Despite my love-hate relationship with his work, I can see valid points in hailing him as the male champion of the strong female in the gender wars of visual media. But, what if the reigning white knight of strong female characters Joss Whedon isn’t femme powered enough for you? Where does a film loving gal like me go to find true complexity? Enter the often forgotten genius of Luc Besson. I have loved his work since a twelve year old Shay got her first glimpse of video that her big sister showed her. I fell in love with La Femme Nikita, the visuals, the style, the story and the lead. Besson doesn’t get as much credit as he should for his work. Not only does he create some of the easiest to relate to yet stunningly complex female anti-heroes to grace the silver screen, but he creates a world where women almost always end up happier and okay just being alone. Sure, there is a love interest, but he’s always a subplot or distraction on the female hero’s way to her end goal. Besson always has his female lead start from a place of weakness; they’ve had a hard, almost violent life experience, and after having gone through all manner of–often male inflicted–hell, they prevail. They soldier through the trauma. They don’t stay victims or acquiesce to the men in their life trying to save them. They do something that rarely happens on film; they think for and save themselves.

Anne Parilla as Nikita
Anne Parillaud as Nikita in La Femme Nikita

 

For the uninitiated, Nikita was the often too realistic story of a drug-addicted young woman who finds herself in jail after a robbery gone horribly wrong. Most filmmakers would have ended there, a cautionary tale of the woman led down the wrong path who ends up punished for her sins. But Besson took the story further; this broken young woman gets turned into an assassin that is used by her government to kill. The killing takes its toll on her, but she values her life and freedom over the other option provided her: death. She meets a guy, falls in love, and at the end of the day Nikita turned out to not be the same story I was used to. Besson takes the character from a scared, isolated, broken young woman and turns her into a slave to her own freedom. And then he does something that I hadn’t ever seen before. He lets her be her own hero. After an assassination gone wrong she sees her way out, a way to control her own destiny, and she does the unthinkable, she saves herself and escapes alone. She doesn’t end up with the guy, or stay as a puppet. She takes her evolution and goes off on her own to continue becoming the person that she wants to be. Watching her evolution and seeing all of the complexity that she possessed was an eye-opening journey, not just for the character, but for me as an artist.

Besson has spent his career showcasing strong women making their way through difficult situations, breaking down and then coming out the other end a little dirty, both literally and figuratively, with a delicate light shining on their sweat smeared faces. His world was filled with a range of all the complexities of human emotions and the evolution of women from girl to woman, finding a sweet spot of strength in between. His women were tough and strong because they needed to be. He showcased their beauty and didn’t feel the typical male filmmaker desire to make them man-hating, or imply that if only they had a man, their life would be so much better. In fact, most white knighting was turned on its head. There was no breaking of these women as punishment for their strength. Their strength and independence was shown as beautiful; it was a celebrated quality. It was what made them who they were and what got them out of the often dire end sequence that almost always had them being brutalized at the hands of one of their male antagonists. There was no cowering or apologies; in fact these women fought just as hard and just as strong as any man would. They were resilient and strong and, through Besson’s lens, these women were equals. True equals.

Natalie Portman as Mathilda in Leon: The Professional
Natalie Portman as Mathilda in Leon: The Professional

 

In his American follow up to Nikita, he gave us a young Natalie Portman as an actual broken little girl bent on revenge who joins forces with an older assassin who she wants to learn from. There seemed to be a step back in Leon: The Professional because despite all the brilliant acting from Portman, Oldman & Reno, the female character in this film was an actual child, and she needed to be protected. But, in true Besson form, he gave her a voice. She wasn’t just vocal; she was strong and defiant, and even in the face of being overrun, shouted at, and abused by men, she held her own. She stood her ground and didn’t get the usual punishment that any other filmmaker would have doled out. Even in the end when Danny Aiello’s character forces her to go to school, it doesn’t seem like patriarchy at all. Her revenge had been accomplished; she was all alone, and it seemed fitting to know at the end of it all, she was going to be alright. She was going to have a chance to become whatever she wanted to become.

I found myself excited again when Besson showed up with Colombiana, and I could tell from the trailer that he was back to his wonderful old tricks. This was a return to the Besson style that I could so easily relate to, and he even threw in a woman of color as the lead. Like all of his other female characters, he didn’t make her a stereotype or a caricature or a piece of scenery whose sole purpose was to provide visual entertainment as a prize for the male characters. In a way, Colombiana was what you imagine might have happened to Mathilde if Leon had made her wait longer to go after her family’s killers. She was complete and whole onto herself. Colombiana showed an actual evolution of its lead from a little girl who fearlessly escaped to a grown woman with her own agenda of vengeance as a means to find peace. Her passion and emotion, much like all of his female leads, gets her into trouble but, in true Besson form, she fights her way out. In the end, when her mission is complete and her journey is over, she lets go of her rage and moves on to a new life. She wasn’t a soulless killer and worthy of pain, she was human, a little girl who fed the beast inside of her until it had had its fill. She was real, complex and human and we could relate to her pain and growth.

Zoe Saldana as Cataleya in Colombiana
Zoe Saldana as Cataleya in Colombiana

 

A lot happened in between Nikita and Colombiana, but the messages stay the same. When Besson is directing you’re assured that there will be a woman in the lead and she will be complex, independent, strong and, with the exception of The Fifth Element, the love story would be a side story and not the main attraction. His resistance to making a romantic love story the core of the female antihero’s journey is one of the things I love about his work. When he does show us our lead’s romantic entanglements, he does show only a side story, a throwaway to the real star of the show, the woman and her journey. He makes the men part of her scenery, her manic pixie dream boys who show her how to lighten up and let go. An extra in the movie of her life whose sole purpose is to give her a glimpse at a life she could have when her journey is complete. He lets his female leads do exactly what any male director would allow their male lead to do without batting an eye. He doesn’t try to sugar coat the reality of the situation by showing them as permanent victims. He allows them to grow, evolve and be who they are, be it good, bad, or a work in progress. His camera loves strong women. Their strength is what makes them beautiful. It does not sexualize them or treat them as less than the men on screen. Through his lens we are all human and we are all equal. And, I can’t think of anything more feminist than that.

 

Shay Revolver is a vegan, feminist, cinephile, insomniac, recovering NYU student and former roller derby player currently working as a NY based microcinema filmmaker, web series creator and writer. She’s obsessed with most books , especially the Pop Culture and Philosophy series and loves movies & TV shows from low brow to high class. As long as the image is moving she’s all in and believes that everything is worth a watch. She still believes that movies make the best bedtime stories because books are a daytime activity to rev up your engine and once you flip that first page, you have to keep going until you finish it, and that is beautiful in its own right. She enjoys talking about the feminist perspective in comic book and gaming culture and the lack of gender equality in mainstream cinema and television productions. Twitter @socialslumber13.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

From a Saudi Arabian female filmmaker to loving your body to privilege–check out what we’ve been reading about this week! What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

Saudi Arabian Film “Wadjda” Quietly Subverts and Stuns by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

The Big O: How Sandra Bullock Found Her Own Sense of Gravity by Susan Wloszczyna at Women and Hollywood

Homeland and Mental Illness by Melissa McEwan at Shakesville

The Female Anti-Hero in “Masters of Sex” by Alyssa Rosenberg at Bitch Media

Fanboys Don’t Like Black Widow’s ‘Huge’ Role in the Avengers Sequel by Alexander Abad-Santos at The Atlantic Wire

Why ‘It’s Like a 13-Hour Movie’ Fails to Do Justice to Great TV by Ronan Doyle at Indiewire

Women Film Pioneers Project at Columbia University

Meet Chris Nee, creator of Disney’s “Doc McStuffins” by Lorena Ruiz at msnbc

Quote of the Day: Jennifer Lawrence to Hollywood’s Diet Police “Go F*** Yourself” by Kerensa Cadenas at Women and Hollywood

Natalie Portman On The Real Meaning of Feminism at Huffington Post

The Feministing Five: Mariska Hargitay by Suzanna at Feministing

Fox Buys Diablo Cody/Fake Empire Drama by Nellie Andreeva at Deadline Hollywood

OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network Presents Special Night of Programming on Being Gay in America by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act

Stars Bring Laughter, Tears to Variety’s Power of Women Luncheon by AJ Marechal at Variety

Loving Your Body in the Age of Patriarchy by Sam at Autostraddle

Why We Still Need to Talk About Privilege by Jamilah King at Colorlines

Stop Dismissing Young Female Musicians as “Inauthentic” by Carl Wilson at Slate

 

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

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Did We Have a Pro-Woman Golden Globes? by Renee Martin via Womanist Musings 

A Salute to Girl Power in Hollywood by Alessandra Stanley via New York Times

Jodie Foster Coming Out: “This Is Something for Us” by Haviland Stillwell via AutoStraddle

New York Times Says “Female Directors Gain Ground Slowly.” Should We Wait That Long? by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood

Denzel and Quvenzhane Are the Only Actors of Color Nominated for Oscars by Jorge Rivas via ColorLines

Oscar and the Film Industry: Still a Men’s Club by Rachel Kassenbrock via Ms. Magazine

Kathryn Bigelow Oscar Snub: Does the Academy Hate Female Directors? by Christopher Zara via International Business Times

Parenthood Bravely Tackles Abortion by Willa Paskin via Salon

Why Girls Still Matters in Season 2 by Karensa Cadenas via Women and Hollywood

From M to Hushpuppy: The Best Flawed Female Characters of 2012 by Alyssa Rosenberg via The XX Factor

The Hobbit: Why Are There No Women in Tolkien’s World? by Ruth Davis Konigsberg via Time

Totally Rational Prediction: Women Will Rule Cable TV in 2013 by Alyssa Rosenberg via The XX Factor

Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart Top Forbes’ List of Most Bankable Actors by Rebecca Pahle via The Mary Sue

The Hobbit: A Gender-Bending Journey by Natalie Wilson via Ms. Magazine

Teen Motherhood: When “Reality TV” Doesn’t Fully Reflect Reality by Avital Norman Nathman via RH Reality Check

Please share what you’ve been reading or writing this week in the comments!

Beautiful Girls, Emotionally Stunted Boys

By Robin Hitchcock

The male cast of Beautiful Girls

It always raises a red flag for me when a film presents men one way and women another. My feminist knee starts to jerk—GENDER BINARY—BIOLOGICAL ESSENTIALISM—DANGER WILHELMINA ROBINSON!

So 1996’s Beautiful Girls, an ensemble belated-coming-of-age story centered around New York City pianist Willie (Timothy Hutton) returning to his hometown for a high school reunion, starts out on notice because it centers on big ideas about The Way Men Are. And that’s before it goes down an even more troubling Lolita-esque road. And yet, it’s one of my favorite movies. I’m just not sure if I should qualify it as a guilty pleasure. 

The main thesis of Beautiful Girls is that men will never be satisfied with what they have because they can always imagine having something more. They’ll never be satisfied with the women the are with because there will always be other women they could be getting—prettier, younger, cooler, NEWER women. As the film’s voice-of-lunacy, Paul (Michael Rapaport) explains in the films title-bestowing monologue: 

A beautiful girl can make you dizzy, like you’ve been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high full of the single greatest commodity known to man – promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile, in her soul, the way she makes every rotten little thing about life seem like it’s going to be okay. 

But yearning for this promise leads these guys to neglect the women they can and do have relationships with. This is laid out without any subtlety in a quaint quasi-feminist rant oh-so-clearly written by a man in the 1990s but delivered with winning gusto by Rosie O’Donnell, who details the artifice of the women presented in a pornographic magazine and laments: “But you fucking mooks, if you think that if there’s a chance in hell that you’ll end up with one of these women, you don’t give us real women anything approaching a commitment.” The men don’t really consider that even if one of these perfect supermodels walked into their lives they might not be able to have her, which becomes abundantly clear later on.

Rosie O’Donnell as Gina in Beautiful Girls

So much of the conflict in Beautiful Girls reads as “Woe, the pain of basking in male privilege.” This can be very annoying. But the film clearly aims to critique this attitude and demonstrate that its men would be much happier if they would just settle down (emphasis on “settle”). So it’s possible that Beautiful Girls actually seeks to deconstruct gender stereotypes and attack the system which creates both the perils of the privileged and desperation of those who are not.

Timothy Hutton and Natalie Portman in Beautiful Girls

But before I go any further with giving Beautiful Girls the benefit of the doubt, I should mention that the core plot thread is the main character Willie falling in love with the girl next door. The girl next door who is thirteen-years-old. RECORD SCRATCH! This thirteen-year-old neighbor, Marty (Natalie Portman), is so charming and vibrant and precocious (she explains that she has an “old soul”) that it is easy to sympathize with Willie’s creepy crush. And it helps that Willie, most of the time, knows that his feelings for Marty are skeevy and wrong. [When I first saw Beautiful Girls, I was fourteen, and had already had my share of crushes on age-inappropriate men, so I related to Marty’s impossible longing more than I worried about the inappropriateness of Willie’s. My husband watched this movie for the first time this week, at age 29 (the same age as the character Willie), and could not get past the ick factor of someone his age pining for a girl that young. So your mileage may vary regarding the possible automatic disqualification of Beautiful Girls.] 

Willie has a perfectly lovely and age-appropriate girlfriend back in the city, but he can’t commit because that means giving up future chances to fall in love again before he “settles in to the Big Fade.” Willie’s infatuation with Marty represents the ultimate fantasy in the worldview of Beautiful Girls‘ men—as a girl on the cusp of womanhood she’s the ultimate in “promise”, and because of the circumstance of her age she’s completely unattainable without the pesky pain of rejection.

Uma Thurman as Andera in Beautiful Girls

Although the men in Beautiful Girls seem to take rejection almost alarmingly in stride in a no-means-yes kind of way. Uma Thurman shows up at some point as The Perfect Woman, Andera (not a typo, just an obnoxious name). She’s gorgeous, confident, funny, and smart. She shoots whiskey and knows exactly how many days there are until Spring Training begins—so we know she’s not just cool for a chick. She’s also in a committed relationship with an unseen man back in Chicago. Despite being out of everyone in town’s league and being unavailable besides, all of the male characters (except her cousin) assume they will be able to have sex with her. When Paul asks her out (she’s not aware it is a date) and takes her to a bar where he knows his ex Jan (Martha Plimpton) will be, she reiterates that she’s unavailable and uninterested, but ultimately agrees to play along as though she’s on a date with him to help make Jan jealous. To that end, Andera takes Paul to the dance floor and puts on an hot-n-heavy show. Paul responds by kissing her. She angrily leaves. 
Then Andera runs into a drunk Willie, who asks her to sleep with him. She says no, and he asks again. She refuses again but does agree to go ice fishing with Willie, where she charitably tries to disabuse him of his manly notions that there will always be another better woman around the corner. He responds for propositioning her for sex yet again. For a movie that is struggling to excuse itself for presenting statutory rape as a possible happy ending, you’d think it would take it’s other representations of consent much more seriously.

Lauren Holly as Darian and Matt Dillon as Tommy in Beautiful Girls

Tellingly, consent is also a fuzzy concept for the female character Darian (Lauren Holly), former high school Mean Girl, current philandering wife, who of the women in Beautiful Girls is most in line with the male characters. Darian regularly cheats on her husband with high school flame Tommy (Matt Dillon), who is also straying from his girlfriend Sharon (Mira Sorvino). Darian crashes a surprise birthday party Sharon throws for Tommy and drunkenly throws herself at him. Tommy’s repeatedly refuses her advances which just leads Darian to up her seduction game, because she treats Tommy’s consent as foregone conclusion. As high school Queen Bee, Darian had status and privilege. So she falls into the same traps of male privilege that plague the men of Beautiful Girls. It’s one of the saving graces that keeps the film from being completely mired in Men Are From Jerkass Mars/Women Are From Long-Suffering Venus territory.  
Unfortunately, only Darian gets an unequivocal smack-down when she’s soundly rejected by Tommy and told off at her high school reunion by someone she bullied. The other disillusioned-by-privilege (male) characters in Beautiful Girls either find the peace of mind to settle with the women they have, or in the case of Paul, give up the chase for the woman he lost. That this happy ending seems kind of sad belies how difficult it is to disengage from the allure of beautiful girls. The italicized and capitalized Beautiful Girls is just as frustrating and compelling as its lowercase namesake.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan: Viewers’ and Critics’ Miss-steps in a Dance with a Female Protagonist

Black Swan (2010)

As Mila Kunis’s character descends upon Natalie Portman’s in the (dream) oral sex scene in Black Swan, a college-age young woman in the movie theater audibly whispers, “And this is why every guy in the theater is here.” 

Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 Black Swan is a film about repression, perfection, and letting go. 
It is a film about finding, torturing, losing, and gaining oneself through destruction, much like many postmodern films of the same genre (Fight Club, along with Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream and The Wrestler). 
But to too many in that theater and in theaters across the country, it is a sexy, crazy, girl movie about ballet. 
Even though most of the marketing of the film catered directly to the male gaze (focusing, of course, on that oral sex scene, which had nothing to do with sex in the context of the film), it is considered either a movie about a girl, or a movie for girls. Even in the sponsored post on Jezebel (which was heavily promoting the film through advertising), women were supposed to come see the film because of pretty ballet, and shocking scenes—psychological and sexual—all touted in a juvenile, sing-song manner: “Natalie violently masturbates face-down on a mattress under the gazes of two creepy stuffed bunnies. For real.” “Natalie makes out with Mila!” The advertisers seemed desperate to sell a different film to audiences. Females would surely flock to theaters to see ballet, so how could it be marketed toward men (and as seen here, women)? Frivolous lesbian sex. Because certainly men wouldn’t want to see a film about a ballerina (note that these marketing concerns certainly weren’t an issue for The Wrestler). 
The IMDB page describes Black Swan as “A thriller that zeros in on the relationship between a veteran ballet dancer and a rival.” 
But it’s not. Nina’s (Portman) rival, Lily (Kunis), has almost nothing to do with the central plot and theme of this film. However, the allure of feminine cattiness, jealousy, and competitiveness is much easier to digest than the idea that a film could focus on universal human conflicts with a female protagonist. 
Aronofksy’s 2008 film The Wrestler is described on IMDB as follows: “A faded professional wrestler must retire, but finds his quest for a new life outside the ring a dispiriting struggle. “ 
Personal conflict, inner-struggle, the gender-neutral “quest.” 
In an interview that touched upon gender issues in Black Swan, Aronofsky said, “… to me, if you paint a human character with real emotions and really empathize with them, it doesn’t matter if it’s a 50-something aging wrestler, or a 20-something ambitious dancer, they’re just people.” How unfortunate that we must hear that explanation from a director, instead of simply understanding it. 
Lest the blame of this feminine vs. universal (masculine) protagonist issue be placed solely upon the marketing and audience, the feminist lens must also be properly focused. In Debra Cash’s “Swanday Bloody Swanday: Darren Aronofsky’s Sadistic, Misogynistic New Film,” she refers to the film as a “textbook demonstration of what academics refer to as the male gaze… Aronofsky’s fable portrays female powerlessness on every level—youth, friendship, collegiality, retirement, motherhood.” And that in itself is misogynistic? Should we not portray powerlessness because we want to be powerful? Had Aronofsky been celebrating powerlessness, maybe that argument would hold true, but he certainly was not. Showing how destructive powerlessness is should be viewed as a feminist action. 
Many feminist film reviewers also lambasted the misogyny of the ballet’s artistic director, Thomas (played by Vincent Cassel), even though his character’s inherent sexism (referring to his principle dancer as his “Little Princess,” for example) is essential to the themes of repression and being able to break free from said repression. Jill Dolan, at The Feminist Spectator, says that “As her [Nina’s] relationship with Thomas gets more and more entwined, she begins to suffer from a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, idealizing and even identifying with Thomas and his mercurial cruelty.” This is begging the question that Nina is the victim–would we ever assume a grown man in a similar role was the victim? Perhaps we’d glance at the notion, but never give him the simple, passive role of “victim.” Relegating Nina to the role of the victim belittles and negates the larger focus of the film. 
While Thomas’s advice to Nina to touch herself is uncomfortable, it is effective, not purely sexist, in trying to force her to find her Black Swan. What better way to discuss this clearly feminist idea—the female orgasm and the difficulty to attain it due to outside and inside pressures—than in the context of the dichotomy of the White and Black Swans? When she finally does achieve orgasm during the aforementioned dream sequence, it’s clear she can do so only when she has lost herself enough, and lost herself to a point where she can blame someone else for her destruction, that she can let herself (and her Black Swan) free. 
While this literal and figurative climax also serves as the beginning of her perfection and destruction, we can see that the destructive nature of this epiphany relies on the fact that she has not achieved freedom by herself. Dolan presents this scene as if it is a lesbian sex scene, as does Cash. In doing so, these feminist commentators take away the importance of the scene by assuming it’s simply for the male gaze, when in fact it is all about Nina overcoming, or attempting to overcome, the passive social and sexual world that she inhabits, while still striving for perfection. 
This leaves the feminist viewer to wonder what makes a film feminist? Must sexism lose and the oppressed woman break free and live happily ever after? Instead, perhaps the truly feminist film is one that makes the female protagonist represent humanity, not just womanhood. Dolan ends her article with the line: “That’s a message that’s not good for the girls.” This further proves the idea that the message of success through self-destruction cannot be gender-neutral with a female protagonist. 
Aviva Dove-Viebahn, in her Ms. Magazine Blog review “Sex, Lies and Ballet,” acknowledges Aronofsky’s “fascination with the intense humanity and obsessive desires of his characters” in a refreshingly comprehensive review. Dove-Viebahn clearly sees what the others miss—that we as viewers are supposed to be questioning and compelled by Aronofksy’s narrative. 
In the Variety article “Stalking the perfect ending,” Mark Heyman (one of the writers of the film, along with John McLaughlin and Andres Heinz) said about the film’s end: “We wanted it to have some kind of emotional weight and significance and somehow be satisfying, even though it’s tragic… so that it felt like she had achieved something even as she had destroyed herself.” It seems that the writers and the director have a clear understanding of the purpose of the film, and the complicated, yet simple, themes. Why did so many audiences and critics miss the point? 
In Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, he explores probability and the human urge to predict in his Black Swan Theory (typically used to explain world and financial events). He derives the title of the book and theory with the story of the white swan in the “old world”—people had only ever seen white swans, so they assumed all swans were white. The sighting of a black swan was a complete surprise. He says, “It illustrates a severe limitation in our learning from observations or experiences and the fragility of our knowledge. One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans.” The male protagonist is the white swan—the millions of white swans. Aronofsky’s Black Swan—the female protagonist—has shocked the people in our “old” world. We don’t know what to do with it exactly, and are unclear of its purpose. 
Taleb goes on to describe the three attributes of the Black Swan: “it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations,” “it carries an extreme impact,” and “in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.” The audiences who quickly categorize Black Swan as a movie for/about women, or the critics who lambast its misogyny, are unable to otherwise grapple with the outlier of a female protagonist who can show us ourselves—male and female. 
Unfortunately, we are still entrenched in a culture where men’s stories are universal stories of humanity, and women’s stories are women’s stories. Until we move past that, and realize that just as we don’t have to be aging professional wrestlers to understand the humanity and struggle of The Wrestler’s protagonist, nor do we have to be young female ballerinas to see Nina as a character that speaks to us in Black Swan, we will continue to be in gendered places in the movie theater, where male protagonists are the norm, and female protagonists are only noteworthy if they are being gone down on.

Leigh Kolb is an English and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri, and has an MFA in creative nonfiction writing. She lives on a small farm with her husband, dogs, chickens, and garden, and makes a terrible dinner party guest because all she wants to talk about is feminism and reproductive rights.

2011 Spirit Award Winners

The 2011 Film Independent Spirit Awards Ceremony took place on Saturday night–the night before the Academy Awards–and aired on IFC. (Which I didn’t watch, because I don’t get IFC.)
In terms of who and which films were nominated, there was a good bit of crossover this year for indie films: four of the five Best Feature nominees were also Best Picture Oscar nominees (Greenberg didn’t make the cut); five of the six women nominated for Best Lead also received Oscar nods; and the Best Foreign Film award went to the Best Picture award winner–The King’s Speech.
But there are some very important differences, some of which we highlighted in our post about the Spirit Nominees. Namely–you guessed it–how much better women fare in the indie world. Here is a selection of winners, and some thoughts about each. You can see a list of all nominees and winners here.
Best Feature: Black Swan
There is nothing near a consensus on how to read this film. Some find it a feminist statement about the unbearable pressures put on women in modern society, while some find it a misogynist exploration of madness and exploitation of the female body. Nevertheless, it is a female-centered film.
Best Director: Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan
Although a man won, there were two women (Lisa Cholodenko for The Kids Are All Right and Debra Granik for Winter’s Bone) in contention, and the winner directed a woman-centered film. 
Best Screenplay: Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg for The Kids Are All Right
This was a great category for women. In addition to Cholodenko, Debra Granik and Anne Rossellini were nominated for Winter’s Bone, and Nicole Holofcener was nominated for Please Give.
Best First Screenplay: Lena Dunham for Tiny Furniture
The best “first” categories are important, in that they give exposure to mostly little-known films (in terms of the mainstream audience) and help launch new voices into the world of filmmaking. The other female nominee in the category is Diane Bell, for Obselidia.
Best First Feature: Get Low

In addition to promoting new filmmakers, this category is exciting because it often introduces films many of us haven’t seen, or haven’t heard much about, including Tanya Hamilton’s Night Catches Us and Dunham’s Tiny Furniture.

Best Female Lead: Natalie Portman for Black Swan
The winner here is no surprise; Portman swept the awards for her portrayal of determined ballerina Nina, which, regardless of how you feel about the film, was an amazing performance. The other nominees were Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lawrence, and Michelle Williams.

Best Supporting Female: Dale Dickey for Winter’s Bone
This is another exciting Spirit category, as was the corresponding Oscar category (for different reasons), though there was no overlap between nominees. Other nominees were Ashely Bell for The Last Exorcism, Allison Janney for Life During Wartime, Daphne Rubin-Vega for Jack Goes Boating, and Naomi Watts for Mother and Child.

While the Spirit Award nominees represent a slightly more progressive and inclusive range of stories and people who tell them, they also reveal a continuing problem: the lack of films about, centering on, made by, or starring people of color. As far as I can tell (as I haven’t seen all the films, nor do I know each storyline), Hamilton’s Night Catches Us is the only nominee focusing on the experience of people of color, specifically Black Americans.

The Spirit Awards may be better than the Oscars, but we still have a long way to go.

2011 Post-Oscar Response

Might as well dive right in! Here is the list (short version) of the winners:

Best Picture: The King’s Speech

Best Actor: Colin Firth in The King’s Speech

Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale in The Fighter

Best Actress: Natalie Portman in Black Swan

Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo in The Fighter

Best Animated Feature Film: Toy Story 3

Best Director: Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech

Best Documentary Feature: Inside Job

Best Documentary Short: Strangers No More

Best Foreign Language Film: In a Better World

Best Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin for The Social Network

Best Original Screenplay: David Seidler for The King’s Speech

Well. As we said earlier in the week:
“the Academy Awards are the most visible celebration of filmmaking in the United States–and possibly the world. Yet–and despite the misnomer of ‘liberal Hollywood’–they continue to exhibit cultural values and norms that are conservative and simply unacceptable. Women are typically rewarded for playing roles that support a central male character in films. People of color are rarely nominated for–and even more rarely win–major awards. This year (as in most years), all Best Director nominees are white men. (Only one woman has EVER won this category.) The Best Picture nominees are about white people (or white cartoon characters), and are lauded by mostly white male critics. Even in a movie about lesbians, a man takes center stage. We could go on, but you get the idea.”

So now that the 2011 Academy Awards have aired, what did you think? I love the discussions that’ve been happening leading up to the Oscars, and I’ll highlight a few of the ones I found particularly enlightening. For starters, the Feminist Frequency video below is an absolute must-watch:  

In our Best Picture Nominee Review Series, we (with the help of our Guest Writers) showed that most of the films were about men, with the exception of Winter’s Bone, Black Swan, and The Kids Are All Right–with the latter two still exhibiting some major problems with their portrayals of women. We also showcased Ten Years of Oscar-Winning Films (in posters), which further illustrated the accolades presented to male-dominated films.
Add The King’s Speech to the ever-growing list.
For those of you who watched the 2011 Academy Awards, you heard Steven Spielberg list several Great Films that had previously won Oscars for Best Picture. He then listed several more Great Films that were nominated for Best Picture Oscars but hadn’t won. His lists included the following films: On the Waterfront, Midnight Cowboy, The Godfather, The Deer Hunter, The Grapes of Wrath, Citizen Kane, The Graduate, and Raging Bull. What do they have in common? They’re all movies about Heterosexual White Men. So I ask, what would’ve been wrong with including some of these films in the list: Rebecca, The Sound of Music, Kramer vs Kramer, Terms of Endearment, or Driving Miss Daisy … ? At this point, I’m honestly starting to wonder if The Academy gives a flying fuck at all about people who aren’t Heterosexual White Men; they sure as hell have no interest in pretending they do.
The following Oscar analyses deepen the discussion.
“Talking About the 2011 Oscars” from The Funny Feminist:
It would appear that expanding the Best Picture category to include ten films instead of five has resulted in more recognition for movies about women.

It hasn’t, though, seemed to improve the field for other marginalized groups, because, as Shakesville pointed out, not a single person of color was nominated in the acting categories.  I guess no people of color acted in any movies last year!  Or else, the Academy filled their quota last year by giving nominations to Gabourey Sidibe and Mo’Nique and don’t feel the need to recognize any other people of color.  Excuse me while I go roll my eyes.

The Academy also filled their quota of female directors last year.  In 82 years of the Academy Awards, they finally recognized a female director (Kathryn Bigelow) and awarded her for her work on The Hurt Locker. I guess no women made movies this year, because the Best Director category is all male.

“Oscar was a Dude: America’s Celebration of Men” from The Sociological Cinema:

Hollywood didn’t invent patriarchy, but that doesn’t preclude it from being implicated in reproducing it. The cultural critic, Stuart Hall, once observed that the people who work in creating media stand in a different relationship to ideology than the rest of us. That is to say, those who produce, direct, and act in films have at their disposal a powerful tool, which can be used to transform how people come to understand the world in which they live. Movies–especially the ones the Academy deems worthy of its coveted Oscar–pose answers to questions many people never asked, such as, “whose story is likely to matter most?” or just, “who matters?” As evidenced from the list of nominated films this year, those who were hoping for a revolution in the kinds of stories Hollywood tells may be disappointed. For now, a critical awareness of the men and masculinity America is (also) celebrating on Sunday may have to suffice.

Thoughts? Concerns? What the hell?