Reproductive Rights – Bitch Flicks

Historical vs. Modern Abortion Narratives in ‘Dirty Dancing’ and ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’

Given this climate, it is somewhat surprising that two mainstream Hollywood films, ‘Dirty Dancing’ and ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High,’ would take progressive approaches to a topic like reproductive justice. While ‘Dirty Dancing’ remembers the realities of abortion pre-Roe v. Wade and illustrates the role that class plays in access to abortion, ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’ shows a main character who exercises her right to choose without trauma or punishment, while managing to keep a relatively light tone.

This guest post written by Tessa Racked appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.

The political and cultural landscape of the United States in the 1980s was widely characterized by conservativism, reflected in cinema by the popularity of glossy action films like Top Gun and Lethal Weapon that glorify violent masculinity and the institutions that enable it. This trend was partly influenced by a backlash against the 1970s, including the rise of feminism in popular consciousness. Given this climate, it is somewhat surprising that two mainstream Hollywood films, Dirty Dancing and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, would take progressive approaches to a topic like reproductive justice. While Dirty Dancing remembers the realities of abortion pre-Roe v. Wade and illustrates the role that class plays in access to abortion, Fast Times at Ridgemont High shows a main character who exercises her right to choose without trauma or punishment, while managing to keep a relatively light tone. (If there’s another film that accomplishes the latter feat in the 32 years between Fast Times and Obvious Child, please mention it in the comments section because I certainly couldn’t think of one.)

Dirty Dancing (written by Eleanor Bergstein) is very much characterized by its historical setting. Our protagonist is Frances “Baby” Houseman (Jennifer Grey) the youngest daughter in a family on summer vacation in 1963. In her opening narration, Baby describes the time period as “when everyone called me ‘Baby’ and it didn’t occur to me to mind, before President Kennedy was shot… and I thought I’d never find a guy as great as my dad.” These are the last days of innocence, both for her and her society — remembered with nostalgia, but also the recognition that it came with some serious misconceptions about how the world works. Baby is good-hearted and idealistic, but has lived a sheltered life. She is caught between her desires to “save the world” by joining the Peace Corps, inspired by her father Dr. Houseman, and her obedience to her aforementioned family’s expectation that she settle down with a respectable (i.e. upper middle class) man, like the resort owner’s snobby grandson Neil. Baby has been raised to do the right thing, but within the boundaries of her status as a good (i.e. upper middle class) girl. This means abstaining from socializing with the working class resort staff, who turn out to be the very people who both need Baby’s help when one of them needs access to abortion, and in turn facilitate her own maturation.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (directed by Amy Heckerling) is also situated in a specific historical point, due to it being a very modern film for 1982. The first scene takes us to the pinnacle of cool teen hangouts, the mall, and is set to the Go-Gos’ 1981 hit “We Got the Beat.” Depictions of femininity are filtered through a viewpoint that values modernity and autonomy. Freshman Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh) worries that she isn’t as attractive to men as her classmates who dress like Pat Benatar, and chooses to be sexually active as part of exploring maturation. Scenes of her engaging in sex are relatively explicit (she is fully nude in one scene), but filmed in such a straightforward way that the titillation factor for the audience is minimized. There are two minor characters who are Black, but otherwise, the cast is homogeneously white and middle-class, putting the gender dynamics between characters in a relative vacuum free of intersectionality, unlike the room that Dirty Dancing makes for consciousness around class. The structure of the film makes the abortion narrative more progressive. Stacy is one of the protagonists, and the one who chooses to terminate her own pregnancy. The parallel of this story with those of the other main characters — Rat has a crush on her, Brad can’t hold down a job, Spicoli goofs off in history class — serves to normalize abortion, depicting it as a situation that some teenagers have to go through and may cause stress, but is not a cause of major trauma or drama.

Where Fast Times at Ridgemont High is very blatant in its depictions of sexuality, both in characters’ conversations and sexual interactions with each other, Dirty Dancing frequently uses dancing as a metaphor for eroticism. While engaged in a tame, awkward mambo with Neil, Baby and the audience both get the first glimpse of dance instructors Johnny and Penny (Cynthia Rhodes). Johnny and Penny impress the guests with a flamboyant mambo that quickly turns into an illustration of power dynamics at the resort. Resort owner Max Kellerman quickly shuts down their performance; they meekly part each other’s company to teach more conservative dance steps to guests. As dance and sexuality are linked in the film, the boss’ control over when and how Johnny and Penny dance parallel the social control that individual male characters and patriarchal society hold over both Penny and Baby.

Later that evening, Baby sneaks off to a staff party where she’s exposed to the titular dirty dancing, sharply contrasting the scene on the guests’ dance floor. “Kids are doing it in their basements back home,” staff member Billy tells Baby when she asks how they learned their hip-gyrating moves. Soon after, we discover that Penny is pregnant and wants to get an abortion. Again, the historical setting becomes key: as the movie is set before Roe v. Wade, Penny’s access to abortion is highly limited due to its legal status. Billy knows of a practicing abortionist, but the $250 fee that it costs (equivalent to $2,000 in 2016) is more than Penny can afford. She has been impregnated by Robbie, who straddles the Kellerman’s class divide. As a waiter, he can party with the staff (and have sex with Penny), but unlike Johnny and Penny, who depend on their salaries to survive, Robbie is a med student who is saving up for a sports car and flirts with Baby’s older sister Lisa, with the approval of their parents and Max Kellerman. He also refuses to support Penny in getting an abortion. “I didn’t blow a summer hauling bagels just to bail out some chick who probably slept with every guy here… some people count and some people don’t,” he tells Baby before trying to clarify his point by offering her a copy of The Fountainhead he carries in his back pocket (no seriously, that happens).

This exchange between Baby and Robbie illustrates some key points that Dirty Dancing makes. It reinforces the inaccessibility of abortion at this point: for characters with lower-paying jobs, it means the bulk of the summer’s wages, whether that means no sports car or no food. It also highlights the oppressive repercussions of the prevailing middle-class values of the day. Robbie aligns himself with the the “people who matter,” by feeling entitled to walk away from his responsibilities, letting less privileged staff take care of it. People mistakenly assume that Johnny impregnated Penny because of the support he shows her; not only has Robbie dumped sole responsibility for the pregnancy on Penny, he has left Johnny in the role of “father.” His reasoning for this entitlement? Penny must be a “slut,” and therefore isn’t worthy of respect. Once Penny grows to trust Baby, she tells her in a vulnerable moment: “I want you to know that I don’t sleep around… I thought he loved me. I thought it was something special.” This scene is a plea for the audience’s respect and sympathy for Penny as much as it is Penny wanting respect and sympathy from Baby. If she had sex with Robbie because she was deceived on some level, she becomes a victim, making her choice to have an abortion more acceptable. Even her decision to have sex with him becomes more acceptable because she did it for love, as opposed to a more casual desire.

Gaining access to abortion for Penny involves both supplicating and subverting the more privileged characters in the film, Dr. Houseman in particular. Baby procures the money from her father by rebelling against her role as dutiful daughter through lying to him, and reassuring him that the money isn’t going towards anything illegal. But money isn’t the only barrier that Penny must overcome. The abortionist is only available on the night that she and Johnny are booked to perform at another resort. “Everybody works here,” Johnny frostily informs Baby when she asks if they can cancel the performance. World-saving Baby solves the problem by learning Penny’s dance routine and filling in for her at the performance (not to mention falling in love with Johnny over the course of their training montage). Unfortunately, the “real M.D.” that Penny was promised turns out to be a guy with “a dirty knife and a folding table.” Baby turns to her father for help saving Penny’s life.

Unlike Objectivist Robbie, Dr. Houseman treats Penny with kindness, saving her life and her ability to have children, but he is not as progressive in his values as Baby. He is rude to Johnny, assuming him to be the father, and forbids Baby to fraternize with him or Penny. His instincts are to prevent Baby from ending up like Penny, to keep her as pure and innocent as her nickname implies. However, when he discovers that Robbie is the one who got Penny “in trouble” and sees Johnny stand up for Baby (spoiler alert: nobody puts her in a corner), Dr. Houseman apologizes to Johnny for his rudeness and praises Baby’s dancing.

Unlike Penny being cast as a victim, Fast Times at Ridgemont High‘s Stacy straightforwardly experiments with sex for the first time. Encouraged by her older, more sexually experienced friend Linda (Phoebe Cates), she wants to be mature and desired by men. Her initial experiences are ambivalent; she actively pursues Ron and Damone, but actual sex with them is disappointing for her. Her sexual debut with Ron takes place in a dugout at an empty baseball field; the camera switches between closeups of her face and her point of view, looking not at her partner but at the graffiti on the dugout walls, obviously not getting much pleasure from sex with him. Both Ron and Damone are focused on their own pleasure and take no notice of her uncomfortable expressions or requests to slow down; after Damone ejaculates prematurely, he can’t leave her house fast enough. The film gives us a protagonist who engages in casual sex with two different men, and makes no apology about her decision to terminate the resulting pregnancy, demanding that the audience respect her decision if we are to remain on-board with her and her story.

Stacy’s access to abortion is remarkably simple. The decision completely excludes her parents (who are barely present in the film to begin with). Her abortion is a private matter between her and Damone. Once Stacy tells him that she’s pregnant and after he stops trying to deny his responsibility (like Robbie, he also tries to slut-shame himself out of responsibility, asking how she knows it’s his), he says that she has to get an abortion, only to discover that she already decided and scheduled the procedure. She asks him to pay half of the $150 fee and give her a ride to the clinic. Until this awkward conversation, the rest of the logistics have been easily planned.

The cost is still high for two young people but not as exorbitant as what Penny has to pay (assuming Fast Times takes place in 1981, it’s the present-day equivalent of about $430); also considering that both Stacy and Damone are high school students in a relatively affluent community, being set back $75 is probably not a crisis. There is a scene of Damone, who makes money by scalping concert tickets, trying unsuccessfully to call in debts in order to raise the $75. We see his list of expenses, with “abortion” listed above “Rod Stewart tickets?”; the stakes are not so high that some humor can’t be afforded. Additionally, the cost of the abortion is not an anomaly in the film. The other characters have money concerns as well: Rat panics when he takes Stacy to a nice restaurant but leaves his wallet at home. Brad goes through a series of jobs over the course of the school year that he needs to pay off his car. Damone is constantly negotiating prices with his customers. The struggle to pay for an expense without relying on one’s parents is an expected factor in the characters’ lives.

Likely due to his inability to raise the money, Damone fails to give Stacy a ride to the clinic, causing her distress and embarrassment. However, her problem is quickly solved as she lies to her brother Brad about needing a ride to the bowling alley across the street from the clinic. The drama of her getting the abortion is mildly heightened when she doesn’t have anyone to drive her home, but Brad saves the day by picking her up after the procedure is over.

Unlike Penny’s experience, the abortion is performed with little fanfare. The scene of the procedure itself is cut from the theatrical release, which shows Stacy in a clean, modern examination room being treated by the doctor and nurse with the same detached professionalism they would likely show any other patient. Unlike Penny’s near-death experience at the hands of a quack, Stacy is able to walk out of the clinic, and Brad promises not to tell their parents and quickly relents from asking her for details: “Come on! Who did it? You’re not going to tell me, are you? Okay, it’ll just be your secret.”

Linda, who gives Stacy advice about men throughout the film, seeks revenge for her after finding out that Damone didn’t follow through on his promise to give her a ride, graffitiing “prick” and “little prick” on his car and locker. His female classmates giggle at him as he passes by them in the hall to discover the message on his locker. He also comes close to losing a friend, as he and Rat almost come to blows when Rat confronts him over having sex with Stacy. Compare Damone’s public humiliation to Robbie’s comeuppance in Dirty Dancing: getting a pitcher of water thrown on him by Baby and losing the respect of Dr. Houseman, neither of whom he would likely never see again anyway.

Ultimately, Dirty Dancing treats Penny’s abortion as a historical artifact, a somber near-tragedy of a bygone era. While a sympathetic character who isn’t sacrificed on the altar of moral stances, Penny is hardly the focus of the film. If anything, her story is a springboard for Baby’s character development and romance with Johnny. She is well and happy at the end of the film, but just another face in the crowd supporting Johnny and Baby as they finally nail the lift that Penny could probably do in her sleep.

In Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Stacy’s abortion leads to personal growth. The experience doesn’t frighten Stacy away from sex per se, but it does incite her to reconsider what she wants from a relationship with a man. “I don’t want sex, anyone can have sex… I want a relationship, I want romance.” She achieves this goal by re-igniting her relationship with Rat. The epilogue informs us that the couple “are having a passionate love affair… but still haven’t gone all the way.”

From a reproductive justice standpoint, Penny’s story is an unnerving tale from a former era that tragically still threatens many people living today, should they seek an abortion. Stacy’s experience is one that should be available to anyone who wants it, both in terms of ease of access, safety, and perhaps most importantly, positioning people who want access to abortions as the self-determining protagonists of their own stories.

Tessa Racked blogs about fat characters in film at Consistent Panda Bear Shape. They have had “(I’ve Had) the Time of My Life” stuck in their head for over a week now.

‘Suffragette’: The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same

In fact, it made me even more upset at the fact that one hundred years later, we may have the vote but women are still facing inequality, sexual harassment, unequal pay, and poor conditions in the workplace. … I wasn’t expecting to be as taken aback by just how little has changed since the period ‘Suffragette’ is set. …It made me realize we need [feminism] more than ever.

This guest post is written by Scarlett Harris. | Spoilers ahead.

I went to see Suffragette at the culmination of a day spent feeling utterly depressed at the state of women in the workplace and the world at large. As you can imagine, Suffragette did nothing to assuage my feelings. In fact, it made me even more upset at the fact that one hundred years later, we may have the vote but women are still facing inequality, sexual harassment, unequal pay, and poor conditions in the workplace.

The day in question saw my Twitter timeline full of defenses of cricketer Chris Gayle, who hit on a female reporter as she was trying to interview him after a game; Jamie Briggs, the minister for cities and built environments, who sexually harassed a young female staffer on an international trip; Peter Dutton, the minister for immigration and border protection, who called reporter Samantha Maiden, who stood up for the staffer in question, a “mad fucking witch” in a text message clearly not meant for her but somehow sent to her anyway (and this is the guy in charge of Australia’s borders!); and the two men who murdered their families as “good guys” suffering from mental health problems (an important issue in its own right but not at the expense of the safety of women and children).

So, heading into Suffragette I shrunk into myself as a form of protection from all the microaggressions I’d faced that day but I raged internally at the depictions of workplace inequality, sexual harassment and assault and the general placement of women as second-class citizens and, behold, this piece was born.

Workplace Rights.
In the laundry that protagonist Maud (Carey Mulligan), her husband Sonny (Ben Whishaw) and friend and fellow suffragette Violet (Anne-Marie Duff) work, women toil away over steam and hot fumes. Maud herself was born at the laundry to a mother who was killed when a vat tipped on her only four years later. When Maud gets home, she washes her family’s own laundry and fixes her husband and son dinner. She endures sexual harassment and, it is implied, survived rape by the manager of the laundry, Mr. Taylor (Geoff Bell). All of this is viewed as inconvenient at best, a workplace hazard at worst.

After a day spent reading about the above-mentioned modern day examples of workplace harassment I couldn’t help but see the similarities. While the Gayle and Dutton incidents came to light because they happened in full view of the media, Briggs’ sexual harassment accusations are the exception to the rule: how many other countless examples of sexual harassment and assault have occurred but are swept under the carpet in an effort not to jeopardize positions or be looked on unfavorably by colleagues?

You Don’t Get a Cookie.
When Maud reveals these labor conditions (her standing up to her rapist happens later) in a votes for women hearing, the men on the board seem genuinely shocked. Prominent British politician and statesman David Lloyd George (Adrian Schiller) seems sympathetic to Maud’s plight however her testimony doesn’t convince him of her right to vote.

Maud’s husband, too, seems initially merely inconvenienced by her newfound interest in suffrage but, as the movie progresses, Maud’s feminism gets stronger and she spends more time in prison for demonstrating, he kicks her out of the house and adopts their son out to a rich family. He says he can’t be expected to work, run a household and look after their son — what Maud’s been doing this whole time — in a stark example of male privilege.

These are some of Suffragette’s more sympathetic male characters compared to anti-suffrage policeman Inspector Steed (Brendan Gleeson) and Mr. Taylor but, like men today who express astonishment when women reveal they’ve been harassed and assaulted and the belief that women do, in fact, deserve basic human rights, they don’t get a cookie for it.

Reproductive Rights.
As attacks on reproductive rights threaten to return to pre-Roe V. Wade levels, which is to say non-existent, in the U.S. and pap tests and STI blood tests will come at a price in Australia, they are mirrored in Suffragette. Abused spouse Violet steps down from the suffrage movement when she discovers she’s pregnant again, citing exhaustion at not being able to “take care of the [kids] I’ve got.” Maud is force fed in prison in a harrowingly triggering scene echoing rape, mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasounds for women seeking to terminate their pregnancies, forced sterilization and any manner of other violations against women’s bodies. She asks Steed, when he expresses disdain over her disobedience of the law, “Why should I obey a law I had no hand in making?”

Check out Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan on the cover of @TimeOutLondon this week! More info http://t.co/nZxRwvNFdo pic.twitter.com/y6KWGLDOK4

— SUFFRAGETTE (@SuffragetteFilm) September 29, 2015

Black Lives Matter.
Much has been made about Suffragette’s whitewashing and rightfully so. There were literally no women of color in the film, despite the real-life involvement of Indian suffragettes, for example. And, in perhaps the most offensive portion of the film that was parlayed into a tone-deaf marketing campaign, suffrage leader Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep in a two-minute cameo) says in her famous speech:

“We do not want to be law breakers; we want to be law makers. Be militant, each of you in your own way. Those of you who can break windows, break them. Those of you who can further attack the sacred idol of property, do so. We have been left with no alternative but to defy this government. If we must go to prison to obtain the vote let it be the windows of government not the bodies of women which shall be broken.”

First of all, slavery is not a choice. Secondly, the above-mentioned use of this 1913 speech for a Time Out cover featuring the all-white cast illustrates just how far white feminism has to go in the inclusion of women of color.

14 officers show up at an Oregon #BlackLivesMatters protest

150 armed protestors: *crickets* #OregonUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/Jrgmc7KS2Q

— Yukio Strachan (@boldandworthy) January 4, 2016

Three queer Black women formed the #BlackLivesMatter movement after the death of Trayvon Martin at the hands of police as “a response to the anti-Black racism that permeates our society.” Meanwhile, white ranchers are allowed to demonstrate “peacefully” — albeit armed — on seized government land (which let’s not forget was originally stolen from Indigenous peoples hundreds of years ago). Much like the attempts to bar people of color from demonstrating peacefully without militarized police forces (see above tweet) threatening them or mowing them down, Suffragette excludes women of color from its depiction of the suffrage movement by denying them a voice. But on the other hand, consider Pankhurst’s words above and some of the film’s early scenes in which demonstrators are attacked by policemen in the streets: Suffragette could also be viewed as an allegory for racist police brutality.

[NEW POST] My #Feminist Awakening & the Influence of #Beyonce's Pop Culture Declaration http://t.co/j5FqMvhPtu pic.twitter.com/ZmBE71DvAu

— Janet Mock (@janetmock) September 3, 2014

I’m Not a Feminist, But…
Upon Maud’s first arrest, she insists she’s “not a suffragette.” Where have we heard that before? Modern women’s baffling insistence that they, too, are not feminists seems to be in the news every other day. The online campaigns about why women don’t need feminism and celebrities being asked whether they are feminists have dominated the discussion in recent years reminded me of Maud’s colleagues at the laundry turning their backs on her when she’s outed for demonstrating and when she finally takes her revenge on her abuser. Internalized misogyny is as hard at work today as it was 100 years ago.

White women who do call themselves feminists, such as Emma Watson and Lena Dunham, are seldom met with much push-back, whereas Black women’s (those who do identify with a movement that has often ignored the contributions of feminists who are women of color and not with another movement such as “womanist”) feminism comes with a whole host of caveats. Despite Beyoncé’s spectacular embrace of feminism at the MTV Video Music Awards flanked by an emblazoned erection of the word, she’s still asked to qualify it. Black feminists such as Janet Mock, Roxane Gay and Amandla Stenberg are increasingly having their voices heard by the mainstream media while Kate Winslet refuses to talk about “vulgar” pay inequities in Hollywood and Patricia Arquette urges other marginalized groups to support women — and, let’s be clear here, she was talking about white women in the über privileged world of Hollywood. That’s not to say that Jennifer Lawrence, a fellow champion of closing the pay gap, doesn’t deserve to get paid as much as Bradley Cooper, but it partially ignores the struggles of women like Viola Davis and men like John Boyega to get paid as much as their white counterparts. And to intersect the two, all we have to do is look at this week’s Oscar nominations which resulted in no actors of color being recognized in the four main acting categories. Oscar noms = $$.

I wasn’t expecting to be as taken aback by just how little has changed since the period Suffragette is set. Sure, sexism and misogyny may not be as violent and blatant and we’re more likely to get up in arms when it is, but just because a few high profile women enjoy privileges far removed from what Maud and Violet in Suffragette and countless other women around the world face, doesn’t mean that we don’t need feminism. In fact, it made me realize we need it more than ever.

Scarlett Harris is an Australian writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about femin- and other -isms. You can follow her on Twitter here.

Pollution, Energy Crisis and… Sexism? A Feminist Look at the ‘Soylent Green’ Dystopia

The film’s female characters seem to have accepted their fates and although they may not be okay with it, they don’t do much to fight against it. Today, women’s voices are constantly silenced, even (and especially) when conversations and arguments are about our own bodies.

This is a guest post by Maria Ramos.

Trigger warning: discussion of rape and sexual assault

Soylent Green, Richard Fleischer‘s 1973 classic sci-fi film, makes huge statements about class division, overpopulation, and global warming. Many have drawn parallels between the future depicted in the movie — where the greenhouse effect has taken its toll and much of the world’s wildlife is extinct — to the course of environmental destruction that humanity is currently on in the real world. While the movie’s message about the environment is much needed, its treatment of women makes an even bigger statement.

The dystopian future shown in Soylent Green is downright miserable for everyone but a handful of people — the lucky few aren’t actually seen in the film, but are noted as living away from the chaos of the city in heavily guarded country estates. The movie’s opener lists the population of New York City in the year 2022 at 40 million. Charlton Heston‘s character, Detective Frank Thorn, can’t go to or from his dilapidated apartment without seeing throngs of homeless people in the streets while law enforcement disperses crowds with a garbage truck that literally scoops people out of the way. Food is so scarce that folks take to primarily eating soy and lentil blocks — Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow — while the more popular Soylent Green is in short supply. It’s clear that poverty and overpopulation are major themes in Soylent Green, but the biggest victims of this are the women seen in the film.

Soylent Green stays true to the handling of women in the book on which it is based, Harry Harrison‘s Make Room! Make Room!. Several key details, some names, and the ending change, but one thing stays the same: women are screwed from beginning to end, literally and figuratively. Few women in the film get a break, not the poor or the ones who are “lucky” enough to have access to real food and a place to stay. The latter are actually referred to as “furniture,” and they’re basically attractive women who come as a package deal with the upscale apartments being rented out. A Craigslist ad for such an apartment might read, “Condo comes with a refrigerator, dishwasher, 23-year-old, slim, blonde furniture, and access to a concierge.”

Just like a chair or a hat rack, the women who are considered “furniture” don’t get to choose who uses them and must obey men’s commands, including visitors off the street. They’re routinely subjected to rape, violence and abuse from their renters and any men with whom they come in contact. Leigh Taylor-Young plays the film’s female lead, Shirl, who is at the mercy of the men who rent out the apartment where she lives. She sees her fellow “furniture” friends being beaten up by the building’s owner. Shirl is told, rather than asked, to have sex with Detective Thorn, and has very little control over her own destiny. She displays no anger at her condition and has clearly accepted her lot in life, as have the other women in the movie.

Aside from the sexist treatment experienced by the “furniture,” other women in Soylent Green are treated as disposable. Homeless women are shown being shot in the streets and in a homeless shelter while simply trying to survive. They are picked up by the scooper trucks while struggling to get food and are left to fend for themselves on the streets as they hover over their children.

While overpopulation is the big problem presented in this film, the solutions are rather absurd. No one in the movie thinks to punish the men who rape women and have stripped them of their reproductive rights, as women have no control over their own fertility and bodies in this world. The society depicted in Soylent Green is an extreme patriarchy, and an incompetent one at that. No women have positions of power and none are depicted as heroes who display courage. The men have all the employment opportunities and men make all of the social, political, and economic decisions.

As the film was released in 1973, a time when more women than ever were claiming their own destinies and demanding equal treatment, Soylent Green didn’t depict women’s place in the real world. However, it makes sense in a dystopian setting where political corruption and social chaos run rampant — history shows that women and children typically get the worst treatment in such situations.

One thing that made Soylent Green such an influential movie is that is seems to depict the possibilities if people continue on at their worst. The political system would become a nightmare, police would become defenders of corporations rather than people, and advocating for the rights of women and protecting nature would become afterthoughts. These are all things that have happened in one way or another, especially when it comes to the environment. As the EPA has reported, human fossil fuel consumption in the U.S. alone is adding between 5,000 to 6,000 million metric tons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year, which is thought to be driving temperatures upward. Global warming and climate change are real, and we’re spurring it on.

But would the country’s young women be forced into accepting rape and degradation if our society slips into mayhem in the future? The film’s female characters seem to have accepted their fates and although they may not be okay with it, they don’t do much to fight against it. Today, women’s voices are constantly silenced, even (and especially) when conversations and arguments are about our own bodies. Although definitely not ideal, a future where patriarchal ideas and control over women’s bodies and rights could be a frightening possibility, as seen in the debates around abortion in current political headlines. As for the homeless women being trampled and shot in the streets, that could definitely happen to a significant portion of the female population, especially as violence like this does happen now, particularly to Black women. If we ever see social unrest like that in Soylent Green, women’s rights and social justice would deteriorate as people struggle to survive and men fight to keep their power.

Instead of being outraged at how dreadfully Soylent Green treats women, let’s take it as a forewarning and a lesson. We should think of what we can do to secure the future of women in our society if we ever get to a point where our civil liberties and legal protections are gone. We can either be proactive now, or resign to a life of furniture-like serfdom later.

Maria Ramos is a writer interested in comic books, cycling, and horror films. Her hobbies include cooking, doodling, and finding local shops around the city. She currently lives in Chicago with her two pet turtles, Franklin and Roy. You can follow her on Twitter @MariaRamos1889.

#iamnotavessel: Joss Whedon’s Romantic Reproductive Coercion

Whedon and director Jeunet thus systematically demolish Ridley Scott’s original metaphor by consistently representing Ripley’s experience of forced maternity as akin to both chosen motherhood and loss of self, and essentially different from the forced impregnation and reproductive coercion of the male characters.

Ripley, loving her "beautiful, beautiful little baby" — Ripley, loving her “beautiful, beautiful little baby”

Written by Brigit McCone.

The Alien saga offers some of the most powerful images of bodily violation in pop culture, from the metaphorical rape of the facehuggers to the victim’s resulting fatal impregnation. Ridley “Thelma and Louise“ Scott* fostered male empathy by casting John Hurt as the victim of this violation, while Sigourney Weaver’s badass Ellen Ripley defeated the monster. The sequel, Aliens, saw Ripley voluntarily assume maternal responsibility for a young girl, Newt, and fight an iconic battle against the Alien Queen to save her adopted child. In Alien3, Ripley realized she had been impregnated with an Alien Queen, and made a conscious decision to destroy herself and it. Then, in 1997, celebrated male feminist Joss Whedon scripted a fourth film in the series, Alien: Resurrection, which revived Ripley as an Alien/human hybrid clone.

When her identity is challenged, Ripley/Alien smiles, “I’m the monster’s mother,” equating motherhood with forced cloning in a lab. Realizing that Aliens have escaped, Ripley/Alien grins, later clarifying, “I’m finding a lot of things funny lately, but I don’t think they are.” Merging with the Alien has rendered her emotional responses irrational. As Ripley/Alien is anguished at being forced to destroy a room full of fellow clones, Ron Perlman’s pirate snorts “must be a chick thing”, in a franchise founded on transgressive gender-bending. Ripley/Alien weeps openly at the death of the Newborn, an Alien/human hybrid which has already devoured the brains of two people (including the film’s final person of color), which Brad Dourif’s scientist described as her “beautiful, beautiful little baby.” Whedon and director Jeunet thus systematically demolish Ridley Scott’s original metaphor by consistently representing Ripley’s experience of forced maternity as akin to both chosen motherhood and loss of self, and essentially different from the forced impregnation and reproductive coercion of the male characters.

Maternity may be forced, but motherhood is always voluntary. An adopted mother is a true mother, as Ripley is to Newt. An egg donor, a surrogate or a clone is not automatically a mother, as Ripley is not to the Newborn. Reducing the complexity of motherhood to automatic biology also implies that bad mothers are unnatural, rather than flawed humans, which aspiring writers may wish to explore in this Theme Week. As for Alien: Resurrection, Whedon’s ending was changed and he claims “they said the lines…mostly…but they said them all wrong. And they cast it wrong. And they designed it wrong. And they scored it wrong. They did everything wrong that they could possibly do.” However, three aspects of Whedon’s role as author of Alien: Resurrection still deserve scrutiny. Firstly, that it consistently rewrites and undermines the original feminist purpose of Ridley Scott’s Alien. Secondly, that it is only one of numerous dehumanizing portraits of forced maternity in the work of Joss Whedon. Thirdly, that Whedon’s status as a vocal male feminist does not restrain him from perpetuating this trope.

Sixteen percent of pregnant women surveyed by Lindsay Clark M.D. had been subjected to reproductive coercion (the sabotaging of birth control or the use of threat by male partners to force pregnancy). In a survey of women using family planning services, fully 35 percent of those who experienced partner violence had also been subjected to reproductive coercion. Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction is an iconic representation of terrifying reproductive coercion, but I can think of no equivalent portrayal of reproductive coercion by male characters targeting women, despite its staggering frequency in reality. Nobody wants to confront the possibility that a child might be unwanted, especially by their own mother. However, if we can’t admit that an acid-spitting, brain-eating Alien-child might ever, possibly, be unwanted, our denial has become dehumanizing. Male-authored horror, focusing disproportionately on women as victims of supernatural possession, almost invariably implies that women can be drained of selfhood and controlled by reproductive coercion, supporting the ideology of real-life abusers.

In The Omen, Gregory Peck’s father must confront and attempt to destroy his demon spawn while, in Rosemary’s Baby, Mia Farrow’s mother gently rocks her demon spawn’s cradle with a tender smile. Paternity is an emotional bond mediated by rational judgment, while maternity inevitably entails loss of the rational self. Some female directors have challenged this trope. In Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, a mother’s love is alienated by her child’s sadism, joining the conflicted but humanized mothers of Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, and Kimberley Peirce’s reimagined Carrie. Meanwhile, Roman “Rosemary’s Baby” Polanski, self-confessed rapist, has stated publicly that the birth control Pill “chases away the romance from our lives.” While celebrated male feminist Joss Whedon probably wouldn’t endorse that statement, his romanticized reproductive coercion nevertheless reflects that ideology.

Sady Doyle has praised Whedon’s Dollhouse for its exploration of the sinister implications of reducing women to manipulable male fantasy. As Doyle argues, Dollhouse can even be read as an interrogation of Whedon’s own role, as a writer who converts living actresses into creations of his fantasy. However, Doyle also highlights problems with the second season episode “Instinct,” which suggests that Echo’s being forcibly imprinted, to believe herself a mother, produces a biological response that cannot be erased, even though the woman’s entire personality can be erased, “because the Maternal Instinct has magical science-defying powers of undying devotion which are purely biological and not at all circumstantial” (Doyle’s words). Although the show’s entire point is the essential creepiness of depriving a human of consent, ‘Instinct’ suggests that the maternal instinct is capable of converting forced maternity into a positive experience. Nor is Dollhouse the only example of this.

Dawn, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is conceived by monks reprogramming the characters’ memories and emotions, echoing Dollhouse‘s premise. Since Dawn is an innocent and vulnerable being, Buffy’s decision to protect her is consistent with her established character as a natural rescuer, akin to Ripley’s decision to protect Newt at any cost. However, the show barely allows Buffy five minutes of outrage over the monks’ traumatic violation of her memories and emotional self (without even considering the implications of her fake robot pregnancy in the comics, or Black Widow’s becoming “monster” by sterilization because… dude). Like Echo’s positive experience of forced maternity, Buffy’s maternal instinct towards Dawn effectively cancels out the violation of Dawn’s conception. In the third season of Whedon’s Angel, the evil Darla’s entire personality alters through pregnancy, as she becomes mysteriously infected by the soul of her Prophecyfetus, recalling Ripley’s personality shift through Alien impregnation. Not only is Darla/Prophecyfetus redeemed by an explicitly unwanted pregnancy, but expresses her redemption through self-annihilation, staking herself to allow her baby’s birth.

Self-annihilation is likewise the ultimate expression of Buffy’s maternal instinct, the heroine killing herself for Dawn, her corpse bathed in the hopeful light of a new dawn (subtle). I can’t recall any comparable example of voluntary, fatherly self-annihilation as redemptive in the work of celebrated male feminist Joss Whedon (and even Michael Bay gave us Armageddon). Simon’s sacrifices, as adopted father-figure (and safeword-wielding controller) of sister River Tam, are rewarded with Kaylee’s love in Serenity, while Angel heroically chooses to wipe his son’s memory when paternity becomes too troublesome, and Giles dramatically rejects Buffy when she becomes too independent. Sure, there are complex undercurrents of male self-loathing and idolized female sacrifice going on here, but I can’t see how that actually empowers Whedon’s (routinely mind-controlled) women. As Angel points out in Angel‘s fourth season: “our fate has to be our own, or we’re nothing.” By this measure, Whedon’s women are constantly reduced to “nothing” by maternity.

When it comes to reproductive coercion, nothing beats the treatment of Cordelia Chase on Angel. Already forcibly impregnated by mind-controlling demon spawn in the first season’s “Expecting,” Cordelia agrees in “Birthday” to become half-demon herself, as an act of self-sacrifice to spare Angel from head-splitting visions. She eventually “transcends love” to become an omniscient “higher being” of pure light, but finds herself “so bored” by this power, echoing the vocal dissatisfaction of Whedon’s Ripley, Call, Buffy, Willow, Faith, and River Tam. If Whedon’s superstrong women didn’t all commiserate with each other about the terrible burden of power, they’d barely pass a Bechdel. In Season Four’s opener, Angel is trapped at the bottom of the sea, hallucinating visions of happiness with Cordelia. In one vision, Cordelia pledges her love as self-annihilation, foreshadowing the amnesia inflicted on her when she rejoins Angel, “I can’t remember what it was like, not knowing you”, before Angel vamps and drains her blood. At another vision’s cheerful feast, Cordelia exclaims “kill me now before my stomach explodes,” foreshadowing her next demon pregnancy, in which Cordy’s mind will be possessed yet again by the soul of her Doomfetus, just as Darla/Prophecyfetus and Ripley/Alien were.

Jasmine, the possessing being, forces Cordelia to seduce Angel’s son, Connor, primarily to provoke conflict between the male heroes, but also to conceive Jasmine’s Doomfetus vessel. Appearing in a vision, as the maternal mouthpiece of The Powers That Be, a reproductively purified and ex-evil Darla informs her son, Connor, that the fate of the world now depends on his choice, since Cordelia’s agency has been reproductively annihilated (Darla merely implies that last part). Cordelia is then forced into a coma by the birth of her demon spawn, just as Darla was dusted while giving birth, or Whedon’s Alien Queen decapitated by her Newborn. Meanwhile, Cordelia/Doomfetus has found time to bring forth a Doomsday Beast to destroy the sun (women are great at multitasking), forcing our hero, Angel, to lose his soul for various complex reasons, but mainly to confirm Cordy’s boundless power as mindless maternal mouthpiece. Powerful as she is, Cordelia’s lack of agency nevertheless reduces her, by Angel’s own logic, to “nothing.” Incidentally, Whedon’s treatment of actress Charisma Carpenter did nothing to dispel this impression.

Unmarried, pregnant Cordelia Chase is literally demonized

This feels familiar to an Irish viewer. Our feminine ideal, the “Wild Irish Woman,” gave us warrior goddesses, but never prevented pregnant girls being institutionalized as slave labor (a cultural demonizing of unmarried mothers criticized by Dorothy Macardle and Mairéad Ní Ghráda, before Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters and Stephen Frears’ Philomena drew international attention). Our pirate queen got her nationalist anthem, but our women had their pelvises broken by crippling symphysiotomy until the 1980s without anesthetic, for fear caesareans would encourage use of birth control. We boast history’s second female minister in government, army officer Constance Markievicz, but just last year, a woman raped by the murderers of people close to her underwent forced hydration (she was on hunger strike, becoming suicidal after five months pleading for an abortion) before a coerced C-section (her visa status prevented travel). Believe us, there is no connection whatsoever between celebrating women’s warrior spirit and respecting their reproductive rights. I’m a fan of Buffy. I also understand that teams of writers are involved, though Joss Whedon is ultimately responsible for the content of his television shows. I hate his portraits of reproductive coercion because this ideology repeatedly tortures and kills the most vulnerable women in my country. It’s nothing personal. Images of late-term abortions are commodified by Ireland’s forced maternity lobby, while the faces of suicidal rape victims and the corpses of women who died, denied medically necessary abortions, cannot be shown, ironically out of respect for their personhood; this is why fictional images of forced maternity become a battleground for hearts and minds. Ultimately, this torture of Ireland’s most vulnerable women is also the end goal of America’s forced maternity lobby.

* Yes, I know the rape scene in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is problematic. It’s not like the rapid rise in ass-kicking heroines was matched by a rise in female authorship. Time for a “Microscope on Male Feminists” feature?

Brigit McCone writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling, ducking and covering in anticipation of Whedonite backlash.

Vintage Viewing: Lois Weber, Blockbusting Boundary-Pusher

Thanks to Alice Guy and Lois Weber, filmmaking was once almost unique in its gender equity, before a centralized studio system eliminated the female directors.

Written by Brigit McCone.

Part of Vintage Viewing, exploring the work of female filmmaking pioneers.

“No women directors have achieved the all-embracing, powerful status once held by Lois Weber” – film historian Anthony Slide

Lois Weber: social justice warrior

The career of Lois Weber demonstrates the importance of mentoring between women; entering Gaumont Company as an actress in 1904, Weber was encouraged by the original film director, Alice Guy, to explore directing, producing, and scriptwriting, while Weber mentored female directors at Universal like Cleo Madison and Dorothy Davenport Reid. Weber’s career also demonstrates the importance of precedent: elected to the Motion Picture Directors’ Association and the highest paid director in Hollywood, her success inspired Universal to promote female directors such as Ida May Park to replace her when Weber left to found Lois Weber Productions. Thanks to Alice Guy and Lois Weber, filmmaking was once almost unique in its gender equity, before a centralized studio system eliminated the female directors. The only survivor into Hollywood’s Golden Age, Dorothy Arzner, was great for transmasculine representation, but an indicator of how exclusively masculine-coded directing had become.

Three directors: Cecil B. DeMille, Lois Weber and Jeanie MacPherson — Three directors: Cecil B. DeMille, Lois Weber, and Jeanie MacPherson

For her first feature film, 1914’s The Merchant of Venice, Weber chose a Shakespearean classic whose brilliant female lawyer, Portia, resolves the plot’s dilemma. Her 1915 feature, Hypocrites, is a lush epic. Made the year before D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, Hypocrites parallels the medieval past and the present in a moral allegory, anticipating Griffith’s most admired film. Weber’s Hypocrites criticizes mob mentality and organized religion, as a medieval monk creates an icon of truth as a naked woman and is murdered by a mob for lewdness. Using innovative traveling double exposures and intricate editing, Weber constructs her naked star as a disembodied phantasm, who confronts congregation members with their own urges for money, sex and power, bypassing slut-shaming to examine society’s fear of the naked woman in the abstract. Fact mirrored fiction, as audiences flocked to Hypocrites for its nudity, before Weber faced a backlash of hypocritical outrage. Weber’s film also features vast canvases and landscapes, using mountains with interesting silhouettes and the highly reflective surface of lakes to compensate for the low light-sensitivity of early cameras. Film critic Mike E. Grost points out that this pictorial quality is associated with the cinema of John Ford, who started his directing career working for Weber’s employer, Universal, in 1917, two years after Hypocrites. [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJBJvEEPegI”]

Extract from Hypocrites, showcasing Weber’s pictorial allegory

In 1915, Hypocrites was banned by the Ohio censorship board, as was the racist The Birth of a Nation. The all-male Supreme Court’s judgement in Mutual vs. Ohio, that free speech protections should not apply to motion pictures, centers sexual “prurience” as their concern however, not hate speech. By 1915, female directors Alice Guy and Lois Weber had explored gender role reversal, gay affirmative narratives, social pressures fuelling prostitution, the evils of domestic abuse, and the hypocrisy of male censorship of the female form. The following year, Weber would condemn capital punishment in The People vs. John Doe, while the Supreme Court’s decision enabled widespread censorship of films by Weber and Margaret Sanger advocating birth control. By the time free speech protections were extended to film, with 1952’s Burstyn vs. Wilson decision, female directors had been eliminated from Hollywood’s studio system.

More than just social propaganda, Weber’s films were equally noted for her talent at drawing out effective performances, shown in this extract from 1921’s exploration of wage inequity and the credit crisis, The Blot. [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1ttuOKdPC4″]

Margaret McWade‘s dignified humiliation in The Blot (extract)

Though most of Weber’s films are credited to the husband and wife team of Weber and Phillips Smalley, Weber was the sole author of their scenarios. She went on to write and direct five feature films after her divorce from Smalley, while he never directed again. Nevertheless, film historian Anthony Slide claims that her productivity declined post-divorce as she could not function “without the strong masculine presence” of her husband. Her drop in productivity actually parallels most of her female peers, with outside investors playing an increasing role in 1920s Hollywood and preferring to back male productions. Despite setbacks, including the bankruptcy of Lois Weber Productions, Weber entered the sound era with lost film White Heat in 1934, depicting a plantation owner ruined after discarding his native lover and marrying a white society girl. This echoes Weber’s 1913 short Civilized and Savage, in which a heroic native girl nurses a plantation owner and departs unthanked. Though Weber’s brownface performance in Civilized and Savage, and her use of “tragic mulatto” clichés for White Heat‘s martyred heroine, can be criticized, both films are theoretically anti-racist. Weber died of a ruptured gastric ulcer, aged 60, in 1939, dismissively eulogized as a “star-maker” rather than a distinctive artist with her own voice and politics.

Suspense – 1913

“The Final Girl is (apparently) female not despite the maleness of the audience, but precisely because of it.” – Carol J. Clover

In Carol J. Clover’s influential study Men, Women, And Chain Saws, she expresses surprise at finding feminist enjoyment in horror, where majority-male audiences are expected to identify with a female protagonist. But slashers were not the male creation she assumed them to be. Gothic horror was popularized by Ann Radcliffe, writing from the perspective of a vulnerable yet resilient heroine. Radcliffe’s Final Girl was raped by Matthew Lewis’ Monk, parodied by Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, and made lesboerotic by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, but her role as the conventional protagonist of horror was fixed, her impact discussed by Bitch Flicks‘ guest writer Sobia. Male artists obsessively sexualized the Final Girl, but didn’t create her.

In Lois Weber’s 1913 short Suspense, the Final Girl crosses into cinema, now unsexily a wife and mother. Ideologically, Suspense is not radical: Weber’s middle-class heroine is a damsel-in-distress, shrieking and clutching her baby as she’s imperiled by the house-invading “Tramp,” waiting passively for her husband to rescue her. What Suspense brilliantly achieves is a cinematic language of the female gaze, inducing male viewers to identify with the heroine. From the mother spotting the Tramp from an upper window in dramatic close-up, to the Tramp’s slow ascent, viewed from the woman’s position at the top of the stairs, to Weber’s close-ups of the mother’s terrified reactions, Suspense demonstrates that identifying with the imperiled woman is essential to produce… suspense.

Weber’s split screens, and the dread she builds by allowing the Tramp to initially lurk in the background, were also innovative. From George Cukor’s Gaslight to Hitchcock’s Rebecca to John Carpenter’s Halloween, directors would use Weber’s techniques of female gaze to induce the male empathy that they required for their suspense effects, creating the accidental feminism of horror that Clover celebrated. Though often remembered for her moralism, Weber mastered the craft of popular entertainment, scripting the original 1918 Tarzan of the Apes, and being drafted to recut the Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera after initial versions tested poorly, successfully crafting it into an acknowledged classic. [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_wkw5Fr_I8″]

Where Are My Children? – 1916

“Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises.” – Margaret Sanger

“Must She Always Plead In Vain?” by legendary feminist cartoonist Lou Rogers, 1919

A Cinema History slams Weber’s influential 1916 film with the claim that “even more strongly than D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, this film defends the superiority of the white race… the film is in the first place defending eugenics.” It is true that Weber’s film invokes eugenics in her courtroom defense of birth control, but her case studies are of impoverished white families in circumstances unsuitable for children – abusive relationships, overcrowded homes and ailing mothers. Weber’s argument, “if the mystery of birth were understood, crime would be wiped out,” actually anticipates research by popular book Freakonomics. The irony of Where Are My Children? — that birth control and abortion are available to women who can afford children, but not to the poor — mirrors current realities in Ireland. Though the activism of Women on Web has reduced the number of Irish women driven overseas for terminations over the last decade from over 6,000 yearly to around 3,000, the law almost exclusively impacts institutionalized women, illegally trafficked women, asylum seekers, homeless women, hospitalized women and victims of reproductive coercion – that is, groups most at risk of sexual exploitation.

Like Weber’s choice of a white actor for the Tramp of Suspense, and her argument in Civilized and Savage that civilized values are independent of race, her choice of white families as negative case studies in Where Are My Children? dodges eugenics’ racial aspect. To understand why she is using eugenics, one must appreciate the philosophy’s widespread acceptance before its adoption by Nazism, shaping US debates on immigration and converting celebrities George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill in the UK. Weber covers her bases by invoking religion as well as pseudoscience, using Calvinist concepts of election as a metaphor for the “predestination” of planned parenthood, with cherubs representing pregnancies that were unfilmable at the time.

The prosecution of Margaret Sanger inspired the film’s Dr. Homer. A Cinema History questions Weber’s feminist cred by demanding, “Why did Lois Weber turn this positive female character into a man?” Why A Cinema History considers eugenicist Sanger “a positive female character” while criticizing Weber is a mystery, but here’s why Dr. Homer’s a man: the success of Where Are My Children? emboldened Weber to make The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, starring Weber herself as a woman on trial for advocating birth control. The film’s original title Is A Woman A Person? echoes Ireland’s #iamnotavessel. The Hand That Rocks The Cradle was censored across the Northeast and Midwest, and is now lost.

Alison Duer Miller, sarcastic suffragette bitch (in a good way)

The suppression of The Hand That Rocks The Cradle demonstrates the necessity of Weber’s patriarchal approach to Where Are My Children? (including remaining uncredited to obscure its female authorship), as classic deliberative rhetoric. Weber harnesses popular horror of abortion to present birth control as the only alternative to “stop the slaughter of the unborn and save the lives of unwilling mothers.” The hero, Walton, fails to consult his wife on having children, driving her to secret abortions which render her unable to conceive, punishing him with permanent childlessness. In a Dirty Dancing twist (another female-authored blockbuster), the housekeeper’s daughter dies by tragically botched abortion, blamed on the wealthy “wolf” who seduced her without consequence.

Though A Cinema History claims the film shows “how moral values have shifted since the 1910s,” their interpretation of Weber’s frankly depicted unwilling mothers, as “refusing motherhood out of pure selfishness,” rather suggests little has changed. Where Are My Children? is not a free expression of Weber’s eugenic or anti-abortion views (whatever they were), it is calculated propaganda for an age when advocates of birth control were prosecuted by male juries, under obscenity laws created by legislatures for which women were not yet entitled to vote. Watching Where Are My Children?, you see our foremothers going to the mattresses for freedoms we (even me, thanks to Ireland’s Contraceptive Train) now take for granted. Despite its outdated imagery, or precisely because of how that imagery reflects Weber’s anticipated audience, Where Are My Children? is a milestone in the struggle for reproductive rights.

Suggested Soundtrack: Joan Baez, “Baez Sings Dylan”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwrkAyH0-8A”]

See also at Bitch Flicks: Erik Bondurant reviews Where Are My Children

Lois Weber was only one of many actresses who took creative control over their films by moving into directing in the silent era. Next month’s Vintage Viewing: Mabel Normand, Slapstick Star in Charge. Stay tuned!

Brigit McCone writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and memorizing lists of forgotten female artists (Brigit McCone is an extremely dull conversationalist).

Folk Mariology in ‘Jane the Virgin’

‘Jane the Virgin’ isn’t about the fetus, and it certainly isn’t about being a passive receptacle. The show’s real coup is its emphasis on the agency of a woman who is a victim of reproductive coercion. Jane is thrown into a reproductive situation which she wouldn’t have chosen, and the show takes her quandary seriously: how does she feel? What does she do next? How does this affect her career plans, her relationships with those around her, her self-conception?

Written by Max Thornton.

The Virgin Mary is a complicated figure in the feminist imagination. The classic feminist critique is that, as virgin and mother, she simultaneously embodies the two contradictory patriarchal idealizations of women. As the most prominent female figure in the mainstream Catholic tradition, Mary becomes the standard against which all women are measured; but, being unable to be simultaneously virgins and mothers, women are doomed to failure from the get-go.

There’s something to this critique, especially if you only consider the top-down decrees of an all-male church hierarchy, but it’s absolutely not the whole story. From early Christian converts, who were able to impute to Mary some of the characteristics of goddesses they had previously revered, to the transgressive folk Mariology of twentieth-century Latin America described by queer theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid, Christian history is rife with Marys who are considerably more nuanced and complex than a mere idealized virgin mother.

Remember the controversy around this New Zealand church billboard?

The CW’s new show Jane the Virgin is a folk Mariology for the twenty-first century, and in a lot of ways it’s a pretty great one. Perhaps the show was initially been pitched and greenlit on the basis of its absurd and contrived premise – a pregnant virgin! who is artificially inseminated by mistake! – but, just like with the Virgin Mary of Christian myth, you’d be missing out on a lot of fascinating nuance if you disdain it purely because it’s fantastical.

Like the Mary of Christian tradition, Jane is an idealized woman on paper: chaste, engaged to a good man, committed to her faith, and determined to live an upright life. At the urging of her devout abuela, Jane takes a childhood vow of chastity until marriage, but a mix-up at the gynecologist’s results in a virginal pregnancy. Jane may be a pregnant virgin who tries to adhere to traditional morality, but she is definitely not the Virgin Mary reborn. She has no intention of remaining a virgin in perpetuity like the sainted Mary of Catholicism, and she plans to relinquish the baby to its intended parents; her own conception to an unwed teen mother was far from immaculate; so far from sticking heroically by her, her fiancé proves to be kind of a douche. Sharp writing and superb acting from the delightful Gina Rodriguez combine to portray Jane much more sympathetically and realistically than some of the hyper-idealized images of a perfect, sinless Mary.

jane-the-virgin-poster-the-cw — In reality, Jesus’ mom definitely had darker skin, hair, and eyes than the whitebread lady up top.

In its haste to focus on the baby Jesus, Christianity has too often reduced Mary to a passive receptacle, an incubator who performs her reproductive function with the minimum of fuss, a reactive figure whose greatest display of agency is to accept the reproductive coercion of the supernatural. Jane the Virgin isn’t about the fetus, and it certainly isn’t about being a passive receptacle. The show’s real coup is its emphasis on the agency of a woman who is a victim of reproductive coercion. In a political climate of dramatic assaults on reproductive freedom, it’s not hard to see Jane’s accidental insemination as a general-audience-friendly version of the reproductive coercion that people with uteri face from a whole array of actants, including the anti-choice lobby, intimate partner violence, and economic instability. Jane is thrown into a reproductive situation which she wouldn’t have chosen, and the show takes her quandary seriously: how does she feel? What does she do next? How does this affect her career plans, her relationships with those around her, her self-conception?

I’d like to see Jane the Virgin take its interrogation of hierarchical Mariology further. I want to see a deconstruction of the whole meaningless concept of virginity (and perhaps the show is headed that way, with Jane gradually coming to acknowledge that her worth as a human being is not tied to her sexual activity or lack thereof). And I want to see a critical engagement with Abuela’s Catholicism, which, despite being both profoundly resonant theme and plot driver, remains fairly one-dimensional, being characterized primarily by exhortations to sexual purity and a vapid insistence that “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

Jane with her mom and abuela, a "strong Latina matriarchy." — Jane with her mom and abuela, a “strong Latina matriarchy.”

There are plenty of other reasons to love Jane the Virgin. Nearly every character is Latin@ and there are a lot of well-rounded female characters (including queer Latina women). Arguably the central relationship is that of Jane and her mother Xiomara, which is complicated and wonderful. The show has a jocular self-awareness of its frequent silliness without being mean-spirited about the telenovelas from which it derives, especially in the glorious character of fictitious telenovela superstar Rogelio de la Vega. It also has the best use of a TV voiceover since Arrested Development.

Only seven episodes have aired so far, with the eighth due to air next Monday. In those seven hours, Jane the Virgin has proved itself to be one of the best new shows on TV. Long may it continue.

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Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and tweets at @RainicornMax. He’s never happier than when he can combine talking about pop culture, theology, and feminism.

‘It’s A Girl’: The Importance of the Reproductive Justice Framework

The framework of reproductive justice was conceptualized by Black women to be a much broader, more sophisticated analysis of the various factors beyond individual choice, encompassing race, socioeconomic status, disability, and other intersections of oppression and marginalization. A very clear illustration of the necessity for replacing the choice framework with the reproductive justice framework lies in the issue of sex-selective abortions.

Written by Max Thornton.

It’s easy to be seduced by the rhetoric of choice. We all want to believe we’re free agents, exercising our will with maximum autonomy. Who wants to be the product of social forces and discursive systems that circumscribe the very possibilities of your existence before you’re even born?

The reality is, though, as much as we’d like to think otherwise, every choice a person makes is radically delineated by a vast web of socioeconomic, political, cultural, and material influences. Systemic change, then, isn’t simply a matter of individuals making different choices; nuanced, contextually-sensitive analysis of the many forces at play is crucial.

Reproductive justice isn’t as simple as choice and can’t be reduced to being “pro-choice.” The framework of reproductive justice was conceptualized by Black women to be a much broader, more sophisticated analysis of the various factors beyond individual choice, encompassing race, socioeconomic status, disability, and other intersections of oppression and marginalization. A very clear illustration of the necessity for replacing the choice framework with the reproductive justice framework lies in the issue of sex-selective abortions.

Evan Grae Davis’ 2012 documentary, It’s A Girl, attempts to analyze some of the factors at work in the issue of sex-selective abortions in India and China. The film’s great strength is its clear divide of focus, to examine in turn the different contexts of India and China, showing how the same issue in both countries has a quite distinct matrix of causes.

Fun fact: if you google this movie, you find pro-life websites love it. Sigh. — Fun fact: if you Google this movie, you find pro-life websites love it. Sigh.

In India, a heteropatriarchal tradition has united with rampant capitalism to produce a context in which sons are financially valuable while daughters are an economic drain. The payment of dowries is technically illegal, but that hasn’t put an end to the cultural practice of the bride’s family paying the groom’s, sometimes quite extravagantly. Consequently there is immense social, cultural, and economic pressure on women to provide sons.

The limitations of the choice framework are abundantly clear when the film shows a rural Indian woman talking openly and unrepentantly about killing her own female newborns: it’s a choice she made, sure, but this choice was circumscribed by so many discursive and material circumstances, the combination of poverty and patriarchy that keeps women wholly dependent on their husbands, the entrenched devaluing of female life, the failure of law and government authorities to enforce the laws that exist… I can’t help comparing the many women in the US who abort fetuses because they would be born with disabilities. Again, this is a choice they make, and it is (or should be) absolutely the pregnant person’s decision whether or not to continue being pregnant; however, it is a choice enacted in a cultural milieu that considers disabled lives not worth living, an economic milieu that treats disabled lives as a burden, a political milieu in which healthcare is so precarious that many families lack the resources to care for children with disabilities.

Similarly, in India there are very many factors at play, and the film might have benefited from engaging a critique of a few more of them, such as the compulsory heterosexuality and cissexism of treating every infant as though its birth-assigned sex will dictate its entire life course, and the unchecked capitalism that exacerbates the issue.

In China, the situation is quite different. The end result – sons are valuable, daughters are a drain – is the same, but the equation that leads to this result is not heteropatriarchal tradition plus capitalism, but heteropatriarchal tradition plus government control of reproduction. The one-child policy has been in place since 1979, with an exception for rural families whose first child is female – they can try again for a boy. Women who are found to be pregnant illegally face forced abortion and forced sterilization. (Again, I found myself irresistibly drawing comparisons closer to home, this time to the anti-abortion lobby in the US and its campaign to recriminalize abortion, perhaps willfully ignorant of the fact that forced birth is just as dystopian a violation as forced abortion.)

It’s A Girl is particularly strong in its analysis of China’s situation, both its roots and its ramifications. For example, the “gendercide” against female infants has resulted in a generation whose males vastly outnumber its women, and this has led to a spike in sex trafficking and the kidnapping of child brides. Concurrently, there is a young sub-society of undocumented children, who were born illegally and have no official existence and thus no access to healthcare, schooling, passports, and other benefits of citizenship.

Special mention of this supercool woman, who rescued an abandoned infant and who I want to be friends with.

A perfect film would perhaps have committed to a fuller analysis. At 64 minutes, this documentary runs a little short, and could easily have found time for a discussion of, say, the impact of globalization – which might have mitigated the occasional moment of awful hypocrisy and paternalism, such as the one interviewee who outright indicts these countries by comparison with (I paraphrase slightly) “countries where women are fully equal.” (Tell us more, Sam Harris.) Nonetheless, overall It’s A Girl is a solid popular introduction to a fraught topic, and not a bad entrypoint into thinking through reproductive justice issues with nuance and complexity.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and tweets at @RainicornMax. The event where he saw this film was kind of weird, but he made a cool new friend. Hi, Lillian!

Reproductive Rights in ‘Orphan Black’ Season 2

What’s shaping up to be the forefront theme in ‘Orphan Black’ season two is reproductive rights. Of all the clones, Sarah is an anomaly because she was able to give birth to Kira when all her clone counterparts are infertile. The seemingly impossible birth of Kira has the forces of science and religion both vying for access and control over clone bodies.

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I continue to be a fan of Orphan Black into its second season. My review of season one—Orphan Black: It’s All About the Ladies–focuses on the strength and wide range of female characters that the show revolves around (not to mention Tatiana Maslany‘s formidable acting talents as she portrays all of the clones). In season two, the compelling female relationships continue to be integral to the heart of Orphan Black‘s plotlines. In particular, we see a deepening of Cosima’s connection to and lingering distrust of her monitor, Delphine.

Can Cosima trust her lover and monitor Delphine?

We also delve into the dark past of Sarah’s foster mother Mrs. S, full of secrets, violence, and questionable intentions.

Is Mrs. S helping or hurting Sarah and Kira?

We also meet a new and powerful clone, Rachel, who works for the dubious cloning research corporation, Dyad, and who doesn’t seem to feel a kinship with her fellow clones.

Sarah and Rachel get off on the wrong foot — Clone-Off: Sarah and Rachel

We also see more of Sarah coming into her own as a responsible, present parent for her medical miracle daughter, Kira. Though Felix is not a woman, his close relationship with foster sister Sarah and his queerness seem to get him into the inner circle of Clone Club, and it’s always a pleasure to watch scenes where he calls Sarah on her shit, is nurturing to Kira, is hilarious, and remains fabulous the whole time.

What’s shaping up to be the forefront theme in Orphan Black season two is reproductive rights. Of all the clones, Sarah is an anomaly because she was able to give birth to Kira when all her clone counterparts are infertile. The seemingly impossible birth of Kira has the forces of science and religion both vying for access and control over clone bodies. Yes, a pitched battle between science and religion is mounting over the reproductivity of female bodies. Sound familiar? Art imitating life perhaps…

The Prometheans, a religious cult, attempt to bind Helena to their cause

Both the Prometheans (religious nutjobs) and the Dyads (cold, calculating scientists) are deceptive, selfish, and don’t see the clones as autonomous human beings. Our heroines must navigate these treacherous forces that seek to exploit them. Even more remarkable is the way in which the clones fight back by using these forces for their own gains by gathering, stealing, and manipulating resources and information in order to better understand themselves: their origin, DNA, and purpose. From within a system that attempts to abuse and dehumanize them, these woman are making their own way, living by their own rules, and relying on their collective strength to survive. Now that, my friends, is a feminism.

Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Abortion Onscreen: Behind the Statistics

However, we did our analysis to counter the recurring popular narrative that abortion is totally absent from media representations. Abortion stories are there, and they’ve always been there. Now that we know that, and we’ve identified them, we can begin delving into more detailed analyses of these stories.

Abortion on Film and TV — Click on the infographic to view the full-size image. Designed by Jessica Harrington, Kate Giambrone, and Julianna Johnson.

This is a guest post by Gretchen Sisson. She is working on Abortion Onscreen, which involves research of depictions of abortion in film and television.

Whenever you set out to say something about abortion, you’re going to be faced with criticism; whenever you attempt to say something serious about popular culture, the rigor of your intellectual pursuit will likely be challenged. Despite that, we’ve been generally pleased with the response to the study. People seem interested in discussing what stories they’ve seen, and which they find most compelling. I thought that – for this audience of cinephiles – I might respond in more detail to some of the comments and questions that keep cropping up.

So, there are more examples of abortion on television and movies than there used to be. That does not seem that interesting.

True, it’s not. There are more movies being made, more television shows, more channels for distribution – unless the increase is in prevalence (it’s not), this isn’t inherently noteworthy. However, we did our analysis to counter the recurring popular narrative that abortion is totally absent from media representations. Abortion stories are there, and they’ve always been there. Now that we know that, and we’ve identified them, we can begin delving into more detailed analyses of these stories.

Movies and television are always more dramatic than real life. So why is this interesting?

It’s true, lots of things are more dangerous on television and in movies. Cars and planes are more likely to crash; patients are more likely to slip into comas (and come out of them). There is more violence, more suspense, more drama overall – that’s what makes stories interesting.

However, it’s interesting that many medical procedures are less risky on television. CPR, for example, is consistently much more successful on television than in real life. Not only is it more effective at reviving people, it is also almost never shown to result in complications (such as broken ribs) that are fairly common in real life emergency situations. Yet, abortion is consistently shown to be more dangerous. (In this study, we specifically looked at the mortality rates of abortion on television; in future investigations we hope to look at other complications such as infertility and adverse mental health outcomes.)

It’s true that a dangerous abortion may be a more interesting story than a safe abortion. But why would a storyteller include an abortion, if their primary goal was to include medical complication? Why not have a character experience acute appendicitis? Or miscarriage with hemorrhage? Or any number of dramatic, possibly (but rarely) fatal conditions? The fact that abortion is often used in this way tells us something about why it’s included at all.

Furthermore, many of the deaths associated with abortion were not caused by the abortion itself. As you can see, many of the characters who got an abortion (or just considered getting one) later died as a result of accident or violence. This sort of karmic linking between characters associated with abortion and dramatic deaths is telling; it seems that abortion is used not as a way of creating drama in and of itself, but as a way of condemning characters.

Realistic abortion stories would be boring. Why would media makers want to include them?

This is the Chekhov’s gun principle. Why include an abortion if it’s not dramatic? But realistic abortion can be dramatic. It can involve drama if the character is conflicted and agonizing over her decision. It can involve drama even if she knows immediately that she wants an abortion, but must find a way to pay for it, or face protestors on her way to the clinic, or consider what the unplanned pregnancy means for the future of her relationships. Many movies and television shows have shown realistic abortions in compelling dramatic ways: Friday Night Lights, Parenthood, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, to name just a few. I don’t accept the premise that realistic abortions are inherently uninteresting. Furthermore, it seems that common, stigmatized experiences would provide ample opportunities for creative storytellers to say something new, interesting, dramatic – maybe even profound – without resorting to a bloody ending.

When, historically, are these abortion stories set? Shouldn’t some abortions be portrayed as dangerous?

This observation is exactly why we chose not to comment on the motivations of screenwriters and producers. For example, in Vera Drake, Revolutionary Road, and Dirty Dancing, illegal abortion is portrayed as dangerous. This could be a very progressive commentary on the importance of legal access to abortion. Conversely, the legal abortion story in Ides of March – which ends with the young woman committing suicide when she believes her abortion is going to be disclosed on the national stage – is, at its core, a message of stigma.

Furthermore, because our sample began in 1916 (when abortion was dangerous) and included the decades filmmakers had to follow the Hays Code (which said abortion stories could not have happy endings), we recognize that there are innumerable reasons and motivations for abortion to be portrayed as dangerous.

Ultimately, though, the aggregate linking of abortion and risk creates an ongoing social myth about abortion as dangerous. We do not live in a world where people talk openly about their abortion experiences. We’ve all driven in cars, so when we see crashes or chases in movies, we can integrate that into our overall idea of what “driving” is, and the fictional narrative, while entertaining, plays a relatively small part in shaping that idea. However, we don’t all have abortion, or talk to people we know about their abortions (or even know that we know people who’ve had abortions), which makes the stories we see in the media all the more important cultural understanding of what abortion is.

What’s next?

We really want to use this study as a jumping off more for exploring more detailed questions about abortion stories in film and television: Who gets abortions? Why? What does abortion care actually look like in popular culture? You’re welcome to check out abortiononscreen.org to see more about where we hope to go in the future.

Recommended Reading: “Films and TV Portray Abortion As More Dangerous Than It Is” at Bitch Media

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Gretchen Sisson is a sociologist at ANSIRH, a reproductive health research group at the University of California at San Francisco, whose work focuses on abortion, teen pregnancy and young parenthood, adoption, and infertility. You can find her on Twitter @gesisson.

‘Obvious Child’: A Rom Com Gets Real Over Choice (Fundraising)

Too many times, films singularly depict abortions as religious immoral decisions or heavy emotional burdens, but such a topic does not always have to be heavy hitting and controversial.

This piece by Katrina Majkut is cross-posted with permission from her blog, The Feminist Bride.

In the saccharine land of rom coms, plots can be trite, characters undefined and sappy sweet endings all too predictable for most movie-goers. And the worst part is that rom coms are usually geared toward women. No one wants to watch the same movies with the same formulas. If you’re like me, you’ve been looking for something different, endearing, and more in touch with reality.
That’s where Obvious Child (2014), by writer and director Gillian Robespierre, comes in. Unlike rom coms centered around getting the boy or choosing love, Obvious Child is about what a woman chooses for herself–in this case, an abortion. It follows Brooklyn comedian Donna Stern (Jenny Slate), who “gets dumped, fired, and pregnant just in time for the worst/best Valentine’s Day of her life.” The best part about the film’s description is that it focuses on the nature of Donna’s choice and how after everything, she ends up all right.

With the help of Robespierre’s friends and coworkers, Anna Bean and Karen Maine, they wrote and produced a short film version in 2009. Robespierre said, “We were frustrated by the limited representations of young women’s experience with pregnancy, let alone growing up. We were waiting to see a more honest film, or at least, a story that was closer to many of the stories we knew.” Too many times, films singularly depict abortions as religious immoral decisions or heavy emotional burdens, but such a topic does not always have to be heavy hitting and controversial.

What I loved about the idea to this film (and why I chose to donate to it) is how imperative it is to see women’s issues addressed in different ways–with humor and wit. I also loved the women power behind this film, something we seldom see. Kathryn Bigelow is not the only female director tackling hard issues in interesting ways.

The film has been accepted to the upcoming Sundance Film Festival, but it still needs financial support to be complete (donations support final touches and distribution). It is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. $10 gets you an online screening of the original short film. It’s a few thousand dollars short and just has 11 days to go! Sometimes, women have to go to extra lengths to support their sisters and get better pop culture representation. Ladies, give the gift that will give back to yourself! The best part is that you can do this from the comfort of your own home. In a time when abortion rights and access become increasingly limited in the United States, sometimes it’s movies like Obvious Child that can entertain us, but also send an important message that when it comes to abortion, whatever we choose, we’ll be all right.

OBVIOUS CHILD: a 2014 Sundance World Premiere! by Gillian Robespierre — Kickstarter.

Read Bitch Flicks’ review of the original short film here.
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Katrina Majkut is the founder and writer of the website TheFeministBride.com. As a “wedding anthropologist,” she examines how weddings and relationships are influenced by history, pop culture and the media. Her goal is to bring to light the inherent gender inequality issues that couples may not even be aware of within wedding traditions and the wedding “industry,” and to start dialogue around solutions that empower women to take positive action toward equality in their relationships and marriages.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

The feminism of Working Girl, “respectability politics” in 12 Years a Slave, female filmmakers on Twitter, comedy and reproductive rights, female sexuality on primetime, “Black Actress” on YouTube, and a comic about abortion laws… check out what we’ve been reading this week, and let us know what you’ve been reading and writing in the comments!

Acting Right Around White Folks: on “12 Years a Slave” and “Respectability Politics,” by ReBecca Theodore-Vachon at RogerEbert.com

Amy Poehler introduces TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD at Alamo Drafthouse! at Drafthouse.com

Why female pleasure–not sex–is the real taboo on primetime television by Monica Nickelsburg at The Week

Carrie: A Possibly Unnecessary Remake of a Still-Resonant Horror Story by Andi Zeisler at Bitch Media

Healing from Historic Trauma: “12 Years a Slave” by Janell Hobson at Ms.

40 Female Filmmakers to Follow on Twitter: A Crowdsourced List by Paula Bernstein at Indiewire

The Hollywood Reporter Announced the Top 50 Showrunners by Kerensa Cadenas at Women and Hollywood

Black Girl ‘Geeks’ Want To See More Of Themselves In Comics at NPR

Carol Burnett Cracks Up Washington by Ashley Southall at The New York Times

Call for Applications: Her Film Project Marketing Grant for Women Filmmakers by Kyna Morgan at Her Film

Everything I Know About Feminism I Learned From Working Girl by Rosemary Counter at Jezebel

‘Black Actress’ Web Series Premieres on Issa Rae’s YouTube Channel by Von Diaz at Colorlines

Comedy, Women, and Reproductive Rights: An Interview with Lizz Winstead by Hannah Strom at NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon

Purity Culture as Rape Culture: Why the Theological Is Political by Dianna E. Anderson at RH Reality Check

Stealth Attack: What You Need to Know About the New Abortion Laws (Comic) by Jen Sorensen at ACLU

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

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

This week we’ve been reading about how an actress prepares for violence in a film, women directors, the common flaw of TV’s strong women, and more. Tell us what you’ve been reading and writing this week in the comments!