Tag: On Television

An Audience on the Edge: ‘Sons of Anarchy,’ Morality and Masculinity

Sons of Anarchy
 
 
Written by Leigh Kolb

In 15th and early 16th century Europe, morality plays existed to entertain audiences, but also to teach them lessons. Classic morality plays used allegory to impart lessons about what it means to be good, and what it means to be evil. Typically, virtue always prevailed over vice.
Shakespeare no doubt was exposed to such plays in his early life, and reflections of this genre can be seen (in more complex forms) in some of his plays, including Hamlet. Showrunner Kurt Sutter has said Hamlet inspired Sons of Anarchy, which began its sixth season on Tuesday, Sept. 10.
At a recent press conference, Sutter acknowledged the shocking ending of the season premier, which follows a young boy who takes a KG-9 machine gun into a school and opens fire (the audience hears the shots and screams from inside the building).  Sutter said,

“It is truly the catalyst for the third act of our morality play. It sets everything in motion for this season that will ultimately lead to the end that then will bring us into the final season and what I see as the ultimate comeuppance of everything in terms of the series.”

Viewers were shocked at the scene, and a conservative parents group is calling for Congress to reconsider cable programming distribution methods because of, in part, this episode.
In an article at The Daily Beast, Jason Lynch (who has screened the first three episodes) asserts that the show has gone too far, and that this storyline is “damaging to the series and its characters.”
What is clear at the end of the first episode is that SAMCRO has some connection to the gun and to the child shooter. The child is the son of a woman who is dating Nero’s cousin, and we can assume that the gun used in the shooting came from the Sons, who run guns and produce pornography.
While this episode is horrifyingly violent and disturbing, it’s also this: brilliant.
If we think about Sutter’s influences–Hamlet and his reference to Sons of Anarchy being a “morality play”–something needs to happen this season. That something that needs to happen is that we need to start despising the club, and maybe even Jax (unless he is “reformed” into virtue, as the protagonist of a true morality play would be).
The child shooter–the juxtaposition of virtue (religion, order) and vice (guns, violence), and a case study in toxic masculinity.
At this point (in the action of this first episode), the men of SAMCRO are still operating in some sphere of justice and morality. This is highlighted in the opening women-in-refrigerators plot point when the men avenge the beating and rape of Lyla, who had gotten a job shooting porn that turned out to be violent torture porn.
These disgusting scenes highlight the relative “morality” of the Sons–they run porn and prostitution businesses, but there’s a line that can’t be crossed (women being tortured, raped, beaten or killed). This has been apparent from the beginning of the series. Even when the men were running drugs and guns, their treatment of women reinforced the idea that we are still supposed to be rooting for them.
And the women, of course, (thankfully) aren’t painted as innocent victims needing rescuing. The “Mothers” of Anarchy are forces to be reckoned with, too.
In prison, Tara refuses to see Jax and devolves into violence.
In Hamlet, we know Hamlet has turned when he starts treating Ophelia like shit. How a character treats women is often a litmus test for whether or not we are supposed to support that character. In 2013, the morality play is twisted and turned (the antihero is king, after all), but some archetypes still remain.
Something awful needed to happen on Sons of Anarchy–something so awful that we can’t reconcile our sympathy and support for the characters. While Lynch is disgusted with the turn, I think it’s perfect. Forcing us to turn against our heroes (who we should struggle to see as heroes, in reality) is powerful storytelling.
As this child wields a semi-automatic weapon and goes into his all-boys Catholic school and opens fire, Gemma is gifting Nero’s son with a toy gun (she had one of Nero’s prostitutes wrap it for her). Gemma’s gesture, which is a clear indoctrination of what masculinity means–guns, violence and sex–is made even more meaningful by the boy across town who, amidst violent and disturbing drawings he’s done and the self-harm cut marks on his arm, has gotten access to a man’s gun by his proximity to SAMCRO. What’s the difference between the play gun and the real gun? What’s the difference between fetish porn and torture porn? There are differences, but Sons of Anarchy is asking us to think harder about how different they really are.
Meanwhile, Jax is cheating on Tara and having sex with the madame of a brothel (Sutter notes that Jax is really looking for nurturing and maternal love). Another display of what we consider to be masculinity is cut between scenes of violence. Tara, in prison, is beating a woman for stealing her blanket.
Jax seeks “comfort” from Colette.
All of this is set to Leonard Cohen’s “Come Healing,” a gravelly spiritual that conjures images of Christ and redemption.
Lynch says that Sutter “crossed a line” when he had SAMCRO react in “a callous way” with “no remorse” in the next few episodes.
However, that’s exactly how the club should react. We need to reach a point where we are not rooting for and sympathizing with these men–this is the ugly, unhappy truth of loving a show with an antihero who keeps falling instead of being redeemed.
SAMCRO has always had its own code of justice and morality and we, as viewers, have more often than not sympathized with the men. However, if they see that they are complicit in the mass murder of children, and they do not respond properly–we must rethink our sympathy. We are going to turn against them, as we should.
At the beginning of the episode, Jax is reading aloud a letter he’s writing to his sons. “Examine yourselves as men,” he says, filling the page with cliches.
That’s what’s happening now. What it means to be a man–the overwhelming masculinity of sex and violence–is coming to a head. If Jax falls, which he appears to be doing, so does his brand of masculinity. Hopefully his sons will get that message.
Sutter’s “sons” are examining themselves as men as the series begins its descent. In ancient morality plays, virtue would win, and the sinner would typically be redeemed. In Hamlet, everyone dies in a pile of revenge and tragedy. It remains to be seen how Sutter will ultimately unwind this modern “morality play,” but we will know if we are supposed to stop caring about the Sons. There will be consequences–just as there should be.
We need to examine ourselves as viewers, and recognize when enough is enough–and when we reach that breaking point, we are pushed to the edge and forced to reconcile our obsession with vice and toxic masculinity. The ride into the last act of Sons of Anarchy isn’t going to be an easy one–if it was, then Sutter wouldn’t have gone far enough.
Like the Sons and their old ladies, the audience is going to have a difficult ride in the last act.
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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. She wrote a chapter about the feminine sphere and ethics of care in Sons of Anarchy and Philosophy: Brains Before Bullets.

The Feminism and Anti-Racism of ‘Boardwalk Empire’ (And the Critics Who Don’t Get It)

Boardwalk Empire



Written by Leigh Kolb


Spoilers ahead

Boardwalk Empire returned for its fourth season on Sunday, Sept. 8. This season is poised to continue important representation of struggles involving gender and race in the award-winning show, which is aesthetically gorgeous and well-written.

The few, but incredibly important, female characters on Boardwalk Empire are fascinating. I wrote last year about the remarkable story lines in season 3 that focused on birth control and reproductive rights. Boardwalk Empire has always kept a keen eye on women’s issues–from suffrage to health care.

Season 4 is set up to be more of the same–long-form debauchery and violence with moments of poignant sub-plots featuring the female characters. Gillian is slipping deeper into a heroin addiction, and is selling herself instead of selling her house. Cora escapes a violent bedroom scene (which we will revisit in a moment). A young actress attempts to take Billie’s place in Nucky’s life for her own gain, but he rejects her. Richard has traveled to reunite with his twin sister, Emma, on her farm.

As often is the case in these seemingly masculine dramas, women are essential to the plot, even if they often aren’t the focus of most reviewers, or even the bulk of the action. Nucky is king, Al Capone is pulling strings, and Chalky is set to be a power player.

Drink, talk, shoot, repeat.

But those moments that the women of Boardwalk Empire are on screen are among the best of each episode. Their parts are small. Their scenes are brief. But each is meaningful and powerful. The women characters are complex–evil, moral, conflicted, good mothers, bad mothers, addicts and everything in between. They are three-dimensional. This is a good thing.

The female-centric subplots in Boardwalk Empire are treasures buried in a pile of empty whiskey bottles. Most reviewers, however, focus on the men. Hollywood Life only mentions the male characters (except for the mention of Nucky getting smarter about women). The Huffington Post mentions Gillian briefly and Cora (but not by her name). Rolling Stone does do a better job of fully describing and summarizing the episode.

The fact that critics often ignore or reduce women characters isn’t surprising, although it’s always frustrating. What’s horrifying, however, are a few critics’ responses to the aforementioned violent sex scene.

Just like Boardwalk Empire has woven in subplots of women’s struggles, it has also presented the endemic racial tension in Nucky’s world in a way that makes viewers uncomfortable (especially since our culture is still so steeped in racism). Not everyone seems to get this, though.

From left, Dickey, Cora, Dunn and Chalky.

At Chalky’s new club, he sits watching the new talent with his right-hand man, Dunn, and a white talent agent, Dickey, and his girlfriend, Cora. Cora sketches an erotic drawing of her and Dunn, and asks him to come upstairs. The two start having sex, and Dickey makes himself known in the room as he draws a gun against Dunn. Dunn scrambles to put on his pants, and Cora immediately says he had forced her. This is all a game, though, for Dickey and Cora. Dickey forces Dunn to resume having sex with Cora, and all the while Dickey is throwing racial epithets, heavily peppering his slurs with the N-word and claims about how black men behave.

Dickey starts masturbating. “It’s all just some fun,” Cora says with a smile.

Then Dickey says, “There’s no changing you people.” With this, Dunn breaks a bottle over Dickey’s head and proceeds to stab him repeatedly and viciously. We are surprisingly comfortable with this outcome of the scene, because Dunn’s humiliation and objectification is so visceral, as is the racism. This scene is indicative of not only the racism and degradation of black Americans at the time (echoed by Nucky’s almost-mistress who says the Onyx Girls are “deliciously primitive”), but also the demand that they perform as objects for whites’ entertainment and sexual purposes, without agency. The power that Dickey wields over Dunn–his whiteness, his gun, his hand down his pants–is nauseating and historically accurate. This scene is about racism. This scene is about power, humiliation and resistance when one is caught up against a wall of disgusting degradation.

However, the aforementioned reviewers had a different reading of this scene.

From Hollywood Life:

“…Chalky finds out that being the boss requires a lot of cleanup. Like when after his sidekick Dunn Purnsley (Erik LaRay Harvey), in the most awkwardly violent scene of the episode, murders a booking agent after the guy catches him sleeping with his wife — and then forces Dunn to continue while he watches. Boardwalk Empire, ladies and gentlemen!”

Certainly a brief show recap isn’t always the place for heavy cultural analysis, but to brush off the scene with such flippant commentary? Privilege, ladies and gentlemen! 
Not to be topped, the Huffington Post saw Dunn’s actions as self-defense:

“So Dunn did what he had to do, smashing the guy’s head with a liquor bottle to get himself out of danger. And then he went the extra murderous mile, repeatedly stabbing the guy in the throat with the broken bottle, because it’s Boardwalk Empire.”

Are you kidding me? Dunn murdering Dickey had nothing to do with him being in danger. It had everything to do with him being degraded and humiliated.

Rolling Stone acknowledges Dunn’s true motivations, but still misses the mark:

“He may have moved up the ranks from jail antagonist to kitchen worker to Chalky’s right-hand man, but Dunn doesn’t know shit about doing business, especially with white folks in 1924. I can’t blame him for pounding a broken bottle into Dickey’s face repeatedly – not only was he forced to have sex with Cora at gunpoint, but Dickey degraded him even further with regular use of the n-word and vicious taunts like, ‘There’s no changing you people.’ Except Chalky knows that you can’t go around killing Cotton Club employees (Cora manages to escape) just for ’15 minutes’ worth of jelly.'” 

Yes, perhaps Chalky knows how to do business with white folks, but his “jelly” comment is inaccurate–that’s not what Dunn killed for. Except for killing Dickey (which even this reviewer acknowledges a motivation for), Dunn didn’t really do anything wrong.

And perhaps most egregious, buried in an approximately 2.5-million-word recap from New Jersey:

“‘It’s all just some fun,’ the wife assures. Not to Purnsley who, after they begin the humiliating deed, blasts a whiskey bottle clear across Dickie’s face. It’s doesn’t just stop there, however, the beating continues until the booking agent is dead and his wife, in horror, escapes through the window, naked. Purnsley stands there a bloody mess.”

There are some pretty pertinent details missing here. In this review, Dunn seems to be painted as a savage villain, lashing out for no clear reason. That’s not what happens.

Reviewers saw Dunn acting in self-defense (which further reduces his perceived power), not understanding how to do business with white people (blaming his sexuality and ignorance), or lashing out in savage violence without clear motivation.

Reviewers ignore the implications of racism.

Reviewers sideline female characters.

Reviewers do this because too frequently, the lens they are looking through is of the white male experience. This is privilege.

Even when the artifact itself deals with gender and race in a way designed to challenge viewers, reviewers often overlook it. I was uncomfortable, horrified and excited during the premier of Boardwalk Empire this season. I continue to see complex female characters and pointed commentary on racism.

Sally, Margaret and Gillian.

I’m disappointed, then (and even horrified), when critics ignore these aspects, or get them terribly wrong. Their recaps and analyses help shape the conversations surrounding these shows, and if they just focus on those smoke-filled rooms and the power brokers, without fully paying attention to the other characters, they are insulting women, people of color and those who work so hard to write about and represent them.

However, if we can look past the critics, there is much to be excited for in season 4. Still to come this season, Patricia Arquette will play a speakeasy owner and Jeffrey Wright will play a Harlem gangster who is seeped in the politics of the Harlem Renaissance. These moments that have made Boardwalk Empire exceptional–the moments of clear gender and racial historical context and commentary–are poised to take center stage in season 4. Hopefully we can all look through the clouds of white male smoke to see what lies ahead.

Valentin and Maitland

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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

‘Wentworth’ Makes ‘Orange is the New Black’ Look Like a Middle School Melodrama

Wentworth poster

Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Wentworth is an Australian women’s prison drama that is much grittier, darker, more brutal and realistic than Netflix’s Orange is the New Black could ever hope to be. This bleak realism also makes Wentworth‘s well-developed characters and situations much more compelling than its fluffier American counterpart. Don’t get me wrong; I really enjoyed Orange is the New Black. The stories of incarcerated women are always important because they are a particularly marginalized and silenced group. However, the over-the-top, zany approach to characterization that OITNB utilizes for comedic effect renders the characters less substantive overall. Consider the lesbian-obsessed prison worker Caputo who has a mail order Russian bride or the insane abortion doctor murderer and ex-meth addict Pennsatucky Doggett who believes she has a calling from Jesus or the flame-haired Russian mobster cook Red played by my beloved Captain Kathryn Janeway (er, I mean Kate Mulgrew). Very colorful. Very little depth.

Pennsatucky is one craaaaaaaazy lady.

Though OITNB and Wentworth deal with similar themes, Wentworth (based on an Aussie soap opera from the 70’s and 80’s called Prisoner) takes a no-holds-barred approach to subjects like officer sexual exploitation of prisoners, turf wars and hierarchy, sexuality, the inmate code of silence, gang beatings, gang rapes, prison riots, and the brutality of the crimes that landed these women behind bars. Because the Australian prison system is different from ours, my first glimpse of Wentworth Correctional Centre left me comparing the prison to middle school with its catty girls and basic rights stripped from the inmates, much like the ones that are stripped from children, i.e. rules govern when they use the restroom, showers, bed times, how they spend their free time, classes are mandatory, and they are allowed no privacy save that which they sneak. The finale of the first episode (“No Place Like Home”) concludes, however, in a chaotic riot with a body count, leaving a major character dead. I rapidly revised my initial reading, realizing that the women of Wentworth play for keeps in a way that those of OITNB do not.

The show evokes a primal sense of self-preservation amidst the complete absence of the basic human need for safety. It is unflinchingly honest in its representations of women who’ve committed terrible acts, lived complicated lives, and must continue their struggle for survival in the place that’s supposed to give them structure and rehabilitate them but in actuality further hardens and traumatizes them.
The racial diversity of Wentworth‘s cast leaves a bit to be desired. One of the primary prison guards, Will Jackson, is played by Robbie Magasiva, a Samoan New Zealander.

Mr. Jackson escorts our heroine, Bea Smith.
Aboriginal Shareena Clanton portrays the integral matriarchal role of prisoner Doreen Anderson.

Doreen Threatens to cut Bea in order to keep the child she protects on their unit (that’s right, Aussies have kids in prison).

Lastly, there’s Frankie Doyle’s steady girlfriend, Kim Chang, played by Korean Ra Chapman.

Kim walks with her lover Frankie.

To be fair, I don’t know enough about the racial/ethnic composition of Australia to know what would constitute a balanced representation. In addition, though, there isn’t as much lesbianism as one might expect from the show either, though the lesbianism depicted is as graphic as the rest of the series. Though there are more lesbian characters in OITNB, I often wondered why their relationships were so censored on Netflix that can call its own shots…was it an effort to not exploit lesbian sexuality as so many shows typically do or was it to not “turn off” viewers?
On Wentworth, Frankie Doyle is the only major LGBTQ character along with her minor character girlfriend, Kim. We also find that the “Governor” Erica Davidson harbors a secret attraction to Frankie.

Governor Erica Davidson steals a covert look at Frankie.

Erica Davidson is one of the more interesting characters represented in the show. Erica becomes Governor through semi-devious means, but she continues to claim that the welfare and rehabilitation of the female prisoners are her number one priorities. The show constantly pits her genuine empathy for the women against her career ambition. Her sexuality is gratifyingly complex. We are given background on her relationship with her (male) fiance who is very vanilla when it comes to sex. Erica fantasizes about a fetish club she once visited as part of her pre-Wentworth lawyer work. When she asks her fiance to pull her hair during sex, he loses his shit. They don’t have a conversation about it, like, say a couple might if the man requested anal sex or a ménage à trois; instead he issues an ultimatum. They almost end a five plus year relationship because her request makes him feel inadequate. He asserts that she may have picked the “wrong guy.” He stifles her sexual curiosity completely. The repression of her sexual fantasies exacerbates Erica’s desire to step outside the bounds of sexual propriety as is evinced by her lesbian attraction to an inmate, a woman who constantly challenges her authority. The complex sexual power dynamic at work between Erica and Frankie feeds into Erica’s fantasies. The psychological context given for Erica’s sexuality gives her much more depth than, say, Piper Chapman from OITNB, whose sexuality is the cause for much debate but is given little room for its inherent fluidity.

Erica fantasizes about sex with Frankie within the prison walls.

Lastly, we’ve got Wentworth‘s heroine Bea Smith. Wentworth is a sort of prologue intended to give the backstory for the woman Bea later becomes in the series Prisoner (which many Aussie fans have already watched). In many ways, Bea and Piper aren’t so very different. They’re both women out of their element, gentle by nature. Neither woman wants to rock the boat, but both are possessed of a streak of moral righteousness that alternately gets them in trouble and gains them respect. Both undergo major transitions before the end of their first seasons, the prison setting actually accentuating their buried inner violence and pushing them to acts of vicious aggression.

Bea Smith from Prisoner on the left, and Bea Smith from Wentworth on the right.

Bea’s pre-prison life, however, is not as ideal as Piper’s perfect upper middle class New York existence. Bea is a hairdresser whose husband brutally beats and rapes her on a regular basis. Bea is imprisoned for attempting to kill him when she finally snaps and decides to fight back. Piper’s crime is an isolated incidence of non-violent drug trafficking that she did simply as a youthful thrill and to help out Alex, her then girlfriend. Though she, like Piper, is bewildered by prison culture when she is first incarcerated, Bea is no stranger to darkness. Though Bea and Piper both undergo major personality shifts by the end of their first seasons, Bea’s prior life, her family, and her meek disposition are truly and permanently eradicated by her stay in prison (and she hasn’t even had a hearing, nevermind trial and sentencing, as the first season closes).

Wentworth cast

I think I’m asking too much from Orange is the New Black. In fact, I know I am. It’s a mainstream show that focuses on the marginalized stories of women in prison, many of them LGBTQ. Shouldn’t that be enough subversion to keep me happy? Walking into the show, I’d already watched a couple of seasons of the British women in prison drama Bad Girls, and then after seeing Wentworth, I knew that I wanted more from the trope of women and prison than Orange is the New Black could provide. I didn’t want these important, often untold stories turned into humorous fluff in order to make them palatable to an audience. I didn’t want the complexity of the lives and struggles of these women to be minimized in order to keep them within their pre-determined stereotype boxes for the sake of simplicity and a huge, mainstream audience. I’ll keep watching OITNB, but I’ll keep turning to Wentworth for stories about ostracized women with fascinating psychology, depth of character, and complexity of emotion and motivation. 

‘Orange is the New Black’ and Carrie Bradshaw Syndrome


The cast of Orange is the New Black.

Written by Myrna Waldron.

I am not much of a TV watcher. I prefer films for a few reasons – they don’t take as long to watch, plots are resolved, character arcs don’t get derailed, etc. But I’ve started bingeing on Netflix in a smaller window while I work with Photoshop in a larger one. And, upon enthusiastic recommendations from Bitch Flicks Editor Megan and my friend Isabel, I decided to check out Netflix’s original series Orange is the New Black. (Minor spoiler alert, by the way.)

I expected to hate it. I usually avoid tragedies and horror, and since the series is set in a women’s prison I was visualizing Oz-level violence. And then I ended up bingeing on it – not because it was particularly lighthearted (it’s really a drama with a sprinkling of comedy) but because I wanted to know more about Piper’s fellow inmates. I was thrilled that, for once, a TV series was giving voice to the types of women who usually get silenced – black women, hispanic women, lesbian women, trans women, older women, fat women. And they’re all inmates, the types of people that we especially try to ignore. I can honestly say OitNB has the most diverse cast I have ever seen.

And yet it is obvious to me and to others who have written on the show that it painfully illustrates the pervasiveness of privilege, especially white privilege. Piper Chapman is beautiful, thin, passes for straight, is comfortably wealthy, supported by friends, family and a lover, has somewhere to go when her sentence is up, and was convicted for a nonviolent crime. It’s also obvious that although the series has an unusually diverse cast, it only got greenlit because the main character is a pretty white woman.

And oh my god, I hate her.

She’s selfish, she’s spoiled, she’s rude, she refuses to admit guilt for anything, she breaks the hearts of the few people left who support her, she references the Kinsey Scale yet refuses to use the word “bisexual,” and she keeps pretending she’s just a sweet little nice girl who hasn’t really done anything wrong and doesn’t belong in prison.  Fuck that. On her first day in prison, she proves just what kind of person she is by complaining about the food to (unbeknownst to her) the head chef. Lady, you’re getting food for free. Some of these women came from the streets where they had nothing. Suck it up. The chef’s decision to starve Piper for a few days is disproportionate retribution, but it finally starts to give the message to Piper that she’s in prison and she needs to stop thinking that she’s above it all.

Fortunately, the series makes it clear that I’m NOT supposed to like Piper and that she’s in some ways more fucked up than the women sentenced for more severe crimes. But it got me thinking that, in most, if not all of the fictional TV series I’ve watched, the main character is never my favourite – and is sometimes my least favourite. And it drives me nuts when the series focuses so much on a main character I don’t like that much. Stop showing me Piper’s bullshit and tell me more about Sophia!

Since making this realization, I have started referring to my recurring loathing for main characters as “Carrie Bradshaw Syndrome.” Sex and the City operated under the assumption that I was supposed to like Carrie, but I usually fast-forwarded over her scenes because I was going to vomit if I watched her spend thousands of dollars on goddamn shoes again, and then watch her be an absolutely terrible person to the people who (inexplicably) love her. I wanted more Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte. And instead I just got lots of Carrie being her neurotic, selfish, irresponsible self. I like Sarah Jessica Parker. I think most of the “horse” jokes about her face are untrue and sexist. But man do I hate Carrie.

I thought about my favourite fictional TV series and where I stand on their main protagonists. (And yes, I watch a lot of animation.)

Sailor Moon – Not my favourite character, she’s pretty close to the bottom. (My favourites are the ones who, comparatively speaking, were in the series the least.)

Futurama – Fry is not my favourite, it’s Bender, and Fry annoys me half of the time.

Adventure Time – Don’t dislike Finn, but I vastly prefer Marceline.

ReBoot – Bob’s okay, don’t like Enzo, but Dot is amazing.

Avatar the Last Airbender – Aang annoys me. I prefer Toph and Zuko.

Young Justice – No real main character here, but there was too much Superboy and Miss Martian and not nearly enough of everyone else.

Star Trek TOS – Boo Kirk. Yay Spock.

The only series I can think of where I don’t dislike or feel neutral towards the main character(s) are the ones with balanced ensemble casts, like Downton Abbey, Community and Slayers.

And the more I think about it, the more I wonder why I tend to dislike main protagonists so much. Is it because series tend to focus so much on the main character that I get sick of them? Is it because I crave more of the stories of the characters that don’t get told? Am I just a rebel or something?

And is it just me who experiences “Carrie Bradshaw Syndrome?”



Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and can be reached on Twitter under @SoapboxingGeek and @Misandrificent.



‘Breaking Bad’ and the Power of Women: Skyler, Lydia and Marie Take Control

Skyler is calling the shots now.
Written by Leigh Kolb
Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Throughout the last five seasons of Breaking Bad, the female characters have played key roles–from playing adversaries to aiding and abetting–yet they are often overlooked as secondary characters. In fact, a recent article in The Atlantic doesn’t even mention any of the female characters (save for a passing mention of Jane being a “lovely” secondary character in an infographic). While Walt and Jesse are the focus of the series, and they operate in a largely masculine and man-centric world, without Skyler and Lydia, they would have been stopped long ago. 
Skyler thought of the car wash. She got the car wash. She laundered the money and kept it safe. She kept the IRS away from her boss and her household. She is consistently rational and protective of her life and her family.
Lydia provided an “ocean” of methylamine. She had threats to the business taken care of. She expanded the operation overseas, and won’t settle for disappointed customers. She is fiercely in charge of her business.
Marie figured out the details of Skyler and Walt’s deceptions quicker than Hank did. She’s willing to attempt to steal–baby Holly this time, not a spoon–to punish Skyler and protect her niece.
Is there a new holy trinity in Albuquerque? 
We can’t help but think about the juxtaposition of scenes in last summer’s “Fifty-One” when Skyler submerges herself in the pool and we cut to Lydia at an electrical grid. Each episode, these two become increasingly invested in and in control of producing and protecting Walt’s legacy. Skyler confronted Lydia at the car wash, but that was her home turf. Surely they’ll meet again–and that meeting (like the water and electricity) could be deadly.

(It’s important to note that this most recent episode, “Buried”–perhaps the most woman-centric of the series–was also directed by Emmy-nominated Michelle MacLaren, who some critics consider the show’s “best director.” Another fun fact? A female chemistry professor is the show’s “lead meth consultant.”)

However, the male characters (and audience members) habitually underestimate the women. Hank assumes Skyler is an innocent victim. “Ladies first,” Declan says to Lydia. 

In “Buried,” Skyler and Lydia are rising to the top of their prospective enterprises. 
Skyler covers a sickly Walt with a feminine quilt, comforting him, and nursing him back to health. “Maybe our best move here is to stay quiet,” she says, acknowledging that to keep the money and keep all of them relatively safe, they need to not talk. She reassures Walt that Hank seemed to have “suspicions, but not much else.” (She knows this because Hank corners her in a diner and tries to get her to talk and give him something–she refuses, screaming “Am I under arrest?” to get out of the situation.) Hank calls her a victim. By the end of the episode, it is clear that Skyler’s no victim. How far could Walt have gotten without her?
The feminine is highlighted in “Buried,” and given great power.
Lydia visits the meth lab in the desert, where Declan and company are making meth that is not up to her or her Czech clients’ standards. “It’s filthy,” she says of the lab. “What are you, my mother?” Declan responds. They underestimate Lydia. If they would have listened to her and followed her pure-meth protocol, perhaps they would have survived. She covers her eyes as she walks past the carnage that she ordered (she was brought to the desert blindfolded, and chose to leave blindly). She steps next to corpses with her feminine, red-soled Christian Louboutins.

If the cooks had listened to Lydia, things would have ended differently.

Lydia often isn’t focused on as a main character, but those Louboutins are carrying her into a pivotal role. But will she be taken seriously? A critic at Slate said, “Her girliness is annoying—calling Declan’s lab ‘filthy’ was sure to make him reference his mom—but she also happened to be right. The man had no standards.” Would Walt have been “annoying” if he had critiqued the way a lab was run? Probably not. 
Even with Skyler and Lydia’s power plays and scheming, too many are still focused on the likability of the female characters. (In a thread on Breaking Bad‘s facebook page right now, hoards of people are calling for Skyler to be beaten or killed.) Lydia is too “girlish.” And Marie? “She is so annoying that she deserves to die.”
Critics and audiences wring their hands over who we’re “supposed” to like in Breaking Bad. If we operate in high-school superlative absolutes of “most likable” and “most hated,” how would Vince Gilligan have us categorize the characters? Are we truly supposed to feel good about liking anyone but Jesse?
In reality, we’re allowed to like male characters who maim, kill and hurt children. We’re allowed to root for male anti-heroes and revel in their dirty dealings. The women? Well, if they’re not likable, Internet commenters want them dead. 
In “She Who Dies With the Most ‘Likes’ Wins?” Jessica Valenti argues,

“Yes, the more successful you are—or the stronger, the more opinionated—the less you will be generally liked… But the trade off is undoubtedly worth it. Power and authenticity are worth it… Wanting to be liked means being a supporting character in your own life, using the cues of the actors around you to determine your next line rather than your own script. It means that your self-worth will always be tied to what someone else thinks about you, forever out of your control.”

And while I’m fairly certain Valenti wasn’t cheering on money launderers, murderers, or meth dealers, the women of Breaking Bad have appeared to break bad. Their moves will undoubtedly decide the course of the rest of the series.
Audiences, though, too often want to box female characters into “likable” and “hate and kill” categories. While Skyler populated the latter category for years, it seems as if people are now–to an extent–trying to wedge her into the “likable” category. (This critic lauds her as the “best character” on Breaking Bad, and describes her as a wife and mother and extols the virtues of her as a moral center–why does she have to be moral to be a good character? Is it because she’s a woman?) 
The Breaking Bad social media team coined #Skysenberg after “Buried,” showing that Skyler has crossed over and fully enmeshed herself with Heisenberg. (This is awfully and misguidedly close to her taking her husband’s name and adopting his characteristics. Because Skyler isn’t necessarily doing what she’s doing to protect Walt.) 
This symbolic move into Walt’s court, though, won her some new fans: 
Ugh, awful women.
High five, bro!
Heisenberg is sacred–no girls allowed!
And that’s what’s most important.
Yes. You’re right. Everything he did was for her.
Ding ding ding!
Skyler doesn’t care if you like her. Neither does Lydia. Or Marie. Gilligan himself recognizes the hatred and has said, “I think the people who have these issues with the wives being too bitchy on Breaking Bad are misogynists, plain and simple.” Skyler, Lydia and Marie are poised to decide the outcome of Breaking Bad. Skyler is calling the shots instead of Heisenberg. Lydia is decimating–and will certainly replace–a drug cartel. Marie desperately wants to see Walt and Skyler punished; her desire for revenge seems to overshadow Hank’s desire to protect his career.

In the excellent “I hate Strong Female Characters,” Sophia McDougall points out that

“If Strong-Male-Character compatibility was the primary criterion of writing heroes, our fiction would be a lot poorer. But it’s within this claustrophobic little box that we expect our heroines to live out their lives.”

Skyler and Lydia especially are clearly breaking out of these boxes, and Marie isn’t very far behind. But aren’t women supposed to be moral centers? Aren’t their roles as “wife” and “mother” supposed to define them? Aren’t they supposed to not get their hands dirty? We are so accustomed to enjoying and eagerly watching male antiheroes, but watching female characters embody the same traits has been, until now, incredibly rare.

At this point in the series, though, these complex female characters are calling the shots. (“The men are basically just sitting around diddling themselves,” my husband said.)

We don’t need to like female characters for them to be well-drawn and powerful (just like we don’t need to like Walt). We need to get over that. Skyler, Lydia and Marie aren’t just wives and/or mothers anymore. The are characters–not just female characters, or worse yet, “strong female characters.” They are effective and compelling, just how characters who happen to be women should be.

Skyler isn’t Skysenberg. She’s Skyler. And she’s got this.

Are we done here?

________________________________________________________
Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

A Modern Antihero’s Journey: The Goddess and Temptress in ‘Breaking Bad’

Breaking Bad promotional still.



Written by Leigh Kolb

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Joseph Campbell immortalized the concept of the monomyth–or hero’s journey–in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is required reading for students of literature and film. Campbell mapped out the archetypical hero, who has traversed centuries of myths, stories, films and now, television shows.

With the rise of the antihero in film and television, Campbell’s roadmap of the hero’s journey is still accurate. It’s just more crooked.
Walter White is the perfect antihero, and his journey (from “Mr. Chips into Scarface,” as creator Vince Gilligan has said)–from his departure and initiation to his return–is in lock step with the story arc of heroes throughout history, albeit it with a lack of heroic qualities. Gilligan has artfully shaken and baked archetypes, symbolism, religious imagery and time-worn human motivation into one of the greatest–and most literary–television series ever.
Modern storytelling borrows from ancient narratives.
As Breaking Bad begins the final leg of its run, two pivotal women in Walt’s life are at the forefront of his life’s path. His wife, Skyler, acts as Campbell’s “goddess” figure, and Lydia has re-emerged as the “temptress.” As modern adaptations of Campbell’s archetypes, each is attempting to keep or draw Walt into a life that fits her needs, for better or worse.
At the end of the first part of Season 5, Skyler takes Walt into a storage locker where she has stashed their piles upon piles of money. She shows him that they have more than they need, and helps convince him to remove himself from the business. His megalomaniac greed was taking over, and Skyler seemed to be able to pull him back in. While Walt began his meth career ostensibly to support his family during his cancer treatments, by the time he was at the top, he was referencing his bitter anger at missing out on a fortune with Gray Matter Technologies and wanting to top what he could have been, had he not settled for the life he did.
Walt’s “meeting with the goddess,” as Skyler shows him that he has all he needs.
Skyler has served as Walt’s moral compass throughout the series. Even when she was scheming and plotting, her plans (the car wash, especially) were often the most efficient and certainly didn’t have the body count that Walt’s career trajectory has had. 
As a moral compass and goddess figure, Skyler doesn’t fit into the mold of what many would consider an archetypical “good” maternal force. It’s clear that she’s been an incredibly important force in Walt’s journey, and continues to be. Walt’s “meeting with the goddess”–when Skyler orchestrates the car wash, or when she takes him to the stockpile of money–changes him and shifts his course. This goddess figure is a twenty-first century force of maternal goodness–complicated, imperfect and often unlikeable. In “The True Anti-Hero of ‘Breaking Bad’ Isn’t Walter White,” Laura Bennett argues that

“…Skyler—brash, self-righteous, unsure of what it means to do the right thing—is a messier case. And even at her least likeable, she is key to what makes this show overall so compelling: its moral prickliness, the way its view of good and evil can seem at once so twisted and so stark.” 

Therein lies the brilliance of Breaking Bad–our complicated relationships with and emotions about the characters reflect modern crises in what is good and what is evil. The world is far more gray than most are comfortable admitting. This is obviously reflected in Walt’s character, but the female characters have the same complexity.

At this point on Walt’s journey, he appears to be back in a partnership with his wife. Walt enthusiastically shares ideas about expanding the carwash, and Skyler says she’ll “think about it.” She’s in the freshly shampooed driver’s seat.

Walt makes suggestions. Skyler says she’ll think about it.
Meanwhile, Walt’s former business partner, Lydia, is one of the only ones left from his previous operation. She has stayed in the meth game, and is starting to lose without Walt’s pristine product. Lydia goes to the carwash and orders a wash from Skyler. Lydia confronts Walt inside, and begs him to come back. “You’re putting me in a box here,” she says, and promises him that there’s a great deal of money in it for them both. 
Lydia is a shrewd businesswoman.
Lydia–Campbell’s temptress–is trying to pull him back in. Some viewers may see his new, emasculated position at the carwash with his wife as decision-maker as a step down, and want him to return to his prior “glory.” This temptation to go back to his old life could seduce Walt, and could seduce the viewer, who is addicted to watching Walt spiral into power and out of control. Certainly there are those who are cheering for him to be beckoned by the siren song.
Skyler confronts Walt and points out that people don’t bring rental cars to the carwash (she notices everything–Walt probably would have been caught long ago without her eyes). He tells her who Lydia was and what she wanted, and Skyler immediately confronts Lydia. “Get out of here now,” she tells her. “Go.”
Skyler confronts Lydia.
This is a twenty-first century goddess/temptress archetype. They are complicated and have their own motivations. They confront one another, and aren’t simply helpers or antagonists to the man on the journey. These compelling female characters, who play into a modern, “twisted” journey, are as noteworthy as the antihero who is taking the jagged, illegal path.

The goddess isn’t perfect. The temptress isn’t evil.

Moving female characters away from tired tropes is an excellent step (albeit uncomfortable, if you’re used to delineating female characters as one-dimensional stereotypes). 

As the final few episodes of Breaking Bad commence, Walt reminds Hank, and us, that “If you don’t know who I am, maybe your best course would be to tread lightly.” With Hank discovering who he is, and his cancer having returned, Walt is in a box, too. It remains to be seen what he does to get out of it, although we’re not given any indication that he chooses the path of so-called righteousness. That’s for Jesse, who remains the Christ figure as he throws money to those in need as Saul jokes about his sainthood.
Humans have been telling and re-telling stories throughout their existence. The stories have changed very little, considering the depth and breadth of human experience. However, the moral ambiguity of the antihero and the strong and complex female characters that are present in Breaking Bad may still fit Campbell’s monomyth, but they push and warp the time-worn boxes of good vs. evil. 
The female powers in fiction are often complex, course-changing and overlooked. Skyler and Lydia are frequently hated, ignored or seen as bit players–simply background dancers to Walt, the main event. However, they are still poised, just as they were in the first part of Season 5, to have a strong influence on the outcome of the story. As we as viewers hang in the balance, waiting for the untying of all of the knots that have been tightened in the last five seasons, the female characters are orchestrating and plotting, not just sitting by as passive bystanders. And that, of course, is just how it should be.
By the time Walt reaches his 52nd birthday, Skyler isn’t making his breakfast.

________________________________________________________
Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Bisexuality in ‘Orange is the New Black’

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Orange is the New Black
Orange is the New Black has more buzz than an apiary this summer, and with good reason: it’s funny, emotionally affecting, intensely watchable, and as a Netflix original series, suited to an immensely satisfying weekend binge-watch. But on top of all that, OitNB offers a lot to talk about beyond “Did you watch Orange is the New Black yet? It’s so great!”
It’s actually kind of a shame that Orange is the New Black is so revolutionary and fresh. The show has gotten a lot of attention and praise for the character Sophia, a black trans woman, portrayed by black trans woman Laverne Cox (and her twin bother M. Lamar in flashbacks, in some truly fortuitous casting). I wish that kind of representation didn’t seem so revolutionary and fresh, but honestly, it is still revolutionary and fresh merely for there to be a show mostly about women, much less one like OitNB that does its best to reflect womanhood as anything but monolithic and directly addresses race, class and sexuality. 
Laverne Cox as Sophia
Of course, the central and point-of-view character, Piper Chapman, is a privileged white woman–a Smith graduate whose mother is telling everyone she’s volunteering in Africa as an alibi for her 15 months in Federal Prison. Orange is the New Black does its best to address, challenge, and sometimes mock Piper’s privilege (she compares her prison-issue shoes to TOMS), but it can be frustrating that she is the focus while the audience has to wait many episodes for the serious treatment and backstories of some of the most compelling characters of color. 
And it is fitting that the most interesting thing about Piper is her bisexuality, which is the one dimension she isn’t at the top of the hierarchy. Again, it shouldn’t be so fresh and unusual to have a bisexual main character, but it is. And Orange is the New Black doesn’t just use Piper’s sexuality as a representation token or an opportunity for hot girl-on-girl prison action, but as an actual platform to explore the complexities of sexual identity. 
Larry (Jason Biggs) and Piper (Taylor Schilling)
Piper enters prison engaged to a man, who had previously known nothing of Piper’s same-sex relationship with a drug trafficker ten years prior. Piper, her fiance Larry, and her future in-laws are all too happy to brush off that history as a long-passed phase. Larry only becomes nervous about Piper cheating on him in prison when he learns her ex-girlfriend Alex is also incarcerated there. She has to lecture him on the Kinsey Scale to point out that the presence of Alex isn’t going to “turn her gay.” When Piper (spoiler alert) does have sex with and fall for Alex again, it doesn’t make her fall out of love with Larry, defying the common portrayal of bisexuality involving some kind of toggle switch.
Piper and Alex (Laura Prepon)
Orange is the New Black also side-steps the trope of Piper only being “gay for” one person. In a flashback sequence Piper tells her best friend Polly, “I like hot girls. I like hot boys. What can I say? I’m shallow.” [That’s also an absurdly simplistic representation of bisexuality, but absurd simplicity is fairly honest to Piper’s character.]
Piper’s sexuality is as hard for Alex to accept as it is for Larry, though. When their relationship hits the rocks, Alex angrily says she broke her rule number one: “never fall in love with a straight girl.” Alex bonds with Nicky, another lesbian inmate who had been having sex with another “straight” girl engaged to a man. Seeing these characters express frustration with bisexual characters’ ability to “opt-out” and enjoy heterosexual privileges puts Orange is the New Black‘s simple “Kinsey scale”/”I like hot people” depiction of bisexuality back into a realistically complicated and often painful context of negotiating sexualities. 
Discussing Piper’s rekindled affair with Alex, Larry says to her brother Cal, “Is she gay now?” Cal says, “I’m going to go ahead and guess that one of the issues here is your need to say that a person is exactly anything.”

His issue and everyone else’s, Cal.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, and that is not a WASP-y cover story for a prison stint. 

Afro-Colombian Female Leaders Defy Death Threats to Hold Onto Their Land in ‘Women, War & Peace’s ‘The War We Are Living’

This review by Megan Kearns previously appeared at her blog The Opinioness of the World.

Imagine you walk into your home. An eviction notice awaits you. The government demands you relocate in order to dig up your land. If you choose not to leave, you receive death threats. This is the reality many Colombian civilians face. While a notorious drug war has been waged, another war ravages the South American country’s land and its people. I had never known about this struggle.

In The War We Are Living, Part 4 of Women, War and Peace (WWP), Colombian women grapple with displacement as their country is torn apart. Co-written by Oriana Zill de Granados and Pamela Hogan, WWP co-founder and executive producer, the chilling yet inspiring documentary is narrated by actor Alfre Woodard. Fueled by greed and a gold rush, guerillas and paramilitaries destroy homes and ravage bio-diverse lands. The government remains silent, failing to protect its citizens. Amidst this chaos, two female community leaders and activists, Clemencia Carabali and Francia Marquez Minas, admirably fight to hold onto their homes and save their land.

Beginning as a class struggle between the rich and poor, civil war erupted in Colombia. 40 years ago, armed guerillas fought for the poor, seizing land and attacking the government. Wealthy landowners created private militias, or paramilitaries, to protect them. Both the guerillas and paramilitaries funded their war through cocaine trafficking. “By the 90s, the guerillas and paramilitaries had turned Colombia into the most violent country in the Americas. Civilians were caught in the crossfire.”

After Alvaro Uribe was elected president, he “doubled the military,” “cracked down” on guerillas and forced “30,000 paramilitaries to turn in their guns.” Colombia pushed tourism to change the country’s notoriously dangerous image and garner income. “But today, there are two Colombias.” Claiming the paramilitaries demobilized, President Uribe declared the war over. And for wealthy urban residents, it was. But for the Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities living in the rural Cauca Department, or municipality, the war rages on.
One of the most bio-diverse regions on the planet, Cauca’s land yields vast deposits of gold. Multinationals and paramilitaries force civilians off the land to excavate natural resources. Cauca is also home to over a quarter of a million Afro-Colombians. The land’s lucrative diversity has endangered the Afro-Colombian population. Civilians have faced massacres, kidnapping and continually receive death threats.
Human rights activist Clemencia Carabali has been forced to move 5 times due to displacement by armed paramilitaries. She belongs to the Municipal Association of Women (ASOM), a network of women’s groups. Carabali, who “wonders how she’s not dead,” found that “in war time, women could organize more freely than men:”

“In my zone there is a network of African women…When the paramilitaries take control of the territory, men are killed, accused of being guerillas so women develop a key role because they’re able to move around.”

Activist and community leader Francia Marquez Minas, also works closely with ASOM. She lives in La Toma, a mountain community of Afro-Colombians in Cauca who rely on mining to survive. But investors want to open large-scale industrial operations to extract the gold from La Toma, destroying the residents’ subsistence.

Marquez serves as Vice-President of La Toma’s community council, spearheading the fight to protect their land. Raising two sons, Marquez works in the mines part-time to put herself through college, not only to educate herself but to empower her community:

“So I told myself I have to study law because that gives you the tools to teach your community how to demand their rights.”

Carabali, Marquez and other community leaders organize to protest eviction. Colombian law states that permits to mine gold on Afro-Colombians’ land “requires consultation with their community councils.” But with a government plagued by corruption, numerous illegal permits exist. Hector Sarria, who received a license from the Institute of Geology and Mining (Ingeominas) 10 years ago to excavate La Toma’s gold, never met with La Toma’s council. But he claims his license states no Afro-Colombians live in La Toma. In March 2010, the court granted Sarria’s eviction request. Eviction would “uproot” 1300 families.
How can the government pretend no Afro-Colombians live in La Toma? How can they erase an entire ethnic community?? Carabali said:

“Colombia is one of the countries with the best laws to protect Afro-Colombians. Nevertheless those rights exist only on paper.”

Over the course of the last two decades, at least 16 million acres of land have been violently taken from Colombians. In the last 8 years, over 2 million have been displaced. Colombia has the second largest number of internally displaced people in the world after Sudan. With no jobs and contaminated water, displacement traumatizes civilians and rips families apart. Under international law, internally displaced citizens don’t receive the same protections that refugees do. Their government is supposed to address their rights. But in this case, how are Colombians supposed to obtain justice when their own government condemns them?

Afro-Colombians make up one quarter of Colombia’s population. In May 2010, coinciding with Afro-Colombian Day, which commemorates the end of slavery in Colombia, Sarria’s eviction was set to commence. People took to the streets, barricading the road to halt the eviction. Marquez said:

“The 21st is when we celebrate Afro-Colombianism in this country. The gift the government was giving us was a threat of eviction for our community. The message that is being relayed is that in this country the black communities don’t matter.”

In a meeting between community leaders and the Ministry of Mines, who issued Sarria his license, Marquez boldly declared:

“You cannot ignore us just because the government thinks more about the riches that can be extracted from this country, than it thinks about the lives of the people in this country…The community of La Toma will have to be dragged out dead. Otherwise we are not going to leave!”

In June 2010, the eviction was put on hold for political elections. Corruption plagues Colombia’s government. Former paramilitaries revealed ties to President Uribe and the Alto Naya Massacre (a 2001 killing spree in Cauca where paramilitaries dismembered and decapitated civilians with chainsaws and 4,000 survivors fled in terror). “1/3 of Congress was either in jail or under investigation for their links to the death squads.” Carabali insists that paramilitaries forced people to vote for Uribe, threatening them with death. Worried the rest of the world doesn’t know the truth, Carabali said:

“I get chills hearing all the positive things that are said about President Uribe. And I get chills because people don’t know all the damage he did especially to indigenous communities and black communities.”

The U.S. has given over $7 billion of assistance to Colombia. In order to continue receiving aid, Colombia must meet certain requirements, including military protection of the Afro-Colombian population. If human rights violations occur, foreign aid is supposed to stop. But the U.S. continues to provide funding, despite Colombia’s numerous human rights atrocities.

In September 2010, for the first time ever, the State Department, in its human rights report to Congress, highlighted La Toma’s land dispute in order to monitor the situation. It’s a step but the battle is far from over. Talking about the war she faces, Marquez said:

“The never-ending conflict in this community helps us remember what is important in life. My grandparents always say a soul without land is navigating without destination…I start thinking – and I believe the whole world needs to start thinking – what do we want for the future? Because if we continue this way, humanity will come to an end. “

Most documentaries tell stories in the past. But events in The War We Are Living continue to unfold. The story isn’t over. Sadly, the La Toma case isn’t isolated. Other communities face eviction and death threats from paramilitaries. While President Santos recently signed a bill into law that would “return 5 million acres to landless peasants,” he believes paramilitaries don’t pose a real threat. But Carabali and Marquez still fear for their lives.

Echoing concerns of Occupy Wall Street protests about the elite 1% controlling resources, Colombia contends with massive class inequality and a war fueled by greed. Afro-Colombians and Indigenous Colombians confront discrimination and concentric layers of oppression including racism and classism. Facing death threats to themselves and their families, female leaders like Clemencia and Francia bravely negotiate for peace and demand justice. They refuse to be intimidated. They refuse to leave their land. They refuse to be silenced.

Watch the full episode of The War We Are Living online or on PBS.

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Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. She blogs at The Opinioness of the World, a feminist vegan site. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Fem2pt0, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston with more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime.

Megan contributed reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed, !Women Art Revolution, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Kids Are All Right (for our 2011 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), The Reader (for our 2009 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), Man Men (for our Mad Men Week), Game of Thrones and The Killing (for our Emmy Week 2011), Alien/Aliens (for our Women in Horror Week 2011), and I Came to Testify, Pray the Devil Back to Hell and Peace Unveiled in the Women, War & Peace series. She was the first writer featured as a Monthly Guest Contributor.