Tag: Objectification

Post-Feminist Rom-Coms and the Existing Female in ‘Trainwreck’ and ‘Legally Blonde’

In the post-feminist romantic comedy, female characters transition from being non-existent objects, into existing, as subjects, in the course of love. … In ‘Trainwreck,’ Amy begins the film as a subject, but ends as an object. Amy’s opposition becomes submission to male desires, for a man, which erases her. In ‘Legally Blonde,’ Elle begins as object, but ends the film as subject. Initially, the gaze of the camera and the characters objectify Elle’s body. But eventually, Elle demonstrates her worth and success outside of male desires and ultimately finds love.

Legally Blonde and Trainwreck

This guest post is written by Claire White.

In cinema, female characters do not exist (as subjects), especially in the course of finding love. Looking at the origins of feminist film theory, it is easy to establish why the idea of the non-existent female in cinema is present. However, when female heroines are the main protagonist, the female oscillates between existing and being erased. I will convey this oscillation of existence through the analysis of two post-feminist romantic comedies, Trainwreck and Legally Blonde, in which the female protagonist ultimately finds love.

In the case of Trainwreck (directed by Judd Apatow, 2015), the lead character, Amy (Amy Schumer), exists as love subject at the beginning of the film. However, by the film’s end, Amy erases herself by submitting to male desires, becoming the love object, in order to ultimately find love. On the other hand, in Legally Blonde (directed by Robert Luketic, 2001), Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) does not exist at the beginning of the film, due to her characterization as a typical dumb, rich, and spoiled blonde who is portrayed as object. Nonetheless, it is how her character develops and reacts to male criticism which legitimizes her, and in the end she finds, proving that in the post-feminist romantic comedy, the female can exist and find love.

The concept of the non-existent female character in cinema has been prevalent as far back as the 1970s, as highlighted in the works of key feminist film theorists Claire Johnston and Laura Mulvey. In her 1974 essay “Myths of Women in the Cinema,” Johnston contends in cinema, “woman as woman is largely absent” (Johnston 1974, 410). Johnston examines the sexist ideology of the male-dominated cinema, and discusses the woman as a myth (1974, 410). Women in cinema exist under fixed iconography, only ever as erotic myth or stereotype, with no variety, whereas men play various different roles (Johnston 1974, 408). Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” discusses the “male gaze,” which remains a prominent concept in contemporary film criticism. The Male Gaze is understood as men in the cinema being the active holders of the gaze, which is imposed onto the women as passive bearers of “the look” (Mulvey 1975, 418). The Male Gaze “projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly” (Mulvey 1975, 418). These critiques arise out of the recognition of the cinema being male-dominated, meaning male directors were the ones portraying women as object, and inflicting their gaze.

Claire Mortimer recognizes, while the romantic comedy is thought of as a woman’s genre, “the romantic comedy heroine is almost always the construct resulting from the work of men, due to the patriarchal nature of the film industry” (Mortimer 2010, 20). Applying Johnston and Mulvey’s theory in the cinematic love story, the woman does not exist outside of a sexualized and erotic or love object, not love subject. Over twenty years after Mulvey’s essay, Jane M. Ussher discusses the Male Gaze in film and art, and describes the woman appearing “as a creature to be worshiped or an object to be denigrated; her very essence is irrevocably linked to sexuality in all its myriad forms” (Ussher 1997, 84). This is a testament to the weight of Mulvey’s argument, and demonstrates over time that women as object in cinema endures.

Trainwreck

I assert that Trainwreck and Legally Blonde fall under the term of “post-feminist.” Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra, in the introduction of their edited book Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, describe post-feminism as an ideology which “broadly encompasses a set of assumptions, widely disseminated within popular media forms, having to do with the ‘pastness’ of feminism, whether that supposed pastness is merely noted, mourned, or celebrated” (Tasker & Negra 2007, 2). Post-feminism acknowledges the work of feminism as over, and exists through the idea of gender equality having been achieved, allowing young women to feel empowered through sexual acts and consumption.

The post-feminist romantic comedy presents what Negra and Tasker describe as “a limited vision of gender equality as both achieved and yet still unsatisfying” (Tasker & Negra 2007, 2). Trainwreck and Legally Blonde both portray empowered and successful women, living in post-feminist success, yet also highlight the gaps and unsatisfactory nature of the post-feminist society. The two concerns post-feminist culture emphasizes, which are most relevant to these films, are the “educational and professional opportunities for women” and “physical and particularly sexual empowerment” (Tasker & Negra 2007, 2).

In the contemporary romantic comedy, Mortimer describes the female heroines as those who “work hard and play hard, seemingly living the post-feminist dream” (Mortimer 2010, 30). This is the site of the female character’s existence, through empowerment and agency. However, as Mortimer further explains, in the romantic comedy love story, “at a decisive point in the narrative, [the female heroine’s] values are overturned and they can no longer find happiness in their former lifestyle” (Mortimer 2010, 30). The contemporary romantic comedy heroine will make “significant sacrifices for a traditional heterosexual partnership; she embraces the romantic dream and is whisked off her feet by the right guy, having realised that love conquers all” (Mortimer 2010, 30). This is what happens to Amy in Trainwreck, which ultimately erases her as a character of existence.

Trainwreck

Trainwreck tells the story of party girl and journalist Amy Townsend (Amy Schumer, who also wrote the screenplay). She lives in New York City, and is assigned to write an article on sports surgeon Dr. Aaron Conners (Bill Hader). The two pursue a relationship, the main tensions of the relationship coming from Aaron’s eventual unacceptance of Amy’s wild, weed-smoking, excessive drinking, and emotionally distant ways.

In an introductory voice-over, Amy describes her life with her “great job,” “sick” apartment, and “awesome” friends and family, all while the audience are shown images of Amy sleeping with various men. Amy is a successful protagonist without being tied down to one monogamous relationship; she embodies Angela McRobbie’s description of the new, young post-feminist woman who “brazenly enjoy their sexuality without fear of the sexual double standards” (McRobbie 2007, 38). Even when Amy enters her relationship with Aaron, she remains existing while finding love by sticking to her own principles, regardless of male desire. This is seen predominantly in the scene where Amy first sees the Knicks City Dancers perform.

In the scene where Amy and Aaron attend a basketball event together, editing and framing positions Amy as a female character who exists. This is due to her obvious opposition to the male desire Aaron and the male characters around her exhibit during a performance by the cheerleading group, the Knicks City Dancers. After the camera reveals the scantily-clad dancers beginning their routine in a long shot, the film cuts to a medium shot of Amy and Aaron in the crowd, watching. The camera frames both of the characters into a two shot and positions them in the center of the frame. Due to the two shot, the difference in opinion on the dancers are given emphasis. Amy looks on with a disgusted expression on her face, while Aaron cheers in support and claps. In the background, male extras dance in enjoyment to the performance, while Amy remains stationary and opposed. She gives a slight shake of the head in disapproval, and the camera cuts back to the performance.

Amy’s refusal to accept the image of woman as erotic spectacle is what validates her as a female character which exists as subject. However, in a post-feminist culture, “whilst it is clear that women are active in resisting the narrow restrictions of the feminine masquerade,” women still do not have the “freedom to decide what being a ‘woman’ means to us” (Ussher 1997, 131). While Amy’s opposition to male desire may be the effect of Schumer’s writing, Apatow, as director, still maintains control over Amy’s character. In discussing how female desire is portrayed by male directors, Geetha Ramanathan stipulates “female desire … is underwritten by a male desire which conflates the image of woman with desire itself” (Ramanathan 2006, 141). This underwriting is apparent in the final sequence of the film.

In the final scene of the film, and in an effort to truly find love, Amy erases herself by performing as a cheerleader for Aaron. Trainwreck follows Roberta Garrett’s description of the new romantic comedy tradition, in which “the [female] central protagonists modify their behaviour in accordance with the desires of the [male] other” (Garrett 2007, 101). As Amy dances with the Knicks City Dancers, she is dressed in the same revealing costume as the dancers in a short skirt and plunging neckline, which is not unusual for Amy’s character. However, by wearing a cheerleader costume and not her usual clothes, and dancing in the center of the performance, Amy has shifted in character from flaunting her sexuality for her own empowerment, to submitting to male (Aaron’s) desires. A medium shot cut to Aaron as he watches the performance positions him in the center of the frame, surrounded by empty chairs. This performance is for him, and him alone, and his obvious enjoyment is indicated by the astonished expression and smile on his face. This performance is regressive from Amy’s earlier opposition to the dancers, and represents what Garrett describes as the “patriarchal desire to return to pre-feminist conceptions of sexual difference” (Garrett 2007, 99). In the course of finding love for the post-feminist, their “pursuit of ‘personal’ happiness [is] understood in relation to men,” as their professional success and financial stability is no longer enough (Garret 2007, 94). As shown in the diegesis, Amy has changed significantly since she last spoke to Aaron, while he has not changed at all. To finally achieve love, as cemented by the kiss which ends the film, Amy has had to completely change herself to fit male desire, and, as a result, erases herself into the love object.

Legally Blonde

In Legally Blonde, the shift from real to not real in the pursuit of love for the female protagonist works in reverse. The film tells the story of Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon), a Californian Sorority President who goes to study at Harvard Law School to chase her college boyfriend, Warner Huntington III (Matthew Davis) after what she thought would be a proposal resulted in Warner dumping her for being too “blond.”

In the first half of the film, Elle is a female character who does not exist, as she embodies ditzy blonde stereotypes and, as a result, most characters expect little of her outside of being a trophy wife. Where Trainwreck‘s Amy flaunts her sexuality for personal empowerment, Elle uses it specifically to appeal to men. Indeed, Carol M. Dole describes Elle’s Harvard admissions tape as her “employing her sexuality … featuring herself in a bikini” (2008, 62). Elle is a character who is “unashamed to employ the spectacle of her adorned body to gain her ends,” which is common for post-feminists (Dole 2008, 67). Legally Blonde begins in the classical romantic comedy tradition, “[exhibiting] a structural drive towards marriage and coupledom” (Garret, 2007, 96). For the first half of the film, Elle’s main character drive is to be proposed to. However, as a romantic comedy made in the post-feminist society, when Elle’s attitudes shift, the limits of post-feminism is critiqued.

The scene where Elle is misled into believing a Harvard party is a costume party by Vivian (Selma Blair), pinpoints the moment in which the character of Elle switches from non-existent to existing. The scene begins with a close-up on Elle’s high-heeled shoes which pans slowly up her body, revealing her tight, pink bunny costume. The camera remains behind Elle as she walks up to the door of the party, allowing the emphasis to remain on her body and behind, which is situated in the center of the frame. As Elle walks into the party and realizes Vivian lied to her about the costumes, the camera remains in a medium shot. This use of camera ensures Elle’s body and tight, sexualized costume of silky corset and tights is always in frame. Elle is positioned as another ditzy, sexualized blonde, evident in her easily being manipulated and her choice of costume. However, when she talks to Warner, who suddenly pays attention to her and reaches out to grab her hips, despite having ignored her up until now within the diegesis, a shift in framing and camera angles occur. When Warner insult’s Elle’s intelligence, she steps back and the camera cuts to a close-up, which zooms slowly towards her face. This camera movement removes the objectifying gaze, and emphasizes her outraged expression as she realizes Warner and her fellow classmates will never take her seriously, despite being smart enough to get accepted into Harvard Law School, just like anyone else.

Legally Blonde

It is in this way Legally Blonde points out the limits of post-feminism. Post-feminism purports feminism’s work is done, and espouses empowerment through sexualization. However, what Legally Blonde does here is “[warn] women viewers that extremes of femininity” that is, flaunting her sexualized body, “can be socially unacceptable” and damaging (Dole 2008, 68). Elle realizes she is more than the beauty she has been conditioned to believe is the most important part about her. It is from this point onward that Elle’s character is validated and becomes a real person, and becomes subject, outside of erotic spectacle.

The final scene of Legally Blonde proves female characters can exist and find love in the cinema, as Elle does. This scene is set “two years later” after Elle wins her first big murder trial, indicated by a title card at the bottom of the screen. Elle has been announced as class speaker at her graduation from law school, having earned the love and respect from her fellow students. Eleanor Hersey pays particular attention to the role the public speech plays in contemporary romantic comedies. She argues a public speech “reminds women that they are not going to find all their fulfilment in men” (Hersey 2007, 152). Elle’s anger from Warner is channeled into her studying, and upon graduation, she has succeeded. Legally Blonde shifts post-feminist empowerment from sexuality to education (Hersey 2007, 156).

During Elle’s speech, the camera cuts to high angle shots of the ensemble characters in the audience, watching her. As the camera views Vivian, who was originally Elle’s opposition due to being Warner’s fiancée, she now smiles up at Elle and a caption along the bottom of the screen reveals Vivian “dumped” Warner and is now best friends with Elle. Similarly, when the camera cuts to the character Emmett (Luke Wilson), captions reveal he and Elle have been dating for two years, and he is going to propose to Elle that night. Elle has been able to find and attain love, not only in the form of a proposal but also in friendship. Elle’s love story has come full circle from the proposal-that-never-was with Warner, to Emmett, who loves Elle for her mind (Hersey 2007, 156). She was able to prove herself outside of stereotypes, and ultimately find love, despite her existence as subject.

In the post-feminist romantic comedy, female characters transition from being non-existent objects, into existing, as subjects, in the course of love. However, as argued, this transition can go either way. In Trainwreck, Amy begins the film as a subject, but ends as an object. Amy’s opposition becomes submission to male desires, for a man, which erases her. Legally Blonde, however, works opposite: Elle begins as object, but ends the film as subject. Initially, the gaze of the camera and the characters objectify Elle’s body. But eventually, Elle demonstrates her worth and success outside of male desires and ultimately finds love.

Bibliography:

Dole, C M 2008, ‘The Return of Pink: Legally Blonde, third-wave feminism, and having it all’, in Ferris, S, Young, M (eds.), Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies, Routledge, London and New York, pp 58-78

Garret, R 2007, ‘Romantic Comedy and Female Spectatorship’, Postmodern Chick Flicks: the return of the women’s film’, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp 92-125

Hersey, E 2007, ‘Love and Microphones: Romantic Comedy Heroines as Public Speakers’, Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 34, no. 4, pp 149-158

Johnston, C 1974, ‘Myths of Women in the Cinema’ as printed in Kay, K and Peary, G (eds.) 1977, Women and the Cinema: A Critical Anthology, E. P Dutton, New York, pp 407-411

McRobbie, A 2007, ‘Postfeminism and Popular Culture: Bridget Jones and the New Gender Regime’ in Negra, D, Tasker, Y (eds.) Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, Duke University Press, USA, pp 27-39

Mortimer, C 2010, ‘The Heroine of the Romantic Comedy’, Romantic Comedy, Taylor and Francis, Hoboken, pp 20-44

Mulvey, L 1975, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ as printed in Kay, K and Peary, G (eds.), 1977, Women and the Cinema: A Critical Anthology, E. P Dutton, New York, pp 412-428

Negra, D, Tasker, Y 2007, ‘Introduction: Feminist Politics and Postfeminist Culture’ in Negra, D, Tasker, Y (eds.), Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture, Duke University Press, USA, pp 1-26

Ramanathan, G 2006, ‘Desire and Female Subjectivity’, Feminist Auteurs: Reading Women’s Films, Wallflower Press, London, pp 141-167

Ussher, J M 1997, ‘The Masculine Gaze: Framing ‘Woman’ in Art and Film,’ Fantasies of Femininity: Reframing the Boundaries of Sex’, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, pp 84-142

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Trainwreck‘s Unexpected Dose of the Feels

Raunchy and Unfiltered, Amy Schumer Talks about Trainwreck at the Apple Store

The Feminist’s Box Office Call of Duty

Watch Me Shine: Legally Blonde and My Path to Girl Power

Claire White is a Screen & Cultural Studies and Media & Communications graduate, bookseller, and production intern based in Melbourne, Australia. She is founder and writer of the all-female stage and screen blog Cause a Cine. You can follow her on Twitter @clairencew.

The Capaldi Conundrum: How We Attack the Female Gaze

In any fandom based on visual media, fangirls are attacked because of the way the female gaze is misunderstood and misrepresented.

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This guest post by Alyssa Franke appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

Fangirls everywhere face a common frustration. Call it what you like, there’s a name for almost every fandom — Marvel has the Chrises Conundrum, Sherlockians have the Cumberbatch Conundrum, Whovians have the Capaldi Conundrum. In any fandom based on visual media, fangirls are attacked because of the way the female gaze is misunderstood and misrepresented.

The female gaze is often assumed to be singularly focused on male objectification, to the exclusion of anything else. As a result, women are assumed to either be sexual beings who are present solely to gaze at male bodies, or intellectual beings capable of understanding and appreciating media. Unlike men, we are not allowed to be both at the same time.

Set aside, for the moment, the question about whether or not we can say that the female gaze really exists in franchises that are largely written, produced, and directed by men. At the very least, the creators of these franchises have attempted to appeal to what they believe is the female gaze — a presumed straight female audience — by objectifying their male leads.

Marvel hasn’t been shy about objectifying Chris Hemsworth’s body in his multiple on-screen appearances as Thor. His first solo movie featured several shirtless or partially clothed scenes, but by his second solo film we were upgraded to softly lit, lingering shots of Thor’s torso as he bathed. And Marvel didn’t tiptoe around the blatant objectification and who it was intended for. In a later scene, a woman deliberately falls onto Thor in a crowded subway car just to get a subtle feel of Thor’s chest. Thor is here for women to ogle, and he’s totally down for it.

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The creators of Sherlock have also gleefully displayed Benedict Cumberbatch’s body for the enjoyment of his fangirls. Cumberbatch wasn’t deliberately objectified in the first season of Sherlock, though with his well-tailored suits and tight shirts, he certainly wasn’t being hidden away. But by the second season, he was being shamelessly objectified for the female audience. In a now infamous scene, Sherlock answers a summons to Buckingham Palace completely naked, wrapped only in a bed sheet. When he attempts to leave, his brother Mycroft steps on the edge of the sheet and pulls it down, giving women an eyeful of Cumberbatch’s torso and backside.

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Doctor Who has been slightly more circumspect about appealing to the female gaze. Multiple female characters are shown gazing at or discussing the attractiveness of the various Doctors, but the men’s bodies themselves are rarely visually objectified for the viewer in the way female bodies are. Scenes with partial nudity are usually portrayed as slapstick or comedic scenes.

There are a few exceptions to this. In a special skit produced for a TV charity marathon, Matt Smith’s Doctor donates his wardrobe for charity. But he’s soon forced to hide behind his TARDIS as the viewers — presumably straight women — discover that pressing a button on their remotes will strip him of his clothing. The event is scripted and presented as a comedy, but women are actively shown objectifying Matt Smith’s body for their enjoyment. And in the first season of the new Doctor Who, Captain Jack, played by John Barrowman, has his clothes zapped away by two female-coded androids. Now naked in front of millions of television viewers, he flirtatiously tells the androids, “Ladies, your viewing figures just went up.”

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Given the overall ratio of female objectification in media — and indeed, the ratio of female objectification in each of these franchises — the number of times men are objectified for a straight female audience is practically insignificant. But there’s an enormous disparity in the way male and female fans are treated when they react to this objectification.

Male fans can openly and loudly express their attraction to the female actors in a franchise without question. They can show their appreciation for moments where women are objectified without having their knowledge of a franchise questioned and tested. And their intellectual appreciation and understanding of a show is rarely challenged as a result. If anything, the recent surge of “sexposition” in high-brow TV shows seems to show that creators believe that appealing to the male gaze is necessary while delivering exposition and commentary.

Female fans do not have that same power, respect, or freedom.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, female fans are assumed to only watch the movies because of the attractiveness of the male actors. This attitude goes alongside a general suspicion that female fans of Marvel comics and the MCU are not “real” or “serious” fans, and female fans are often challenged to prove their knowledge of the extensive and convoluted history of those comic book characters.

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Female fans of Sherlock have faced similar attitudes. The popular caricature of Sherlock’s fanbase, repeated ad nauseam on the internet and by the media, portrays the show’s fans as crazy Benedict Cumberbatch fangirls. And sure, many female fans do find Cumberbatch attractive. But he is not the sole reason that the vast majority of fans are watching Sherlock. Female fans are also watching for the witty writing, compelling mysteries, and the plethora of other amazingly talented actors called upon to play these classic roles.

Even within the larger Sherlock Holmes fan community, female fans tend to be dismissed based on the assumption that they are exclusively fans of Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and are ignorant of the larger Holmes canon. This is often accompanied by the misogynistic assumption that they are only watching Sherlock to ogle Cumberbatch.

In one particularly notable incident, Phillip Shreffler, a member of the Baker Street Irregulars literary society and former editor of the Baker Street Journal, wrote an article denouncing modern “fans” (a term he uses derisively) of Sherlock Holmes and praising instead the “elite devotees” who meet his accepted level of serious appreciation for the Sherlock Holmes canon. But his screed particularly targeted young female fans of Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, and he specifically singled out the Baker Street Babes podcast, which is composed entirely of women. Ironically, the Babes are devoted to discussing every incarnation of the Holmes story. It was Shreffler who assumed that young women would only be interested in Sherlock Holmes to watch Cumberbatch.

And then we have the Capaldi Conundrum. When it was announced that Peter Capaldi was being cast as the next Doctor, a particularly malicious glee began to seep through some parts of the Doctor Who fandom. At 55 years old, Peter Capaldi was breaking the trend of younger, more conventionally attractive men being cast as the Doctor. And some fans became to wonder if an older Doctor would “drive away” female fangirls.

To these fans, young female fans were interlopers in the Doctor Who fandom. They weren’t real or serious fans that were dedicated to the show or its history. They were just silly little fangirls sucked into watching the latest Doctors because the actors playing them were young and cute. They assumed Peter Capaldi’s casting as the Twelfth Doctor would drive fangirls away from where they didn’t belong. Accusations that female fans only watched Doctor Who to ogle its male actors appeared side-by-side with accusations that female fans weren’t “real” Doctor Who fans.

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When most men try to imagine why women watch visual media — when they try to conceive of what the female gaze might be like — they tend to assume women are focused on viewing men as sexual objects. In its most benign form, this assumption results in male writers, directors, and producers creating scenes where men present themselves as passive sexual objects. For which we thank them.

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But in it’s most misogynistic form, this assumption portrays the female gaze as something shallow and infantile. If a character is portrayed by an attractive actor, that must be the only reason why women like that character. If a franchise moves into a visual medium or is suddenly filled with attractive actors, that must be the only reason why women decide to become fans of that franchise. Within this mindset, women are assumed to have no interest in the story or its thematic elements. We are assumed to have no deeper intellectual appreciation for that franchise.

These dismissive attitudes put female fans in a bind. Because while we can and do have a deeper interest in and appreciation for a franchise beyond its male actors, many of us are interested in ogling hot guys.

I can be interested in Chris Evans’ ass and still want to examine the way the Captain America franchise examines the current American conflict over the lengths we should go to ensure security. I can watch the gif of a sheet being pulled off of Benedict Cumberbatch’s torso on repeat for hours and still examine the way Sherlock interprets the Holmes canon for a modern audience. And I can stare at gifs of David Tennant’s hair for days and still want to spend the next week marathoning episodes of Jon Pertwee’s and Peter Capaldi’s Doctors.

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We need media that employs the female gaze — we need media that is written, directed, and produced by women for an audience of women. We need media that puts women at the center of the narrative and presents them as sexual beings rather than sexual objects. But more than that, we need to treat female viewers with the same respect we treat male viewers. We need to treat them as beings capable of intellectually and emotionally appreciating a piece of media while simultaneously being capable of appreciating Captain America’s ass.

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God bless America.

 

Alyssa Franke is the author of Whovian Feminism, where she analyzes Doctor Who from a feminist perspective. You can find her on Twitter @WhovianFeminism.

Murder Spouses and Field Kabuki: The Female Gaze in NBC’s ‘Hannibal’

The show treats the bodies of living women with the same respect that it treats those of dead ones.

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This guest post by Lisa Anderson appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

In discussing the female gaze in media, there’s one television show worth considering that may come as a surprise: NBC’s Hannibal. This plucky little drama has toiled away in bad time slots for three seasons now, winning critical accolades and devoted followers that never translated into ratings. In a landscape littered with crime procedurals that exploit women, Hannibal stands out, and not just for its searing visuals or plot twists. There are three ways that the “gaze” in Hannibal is feminine: the way the show depicts women, the way it depicts men, and the way it depicts sex.

You only need start with the pilot to see that Hannibal is a different sort of show. Not only does it cast two characters who were men in the original novels by Thomas Harris as women – Freddy (Freddie) Lounds and Alan (Alana) Bloom, to be specific – but it gives beefed-up rolls to three characters who weren’t central to the novels’ plots. Those are Jack Crawford’s wife Phyllis, forensic investigator Beverly Katz, and Abigail Hobbes, the daughter of serial killer Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Yet another female character, Hannibal Lecter’s psychiatrist Bedelia DuMaurier, is created from whole cloth. Showrunner Bryan Fuller has been quoted as saying he balanced the cast this way in part because writing a show with only men would have been boring.

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As remarkable as the living women in the cast, however, is the way that the show treats dead women, right from the start. Much ink has been spilled about how many law enforcement procedurals fetishize the torture and suffering of women, or depict female murder victims in a titillating way. By contrast, in the opening moments of Hannibal, the protagonist, Will Graham, invites his students (and the viewers) to empathize with a dying murder victim, not with her killer–in spite of his own unfortunate gift for doing the opposite. As he is drawn into the FBI’s investigations of Hobbs’s murders, the first victim is found tucked respectfully into bed, fully clothed. The second crime scene he visits turns out to be one of Hannibal Lecter’s infamous murder tableaus, and while the dead woman there is naked –impaled on antlers – her body is angled in such a way her gender isn’t obvious and the image is fit for network TV.

Hannibal continues its gender-neutral approach to serial murder throughout its run. As many men are murdered as women (if not more), and whenever corpses are found without clothes on, they are shot such a way that they register as human rather than male or female. (The victims of the Muralist in Season 2 are perhaps the best example of this.) Even when a bare breast is shown straight on (such as with one critical character death in Season 2), it goes by quickly and is soft-focused and the nipple is not shown. Most importantly, the murders on Hannibal aren’t driven by misogyny or some twisted sexual motivation. This is not reflective of real of serial killers at all, but the show is more interesting for it. The one exception is Frances Dolarhyde, who comes on the scene in the back half of Season 3, and whose sexual pathology is impossible to get around. Even there, though, his female victims aren’t depicted in a titillating way.

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Surely just having lots of good female characters and not depicting crime in a creepy way doesn’t qualify a show has having the female gaze, though, right?   No, and in the case of Hannibal, there’s more to it than that. The show makes the most of the attractive male actors in its cast (and their avid fans), and also centers female pleasure in its sex scenes without exploiting the actresses.

The first (and very unsettling) instance of the female gaze that I noticed in Hannibal centers around the above-mentioned Mr. Graham, played by the amazing Hugh Dancy. Early in Season 1, Graham uses his talent for empathy to imagine himself in the place of a mental hospital inmate played by Eddie Izzard. As he mentally reconstructs a murder committed in the hospital by Izzard’s character, we see him with his shirt unbuttoned, smirking at the victim with a mix of smolder and menace before attacking her. In that moment, Dancy seems to be channeling Eddie Izzrard’s own sex appeal. Nor was that the only time the show has made the most of Dancy’s looks: it’s not common for him to be seen shirtless, but it’s not unusual either, and fans on tumblr have gleefully traded stills of the show that feature his rear end. In terms of Will the character, there is, of course, a perennial appeal to a cute man in glasses and cold-weather clothes scritching a dog… but maybe that’s just me. (I doubt it.)

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In terms of the female gaze in Hannibal, however, no character is more important than the titular serial killer, played by Mads Mikkelsen. Sex appeal is part of the “Person Suit” that Lecter puts on, whether it’s the dapper, cultured professional that he puts forward in seasons 1 and 2, or the leather-clad, globe-trotting bad boy that begins Season 3. It’s not to lure his victims, though; it’s to conceal his crimes from society. Nor do clothes always make the man–in Season 2, the audience is treated to a slow pan up Mikkelson’s body as he is clad in only swim trunks. (In another example of the show’s twisted vision, Lecter is actually in dire straights at that moment.) In Season 3, there is a brief-but-langorous sequence of Lecter showing off blood. He emerges from the bathroom to have a tense confrontation with another character, rendered decent only by prop placement that would make Austin Powers proud.

The staff of Hannibal make the most of both their talented and attractive lead and the fans’ appreciation for him. The show’s official tumblr literally teased fans for weeks with the prospect of their favorite cannibal in a swimsuit. Even the show’s hilarious and inimitable food stylist, Janice Poon, has described Mikkelson as the “man o’ dreams,” as she jokingly (?) lamented missing the opportunity to brush glaze onto him.

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The show’s eye candy doesn’t end with Mikkelson and Dancy, either. Richard Armitage, of Hobbit and North and South fame, joined the cast in Season 3 as Francis Dolarhyde, the Great Red Dragon. Right from his first, dialogue-free scene, he meets the high bar for acting set by Dancy and Mikkelson. But he also got into fighting shape to play the body-building villain of Harris’ novel, and for the most part, if Dolarhyde is in private, he is either wearing only small shorts or implied to be naked.

The way Dolaryhyde is filmed for Hannibal points to the difference between how depicts men and women. His nudity is not necessarily supposed to be titillating – it’s mainly to show off his formidable form and the vivid tattoo on his back, although it certainly won’t be unappealing to those who go in for muscular men. What it is, though, is gendered. By contrast, in the pilot, we see Freddie Lounds sitting at her computer, with her back turned and no shirt on. The mood is casual (especially in comparison to Dolarhyde’s workouts), and there is no posing for a camera that shouldn’t be there, no implication that she might turn. She’s treated as a naked human, not a naked woman. The same comparison can be made between Lecter’s Season 3 shower and the baths taken Dr. DuMaurier, played by Gillian Anderson. The show treats the bodies of living women with the same respect that it treats those of dead ones.

Hannibal - Season 1

So, what happens when the men and women of Hannibal get together? Speaking strictly in terms of what’s been confirmed onscreen, we’ve had a couple of opportunities to find out. Women are seduced by (and seduce) serial killers, a lesbian character sleeps with a man to get pregnant but later finds a female partner, and there’s even a hallucinatory “five-way” that involves people hooking up with people while thinking of other people (and also… a wendigo. It’s hard to explain). If it all sounds sensational and potentially problematic, only the first part of that is true.

The sex scenes in Hannibal have a few things in common. First, neither female nor male bodies are really exploited. This could be written off as owing to network TV, the networks manage the male gaze just fine in their sex scenes most of the time. Instead, there’s a dream-like, almost art-house quality to the editing and camerawork. Second, they’re always between central, full-drawn characters, who are both acting out of their agency even if there is information that they don’t have. Third, they all have strategic or plot importance – the feelings of the characters and the dynamics between them are as important as what happens physically.

hannibal-sniff1

Most importantly, though, the sex scenes in Hannibal always imply that the woman (or women) involved are satisfied. This is usually done with a tasteful shot of an arched back or ecstatic facial expression. Remarkably, in a show where interpersonal relationships of all kinds prove to be fraught and painful, there’s never been a sex scene where it wasn’t clear that a woman was having a good time. This focus on female pleasure, as much as anything else, qualifies Hannibal as a show with a female gaze.

While Hannibal’s female gaze obviously includes the straight female gaze, it’s not strictly heteronormative. Dr. Alana Bloom, played by Caroline Dhavernas, is attracted to both Will and Hannibal, but ultimately ends up in a long-term relationship with a woman. Will and Hannibal both get involved with women, but in a Episode 10 of Season 3, Bedelia DuMaurier – perhaps the person most in Hannibal’s confidence – heavily and repeatedly implies that they’ve been sexual with each other as well. Many viewers were surprised only by the confirmation, based on the homoerotic subtext between the two from the start. While Hannibal still has never had a gay man as one of the central characters, it acknowledges both male and female bisexuality, which is unfortunately a rarity on TV today. Needless to say, this wins the show points in today’s fandom environment, with it’s overlapping interest in social justice and same-sex pairings.

hannibal-tv-series-image-hannibal-tv-series-36794557-3000-1997

I’m not saying that Hannibal is a perfect show. Feminists have taken issue with it before. I’ve agreed with some of those criticisms and either disagreed with or eventually softened my position on others. With two more episodes left in Season 3 as of this writing, I can imagine ways in which it could still disappoint me. At the end of the day, though, it explodes many of the misogynist tropes of the TV crime procedural and even the texts where it finds its roots, and makes something truly unique and darkly beautiful with the shards.

Sadly, Hannibal has been canceled by NBC, and has not yet found another financial backer. I hope that it finds one, because I’d love for Bryan Fuller to be able to complete his vision. Until then, I’ll probably revisit it on DVD, and encourage those who I think would enjoy it to check it out. I’ll also look forward to his next project: a mini-series of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. I’m sure he’ll bring his singular style to it, and hopefully continued nods to the female gaze as well.

Lisa Anderson is a social services professional and part-time writer living in Nashville Tennessee.  Her favorite things include reading, good chocolate, and feminist pop culture deconstruction.

 

 

Women’s Bodies in the Oscar-Nominated Films

What is telling is the presence of so many films that either elide or sexualize female bodies in the category that presumably represents the best of the best. The Academy clearly has a critical preference for movies about men, with women present primarily as wives and sex objects.

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The Wolf of Wall Street

This guest post by Holly Derr previously appeared at Ms. Magazine and is cross-posted with permission.

Jake Flanagin at Pacific Standard and Victoria Dawson Hoff at Elle recently floated an interesting idea: The Oscars should be entirely segregated by gender. Their proposal would create categories such as Best Female Director and Best Female Writer in addition to the already segregated acting awards.

Though this would lead to recognition of more women working in the field, it wouldn’t solve one of the Oscars’ main gender problems: the Academy Award for Best Picture. Most films are produced by teams of both men and women, making segregation in that category impossible. And yet, the Best Picture category is where we can see the clearest evidence of the Academy’s preference for male-driven films. Only three of the nine films nominated this year even have women in leading roles: American Hustle, Gravity and Philomena.

Perhaps as significant as the lack of women characters is the treatment in these films of women’s bodies. The main female character in Her is not even human, allowing the film and its central relationship to avoid dealing with the messy reality of  women with bodies. In Dallas Buyers Club, one of the two female-gender-identified characters is played by a cisgender man, effectively replacing a body that would raise interesting questions about the difference between sex and gender with one that is much easier to understand. One cannot help but wonder, if a trans actor had played the role, in which category would she be eligible for a nomination?

Where women’s bodies are present in these films, they are almost always objectified through an emphasis on their sexuality. In The Wolf of Wall Street, one woman has sex on top of a pile of  money (the actor says her back was covered with paper cuts after filming) and another woman literally wears money. One could argue that these moments are designed to reveal the callousness of the male characters, but in imagining and glamorizing a world without any female characters who aren’t objectified, the film ultimately endorses its characters’ worldview. The main female character in 12 Years a Slave is literally a possession, and she is repeatedly raped. Unlike with The Wolf of Wall Street, which encourages the audience to identify with criminals, 12 Years a Slave invites us to sympathize with the victim rather than the perpetrator. In this way, the film does at least provide a critique of turning women into objects, rather than an endorsement.

o-12-YEARS-A-SLAVE-PRESS-IMAGE
12 Years a Slave

American Hustle provides the clearest example of Hollywood’s inability to deal with women’s bodies without sexualizing them.Though most of the fashions in which the male characters adorn themselves–from the polyester to the conspicuous chest hair to the hairstyles–are quite unsexy, the women are dressed in ways that reveal their every curve. Though plunging necklines were popular for evening wear in the era portrayed in the movie, women also wore formal dresses that, by today’s standards, look like your grandmother’s nightgowns. During the day, women wore button-up shirts with large collars; the most popular woman’s outfit of the decade was the pantsuit, and hair was more commonly worn natural than elaborately styled.

amy_adams_wardrobe_malfunction_a_p
American Hustle

It makes sense for Amy Adams’ character to wear a dress cut down to her belly button, but when her character impersonates a British aristocrat, it would have been more logical to have her button up. She would still have been sexy and her talent would have shone just as brightly without an outfit that invites the viewer to spend most of the scene staring at her boobs. Similarly, the notion that a troubled housewife would wear her hair in an updo all the time is incongruent both with Jennifer Lawrence’s character and with the style of the time.

The contrast between the body of Christian Bale’s character and those of his lovers is especially striking. Whereas Bale’s character has an outside that matches his inside–his corrupt, conniving character is manifest in his weight, physical health and  unnatural hairpiece–Adams’ and Lawrence’s characters are gorgeous despite their twisted insides. I would love to see a version of this film in which the women’s bodies, the clothes they wear and the hairstyles they sport are as reflective of their unsavory inner selves as the men’s are.

Only two of the nine films nominated for Best Picture are genuinely about women, and the difference in how women’s bodies are treated in those films versus the other seven is telling. Sandra Bullock spends much of Gravity in shorts and a tank top, yet at no point is she sexualized. One might note that she looks strong and healthy, but one’s eyes are not deliberately focused on her breasts either by her costume or the camera. The unnecessary addition of [SPOILER ALERT!] a lost child to Gravity betrays Hollywood’s inability to portray women without reference to their biology, but even the final shot in which the camera slowly pans from Bullock’s feet to her head is much more about showing her strength than it is about showing her girl parts.

gravity-sandra-bullock-10
Gravity

Philomena is a film centered around a woman’s reproductive past, yet it trounces the competition in its fully human representation of a woman character. Unlike  Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle, Judi Dench is old enough to conceivably be the woman she portrays. Close-ups of her face make no attempt to hide signs of age, revealing a beautiful woman whose wrinkles only make her intense emotional experience all the more gripping. Though the film is about the woman’s search for her lost child, the woman herself is far more than a mother on a mission. She loves her children, but she also loves sex. She’s a woman of faith, she’s openly accepting of gay people, she loves to read and she makes friends everywhere she goes. This is not to say that every female lead in every movie needs to be a saint;  most real women are not. But is there any other female character in this year’s nominees for Best Picture about whom the audience learns so much and in whom they become so deeply invested because of whom she is instead of what?

You might question whether the absence/objectification of women’s bodies in this year’s Best Picture nominees reflects on Hollywood or the culture as a whole. None of these films would necessarily be problematic on its own—12 Years a Slave in particular performs the important function of detailing the violence under which female slaves really lived and showing slave owners to be as oppressive as they really were. What is telling is the presence of so many films that either elide or sexualize female bodies in the category that presumably represents the best of the best.  The Academy clearly has a critical preference for movies about men, with women present primarily as wives and sex objects.

Though segregating awards by gender would up the profile of women working in Hollywood, it would also perpetuate the notion that there is something fundamentally different about work created by women and work created by men. And it would not solve the fundamental problem at the heart of Hollywood: Movies about men are more highly valued than those about women.

 

Related Reading: 7 Ways Stars Can Change Hollywood This Award Season

For more Bitch Flicks commentary on the 2014 Academy Award nominees: 2014 Academy Award Nominations; The Academy: Kind to White Men, Just Like History

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Holly L. Derr is a feminist media critic who writes about theater, film, television, video games and comics. Follow her @hld6oddblend and on her tumblr, Feminist Fandom. 

‘Despicable Me 2’: One of These Things Is Not Like the Other

Despicable Me 2 poster

This is a guest post by Margaret Evans.

I really enjoyed the first Despicable Me movie. The characters were all a lot of fun, the bond between Gru and his adopted daughters was believable, and the world that the movie built was interesting. When the sequel came out, I saw it in the cinema, and it was just as good as the first, if not better. However, one scene in the movie troubled me.

 

At one point, the main character, Gru, is set up on a date with a woman, and the date doesn’t go well. When Shannon (his date) threatens to reveal his wig, he is “saved” when Lucy (one of the female leads) tranquilises her. Gru and Lucy drop Shannon off at her house, and slapstick humour ensues on the way.

 

So, why does the slapstick humour aimed at Shannon bother me when I have no problem with either slapstick humour as a concept or even the slapstick humour inflicted upon Gru, his minions, or later the main antagonist? I believe that the answer to this question can be found by taking a look at how the characters react when they are the focus of slapstick.
Lucy spies on Gru during his date with Shannon
In the case of Gru, the best example of slapstick is when he gets hit by Lucy’s lipstick taser. His response is to start frantically moving; he even does a little bit of the dance from Saturday Night Fever. He is very animated and clearly in pain.

 

Shannon’s experience, on the other hand, is very different from Gru’s. The major difference between the two is that Gru is conscious …  whereas Shannon is out for the count the whole time. Because of this, the humour doesn’t come from her reaction to the injuries that she is experiencing–but from her lack of reaction.

 

When Gru and Lucy take Shannon home, they don’t put her in the car or call for a taxi; they put her on the roof of the car, the same way you would put your luggage on the back of the car. When they arrive at Shannon’s house, she is unceremoniously thrown off of the car, and the other characters laugh about it. Now, imagine this scene again and–instead of Shannon–picture any inanimate object that you think fits. If you play this scene again in your mind with the changes, it will still make sense and be funny for the same reason.
Lucy and Gru
That is what troubled me about the scene with Shannon. In the case of Gru being tasered, the joke was his reaction and his pain, but in Shannon’s case, it was how she showed the exact same “reaction” that an inanimate object would (because she was unconscious). In Gru’s case, the humour has a humanising effect, but in Shannon’s case, the humour very literally objectifies her.

 

Now, it has been suggested to me that the reason Gru and Shannon are treated differently in this regard is that we are meant to sympathise with Gru because he is the good guy, and we are rooting for him, whereas we are meant to take delight in Shannon’s pain because she is cruel and obnoxious.

 

To counter this argument, I would like to take a look at the main villain. Near the end of the movie, the villain is defeated, in part by Gru using the same lipstick taser that Lucy used on him. The villain reacts in the same way that Gru did, and we can very clearly see the pain that he is experiencing because of the electricity. Yet, the humour still comes from his defeat rather than our feeling sorry for him. The movie does not use the character’s villainy as some sort of excuse to treat him as anything less than human.
Shannon from Despicable Me 2
Therefore, the fact that we are meant to strongly dislike Sharon and be rooting against her can’t be pinned down as the reason that her experience is so noticeably different from Gru’s. Neither can it be used as justification for the problematic elements.

 

The slapstick involving the other characters throughout the movie only serves to show that if the writers really wanted to pull some humour at the expense of Shannon, they could have easily done so without the need to reduce her character to the level of a piece of luggage.
The scene with Shannon is, for me, the sole off-putting scene in the movie. It is a scene in which being an irritating person and a bad date is used to justify knocking someone out–and in which a character gets treated the same way someone would treat an object that they felt didn’t need to be particularly handled with care. We, the audience, are meant to laugh along with Gru and Lucy, to view this all as an evening of comedic antics rather than what it actually is, complete disregard for her as a human being.
Gru, Lucy, and Shannon’s unconscious body
This scene didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the movie, but the rest of the movie doesn’t give this scene a free pass. Personally, I thought it was a real shame to see the direction that the movie temporarily took considering how good the movies had been up to that point at humanising its characters, (especially Gru, who played an archetype traditionally demonised in the first movie). I just wish that the people behind this movie could have put the same thought into writing the character of Shannon, however personally irritating they intended her to be.

 

Margaret Evans is a blogger from Godalming, a small town in south England. She contributes to the website www.paranerds.com. When she isn’t writing she volunteers as a receptionist for the local Citizen’s Advice Bureau and works as an admin for a local building firm.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

I Hate Strong Female Characters by Sophia McDougall at New Statesman



Why “Solidarity” is Bullshit by Tina Vasquez at Bitch Media

New Film “Lovelace” Leaves a Lot to Be Desired by Monica Castillo at Bitch Media
Austenland movie review by Susan Wloszczyna at RogerEbert.com

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

Bitch Flicks Weekly Picks

I Hate Strong Female Characters by Sophia McDougall at New Statesman



Why “Solidarity” is Bullshit by Tina Vasquez at Bitch Media

New Film “Lovelace” Leaves a Lot to Be Desired by Monica Castillo at Bitch Media
Austenland movie review by Susan Wloszczyna at RogerEbert.com

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

The Terminatrix Problem

Written by Robin Hitchcock
Kristanna Loken as the T-X or “Terminatrix” in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
On round one thousand seventy eight of the eternal “do the time travel rules in the Terminator movies make any sense?” debate, my partner and I decided the only reasonable course of action was a Terminator movie marathon [we excused ourselves from having to suffer through Terminator Salvation, because life is too short to watch that dull abomination more than once].
The time travel debate, of course, rages on, but watching the first three Terminator films in short order made their relative strengths and weaknesses all the more clear. [Or, in the case of T2: Judgment Day, relative strengths. That movie HAS NO WEAKNESSES.] I held out hope that Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines might have some new charms or interest placed directly next to its legendary big sister. It’s a movie I want to like more than I do, despite the crippling absence of Sarah Connor, awkward recasting of John Connor, and the distractingly aged Schwarzenegger. Oh, and James Cameron out of the director’s chair, half-heartedly replaced by some “I made one of those submarine movies from the early aughts, and no my name isn’t Kathryn Bigelow” hack (Jonathan Mostow).
I know now why you Botox
And then there’s that whole thing where Terminator 3 completely defies the defining spirit of the series “no fate but what we make for ourselves” and goes all predestination on our asses. You have a fate! You have a fate! EVERYONE HAS A FATE! Man, this movie has a lot of problems.
But allow me to expand on just one of them: The T-X, or Terminatrix, played by Kristanna Loken. Judgment Day had one of the most memorable movie villains of all time in Robert Patrick’s T-1000. Living up to that standard is a tall order. T3’s only answer for how to up the ante is boobies.
Inflatable boobies! [To be fair, they also give the T-X various and sundry additional powers like technopathy and plasma weapons, but they feel thrown against the lingerie billboard and they don’t quite stick.]
From a gender studies point of view, there’s a lot of potential in introducing the first female terminator. What are the tactical advantages of boobies? Why do robots (shape-shifting robots, at that!) even have gender identities? Why does the T-X have a “sexy” curvy endoskeleton?
That’s not how skeletons work!
Spoiler alert: none of these questions will be answered or even adequately addressed by T3. Instead, Kristanna Loken will do her best Robert Patrick impression whilst having boobies, and it will fall completely flat (pun perhaps subconsciously intended).
Nothing will ever be this scary.
There’s several problems with Loken (as well as the writers and the director) deciding to go the T-1000 imitative route. First, obviously, is that it’s essentially impossible to live up to the memory of Robert Patrick’s chilling performance. Secondly, it throws away the fascinating idea introduced in T2 that different Terminators have distinct personalities (thankfully, the Battlestar Galactica reboot would pick up their fumble).
And finally, a beautiful woman acting robotic just isn’t that notable in our culture of objectification.
Women are so often used as beautiful emotionless props it can be hard even for feminists to notice when it’s happening. In the era of widespread photoshop abuse, images of women are increasingly not quite human: everyone has the same glowy, flawless, fresh-off-the-factory line look.
3-D printed Natalie Portman
Emma Stone with upgraded robolashes
Olivia Wilde is a female pleasure unit.
She requires a new coat of paint.
These images should freak us out, but they’re all too easy to accept as honest representations of a inhuman beauty to which we should all aspire. This objectification is such a pernicious part of the cultural DNA that the usual rules of the uncanny valley don’t apply to beautiful women. When Robert Patrick played the T-1000 with inhuman rigidity and emotionless focus, it was terrifying. But when Kristanna Loken played the Terminatrix using exactly the same mannerisms, she was just another sexy fembot.
Ask your beautician about mimetic polyalloy, the new revolution in skincare
Even when something is as thoroughly pre-ruined as Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, the patriarchy finds ways to make it even worse.
—————-

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town. She always leaves the room when Sarah Connor starts carving “no fate” into a picnic table during T2 because she’s afraid to watch the nuclear attack dream sequence that comes next. 

The Sun (Never) Sets on the British Empire: The Neocolonialism of ‘Skyfall’

Growing up, my little brother was an enormous James Bond fan. He rewatched the films repeatedly on video; he developed an encyclopedic knowledge of all the villains, plots, and gadgets from reading his glossy making-of books; and, in an anecdote our mother never tires of retelling, he wanted to be Bond “without the kissing.”

Thanks to his enthusiasm, and everyone else’s moderate enjoyment, each new Brosnan Bond film was cause for a Family Outing to the cinema (and we have never been big on Family Cinema Outings; our taste in films is too disparate). For me, this meant a couple hours’ quality nap time. I snoozed happily through Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, and Die Another Day.
Me, watching a James Bond movie, 1997-2002.
Casino Royale, of course, famously upset some Bond fans who felt it was too serious, too Bourne-y, and unfaithful to the sense of fun that had always previously characterized the series. And maybe it is indeed a complete break with the rest of the franchise, because it’s the first Bond film that kept me awake for its entire (bladder-busting, 145-minute) runtime.
Bond is a British institution, and every new film is quite the cultural event back in Blighty. It’s a slightly different perspective from this side of the Atlantic, but in some ways the US is an appropriate place to be for the release of Skyfall: director Sam Mendes is a Brit, but he’s most famous for a film with “American” in the title. This latest offering turns out to be not only self-reflexive on the half-century-old Bond film franchise itself, but also a somewhat disturbing meditation on Britain’s role in the modern world.
Before I get into a geopolitical reading of the film, let’s talk feminism: this is NOT a good film for its women characters. The Craig Bond films have been weird about women in general. They don’t seem to be quite sure whether or not they want to get away from the traditional Bond treatment of women as interchangeable totty for 007’s shagging pleasure. On the one hand, Casino Royale won feminist plaudits for recapitulating Dr No‘s famous Ursula-Andress-rising-from-the-sea moment with a ripped Daniel Craig in the role of Anadyomeneeye-candy. On the other hand, Skyfall features Bond walking in on a former child sex slave in her shower, and that is objectively more squicktastic than most Bond seductions.
Even the one where he shags Honor Blackman straight.
Plus, without getting too far into spoiler territory, by the end of the film the role of women in the MI6 workplace is not exactly inspiring for one’s feminist sensibilities.
SPOILER: this is the final shot of MI6 at the end of Skyfall.
Having said all of which, the film does focus significantly on one female character. Dame Judi is of course a British icon, and – particularly in the wake of the Olympics opening ceremony stunt – it’s not a huge leap to see her M as representative of the queen (and, by extension, the UK as a whole): she’s talked about obsessively as a “little old woman” who holds people inexplicably in her thrall and power, and unfailing loyalty to her is presented as an irrational but ultimately very British characteristic.
I should make it clear that I am not a fan of monarchies, empires, or jingoism, and that my own British nationality is so compromised by my third-culture childhood that it doesn’t really have abstract, personal, emotional, or ontological relevance for me. As such, I don’t care much for the endless, usually racist and Islamophobic debates over what British identity IS or whether the Royal Family is relevant(IMO: this, and no).
However, I do think that there is a very good reason for the continuance of these discussions, and it is this: Britain has never really bothered to process the loss of its empire.
By this I mean both that Britain has failed to properly grapple with or repent for its imperial sins, and that it has not yet seriously reconsidered its place in the current global milieu. The former is the more difficult task, and I still don’t see anyone trying to do anything about it; on the contrary, imperialism, via western neoliberalism, looks to be reinscribed through the very public conversation on modern Britain’s role that has arisen in the past few years. Between the Royal wedding, the Jubilee, and the London Olympics, Britain has begun to gain something of a sense of itself in the 21stcentury, and I don’t know if that’s entirely a good thing.
The British brain. See, it does too exist.
21st-century Britishness is precarious and conflicted, but still deeply troublesome (and still, I think, built on a feeling of entitlement to control others). Skyfall beats you over the head with its theme of whether the Good Old Ways are useful in the modern world, but that’s because this is a question that has plagued Britain since at least WWII. Bond first meets young tech-savvy Q in front of Turner’s Fighting Temeraire, and the obsessive harping on the motif of Old vs. New doesn’t get any subtler, between the callbacks to Bond movies past and the, well, explicit conversations about whether the old ways are useful in the modern world.
And yet the film has a striking caginess about the real world. The London Underground hijinks almost entirely avoid evoking 7/7. The villain of the piece is a former British intelligence agent with a grievance about his mistreatment at British hands, but he’s played by Javier Bardem; and, while many of the world’s countries have legitimate grievances about their mistreatment at British hands, Spain is waaaaay down the list. Giving the villain a purely personal grievance against M allows for a paralleled symbolism: as M represents imperial Britain, so Bardem’s character represents any or all of the formerly colonized territories of the world.
The film chooses not to engage with the perspective of the colonized. Bardem’s desire for revenge on M is a Very Bad Thing, and Bond takes M “back in time” to defend her. Bear in mind that I’ve been reading M as a symbol of the British Empire, and you’ll realize that I do not love where this is going.
***Spoiler ho***
Bond loses M, but another M arises to take her place. The Union Jack still flies over London. MI6 still operates. The new M still has missions for Bond, offered in front of another painting, this time of an intact fleet of ships. The Good Old Way of territorial imperialism may be gone, but the same colonizing work can still be done – in newer, slicker, more insidious ways.
 
The top-hatted octopus-man is James Bond. Okay, it’s not a perfect metaphor.


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

Horror Week 2012: ‘V/H/S’: The New Face of Horror

This review by Marcia Herring previously appeared at Another Coast and is cross-posted with permission.

The new face of horror … 

 
is privileged white dudebros.

I just watched and reviewed the found-footage horror genre film V/H/S after reading some promising reviews. Despite the early read in the opposite direction, V/H/S is not anything close to good — and that’s just the writing, editing, filming, and acting.

My brother’s mainstream movie review site didn’t seem like the right place to do it, but I want to talk about the women of V/H/S and why this film should, in fact, scare you.

The rest of this post will contain spoilers for each of the short films, and discussions necessitating a trigger warning. Warnings include but are not limited to: blood, non-con, murder, sexual violence, religious violence, self-harm, medical violence.

The film opens with “Tape 51″ (which we cut back to each time a ‘tape’ ends) — or rather, opens with the first-person hand cam assault of a woman. The group of guys drive past her in a parking lot. They circle back. They swoop in. One takes down her male friend, two others grab the girl, expose her breasts, and whoop and holler for the camera. The next scene reveals that the guys work for a porn site that specializes in these kind of attacks, and that the guys get paid to take these shots. They speculate about expanding to up-skirt shots.

These are, for the intents of assigning this film a plot, our protagonists. A new character enters and offers these guys a job that will pay a lot more than their current gig. All they have to do is break into a house and steal a particular VHS. No big deal.

The short films included in V/H/S are tapes that the guys check out, trying to find the one they are looking for, before meeting their own ends and rendering the entire film completely pointless.

Image provided by V/H/S press kit.

First up: “Amateur Night.” We continue with the theme of filming girls without their consent. Group of white guys armed with a hidden glasses cam hits the bars with the intent of getting some hot chicks liquored up and willing to have sex in a room with several people watching. In addition to one girl who, as we meet her, is already intoxicated but seems game, the guys attract the attention of “Lily” (named on the film’s IMDb page, not in the film), a wide-eyed girl who appears to be, at best, on an array of drugs. The guys get the girls into a cab where they encourage both girls to take drugs. Fast forward (hah) to the motel room. Girl 1 is wasted, and making out with Dude 1. Dude 2 watches and laughs because he is stoned or something. Dude 3 (hidden glasses cam dude) has several moments of… contemplation in front of the mirror before re-entering the situation. Yes, he seems to decide, he’s in this, and he’s going to film some girls getting fucked without consent. But there’s a hitch in his plan! Girl 1 has passed out, and — holy shit, give the guy a cookie — Dude 1 calls it off. Course, he really wants to get some drunk pussy! “Lily” is weird, but she’ll do. Dude 1 goes at it, and Dude 2 wants to get in on that action. “Lily” doesn’t fight back, but upon what we can assume is penetration, growls and hunches over before digging into Dude 1 with her teeth and claws. Dude 2 and Dude 3 are officially freaking out, man. Dude 1 is totally dead! That’s uncalled for! Dude 2 gets it too. Dude 3 narrowly escapes a few times before “Lily” completes her transformation into a vampire/succubus/bat creature and flies off. Jeez. That bitch really had an attitude problem.

“Second Honeymoon.” Everything is really boring and a lovely normal heterosexual white couple is sight-seeing for their second honeymoon! Girl is grossed out by the shitty hotel, and grossed out by Dude’s attempts at filming her naked. God, what is her problem what an uptight bitch. Dude and Girl sleep in separate beds because of reasons. Dude sees a girl in the parking lot and is Really Exaggeratedly Freaked Out By Her Because She Means Something To This Story. Mysterious person breaks into their hotel room and runs a knife along Girl’s back, steals $100 and dips Dude’s toothbrush in the toilet bowl… also because of reasons. More boring sight-seeing and dialogue that probably Means Something to the dudebros who put this shit together. Dude blames Girl for his missing money because that is definitely something you should do to your uptight bitchy wife. Mysterious person — a girl, is it the girl from the parking lot? it is probably the girl from the parking lot! — kills Dude while he is sleeping. Kills him to blubbery death. Girl and Mysterious Girl make out and hit the road… because of reasons that are probably that lesbians are BITCHESSSSSSSS.

“Tuesday the 17th.” Girl takes her friends and significant other out to the woods, uses lies and misdirection to get them there because girls are just like that yanno. After not reaching the promised party cabin, friends start to get suspicious. Girl tells her friends they’re gonna die, but they don’t believe her. The camera (???) has weird flashes of dead people and Girl is starting to act pretty creepy so friends insist on more information. Turns out, a while ago Girl came here and this creature killed off all of her friends. (The creature is actually kinda scary, but the hand-cam, while integral in showing us the creature eventually undermines the scares.) She’s using these friends as bait, because she’s going to kill the creature/capture him on film (she says both at different times, because they’re totes the same thing). Everybody dies.

“The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Younger.” Girl talks to her boyfriend on Skype, shows her tits without him asking for it cause girls are sluts. Girl thinks her house is haunted. Girl hears noises and boyfriend sees green ghost creatures on screen but whoops isn’t recording so cannot play back the footage. Girl also has a weird lump on her arm. Girl decides to cut weird lump out of her arm, digs around with a stick. Boyfriend, oh thank goodness, is a doctor and he’s pretty sure she shouldn’t be doing that. He’ll be home soon and he’ll take care of her then. Girl decides to try and communicate with ghosts, but looking at them scares her so she does the obvious and closes her eyes and asks boyfriend to tell her where the ghosts are so she can talk to them. Girl gets knocked unconscious. Enter boyfriend who isn’t as out of town as he said! Boyfriend cuts Girl open, removes something, and whines to alien/ghost/people about having to do this. Girl gets doctored up, slapped with a diagnosis of schizophrenia because only that would explain all the weird stuff. Boyfriend chats with another girl… more tits… and more lump in her arm. THIS GUY IS A DOCTOR YOU GUYS YOU ARE LUCKY TO BE DATING SUCH A WINNER.

“10/31/98.” Drunk dudebros head to a Halloween party. One is dressed as a nanny cam with camera and all. Dudebros cannot find the party or even the street it’s on. They see a house and it must be the party but no one is there but they’re pretty sure it is a haunted house haha great party man. WATTA JOKE IT REALLY IS A HAUNTED HOUSE AND THE ONLY ONE PARTYING IS SATAN JUST KIDDING. Dudebros make their way upstairs, noticing strange things. At the attic they hear chanting and see a group of men performing what looks like an exorcism on a girl dressed in white. She’s crying a lot and they are hurting her and what might just be part of a really elaborate haunted house party is probably not cause some guy just got snatched out of the air and killed? Dudebros freak out! But Dudebros have a savior complex and gotta rescue that girl. They escape a horrible series of CGI horrors and make the escape. Dudebros can’t read a map but where is the hospital dudes! OMG. The girl isn’t in the car any more! She’s being creepy in the road! And the guys get hit by a train.

And now that I have this all written out, I think maybe V/H/S is a secret feminist masterpiece because all the guys are the worst and with the exception of “Emily” all the girls GET REVENGE AND MURDER and everyone who dies is an asshole.

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

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Marcia Herring is a recently relocated writer from Missouri. She is still working on her graduate degree, working in retail, and writing freelance for ThoseTwoGuysOnline.com (one of the guys is her brother) and Lesbrary. She spends most of her free time watching television and movies. She wrote an analysis of Degrassi, Teens and Rape Apologism, contributed a review of X-Men First Class, and reviewed Atonement and Imagine Me & You for Bitch Flicks.