Patriarchy – Bitch Flicks

Kelly Reichardt’s ‘Meek’s Cutoff’: The Camera’s Relationship to Characters and Power

In reclaiming the era, Kelly Reichardt created a representation that centers the experiences of those not served by the traditional Western. A view of the life of women divorced from the patriarchal lens, a view of the treatment of Native Americans divorced from the lens of white supremacy.

This guest post written by E Warren appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors, Part 2.

Somewhere downhill, a short distance away, the men are talking. Their voices tickle the edge of our comprehension. “What are they talking about?” someone asks, “Were you told?” “They’re talking about whether to hang Stephen Meek.” A slight pause, the women on the bluff go back to collecting their kindling. The camera lingers on this image for a while. Later on, we will find out how that discussion in the valley went, one of the men will relay proceedings to us, and we trust that he is being truthful. For now, there’s work that needs doing.

As for Meek himself, it’s widely agreed amongst the characters that he probably deserves his sentence. Having led their caravan on a two-week shortcut, now well into its fifth week, and into territory Meek happily admits is on no map he ever read, the caravan continue marching westward; hoping against hope to blithely stumble their way back into civilization.

Meek’s Cutoff is a 2010 film directed by Kelly Reichardt. Compared at the time to Gus Van Sant’s Death Trilogy, it shares the bleak tone and sparse narrative in its look at the lives of the women on a caravan lost on the Oregon Trail in 1845. With little dialogue, Reichardt relies on the images captured by director of photography Christopher Blauvelt (in their first collaboration) to create a sense of their place in the world.

The film opens on the fording of a river. Observing dispassionately, from a distance, these anonymous figures wade through chest high water, their belongings held above their heads. We wait for someone to fall. Nobody does. The water sounds loud and fierce in our ears, the rickety wagons tremble in the flow. Once all are across, the men sit by the shore planning the way forwards. Everyone seems glad the trial is passed. It is the last running water they’ll see.

Before setting out, the women of the caravan wash clothes at the bank of the river. We see them from beside, behind, above; their bonnets conceal their faces. We see three figures: one pink, one green, one yellow. Eventually their identities are revealed to us: Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams), Glory White (Shirley Henderson), and Millie Gately (Zoe Kazan). We come to know them by the colors of their dresses long before we get a closer look at their faces. Their names come up only in passing.

It is morning then, and Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood) emerges from his tent — Reichardt employs a static camera as we observe the scene. She then creates three shots: the Whites, the Tetherows, the Gateleys. The men are standing, pouring coffee, extinguishing fires. The women are seated, placed towards the back of the compositions, their presence minimized. The caravan sets off and again we see this division. The men lead their oxen while their wives walk a short distance behind, subordinate.

In the American expansion, men gave up their whole lives to head bravely on towards a new west. They would leave their jobs and homes to adventure toward a brighter future. What did women leave behind? The responsibilities of “women’s work” could not be abandoned on the journey. They still were expected to cook, clean, and to rear their children. These women, in their marriage vows, would have promised to love, honor, and obey. Their work never changed, they were just expected to trek as well; Reichardt speaks of the historical sources in this interview with Filmmaker Magazine.

The working woman in Meek’s Cutoff is an isolated one. If at rest she sits, at work she crouches to wash, set fires, and knead dough. In their long calico dresses, it seems an uncomfortable position to be in. In this form, the women are immobilized. For the camera to capture them, it must single them out in the frame, its borders invisible divisions between them. The men debate, their work connects them; we see them huddled together having important discussions. Even the young boy, Jimmy White (Tommy Nelson), is included in these, the camera establishing the patriarchy he’s growing into.

Eventually, the film provides an image of a space for women: a knitting circle. It is quiet, but over half an hour into the film, it is the first time we establish a physical closeness between these female characters. Then Stephen Meek invades; he hijacks the conversation, and with it the frame. Towering over them, they are isolated once again.

Portraying companionship: Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams) and Glory White (Shirley Henderson) share a rare two-shot.

After the men venture off to find water, Emily encounters a Native American man (Rod Rondeaux, credited as “The Indian”). The film reaches a turning point as she runs to the gun. It is an image we have not been primed for, if a working woman crouches and a resting woman sits, what does this new form mean? Jean-Luc Godard said that all you needed for a movie was “a girl and a gun” (though the credit for this is disputed.) Can culture rationalize an armed man in a way that it finds impossible with an armed woman?

In American society, male gun owners still outnumber women who own guns at a rate of roughly three to one. Culture has established a visual shorthand: the uniformed soldier; the cowboy in a long coat and wide brimmed hat; the suited gangster; the isolated teenager dressed in whatever style is determined “alternative.” We are led to understand the roles these people play, the positions they exist within society. They are all traditionally male figures. Films such as Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty and Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario are notable for their disruption of these culturally stratified roles, examining how they are inhabited by women. On their own, a woman with a gun seems to signify chaos, as women traditionally have when refusing to occupy their correct position in patriarchal society.

After that subversive act, the film starts to change, a war starts to be waged between Emily Tetherow and Stephen Meek. If neither of them know the way to civilization, or even to water, why should it matter who makes the calls? It extends beyond the caravan to the very structure of the film itself. Emily starts becoming more prominent in the frame, her actions command the edit, and she invades the spaces previously reserved for the men. Reichardt has spent so long defining the character’s role in society that to see her step out of it is arresting.

This change happens in part because of the arrival of another unknown: the Native American man is captured. A vote is taken and the characters choose to leave him alive, hoping he can lead them to water. The man speaks no English and he is a different race than the travelers; he is now the Other and the unknown. The presence of a more notable Other empowers the women — racism becomes a more powerful motivator than misogyny. For this man to have control of the caravan’s direction begins to upset the balance of the white patriarchy, the established order begins to dissolve, yet white supremacy still reigns as he remains captive.

With this shift, so too does the rigid formalism of the cinematography. The previously united caravan falls in on itself; they appear to shrink, consumed by the landscapes they traverse and the crushing darkness of night. Stephen Meek, who previously commanded the frame, loses control of it as the Native American man now takes ownership of it. It is through him that Emily gets to explore her relationship to power, to the film’s lens.

By placing the camera on the kidnapped man, the power the lens can give is also gated. It is then that Emily sets about gaining it. She approaches the man, in the context of the place she must inhabit in this world as a woman. Rather than exhibiting the force that her male companions do, which necessarily comes in opposition, separating them in the frame, she cooks for him and fixes his garments. Their interaction connects them; in the language of the film, the power is shared.

Reichardt has the film take the travelers’ perspective, lost in this unrecognizable territory, the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio constrains our ability to see, much like the bonnets worn by our leads restrict their peripheral vision. The Native American man’s dialogue, spoken in the language of the Nez Perce tribe, is not subtitled. The film is not content to “whiten” the character in order to make him accessible to a modern audience; we are asked instead to understand that his humanity is not a function of his relatability. The history of the United States is inextricable from the subjugation of Native peoples. The film observes the exploitation of this man, of his knowledge. Even Emily, whose relationship to him veers the closest to respect, still operates through the context of subjugation; when she proclaims that he knows there’s water over the next hill, she remains as ignorant of him as her compatriots.

The climax of Meek’s Cutoff comes with guns drawn. Emily defends the man from Meek, the embodiment of the failure of the white supremacist patriarchy. The angle puts the two side by side with Meek, opposing them and creating a barrier between the two forms. When Meek backs down, walks away, the earth tones of his clothes disappear him into the ground. A new order has arisen.

At the film’s close, the man is leading them again, away from the camera; we do not know if they will find water. Their position is not materially any better than it began yet the divisions have fallen. At last, the women and the men appear to be travelling as one. The Native American man, however, is still their captive.

At the time, Meek’s Cutoff was extensively described as an “anti-Western.” Reichardt rejected the label. In an interview with T Magazine, she said, “You know, it’s funny. If you’re not a white, straight man and you show a different point of view in a film, you need a particular category to go into, when it’s just a different point of view.” The history of the American West is just that, regardless of how it has been depicted through the history of cinema.

In reclaiming the era, Reichardt created a representation that centers the experiences of those not served by the traditional Western. A view of the life of women divorced from the patriarchal lens, a view of the treatment of Native Americans divorced from the lens of white supremacy. It may be a different perspective on the Western, but it remains an honest perspective on The West.

E Warren is a writer and actor in the UK. More film and culture writing can be found at their blog A Grand Quiet.

‘The Stepfather,’ Toppling Patriarchy, and Love of 80s Horror Ladies

Stephanie emerges as a poised, perspicacious, and resilient female lead. She is a wonderfully surprising alternative from most of the panoply of horror heroines who are tortured, fight, and scream their way through the terrifying films of the 80s. … Stephanie embodies what each of the archetypally male characters in the film fails to, and in doing so transcends the clutches of gender expectations in the film…

This guest post written by Eva Phillips appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. | Spoilers ahead.

Following the banal images of a brutal murder scene in a quaint, thoroughly 80s suburban living room that kick off the wildly underrated 1987 Josef Ruben film The Stepfather, there is a fantastic tracking shot that careens through a blissfully undisturbed, quintessential American upper-middle class neighborhood: we see the blooming, verdant trees, pristine yards, immaculately manicured homes — the whole shebang. The shot, which as a narration tool serves to show the titular stepfather Henry Morrison/Jerry Blake (unnerving and under-used Terry O’Quinn) exodus from one domicile — or, as the film later shows, one arena for him to futilely commandeer another single mother and her children — and move onto another, as he progresses from home-to-home, insidiously usurping them as he sees fit. But on a more subversive level, this opening tracking shot, which unintentionally parodies idyllic tracking or panoramic shots of 80s and 90s films that featured goofy but affable dad protagonists (think Uncle Buck or Father of the Bride or any film in which kids are shrunk) speaks to the film’s more profound subversive qualities. The shot indicates a sort of potential for undisturbed perfection, but it is a perfection that is violated and infested by the nefarious threat the stepfather symbolizes.

While many of the memorable and crucial aspects of The Stepfather are the flailing, if not furious, impotent attempts at O’Quinn’s menacing nomad in securing some draconian ideal family life, the true power of Stepfather lies with the groundbreaking dynamic between the two women who are preyed upon — Stephanie and Susan Maine (Jill Schoelen and Shelley Hack, respectively) — and the intuitive resilience of the daughter Stephanie in prevailing against her “new dad.” The introduction to Stephanie and Susan, mere moments after the grisly scene by Henry Morrison (who changes his name to Jerry Blake, real estate wizard, like any good homicidal villain would) is one of such unadulterated, unsullied bliss, that in my years of film watching it has yet to be rivaled by any moment of mother-daughter conviviality on screen. The two very jovially, un-eroticized and un-infantilized, play in a leaf pile, genuinely enjoying the frivolousness and love between them. What intrudes upon this mother-daughter euphoria, of course, is Susan’s mention of her new husband — aforementioned, newly reminted killer Jerry — who greets the glowing Susan and the less-than-enthused Stephanie with a puppy (which, mercifully defying the awful tropes 80s horror, LIVES TO THE END) and the hope that he’ll finally make a good impression on his surly stepdaughter.

What is most sensational about this cult classic (which, if it hasn’t officially been elevated to this status, I’m empowering myself to do so) is how, in the wake of the disquietingly erratic invasion of Jerry and his hauntingly traditional family values — the family must get along, the family must eat together, the family must not mind if the new stepfather has a completely savage break in the basement during a cookout — Stephanie emerges as a poised, perspicacious, and resilient female lead. She is a wonderfully surprising alternative from most of the panoply of horror heroines who are tortured, fight, and scream their way through the terrifying films of the 80s. Stephanie’s sexuality originates and exists organically (except when the rapidly unhinging Jerry accuses her crush of “raping” her when they kiss on the front step) and the film never once fetishizes her sexual development, or lack thereof, in the tradition of much of 80s horror cinema — built on a preexisting set of standards for horror women.

More importantly and gratifyingly, Stephanie’s fortitude and cleverness, and her determination to restore the blissful perfection between mother and daughter displayed at the beginning of the film, is in the face of the absolutely bumbling antics or brutal tendencies of the men around her. The men completely fail or are violently disconnected from reality: whether it is the well-intentioned but mainly hapless chisel-faced brother of Jerry’s slain first wife, always 10 minutes too late in trying to sniff Jerry out; the perpetually denying, stagnating police officers; or the earnest therapist who is brutally murdered by Jerry in his foolish attempt to confirm Stephanie’s feelings of unease about Jerry. Stephanie embodies what each of the archetypally male characters in the film fails to, and in doing so transcends the clutches of gender expectations in the film and in a genre that is so often besotted by explicit or implicit gendered presumptions.

Stephanie’s formidability and indefatigable stamina, despite being thwarted by Jerry at many turns throughout the film, is also a sub-textual nod to a profound reversion of a patriarchal predominance, one which looms over the film and certainly taints many films in the 80s horror tradition. The brand of paternal instincts and familial preservation that Jerry is so ruthlessly fixated on is a hollow, ghastly farce. He is joltingly compulsive, and when the family unit does not function as he wants it to (which is to say, in defiance of picturesque happiness and groveling at the shrine of Jerry-Or-Whoever-He-Is), he must resort to abhorrent violence to embody the dismay over the shambolic domestic unit “failing.” Selling real estate and life insurance in his various assumed identities, every orchestrated move Jerry makes is a testament to the meretriciousness of the type of “home” for which Jerry strives. And so, in tandem with this vicious, empty patriarchal presence, is the true domestic perfection that Stephanie stands for — one established and centering around matriarchal and even Edenic love; one based on respect and value and ass-kicking bulwarks of women. Restoring this order is not only the be-all-end-all for Stephanie, it symbolizes the natural order of things and the film, critically, supports this perspective. The culminating, relentless fight scene is cleverly staged like so many chaotic 80s horror slaying scenes: Susan is abruptly and unflinchingly assaulted by Jerry upon realizing his farce and unearthing his true identity. As she stumbles helplessly into the basement, the chiseled brother of Jerry’s former victim swoops in, only to be maniacally stabbed by Jerry. It is only Stephanie who can effectively enter the domestic sphere and overcome her despotic stepfather, ending not only his reign of terror but reclaiming the domestic sphere for herself and her mother.

For a film that gets too frequently billed as a B-Movie, or disregarded or lost in the canon of slasher-centric 80s horror, The Stepfather is outstanding for the distinct feminine strength and unity it lionizes. Moreover, the film is a brilliant experiment in subverting expectations. Despite the title’s implications, the film is not some nauseatingly machismo feature of masculine power and reconstruction in which a destabilized family unit (weakened, of course, by the lack of a “father”) is consumed by the diabolical machinations of a traditionalist murderer. Rather, the film is one of the feminine-centric family unit prevailing, and the love between a mother and daughter being the prized, organic form of love that champions the aberration of the male intrusion and the male buffoonery that ensconces it. The haunting poster for the film shows Jerry pensively staring at a fogged over mirror, the words “Who Am I Here” traced on the glass. It is not so much indicative of Jerry’s delusional mania, but indicates the emptiness and futility of the forced patriarchal order on a domestic sphere. Importantly, too, Stephanie does not function as some Carol Clover-esque horror heroine — her body and her actions exist outside of an eroticized or fetishized realm, and she is not operating within some sort of phallic terror-dome, but, rather, transcends it. And, sure, the movie has some wonky moments: laughably oblivious characters, awkwardly 80s-tastic quips, and perhaps one of the most heinous scores of any 80s horror film (think a synth-focused Def Leppard instrumental cover band with no sense of dramatic irony). But it should be valorized for its uniquely feminist message that is never pandering, unequivocally unique, and woefully difficult to replicate (case in point: the miserably dude-centric 2009 remake). The Stepfather’s sly championing of female strength and domestic reclamation is no more evident than the masterful final scene: Susan and Stephanie, shaken but stalwart, reassess their home in the backyard, as Stephanie takes an ax the birdhouse Jerry erected in the backyard, therein violently and resolutely toppling the specious emblem of his false domesticity, his pseudo-colonization, and literally dismantling the patriarchal presence. Get it, girl.

See also at Bitch Flicks: Patriarchy in Crisis: Power and Gender in ‘The Stepfather’

Eva Phillips is constantly surprised at how remarkably Southern she in fact is as she adjusts to social and climate life in The Steel City. Additionally, Eva thoroughly enjoys completing her Master’s Degree in English, though really wishes that more of her grades could be based on how well she researches Making a Murderer conspiracy theories whilst pile-driving salt-and-vinegar chips. You can follow her on Instagram at @menzingers2.

The Feminisms of ‘Born in Flames’

It’s no coincidence to me that three years later Lizzie Borden would direct ‘Born in Flames,’ a film that depicts a collection of different feminist voices all aligned in a common goal of resisting what bell hooks terms the white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.

Written by staff writer Heather Brown, this re-post appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

What is the role of difference in feminism? When in doubt, ask Audre Lorde. In 1980, she delivered a lecture entitled “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” (later published in Sister Outsider) in which she states, “There is a pretense to homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist.” It’s no coincidence to me that three years later Lizzie Borden would direct Born in Flames, a film that depicts a collection of different feminist voices all aligned in a common goal of resisting what bell hooks terms the white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.

The film takes place 10 years after a social revolution in the United States (!). However, despite the political structure of a socialist democracy, social, and economic justice for the historically marginalized is still a long way off. Filmed in cinema verité style with non-professional actors and against the backdrop of Reagan-era New York City, the post-revolution future looks appropriately gritty, unflinching, and chaotic — much like the film’s narrative. So, too, are the voices of feminist activists that structure the film. First, we meet Adelaide Norris (Jean Satterfield) an African American woman who, along with Hilary Hurst (Hilary Hurst), a white woman, leads the Women’s Army. Both are disenfranchised by the government’s “work-fair” program, and we see them work to mobilize their respective communities across racial lines. And most importantly, we see them disagree about how to do it. Adelaide, influenced by her mentor Zella (played by the late feminist activist Florynce Kennedy), weighs the necessity of the Women’s Army to take up arms against the state, which has only ever perpetuated militarized violence toward women, lesbians, communities of color, and the poor in general. Zella tells Adelaide, “All oppressed people have a right to violence.”

In addition to seeing women converse with and debate one another, we also see them speaking from dedicated feminist platforms on pirate radio. Isabel (Adele Bertei), the DJ of Radio Ragazza, is an outspoken critic of the Women’s Army. She and her community represent the white, anarchist-punk perspective that promotes creative resistance through art. Then there’s Honey (Honey) of Phoenix Radio, a DJ who Adelaide seeks as an ally by extension of overlap of their membership in Black communities. Yet another voice is the Socialist Youth Review, a liberal magazine whose reporters (white women, including a young Kathryn Bigelow) occasionally weigh in to critique the Women’s Army for its agenda and question the need for it to exist at all, given the social gains achieved by the revolution. And finally, a distinctly anti-feminist perspective that provides a counter-narrative to the action unfolding is the voiceover of FBI agents, who aim to take down the Women’s Army, starting with Adelaide Norris. We hear them remark, “We don’t know who to find out who is charge” and “it’s not clear how they function.” These statements reveal just how confounding it is to the very centralized government that a social movement could share authority amongst its members.

One of the ways that the Women’s Army shares this authority is shared is through collective anti-street harassment activism and anti-rape squads. In a harrowing but triumphant scene, a woman is being assaulted by two women on her way to the subway, and out of nowhere appears a fleet of women on bicycles, blowing whistles and circling the men. The men leave the scene and the Women’s Army come to the aid of the attack victim. What is particularly important about this scene is not just how little things have changed when it comes to the endurance of street harassment and violence against women, but that the Women’s Army creates its own policing solutions to these problems. Instead of acting out carceral feminism, which relies on law enforcement and state violence to combat violence against women, the feminisms of Born in Flames create justice rather than restore “order.”

Though much is made of the differences between the activist groups, one thread runs through the film: the shared experience of work. There are several montages — set to the soundtrack of Red Krayola’s “Born in Flames,” which will get lodged in your brain for weeks — in which close-up shots of hands and all kinds of bodies are engaged in all kinds of labor. From bagging groceries, to child care, to sex work, each act is equated as valuable in its own right. One of the acts of resistance occurs after Adelaide, like many other women who are lower in the social caste, is laid off from her construction job and organizes a demonstration to fight for jobs that have the potential for growth.

The film’s rising action occurs when Adelaide is detained by the FBI on suspicion of arms trafficking — a fabrication intended to stamp out her and the Women’s Army. Without spoiling the film, let’s just say that the different feminist subgroups are called to combine their efforts and create Phoenix Regazza Radio to stand in solidarity as they enact a final act of terrorism. While this particular act is a bit chilling to watch post-9/11, it powerfully symbolizes the danger that will befall society should the marginalization of women and the white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy persist.

Heather Brown is a Bitch Flicks staff writer. She grew up in Connecticut but hopes that having lived in Virginia and North Carolina — and being married to an Arkansan — gives her occasional license to have a Southern accent. She recently fled a full-time job as a professor in central New Jersey, where she taught classes in gender studies, feminist theory, linguistics, and rhetoric. Long story short, she decided to leave the ivory tower to have more fun on the outside. Now she teaches online part-time, works as a freelance writer and instructional designer, and is currently pursuing professional coach certification training in Chicago, Ill., where she moved at the end of 2013 with her partner and cat, Edie. She lives for live music, road trips, and good movies. She blogs sporadically at PhDilettante.

Feminism and Classism in ‘The Legend of Billie Jean’

‘The Legend of Billie Jean’ addresses questions of gender and class that are as real today as they were in 1985 and sets its story within the struggles against the patriarchy and the ruling wealthy class by people who all too often fall victim to those oppressions. … She wants dignity, and respect – truly, what she is after is equality.

This guest post written by Horrorella appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s. | Spoilers ahead.

[Trigger warning: discussion of sexual assault]

The Legend of Billie Jean is a film that I found my way to only recently; a year ago, in fact. It wasn’t one of the 80’s teen classics that was endlessly rerun on cable every weekend throughout my high school and college years, so I didn’t have the opportunity to get to know the great Billie Jean Davy the way I got to know Samantha and Farmer Ted, Andie, Bender, or any of the other John Hughes characters. On the one hand, I wish that Billie Jean had been a character that I would have found in my teenage years. Her strength, her unwillingness to be beaten down, and the way she stands up for herself would probably have had a positive impact on my confused, teen self. But on the other hand, I’m glad I discovered her exactly when I did – in my 30s as I am surrounded by a new feminism and as women are beginning to be heard in new and exciting ways. I resonate with this character much differently than I would have at the age of fifteen, and even now, she has given me a new role model.

Though thirty years old, The Legend of Billie Jean speaks to me in a very real way, and mirrors issues that are still at the forefront of our conversation. It addresses questions of gender and class that are as real today as they were in 1985 and sets its story within the struggles against the patriarchy and the ruling wealthy class by people who all too often fall victim to those oppressions.

The film tells the story of Billie Jean Davy (Helen Slater), a teenager living in a Texas trailer park with her mother (Mona Lee Fultz) and her brother Binx (Christian Slater). At the opening of the film, the siblings drive Binx’s Honda scooter to a secluded river area to swim and try to escape the oppressive Texas summer heat. On their way, they cross paths with Hubie Pyatt (Barry Tubb) and his gang of teenage miscreants. Refusing to succumb to both his forceful advances on Billie Jean and his desires to push Binx around, the pair flee, but not before Binx splashes Hubie’s face with a milkshake as a means of distraction. Thinking they are safe, Billie Jean and Binx relax. Their respite is all too short, however, when Hubie and his boys track them down and trash the scooter in an act petulant of revenge.

Billie Jean reports the incident to the local police department, but finds the detective (Peter Coyote) to be less than helpful. She then goes to visit Hubie and his father (Richard Bradford) to claim the money necessary for the repair work: $608. Instead of simply paying up (oh, and maybe apologizing), Mr. Pyatt attempts to assault Billie Jean, telling her that she can earn the money through sexual favors. She is able to flee when Binx enters the store and threatens Pyatt with a gun, believed to be empty. The gun goes off (much to Binx’s surprise) and wounds Pyatt, offering an opportunity for escape. Knowing the magnitude of their situation and with little faith in the fact that anyone would take their word over Pyatt’s, the pair hit the road.

In the days that follow, the story of a young woman who just wanted fairness, equality, and a fair shake spreads. She becomes a hero figure to teenagers across Texas when she cuts her hair (inspired by Joan of Arc), dons a particularly inspired warrior look and makes a video decrying the harshness of a world that would believe Pyatt over her because of his money and his status as a man. All she wants is payment from Pyatt for the money owed for the scooter, decreeing, “Fair is fair!” It would become a rallying call that would be echoed by teens across the state and the theme of Billie Jean’s mission.

Through Billie Jean’s story, we see the harsh reality of a world where being affluent and male is everything that you need to survive. Pyatt never has any intention of just owning up to his son’s behavior and paying for the scooter repairs. He assumes he can take what he wants from Billie Jean (here, in the form of both money and sex) and nobody will protest or stop him because she’s a woman and poor. His status as a male figure protects him from any repercussions to his actions. He has no fear throughout this process that his story will ever even be questioned, and is free to proceed as he wishes. He has full control, and she can either bend to his will, or abandon her quest entirely. Even when Billie Jean fights back, she is forced to flee because her recent attempt at getting help from the police went unanswered. The world has proven that no one will believe the truth of the story — that Pyatt started the altercation and that Binx never had any intention of shooting the man, as he believed the gun to be empty.

As the story progresses, Billie Jean’s flight becomes more than just the desire to escape from a situation that sees her and her friends unfairly on the wrong side of the law. She wants wrongs to be set right. She wants Pyatt to pay the $608 he owes for repairs on the scooter – no more, no less. Fair is fair. She wants what she is rightfully owed and for Pyatt and Hubie to own up to what they have done and make it square. She wants dignity, and respect – truly, what she is after is equality.

Pyatt refuses to give her that equality. The reason the situation goes as far as it does it because he won’t admit that Billie Jean is entitled to the same treatment hat he would give someone male and of higher income were the situation repeated. Billie Jean is a trailer park girl and is of little value in his eyes. She is simply an object; someone that he can take advantage of, force himself on, and someone who nobody would believe even if she did make the truth known. His maleness and his wealth make him untouchable.

The film utilizes the Male Gaze throughout to allow us to see how Pyatt and his ilk view women. It is always used as a means of making women feel small, trying to force some sense of ownership on them. The first instance occurs during the initial altercation between the Davys and Hubie’s group of friends. Throughout all of it, one of the young men is photographing Billie Jean – her movements, her reactions, and most importantly, her body as she her climbs out of the pond and tries to prevent the group from taking the scooter, scantily clad and dripping wet. While she is on the offensive in that moment to try to prevent any harm from coming to her brother or to his property, he captures the sensual nature of the image and uses that shot as a means of holding power over her. She is in his sights – an object of prey. He can see her and thus, she is vulnerable.

Later, that photo becomes an iconic image of Billie Jean when it is released to the public and sold as posters at Pyatt’s beachfront pop-up store. He has assaulted her, he has refused to own up to his role in the altercation, he has refused to pay her what it owed, and now he is selling her. His final attempt at owning her by any means necessary. He has her image and he is profiting off of it.

Billie Jean serves as an icon to both feminism and to an ongoing class struggle. As her legend grows, kids and teenagers begin to look up to her and to see her as a hero figure. Even though most of the stories surrounding their exploits have been fabricated (often for the benefit of male businessmen who want the notoriety of having been held up by the notorious Billie Jean Davy), the teen populace of Texas identifies with her as someone bucking the system. Someone who refuses to play by the rules of the status quo when those rules are meant to benefit and serve a select few, rather than the downtrodden many. If the story were set today, Pyatt would be the 1% and Billie Jean would be the rest of us.

These themes of a class struggle are further illustrated by the inclusion of the scooter as a plot device. That scooter is Binx’s most prized possession. He was only able to afford it thanks to some insurance money that their father left behind when he passed away. This is a luxury item to them; something that Binx cherishes not only for its practical uses, but also because it represents a life he can only dream of. It is the one instance that he has been able to grasp of a life beyond the trailer park. And Hubie ripped it apart in a childish rage — not only as revenge for the milkshake incident (hardly a fair trade, mind you), but because doing so put Binx and Billie Jean back in their place. The destruction was a reminder and a warning against trying to rise above their roots and to invade the sacred space of those wealthier.

Within the film, Billie Jean’s story grows to make her something of a combination of a Robin Hood figure and a Bonnie and Clyde story. Her deeds are greatly exaggerated, but she represents something that resonates strongly with the community. She stands up and refuses to let a wealthy male figure walk over her. In a world where feminist issues are still prevalent (though thankfully, also a part of the conversation), Billie Jean remains a hero that we can all look to for inspiration. She demands the very definition of feminism – equality. She wants no more and no less than what is owed to her. Fair is fair.

Horrorella has written about film for Ain’t it Cool News, the Women in Horror Annual and on her blog at horrorella.com. She geeks out incessantly over movies, television, comics and kitties. You can gab with her on Twitter @horrorellablog.

‘Game of Thrones’ Week: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our ‘Game of Thrones’ Theme Week here.

Bowed, Bent, and Broken: Examining the Women of Color on Game of Thrones by Clara Mae

With the women of color being so scarce in the show, it’s just as important to look at the quality of these portrayals. While Game of Thrones does give us some strong women of color, many of them are portrayed problematically in their own ways: either put into subservient roles, exoticized, demonized, or otherwise discarded by the narrative in ways that the white characters aren’t.

Let’s Talk About the Children: War and the Loss of Innocence on Game of Thrones by Amy Woolsey

Children have always figured prominently in Game of Thrones, but their presence seems especially meaningful this [fourth] season, as we get a clearer glimpse of the war’s effect on bystanders, people not entrenched in political intrigue and behind-the-scenes strategizing.

Game of Thrones: Does It Feel Worse to Cheer For or Against Daenerys? by Katherine Murray

It’s hard to ignore that this is a white woman from a foreign nation who feels it’s her birthright to teach a bunch of brown people how they should behave. … On the flip side, watching a woman lose power on Game of Thrones always seems to involve watching her be sexually victimized somehow, which I can’t really get on board with, no matter how awful she is.

Why I Will Miss Ygritte’s Fierce Feminism on Game of Thrones by Jackie Johnson

Ygritte was fierce, she was vibrant, and she didn’t take any shit. Ygritte’s feminism was multi-dimensional, and for me she will always be missed.

When Brienne Met Jaime: The Rom-Com Hiding in Game of Thrones by Victoria Edel

But in that web of gloom, there’s this beautiful shining light: Brienne and Jaime. And while rom-coms are not often praised for their realism, to me, this couple is the most grounded, sensible thing about the show.

Game of Thrones: Catelyn Stark and Motherhood Tropes by Sophie Hall

Catelyn Stark’s main function in the show is to be a mother to Robb Stark, a prominent male character, whereas in the book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, she is so much more than that. … The show creators are here relying on mother tropes in order to set up the characters; Catelyn is now the nag who only cares about her family and nothing else, whereas Ned is now the valiant hero who wants to seek justice.

Game of Thrones: Is Jon Snow Too Feminine for the Masculine World? by Siobhan Denton

Whilst ostensibly male in terms of gender, Jon Snow’s character is arguably definably feminine through his actions, motivations and interactions with both female and male characters. … This is not to suggest that Jon’s character is not masculine; certainly his actions in battle signal him to be a hero in the archetypical sense, but I am suggesting that Jon Snow’s masculinity coexists with a feminine expression…

In Game of Thrones the Mother of Dragons Is Taking Down the Patriarchy by Megan Kearns

While many women orchestrate machinations behind the scenes, no woman is openly a leader, boldly challenging patriarchy to rule. Except for one. Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen.

Another Dead Sex Worker on Game of Thrones by Amanda Rodriguez

Even after the finale of its fourth season, the HBO series Game of Thrones continues its reputation for unpredictability and for subverting our genre expectations. However, a glaring pattern of predictability is emerging: all sex workers with significant roles will die horribly. Think about it.

“Love No One But Your Children”: Cersei Lannister and Motherhood on Game of Thrones by Sophie Hall

Cersei Lannister is cunning, deceitful, jealous and entirely about self-preservation. Yet, her show self seems to tie these exclusively with her relationship with her children… Why is motherhood the go-to in order to flesh out her character? Why can’t she be separate from her children, the same way the father of them, Jaime Lannister, is?

The Occasional Purposeful Nudity on Game of Thrones by Lady T

In fact, the difference between gratuitous nudity and artistic nudity is not that difficult to discern. Even Game of Thrones, the show that puts the word “tit” in “titillation,” occasionally uses nudity in a way that isn’t exploitative and adds to a scene rather than detracting from it.

Controversy is Coming for Game of Thrones by Rachel Redfern

Here’s the thing–for all of its controversy (which isn’t hurting the show’s viewership, I’m sure), people are still connecting to this show and are connecting to the terrible, senseless, often difficult situations that they have to struggle through. Game of Thrones offers us, and its characters, no clear way out of mess, no neatly tied up episode endings, hell, even the most devoted fans can only speculate on the series’ ending. This show hosts both the unknown future and the sadly familiar past of familial dysfunction and bad romantic choices.

Sex Workers Are Disposable on Game of Thrones by Gaayathri Nair

When we are introduced to Ros, she is working in Winterfell but as war approaches she decides to try her luck in King’s Landing expressing the view that if all the men leave for war there is not going to be much for her in Winterfell. Once there she goes from being “just a sex worker” to getting involved in the politics of the realm by becoming the right hand woman of Little Finger and subsequently double crossing him by becoming an agent for Varys. However despite her many interesting qualities and potential for interesting storylines, Ros basically exists for one reason to provide exposition regarding male characters on the show while naked. She is sexposition personified.

Masculinity in Game of Thrones: More Than Fairytale Tropes by Jess Sanders

Boys are judged on their ability to swing a sword or work a trade, criticised for showing weakness, and taught to grow up hard and cold. Doesn’t sound unfamiliar, does it? Masculinity is praised in Westerosi society, as it is in our own.

Game of Thrones: The Meta-Feminist Arc of Daenerys Targaryen by Amanda Rodriguez

The journey of Daenerys Targaryen is a prototype for female liberation, one that charts women’s emancipation over the centuries and encourages us to push harder and dream bigger for even more freedom now.

Here There Be Sexism?: Game of Thrones and Gender by Megan Kearns

I recognize that there’s a difference between displaying sexism because it’s the time period and condoning said sexism. But this IS a fantasy, not history, meaning the writers can imagine any world they wish to create. So why imagine a misogynistic one?

Motherhood in Film & Television: Spawning the World: Motherhood in Game of Thrones by Rachel Redfern

One of the aspects that struck me in the show though, is the portrayal of motherhood. Far from being absent or swept to the side, the film’s mothers are a driving force in the plot development and are some of the most multi-dimensional of the series (credit has to be given to the actresses who play them).

Gratuitous Female Nudity and Complex Female Characters in Game of Thrones by Lady T

Yes, Game of Thrones is a show that loves its nudity. HBO is known for gratuitous displays of naked ladies in many of its show, but Game of Thrones might as well exist on a network called HBOOB.

Game of Thrones Season 2 Trailer: Will Women Fare Better This Season? by Megan Kearns

Luckily, Season 2 will see an influx of new characters, including lots of female roles. Huzzah! The “Red Priestess” Melisandre of Asshai (Carice van Houten), female warrior (!!!!) Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie), noblewoman Lady Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer), Ygritte (Rose Leslie), the Ironborn captain (double !!!!) Yara Greyjoy (Gemma Whelan) named “Asha” in the novels. Wait, a sorceress, warrior and ship captain?? More women in leadership roles?? Sounds promising!

Call For Writers: Women Directors

Our theme week for March 2016 will be Women Directors. The gender gap in the entertainment industry has risen to the level of popular consciousness, such that prominent public figures are frequently commenting on it and demanding change, but while awareness of the under-representation and misrepresentation of women in film and television has grown, is there much being done to combat it?

Our theme week for March 2016 will be Women Directors.

The gender gap in the entertainment industry has risen to the level of popular consciousness, such that prominent public figures are frequently commenting on it and demanding change, but while awareness of the under-representation and misrepresentation of women in film and television has grown, is there much being done to combat it?

Women directors face myriad obstacles: despite there being an abundance of talented female directors struggling to produce work, many companies refuse to give them projects (only 3.4% of all film directors are female and only 9% of the top 250 movies in 2015 were directed by women), they are not paid as much as their male counterparts, there’s an expectation that their work be stereotypically female (i.e. chick flicks), and their work is rarely appreciated with the same level of acclaim (only 4 women have ever been nominated for a Best Director Academy Award). Despite all these obstacles and hardships, there are a growing number of women making amazing work with wide range of genres and topics: romantic, thought-provoking, innovative, hilarious, or even terrifying. In 2009, Kathryn Bigelow broke barriers with The Hurt Locker, a film about soldiers and war, when she took home Academy Awards for both Best Picture and Best Director. She was the first woman ever to receive an Oscar for Best Director. In 2014, Ava DuVernay’s depiction of the civil rights movement Selma won an Academy Award for Best Song and garnered nominations for Best Picture. But DuVernay didn’t receive an Oscar nomination, an unfortunate snub as she would have been the first Black woman to ever receive a nomination for Best Director.

However, the Oscars are typically white and male-dominated and are increasingly being disregarded as an antiquated, patriarchal, elitist group who should no longer be regarded as the gatekeepers of important cinema, and women are increasingly working in the independent film scene. Despite the somewhat encouraging rise of women directors, white women tend to dominate the field, receiving accolades and projects with far greater frequency than women directors of color, which is a microcosm reflective of the stratification of the feminist movement itself.

The examples below are the names of women directors alongside an example of one of their most acclaimed works. Feel free to use those examples to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Saturday, March 26, 2016 by midnight Eastern Time.

Ava DuVernay (Selma)

Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation)

Haifaa al-Mansour (Wadjda)

Jane Campion (The Piano)

Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)

Amma Asante (Belle)

Lena Dunham (Girls)

Julie Delpy (2 Days in Paris)

Mary Harron (American Psycho)

Mary Lambert (Pet Sematary)

Meera Menon (Farah Goes Bang)

Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust)

Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle)

Penny Marshall (Big)

Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right)

Emily Ting (It’s Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong)

Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone)

Dee Rees (Bessie)

Randa Haines (Children of a Lesser God)

Barbra Streisand (The Prince of Tides)

Jodie Foster (Orange is the New Black)

Mining the Feminist Messages of ‘Crimson Peak’

In fact, she genuinely began to feel “depressed” from playing Lucille. However, when she confided this in on-screen brother Tom Hiddleston, who has famously played characters such as Marvel villain Loki, he shared that “you only have fun when your character is having fun,” and, as Chastain explains, “Lucille hasn’t had a fun day in her life.” As the victim of intense patriarchal oppression, it’s no wonder.

(Contains SPOILERS for Crimson Peak.)

When filming Guillermo del Toro’s most recent film, Crimson Peak, Jessica Chastain felt surprised that playing the villain, Lucille Sharpe, wasn’t as “fun” as other actors describe playing villainous roles to be. In fact, she genuinely began to feel “depressed” from playing Lucille. However, when she confided this in on-screen brother Tom Hiddleston, who has famously played characters such as Marvel villain Loki, he shared that “you only have fun when your character is having fun,” and, as Chastain explains, “Lucille hasn’t had a fun day in her life.” As the victim of intense patriarchal oppression, it’s no wonder.

As patriarchal values are all Lucille has known, those are the tools she uses to attempt to gain and maintain control over her own life and to protect her beloved younger brother, Thomas. By adopting patriarchal means of action, even while being miserable doing it, Lucille becomes a “formidable” antagonist to Mia Wasikowska’s protagonist Edith. This is despite Lucille being entirely (and sympathetically) driven in her actions by profound love and a deep-seated fear of being alone. Turning on other women, including Edith, leads to Lucille’s ultimate downfall, and at Edith’s hands, who was only trying to defend herself and others. As Lucille’s sad life portrays, oppression, such as that from patriarchy, cannot be combatted by becoming an oppressor oneself.

Like many of del Toro’s films, this film deals with knowing and learning about the past in order to move forward and not repeat past mistakes or crimes. Lucille experiences abuse, internalizes it, and then takes it out on other women. Edith, meanwhile, suffers minor abuse, is supported in her efforts to rise against it, and attempts to support other women herself. Though the men in the story make many mistakes in their attempts to be allies to Edith, some of their actions aide Edith when her strength and determination need a little boost. However, it is largely due to the help of other women, albeit none still living, that Edith is able to accomplish what she does, whether it is through the role model of “Frankenstein” author Mary Shelly, or the female ghosts that warn and aide her.

It is only when Edith chooses to listen to the messages that these female ghosts have for her, whether through old wax recordings or their own spectral presences, that Edith learns what she needs to know in order to move forward in her own life. Through joined female effort and learning about what came before her, Edith and the audience can effectively move into the present and take the most effective action in efforts to support the lives of women. With the help of other women, the occasionally non-burdensome help of male allies (again, the men make a number of dangerous mistakes – usually by underestimating both Edith and Lucille), and a lot of her own effort, Edith succeeds in getting through danger, not unscathed, but alive. She then publishes the fruit of her labor, her novel, under her own name – quite something for a woman to do in 1901. (The date is not provided in the film, but was given by Tom Hiddleston in this interview.)

Lucille is strongly compared to and contrasted against Edith throughout the film. Edith is an ambitious writer who defends her career choice and preferred suspenseful genres against patriarchal and condescending men and women alike. Edith marries the baronet Thomas Sharpe, who is “a dreamer” like her, in part because he is supportive of her writing. Edith continues to work on her novel after their marriage, just as Thomas continues to work on his mining invention (Yes, the “Sharpe Mines” – I see what you did there, del Toro). Lucille could have made a career as a marvelous composer and pianist, but lacked the supportive upbringing that Edith received, and rarely writes or plays (or, indeed, lives) except for her younger brother. At one point, Lucille throws Edith’s manuscript, page by page, into the fire, saying dismissively “You thought you were a writer….” Meanwhile Lucille never takes credit for the beautiful lullaby she seemingly wrote – for Thomas, naturally.

This reflects the internalization of her years of neglect and abuse, a childhood alternately locked away upstairs or physically beaten with a cane, forced to care at an early age for her abusive mother after her father “snapped [Lucille’s mother’s] leg under his boot,” and then sent to and locked away in a mental institution in continental Europe, away from her only comfort – her brother. So internalized is the abuse and pain, Lucille even thinks she is doing her female victims a favor by killing them, as shown in the scene in which Lucille feeds Edith (poisoned) porridge while speaking about her relationship with her mother.

Throughout her life, Lucille protects Thomas both from oppression and from becoming much of an oppressor himself, keeping him from having to “get [his] hands dirty.” Thomas therefore comes out of a patriarchal past relatively less broken than Lucille, and is able to maintain a bit more of his humanity. It is this humanity, which Lucille made sure to help him preserve in himself, that leads him to experience guilt for what Lucille and he do – exploiting and poisoning vulnerable women for their wealth. It is this guilt that Edith, the protagonist, inadvertently exploits when she encourages him to not live “in the past.” Edith does not seek out to reform Thomas, unlike in so many “romances” that glorify toxic and abusive relationships – he himself makes the choice to help and defend Edith against Lucille. In fact, when Edith finds out what he has done, she understandably does not hesitate to attack him in self-defense. Heartbreakingly, it is revolutionary even today that Edith is not a Bella Swan or a Manic Pixie Dream Girl used by Thomas to feel better about himself. Edith is romantic with Thomas only when she is unaware of what he has done, and then defends herself from her would-be co-murderer.

Meanwhile, while Edith moves into the future after learning from the past, Lucille is “entrenched” in the “history” of the house and the family, and does not “progress.” Lucille grew up in Victorian England and continental Europe being abused by patriarchal society, patriarchal figures, and patriarchal values. Much of what she does is in keeping with these values, clinging to “the past” and the “shadows” as the Edwardian era begins. Patriarchal values are all she has known, and her actions in the film reflect that, whether she is playing the role patriarchy expects her as a woman to play, such as caretaker, or when she emulates patriarchal violence in order to sustain the way of life she and her brother share, such as when she brutally murders Edith’s father Carter Cushing (played by Jim Beaver).

Patriarchy makes many demands on women. It demands that women internalize sexism and abuse, then take out their anger and frustration on other women in horizontal/in-group violence. Lucille fulfills this requirement of patriarchy many times and in many ways, as did her mother before her – and against her. Patriarchy demands that women lack confidence in themselves, and predominantly define themselves by how they do or do not look. Lucille implies that she feels that she “lack[s] beauty” and youth, while women are still fighting against confidence-destroying beauty and age standards today. Patriarchy demands that women value men more than other women, and more than themselves. Lucille centers her brother, Thomas, and her family’s history above all else, and even seems to blame her mother more than her father for the family’s suffering and destruction. This is especially sad, since it was her father’s abuse of her mother that made her mother take out her anger at him in abusing her children. Patriarchy demands that women compete with each other for the little that is offered them, and so Lucille preys upon other women to uphold the life she has created for her brother and herself.

In some ways, Lucille opposes patriarchal ideas of women, but only as manifestations of her role as protector for Thomas. Del Toro describes Thomas as “a stunted man, an adolescent,” and Lucille fills the roles of both mother and wife to him. As depicted by Katherine Fusciardi on Bitch Flicks, violence by women is seen as justifiable by society if it is committed by a mother to protect her child. Lucille takes on the role of violent protector for Thomas, the masculinity of it being emphasized when she crossdresses in order gain access into a men’s club. There, she violently kills Edith’s father, who was “coarse and condescending” to her beloved younger brother. Her role as protector, her clothing, and her violence in that scene are all culturally seen as masculine. When she emulates patriarchy, it is in order for her and Thomas to maintain a place in it, thereby attempting to be free from patriarchal oppression themselves. However, as stated in Alize Emme’s review of Heathers, “the power” of patriarchy to oppress others “is not something to aspire to.” Instead, female friendship creating support systems are all important. In order to gain true power and freedom, patriarchy must be overthrown in a group effort lead by women, not emulated by the individual. Though Lucille gains much needed money by oppressing other women, it hardly relieves her misery from years of external and internal abuse.

Not only does the story of Crimson Peak have many messages that can be mined (I would say the pun wasn’t intended, but that would be lying) for feminists, but del Toro’s casting choices reflect the feminism of his piece, with Jessica Chastain and Tom Hiddleston being open feminists. What is disappointing is that hardly any women were involved at all behind the camera, not even on the script, with the notable exception of Kate Hawley’s beautiful costume design. Del Toro then, unintentionally it seems, highlights his theme that men can make mistakes as allies, even when they have the best of intentions. Jessica Chastain is particularly vocal about the need for all women and all People of Color to be hired for work behind the camera, and for “all stories” to be told, not just that of “the few.” Hopefully del Toro and the other men onset learned these lessons while filming Crimson Peak, and they continue in learning how to be better allies.

Feminist Fangs: The Activist Symbolism of Violent Vampire Women

The acts of violence by the female protagonists are terrifying, swift, and socially subversive. They target misogynistic representatives of the patriarchal society that oppresses and silences women, taking them out one by one.

This guest post by Melissa-Kelly Franklin appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

The apocryphal notion that women are intrinsically sensitive, gentle and maternal is an old one, so we rarely see aggressive women in film and television unless they’re either trying to protect themselves or are seriously unhinged. Sara Century writes that female characters are “so often victims, but even when they’re violent criminals, that violence is either quickly punished, or it’s normalised and reduced by audiences and creators alike.” It would seem that even the notion that women could stray so far from their natures as to be capable of serious violence is utterly inconceivable outside the context of self-preservation, or the protection of children. Well-trodden is the trope that a woman would do absolutely anything to protect her child; so violent acts by women can be easily explained away with the justification that their maternal instincts are kicking in, thereby restoring women to their place in the “natural order.” Similarly, rape-revenge is often used as a catalyst for driving women to violence, using rape as a means of pushing a character to her extreme, thereby asserting that only horrific trauma can compel a woman to act outside of socially constructed notions of gender. Neither of these reasons are shallow or unjustified – and I’d much rather see a female character take control, retaliate and fight back, than see her as a passive victim. However, what these more commonplace depictions of violent women do, is silence other motivations which might see women as actively engaging in calculated acts of violence for personal and political reasons.

Portrayals of calculated violence by women are few and far between. Sure, there is the recently released Suffragette, which portrays the militant action of the London-based suffragette movement, but as others have highlighted, it’s taken a good 100 years for that to see the light of day; and other celebrated examples of female violence in films like Alien and Terminator see women forced into violence to protect themselves and their families. (Megan Kearns wrote an interesting piece for Bitch Flicks about Sarah Connor’s identity being inextricably tied to motherhood and her baby-making potential.) So whether she’s saving her biological children, or her wider human “family,” these violent women subliminally remind us that women’s role in society is as nurturer, protector and mother.

Two films that throw the proverbial spanner in the patriarchal works are the feminist vampire films Byzantium by Neil Jordan, and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night by Ana Lily Amirpour. The acts of violence by the female protagonists are terrifying, swift, and socially subversive. They target misogynistic representatives of the patriarchal society that oppresses and silences women, taking them out one by one. Both films reflect the social anxieties surrounding such subversive women – the notion that violent women violate the very laws of nature – making these idealised givers of life quite literally, harbingers of death. The subversion of traditional gender constructs within these films depict women actively working outside social norms, effectively using violent women within the vampire genre as a symbol of feminist activism.

In Byzantium, Clara (Gemma Arterton) and Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) are a vampire mother and daughter duo living rough and on the run from a vampire brotherhood – all because Clara had the gall to disobey their sexist code forbidding women from creating more of their kind. As Katherine Murray discerningly points out, this is a rare vampire film where the vampire-protagonists are not rolling in cash or occupying vast estates, suggesting that we can easily attribute this to “the lack of opportunity they’ve had as women.” For over a century Clara and Eleanor have been relentlessly pursued by the brotherhood with the intention of killing the “aberration” that is Eleanor, thus restoring the status quo within their previously exclusive invitation-only boys club. Jordan introduces us to Clara and Eleanor’s desperate situation in a high-octane chase at the start of the film, which culminates in Clara’s capture. Believing he is close to finally achieving their aim, one of Clara’s assailants tells her, “I feel a great peace. As if order is about to be restored.” From the outset the film establishes an Us vs Them dichotomy, emphasising how everyone who chooses to function outside of patriarchal gender constructs is inevitably punished. Clara’s response? She shuts him up by taking off his head.

It appears throughout the film that Clara’s prevailing motivation is to protect the life of her daughter, making her one of the “violent mother” character types, but her acts of violence clearly go beyond protecting her daughter. Clara and Eleanor are targeted because they dared to violate the sacred code of the vampire brotherhood (a not even thinly veiled allusion to patriarchy) and the balance of power must be restored. The brotherhood is not actively seeking Clara’s death, rather they want to destroy the product of her disobedience – the reminder that Clara is the loose cannon that refuses to conform to their arbitrary gender rules. In their world, women are even denied the intrinsically feminine power to reproduce, as “women aren’t permitted to create.” While it is resoundingly clear that Clara would go to any lengths to protect her daughter, she is also driven by the desire for freedom so they can live unfettered by social rules which say they cannot do, say or share the same privileges that men enjoy. Clara’s deeply felt respect for individuality, freedom and personhood is made poignantly clear at the end of the film, when she acknowledges that Eleanor should make her own way in the world and discover her identity apart from being a daughter.

The boys gather to chat about whether Clara (Gemma Arterton) should be allowed to join their vampire club

Clara’s targeted attacks against patriarchy aren’t limited to members of the vampire brotherhood. The exploitation and persecution of women is also seen in the human world of the film. Desperate and struggling women are seen throughout the first half of the film, from the lone, drugged girl that Eleanor discovers barely conscious on a park bench, to the sex-worker being taunted by promises of a cigarette by the pimp in the amusement park. Clara sees an opportunity to gather together these women and free them from the power of the odious pimp, by first seducing him, then killing him. Clara’s rescue of the girls may well be self-motivated, but by taking them out of the hands of the pimp and into her matriarchy at the Byzantium hotel, she provides them with a safer, cleaner and fairer environment in which to work. And in case we didn’t get that this act of violence was done for a good cause, she croons to his corpse, “the world will be a better place without you.”

While we might laud Clara’s vigilantism, we feel conflicted in our admiration for her badass defiance of convention in the high-tension scene where she kills Eleanor’s teacher. We struggle more with this kill than previous ones, as the teacher is well-intentioned, inspires his students and is genuinely concerned for Eleanor’s welfare. It’s clear that Clara undertakes this execution to keep their secret and preserve their liberty, but the way she relishes her torturous performance leading up to the kill is chilling. We get a brief insight into why Clara isn’t about to take any risks on letting this man live. She tells him that once “I made a fatal error. I was merciful.” That mercy lead to the rape of her daughter, and her punishment for saving her is to be pursued for over a century by a brotherhood that seeks their destruction. While the murder is not justifiable, it’s understandable that Clara would have some serious issues trusting educated white men in positions of authority, and would not give pause to eliminating the threat. This scene reveals the desperation and degradation of the individual – and the wider repercussions – when denied all agency and personhood.

On the hunt: Clara’s first kill as a newborn vampire

Female agency – or lack thereof – is a similarly prevalent theme in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Like Clara and Eleanor of Byzantium, the women in Amirpour’s film are searching for a way to free themselves from patriarchal oppression. Sex-worker Atti (Mozhan Marno) saves every cent and dreams of escaping Bad City to explore the places marked out on the huge map on her wall, and even the more privileged daughter of a wealthy family feels the need to conform to conventional beauty standards by having a nose-job. Only the Girl (i.e. the vampire protagonist played by Sheila Vand) moves freely about the city, addressing oppression with her own form of violent justice. The title of the film effectively draws on the inherent vulnerability ascribed to a lone woman at night in order to subvert our expectations of the narrative. In this film, the girl walking home alone is not the potential victim, but rather, the predator. In a nail-biting, but darkly comic illustration of this idea, the Girl meets a sweet, good-looking young man named Arash (Arash Marandi), drugged up from a party and dressed as Dracula. In his stupor he assures her that he wont hurt her, and in delicious moment of dramatic irony, we know that the Girl may well hurt him. Fortunately for Arash, something about his lost-kitten like vulnerability touches her, and a romantic connection between them develops.

Will she or won’t she? The Girl takes Arash home after finding him lost and alone one night

The Girl’s acts of violence are never gratuitous. Her first kill of the film is the pimp, Saeed, whom she witnesses taunt Atti and refuse to pay her, forcing her perform oral sex as an inducement. The Girl observes from a distance with eerie, omnipotent stillness. When Saeed later takes the Girl home and attempts to get physical with her (his seductive dance moves are met with a subtle eye-roll from the Girl which is just priceless), she attacks him, drinks him dry and steals his valuables to give to Atti later. As Ren Jender suggests, this vampire is a vigilante who stalks the streets of Bad City satiating her hunger only on exploitative men who mistreat desperate women.

Later in the film we see Arash’s drug-riddled father visit Atti. He watches her dance sensually, then insists that they share some drugs. When she refuses adamantly, making it clear she doesn’t want any of Hossein’s kind of “good time,” he decides to enforce the ‘fun’. In a moment looking disturbingly like a potential rape, he whips off his belt, binds Atti’s hands and violates her by forcibly injecting the drugs. While stalking the streets nearby, the Girl’s hypersensitive instincts alert her to Atti’s situation, and she swoops in like an avenging angel to show Hossein once and for all that no means no.

There is one terrifyingly menacing scene when the Girl probes a little boy with questions, asking if he is good. “Don’t lie” she hisses, terrorising him with the threat of taking out his eyes if he’s ever bad. It’s an easy conclusion to draw that by ‘good’ she means not growing up to become like the exploitative men of Bad City. The threatened eye-gouging punishment is a clear symbol of her preventing him from ever seeing, and thereby objectifying women. While there is no physical violence in this moment, the mere threat of it is enough to achieve her aim. The Girl is the stuff of misogynists’ nightmares.

“I’ll be watching,” the Girl warns the Street Urchin, and she always is

Both Byzantium and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night suggest that action against sexism and misogyny should be targeted and dramatic. Society has always deemed violent women as creatures to be feared, as by eschewing established gender structures they are unpredictable and uncontrollable, violating the supposedly natural laws that define their femininity. That’s not to say these films encourage bloody, criminal violence, rather they advocate the rejection of restrictive social constructs of femininity in redressing gender imbalance, using violent women characters as a potent symbol of feminist activism.

Melissa–Kelly Franklin is an international filmmaker, writer and actress collaborating in London, Bristol and Berlin. She holds an honours degree in English Literature and History, with one film soon to be released and another cooking in pre-production. Updates about her work can be found at melissa-kellyfranklin.tumblr.com and she occasionally tweets at @MelissaKelly_F.

“She Called Them Anti-Seed”: How the Women of ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Divorce Violence from Strength

In ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ the “strong female characters” are notable specifically for their aversion to violence. The film portrays its women as emotionally strong people who engage in violence only in self-defense, and only against the system that oppresses them.

Mad Max: Fury Road‘s Imperator Furiosa and the five wives look down upon the Citadel

This guest post by Cate Young appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

“Strong female character.”

It’s a phrase we hear over and over in pop culture, usually in reference to a female character in an action movie who has lots of guns. “Strong female characters” know how to fight, know how to use weapons and they best all the boys in confrontation. “Strong Female Characters” are effectively measured by their capacity for violence and their competence in the theatre of war.

But what does it mean when we equate strength with violence on a cultural level, and especially in relation to women’s place in society?

In Mad Max: Fury Road the “strong female characters” are notable specifically for their aversion to violence. The film portrays its women as emotionally strong people who engage in violence only in self-defense, and only against the system that oppresses them.

The film is set in a post-apocalyptic future desert wasteland where women have been reduced to various forms of slavery and their value is determined by what their bodies can produce. Whether it be breastmilk or babies, women’s position in this world is determined by their physical utility to the oppressive system they occupy. Furiosa is the notable exception, an Imperator who has presumably worked her way up the ranks of Immortan Joe’s highly patriarchal and hyper-masculine cultish new social order.

From the very beginning of the film we see how the women of this world conspicuously and determinedly avoid violence. We are introduced to the Five Wives initially through their absence; they have run away with Imperator Furiosa leaving behind a message for their captor Immortan Joe.

“Our Babies Will Not Be Warlords.” The Five Wives not only want to opt out of the violent system but also ensure that the system does not continue

These simple messages convey two main points: that the Wives are aware of their entitlement to freedom due to their inherent human dignity, and that they acknowledge that eliminating violence not only starts with them, but extends into preventing violence in the next generation. Their first act of resistance is a direct hit against the very violence that allows the oppressive system of this world to maintain itself; removing their future children from the violence of Immortan’s world.

“We Are Not Things.” Miss Giddy defends the Wives’ right to freedom

Later in the film, we see the Wives sidestep violence once again when the War Boy Nux attacks Furiosa as she is driving the War Rig. Furiosa initially wants to kill Nux, but the Wives tell her that there will be “no unnecessary killing” as Nux is brainwashed and “kamakrazee.” Essentially, the Wives know that even though Nux seeks to do them harm, he is simply a product of a violently oppressive system that positions violence as the way to salvation in Valhalla. He is a natural result of this system and a reflection of the fate they are trying to avoid for their own children, and they elect to toss him out of the Rig instead.

This conscious avoidance of violence is replicated in what I think is one of the most powerful scenes in the film: Splendid the Angharad, heavily pregnant with Immortan’s child, uses her body as a shield to protect Furiosa from Immortan’s bullets.

Splendid the Angharad as anti-patriarchal human shield

As I wrote in my initial review of the film:

She literally uses her body, the site of which has undoubtedly been home to rape and assault at the hands of Immortan Joe, (and now a constant reminder of such) as a weapon against him. She uses her increased patriarchal “value” against the very man who rules the patriarchal system of their world. To me, that was a powerful scene because it showed that even as her body had been used against her will to perpetuate a system that enslaved her, The Splendid Angharad did not view herself as property, but as an equal human being, capable of more than breeding warlords. Furiosa’s escape with the Wives was not so much a rescue as a partnership. She and the Wives worked together to achieve shared liberation in The Green Place.

The scene was a clever subversion of the hyper-violence of the film. Angharad’s body, a site of much violence, is used to prevent more of the same, as the other Wives cling to her to keep her safe. It shows that the Wives understand their relative position in this society, the role that ritual violence plays, and their ability to use it to their advantage.

Soon after this scene, Angharad dies, having fallen from the Rig. Furiosa and the Wives are devastated but know they must press-on. After Furiosa asks Toast The Knowing to the match their remaining bullets with their corresponding guns and she informs her that they have very little ammunition left, Dag and Cheedo note that Angharad used to call the bullets “anti-seed”:

“Plant one and watch something die.”

This relates thematically to the violence done upon the very earth on which they live by the men of the world. With reliance on guns and ammunition, the men have “killed the world” and now nothing grows. The state of the earth mirrors the violence that is done to the women and their bodies. It is fitting then that the women who are seeking salvation in “The Green Place” (that they later discover is barren) and are kept by Immortan as “breeders” due to the world’s low fertility would have very little “anti-seed” available to them.

The green place of Furiosa’s youth is now a barren swamp wasteland

When we are finally introduced to the Vuvalini, Furiosa’s previous clan of “Many Mothers” we discover that The Green Place has been decimated and that they are the last members of the clan to survive. These women however, many of them in their senior years are hardened to the world and perfectly acknowledge and understand that violence is sometimes necessary to achieve liberation.

The Vuvalini understand that violence is sometimes needed to achieve liberation

In confrontation with the War Boys and Immortan Joe during their journey back to the Citadel, the Vuvalini defend themselves and the Five Wives from attack on all fronts as the men descend upon them. While many of them fall, their bravery and willingness to sacrifice themselves in some ways mirrors the blind devotion that the War Boys show to Immortan Joe. The difference here is that they die in service to a liberatory ideal and not a cult of personality. The Vuvalini’s advanced age also serves to upturn our cultural notions of what strength entails. Even in the problematic context of strong women as violent, this rarely if ever includes the old. By being portrayed as capable and willing even in their age, the film redefines strength to encompass women who do not usually fall under this umbrella. Even better, it affords the Vuvalini, (including the Keeper of Seeds, and therefore life, strength, youth and vitality) the courtesy of demonstrating that their strength runs deeper than physical violence.

Finally, in the very last act of violence that we see a woman commit in the film, Furiosa confronts Immortan Joe and rips his breathing apparatus away, killing him and removing large chunks of his face. As one of the only acts of violence that can conceivably be perceived as revenge, Furiosa not only kills Immortan, but physically removes his face and thereby his identity, much in the same way that his violence against the Five Wives removed theirs.

Furiosa denies Immortan his identity through violence

It’s fitting that not only does Furiosa kill Immortan, but in light of the desolation of The Green Place she remembers from her youth, she takes up residence with the Wives in the Citadel at the end of the film. She essentially seeks to invert the history of the centre of this world’s violence by making it the centre of redemption instead. With access to clean water and greenery, she can reestablish the environmental richness of her youth, not just for her, but for all of the oppressed citizens of Immortan’s regime.

The Milking Mothers once again provide sustenance to the citizens of Immortan’s oppressive regime

In the end, these “strong female characters” are allowed to avoid violence as much as possible, engaging only as a last resort, and still emerge victorious.

They are allowed to divorce strength from the violence that we assume is inherent to that characteristic, and in the process highlight many of the problems with this larger cultural assumption.

Cate Young is a Trinidadian freelance writer and photographer, and author of BattyMamzelle, a feminist pop culture blog focused on film, television, music, and critical commentary on media representation. Cate has a BA in Photojournalism from Boston University and is currently pursuing her MA in Mass Communications so that she can more effectively examine the symbolic annihilation of women of colour in the media and deliver the critical feminist smack down. Follow her on twitter at @BattyMamzelle.

‘Monster’: A Telling of the Real Life Consequences for Violent Women

Throughout her life, Wuornos experienced horrific instances of gendered abuse, which eventually lead to a violent outlash at her unfair circumstances. ‘Monster’ vividly documents the life of a woman whose experiences under a dominant patriarchal culture racked with abuse, poverty, and desperation led to a life of crime, imprisonment, and eventually death.

This guest post by Danika Kimball appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

American film audiences love the idea of violence, especially in regard to justice. From Bruce Wayne’s masked forays as Batman, to Frank Underwood’s signature House of Cards sneer, pop culture and media landscapes are bombarded with the image of a vigilante bringing matters into their own hands to enact justice. But what is almost more widely revered is the concept of a woman taking matters into her own hands, as it defies societal norms on numerous levels.

We see this depiction in numerous films. To the audience’s delight, heroine Beatrix Kiddo takes vengeance on her abusers in the Kill Bill series, and Furiosa defiantly defends her right to redemption from evil doers in Mad Max: Fury Road. But sometimes, females who resort to violence aren’t celebrated, and there is perhaps no greater depiction of this than Charlize Theron’s embodiment of Aileen Wuornos in the widely acclaimed dramatic film, Monster.

Monster is a film based on the life of Aileen Wuornos, who was one of the first female serial killers in the United States. Wuornos, an impoverished former prostitute, was executed in Florida in October 2002 for the murder of six men, each of whom were her former customers. She was only the second woman in Florida and the tenth women in the United States to receive the death penalty since the landmark 1976 Supreme Court decision that restored capital punishment.

The film made an impact on most for its graphic depictions of murder, but upon re-watching the film 10 years later, the portrayal of Aileen’s life in Monster was a cruel visualization of the impacts of patriarchy, poverty, and the ways in which the criminal justice system fails violent women.

In the opening scenes of Monster, we see Aileen as an adult sitting under a busy highway overpass, replaying her life story. We see her as a young child, dreaming of being an icon like Marilyn Monroe, wealthy, loved, and the center of attention.

Her fantasy fades as she walks into a gay bar with the five dollars she had just earned from a John which she was determined to spend before she ended her life. It’s here she meets a woman named Selby, a person she would later devote to protect at any cost.

The pair eventually find solace in their shared loneliness and fall in love, which pushes Selby out of her compulsory heterosexuality. Aileen, finally having someone to care for, takes it upon herself to be a provider for Selby. The film follows Aileen’s struggle to support her newfound family, her efforts in making sure that Selby is happy, and the struggle to maintain her own dignity.

After being raped and brutalized by a client, Aileen kills him in self-defense, vowing to quit prostitution. She confesses her crime to Selby, as Selby has been angry with her for not supporting the two of them.

Aileen’s efforts to find a job prove to be difficult she has no marketable skills, and no job history outside of her years of prostitution. Any prospective employers reject her, some openly volatile, accosting her for wasting their time. We see throughout the film that everyone in Aileen’s life believe that no man will ever pay her for anything aside from her body.

With nowhere to turn, Aileen returns to a life of prostitution, each time killing and robbing her Johns more brutally than the last, as she is convinced they are all trying to harm her.

In this context, it becomes difficult for a viewer to see her actions as evil. Aileen’s actions almost appear to be rational, even moral decisions, when viewed through the lens of extreme gender and class oppression. We see this in her explanations to Selby later, where she implores that she is helping to protect the other women in the world, who might also be victimized these men. She says,

Who the fuck knows what God wants? People kill each other every day and for what? Hm? For politics, for religion, and THEY’RE HEROES! No, no… There’s a lot of shit I can’t do anymore, but killing’s not one of them. And letting those fucking bastards go out and rape someone else isn’t either!

Eventually Aileen’s murders catch up with her, and she is arrested at a biker bar. While speaking to Selby on the phone, Selby reveals incriminating information over the phone while the police are listening in. As her last display of protection, Aileen admits she committed the murders alone. During the subsequent trial, Selby testifies against her in the courtroom hearings. Aileen is executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002.

Part of what makes Monster so honest and relevant to feminists is the way that it recognizes and points to the patriarchal conditions in place that frame and constrain women’s choices, sometimes leading to a life of crime.

Throughout her life Aileen has been victimized, raped, and violence is a part of her day-to-day existence.

Emily Salisbury, a professor at Portland State University’s Criminology and Criminal Justice Program, suggests that patriarchal conditions are often a huge part of the reason for women’s participation in criminal activity and subsequent incarcerations. She remarks,

With the work of feminist scholars such as Mita Chesney Lynn, Kathleen Daly, Regina Arnold, Barbara Owen and many others, new ideas about female offending were established. The qualitative life history interviews that these scholars conducted with girls and women suggested that their lives leading up to criminal justice involvement were extremely complex and disadvantaged, with unique daily struggles…such as struggles with child abuse, depression, self-medicating behavior, self-hatred, parenting responsibilities, domestic violence and unhealthy intimate relationships. It’s argued that these problems create unique pathways to crime for women.

Many of the struggles listed are applicable to Aileen’s incarceration. In a documentary called Aileen Wuornos: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, director Nick Broomfield speaks to the infamous murderer, where she expresses that if her life leading up to adulthood had been more ideal, she wouldn’t have entered a life of crime in the first place. Family members and close friends remark throughout the film that she was the product of homelessness, violence, abuse, prostitution, poverty, incest, rape, and mental illness.

Throughout her life, Wuornos experienced horrific instances of gendered abuse, which eventually lead to a violent outlash at her unfair circumstances. Monster vividly documents the life of a woman whose experiences under a dominant patriarchal culture racked with abuse, poverty, and desperation led to a life of crime, imprisonment, and eventually death.

Though on-screen depictions of violent women are portrayed as empowering, as is the case with vengeful Furiosa in Mad Max, or the cathartic revenge plot for Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill, Aileen Wuornos’ story tells a different story for violent women. Monster illustrates that all too often, violent women’s pasts are rifled with oppression, and in defending themselves, they face consequences from legal systems that have proven to fail them in the past. For Aileen, violent self-preservation ended in demise.

Danika Kimball is a musician from the Northwest who sometimes takes a 30-minute break from feminism to enjoy a TV show. You can follow her on twitter @sadwhitegrrl or on Instagram @drunkfeminist.

The Violent Vagina: The Real Horror Behind the ‘Teeth’

It’s a conundrum, one that Dawn faces head (or vagina) on. She is forced to confront these opposing views, and her body reacts the only way it knows how, it bites the penis of society, it castrates the men that want to turn her into something she doesn’t want to be: a sexual young woman.

I get the imagery, but this movie poster doesn’t really have a horror vibe to it.

This guest post by Belle Artiquez appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Teeth (2007) is a horror film that was directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein based on the story of a young girl who finds out she has teeth inside her vagina. Mind blowing stuff, I know. It was not a good movie, it was not even a good story, in fact it was quite the opposite and anybody who has seen it will tell you that it was pretty much one of the worst movies ever. However, I’m one of those people who may hate watching a movie, may even feel bored during it, but will talk about it for months after if the correct themes are there. Teeth is one of those movies, and I’m still under the assumption that many people, myself included for a while, took away from the film something that was irrelevant, we missed the point, we missed the real issues the film was exploring, even if it was done in a very, very bad way.

Dawn, a young virginal, religious girl wishes to stay just that for as long as possible–society rejoices, she is following the rules! She meets a young man at her abstinence group and although he agrees to wait with her, on a romantic date with woodlands and waterfalls he ends up forcing himself on her because she’s still “pure.” Thus begins the sexual assaults literally thrown at the young Dawn. It is during this first forced sexual encounter with a boy she felt safe with that she realizes, to her and his horror, that she has teeth inside her vagina, that literally bite off the boy/rapist’s penis. We get a glimpse of his ripped-off genitals (and it’s not the only time we see gory, bloody castrated penis), so while this movie isn’t directed toward the male gaze in a conventional way (we never see Dawn’s naked body) it might be done in a horrific way.

Something new for the male gaze to enjoy…

Already I’m seeing a lot of messages and themes that are incredibly familiar. To start we have society’s golden girl, the girl that wants to wait, wants to be virtuous and good and clean so that when the right man comes along he won’t feel like he’s gotten soiled goods (I write gritting my own teeth…pun totally intended). Then we have sexual themes thrown at her; she is hit by the very thing that asked her to stay clean, virginal. She is forced to be sexual. She is inundated with sexual activity, as are all women who walk the earth–we are bombarded with images of sexualized women in underwear, in TV and magazine advertisements, in film and music videos, these are telling us that this is what society wants, sexual women. But we know that society also wants us to be virginal women to save ourselves. It’s a conundrum, one that Dawn faces head (or vagina) on. She is forced to confront these opposing views, and her body reacts the only way it knows how, it bites the penis of society, it castrates the men that want to turn her into something she doesn’t want to be: a sexual young woman.

I know, seeing your vagina for the first time can be bizarre, especially if there’s teeth in there, but I promise–you will get over it.

Not only is Dawn violated by a little boy who thought he was man enough to get some from a girl who actively told him she wouldn’t give him anything, she is also abused by her gynecologist, a healthcare professional who is far from professional. During this scene I felt extremely uncomfortable, it was too…familiar. Dawn seeks medical advice about her vaginal teeth, telling the doctor that she thinks ‘there might be something weird going on’ and I’m only going to assume that it was her first visit (she’s a virgin remember) so probably felt a wave of emotions from fear to pure horror at what was going to happen. Many first visits for women are filled with these emotions. But when her doctor takes his gloves off and continues to mess around down there, things really get weird and the wonderful doctor ends up having his fingers bitten off (serves him right too). Now, I’m not going to say this was exactly like my first experience with a gynecologist, far from it, however, it was equally as uncomfortable, and to this day I feel like something was amiss. I was nervous,very very nervous. I was literally a ball of emotions, on my own, and I’m only going to assume the male doctor noticed this because instead of offering a female nurse, or even trying to make me feel less exposed, he called in two female nurses to literally hold my legs open as he examined me, with no blanket, no comfort, just a horrifying shame that has been with me since that day (over a decade ago). So I understand why that scene was so horrific for me and not other people who laughed their way through it, but this only serves to prove that women are capable of understanding the discomfort of the plot, of the numerous sexual assaults Dawn faces, the reaction she has to her own body (hating and simultaneously fearing it) and then her final understanding that she has to own it, be in control of it and her sexuality. She has to have agency in her violent vagina because she knows how powerful it is.

If only we all had her power, and yes it pretty much is a super power!

She arrives, shaken and terrified after her gyno visit at a boys house, she takes a bath and comes out to find that said boy has lit around a hundred candles, stuck on ridiculous music and is waiting expectantly for sex. She is still shaken (who can blame her?) so he offers her a pill and wine to relax, or drug her. She assumes he has her best interest at heart so accepts, I know right? More fool her..but I did say it was a terrible movie. It gets even worse as this encounter unfolds. She falls asleep/unconscious only to wake and find him fondling her breasts, and although he asks her for consent and she tells him not to stop she is still under the influence of drugs and alcohol so cannot legally give consent. They have sex. He ‘conquers’ her, becomes the ‘hero’ (his words!) and gets to keep his penis. The next morning things don’t go so smooth, during consensual sex he answers the phone still inside her (big mistake) and begins to gloat and brag about it. His penis meets the same fate as the previous two men and he ends up being not quite the conquering hero he first thought, he will be stroking this male ego no longer.

I honestly don’t know why there’s a crunch, but again, bad movie.

From here Dawn eventually rids herself of her abstinence ring; if society wants a sexual girl they were going to get one, but only on her terms. If men are going to force it, they’re going to lose it, simple as that. The male fear of powerful vaginas really takes on a whole new meaning with this film; it portrays the many anxieties men and the patriarchy have where women are concerned. If women start to realize their inherent power, their violent vagina’s, then some men fear they will be cut down, castrated because of it. The fear lies within the notion that both sexes cannot have equal control. He will take (think virginity), she will give, not the other way around. That’s the dynamic society is used to, so a horror within the film is also connected to the fact that men fear the vagina and its power, they fear what will happen to them and their masculinity if the vagina (women) acknowledges its own power. The film blatantly gives shots of castrated male genitals, bloodied, and disgusting (I’m not a gore fan), and while many men will feel a kind of sympathy pain for the characters (who are rapists by the way), and apologise for showing it in blogs because the writer too felt a pain when posting it, I’m left wondering why women are expected to watch rape in film and TV and not feel the same? Because let’s be honest, it’s not everyday that we see mutilated male genitals, but the violent rape of a women which portrays the same kind of genital pain…yeah that’s pretty common. But for some reason neither of these things represent the same pain.

Dawn indeed does end up using her violent vagina as a tool of revenge and protection for other women. She actively engages with men whose intentions are not good just so she can castrate them in order to protect the future women these men would harm. She totally owns it, she takes on the violent nature of her unique vagina and uses it for good.

Now that’s the face of a woman who is owning her sexuality, even if it is a violent one!

Teeth was categorized as a feminist horror film, and I can see why many people didn’t quite agree with that–Dawn is sexually assaulted a lot, she is not in control of her own sexual behaviour (for most of the movie) and she certainly isn’t a feminist herself; I don’t think the literal biting off of men’s penises constitutes as feminist film. However, her having to come to terms with a part of herself that society both worships and fears is quite the feminist argument. One that rings true to nearly every woman on the planet. On the surface though this film just seems like a crude horror that involves a deadly vagina, a violent, razor sharp vagina. But maybe the horror of this film lies somewhere in the messages it portrays; maybe the real horror is the shit this poor girl, who just wanted to play by the rules, has to put up with on a daily basis, and as such, what women everywhere have little option but to just deal with, from the constant sexualization of women in every aspect of society, the slut shaming, the butt grabs instead of handshakes, the boob stares instead of eye contact, the cat-calling and street harassment, to the flat out sexual assault, the (not at all) blurred lines of consent, the daily beating down of women for having vaginas and showing some skin. Maybe that was the true horror of this movie and not the fact that a girl who endured all of this had the ability to cut some men down with the very thing they thought they had control of and a right to: her violent and powerful vagina.

Don’t they all…

Belle Artiquez graduated from film and literature studies in Dublin and since has continued her analysis and critique of film, TV, and literature (mainly in the area of gender politics and representations) as well as cultural and societal critiques on such blog spots as Hubpages and WordPress.

‘Drop Dead Fred’ and the Gendering of Comic Anarchy

There is a deeper truth here: by setting high expectations of men and offering models of liberated behavior that can be imitated, a strong male role model can be a young girl’s best mental defense against patriarchal conditioning. In the absence of one, Elizabeth has created an imaginary friend who models her mental resistance, gendering her own inner anarchic impulses as male.

For the uninitiated, Rik Mayall is what happens when you take a classic English punk from the Sex Pistols era, and tool him up with the comic attitude of Bill Hicks and the comic style of Jim Carrey. Though part of a wave of “alternative comedy,” it was always Mayall who had the Hicksian snarl and the burning, Goatboy-style obsession with his own abjection. A major reason why Hicks found overnight comic stardom in the UK, after years struggling to gain acceptance in the USA, is because Rik Mayall had cultivated the British public’s taste for ferocious comedy anarchism. Mayall and Hicks are products of convergent evolution: unrelated creatures evolving resemblance from environmental similarities. Specifically: Rik Mayall and Bill Hicks were politely raised, intelligent, articulate, straight, white boys of above average height and looks, who spontaneously combusted into epic, punk rock guiltsplosions of belligerent basic decency and self-satirizing privilege, while feeling kinda bad that their raging libidos tempted them to objectify women. Add a feverish energy homaging his beloved Wile E. Coyote, that can only be compared to a punk Jim Carrey, and you’ve got the slapHicks, Rik Mayall. In 1991’s Drop Dead Fred, Mayall starred in a sharp deconstruction of the early-onset socialization of girls to reject their own anarchic impulses – one that films like Seth MacFarlane’s Ted have recycled into a far duller exploration of a man’s choice between his loudly celebrated childish impulses and his Mommy-lover-lady. In Drop Dead Fred the heroine’s own anarchic impulses, comic sense and anger at her mother have been more acceptably regendered as Mayall’s “Fred,” while she herself can be squeezed into an icon of servile ladylike behaviour.

Drop Dead Fred opens with Marsha Mason’s patriarchal mother reading a fairy-tale to the young Elizabeth, telling her that the princess received her happy ending “because she was a good little girl. If she had been naughty, the prince would have run away.” Young Elizabeth considers for a moment, then fires back “what a pile of shit,” healthily immune to social pressures to value herself by a man. Flash forward to adulthood, and Phoebe Cates’ Elizabeth has become pressured into the ideal Mommy-lover-lady of patriarchy, wearing demure floral gowns and fussing over her paternalist, condescending husband’s clothing and shaving. Gradually, we learn that Elizabeth’s mother had blamed her anarchic, destructive behavior in childhood for making her distant father run away, like the prince of the fairy tale who abandons naughty princesses. With her imaginary friend, Drop Dead Fred, being sealed away in a jack-in-the-box on the very day that her father departs, and with her father sharing Fred’s English accent in an otherwise American cast, the film wears its Daddy issues on its sleeve.

Drop Dead Fred is a Dream Father who is a radically present, anti-materialist, anti-provider, implying criticism of the traditional role of fathers, in the same way that the film challenges the traditional conditioning of girls to passive and submissive “goodness.” By standing up to Elizabeth’s mother in all the ways her own father fails to, Fred models self-assertion to her, rather than grooming her to self-sacrificing compliance. There is a deeper truth here: by setting high expectations of men and offering models of liberated behavior that can be imitated, a strong male role model can be a young girl’s best mental defense against patriarchal conditioning. In the absence of one, Elizabeth has created an imaginary friend who models her mental resistance, gendering her own inner anarchic impulses as male.

The adult Elizabeth must finally learn that the sealing away of Drop Dead Fred represented the sealing up of the part of herself that society had coded as masculine: namely, her assertiveness, her anti-conformity and her anarchic disdain for social norms. When her unfaithful husband boasts that he has Elizabeth under control, he feeds her green pills to kill her “imaginary friend” and force her back into tranquilized Mommy-lover-lady perfection, pills that represent rewarded conformity as much as the blue pills of The Matrix. While its patriarchal mother is a figure to be resisted, Drop Dead Fred also showcases positive female friendship and solidarity between Phoebe Cates’ Elizabeth and Carrie Fisher’s Janie. Janie unquestioningly accepts Elizabeth’s accounts of Fred and seeks to fight him on her behalf, curtly telling her older lover that this is “girl stuff.” Yes, apart from the imaginary Fred, all the men of this film are the stuffy, unimaginative equivalent to mainstream cinema’s Mommy-lover-ladies, while battling your anarchic imaginary friend is “girl stuff.” I would say that Drop Dead Fred is “Ted for girls” or “Fight Club for kids,” but it predates both.

Rarely has a showbiz marriage been more divinely inspired than Drop Dead Fred‘s between Elizabeth Livingston’s story of imaginary, anarchic male role models, and Rik Mayall’s self-deprecating punk. A man whose entire career was founded on savage interrogations of toxic masculinity, Mayall was offered a chance to reimagine himself through Elizabeth’s perspective, as a being whose natural anarchism was a liberating force for women. It is impossible to overemphasize how intensely Rik Mayall’s self-authored (or any male-authored) image of Rik Mayall lacked all sense that Mayall’s characters could be good for women. He blossoms visibly in Drop Dead Fred. Watch his interactions with the young Elizabeth. Yes, it’s manic Mayall, but see how wholly his energy is focussed on responding enthusiastically to whatever the little girl gives him? See how visibly thrilled and emboldened that little girl is by his attentive encouragement? See how Phoebe Cates reveals entirely unexpected comic talent as a mime, when wrestling an invisible Fred, and even the brilliantly brassy Carrie Fisher gives her wildest comic performance in a knock-down, drag-out imaginary fight with exactly the physical humor that women are routinely, subtly discouraged from? Rik Mayall was finally cast as a catalyst for female self-expression, so he catalyzed every actress in the film to gleeful unruliness.

Anarchy is a state of mind, not a material state, as many Marxists learn when attempting to enforce their materialist philosophies of antimaterialism (so much devastating humanitarian tragedy that could have been avoided if communist regimes carefully studied “Rik the accidentally authoritarian anarchist snot” from Mayall’s sitcom The Young Ones and cultivated a sense of thunderingly obvious irony). The point is not to sink a houseboat, but to value the adventure over the boat. Not to chop a little girl’s hair, but to teach her that it is irrelevant to her worth. Note also that, while playfully childish sexuality is part of his persona, Fred never sexualizes Phoebe Cates’ Elizabeth. Not ironically. Not jokingly-not-jokingly, to subtly put her in her place. He is her anarchist Dream Father, and he Dream Fathers her with wholehearted focus on her personhood and self-assertion. Rarely, if ever, has a larger-than-life comedian given a performance more generously dedicated to the actual purpose of his role. If you can see Rik freaking Mayall, decked out in hideous fashion and wildly clashing hair that is as classically punk as it is childish, earnestly mentoring a little girl in the joys of antimaterialist, anarcho-punk self-actualization without being moved, then surely you have a heart of stone. Far from selling out, Rik Mayall’s Hollywood family film was the most truly punk statement he ever made.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgh27gCgiQw”]

Drop Dead Fred finally justifies the endlessly abused loyalty of women like me to male comedians like Rik Mayall, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Monty Python, Trey Parker or the Farrelly Brothers. Like the character of Drop Dead Fred himself, each combines an off-putting, abrasive surface sexism with more profound lapses in empathy for female perspectives, but their comic purpose remains egalitarian mental liberation. As women, we are conditioned to express admiration for such men by rewarding them sexually, rather than by identifying, imitating and integrating the qualities we are actually drawn to. As little Elizabeth might say, what a pile of shit.

Brigit McCone loves her some comic anarchy. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and clicking this link