Nuns – Bitch Flicks

Touching Friendship in ‘Marie’s Story’

‘Marie’s Story’ dramatizes the real-life biography of Marie Heurtin, a deafblind girl who was taken in by a convent in the late nineteenth century. It’s an intimate portrayal of an unusual relationship between two young women.

Written by Max Thornton.

The relationship between Christianity and disability is complex and many-sided, encompassing stigma and pity, aid and condescension, systematic exclusion and the creation of refuge spaces – and it’s not just an academic concern for scholars of religion. Societies that took shape under the influence of western Christianity still reflect and perpetuate Christian philosophical and ethical ideas, both in cultural attitudes and in policy and law. Disability is no exception. Levitical purity codes, New Testament healing narratives, and Augustinian theology of original sin all contribute to the mishmash of ableism that pervades twenty-first century US culture.

Disability scholars and cultural critics are doing some terrific work to examine and dismantle ableism. Some of my favorites include Andrew Pulrang at Disability Thinking (and his podcast, Disability.TV), the Disability Visibility Project, and the BBC’s Ouch podcast. You don’t have to spend long reading disability criticism to learn that one of the most hated forms of disability representation in popular culture is inspiration porn. The late, wonderful, deeply mourned Stella Young put it like this:

marie's-story-inspiration-porn — Ugggghhhhh

“[In inspiration porn] we’re objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, ‘Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person.’ But what if you are that person?”

Hollywood in particular loves inspiration porn, to that point that watching a movie about a disabled person is a source of dread for anyone who cares about disability studies. Will the disabled person be a precious angel, too good for this sinful earth? Will they exist primarily to teach the non-disabled protagonist a lesson? Will they be a bitter cripple who gradually triumphs over this dreadful tragedy? Will I throw up in my mouth?

I approached Marie’s Story with less trepidation than usual, though, both because it’s a small French film rather than slushy Oscar-bait, and because the titular Marie is played by a Deaf actress, the talented young Ariana Rivoire. For the most part, thankfully, my confidence was well-placed.

Marie’s Story dramatizes the real-life biography of Marie Heurtin, a deafblind girl who was taken in by a convent in the late nineteenth century. The convent educated deaf children, but felt ill-equipped to teach a deafblind child who had no communication skills – until one very determined nun, Sister Marguerite, insisted on giving Marie a chance.

So far, so Miracle Worker, and in the early stages the film certainly hits a lot of beats familiar from popular narratives of Helen Keller’s life: the terrible fights with the strong-willed mentor, the transformation from wildling to neatly-coiffed well-mannered young woman, the come-to-Jesus moment of language comprehension. What’s distinctive about Marie’s Story is its convent setting and the normalization of the deaf environment (how many movies have you seen that pass the Bechdel Test in sign language as well as spoken words?).

Wisely, given popular Christianity’s reprehensible enthusiasm for the doubly nauseating Inspiration Porn With Added Jesus, Marie’s Story treads lightly around the religion aspect. No miracle healings or trite theodicies here – the most explicitly theological sequence in the film is a conversation around mortality, when Marie asks in frustration: “Who is God? Where is he? I can’t touch him.” The film as a whole functions as a panentheistic affirmation that she absolutely can touch God: despite Christianity’s emphasis on sight and sound as the primary senses for divine encounter, Marie’s alternative embodiment is the locus for divine encounter through touch and scent. From the opening sequence, in which Sister Marguerite climbs a tree and, looking for all the world like The Creation of Adam, extends a hand to a frightened Marie, this film stresses the power of bodily touch.

The film doesn’t entirely escape certain inspiration porn pitfalls, primarily in voiceovers of Sister Marguerite’s diary entries where she gushes about how much she’s learned from Marie and describes Marie’s transformation in weird racialized and colonial terms of “savagery” and “imprisonment.” However, Marguerite’s own chronic illness keeps the relationship from being too one-sided. It’s in the final third that the film really shines, as Marie develops agency and character of her own, even tending to Marguerite just as the nun had previously cared for her. In perhaps the most moving sequence, Marie teaches her parents how to greet her in sign language, with Marguerite translating and facilitating but never speaking for or over Marie.

Ultimately, this is not a film about Saint Sister Marguerite and her noble civilizing mission to help a poor deafblind girl. Instead, it’s an intimate portrayal of an unusual relationship between two young women (watch for a scene where they lie in a meadow together like Bella and Edward), a quietly beautiful story of faith and female friendship.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and tweets at @RainicornMax. He studies theology, disability, and gender, and gets really excited when they all come together.

Finding Faith and Feminism in ‘The Sisterhood: Becoming Nuns’

Nuns are often unsung activists, and convents are underexamined as feminist spaces. In medieval Christendom, entering a convent might be the only way for a woman to have control over her body, her choices, and her reproduction; and, as reproductive rights come under increasingly virulent attack in the US, it could be interesting to consider how a convent might still be that space today.

Written by Max Thornton as part of our theme week on Reality TV.

I have written before about my admiration for nuns. Although rarely present in popular culture as anything more complex than tight-lipped disciplinarians (or, at best, all-singing all-dancing disciplinarians), nuns are often unsung activists, and convents are underexamined as feminist spaces. After all, in medieval Christendom, entering a convent might be the only way for a woman to have control over her body, her choices, and her reproduction; and, as reproductive rights come under increasingly virulent attack in the US, it could be interesting to consider how a convent might still be that space today.

So I was excited to watch Lifetime’s new series, The Sisterhood: Becoming Nuns. The show, which aired all of its six episodes within the past month, follows five young women who are in the discernment process of trying to figure out whether they are called to become women religious. If that sounds many more steps away from actually becoming nuns than the show title suggests, that’s because it is. The complexities of Church procedure do not, perhaps, translate too easily to reality TV soundbites. Indeed, at least one sister has criticized the show’s oversimplifications, complaining that:

“The Sisterhood is a ‘reality’ series that really isn’t. While perhaps not scripted, the scenarios are deliberately constructed, the crises are set up in Survivor mode as if a competition is in play, and someone will ‘go home’!”

To which one is tempted to respond, well, yes. It’s a reality show. Of course it has all the characteristics of reality television: a focus on manufacturing drama and sensationalizing wherever possible, the artificial shoehorning of events and interactions into satisfying narrative arcs, avoidance of the really deep interrogations. If you’re not on board with those terms, or at least capable of engaging them with a suitably genre-savvy skepticism, then perhaps reality TV isn’t for you.

Sisters like selfies too! They're just like us! — Sisters like selfies too! They’re just like us!

But once all of the usual disclaimers have been made, there’s really quite a lot of interesting stuff going on here, even for those of us who might not go quite so far as to call the show “surprisingly insightful.” First and foremost, we are being presented with a perspective rarely seen in pop culture, that of young women who (might) want to become women religious. Young women – a demographic so often trivialized at best, demonized at worst – are being taken seriously in their existential quest, whether that quest involves an unnameably deep yearning for the absolute or a panic attack over acne. We are shown women’s communities, women’s interactions, women’s relationships with God. By definition, there are almost no men at all in the whole show: Eseni’s boyfriend shows up a couple of time, and Claire spends a whole evening witnessing to / flirting with a guy at a bar, but that’s about it.

Oh, apart from Jesus. There is SO MUCH Jesus. Catholic Vote slots the show neatly into a proud lineage of “emotional, expressive young women dealing with the notion of becoming a Bride of Christ,” drawing parallels between the young women of The Sisterhood and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. The “Jesus is my boyfriend” trope is so interesting because of its indeterminacy: is this the hegemony of compulsory heterosexuality over even those who explicitly reject its demands, or is it a queering of the faith and a way for women to take control of their sexuality within a patriarchal institution?

This question does not get explored in any depth, and it’s not the only issue I wish had been examined. For example, when judgmental white girl Claire objects to African American Eseni’s twerking, it’s clearly a racialized interaction, but that doesn’t get addressed. Similarly, when Eseni expresses trepidation about going to the south, the race angle is never mentioned. The experiences of Black women in Catholicism in the US could be whole show on its own, and since pop culture usually only ever shows Black Christians as being part of Black church, I would have loved an honest look at the role of race in Eseni’s experiences as a Catholic.

Claire is probably trying real hard not to judge Eseni right now, but being judgmental is like 75% of her personality. — Claire is probably trying real hard not to judge Eseni right now, but being judgmental is like 75 percent of her personality.

Additionally, a feminist take on the convent is never really explored. One sister talks about finding fulfillment of nurturing instincts in ways different from traditional family expectations, but she has to make it icky by tying the nurturing instincts to the nuns’ being female. The girls discuss their understanding of chastity a little, but it all does still seem very rooted in a culture of shame.

To my surprise, I found myself in tears over the culmination of one woman’s story. As the only daughter, Christie is acutely aware of how she is thwarting her parents’ expectations by entering religious life, and this was painfully relatable for me. Who knew that becoming a nun and coming out as a trans guy had such resonances? And yet it makes a certain amount of sense, considering the number of narratives we have of female saints living their lives as men. The construction of the nun as a woman who is voluntarily surrendering her sexuality and reproduction (and the idea that this makes her a man) opens up a whole vein of feminist analysis which isn’t brought into the show at all. Feminist analysis and profound explorations of faith are not part of The Sisterhood, but they are almost irresistible responses to it.

Christie just has a lot of emotions about Jesus, okay? — Christie just has a lot of emotions about Jesus, OK?

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and tweets at @RainicornMax. As an Anglo-Catholic who also has emotions about Jesus, he snarks from a place of love.

Nun Better: ‘Sewing Hope’ and ‘Radical Grace’

Nuns are the BEST. What’s so interesting about them is that they operate simultaneously within and against a hierarchy. Anyone who cares about social justice can relate to the frustrations of trying to change institutions from the inside, often wishing you could opt out, but never being able to. Recently I saw two documentaries about awesome nuns being awesome feminist warriors in very different circumstances.

I’m Episcopalian, which I like to tell people means I get the best parts of Catholicism and Protestantism – though it would probably be just as true to say we get the worst of both worlds. We do technically have nuns, but they don’t seem to be completely awesome the way Catholic nuns are.

Nuns are the BEST. What’s so interesting about them is that they operate simultaneously within and against a hierarchy. Anyone who cares about social justice can relate to the frustrations of trying to change institutions from the inside, often wishing you could opt out, but never being able to. Recently I saw two documentaries about awesome nuns being awesome feminist warriors in very different circumstances: Sewing Hope is about Sister Rosemary’s work to help women and girls in Uganda, while Radical Grace tells the story of three US nuns who fight for social justice.

The West does not have a very good image of Uganda. Hands up if you remember Kony 2012 and the associated controversy, not least of which was the issue of white saviorism. White people sure do love to swoop in and rescue brown people from themselves, completely eliding the history (and present) of western colonialism that is often the root of many of the problems in the Two-Thirds World. The cool thing about Sister Rosemary is that she is not a white savior. She’s a local Ugandan who runs a school for women and girls who were forced to be soldiers in Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. Many of these women were also sex-slaves, and bear the burden of social stigma on top of single parenthood and personal trauma.

Saint Monica’s, the school run by Sister Rosemary, trains the women in tailoring and baking, providing them with skills that are in demand both in the local hospitality industry and for the international sale of goods. The school not only helps them work toward economic independence, but it also provides a holistic, person-centered environment for healing.

What’s really extraordinary about Sister Rosemary’s work is that she’s not just providing skills from a brute economic bottom line – she’s helping trauma survivors recover. Early in the film, Sister Rosemary speaks about the importance of listening, and this is immediately followed by several women telling their own stories of horror and brutality. Sister Rosemary explains that her method is not to welcome girls by saying she knows what they have been through, but to provide a supportive environment. This includes both emotional support and very practical things like childcare.

Sister Rosemary is working within her context and making a difference from the ground up using the resources available to her and to women in her culture. The US context is very different, and so concomitantly are the methods and tactics of Sisters Simone, Jean, and Chris.

I saw a rough cut of Radical Grace at the Athena Film Festival. — I saw a rough cut of *Radical Grace* at the Athena Film Festival.

Being censured by the Vatican for “radical feminism” (no, not that kind of radical feminism) didn’t stop the sisters from fighting the injustices of their own society. As Nuns on the Bus, they traveled around assorted US cities and petitioned a number of politicians, campaigning for healthcare reform and now immigration reform.

The sisters are tackling issues both of wider society (poverty, the prison-industrial complex) and specific to the Catholic Church (women’s ordination). They are undeterred by the backlash they face, which ranges from the disapproval of the Church hierarchy to on-the-ground accusations of being “worse than pedophile priests” (yes, one protestor really says that).

The sisters are grounded in their commitment to the social gospel, which sees Jesus’ message as being primarily one of radical justice for the people on the margins of society. At the same time, the nuns are committed to thoughtful interrogation of their own faith, and to challenging the institution – which, as they say, is “always going to be ten years too late, if not a hundred” when it comes to social issues.

In some ways these nuns are an embarrassment to the hierarchy. They make the institutional Church look like a reactionary dinosaur; and yet it’s clear that they are working from a place of love. The Church is something they want to be better, and they’re taking matters into their own hands.

Vatican-approved picture of nun being badass

The filmmakers want us to see these stories and be moved by them to get involved. Whether it’s donating to Sister Rosemary and her women, or helping to get the final cut of Radical Grace finished so the story can get out there, they are hoping to motivate us to action. As Rebecca Parrish, director of Radical Grace, notes, there is potential for alliance between secular feminism and progressive religious movements, and we must overcome the divisions of ideology if we want to make the world a better place.

You can learn more about Sewing Hope here, or donate to the Radical Grace kickstarter here.

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.