Orange is the New Black – Page 2

Finally! A TV Show That Handles Transgender Issues With Grace

Television, historically, has not been a welcoming place for transgender people. “Trans representation” has previously consisted mainly of male sitcom characters relating stories about dating women who turned out to be transgender, and then saying “Eww!”

Things are changing now, though, with the breakthrough success of Laverne Cox on ‘Orange is the New Black’ and now director Jill Soloway’s new half-hour dramedy ‘Transparent.’

This guest post by Leela Ginelle originally appeared at Bitch Media and is cross-posted with permission.

Things are changing now, though, with the breakthrough success of Laverne Cox on Orange is the New Black and now director Jill Soloway’s new half-hour dramedy Transparent. All eleven episodes of Transparent are available for binge-watching on Amazon today.

Transparent revolves around the Pfefferman family, made up of three adult children—housewife Sarah (Amy Landecker), record company professional Josh (Jay Duplass), and free spirit/lost child Ali (Gaby Hoffmann)—and their divorced parents, Jewish caricature Shelly (Judith Light) and wealthy near-retiree Mort (Jeffrey Tambor).

Nearly all the publicity that’s greeted the show since its pilot’s appearance in March has concerned its main plot point: father-figure Mort commences her transition, aligning her body with her female gender identity. The first episode handles this quite elegantly. Mort gathers the children to their childhood home but is unable to break the news to them. Later, we see Tambor, now named Maura, at an LGBT support group sharing a story about encountering micro-aggression level transphobia at a big box store when having to produce an ID for a judgmental clerk (bonus points for accuracy!). At the group, Maura also voices a combination of disappointment and bewilderment at the selfishness and self-absorption of her three children. It’s an appraisal the viewer might share.

Jeffrey Tambor, Jay Duplass, and Gaby Hoffman form an awkward family.

Throughout the pilot, Sarah, Josh and Ali all come off as extravagantly privileged, arrogant, and shallow. They speak exclusively in off-puttingly “clever” banter that’s either the result of overwritten dialogue or inadvisably preserved improv.

Critics often say viewers shouldn’t judge a show’s quality by its pilot because writers discover their characters’ voices and rhythms as they go. That may well be the case with Transparent. While the show deals with its central character’s identity very well, there’s certainly room for improvement when it comes to the rest of the family.

A central conceit of the pilot is that not just Maura, but all the characters have hidden sides of themselves. Throughout the pilot, we see each family pursue their hidden interests. Sarah, for instance, comes across a former girlfriend from college, rekindling a passion she’d long forgotten. Josh, who’s dating a super young, skinny blonde singer, is revealed to have a seemingly secret relationship with an older, bigger woman of color. Ali, for her part, seeks out a strict, militaristic personal trainer, and quickly establishes a kinky dynamic in their workouts.

These plots are all interesting and I can imagine them developing nicely throughout the first season, but the show’s pace feels a little slack in the pilot. The three children’s narcissism and the exemption them seem to enjoy from any of the stress that defines daily life for most people, makes their experiences appear trivial.

This isn’t true of Maura. The necessity of grappling with her gender transition lends gravity to her story. Likewise, her impatience with her offspring’s myopic behavior makes her a kind of audience surrogate.

Tambor is terrific in the part. While it might have been nice to see a trans woman in the role, the fact that Maura is just embarking on her transition mitigates any charges that Tambor, as a cis man, has “stolen” the part from a trans woman actress, in my view. Moreover, Soloway has spoken about hiring many trans crew members for the set, and trans actresses and actors for other parts throughout the season.

Tambor lends real pathos to the role, communicating Maura’s gentleness and offering glimpses of the pain she experiences living an authentic life in a culture where unconscious transphobia lingers and informs countless otherwise impersonal encounters.

I can imagine that as the siblings engage with the reality of their parent’s transition, they’ll experience an increased intimacy in areas of their own lives. Whether the viewer will find that journey compelling or not remains to be seen.

Like fellow female show creator Jenji Kohan (Orange is the New Black), Solloway organically constructs a world seen through women’s eyes. The show’s main male character, Josh, surrounds himself with women, and seems at home with his sisters, and, in one of his few lines of dialogue, Sarah’s husband Len declares, “I like lesbians.” Unlike in OITNB, however, this world seems untethered to reality. The characters swim in money derived from unnamed or farfetched sources (a wealthy, successful music executive in 2014?).

That Soloway’s cisgender characters feel the most unrealistic shows how successful she’s been at representing Maura’s trans experience. In interviews promoting her show, she’s stressed how important that is to her, and has walked the talk, correcting NPR anchor Arun Rath when the latter misgendered Maura, and used the term “transgendered.”

Transparent‘s motives and sensitivities are unimpeachable. Let’s hope its drama and pacing become that way, as well. If that happens, it will be a must-see series.

Leela Ginelle is a trans woman playwright and journalist whose work appears in PQ Monthly, Bitch, and the Advocate.

Seed & Spark: In-Betweeners: The Absence of Gender Fluidity in Media

Characters play a key role in our individual process of self-discovery. Stories have always been there to help us learn, to see from another’s point of view, or think deeper than before. What makes us human is that we turn these lessons into reflections of what we want. Through the pairing of images and concepts, I can wrap together the “idealized” me. But what happens when I cannot find myself in what I see on screen? What happened to those who lived in times when LGBTQI content was more taboo than it is now? We create.

This is a guest post by E.A. Francis.

I am an other, an in-between. I use the term “gender fluid” and I don’t consider myself a woman or a man.

I am still perceived by the world as a woman, though, and was raised as such. Sometimes people study me in public, trying to figure out what I am. It can be an ostracizing experience to move through the world as a point of people’s interest. But at the same time, I realize the value of my position. Those that glance, stare, and make eye contact are looking for my story, even if only for a second. That story is a long one—coming into my own took time. I’ve moved through stages and terms and confines until I grabbed ahold of me. And that’s what I want to see on the screen: the rawness of what it means to be conflicted and confined within your own skin.

In some ways, we have come a long way. I can now turn on the TV or head to the movies and see gay, lesbian, or bisexual characters. Even more recently, I have even seen multiple transgender characters on shows like Orange is the New Black. But there was a time when these representations were less frequent, confined to art house films. I remember my fascination with transmen characters like Brandon in Boys Don’t Cry or Max from The L Word. I looked at them and wondered, “Is that me?” I used to deny just how much we ingest media into our personalities and our understandings of our physical beings, but I’ve come to recognize how I compare myself to the images presented. Since I have no gender fluid characters, I turn toward the lesbian and trans communities.

Just like an author who writes the book they wish to read, our first instinct with storytelling is to speak the truths and questions that are within us as individuals in the hope that others share the same thoughts. But there is a stretch, often very long, between conceptualization and the completed project. I applaud our film and TV communities that have pushed for the stories less told, that show us characters with whom the minority can relate—they assist the majority in understanding that we exist and matter. Understanding another’s plight is what has lead humans to our greatest feats and I believe that some of the earliest LGBTQI movements have taken place in film and TV.

But there is a timeline, more or less, when a queer character is introduced in media. Often they are alone in their queerness and are there only to act as a foil, or as a stereotype, or to confirm that it is easy to place this type of person into a single category. Worse still is the implication that their storylines can be disregarded. The audience is supposed to believe that it is enough that the character is onscreen. I watched it happen on The L Word with Max. Quick scenes of transitioning from a female body to a male body, which is a massive process of its own, and then some confusion from the other queer characters about the authenticity of this “new other’s” experience. Here, I watched fictional lesbians, who had faced stigmas and hatred, turn the same bias to another in their queer community.

In Orange is the New Black, Sophia, who is struggling to stay on estrogen as she transitions from a male body to a female body, has a storyline that includes her son distancing himself from her and her wife moving on to be with an actual man. These points were left behind in season one and in season two we watched Sophia cut other, more “important” characters’ hair in the same salon— as though they filmed all of Laverne Cox’s scenes in one day. Where was the development? Where was her conflict? A single scene of dialogue between her and the nun about her relationship with her son skirts around the actual emotional turbulence of that time.

As an audience member, I was waiting for the moment her son expressed his thoughts to her in person, where the tension could either rise and peak or leave us hanging and thinking. But we were left, instead, to follow the story of the bisexual white woman, Piper. There are still many, many issues that lesbians, gays, and bisexuals face (including having their sexuality constantly challenged), but they are becoming more “mainstream,” more commonplace, and even deemed acceptable for families (as suggested by the popularity of Modern Family). The queer communities that lie outside of that newly developed safe zone are next in line for scrutiny in the public eye though they have always suffered massively and violently.

This is why it is crucial that our community, filmmakers and audience alike, help lift up projects that explore the experiences of a wider array of people. Frankly? I have all the hope in the world that we will accomplish this goal. It will take time, but perseverance will rule out. Let’s do this.

___________________________________________

E.A. Francis is an activist and interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago, Ill. Their work examines social issues surrounding gender, culture, and politics. E is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago’s Fiction Writing Department. Their current project is Kendra & Obi, which follows an African American couple working to stay together while yearning to understand themselves as individuals. Patch of Prodigy Productions LLC is hosting a live twitter event on Saturday, Sept. 20, 2014 from 1-3 p.m. CT which discusses POC in the predominantly white world of higher education. Join the conversation, which features guest speakers Sophia Nahli Allison (visual storyteller @SophiaNAllison) and Andrea Hart (Teaching Artist @lenifaye) by using the hashtag #kendraobi. Reach out to E on twitter @eafrancis2 or Facebook at Official EA Francis.

Morello’s Fractured Relationship with Romance in ‘Orange Is the New Black’

Morello’s abovementioned childlike room, her harping on about how her and Christopher’s romance is “meant to be,” like something out of ‘Notting Hill,’ ‘Pretty Woman’ or ‘Cinderella,’ and her psychotic break that sees her stealing the prison van to break into Christopher’s marital home, shows just how damaging society’s “wedding industrial complex and… [its] need to infantalise grown women,” as Nicky puts it, can be. It’s also an all-too-common one drummed into Western women everywhere they turn.

This guest post by Scarlett Harris originally appeared on The Scarlett Woman and is cross-posted with permission.

One of the most explosive backstories on this season of Orange is the New Black has been Lorna Morello’s.

The Italian-American, played by Australian actress Yael Stone, is presumably in prison for credit card fraud, as the opening segments of her life before Litchfield in episode four of the second season that aired last night on Showcase would indicate. We see a Jersey Shore-esque Morello returning to her chaotic familial home after seeing Twilight at the cinema for the “14^th time.” She retreats from her accusatory sister, ignorant father, wayward nieces and nephews and sick mother to her bedroom which is adorned with posters of West Side Story (the classic tale of Romeo and Juliet in 1950s New York, with a healthy serving of racism, which Morello is inclined to dish out), male celebrities, and wedding collages. She pauses to caress the glossy face of one of them before calling a mail-order luxury clothing company to request a refund for the patchwork Prada platforms she’s currently wearing but claims she never received.

Many of the women of OITNB have been busted for financial fraud—Sophia and Gloria come to mind—so it seems logical that Morello would be in for a similar crime. But as the episode progresses, it is revealed that Morello’s inner demons are much more extensive. During a trip to the post office to retrieve parcels of designer goods she’ll no doubt attempt to get reimbursed for, she “literally crashes into” the infamous Chris-tuh-phuh, as Morello pronounces it. Christopher promptly asks her out for a coffee after their meet-cute, and the rest is history, if the future Litchfield inmate is to be believed.

The juxtaposition between the following flashback scenes—Morello getting ready for a weekend away with Christopher and her trial on charges of stalking, harassment, violating a restraining order and credit card fraud—illustrates the fractured reality she exists in. Despite Christopher electing not to pursue Lorna after their first date, Morello still believes they’re together years later.

Stone plays Morello so sympathetically the audience feels sorry for her when we—or at least her fellow inmates—should approach with caution. The consensus at Litchfield seems to be that Morello’s fantastical romance with Christopher may not be etched in truth and word slowly starts to get around that her former “fiancé” is marrying another woman. When you’re bonding with Crazy Eyes (whom the show is taking pains in its second season not to fetishise and to address by her given name, Suzanne) about unrequited love, it’s clear that something’s not quite right.

Morello’s abovementioned childlike room, her harping on about how her and Christopher’s romance is “meant to be,” like something out of Notting Hill, Pretty Woman, or Cinderella, and her psychotic break that sees her stealing the prison van to break into Christopher’s marital home, shows just how damaging society’s “wedding industrial complex and… [its] need to infantalise grown women,” as Nicky puts it, can be. It’s also an all-too-common one drummed into Western women everywhere they turn.

In a recent Buzzfeed longread, Anne Helen Peterson dissects the films based on Nicholas Sparks’ novels and their contribution to a Taylor Swiftian world where men perform romance and women have it thrust upon them:

“… Many women (and some men) use Sparks’ narratives to replace the lack of emotional intimacy and satisfaction in their own lives and, as a result, cultivate unrealistic ideals about what a relationship—and love—should resemble…

“The Sparks narrative offers a life—and a love story nested within it—that extracts its protagonist from [the concerns of everyday life] and consolidates the demands of life into one, simple task: Open yourself to love, and love in return.”

In a way Morello is like the mirror image of the Santa Barbara shooter, Elliot Rodger: the same but opposite. Rodger took his anger at his lack of attention from women—spurred on by porn and men’s rights forums—out on the female population in general in the most violent way, whereas Morello continues her stereotypically feminine obsession with romance and fixates on one man, dangerously crafting an alternate life with him. In Morello’s fictional existence no one died, but that’s not to say she didn’t try to kill anyone. (In the courtroom she is accused of strapping a homemade bomb to Christopher’s fiancé’s car.) Think that’s too heavy handed a tar with the same brush? They are both criminals with mental health issues, after all.

In one of the closing scenes of the season, Morello simplistically attempts to explain to the cancer-stricken Miss Rosa the plot of one of her favourite movies, Toy Story (again with the juvenile interests–though, to be fair, Toy Story has universal appeal). Her warped grasp of the children’s classic leads Rosa to exclaim, “You have one fucked up view of the world, kid!”

Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based freelance writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about feminism, social issues, and pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter.

‘Orange Is the New Black’: The Crime of Passion in Media

‘OITNB’ does not always blame the id. It also wonders whether larger societal forces are culpable too. Take, for instance, adorable Lorna (Yael Stone) a modern day zeitgeist for Bridezillas. As a compulsive shopper, she’s a victim of the consumer industrial complex that taught her happiness and fulfillment can be bought. When a cute man rejects her after one date, she realizes she can’t buy or scam her way into love so it triggers a fatal attraction in her. Pornstache’s adopted patriarchal mindset that women are merely pleasure objects leaves him jobless, in jail, and alone. Officer Healey’s misogyny leads him to procure a “traditional” wife via mail order, only to discover that true companionship can’t be bought or found through biased gender roles.

This is a guest post by Katrina Majkut.

Orange Is The New Black’s second season reveals more about the lives and crimes of its supporting characters. What lies at the heart of season two is not the misdeeds these women committed that account for their imprisonment, but the relationships surrounding them and their personal desires that ultimately contributed to it.

This is a recurring theme in Jenji Kohan’s work. Consider Kohan’s first breakthrough female character, Nancy Botwin in Weeds. Botwin, a dependent housewife, turns to drug dealing once she realizes her lifestyle choice left her financially destitute. Kohan, like many women before her – Simone de Beauvoir to Betty Friedan, iterates that the real crime is the one where women believe relationships are a means to an end.

The Atlantic’s Megan Garber argues that traditional Rom-Coms are a dying Hollywood genre because they don’t include contemporary online dating. I respectfully disagree; OITNB is arguably a new age Rom-Com (plus drama) that still operates on dial-up (Wi-Fi is too fancy for that prison). It merely takes the genre’s traditional trite heterosexual storylines, the romantic city backdrops, and the saccharine plots and puts them into solitary confinement. It then throws away the key.

OITNB reinvigorates this genre by exploring more dynamic and diverse relationships: platonic and romantic, internal and external. Unlike in Rom-Coms, sex is not a driving force in OITNB. It’s merely a perk and even then can lead to complications like Officer Bennett (Matt McGorry) and Dayanara’s (Dascha Polanco) pregnancy. And the show breaks new ground in this obsolete genre with its almost all-female cast. Rom-Coms want viewers to believe that problems will resolve themselves within a relationship; Kohan’s version suggests that’s where they start.

Piper (Taylor Shilling) lies at the heart of this theory. Season two reveals how much her relationship with Alex (Laura Prepon) has negatively impacted her life. However, Piper is not committing crimes in the name of her passion for Alex. In fact, we learn her poor decision-making stems from her relationship with her parents, their habit of obscuring the truth, and her father’s infidelity. Piper’s story makes a compelling argument that one’s nurturing is more influential over personal nature. Maria Ruiz (Jessica Pimental) supports this idea by begging her taciturn boyfriend to talk to their daughter so she grows into a well-adjusted child.

To what purpose Piper is driven to commit these crimes has yet to be revealed, but the question highlights OITNB’s most interesting angle on the new age Rom-Com genre – desire. Season two unveils that the characters’ relationships are merely conduits to attain more intangible, inherent passions like – power, safety, belonging, fortune, favor, excitement, loyalty, relevance, etc.

A bloody Piper on OITNB — A bloody Piper on *OITNB*

This is most evident with Season two newcomer, Vee (Lorraine Toussaint), who, rather than quietly ride her jail time out, is driven by a passion for power and sets out to take Red’s. She’s highly aware of her psychological needs… and others’, which is how she manages to manipulate several women into doing her bidding. She plays off these characters’ needs for family, connection and approval, like Taystee’s (Danielle Brooks), who despite her book smarts, turns to drug dealing in the pursuit of motherly love. Viewers quickly learn that one can only be as healthy and wise as the company one keeps.

That also includes the relationship people have with themselves. In OITNB’s subtle exploration of nature versus nurture, viewers are also shown a compelling argument that personal nature also influences decision-making. As nature drives needs, a person can easily become his or her own worst enemy. Take for instance formerly pro-choice Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning), who, eager for affection from an inattentive boyfriend, quickly switches sides when she realizes how to earn the esteem of the pro-lifers. She’s willing to permanently win their worship by taking the life of a clinic doctor. Sister Ingalls (Beth Fowler) continues to protest despite ones from the Catholic Church, because who is she without her activist conviction more so than without Jesus? Miss Rosa’s (Barbara Rosenblat) boyfriend introduced her to bank robbing, but it was after her first heist that she realized she had a knack for it.

OITNB does not always blame the id. It also wonders whether larger societal forces are culpable too. Take, for instance, adorable Lorna (Yael Stone) a modern day zeitgeist for Bridezillas. As a compulsive shopper, she’s a victim of the consumer industrial complex that taught her happiness and fulfillment can be bought. When a cute man rejects her after one date, she realizes she can’t buy or scam her way into love so it triggers a fatal attraction in her. Pornstache’s adopted patriarchal mindset that women are merely pleasure objects leaves him jobless, in jail, and alone. Officer Healey’s misogyny leads him to procure a “traditional” wife via mail order, only to discover that true companionship can’t be bought or found through biased gender roles.

Lorna & Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" in OITNB — Lorna and Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” in *OITNB*

None of these characters is committing crimes in the name of passion per se, but their unrequited desires are usually leading them toward a perpetual cycle of bad decisions, which, for most, result in crimes. With such skewed risk and reward results, viewers have to wonder if they’re aware of what drives their poor decisions.

The prison setting provides good insight into this. Stripped of life’s comforts, the prisoners are faced with meeting the basics of Maslow’s hierarchy. Meals and a roof are nominally provided, but their social and psychological needs remain elusive. It’s not that people in love do stupid things (though that can happen), but people are willing to assume certain risks if it means earning, winning, or attaining whatever it is that they are seeking. Whether the individual characters know these desires does not ensure their survival or success, which is perfectly captured in Vee’s final scene. Soso (Kimiko Glen) sums up the importance of well-rounded relationships: “We should be leaning on each other, finding support in our fellow prisoners. So we’re not isolated…. I need a friend.”

Viewers learn that community is necessary to survive inside prison, but more importantly outside too. Matriarch Red (Kate Mulgrew), who has struggled the most with family, power, and support, appears to be reaching this important arch. This becomes evident as she gathers with her estranged prison family to break bread and offer an olive branch. Her benevolence and selflessness is rubbing off on her family too, such as when Nicky seeks help with her sobriety, who then offers Lorna the recognition of love she’s always desired (even if it’s platonic). Red mirrors the sentiment Kohan is not so subtly reaching at – that failure is inevitable if we let unhealthy relationships and desires define us. Like jail, they can easily hold people back.

Kohan’s spin on female media dives much deeper into characters and relationships than the now-suffering traditional Rom-Com genre. Rom-Coms’ superficiality is its biggest crime, which ultimately led to its lack of popularity and box-office support. OITNB is a compelling game-changer by highlighting the true nature and depth of women’s desire and making their relationships secondary.

However, it’s important to bring up The Atlantic’s controversial article by Noah Berlatsky, “Orange Is the New Black’s Irresponsible Portrayal of Men,” who accuses OITNB from his seat of male privilege that “the problem is that the ways in which OITNB focuses on women rather than men seem to be linked to stereotypically gendered ideas about who can be a victim and who can’t.” It seems that OITNB has also shaken up the crime and punishment genre.

First, he couldn’t be more off the mark about people being overly generous in their sympathy toward female victims of violent crime. If he were right, rape on US campuses wouldn’t be such an egregious current event. His lack of sympathy for victims sounds eerily like victim blaming, but I digress. Secondly, neither OITNB, nor this article, is suggesting these women are victims of their own unfulfilled desires; many take pride in their crimes! The show is merely trying to get to the psychological root of the misdeeds and decisions and if the prisoners can learn from them.

What makes OITNB such compelling entertainment is the same substance that Berlatsky criticizes. The show redefines an entertainment genre and the traditional characterization of women and prisoners. Based on Berlatsky’s argument, for example, there wouldn’t be any dynamic movies featuring female CEOs because 95.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions are filled by men and they’ve only ever been portrayed as Gordon Gekkos. So in Bertlatsky’s, world men deserve better portrayals first. That’s the thing he misunderstands about OITNB‘s psychoanalysis of desire–if we don’t understand what drives us, we run the risk of using our male privilege to ostracize and enrage minorities. ¿Comprende, Bertlatsky?

Media’s crime is portraying women or prisoners with limited scope and vapid storylines. Kohan’s desire to shake up two very stagnant media genres has left many feeling blindly robbed of a genre they once controlled, but for others it’s filling an empty gulf in entertainment. Season two begins to unravel the mysteries surrounding the inmates’ incarceration. It offers an intimate peek into how the nature of relationships is ultimately driven by personal desires. OITNB is honest in admitting that healthy, trustworthy, selfless, and supportive relationships are as elusive for everyone as that freedom all the inmates desire. But the real culprit is that passion, which without understanding, can get anyone in trouble in the first place.

Katrina Majkut (My’ kit) is the founder of www.TheFeministBride.com. It hopes to inspire a new generation of newlyweds who want unique and egalitarian wedding ideas to fit their modern lifestyles. It aims to empower couples to walk down the aisle as equals. As a writer, lecturer, and research-based artist, Majkut is dedicated to understanding and exploring social narratives and civil issues in Western marriage and wedding culture. She is represented by Carol Mann Agency in New York City. Please follow The Feminist Bride on Twitter @FeministBride and on Facebook.

Physical and Mental Health in ‘Orange is the New Black’

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Sophia leads the inmates in an episode-long exploration of “which hole” pee comes out of and the importance of knowing your body. This season really attempts to get at life in America’s underfunded and overcrowded minimum security prison system. While there’s still a ways to go in achieving a realistic portrayal of the dire reality many incarcerated women face, it’s the only piece of pop culture striving to do so.

Orange is the New Black on Netflix — *Orange is the New Black* on Netflix

This guest post by Scarlett Harris originally appeared on The Scarlett Woman and is cross-posted with permission.

Whereas last year’s inaugural season of Netflix’ women’s prison effort, Orange is the New Black, introduced us to the myriad characters in Litchfield Penitentiary through the incarceration of the WASPy Piper Chapman, this year is all about the more diverse women that wear orange (well, mostly beige).

Specifically, we see the challenges of staying physically and mentally healthy in America’s prison industrial complex.

Last season we did see some of these issues come to light; transgender inmate Sophia Burset, played by the incomparable Laverne Cox, had her hormone medication limited due to concerns about the drug’s side effects, while Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren’s mental illness was a comedic calling card for the show.

The incomparable Laverne Cox as Sophia Burset

This year Suzanne’s backstory gets more airtime, as well as an explosive trajectory for Lorna Morello, which reveals that though both women probably need psychological counseling, they’re not going to get it at the indebted Litchfield. Instead, their issues fall through the cracks so much so that only Nicky is privy to exactly what Morello did to land her in prison.

Season two has been applauded for giving more airtime to the minor characters who also happen to be from racial minorities: Gloria, the Hispanic cook who took over the kitchen from Red and is serving time for welfare fraud, and her Latina cohorts; Vee, Taystee and Poussey’s familial-love triangle cum drug ring; and Rosa, the bank robber with terminal ovarian cancer.

There’s also been an influx of older women this season, whom feminist writer Sady Doyle describes as a “knitting circle” with “an alarming tendency to shiv people.” This includes dementia-ridden Jimmy, who wanders the grounds (and even inadvertently escapes!) looking for her presumably long-dead husband, Jack. Due to her deteriorating mental state, Jimmy is given “compassionate leave” which is revealed to be not-so-compassionate when you take into account that she has no family to look after her and is without the mental faculties to secure herself a home or care. Inmate Frieda predicts she’ll be out on the streets and “dead within a week.”

OITNB Elderly Inmate — Jimmy is released on “compassionate leave”

Jimmy’s release is apparently due to the above mentioned “budget cuts,” which seem to be happening all too regularly at Litchfield. Reporter Andrew Nance contacts Piper’s ex-fiance, writer Larry, and later Piper herself, to see if he can get the inside scoop on the missing millions from Litchfield.

There was talk of the building of a new gym, but that money—along with the gym—is nowhere to be found. The inmates’ bathrooms are leaking raw sewage and they have no heating in the Eastern winter. The prison’s dire financial state comes to a festering head in the penultimate episode of the season as a storm rips through Litchfield, leaving the prison flooded and without power, a backup generator, or whatever functioning plumbing they had left.

These appalling conditions contribute to newcomer Brooke Soso, Yoga Jones, Sister Jane and some girls from Pensatucky’s former laundry crew going on a hunger strike. Sister Jane’s past as an activist comes to light, and let’s just say she’s not as selfless as she makes herself out to be. Having said that, though, she berates prison administrator Caputo for releasing Jimmy with no accountability:

“The elderly are the fastest growing population in prison and they have special needs. So-called ‘compassionate release’ in lieu of care is completely unacceptable. You can’t dump sick old ladies on the street. It’s unconscionable, inhumane and illegal.”

Surely Rosa would be a better candidate for compassionate release as she has weeks to live?

Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based freelance writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about feminism, social issues, and pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

Playing ‘Crazy Eyes’ Taught Actress ‘It’s OK To Be Just You’ at NPR

The Greatest Documentaries of All Time at Sight & Sound

Carrie Brownstein Spills the Beans on Fred, Feminism, and Fear by Lisa Butterworth at BUST

Blackstar Film Fest Review: ‘Dreams Are Colder Than Death’ Is a Haunting Exploration of the Contours of Present-day Blackness by Nijla Mumin at Shadow and Act

New Drama “The Honorable Woman” Portrays a Powerful Woman on the Edge of a Breakdown by Elizabeth Segran at Bitch Media

GLAAD Report: Hollywood Doing More Harm Than Good With LGBT Representations (Especially Paramount and Warner Brothers) at /bent

Village Voice Writer Calls Out Commenters For Gendered Insults Against Their Guardians of the Galaxy Reviewer by Victoria McNally at The Mary Sue

Girls on Film: Why audiences are responsible for the future of cinema by Monika Bartyzel at The Week

Does Comic-Con Condone Rape Culture? by Natalie Wilson at Ms. blog

Clear Your Thursday Nights for Shonda Rhimes by Melissa Silverstein and Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

Katy Perry on Cultural Appropriation: ‘I Guess I’ll Stick to Baseball and Hot Dogs’ by Jamilah King at Colorlines

Marvel Studios President Addresses Lack of Female-Led Movies by Graeme McMillan at The Hollywood Reporter

IFP’s “Fresh Faces” Highlights So Many Rad Female Indie Filmmakers by Mari Brighe at Autostraddle

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

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

“Las Libres” film on Mexican women convicted for homicide for abortions is coming to a theater near you by Katie Halper at Feministing

Orange is the New Black‘s accurate portrayal of men in a story about women by Mychal Denzel Smith at Feministing

‘Manic Pixie Dream Girls’ Exist With or Without the Term by Gwen Berumen at Bust

An Open Letter to TV Showrunners: There Are Over 1200 Experienced, Accomplished Women Directors Waiting to Be Hired by Rachel Feldman at Women and Hollywood

The Shifting Hollywood Audience – Women are the Future by Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood

Kids’ Films And Stories Share A Dark Theme: Dead Mothers at NPR

Princess Of ‘Fresh Prince’ Brings History To Children at NPR

New Film “Third Person” Twists and Turns Its Way to Nowhere by Emily Prado at Bitch Media

Where are the women on IMDb? by S.E. Smith at The Daily Dot

The Fault in Our Media by Briana Dixon at RH Reality Check

Jill Soloway: The Rules About What Female Characters Would Do Are Super Antiquated by Denise Martin at Vulture

Filmmaker Ava Duvernay Opens Up on Her Creative Process by Kimberly Foster at For Harriet

Elaine Stritch, Broadway’s Enduring Dame, Dies at 89 by Bruce Weber and Robert Berkvist at The New York Times

Marvel Will Introduce a Female Thor This Fall by George Gene Gustines at The New York Times

The New Captain America is a Black Man From Harlem by Jamilah King at Colorlines

‘True Detective,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ top TV Critics Awards by Gary Levin at USA Today

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

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

Amy Poehler’s New Film “They Came Together” Is Over-the-Top Stupid in the Best Possible Way by Jennifer L. Pozner at Bitch Media

Hollywood studio announces boot camp to nurture female directors by Ben Child at The Guardian

“Tammy”: Melissa McCarthy finally gets creative control by Sady Doyle at Salon

“Orange Is The New Black” Does Not Need To Tell Male Prisoners’ Stories by Rebecca Vipond Brink at The Frisky

Television Shows That Understand Birth Control Better Than The Supreme Court by Jessica Goldstein at Think Progress

Broad City’s Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson: Yes, We Are “Totally” Feminists by Lindsay Miller at POPSUGAR

Long Live Tousstee: Taystee & Poussey Challenge the Portrayal of Black Woman Friendships by Michelle Denise Jackson at For Harriet

What Pennsatucky’s Teeth Tell Us About Class in America by Susan Sered at Bitch Media

How Melissa McCarthy Became a Box Office Powerhouse by Melissa Silverstein at Forbes

Vietnamese-American Filmmaker Turns Lens on NYC’s ‘DIY Generation’ by Jamilah King at Colorlines

‘Do The Right Thing’ Celebrates Its 25th Anniversary by Shereen Marisol Meraji at NPR

Lena Waithe to Write BET Pilot Based on Her Webseries “Twenties” by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

A Feminist Character ≠ A Character Who Is A Feminist: Examining Claire Underwood and Olivia Pope by Cate Young at Persephone Magazine

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

The Joyful Feminist Killjoy

I get tired of constantly pointing out that something is Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™; I want to enjoy, not eviscerate. I want to laugh.

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Being an angry feminist is hard sometimes.

I mean, I had some breakthrough spotting on Monday, and I think it’s because my uterus was protesting the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby decision.

The life of a Feminist Killjoy is an intense one.

One of the most difficult arenas to navigate while feminist is comedy. Misogynist, male-centric comedies are a dime a dozen. I think back to the comedies of my youth–Dumb and Dumber, American Pie, anything with Adam Sandler or Jim Carrey–and while some of those films may have seemed funny at the time, revisiting them through a feminist lens is pretty horrifying.

I hadn’t seen There’s Something About Mary for well over a decade, and I stumbled across it last weekend. Holy shit. When Woogie–who stalked Mary in college so severely that she had to change her name and move–spits out at her at the end, “Shut up, cocktease,” it was all I could do to keep my head from spinning and short-circuiting while screaming “RAPE CULTURE,” “MISOGYNY,” “PATRIARCHY,” “MALE GAZE,” “LAURA MULVEY SAVE ME.”

Watching while feminist is exhausting. The Onion points this out in their satirical “Woman Takes Short Half-Hour Break From Being Feminist To Enjoy TV Show,” and I’m sure most of us can relate.

I get tired of constantly pointing out that something is Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™; I want to enjoy, not eviscerate. I want to laugh.

So I’ve been writhing around in feminist television and film lately, and damn, does it feel good. These are popular and critically acclaimed comedies and they are feminist as fuck. I love it. I can’t get enough of it. As we watch, I frequently look at my significant other with a shit-eating grin on my face as if to say, “Can you even believe that this exists?”

Broad City–starring Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer–debuted on Comedy Central in January and was quickly picked up for a second season. The pair started Broad City as a web series, and Amy Poehler took them under her (feminist superstar) wing and produced the TV show.

As many feminist commentators have already pointed out, this show is great. The writing, the acting, the story lines… I simply can’t get enough (really–I’ve seen all of the episodes multiple times). Abbi and Illana love sex, weed, and more than anything, one another. They also love themselves. It’s incredibly refreshing to see young women on screen who are so comfortable, even in their most uncomfortable moments.

Abbi and Ilana identify as feminists, and care deeply about diversity in media (which the show reflects in an organic way). In her Bitch article about Broad City, Andi Zeisler says,

“…Broad City‘s feminism isn’t so much sneak-attack as baked-in, with an emphasis on the ‘baked’: Ilana and Abbi are as aimless, goofy, boring, and entitled as any guy of their generation. And they’re striking a blow for equality just by subverting the image of the striving young woman who, well, sees her every move as a blow for equality. “

It’s hilarious, it’s relatable, and it’s inspirational–I’m inspired to be more confident by watching them, and I was inspired by their interior design to finally buy that Urban Outfitters quilt that I’d been lusting after (I understand this is a Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™ company, but I really wanted that quilt).

Sometimes watching young 20-somethings in the city (when I’m a 30-something in the country) can make me feel wistful, or bitter, or jealous, or judgmental, or any other cocktail of quarter-life psychoses. Broad City doesn’t evoke any emotion but joy. And maybe it’s because I can relate to a few of the story lines, but more likely it’s because it’s a universally great show.

Broad City–somewhat shockingly–isn’t the lone feminist wolf on Comedy Central (a station not known for progressive, feminist comedy).

We don’t have network or cable TV, so I sometimes have no idea what’s going on on stations I don’t frequent. Algorithms on Netflix and Amazon Prime probably have me pegged as a clear Feminist Killjoy, and avoid recommending comedies to me (“Feminist Killjoy logging in. Suggest ‘Obscure Dark Foreign Female-Centric Dramas'”).

After falling in love with Broad City, I thought we should try that Amy Schumer show I’d vaguely heard about, Inside Amy Schumer. It didn’t look like something I’d like, and if I’ve learned anything in my almost 32 years, it’s to always judge a book by its cover.

However, what I got was an onslaught of hilarious, biting feminist commentary.

When I was waxing poetic about it to a friend, she admitted that she was a fan but didn’t think that I would like it at all, seeing signs of it being, perhaps, Problematic From a Feminist Perspective™. I explained that I loved it, and what makes satire work for me is self-awareness. I can understand why it might be confusing that I hate on-screen gender essentialism, but cannot stop watching and quoting the parody commercial for SandraGel.

As Willa Paskin writes at Slate,

“In its second season, Inside Amy Schumer has become the most consistently feminist show on television, a sketch comedy series in which nearly every bit is devoted in some capacity to gender politics. But Schumer channels her perspective through an onscreen persona that is insecure, self-proclaimedly slutty, crass, selfish, glossy—onscreen, Amy Schumer thinks feminism is the ultimate F word… This pairing is extremely canny. Schumer hides her intellect in artifice and lip gloss—that’s how she performs femininity. By wrapping her ideas in a ditzy, sexy, slutty, self-hating shtick, her message goes down easy—and only then, like the alien, sticks its opinionated teeth in you.”

In “I’m So Bad” and “Compliments,” Schumer parodies stereotypical female behavior (connecting morality to food and being self-deprecating, respectively). The message, however, isn’t “Aren’t these bitches crazy?” Schumer’s comedy sketches show the insidious social construction of these ultimately ridiculous and self-destructive behaviors.

Certainly one could watch these sketches through a different lens, and think instead about the possible audience perception. If a Tosh.0 fan tunes in to Inside Amy Schumer, I’m not confident that he/she will understand the commentary in the comedy.

But I do. And I love it. Being able to laugh at ourselves and the ridiculous behaviors and norms that we are socialized to embody is powerful.

And in the Upper Northwest, Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen parody feminism in their “Feminist Bookstore” sketches on Portlandia. Portlandia turns a hilarious mirror on a certain segment of American society in front of the backdrop and personality of Portland, Oregon. In the bookstore sketches, Toni (Brownstein) and Candace (Armisen) run Women and Women First (which is based off Portland’s In Other Words, a feminist community center).

They are absolute caricatures of radical feminists, and it’s glorious. They are not mean-spirited in their depictions (in fact, they have a working relationship with In Other Words, which manned–I mean womanned–Portlandia‘s Twitter feed to live-tweet the Oscars and the Super Bowl).

Watching Portlandia gives me ample opportunity to laugh at myself. When we were contemplating putting an NPR sticker on our new used Subaru, I realized that my life is pretty much filled with Portlandia sketches that would be too boring to air. I recognize many of Toni and Candace’s scenes as extreme versions of my own thoughts and conversations. The blurring of lines between fiction and reality was clear when Toni and Candace met with gender studies professors to “debate” feminism; they brought irreverence and comedy to an otherwise serious, analytical conversation.

Contemplating blatantly satirizing women and feminism is enough to make most of us prickle a bit, and be validly concerned about further marginalization of issues that affect our lives. Laughing about the effects of estrogen on our emotions might feel dangerous when we have Supreme Court justices who don’t understand how contraception works. Hearing women repeatedly align feminism with man-hating might make chuckling at Toni and Candace feel depressing.

However, it feels empowering to laugh in the face of adversity, and put ourselves–as women and as feminists–on the line for good comedy. There’s a clear difference between comedy aimed at feminists and comedy created by feminists, and I’m so thankful that I can bask in the latter. These shows are aimed at wide audiences full of men and women, and they lift women up and laugh at them without tearing them down.

Pure joy.

I’ve been rolling around in a lot of other TV and film that’s getting me all stunk up with feminism: Obvious Child shows how incredibly moving and entertaining women’s lives are; Orange is the New Black overwhelms me with so many women’s stories, such diversity, such power; House of Cards shows that feminist media isn’t always what we think it is; and Parks and Recreation is a consistent delight.

It’s easy to get caught up in all of the terrible, misogynist bullshit that infiltrates our screens and sound waves. Seeing just the trailer for Seth McFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West almost unwound the hours and hours of feminist film and television that I’d stocked up as a defense. The Feminist Killjoy rises again and again–and she’s an important voice–but damn if sometimes it doesn’t feel good to just revel in the excellence of feminist comedy.

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

Respect is the Watchword: ‘Orange is the New Black,’ Season Two

The second season of ‘Orange is the New Black’ is all about respect: how you get it, how you keep it, whether it’s something that someone can give you, or something you hold for yourself. Anchored by a standout performance by Lorraine Toussaint, this season is darker and richer than its predecessor, but still extremely fun to watch.

Written by Katherine Murray.

The second season of Orange is the New Black is all about respect: how you get it, how you keep it, whether it’s something that someone can give you, or something you hold for yourself. Anchored by a standout performance by Lorraine Toussaint, this season is darker and richer than its predecessor, but still extremely fun to watch.

To recap: Orange is the New Black is that insanely popular Netflix series about a minimum security women’s prison. The second season went online earlier this month, and it ranks about the same as the first season, in terms of being very entertaining and slightly uneven. If there’s one reason to watch it, though, it’s for the pleasure of seeing Lorraine Toussaint knock it out of the park as this season’s new villain, Vee.

Toussaint, whom you may remember from a very long list of acting credits (I remember her from Ugly Betty), brings so much presence, intensity, and commitment to this role that she steals every scene she’s in. You can’t take your eyes off her – and that’s part of the point.

Vee, who’s introduced to us as Taystee’s foster mother, is an actual sociopath who somehow slipped into minimum security. She’s supposed to be magnetic, charismatic, and charming in a way that draws people to her despite the fact that she’s obviously going to murder them. The performance succeeds not only because it creates a memorable character, but because it allows the audience to experience the same draw — it’s clear from the start that Vee’s an awful human being, but we want more of her, all the same.

Maybe in response to criticism of the first season, or maybe just because this is a natural evolution, the second season of Orange is the New Black is less focussed on Piper (who served as the first season’s protagonist), and more focussed on the other inmates of the prison. The A-story, this time, concerns Vee’s arrival at Litchfield, and the way she lures some of the other characters into her web so that she can use them to smuggle in drugs. This puts her in conflict with Red (who normally corners the market on contraband), and creates a rift between Taystee and Poussey, who’ve been BFF this whole time.

While flashbacks have never been this show’s strong suit – they’re heavy handed, and they over-simplify complex situations by boiling them down into ten-minute narratives – this season throws roughly eight-hundred million our way, as a means of explaining the motivations of the major players in the season finale. In general, the flashbacks are not very good, but one thing they do nicely is lay the groundwork for the dynamics we see play out between Vee and the group. The flashbacks involving Taystee explain why she’s loyal to Vee – Vee may have been a lousy foster mother, but she’s the only real family Taystee has. There’s one really good scene that shows Taystee, her foster brother, R.J., and Vee, sitting down to a normal family dinner; you can tell from the expression on her face – and a nice bit of acting from Danielle Brooks – that this is one of Taystee’s best memories – a moment of real happiness in an otherwise difficult life.

The flashbacks also impress upon us that Suzanne (a.k.a. “Crazy Eyes”) feels rejected and like an outsider – something Vee immediately exploits by love bombing her in an obvious way – and that Cindy needs to prove herself as an adult. (Janae already got a flashback in season one, and we know she’s pissed off because she keeps going to solitary for no real reason.) More importantly, though, the flashbacks show us that Poussey, who seems like she was pretty rad on the outside, is an independent thinker who’s willing to fight for her relationships. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of conflict between Poussey and Vee, and the strongest emotional story line of the season is about Taystee being caught between them.

There are several other story lines this season – Dayanara and the idiot guard who impregnated her are still trying to figure things out; Rosa, the cancer patient, is quickly getting worse; a new inmate named Soso goes on a hunger strike; Pennsatucky has new teeth – but, like the A-story, most of them revolve around respect.

Daya wants the idiot guard to come clean and take his lumps so that they don’t have to lie for the rest of their lives (so that they can respect themselves by living truthfully). The idiot guard experiments with being a hard-ass in order to win some respect from his boss and the inmates – which leads Daya to explain, in a heavy-handed way, that he doesn’t need to bully anyone; the fact that he has a choice about what he does already gives him more power than any of the inmates have.

Soso, a college-aged inmate, initially refuses to shower for unspecified reasons, though it eventually becomes clear that she feels ashamed to be naked in front of everyone else. After the guards force her to do it anyway – in a scene that’s excruciatingly uncomfortable to watch – she starts a hunger strike as a way to reclaim some of her dignity by fighting back against the system. While she attracts some followers who aren’t very serious about prison reform, she also attracts a few people with legitimate grievances. We’re invited to laugh at the protest, but it’s a way for several characters, with different motivations, to try to gain respect.

The A-story, which is about the fight for control of the contraband line – between three opposing, racially segregated camps, represented by Vee, Red, and Gloria Mendoza – is really about individual women trying to hold onto positions that give them a positive sense of self. Controlling the kitchen gives Mendoza higher status in the prison, and it lets her give cushier jobs to the other Latina women; controlling the contraband line gives Red special status, and allows her to buy herself friends; controlling other people feeds Vee’s sociopathic drive to power.

There’s a moment, late in the season, where Vee jokes that it’s stupid to kill and die over who can sell mascara in prison – but that’s not what the fight is about. It’s about holding onto a sliver of self-respect in a place where you have to lie down on the ground when you hear an alarm; it’s about having something that’s yours in a place where you are a number, and issued the same clothes as everyone else.

It’s easy to understand how it would be detrimental to someone to be on a chain gang, to be assaulted, or tied up like an animal while she gives birth – but it’s also detrimental to be treated like you’re not a person, no matter how nice the cellblock is. What Orange is the New Black shows us effectively is women trying to hold onto personhood, even in difficult times.

The first season ended with Piper beating the shit out of Pennsatucky – a meth addict who’d harassed her all season, and pushed her so far that she snapped. The second season dives farther into that same well of darkness, striking an awkward (and sometimes confusing) balance between acknowledging Litchfield as kind of a candy-ass prison, and stirring things up by releasing a predator into the mix.

There are moments that are disappointing, there are moments that are cop-outs, there are moments that are sickeningly sweet, there are moments that don’t make sense, there are moments that seem kind of creepy and slightly misogynist (see: Caputo’s ill-gotten blowjob from Assistant Warden Fig) – but, one of the things that’s always been worthwhile about this show is that most of its characters – good, bad, dull, interesting, funny, sexy, cruel, cunning, average – are played by women, and that means that we get to see something we don’t normally get to see on TV. We get to see complex stories about human nature where “human” doesn’t default out to “male.” That’s the first thing everyone says when they write about Orange is the New Black – I know – but it’s worth saying again, because it’s such an unusual thing.

Season two, if anything, is stronger than season one, since it widens its focus, and gives more of its characters a chance in the spotlight. It’s also stronger because it’s gone beyond the story of season one (being in prison is hard, and it’s not like being out of prison at all), to explore something deeper. It’s pounding the same drum of “prisoners are people,” and, for those of us who already know that, that drum can get old, but this season at least drums with style.

Orange is the New Black is not on my list of “World’s Greatest Television Shows,” but Lorraine Toussaint may be on my list of “Greatest Performers in a Television Show,” and the series is doing something important by modelling how you can have a diverse cast of characters made up of women, and how you can tell stories about our universal humanity, when the humans in question are female.

So, if you didn’t binge watch it opening weekend, it’s worth a look, just to see something different. If you did binge watch it, you already know.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.

‘Uncertain Terms’: A Pregnant Teenager and a So-Called “Nice Guy”

The obsession of glossy celebrity magazines with “baby bumps” and “post baby bodies” (both of which were completely absent in the 80s from People and Us– and made them a lot more interesting to read) doesn’t extend into actresses playing complex protagonists who are visibly pregnant for most if not all of the action. There’s ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ and ‘Juno’ and… ? Full-term pregnancy for most women is a big fork in the road, with life changes that extend beyond bikinis and maternity wear, but in films it’s more like a plot device, so we can hear and see how the male protagonist feels about the pregnancy (as in ‘Knocked Up’ or the recent ‘Locke’), as if we don’t already have more than enough films in which men let us know what they think about women’s experiences.

The obsession of glossy celebrity magazines with “baby bumps” and “post baby bodies” (both of which were completely absent in the 80s from People and Us— and made them a lot more interesting to read) doesn’t extend into actresses playing complex protagonists who are visibly pregnant for most if not all of the action. There’s Rosemary’s Baby and Juno and… ? Full-term pregnancy for most women is a big fork in the road, with life changes that extend beyond bikinis and maternity wear, but in films it’s more like a plot device, so we can hear and see how the male protagonist feels about the pregnancy (like in Knocked Up or the recent Locke), as if we don’t already have more than enough films in which men let us know what they think about women’s experiences.

So I was excited to see up-and-coming indie director Nathan Silver’s Uncertain Terms (showing tonight, June 17, as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival) which is set at a group home for pregnant teenagers. India Menuez (so memorable as the American hippie girlfriend in Olivier Assayas’s Something In The Air) plays one of the teenagers, Nina. Menuez has worked as a model, but has the type of beauty that isn’t typically featured in magazines. With the deep copper red of her long, full, wavy hair cascading from her high forehead past her narrow shoulders, her pale skin possessing the glint of gold leaf, her face often in repose, Nina resembles both a Renaissance portrait of the Virgin Mary and the woman in Jan Van Eyck’s Arnolfini painting–complete with pregnancy bump.

But Nina, like the rest of the residents at the home (which includes It Felt Like Love‘s star, Gina Piersanti in a small role), don’t talk like they come from the past, especially in the support group in which they tell the stories of their pregnancies. “I was drunk. There were three guys,” says one. Carla (Cindy Silver, the director’s mother), who manages the house, tells the story of going to a home during her own early pregnancy–which is why she runs the house today. She admonishes the girls to stop fighting, but as they continue with GED studies, one silently writes on a notebook which she shows to the other, “Your (sic) a cunt.” For one girl’s birthday party they dance to “My Neck, My Back” with each other, their late-stage pregnancy bellies becoming just another curve they move in time to the music.

The girls are allowed “visitation” three times a week so we meet Chase (Casey Drogin) Nina’s pierced boyfriend who can never keep a job even though she will be having their baby very soon. “Just don’t fucking worry about it,” he tells her.

uncertain_termsChaseNina — Nina and Chase

Robbie (David Dahlbom) is at the home (the rainy, lush green woods surrounding it seem to be in upstate New York: the excellent cinematography by Cody Stokes reminded me of Jody Lee Lipes framing of a similar setting in Martha May Marcy Marlene) to get away from his troubled marriage, which he at first doesn’t tell his Aunt Carla about as he completes odd jobs she needs done around the site. He sleeps at night on an air mattress in the basement and smokes pot on the house steps where Nina joins him to take a hit or two herself. When he tells her he’s pretty sure she’s not supposed to be doing so, she laughs and says, “I feel like I should be smoking for two.”

I wish the film had continued to show the girls in all their complexity, but instead it devolves into scenes we’re familiar with from other films and TV written by men (the script is by Silver and Stokes as well as Chloe Domont): a girl climbs into a much older man’s bed and he leaves. And even though her leaving his room later might look to everyone else like he had an inappropriate sexual encounter with her, he didn’t. And if he had, that encounter would have been all her fault. I am tired of directors and screenwriters of both independent and big budget entertainment continually showing male characters in what looks like compromising or criminal positions and then make them all a big misunderstanding–like Louie’s recent show about the title character “accidentally” hitting a woman he has sex with.

Nina, who needs someone to talk to in the face of her boyfriend’s burgeoning unreliability and verbal abuse, has long conversations, then flirts, with Robbie–in a manner obvious enough that the other girls notice. This competition between the girls for a much older guy’s attention seems unseemly and unlikely. As we know from their background stories, most of these girls have had devastating experiences with boys fairly recently, and will soon give birth, so hooking up with someone new probably wouldn’t be first priority. Also the girls would make fun of a man like Robbie, who is old enough to have started to lose his hair, the same way they make fun of him when he says, “tie the knot” instead of “get married.”

uncertain_termsNinaRobbie — Nina and Robbie

Robbie has conversations with Nina about her relationship with her boyfriend that could just as easily be about his relationship with his wife (an over-the-top villain who saddles him with debt, cheated on him–of course–and now harasses him to get back together: the buzz of his phone is a constant background noise in all of Robbie’s scenes). Robbie, because he’s so much older, sees that Nina and Chase’s relationship won’t improve–and pretty much tells her so. What the script neglects to do is explore how an older man could use the age discrepancy (and the life experience that goes with it) to manipulate a teenager at a very vulnerable point in her life. Age-related manipulation is a pretty common story: most teen pregnancies are the result of an encounter or relationship with an older man.

Male staff at institutions of every kind (including penal and therapeutic ones) are often caught sexually abusing women patients/residents/prisoners to the point that some facilities choose to no longer employ men in direct care positions. Silver and his co-screenwriters including these cliched, unrealistic scenarios where the girls are “seductive” or as in Orange Is The New Black “in love” with a man who works onsite is more than lazy writing: it, like an endless loop of similar scenes from past movies and TV, provides a ready-made excuse for some real-life asshole to say, “She wanted it, your Honor, I swear.”

Robbie at one point says to Nina, as if he were a teenager himself, “I just want to be with you.” This scene reminds me of the Ryan Gosling character’s offer to marry Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine to help her raise her unborn child. The difference between the characters is Gosling’s, with his ukelele and his dare-devil stunts on the bridge is, unlike Robbie, a dreamy, reckless kid himself and doesn’t foresee how the dreariness of home life and dead-end jobs will kill the love he and Williams’ character have for one another (as the latter part of the film shows).

uncertain_terms_birthday — A birthday party at the home

Robbie is only supposed to be 30, but the actor looks older and the apparent age of the aunt (who had her son–who seems close to Robbie’s age–very young) would also seem to place him in an older bracket, so his pairing with Nina is even creepier. Menuez was born in 1993, but Nina’s soft, open face, mercurial nature and especially her breezy, unwarranted optimism about Chase, make her seem very much a teenager.

In Robbie’s final confrontation with his wife he carries and physically restrains her to keep her from going someplace he doesn’t want her to. Seeing the wife yell at and even slap a pregnant girl afterward shows us Robbie was “right” to try to prevent her from entering. Again, I’m pretty tired of seeing, especially in indie films, “nice guys” with reasonable explanations for doing abusive, criminal things to women (as also happens in the latter part of Blue Valentine). At the end of Uncertain Terms we’re supposed to think that (spoiler alert) if not for his drunk, psycho, violent, cheating wife, 30-year-old Robbie could have had a perfectly loving, balanced and beautiful relationship with a pregnant teenager, something those of us with life experience of our own might be skeptical about.

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.