Racism – Page 5 – Bitch Flicks

The Academy: Kind to White Men, Just Like History

The hunters write history. The hunters glorify themselves. The hunters’ history infiltrates itself into the very fabric of our cultural narrative, so we’re only comfortable with seeing the complexities of the hunters, and the simplicity of the lions.

It is what we’ve been trained for since birth.

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Last year, after Django Unchained was largely snubbed at the Oscars (compared to the Golden Globes), I looked at the history of the Black actors/characters who were awarded by the Academy over the years. The results were troubling, but not surprising–much like the infographic The Huffington Post posted today about what roles that women won for over the years (here is Feministing‘s take on the findings).

It’s fairly clear what roles Hollywood is most comfortable with: for Black characters, passivity, tired stereotypes, and villainy get the highest awards. For women, wives/daughters/mothers/sisters/girlfriends–all roles in relationship to men–are rewarded.

Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. (The Black actors up for 2014 Academy Awards--Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong'o--play a kidnapped freed man/slave and slave.) — Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. (The Black actors up for 2014 Academy Awards–Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong’o, and Barkhad Abdi–play a kidnapped freed man/slave, slave, and Somali pirate, respectively.) *Click to enlarge.*

For men (who are almost all white), the category with the most winners is “Historical.” For men, there are countless historical roles to fill, so filmmakers can tell the stories of those who have shaped our history and culture–or at least, those whom we see and are told about. And this has been a history that has been largely unkind to Black people and women.

In an interview, late author Chinua Achebe quoted the following proverb: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

It is what we’ve been trained for since birth.

This is a history that the lions have had to fight and claw their way out of, yet we don’t see them in Hollywood. The lions write, the lions pitch, but the hunters are not interested. (And the hunters have the money, from generations of oppressing the lions.)

I’d be happy to see the hunters start telling the lions’ history, even just a little bit (I salivate at the thought of Quentin Tarantino taking on suffragettes).

Three of this year’s Best Picture nominations (12 Years a Slave, Wolf of Wall Street, and American Hustle) are films that are based on real stories–and each of these stories, on some level, is about white men fucking people over so they can get rich. And at the end of these stories, the white men don’t really get punished. This is our history.

This is our history.

So how can we blame the Academy for reflecting this history back at us? Art is imitating life, and life keeps imitating art. If the two are so inextricably related (which they are), where do we go from here?

I’m not one who argues that it’s all about the Bechdel Test, or that we need to demand the Perfect Feminist Film. Some of the most potentially empowering films that I’ve seen (that feature female and Black protagonists) would be solidly placed in the “exploitation” category (Blaxploitation especially). We need to demand female and Black anti-heroes if we want true, complex characters and stories.

See this, this, and this. (Who gave the lions a dictation machine, anyway?!)

As I argued in regard to 12 Years a Slave, we have barely started to deal with our country’s history, and we need to, desperately. But still–the only white American actor who is prominently featured in the film was Brad Pitt, who plays a heroic Canadian. It’s hard to face.

In American Hustle and Wolf of Wall Street, the white male protagonists are complex–they aren’t good, but they are whole. They are criminals. They are cheaters. But audiences kind of like them–or at the very least, accept them.

Our goal as lions, then, may not be to just tell our stories. We need to become hunters, and find those stories and demand that they be told. We need to face a history in which Black hunters and female hunters have been punished, and white male hunters have prevailed. We may not be able to rewrite that history, but we can live within it, and force it into our cultural narrative. (Or, as my husband said after we sat through previews last weekend, “They could just quit telling World War II stories for a while.”)

But here we are, in 2014, facing how the Academy’s choices clearly reflect our history. What do we do with this? We should get angry at history, and attempt to rewrite our future. We should be angry at an American history that has oppressed women and Blacks since its inception.

If Wolf of Wall Street reflects modern history, which it does, we see that white men are still winning (case in point: I can’t use the term “winning” without thinking about a white male actor who “allegedly assaulted, threatened, harassed, abused, and—in one incident—shot women” and yet still was the highest-paid actor on television in 2010).

If we want to tell revolutionary women’s and Black people’s stories, we’ll have to settle for a lot of tragedies. There aren’t slaps on the wrists or a few months in a cushy white-collar prison for these historical figures. There’s torture, lynching, and shame. And the villains are almost always white men.

So we’re back to the hunter. And what we know about hunters is they don’t come back bragging about their losses; they brag about their wins. It’s time for them to stop winning, and for the lions to be heard. Then, and only then, can we expect the Academy to reflect a new reality.

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

‘The Great Beauty’ of Little Temptations

‘The Great Beauty’ (‘La Grande Belleza’ in its native Italy)–winner of Best Foreign Language Film at The Golden Globes (and nominated in the same category for an Academy Award)–could easily have been an example of what the great film critic Pauline Kael called “The Come-Dressed-As-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties”: European films in which very wealthy, attractive people are depressed in spite of their beautiful homes, expensive clothes, and jet-set lifestyles. These films, especially to contemporary audiences, can seem like at any moment they will cross the line into parody, with one of the characters spoofing an old Weill/Brecht tune, “Oh no, not another opulent location! Oh no, not another expensive, tailored suit! Oh no, not more sex with gorgeous, unhappy people!”

The Great Beauty (La Grande Belleza in its native Italy)–winner of Best Foreign Language Film at The Golden Globes (and nominated in the same category for an Academy Award)–could easily have been an example of what the great film critic Pauline Kael called “The Come-Dressed-As-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties“: European films in which very wealthy, attractive people are depressed in spite of their beautiful homes, expensive clothes, and jet-set lifestyles. These films, especially to contemporary audiences, can seem like at any moment they will cross the line into parody, with one of the characters spoofing an old Weill/Brecht tune, “Oh no, not another opulent location! Oh no, not another expensive, tailored suit! Oh no, not more sex with gorgeous, unhappy people!”

Superficially, The Great Beauty resembles these films with a dissatisfied main character at its center: Jep (played by the director, Paolo Sorrentino‘s longtime star, Toni Servillo) a celebrity journalist who wrote one acclaimed novel forty years before and has been dining out on his reputation ever since. Servillo, after making a delayed appearance in the film (in a great entrance, he steps out of a line dance at his own chaotic, noisy birthday party to light the first of countless cigarettes) is in nearly every scene that follows, framed in the middle of the breathtaking scenery and lush interiors of Rome. The film makes us want to visit, but as one great visual outdoes another we realize outside of the cinematographer, Luca Bigazzi’s, lens the city could never live up to this ideal.

Beautiful Scenery and Beautiful Suits — Beautiful scenery and beautiful suits

The man who has every social and material advantage but remains unhappy is a staple in every art form: Edwin Arlington Robinson’s “Richard Cory” (also a Simon and Garfunkel song), The Kinks’ “A Well Respected Man,” the Jack Nicholson character in Five Easy Pieces and Shakespeare’s Hamlet are just a few examples. The character is always a man: women exist in these works to either support him, betray him, or both. The popularity of “the people who have everything but really have nothing” can also be seen, in TV shows like Downton Abbey and, back in the 80s, Dallas and Dynasty, as an attempt at social control. The message in these works for those without money or power is: “Even if you had what you want, you still wouldn’t be happy.”

Sorrentino avoids these pitfalls, in part because the energy and fantasy-level luxury that make up the characters’ lives are allowed to dazzle us: even Jep’s mid-rise apartment and well-tended garden overlook the ruins of The Colosseum. We understand why Jep would spend forty years in this world, but after a few parties we come to understand why he is sick of them. We see Jep is a thoughtful and decent man, but weak, like Lily Bart in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth who said, “We resist the great temptations, but it is the little ones that eventually pull us down.”

Servillo’s charming, insinuating performance also saves the film from becoming a chorus of “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me”: in spite of his discontent the character never raises his voice: his life is easy and enviable so he never has to. The movie is also a portrait of Italy at a critical juncture. Not just the main character, who often thinks back to his first love, but others in the film, like the country itself, are trapped in the past: a “princess” rents herself and her husband out to parties where her bloodline will add some social cachet, even though they live in a cramped, ugly apartment–underneath the glittering museum her childhood home has become.

Instead of positing that the characters will find some missing and essential part of themselves by revisiting their memories (as so many films have posited before it) The Great Beauty sidesteps that possibility: Jep sees an opportunity to find out why his first love left him when her husband mentions she kept a diary, then in the next breath he tells Jep he threw it away. The princess’s empty, pristine old bedroom in the museum will never be her room again, just a backdrop for taped audio about the history of her family the museum-goers listen to.

The film avoids disaster in other ways. I was afraid the little person we first see as part of the raucous, debauched party at the beginning, who then regains consciousness the morning after at the now empty site, might be the art-film trope Peter Dinklage’s character in Living in Oblivion described as “Make it weird. Put a dwarf in it!” But blue-haired Dadina (Giovanna Vignola) turns out to be Jep’s editor–his boss–at the magazine where he works. She regularly eats with him at the dining table inside her office and is one of his closest–and in one scene, most tender–friends.

Some scenes had the potential to devolve into the misogyny that often accompanies this type of storyline, as when Jep interviews a Marina Abramović-like performance artist and gets her to admit she doesn’t know what her quasi-mystical pronouncements mean, or the scene when, after a fellow-partygoer provokes him, he dismantles her illusions point by point. But Jep is quiet and matter-of-fact in these scenes: he has none of Jack Nicholson’s relish in denigrating women. He asks the partygoer several times to stop asking him to analyze her before he lets her have it. When he does, we see, like Truman Capote before him, Jep’s sojourn in the world of celebrity hasn’t dimmed the novelist’s gift for observation.

At one point Jep makes a stripper (who is the daughter of an old acquaintance, the strip club’s manager) his companion, but she’s in her 40s, 20-something years younger than Jep, but not the 25-year-old we’ve come to expect in these roles. As other partygoers gossip over her spangled catsuit, he treats her as an intelligent apprentice in the art of negotiating the highest social circles. They don’t have a sexual relationship. Earlier Jep falls into bed with a woman–again much more age-appropriate than she would be in an American film–and we can see these encounters don’t have the same appeal for him as they might have when he was younger. But the film is devoid of the hostility toward women we’ve come to take for granted in similar films. He’s playful with the woman, asking, “What did you say your job was?”

She answers, “Me? I’m rich.”

“That’s a good job!”

Sorrentino criticizes the vanity of Jep’s circle, showing a botox party (which makes looking at some of subsequent close-ups of middle-aged actresses in the film difficult–something Sorrentino might have done intentionally) but later Sorrentino exposes Jep’s vanity as well, when we see his torso usually covered by a smart suit jacket (often in a primary color) wrapped in the velcro equivalent of Spanx.

In this film Sorrentino also focuses on nuns and clergy who wander in and out of the frame like birds–or aliens: the young nun at the botox party wants the shot so her hands will stop sweating, and a Mother-Teresa-like figure collapses on the bare floor of Jep’s elegant apartment to sleep. Sorrentino’s interest in religious figures reminded me of Luis Buñuel’s obsession, though Sorrentino seems to see them as clueless and out-of-step (during a party one cleric can speak only about recipes) and not, as Buñuel did, an active harm to the culture. That difference may be a statement about the Catholic Church’s disappearing relevance as much as about the two directors’ style and tone.

As much as I loved the film: at two hours and 20 minutes it’s about a half an hour too long. We could use fewer of the parties. We get it: they’re not as fun as they might seem. The film also falters in a brief scene in which a delegation from Africa (who come to see the Mother Teresa figure) are dressed as if they were extras in a Tarzan movie. I’m a little disappointed that the film won The Golden Globe over Blue Is The Warmest Color (which isn’t nominated for an Oscar, because of a technicality). The Great Beauty is a worthy film, but it’s also one that I recommended to my mother, which I most definitely would not with Blue. I’d love if the “Best Foreign Language Film” reflected how exciting and innovative the greatest films from non-English speaking countries are these days.

Still, film is a tricky medium: a movie about a character without redeeming qualities (like The Wolf of Wall Street) can seem like a paean to outrageously bad and sometimes criminal behavior (especially when its real-life protagonist continues to make money from his misdeeds) no matter how much the filmmakers disavow those intentions. Movies about obtuse misanthropes like Nebraska and Inside Llewyn Davis can seem obtuse and misanthropic themselves. The Great Beauty is about a bored, jaded man but doesn’t leave its audience bored–or jaded which is itself an achievement.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxWdwx5Hkiw”]

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

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

‘Too Much Estrogen’: The Golden Globes, Chris Christie and Men Who Don’t Want to Share Culture by Soraya Chemaly at The Huffington Post

How Does Race Impact Who Wins at the Golden Globes? by Monica Castillo at Bitch Media

The Big O: And the Oscars’ Winning (and Losing) Female Nominees Are… by Susan Wloszcyna at Women and Hollywood

Characters Who Have, or Just Think About Having Abortions Often Die by Roxanne Khamsi at Slate

Study: Women are Taking Over Television, While Movies Continue to Leave Them Out by Katey Rich at Vanity Fair

What Happened to the Women Directed Films from the Sundance Class of 2013? by Serena Donadoni at Women and Hollywood

They give out oscars for racism now? by Adrienne Keene at Native Appropriations

Number of Women Oscar Nominees Remains Low by Rachel Larris at Women’s Media Center

EGOT Actress Rita Moreno Talks Oscars, Racial Typecasting, and Getting a SAG Life Achievement Award by Susana Polo at The Mary Sue

The Oldest Surviving Animated Film Was by a German Woman in 1926 (“The Adventures of Prince Achmen”) at Vestal Virgins on tumblr

Five Sundace Shorts Directors You’ve Never Heard Of–Yet by Ally T.K. at Bitch Media

Celluloid Ceiling Report: No Progress in 16 Years for Women in Hollywood by Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood

Sorry, ‘HIMYM’: Casual TV racism won’t fly in the social media age by Audra Schroeder at The Daily Dot

Why Critics Can’t Handle the Female Anti-Hero by Michelle Juergen at Policy Mic

“Saving Mr. Banks” Erases P.L. Travers’ Queer Identity, Misses Amazing Opportunity for Representation by Laura Mandanas at Autostraddle

25 Women Poised to Lead the Culture in 2014 by Michelle Dean at Flavorwire

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

Black Girls Rock The World

BET’s Black Girls Rock! Awards ceremony last week was a magnificent and much-needed celebration of the social and cultural achievements of Black women: in politics and sport, music and local activism. It’s absolutely disgusting that such an important and wonderful event was marred by white racism.

BET’s Black Girls Rock! Awards ceremony last week was a magnificent and much-needed celebration of the social and cultural achievements of Black women: in politics and sport, music and local activism. The ceremony is a 90-minute showcase of monumental talent, guts, and determination among women of color, and it’s absolutely disgusting that such an important and wonderful event was marred by white racism.

As a white person watching this event, what struck me most was this: These women were not addressing me. Although I’m trans and queer, I otherwise fall into the coveted “white males aged 18-35” demographic, and all mainstream media content is aimed squarely at me. Our society demonstrably:

And then turns around, smiling sweetly, and claims to be “post-racial.” In this environment, only the most assimilationist and unthreatening of Black voices are given a platform. Will Smith stars in bootrstrappy neocon fairytales. Crash passes for nuanced discourse around race in Hollywood. Kanye West is ridiculed for publicly speaking truths about racism in the US.

There’s an ugly mass silencing of Black voices in white America. That’s what makes Black Girls Rock! so necessary and so compelling.

I’m a white guy, surrounded by white privilege the way I’m surrounded by air, so I didn’t start watching the show for its political content, but out of sheer narcissism: I was at the taping of the opening performance by my beloved Janelle Monáe, and I just wanted to see my own face on TV (you get a split-second glimpse of me at the end of Monáe’s song). I kept watching because it is so unusual for me to witness people of color talking in this way – to, from, and for their community. The women onstage were talking about the intersectional web of systemic and individual oppressions faced by Black women in America, and they were doing this in the context of an awards show. As an avid Academy hate-watcher, I’m accustomed to treating awards shows as the smarmy, self-congratulatory industry circle-jerks that most of them are. This, though! This was a genuinely uplifting celebration of legitimately inspiring work by truly awesome individuals.

Here was the incredible Marian Wright Edelman, Mississippi’s first African-American woman lawyer and a tireless activist for underserved children even well into her seventies.

Here was anti-violence activist Ameena Matthews, speaking so powerfully about being a Black Muslim woman that she gave me chills.

Here was TV writer Mara Brock Akil, declaring, “Black women, even if nobody else sees you, I SEE YOU.”

Here was Misty Copeland, a Black woman dancing classical ballet with otherworldly beauty.

Here were three astonishing young women who have made astounding contributions to local activism in their communities, including one little girl who created her own (female, Black) superhero to combat pollution.

As Awesomely Luvvie put it, “Every moment felt like a highlight.” Amber Riley, Queen Latifah, Venus Williams, and Jennifer Hudson were among the stars present, and pretty nearly everything about the show was wonderful. Talented, tireless African-American women were lifting one another up instead of being forced to cater to white supremacy, and it was beautiful.

So, of course, white people had to throw a hissy fit.

This is the ugly reality of racism’s MO in US society. Staggering forces operate socially, economically, politically, and culturally to maintain white supremacy in every arena, and if everpeople of color do something that is not directly and primarily aimed at perpetuating this, white people start accusing them of racism. It would be funny if it wasn’t borderline-genocidal.

Fellow white people, I am begging you: don’t make this about you. Go watch the Black Girls Rock! show. Give BET your eyeballs, your time, and your attention. When I sat down to watch the show, I was only in it for myself, but I got a humbling and eye-opening exposure to some phenomenal women who are powerful forces for good in our society. May Black girls continue to rock the boat, the house, and the world.

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

Facing the Horror of ’12 Years a Slave’

Spirituals and folk songs were essential in African American history–they allowed slaves to communicate and to collaborate. They were a subtle way to resist slavery and develop community (which was exactly what chattel slavery sought to demolish). White people–as the aforementioned overseer demonstrates–often co-opt these important black cultural pastimes, which is something to keep in mind as we seek to hear and see–but not take–African American stories.

Written by Leigh Kolb

As we walked out of the theater from seeing 12 Years a Slave–still tear-stained and overwhelmed–a wealthy-looking white couple filed out behind us.

“That didn’t seem like 12 years,” the woman said.

“It seemed like it to me,” the man replied.

My husband and I discussed which comment was worse–hers, that seemed to diminish Solomon’s terrible journey, or his, that indicated the film was too boring or long.

I wondered what would have compelled this couple to come see this particular film. Awards buzz? Prestige? I don’t know, but I was both horrified and unsurprised at their reaction.

While I don’t imagine their response was shared by most, or even many, audience members, there was something about that retirement-aged white man in a crisp popped collar that made me seethe.

I think, more than anything, this couple represents the response of so many whites in the face of our brutal history.

Because our American history–built on slavery–is so frequently whitewashed, we are not confronted enough with our short-term memory loss and the privilege of not hearing or seeing the cruelties of our recent past.

White audiences rarely have to feel uncomfortable. We are typically the protagonists, the victors, the complex characters. Our stories are universal–or at least they’re marketed as such.

Hopefully, this is starting to change.

12 Years a Slave is the first time a slave narrative has been given the Hollywood treatment, which is almost unbelievable. The slave narrative at its very core is a hero’s journey, and the fact that filmmakers have not looked to these first-person accounts as screenplay material points to a much larger issue in our society.

White America is so deeply ignorant and/or ashamed of its history, these stories are pushed aside, relegated to African American Literature classes. These stories are otherized, even though they are our history.

12 Years a Slave–which will surely be nominated for and win its fair share of awards–is an amazing film. The acting and Steve McQueen’s directing are brilliant, the score is perfect, and its importance is poignant. It is interesting, though, that the director and most actors are not American (with the exception of Brad Pitt, who plays the good-guy Canadian who helps Solomon regain freedom). Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays Solomon, is incredible. Michael Fassbender’s Edwin Epps is horrifying.

It’s difficult to see our white American selves as the enemy, and for black American directors, I can’t imagine the obstacles against telling those stories. (I’ll think there’s been some kind of real breakthrough when a Nat Turner film gets made for mass audiences.)

Solomon, kidnapped and sold into slavery, with Epps

One of the powerful aspects of the film is its score. The first half of the film features Hans Zimmer’s punctuated horror music, which seems mildly out of place but also perfect, because we are watching a horror film. The vocal music we hear–painfully infectiously–is a white overseer singing “Run, N-gger, Run.” It fits well with the horror theme. This folk song, however, began as a song that slaves would sing, and then it was co-opted as a threat instead of a chant. At this point in the film, everything that Solomon had, that was his, is gone and has been sold.

Another perfect soundtrack choice during these scenes is when Bible verses and sermons are spoken as an abused slave is wailing, or the cruel overseer is spewing pejoratives. This is a not-so-subtle reminder that slavers and those who supported slavery used Christianity to defend the practice.

We only start hearing slave spirituals and folk songs sung by the slaves themselves about halfway through the film–in resignation, almost, as if there is nothing we all can do except cope with the terrible situation. When Solomon starts singing along to “Roll Jordan Roll” after a fellow slave dies in the cotton field, we know he has changed.

Solomon’s story isn’t over there, thankfully, but when he starts singing, we know he has changed.

And so have we.

At least we should.

Solomon has–to an extent–resigned and begun to see himself as part of the groups of slaves (more so than when he was lynched, which was one of the most excruciating scenes, next to the rape and whipping of Patsey, played by an incredible Lupita Nyong’o). He is now part of a community, which he wasn’t before, and this makes his return to freedom painful–because they are still enslaved. Spirituals and folk songs were essential in African American history–they allowed slaves to communicate and to collaborate. They were a subtle way to resist slavery and develop community (which was exactly what chattel slavery sought to demolish). White people–as the aforementioned overseer demonstrates–often co-opt these important black cultural pastimes, which is something to keep in mind as we seek to hear and see–but not take–African American stories.

Black Americans have many other stories besides the tragedies that are starting to seep onto the big screen. It’s incredibly important that we be forced to see these tragedies because we are still so remarkably racist, and we haven’t learned our history.

However, we need more than that. We need much more than the “lonely slave narrative” to actually effect change.

One of the previews before 12 Years a Slave was for All is Lost, which was being promoted heavily at the theater. This film is about a man who gets lost at sea. That’s it. No dialogue, no other characters–just one white man being tousled about in the ocean.

While I’m sure it’s a lovely film (and I’m SURE crisp-shirt Richie Rich will love it), it’s amazing that these films can get made–repeatedly. “White man has problem.” “White man has problem.” “White man has problem.”

However, with black films we’re slipping into “Important Black Film” territory–and we need more than that. We need films that accurately portray the years of suffering that we’ve denied. And from a screenplay perspective, what rich source material we have to work from.

Then, and only then, can we move from the jarring and uncomfortable horror music to songs sung in harmony–songs of mourning, of celebrating, of coping, of togetherness. Only when we face the horror can we go forward together.

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

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

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

The Seven Stages of Important Black Film Fatigue by Stacia Brown at American Prospect

Why ’12 Years A Slave’ Is Different From ‘The Help’ And ‘Django Unchained’–And Why It Matters by Alyssa Rosenberg at ThinkProgress

It’s Time To Say Good-Bye To TV’s Strong Black Woman by Nichole Perkins at BuzzFeed

13 Myths Hollywood Uses to Hide Discrimination Against Women Directors by Maria Giese at Women Directors in Hollywood

Voices: Halloween–A White Privilege Christmas by Arturo R. García at Racialicious

The Big O: Oscar Could be Swayed by Leto’s Feminine Mystique by Susan Wloszczyna at Women and Hollywood

15 Fantastic Horror Films Directed by Women by Alison Nastasi at Flavorwire

Creator/Producer Lorne Michaels Responds To Lack Of Black Women On ‘SNL’ Criticism by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act

Queen Latifah, Patti Labelle, Venus Williams to Be Honored at Black Girls Rock! by Evelyn Diaz at BET

Why White People Can’t Quit Blackface by Camille Hayes at Bitch Media

‘Homeland’ And The Delicate Art Of Withholding by Linda Holmes at NPR

Heroines of Cinema: 10 Great Films About Female Sexuality by Female Filmmakers by Emily Craig, Matthew Hammett Knott and Sophie Smith at Indiewire

Season of the Witch: Conjuring Strength Through Power by Alyssa Rosenberg at Women and Hollywood

Tina Fey’s New Show Picked Up By NBC #Blessed by Eloise Giegerich at Bust

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

Older Women Week: The Extraordinary Romance of an Ordinary "Old Girl": Thoughts on ‘Ali: Fear Eats the Soul’

Of course older women have traditionally not been allowed to be sexual beings, and mothers have always been held to a higher sexual standard than fathers. In fact, when a woman of any age does not conform or transgresses sexually she customarily suffers greater social condemnation. What Ali: Fear Eats the Soul makes clear is that the Whore-Madonna complex still reigned supreme in 1970s Germany. When Emmi first tells her daughter and son-in-law that she has fallen in love with a much younger man, they laugh. The thought of an old mother in love and lust is so impossible, so unnatural—horrific, in fact—that laughter is the only fitting response. When she introduces her children to her new husband, one son calls her a whore and another kicks in her television. In the eyes of her deeply conventional, racist children, Emmi is guilty of the most profane double betrayal—racial disloyalty and defilement of the maternal role.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

This is a guest post by Rachael Johnson.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a tale of interracial and intergenerational love set in West Germany in the 1970s. It was both written and directed by one of the key figures of the New German Cinema, Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In his short yet productive life–he died aged 37 of a drug-related heart attack–the workaholic Fassbinder made countless remarkable films and pursued an equally remarkable private life. Anti-bourgeois and anti-establishment, the bisexual Bavarian earned a legendary reputation as a flammable wild child and libertine of extreme appetites. Influenced by Douglas Sirk’s socially subversive melodramas, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a fascinating exploration of sexual taboos and non-conformity as well as a searing critique of German racism. It is, also, a deeply affecting love story.

The lovers are Ali, a Moroccan-born mechanic in his thirties and Emmi, a white German woman around 60. Tall, bearded and muscular, Ali is played by El Hedi ben Salam, then a lover of the director. Emmi, played by Brigitte Mira, is a small woman of average looks with a pleasant, pudgy face. There is nothing glamorous about Fassbinder’s heroine, and it is this very ordinariness that endears her to the viewer and makes the story all the more poignant. A lonely widow with three married children she rarely sees, there is, it seems, little remarkable about Emmi either. Nor is she a privileged hausfrau. She cleans for a living.

The bar

The two meet in a bar frequented by Arab immigrants. Emmi takes shelter from the rain, but she is also drawn by the ‘exotic’ music. It is a fairly odd scene. The bar maid is a buxom, blonde German woman, and there is only a handful of customers. They stare impassively at Emmi when she enters. A long shot emphasizes her vulnerability and isolation. She sits by the door and asks the bar maid about her clientele and selection of music. She orders a coke and keeps her coat on. The women mock her and a female companion of Ali prods him to dance with ‘the old girl.’ He obeys her with a mock salute. The others stare at the couple, of course, but Ali is gracious, and they learn a little about each other. He accompanies Emmi home and their extraordinary romance begins in a sweet, ordinary fashion.

Fassbinder lays bare the nasty, pervasive nature of racism in West German society during the seventies. Ali, we soon learn, only calls himself Ali because white Germans have maliciously given him the stereotypical name. His life is hard. He works constantly and drinks heavily. He tells Emmi that he shares a room with five other foreign workers. ‘German master/Arab dog’ is how he describes race relations at his garage. Racism is a constant in the lovers’ lives. Emmi listens with unease as her fellow cleaning women dole out dehumanizing descriptions of immigrants as dirty, lazy, dangerous and hypersexual. Her female neighbors gossip incessantly about her affair and fix merciless eyes on her lover. Her son-in-law, Eugen, played by Fassbinder himself, is a lazy boor enraged at the mere mention of his Turkish foreman. When her landlord’s son accuses her of subletting due to Ali’s presence, Emmi tells him that the young Moroccan is her fiancé. The ruse becomes a reality when they mutually agree to tie the knot. Emmi’s children, neighbors and co-workers ostracize her and her new husband. She is forced to eat lunch alone at work, and he is humiliated by the local shop-keeper. Only the passage of time and naked self-interest mellow their attitude.

Ali surrounded by Emmi’s coworkers

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul explores the impact of racism on human relationships. Fassbinder specifically underscores how its evil even infects those of an intimate nature. Emmi’s relationship with Ali sours and she is shown to be capable of reproducing the racism of her compatriots. Impatient with his craving for couscous, a sign, of course, of deep homesickness, she tells her husband to adapt to German customs. On one occasion, she encourages her co-workers’ sexual objectification of Ali, an objectification that smacks of unsavory white voyeurism. When he quits the room, she puts it down to a changeable ‘foreign mentality.’ Emmi is, of course, a product of her nation’s past. In the 1970s, Germany’s history of genocidal racism was still a living, breathing memory. Emmi was a young woman when the Nazis were in power. When she tells Ali that she and her father were members of the party, it is a quiet, forever mind-blowing reminder that membership was the norm.

Emmi with Eugen and Krista

There are, nevertheless, indications that Emmi was always a little different. She crosses borders. Her parents did not want her to marry a foreigner after the war, but she married a Polish man. She is not a xenophobe like her father. She enters the immigrants’ bar because she is drawn to the sounds of others. Emmi is genuinely curious about other cultures and accepts cultural differences. She is hospitable and questions why white Germans and foreigners cannot be friends. She is appalled to hear of Ali’s intolerable living conditions. Curiosity, empathy, attraction and love make up Emmi’s feelings for Ali. Although she will never suffer the daily degradations and abuse he suffers, she is also a victim of racism. Although she tries to hide it, she is, in fact, tormented by the hatred besieging them. Emmi is derided and marginalized by white Germans for loving and marrying an Arab man. A neighbor asks, at one point, if she is a ‘real’ German due to her Polish last name. White women who have affairs with North African and Turkish foreign workers are labeled ‘filthy whores’ by her co-workers. Although a manifestly provincial product of her time and place, Emmi artlessly manages to challenge German racism through the simple, human act of loving. In the socio-historical context of post-war West Germany, she is a nonconformist.

Ali and Emmi

Seemingly unsophisticated, Emmi also breaks sexual taboos. She is a desiring old woman, and it is this desire that outrages and disgusts her children. Of course older women have traditionally not been allowed to be sexual beings, and mothers have always been held to a higher sexual standard than fathers. In fact, when a woman of any age does not conform or transgresses sexually she customarily suffers greater social condemnation. What Ali: Fear Eats the Soul makes clear is that the Whore-Madonna complex still reigned supreme in 1970s Germany. When Emmi first tells her daughter and son-in-law that she has fallen in love with a much younger man, they laugh. The thought of an old mother in love and lust is so impossible, so unnatural–horrific, in fact–that laughter is the only fitting response. When she introduces her children to her new husband, one son calls her a whore and another kicks in her television. In the eyes of her deeply conventional, racist children, Emmi is guilty of the most profane double betrayal–racial disloyalty and defilement of the maternal role.

Her daughter Krista mirrors her brothers. She calls Emmi’s home ‘a pigsty.’ There is, it must be said, little female solidarity apparent in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. The older woman’s female peers and acquaintances seem for the most part to be slaves of convention, regarding issues of race and gender. Ali’s female friends are manifestly threatened by Emmi’s sexuality. One calls his wife ‘a filthy old whore’ behind her back. ‘It’ll never work out. It’s unnatural, plain unnatural,’ she spits, with some jealousy. Does Fassbinder identify women in particular with convention? Or does he see his female characters as parts of the patriarchal system?

Emmi and Ali embrace

Fassbinder’s portrayal of Emmi’s passion is, however, empathetic and quite revolutionary. He never depicts the older woman’s desire as warped and unnatural, and it is worth reflecting how rare an attitude this is on screen. Emmi’s sexual subjectivity is acknowledged. When she momentarily looks at Ali showering, she tells him, ‘You are very beautiful, Ali.’ Her looking does not here denote exploitative voyeurism. Her softly delivered words are addressed to her husband only. He smiles back at her. An older female gaze, of course, doubly reverses cinematic male-female conventions of objectification. In this very short scene, the director recognizes Emmi’s subversive female gaze while, it must be said, expressing his own sexuality. Ultimately, Fassbinder understands that his heroine is, at heart, driven by an entirely natural desire for intimate human companionship as well as a simple need for love.

Their intergenerational relationship comprises painful personal humiliations–issuing from racism and infidelity–but it is also an essentially loving one. Ali’s everyday interactions with Emmi are, from the very start, characterized by kindness, devotion and respect. He and Emmi share their insecurities, comfort each other and enjoy each other’s company. Her daughter’s so-called conventional marriage pales in comparison. There are many achingly poignant, well-observed moments in this love story. On the street where she lives, an anxious Emmi fearing that she had lost her new love, cries Ali’s name before running toward him like a little girl. The warm, relaxed way Ali strokes Emmi’s arm their first night together is another arresting sign of their unusual bond. Their supposedly impossible relationship always seems authentic. Fassbinder reveals the unlikely pair’s fundamental affinities. They are both victims of loneliness and social alienation, and they are both hard-working, working-class people.

Emmi and Ali have dinner

There is an essential humanity to Fassbinder’s characterization of both lovers, and their unusual love story is told with tenderness. Unsurprisingly, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was well received internationally. It honors the empathetic imagination and pays touching tribute to the outsider. It also shows how an ordinary ‘old girl’ can quietly tear down racial boundaries as well as defy conventional expectations of female desire.

Rachael Johnson has contributed articles to CINEACTION, www.objectif-cinema.com and www.jgcinema.com.

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

Boardwalk Empire

Written by Leigh Kolb

Spoilers ahead

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

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

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

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

Drink, talk, shoot, repeat.

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

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

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

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

From left, Dickey, Cora, Dunn and Chalky.

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

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

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

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

From Hollywood Life:

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

Certainly a brief show recap isn’t always the place for heavy cultural analysis, but to brush off the scene with such flippant commentary? Privilege, ladies and gentlemen!

Not to be topped, the Huffington Post saw Dunn’s actions as self-defense:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reviewers ignore the implications of racism.

Reviewers sideline female characters.

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

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

Sally, Margaret and Gillian.

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

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

Valentin and Maitland

________________________________________________________

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

Surfers in ‘Blue Crush’ and Girls in ‘Blue Crush 2’

Michelle Rodriguez, Kate Bosworth, and Sanoe Lake in Blue Crush

Written by Robin Hitchcock

To borrow an observation from my friend Liz, subculture movies are awesome. Well, they have a better chance of being awesome, and an excellent chance of being at least interesting. Focusing on people who build their lives and identities around an activity that many people never even have the chance to try is a pretty good starting point for a story. Passionate characters are interesting characters. Blue Crush credits itself as based on the article, “Life’s Swell” by Susan Orlean, about “the surf girls of Maui.” It’s more of an inspirational source for a loose adaptation, but I’m sure the studio was influenced by the line, “At various cultural moments, surfing has appeared as the embodiment of everything cool and wild and free; this is one of those moments. To be a girl surfer is even cooler, wilder, and more modern than being a guy surfer.”

To its credit, Blue Crush ignores Orlean’s notion that women surfers are “in a tough guy’s domain.” There are some surfer dude characters in the background, but they’re scenery (the way beach babes might be in a movie about male surfers). Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth) surfs with her two best friends/roommates/coworkers, Eden (Michelle Rodriguez) and Lena (Sanoe Lake). Eden dedicates herself to training Anne Marie for a competition at the North Shore’s Pipeline, sometimes angrily trying to push Anne Marie out of her self-doubt (she’s traumatized from nearly drowning while surfing at a previous competition). Anne Marie also is the primary caregiver for her younger sister Penny (Mika Boreem). Blue Crush mainly deals with personal problems rather than conflicts between social spheres.

While it takes a sort of post-feminist approach to surfing, Blue Crush attempts to work in some subdued class commentary. The girls live in a trailer, drive a beater car, and eat convenience-store candy for breakfast. They work on the cleaning staff of a high-end hotel, getting glimpses into the materialistic and carefree lives of rich tourists. There’s an unfortunately overemphasized romantic subplot between Anne Marie and an NFL quarterback in for the Pro Bowl, wherein Anne Marie is ostracized by the WAGs who also mock him for his propensity for “slumming it” with local girls. While it is superficial and not very sophisticated, it is nice that Blue Crush at least ACKNOWLEDGES some of the class dynamics at play in Hawaii. [Of course, our protagonist is the white Kate Bosworth rather than her Hawaiian co-star Sanoe Lake, because Hollywood hates making movies about people of color.]

Sasha Jackson and Elizabeth Mathis in Blue Crush 2

Which brings me to Blue Crush 2. This straight-to-video “sequel” is just another movie about surfer girls, with no connection to the original film other than someone paying for the rights to the title. Here we have another white girl protagonist, although this one has the opposite amount of class privilege. The first ten minutes of the film are devoted to clunky exposition establishing Dana (Sasha Jackson) as a) richer than chocolate cheesecake, b) spoiled as curdled milk. After a fight with her father she storms off from Beverly Hills to Durban, South Africa, to follow in her dead mother’s footsteps of surfing along South Africa’s Wild Coast. She makes a fast friend when she uses another young girl as a Scary Dude buffer. “I’ve never seen a white girl on the bus before,” says the new friend, Pushy (Elizabeth Mathis). “Well I’ve never seen a black girl who surfs.” Don’t worry, Dana, there won’t be any others in this movie. Or any other black PEOPLE, except that one same “Scary” Dude on the bus—seriously, the same guy, I was worried I was racistly confused but I guess they were trying to save on hiring actors by having THE SAME. EXACT. PERSON. a) “rudely” ask to sit next to Dana on the bus b) steal her things out of her beach locker c) menace her in a dance club d) POACH IVORY. I am not kidding about that last one.

In case you can’t tell, Blue Crush 2 is profoundly terrible. I was trying to figure out why I find it so execrable when I’m so fond of the original despite its flaws, wondering if it was just a matter of basic acting skill and production values. But there is more to it than that: Blue Crush 2 isn’t really about surfing. It’s about a privileged white American girl going to Africa to find her soul (Pushy actually tells her she is on an “uhambo” or “journey” for personal meaning). Dana doesn’t learn ANYTHING; she just experiences more. She visits Africa and leaves with photographs of her in the same places her white mother had been. She visits Pushy’s township and walks away with the experience of having shown everyone that a white girl can dance. She surfs Jeffrey’s Bay not for love of the surf but because it was her mother’s dream break. Blue Crush might inelegantly handle some of the race and class issues inherent to its story, but it’s a movie about SURFING, not a movie about how great it is for a rich white American girl to visit South Africa and happen to surf while she is there.

Robin Hitchcock is a white American girl living in South Africa. She doesn’t surf (yet).

Women in Sports Week: ‘The Blind Side’: The Most Insulting Movie Ever Made

Movie poster for The Blind Side

This guest post by Nine Deuce previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on March 23, 2011.

Davetavius and I consider ourselves the world’s foremost authorities on watching movies for reasons other than those intended by their producers. As such, we go way beyond just watching “cheesy” (whatever that means) movies, 80s movies, or kung fu movies (which I refuse to watch but which every dork on Earth has been pretending to like in some attempt at letting everyone know how “weird” they are since Quentin Tarantino’s ridiculous ass popularized kung fu movie fandom as the #1 route to instant eccentricity cred in True Romance) to focus our attention on recently-released romantic comedies, those obnoxious movies in which two assholes just sit around and talk to each other for 98 minutes, and “serious” movies for which people have been given gold-plated statuettes. One can learn an awful lot about the faults and failings of our social system and corporate entertainment’s attempts to sell us its version of culture by watching movies created by and for the anti-intelligentsia, and if one were to try hard enough, I’m sure one could find the string that, if tugged, would unravel the modern world system buried somewhere in a melodramatic Best Picture Oscar contender intended to make people who refer to beers as “cold ones” feel like they’re considering The Big Issues. There was no way we were going to miss The Blind Side.

Spoiler alert: this is the worst movie I’ve ever seen, and I’m going to spoil your desire to see it yourself by writing this post. Also, I may, if I can manage to give a fuck, divulge important plot elements. But it’s based on a true story that everyone has already heard anyway, so who cares.

Sandra Bullock schools Michael Oher in The Blind Side

Let me say up front that I’m aware that I’m supposed to feel sorry for Sandra Bullock this week. She’s purported to be “America’s sweetheart” and all, she has always seemed like a fairly decent person (for an actor), and I think her husband deserves to get his wang run over by one of his customized asshole conveyance vehicles, but I’m finding it difficult to feel too bad. I mean, who marries a guy who named himself after a figure from the Old West, has more tattoos than IQ points, and is known for his penchant for rockabilly strippers? Normally I’d absolve Bullock of all responsibility for what has occurred and spend nine paragraphs illustrating the many reasons Jesse James doesn’t deserve to live, but I’ve just received proof in the form of a movie called The Blind Side that Sandra Bullock is in cahoots with Satan, Ronald Reagan’s cryogenically preserved head, the country music industry, and E! in their plot to take over the world by turning us all into (or helping some of us to remain) smug, racist imbeciles.

The movie chronicles the major events in the life of a black NFL player named Michael Oher from the time he meets the rich white family who adopts him to the time that white family sees him drafted into the NFL, a series of events that apparently proves that racism is either over or OK (I’m not sure which), with a ton of southern football bullshit along the way. Bullock plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, the wife of a dude named Sean Tuohy, played by — no shit — Tim McGraw, who is a fairly minor character in the movie despite the fact that he is said to own, like, 90 Taco Bell franchises. The story is that Oher, played by Quinton Aaron, is admitted into a fancy-pants private Christian school despite his lack of legitimate academic records due to the insistence of the school’s football coach and the altruism of the school’s teachers (as if, dude), where he comes into contact with the Tuohy family, who begin to notice that he is sleeping in the school gym and subsisting on popcorn. Ms. Tuohy then invites him to live in the zillion-dollar Memphis Tuophy family compound, encourages him to become the best defensive linebacker he can be by means of cornball familial love metaphors, and teaches him about the nuclear family and the SEC before beaming proudly as he’s drafted by the Baltimore Ravens.

The Tuohy family prays over mounds of food

I’m sure that the Tuohy family are lovely people and that they deserve some kind of medal for their good deeds, but if I were a judge, I wouldn’t toss them out of my courtroom should they arrive there bringing a libel suit against whoever wrote, produced, and directed The Blind Side, because it’s handily the dumbest, most racist, most intellectually and politically insulting movie I’ve ever seen, and it makes the Tuohy family — especially their young son S.J. — look like unfathomable assholes. Well, really, it makes all of the white people in the South look like unfathomable assholes. Like these people need any more bad publicity.

Quentin Aaron puts in a pretty awesome performance, if what the director asked him to do was look as pitiful as possible at every moment in order not to scare anyone by being black. Whether that was the goal or not, he certainly did elicit pity from me when Sandra Bullock showed him his new bed and he knitted his brows and, looking at the bed in awe, said, “I’ve never had one of these before.” I mean, the poor bastard had been duped into participating in the creation of a movie that attempts to make bigoted southerners feel good about themselves by telling them that they needn’t worry about poverty or racism because any black person who deserves help will be adopted by a rich family that will provide them with the means to a lucrative NFL contract. Every interaction Aaron and Bullock (or Aaron and anyone else, for that matter) have in the movie is characterized by Aaron’s wretched obsequiousness and the feeling that you’re being bludgeoned over the head with the message that you needn’t fear this black guy. It’s the least dignified role for a black actor since Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s portrayal of James Robert Kennedy in Radio (a movie Davetavius claims ought to have the subtitle “It’s OK to be black in the South as long as you’re retarded.”). The producers, writers, and director of this movie have managed to tell a story about class, race, and the failures of capitalism and “democratic” politics to ameliorate the conditions poor people of color have to deal with by any means other than sports while scrupulously avoiding analyzing any of those issues and while making it possible for the audience to walk out of the theater with their selfish, privileged, entitled worldviews intact, unscathed, and soundly reconfirmed.

Kathy Bates wants to fist bump Michael Oher in The Blind Side

Then there’s all of the southern bullshit, foremost of which is the football element. The producers of the movie purposely made time for cameos by about fifteen SEC football coaches in order to ensure that everyone south of the Mason-Dixon line would drop their $9 in the pot, and the positive representation of football culture in the film is second in phoniness only to the TV version of Friday Night Lights. Actually, fuck that. It’s worse. Let’s be serious. If this kid had showed no aptitude for football, is there any way in hell he’d have been admitted to a private school without the preparation he’d need to succeed there or any money? In the film, the teachers at the school generously give of their private time to tutor Oher and help prepare him to attend classes with the other students. I’ll bet you $12 that shit did not occur in real life. In fact, I know it didn’t. The Tuohy family may or may not have cared whether the kid could play football, but the school certainly did. It is, after all, a southern school, and high school football is a bigger deal in the South than weed is at Bonnaroo.

But what would have happened to Oher outside of school had he sucked at football and hence been useless to white southerners? What’s the remedy for poverty if you’re a black woman? A dude with no pigskin skills? Where are the nacho magnates to adopt those black people? I mean, that’s the solution for everything, right? For all black people to be adopted by rich, paternalistic white people? I know this may come as a shock to some white people out there, but the NFL cannot accommodate every black dude in America, and hence is an imperfect solution to social inequality. I know we have the NBA too, but I still see a problem. But the Blind Side fan already has an answer for me. You see, there is a scene in the movie which illustrates that only some black people deserve to be adopted by wealthy white women. Bullock, when out looking for Oher, finds herself confronted with a black guy who not only isn’t very good at appearing pitiful in order to make her comfortable, but who has an attitude and threatens to shoot Oher if he sees him. What ensues is quite possibly the most loathsome scene in movie history in which Sandra Bullock gets in the guy’s face, rattles off the specs of the gun she carries in her purse, and announces that she’s a member of the NRA and will shoot his ass if he comes anywhere near her family, “bitch.” Best Actress Oscar.

Sandra Bullock braves the Black Neighborhood

Well, there it is. Now you see why this movie made 19 kajillion dollars and won an Oscar: it tells a heartwarming tale of white benevolence, assures the red state dweller that his theory that “there’s black people, and then there’s niggers” is right on, and affords him the chance to vicariously remind a black guy who’s boss through the person of America’s sweetheart. Just fucking revolting.

There are several other cringe-inducing elements in the film. The precocious, cutesy antics of the family’s little son, S.J., for example. He’s constantly making dumb-ass smart-ass comments, cloyingly hip-hopping out with Oher to the tune of Young M.C.’s “Bust a Move” (a song that has been overplayed and passe for ten years but has now joined “Ice Ice Baby” at the top of the list of songs from junior high that I never want to hear again), and generally trying to be a much more asshole-ish version of Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. At what point will screenwriters realize that everyone wants to punch pint-sized snarky movie characters in the throat? And when will I feel safe watching a movie in the knowledge that I won’t have to endure a scene in which a white dork or cartoon character “raises the roof” and affects a buffalo stance while mouthing a sanitized rap song that even John Ashcroft knows the words to?

Sandra Bullock reads a story to her child son and Michael Oher

And then there’s the scene in which Tim McGraw, upon meeting his adopted son’s tutor (played by Kathy Bates) and finding out she’s a Democrat, says, “Who would’ve thought I’d have a black son before I met a Democrat?” Who would have thought I’d ever hear a “joke” that was less funny and more retch-inducing than Bill Engvall’s material?

What was the intended message of this film? It won an Oscar, so I know it had to have a message, but what could it have been? I’ve got it (a suggestion from Davetavius)! The message is this: don’t buy more than one Taco Bell franchise or you’ll have to adopt a black guy. I’ll accept that that’s the intended message of the film, because if the actual message that came across in the movie was intentional, I may have to hide in the house for the rest of my life.

I just don’t even know what to say about this movie. Watching it may well have been one of the most demoralizing, discouraging experiences of my life, and it removed at least 35% of the hope I’d previously had that this country had any hope of ever being anything but a cultural and social embarrassment. Do yourself a favor. Skip it and watch Welcome to the Dollhouse again.

Nine Deuce blogs at Rage Against the Man-chine. From her bio: I basically go off, dude. People all over the internet call me rad. They call me fem, too, but I’m not all that fem. I mean, I’m female and I have long hair and shit, but that’s just because I’m into Black Sabbath. I don’t have any mini-skirts, high heels, thongs, or lipstick or anything, and I often worry people with my decidedly un-fem behavior. I’m basically a “man” trapped in a woman’s body. What I mean is that, like a person with a penis, I act like a human being and expect other people to treat me like one even though I have a vagina.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Gender Flipping in Hollywood by Holly L. Derr at Ms. Magazine Blog

First Annual Studio Responsibility Index Finds Lack of Substantial LGBT Characters in Mainstream Films by Max Gouttebroze at GLAAD

25 Movies by Female Directors Every Aspiring Filmmaker Should See by Michelle Dean via Flavorwire

Will Black Actresses Ever Catch Up To Their Peers? by Aisha Harris at Slate

Julie Taymor’s 10 Golden Rules of Moviemaking by Jennifer M. Wood at MovieMaker

13 Kickass Women’s Movie Roles Originally Meant for Men by Autumn Harbison at PolicyMic

How Cristina Yang Changed Television by Willa Paskin at Slate

The Skyler White Problem: Can We Accept Complex Female Characters? by Jos Truitt at Feministing

Wonder Woman Can’t Have It All by Alexander Abad-Santos at The Atlantic Wire

Racism within white feminist spaces by Mia at Black Feminists Manchester

On Feminist Solidarity and Community: Where Do We Go from Here? by Mikki Kendall at Ebony

A Day In the Life of a Troubled Male Antihero by Mallory Ortberg at The Toast

“The Butler,” My Grandmother, and the Politics of Subversion by Nijla Mu’min at Bitch Media

I Have a Character Issue by Anna Gunn at The New York Times

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