Tag: Romance

Guest Writer Wednesday: African American Romantic Comedies: Colorism

This guest post by Renee Martin also appears at her blog Women’s Eye on Media. 

I love a good romantic comedy, but I must admit I am especially partial to those that star Blacks. It is a rare thing to see a dominant Black presence in media, and romantic comedies happen to be the only genre that this consistently happens in. Unfortunately, these movies still fall into specific tropes that are a direct result of being produced in a White supremacist culture.

Many of the male stars like, Morris Chestnut and Taye Diggs are dark skinned Black men. In fact, you could reasonably argue that Morris Chestnut is the king of the African Romantic comedy. These dark skinned men are always described as fiiiine, hot, and a real catch. When it comes to colourism and Black men, it would be fair to say that it is not an issue in African American comedies, because the actors range from Morris Chestnut to the ever so lovely LL Cool J (and yes, I love him).

The same is not necessarily true when it comes to women. From Stacey Dash in VHI’s new series Single Ladies, to Paula Patton in 2011’s Jumping the Broom, to Sanaa Lathan in The Best Man, to Zoe Saldana in Guess Who, to Vivica Fox in Two Can Play That Game, and Queen Latifah in Just Wright, light skinned women have a tendency to dominate the genre. The darkest skinned women that you will find in the genre are Monique, who played the ghetto woman Two Can Play That Game, Kimberly Elise, who played Helen in Diary of a Mad Black Woman (the title says it all doesn’t it), and Gabrielle Union, who starred in Deliver Us From Eva.

What is perhaps most interesting, is that in Deliver Us From Eva, Union played the stereotypical angry Black woman who had been burned countless times. She was absolutely vicious to anyone that approached her, and her brother in laws absolutely detested her, that is until they paid LL. Cool J to date her, and suddenly she became soft, and loving. Here we go again with another Black woman being saved from her angry ways by the love of a good Black man. (Tyler Perry is somewhere dancing a little jig.) All the things that allowed her to support her sisters up to and including putting them through school, and saving money for the benefit of their family, were seen as negative character traits. When Union played opposite Vivica Fox in Two Can Play That Game, she played the role of Jezebel. That’s right, a dark Black woman out to steal away Morris Chestnut from the light skinned, smart, and in control Vivica Fox. Union was slut shamed throughout the movie, and yet when Vivica Fox chose to sleep with Chestnut in his office it was simply being freaky and keeping your man happy. Particularly telling, is that no reference was made to differentiate between the two women, except for the visually obvious difference in hue. Why one was necessarily deserving of being slut shamed, when she was essentially no different than the other, was left for the viewer to determine. Even in movies, the strong dark skinned Black woman can never get a break.

Colourism can be just as damaging to Black men as Dr. Michael Eric Dyson explained, when he examined the relationship between himself and his incarcerated dark skinned brother, yet in movies, the hue of Black men can range from LL. Cool J and Terrence Howard to Taye Diggs and Richard T Jones, without any real issue. In fact, the very range in hue of Black men suggests that Black men are all uniquely valuable and sexually attractive. This is why it is hard to comprehend why the same universal acceptance is not given to Black women.

In Jungle Fever, Wesley Snipes leaves his light skinned Black wife played by Lonette McKee, for an Italian woman. In a scene with McKee’s girlfriends, they discuss how the trend for a long time was for Black men to seek out light bright and damn near White women as partners, and how that changed as inter racial relationships became acceptable. You see, the White woman has always been held up as the epitome of beauty, and failing that, the WOC who was closest in appearance to Whiteness was then the chosen prize, thereby leaving dark skinned women completely out of the loop. A new documentary entitled Dark Skin being released this fall discusses this issue. If you doubt that this is an issue, a simple look at what L’Oreal Feria haircolor did to Beyonce, or what Elle Magazine did to Gabourey Sidibe is more than enough to settle this issue.

No woman of colour can ever be light skinned enough. What is particularly disgusting, is not only do these movies have all Black casts, in quite a few instances, they have Black directors to boot. What does it say about Black cinema, that we constantly reproduce our internalized racial hatred? Since we know that colorism is an issue for the entire community, why is it that, Black women are particularly targeted with erasure? Watching these movies really brought to mind the conversations in media about the lonely Black woman, who is destined to die a single woman. As much as African American romantic comedies constantly end with a Black woman and a Black men either in a committed relationship, or getting married, the near erasure of dark skinned women plays into the whole idea that unless you are light skinned you are not worthy of being loved. When we add in the fact that these movies are not aimed at White people, it seems to me that Blacks have come to find this idea acceptable, otherwise when given the opportunity to tell our stories, darker Black women would appear in this genre more regularly, rather than being restricted to films like The Color Purple and Precious.

Editors Note: This is an ongoing series. You can find part 1 here on class. Next week, we will be looking at the ubiquitous usage of the word nigger in these movies.



Renee Martin is a disabled mother of two, and a freelance writer who focuses on social justice. On her blog Womanist Musings she largely writes about social justice generally. She also is a contributor and co-creator of the blog Fangs for the Fantasy, where she writes critically using a social justice lens on the urban fantasy genre. Each week she also participates in the Fangs for the Fantasy podcast, where she discusses the latest in urban fantasy. At Women’s Eye on Media, where she is also a co-creator and shares editing and writing duties with fellow creator Holly Ord, she writes about social justice and the media. Her work has been published at The Guardian, Ms Blog and several small newspapers. She previously cross-posted her review of The Big C at Bitch Flicks. 


Guest Writer Wednesday: Cardboard Cutouts Beware! A Review of Good Dick

Good Dick (2008)

A feminist romcom that fails to pass the Bechdel Test? How can that be? Good Dick (2008) suggests that it is not only possible, but that it can be done in a way that makes one wonder about the typical inanity of the genre.  Why must the overwhelming majority of romcoms perpetuate a status quo that lionizes men while demeaning women? Why can’t we be presented with complicated characters who navigate the complexities of sex and love instead of cardboard cutouts who confirm dangerous conventions?
On the surface, Good Dick, which Marianna Palka wrote, directed and stars in, seems conventional, albeit quirky. A video store clerk (Jason Ritter) is attracted to a woman (Palka) who comes into his store to rent “bad ’80s girl-focused porn” (Cynthia Fuchs). The clerk looks up the woman’s address on the store’s computer and pays her a visit. Through cracks in her window blinds, he spies her masturbating to the video rental and decides to set up camp in a nearby parking lot, living in his car so he can pursue her affections in closer proximity. Eventually, the peeping Tom gains entrance into her apartment by lying about a dead relative. Despite our reservations about this character—as Fuchs writes, “In another movie the boy would be a serial killer”—he proves to be patient and persistent enough to gain the woman’s hard-earned trust and eventually win her heart.
I admit, the setup of the story sounds awful. In Palka’s Director’s Statement, she writes, “The story is almost like a knight slaying a dragon to save a damsel in distress.” Palka’s observation that the dragon is part of the woman does not reassure that this flick will rise above the regressive romcom fantasy fare of man-as-savior, woman-as-saved. The fact that there are no women in the supporting cast, let alone strong women, does not seem to help matters. Nor does a clichéd scene of an old man (Charles Durning) who visits the video store to deliver the moral of the story to the suitor and his coworker-compadres (in so many words, find love before it’s too late). 
At this point, I might use a turn of phrase such as “In spite of these pitfalls, Good Dick succeeds…”. However, transitioning from a well-wrought counterargument misses my overall point that Good Dick succeeds because of these pitfalls, not in spite of them. The argument in the film lies firmly within the counterargument; it could be no other way. In other words, the only way for Palka’s debut film to overturn conventions is to court them with all the attendant dangers, much like the man in the film does with the woman who, it becomes more and more apparently clear, is struggling to overcome sexual abuse. The film succeeds because it romances romcom normativity to buck it in two vital ways.
First, the woman’s sexual abuse is not sensationalized. The film portrays its lingering effects with a subtle realism that would leave the Hallmark channel crowd squeamish, and rightfully so. The last thing a woman who has been sexually abused by her father needs is some paperback-Fabio-figure to waltz in the picture and show her how “it’s supposed to feel.” Palka hits the right note by including no sex in a film permeated by it. The cure for a “bad dick” is not a “good dick,” sexually speaking.
The title “Good Dick” is more ironic than literal. The man is a dick in the eyes of the woman because he will not leave her alone. He is dogged, pesky, slavish. He at once confirms and frustrates her beliefs about men (that they are all dicks all the time). He wants to have sex with her, but he seems capable of waiting forever for her consent. In short, he seems to be in love with her. But instead of love being treated as the goal and the lover as the prize, as is the case with most romcoms, love is perceived by the woman as abhorrent and the lover as a contemptible (“a dick”). The abuse she suffered at the hands of her father has corrupted her sense of love; love has been confused with abusive sex. The man represents “good dick” because he disentangles the notion of love from sex, thus opening up a space for her to discover (on her own terms and at her own pace) the possibility that good love and good sex can exist, and simultaneously at that. (The father (Tom Arnold) appears in one scene at the end. In this scene, we discover that he is not only sexually abusive but wealthy and financially supporting his daughter. In short, she is a victim not just of her “bad dick” father, but of patriarchy at large, another subtle touch in the film that opens up the scope of its social commentary). 
Although made by a woman, the film strikes me as a romcom aimed at men as much as women—not in that sense of norming guys to carry the torch of patriarchy or apologizing for their man-child behavior. Rather, the film exposes men to how damaging these norms are to women while offering them an alternative form of masculinity. From Palka’s Director’s Statement again:
For the lead male role I wanted to see the lover archetype illustrated in a way that is all loving, all kind, all ways. I knew the guy had to be strong and thereby protective, but not in a stereotypical sense. Definitions of masculinity often tend to be deformed in our culture, forgetting the good fight and glorifying what I like to call, “The cardboard cutout man.” In Good Dick the man’s power has nothing to do with his physical strength, his appearance or his social status.  He is masculine in a way that is genuine; this masculinity stems from his lack of chauvinism. His chivalry is his depth of kindness.

Good Dick reminds men to fight this good fight against the abusive power of cardboard masculinity. It challenges men to redefine masculine power in a way that is genuine, benevolent, and (dare I say?) loving. Although not a perfect film, Good Dick’s merits lie with warning men and women not to confuse our culture’s “deformed” definitions of masculinity with masculinity itself. “Man up” can mean something other than the masculinity peddled in Miller Lite commercials.

Kirk Boyle is an Assistant Professor of English who will be joining the University of North Carolina at Asheville’s Literature and Language Department in August. He previously contributed pieces on The Day the Earth Stood Still and Revolutionary Road to Bitch Flicks.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Resisting Motherhood in Grey’s Anatomy

This guest post by Marina DelVecchio also appears at Marinagraphy.

Lately, it seems that every single television show takes any kind of woman and turns her into a mother. She can be a Playboy vamp, a stripper, an affected teenager, or a surgeon, but at some point in her fictitious or reality TV role as a woman leading a happily single existence while having a lot of sex, she gets the urge to have a baby. Becoming a mother has become vogue—the “in thing.”

Kendra, former Playboy bunny who had sex with Hugh Heffner voluntarily (gagging here), is now settled down and pregnant. Pink (who I adore because she’s such a rebellious punk), is pregnant. The Kardashian sisters are each filing away their sexual escapades and viral sex tapes and preparing for babies.

On a more fictitious level, Kate Walsh’s character in Private Practice just gave up a relationship because she wants a baby and he doesn’t, since he’s already been there and done that. In House, Lisa Edelstein’s character, after years of service as head of the hospital—a powerhouse of a woman who has to dress sexy in every episode, adopted a baby because she could no longer wait for House or any other man to give her one.

And then there are three mothers presently blossoming at Grey’s Anatomy. Callie, (Sara Ramirez) is the eternal Madonna—a straight woman turned gay, who has been wanting her own baby for a long time and almost lost Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) because of it, since the pediatric surgeon never wanted kids for herself. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) is a new adoptive mom after many failed attempts at having her own baby—and the most realistic one to me, since she’s not sure how good she will be as a mom. And then of course, we have Christina Yang, played by the ever brilliant Sandra Oh, who finds herself pregnant for the second time. And for the second time, she wants to get an abortion.

And there’s nothing wrong with this—except that aside from Christina Yang’s character, there are few other representations of women. What about the women who don’t want to be mothers? Where are their voices? And why are the voices of mother-want-to-be’s so much louder? It seems that they are everywhere, telling all young women that eventually, they all need to settle down and have babies, especially before their biological clocks start humming, followed by the incessant whine of “what if you’re never a mother?”

I have been thinking about Christina Yang since a few weeks ago. I love her character. Aside from the fact that her writers fell off the track by making her have a nervous breakdown and dance on a bar drunk as a skunk, Sandra Oh’s character is brilliant and so different. She is a surgeon—a die hard, unrelenting, and un-self-sacrificing woman, who hates more than anything to lose herself in a man she loves. She even gave up her lover so that she could have a chance to operate and learn from the best in her field. She is single-minded, obtuse, and unapologetic—and I know she’s not just a figment of some writer’s imagination. There are women like her out there. Women who don’t want to have children or be mothers. Women who have no problems saying that they don’t even like kids. And it’s not because the child will interfere with her work or domesticate her. She is just not interested in having kids. Motherhood is not in her nature.

And there is nothing wrong with this. But the world makes us all feel like there is. There is something wrong with you if you’re a woman and don’t want to have any kids. You’re a cold bitch if you choose a career over family. You’re unnatural. Feminism of the seventies told us that we had choices, but the choices always included kids—women had to learn to have children, careers, and dinner at the table by five.

But what if you don’t want to have any? Hugh Heffner has sex with a lot of babies (they may as well be), but you don’t see the world crushing him with self-righteous diatribes because his Playboy mansion is not full of his children running around in their undies—and I am sure he has fathered many. But men are different, right? Rules don’t box them in. They get away with everything—including being in their 80′s and having sex with girls of 18. No gross factor there.

Women are controlled—subtly and and not so subtly. We have been conditioned to define ourselves via our biology. We have the children, therefore, we must have children. Commercials tell us our roles— our defining roles as women: mothers, care givers, cooks, cleaners, carpoolers, wives, volunteers, educators, and self-sacrificing do-gooders. Our neighborhoods define our place in society: mothers, care givers, cooks, cleaners, carpoolers, wives, volunteers, educators, and self-sacrificing do-gooders. Let’s add some negative ones here also, like nags, overweight hags, gossips and trophy wives. Now television shows—reality and non-reality—overwhelm us with maternal figures—no matter where they got their start from. Sex bunnies gone mom. Pop stars gone mom. Infertile women gone mom. High school drop-outs gone mom. And out of all of these, we only have one woman who resists motherhood: Christina Yang.

Where are all the others? Where are their voices? I want to see more representations of Yang’s character everywhere, because these women do exist. Although I got married and have two kids, I am the daughter of a woman who resisted conventional roles of women. I watched my mother growing up, keenly, as if I were observing a rare stone that never belonged to our region. She was as unique as they come. And even though she chose motherhood by adopting me—it was more for companionship than it was for a desire to show maternal affection—she had none—or at least she withheld it out of self-preservation. But I am reminded of her when I come face to screen with Christina Yang—and I wish young girls had more of her uniqueness with which to identify. I have learned so much from my mom—I learned that all women are different, and we can choose different paths in life than the ones we are told are especially pink-lined for us.

Just because women can have babies doesn’t always mean they should have them. We are not all made of the same cloth—we are not all designed to mother—even if biologically, we can.

Marina DelVecchio is a writer and a College Instructor. She has a BA in English Literature, an MS in English and Secondary Education and has completed thirty credits towards a Doctorate in Feminist Theory, Rhetoric and Composititon and 19th century Women Writers. Originally from New York, she began teaching on the High School level and then moved up to the College level in 2005. She presently teaches English Composition, Research, and Literature at a local Community College in North Carolina. 

Movie Review: Something Borrowed

This post is by guest writer Megan Kearns.

I’m usually no fan of chick flicks romantic comedies or chick lit women’s commercial fiction (god I hate the infantilizing term “chick”). While I enjoy romance, I cringe over the vapid dialogue, shallow characters, the reinforcing of stereotypical gender roles, the obsession over men, getting married and finding The One. I find the absolute solipsism given to men in these wretched movies unbearable, as if women never talk or think about anything else. But every now and then, a movie (like oh say Devil Wears Prada or Definitely, Maybe) comes along, surprising and delighting me. So with this skeptical yet ever so slightly hopeful attitude, I went to see Something Borrowed.
Based on the New York Times best-selling book by Emily Giffin, Something Borrowed follows the lives of Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Darcy (Kate Hudson) who’ve been inseparable best friends since childhood. Smart, studious Rachel is an attorney while vivacious, lime-light stealing, party girl Darcy is…well, we’re never quite sure what she is in the movie (although in the book she works in public relations). Darcy is also engaged to Dex (Colin Egglesfield), Rachel’s smart and handsome good friend from law school. At her 30th birthday, Rachel confesses to Dex that she used to have a crush on him years ago, a revelation that ends up testing her friendship with Darcy.
Now, the premise bugged me right from the start; it glorifies infidelity. Oh, it’s okay if you sleep with your best friend’s fiancé so long as he’s The One; otherwise you’re a big whore. But what pissed me off even more is how movies and the media perpetually pit women against each other…and this film is no different. Movies often devalue women’s friendships; they’re tossed aside as if women are too catty, too calculating, too backstabbing, and too man-hungry to ever really get along.
The actors make the movie a bit more likeable, particularly the hilarious scene-stealing John Krasinski. Colin Egglesfield does his best charming Tom Cruise here. But Ginnifer Goodwin who’s supposed to be the center of the film is forgettable (except for her rampant usage of the word “stop” throughout much of the film) and Kate Hudson plays…well the same role she always plays.
I couldn’t help comparing this film to Bride Wars, perhaps because Hudson forever churns out these shitty movies, mere mimeographs of one another. I hate the consumerism and competition suffocating Bride Wars. But I must admit that the end makes me weep like a baby as Anne Hathaway’s and Kate Hudson’s characters realize what truly matters: their friendship. But the same can’t be said for Something Borrowed. In the book, you discover that while Darcy is selfish, she stood up for Rachel against a school bully and she would never blow off her friends for a guy. In the movie, the only scene just about the two friends, rather than weddings or boyfriends, occurs during a bachelorette party sleepover when they dance along to Salt N Pepa’s “Push It,” bringing me back to my own junior high days as my best friend Angela and I choreographed a dance to that song too (what is it about that song?!). Yet despite this cute moment, I’m never really sure why Rachel is friends with Darcy, other than habit as they’ve been friends for decades. Perhaps the movie would have been more compelling had the plot focused on the complexities of being friends with someone you find simultaneously infectious and exasperating.
In the movie, Rachel’s confidante is another childhood friend, Ethan (the adorable Krasinski). But in the wretchedly awful book (which yes, I unfortunately read as research for this review…clichéd language, corny dialogue, lacking character development…the lengths I go to), Rachel confides in Ethan but also her close friend from work Hillary, a female character completely erased from the film. Rachel laments throughout the film that Darcy breezes through life, taking things away from her. But Ethan tells Rachel to stop passively waiting around and to take charge of her life. As a result, Rachel eventually recognizes that it’s not Darcy doing the taking, it’s Rachel giving herself away. Yet I can’t shake the feeling that I wished another female friend advised her or she came to this realization on her own. Again the film conveys that women don’t need other women or themselves for that matter, only men.
Not only are two women ultimately pitted against one another, they exist as two common female archetypes: the good girl and the bad girl. No depth, no subtle nuances exist here. Rachel is hard-working, thoughtful and sweet while Darcy is impetuous, obnoxious, boisterous, and likes sex. Despite Darcy being the person who’s wronged through her best friend’s betrayal, it’s clear whom we’re supposed to root for here. Through this one dimensionality, women fall into one of two categories and on two sides sparring for the prize: a man. Even though she dabbles in bad girl territory, Rachel follows her heart so all her betrayals and dishonesty become justified; she does it in the name of love so she’s ultimately still a good girl. Too often, women’s roles are relegated to simplistic caricatures, frequently in a virgin/whore dichotomy. Women are far more complicated and nuanced than Hollywood would have us believe.
In Something Borrowed we learn about Dex’s parents and Dex’s dreams and aspirations but not Rachel’s or even Darcy’s. It’s as if the women in the film don’t really matter; it’s all about the men. Movies like these continually reinforce the notion that careers and friends don’t count; it’s only your love life that matters. Society tells women they can never truly be happy without a man in their life. I call bullshit. Perhaps I’m being too hard on a movie intended to exist as light-hearted, romantic escapism. But I don’t find anything fun about a movie that silences women’s voices and erases their relationships with each other.
Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World. Her work has appeared at Open Letters Monthly, Arts & Opinion and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. She lives in Boston. She previously contributed reviews of The Kids Are All Right, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest to Bitch Flicks.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Easy A: A Fauxminist Film

Emma Stone stars in Easy A

This is a cross post from The Funny Feminist.
It appears that star power is on the rise for the funny, luminous Emma Stone.  She first caught my attention as the snarky cool girl who was way too good for Jonah Hill’s character in Superbad(and not because she was hot and he was fat, but because she was sarcastic and witty and he was whiny and entitled).  She continued to charm me all the way through Zombieland, which was no easy feat when she was the prickliest of the four main characters.  Finally, someone decided to give her a starring role in a movie called Easy A. I saw the trailer for this and was immediately intrigued.

I thought, “Ooh, feminist issues!  A comedic look at sexual hypocrisy in society, especially high schools!  A cast with funny actors!  Count me in!”
I saw it in the theater.  I laughed.  I sympathized with Emma Stone’s character Olive, found myself crushing on the character played by Penn Badgley even though he failed to even make a blip on my radar on the one episode of Gossip Girl I watched, and thoroughly enjoyed every scene with Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson as Olive’s quirky, hippie parents.  I went home with a smile on my face.
The smile soon turned into a straight line, which eventually became a scowl, as the more I thought about the movie, the more it annoyed me.  I think it’s much less feminist than it seems, and for that matter, not as funny as I thought it was when I first saw it.  (Warning: Spoilers ahead).
Why the Movie Fails on a Feminist Level
1) Olive is awesome.  All other women are bitches.
How would I describe Emma Stone’s character, Olive Penderghast?  First of all, she has the coolest name for a character in a teen movie since Anne Hathaway’s Mia Thermopolis in The Princess Diaries. She’s also independent, feisty, compassionate, and refuses to let other people define who she is.  When the school labels her as a slut, she decides to take her reputation into her own hands.  Note that it’s already inherently problematic that she’s embracing the “slut” label as a form of rebellion – it’s kind of a stupid rebellion, in my opinion – but her motive behind that rebellion is still laudable.  And of course she Learns and Grows from the experience and finally tells the world that her sex life is nobody’s goddamn business but her own.  That is a fairly satisfying conclusion, even if getting there was a bit of a struggle.
But let’s take a look at the other female characters.
We’ve got Rhiannon, the hypocritical best friend of Olive played by Aly Michalka.  At first, she eagerly devours Olive’s account of her made-up sex life, but then turns on her and joins the rest of the school in slut-shaming her.  She’s a pretty crappy best friend, and of course, she’s motivated by jealousy.
We’ve got Marianne, played by Amanda Bynes, the holier-than-thou religious girl who begins the campaign to slut-shame Olive.  In addition to being judgmental, she’s also a cheap, less funny ripoff of Mandy Moore’s character from Saved!
We’ve got all of Marianne’s friends, who join in on the slut-shaming campaign. 

We’ve got Mrs. Griffith, played by Lisa Kudrow, who turns out to not only be an incompetent guidance counselor, but cheating on her husband with a student.  Of course, her husband is the best teacher in the school, making her crimes even worse.
In other words, Olive is a great character because she’s not like the other girls – implying that most “other” girls are bitchy, catty, jealous, conniving, and mean.
I can’t praise a movie for its feminism if ONE female character is strong and the others are horrible.
2) The boys get a free pass for their douchey behavior.
We’ve talked about why the girls are bitches.  But what about the boys?  Are they portrayed as being jerks for taking advantage of Olive, for participating in a system that allows her to be shamed while they reap the benefits of her fallen reputation?
No.  No, they are not.  We’re supposed to think that the boys are wrong, certainly, but we’re also to feel sorry for them.  Brandon asks Olive to fake-fuck him at a party so he can pretend to be straight and stop getting bullied.  Never mind that he’s indirectly asking her to put her reputation on the line, so she can get bullied in a different way.  We’re supposed to feel sympathy for the poor, bullied gay kid, not angry with him for being a hypocrite.
I also feel that we’re supposed to make the same kind of excuses for the other boys who ask Olive for permission to say they had sex with her.  It’s wrong of them to do it, but they’re shy nerds who aren’t good with girls, so all they want is to build their reputations so that girls will like them.  Wow, what a feminist message – guys use a girl’s fallen reputation to build up their own “street cred” so they can trick other girls into actually having sex with them!  And the girl participates in this deceit of other girls!  But that’s okay, because other girls are shallow!  I think I have to take back what I said about Olive being awesome.
There’s also Cam Gigandet’s character, a 22-year-old high school student named Micah, who is dating Marianne.  He is supposedly religious and chaste, but he turns out to be cheating on Marianne with Mrs. Griffith!  And he tells everyone that he got syphilis from Olive! DUN DUN DUNNN!  Is he condemned for this?  No.  Why?  Because the poor guy was under pressure to lie after – wait for it – his mother beat him over the head and threatened to beat him more if he didn’t tell her who he slept with!  His mother browbeats him, and his lover denies him.  Older women = bitches, amirite, guys?
On a less serious note, there’s Thomas Haden Church’s character, Mr. Griffith.  By Olive’s account, he is the best teacher in the school.  Yet, when one of Marianne’s minions calls Olive a tramp in the middle of the class, and Olive responds by calling her a twat, he sends Olive to the principal’s office!  This was all contrived so we could get a very awkward, unfunny scene in the principal’s office as he ranted about private schools vs. public schools (um…what?) but any teacher worth hir salt would have sent both Olive AND Nina to the principal’s office – or, at the very least, publicly condemned Nina for attacking Olive out of nowhere.  Come on.  That’s Classroom Management 101.
The only male character who the movie acknowledges to be a jerk is the guy who tries to pay Olive for actual sex.  The screenplay and tone of the direction clearly condemn him.  But he is the only one.  The rest of the men (excluding Olive’s supportive, quirky dad) are either being used by evil bitches, or using women because they can’t help it.
3) Sex is still bad, especially for girls.
I appreciate that this teen movie is acknowledging slut-shaming and why it’s wrong.  I really do.  But I feel like it chickens out, by the very fact that Olive is still a virgin by the end of the movie.  I think the movie is implying that slut-shaming Olive was bad because she never actually had sex.  Would the screenwriters have written a movie with the same message about a sexually active young woman?
I doubt it, because of the scene where Olive confides in her mother.  I didn’t mention Patricia Clarkson’s character under my first point because she’s not a bitch.  She’s a quirky, supportive, loving mother.  That’s great!  But she admits to Olive that, when she was in high school, she had sex with a bunch of people (“mostly guys,” HAHA LESBIAN EXPERIMENTATION LOL!).  But don’t worry, viewers!  She didn’t have sex because sex is fun and enjoyable.  She did it because she had low self-esteem.
Of course she did.  That’s the only reason why teenage girls ever have sex, or why adult women ever have sex outside of monogamous relationships. Low self-esteem.
Pffft.
At the end of the movie, Olive spells out the message, that it’s nobody’s business what people do with their private lives.  That’s admirable, and true. But the message means very little when the journey getting there is so icky and filled with double standards – the same double standards that the movie is supposedly criticizing, but tacitly embracing.
Why the Movie Fails on a Humorous Level: “Remember that funny line when…um…that person said that one thing?”
I have a great memory for dialogue.  It’s a family trait that I share with my younger brothers.  I can recite entire episodes of The Simpsons and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and will do so upon request, though I’ve begun charging by the word.  Speak to my agent and we’ll talk rates).  I can recite movies after seeing them once.  But the movie has to make an impression on me before I can do that.  I have to really like the movie.  The dialogue has to be memorable.
When I left Easy A, I tried to recall particular lines of dialogue that struck me as funny.  I drew a blank.  I had to go onto imdb.com to look it up.  I never have to go to imdb.com to find funny dialogue.  Reading through the “memorable quotes” page, there was only one line that really made me laugh.  It was Mr. Griffith to Olive: “I don’t know what your generation’s fascination is with documenting your every thought… but I can assure you, they’re not all diamonds.”
That was very funny, and I like anything that mocks Facebook and Twitter (even though I use both).
But any other moments that made me laugh, I chalk up to the strength of the actors.  The scene where Olive’s parents try to find out the “T” word that their daughter used in class would’ve been insufferable and awful in the hands of lesser actors than Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson.  The movie has a strong cast that can handle any dialogue you throw at them.  I only wish they had better material to work with.
In Conclusion?
I didn’t talk about how the movie misses the point of The Scarlet Letter, because I hated The Scarlet Letter – I admire Hawthorne’s politics, but hate his prose, and when I was forced to read this book in my sophomore year in high school, I actually wrote in my annotations: “Does the scarlet A symbolize shame?  Because I didn’t get it the FIRST HUNDRED TIMES YOU MENTIONED IT!”  Misappropriating and misunderstanding literary themes seems like a very high school thing to do, so it oddly works for the film.
However, I’m afraid I can’t give Easy A the letter grade it wants.  On a humorous level, it gets a C for “Cast is Awesome Despite Mediocre Dialogue.”  On a feminist level, it gets an F for “Fauxminist,” with a note home to the parent: “Shows good effort, but fails to grasps key concepts.” 
Lady T writes about feminism, comedy, media, and literature at the blog The Funny Feminist.  Her essay “My Mom, the Reader” has also been featured at SMITH Magazine.  A graduate of Hofstra University, she teaches English to eighth graders and writes fiction about vampires, superhero girlfriends, and feisty princesses.  

 

Guest Writer Wednesday: Bridesmaids Preview

Judd Apatow puts on some panties in Bridesmaids
This is a cross post from The Feminist Bride.

Having turned 18 at the birth of the Sex and the City era, college and adulthood came at a time when sexual expression and alcohol could be worn like Girl Scout badges, proudly and with accomplishment. It was the best of times (that I could remember) and the worst of times (that were gladly hazy). The graduates of the millennium celebrated leaving the sophomoric comedy of American Pie and blissfully embraced the gratuitous ass shots of Will Ferrell. And just as quickly as we got on “double-secret-probation” in college,” we just as quickly matriculated from it. Now working stiffs and pissed off about having $160,000 in college debt, Judd Apatow appeared to ease our pain with raunchy and outrageous humor.

In the back of my mind, I always noticed the boy’s club atmosphere in today’s comedies, but between attending a college where 70% of the student body were men, being one of the few women on the track team and working in finance, I was always “one of the guys,” so I never paid it much mind.
In appropriate timing, like all comedies, The Hangover came out in the year of my bachelorette party (also in Vegas). Brushing the dust off my Girl Scout sash and admiring a few of my own badges – “Held my own hair back” and “Boot n’ rallied twice” – I reveled in the excitement that this was going to be a weekend of epic proportions, with new badges earned in Seth Rogen-esque fashion. No one threw a mattress from the roof of Caesars Palace, but we would have thrown some rebellious tampons from the Mirage’s windows…if they opened. As ladies, we’ve enjoyed the jokes and vulgarity of Apatow and his predecessors; however, the truth is we’ve been outside the men’s room peering in. Creepy, but true. The film industry has failed to give women a true comedy on par with our male colleagues without the trite themes of dating, childbirth, weddings and fashion. Instead, we’ve resigned ourselves to live vicariously through the mishaps of Jonah Hill and Michael Cera.
So I was more than ecstatic to hear that Apatow was finally putting on a thong and producing a comedy expressly for women. Business Trip, starring Leslie Mann, is set to start production in 2011. Characterized as the female version of the The Hangover, Business Trip features a group of women on a trip where they do anything but business. Having existed in the 9 to 5 world for too long, it’s about time women had their own Office Space; our cubical suffering has reached comical proportions too.
But then my heart sank as I read about the other comedy he’s producing, unimaginatively called Bridesmaids (release date May 2011). Written by and starring Kristen Wiig, the movie is about “a maid of honor trying to please the snobby, eccentric or really awkward bridesmaids at every pre-wedding event before her best friend’s nuptials.” Given Wiig’s successful comedic record, it’s clear she can hang with the funniest of dudes, and I’m willing to bet she lays down some solid jokes in Bridesmaids, but that type of movie has graced the big screen before with lamer jokes and interchangeable blondes and brunettes – cue the bridezilla, bridesmaid dress fat jokes, Vera Wang and a heart warming, seen-the-error-of-our-ways ending.
Around the release of My Life in Ruins (2009), Nia Vardalos revealed that some studios decided to no longer make female-lead movies because of low financial return. If studios continue to produce “chick-shit” movies with a shoddy script and characters limited to romantic roles, sexy roles, marriage roles, mommy roles or nagging wife roles, of course a movie won’t make any money. The question for Wiig and Apatow is “How will this movie differ from similarly themed ones?”
As women, Wiig and Mann have the resume and the resources to set new theatrical standards for women. But to Ms. Wiig, Ms. Mann and Mr. Apatow – be forewarned, you have some huge hurdles to overcome in order to break new ground and old stereotypes. If Gloria Steinem can tell you anything it’s that we’ve had to work twice as hard to prove ourselves. You’d better add some barbed wire to those Manolos before walking down that aisle.

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.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Night Catches Us


This guest post first appeared at Arielle Loren, daily musings for ladies and curious men.

Seeing My Reflection In Film: Night Catches Us Struck a Chord With Me

It is rare that a film invades my imagination to the point of insomnia. After seeing Tanya Hamilton’s Night Catches Us starring Kerry Washington and Anthony Mackie, I felt a sense of deep pride wash over my body and nudge my mind into continuous thoughts about the potential for independent productions to rebalance diversity in black film.

Based in Philadelphia, Night Catches Us tells the story of two former black panthers trying to re-establish life after leaving The Party and the death of a fellow panther years ago. While the central plot revolves around these two characters’ lives, Hamilton integrates into the film historic footage of the Black Panther Party. As this era of black history often is pigeonholed to radicalism, Hamilton truly humanizes The Party through several scenes of police brutality, corruption, and community gatherings. For instance, Washington’s character, Patricia, would raise money to pay the legal fees for her less fortunate clients and feed every child on the block even when she couldn’t pay her light bill.

This sentiment of “community first” is the history with which I identify and the one that I wish we could spread to more mainstream screens. While watching this film, I saw my reflection. From Washington’s afro to her desire to serve her community, I felt hope again for the half-baked images rummaging through mainstream black film. Night Catches Us only is playing in select theaters, BUT you can rent it on iTunes and On Demand via Comcast. Thus, there’s no excuse not to support this film; we’ve got to support the films that we want to see in the mainstream.

I hope Night Catches Us will be nominated for an Oscar and brought to larger screens. As a first time director, Hamilton has left me quite impressed and I can’t wait to see what other stories she will bring to life during her career. Additionally, I am truly proud to see my reflection in her too.

Check out the trailer for Night Catches Us below and if you haven’t seen the film, view it on iTunes. Tell me, how can we get more films like this onto the big screen?



Arielle Loren is a gender and sexuality writer, filmmaker, and web personality. Recently, she directed and produced The Bi-deology Project, a media-acclaimed, online documentary series that chronicles the experiences of straight women dating bisexual men.  


Guest Writer Wednesday: On Sam Mendes’s Almost Feminist Revolutionary Road

Winslet and DiCaprio star in Revolutionary Road
Revolutionary Road (2008) is almost a feminist film. It also just falls short of being something more than the hackneyed anti-suburbia types of film Sam Mendes revels in making.
A couple, who once fell in love over common artistic dreams, pulls off to the side of a highway to engage in verbal combat, sparked by the kitschy play the wife has just acted in, that threatens to turn physical. Each blames the other.
April Wheeler (Kate Winslet) reflects on their life together throughout the next day. As she drags her metal trash cans to the curb to join the others aligned down both sides of their anything-but-revolutionary road, she recalls her real estate agent introducing her and her husband, Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio), to their future home, the typically perfect white suburban house. Later, as she looks through old photographs, a second flashback recalls a conversation with Frank where she told him he was the most interesting man she had ever met.
As April reminisces about the hopes of the past, Frank woos a secretary at his cliché-ridden office job in a sales department. He gets her drunk, uses her as a shrink to confess that he has turned into his father despite his best intentions, and—as you already have guessed—sleeps with her. When he returns home past dusk, April meets him with smiles, an enthusiastic apology, and a birthday cake with thirty lit candles. Frank cries as his wife and two children—one girl, one boy—sing to him.
At this point I thought to myself, à la SNL’s Seth Meyers and alum Amy Poehler, “Really? Really? Do we really need to see another suburbia-is-the-ninth-circle-of-hell film? Really?” Hadn’t Mad Men already taken this trite formula to its farcical limits? The irony has lost its whip; there’s no need to tell us that life on Revolutionary Road is the conservative fast lane to Hades. We’ve been wise to the parable for some time: American beauty is anything but.
When I saw Frank washing away his infidelities in the shower, I puked a little in my mouth.
But then something unexpected happened. Instead of Kevin Spacey throwing a plate against a wall and toking up with his teenage daughter’s boyfriend, April lays bare the message of films like American Beauty. Road becomes meta-cinematic when she tells Frank:

Well, I happen to think this (suburban life) is unrealistic. I think it’s unrealistic for a man with a fine mind to go on working like a dog year after year at a job he can’t stand, coming home to a place he can’t stand, to a wife who’s equally unable to stand the same things. You want to know the worst part? Our whole existence here is based on this great premise that we’re somehow very special and superior to the whole thing, and you know what I’ve realized…? We’re not! We’re just like everyone else. Look at us!  We’ve bought into the same ridiculous delusion. This idea that you have to resign from life and settle down the moment you have children. And we’ve been punishing each other for it.

With this piece of dialogue, a character within the film’s diegetic reality provides an accurate account of the predicament of the film’s starring couple…near the beginning of the film! Road replaces Beauty’s device of a dead male narrator who knows the foibles of his life only after it is over with a living, breathing, and INTELLIGENT female character who knows them and wants out before it’s too late. In a later scene, she tells one of their neighbors that she actually wants “in” to life, a nice reversal that equates suburban living with death, that favorite topic of anti-consumerist zombie films.
After some initial resistance, Frank agrees with April’s analysis and her diagnosis. They will move to Paris so that he may figure out what he wants to do with his life while she supports the family on secretary’s wages (thanks to France’s fairer treatment of women workers). Although such a plan seems anti-feminist on the surface, and one neighbor says as much upon hearing it, there is something liberating about it. Shots follow of April and Frank almost glowing with the prospect that they will soon be leaving the humdrum rhythms of Eisenhower America.
Of course, the best-laid plans of mice and couples often go awry, and the Wheelers fail to make it to Paris (I mused that their voyage would be cut short somewhere in the north Atlantic anyway). The Wheelers’ plans go awry when Frank comes up with a business slogan that impresses his higher-ups so much that they offer him a promotion. The irony is that Frank’s sudden show of corporate creativity only comes after he has convinced himself to leave. The mere thought of becoming a class traitor opens the wells of inspiration trapped inside him not a moment too late, which is so often the case, but a moment too early. The prospect of becoming a well-compensated company man leads him to waver on his early retirement. As if this were not enough, April discovers that she is pregnant with their third child. Although they convince each other that Paris is still in the cards, the odds seem stacked against them.
Here is where our co-heroes separate into their roles as protagonist and antagonist. I assert that Frank betrays April by buying into the “realist” narrative of his friends and colleagues, i.e. the American middle class. Notably, in the key scene where he dismisses Paris as a pipe dream, he responds to April’s proposal of an abortion like a Right-wing conservative. 
April, a normal woman, a normal sane mother doesn’t buy herself a piece of rubber tubing to give herself an abortion so she can go live out some goddamned fantasy.
He reduces her to a scolded child, the idea of moving to Paris now considered a “childish dream.” Frank promptly resumes fucking his secretary like the mad man that he has become (and unconsciously always was and desired to be despite himself).
The ensuing fight between the Wheelers parallels the one that opens the film with one significant difference: although they both recognize that Truth has just spake, only April refuses to ignore it. She no longer loves Frank precisely because he is no longer the man she married, the man who wanted more from life than a cookie-cutter existence, and she reaffirms this fact. Frank cannot handle the Truth, and does his best to defend against it. He speaks for April, putting words in her mouth that she cannot express because she no longer loves him. April has not grown cold to him because of his unfaithfulness with another woman—April sleeps with another man, too—but his infidelity to himself.
The film should end with the two most disturbing scenes of all.
First, Frank awakens to find April playing Stepford wife. She pauses from cooking breakfast when he enters the kitchen and apologizes, just as she does earlier in the film with the birthday cake and party, except this time her words sound eerily scripted. Because Frank no longer cares about Truth and desires only to live in bad faith, he plays along, a bit surprised but also pleasantly amused. When he leaves, one gets the sense that he has bought into the male-centric American Dream. One knows that April hasn’t.

The second scene finds April crying in front of her mirror after Frank has left. She makes a fitful call where she threatens to break down at any moment to the babysitter watching her kids to ask if she can prolong her duties. The egg yolks that the camera focused on her scrambling in the prior scene retroactively become a foreshadowing moment, as she methodically carries out the abortion. When she descends the stairs, the camera focuses on her unsteady feet. Her face is pale. She goes to the window. The sun shines upon her and she lets out a small smile. Then a drip of blood falls to the carpet. The camera pans back to show a pool of blood expanding on the back of her skirt. She slowly moves out of the frame to make a phone call, “I think I need an ambulance…Yes…One one five Revolutionary Road…”

A perfectly disturbing end, right? No! Mendes cannot help but steal the show from his now ex-wife. Instead of ending with a shot of the blood on the carpet—the blotch in suburbia that betrays it a violent, life-draining lie—and April voicing the title of the film offscreen, Mendes includes a coda, a series of short scenes that a) turn the film anti-feminist and b) reinstate the generic codes of the cinematic anti-suburbia tract. 
Instead of being left with a woman who may or may not be in critical condition, we learn that April dies, and her death acts as a sacrifice to return the men to normalcy. Frank moves to the city with his kids, thus finding some compromise between Paris and the American suburbs. The neighbor, who professed his unrequited love for April after she slept with him, becomes closer with his wife. We might brush these scenes against the grain to argue that they are the most feminist part of all because they show that female sacrifice undergirds the American Dream of the middle class, but they also inspire an unwarranted sympathy for Frank. The men are allowed to mourn almost as an act of contrition.
The final insult comes in the concluding scene where Mrs. Helen Givings (Kathy Bates) tells her husband about how the new couple who has moved into the Wheelers’ house seems perfect for their abode. When the husband reminds her that she said much the same when the Wheelers moved in, she claims that she always knew that something was not right about the Wheelers, showing us that she, too, continues to live in bad faith by refusing to treat her Truth-telling son as the normal one (and not the folks she sells houses to). In my vote for the platitudinous scene of the decade, the husband is shown turning down the volume on his hearing aid.

Road should resolutely not be framed as a film about all suburbanites remaining deaf to the truth of their existence, as Mendes’s grandiloquent closing sequence suggests. The film is resolutely not about everyone’s bad faith. One woman, in the great tradition of Ibsen’s Nora Helmer, remains faithful to reality in an unreal setting and demonstrates her sanity despite her insane husband and unfaithful director.

Kirk Boyle has previously contributed a Flick-Off of The Day the Earth Stood Still to Bitch Flicks.

Review in Conversation: ‘Sex and the City: The Movie’

Carrie at her wedding
Carrie at her wedding
Welcome to our second installment of the Review in Conversation: Sex and the City: The Movie. Our first RiC discussed the film Black Snake Moan.I had liked the early seasons of Sex and the City when it was on HBO, and while acknowledging its problems–unawareness of class most troubling, though in the late 90s perhaps it was permissible in our cultural imagination for a newspaper columnist to live a fabulous life –I thought it was funny and well-written. Oh, how things have changed. The fantasy of a newspaper writer being able to afford shoes with designer names I can’t pronounce has morphed into a successful book writer being so fabulous that she receives a free couture wedding gown from a designer I’ve even heard of, and her super-rich boyfriend buys a multi-million dollar penthouse apartment. The silly consumerist fantasy exploded like a vomit balloon all over this materialistic movie.Here’s a secret: I like fashion. It’s an art form, and its creators are capable of beautiful design and cultural statements. It’s also an industry, and like all major industries, has a very ugly side. I liken it to professional sports: I watch from the sidelines, aware of the way I’m being manipulated, but enjoy it nonetheless—all without expressly participating. In the TV show, Carrie Bradshaw stepped into the world of New York fashion, and we could laugh at her ridiculous ensembles and her forays into a world in which she didn’t—and probably didn’t want to—completely belong. In the movie, we’re watching The Carrie Bradshaw Brand, and she’s become very much a part of that thing called fashion. The fact that she wore a bird on her head as part of her wedding ensemble isn’t a joke, but played straight and serious. In other words, we’re no longer identifying with an outsider to fashion; she’s now part of the machine.Carrie’s friends have all been similarly transformed from dynamic characters into commodities—who are all far too rich and insincere for any comedy to ensue. There were clearly moments in the film when we were supposed to laugh (and during which I imagined a cheesy sitcom laugh track), but all felt so dated, so out of touch, and so, frankly, ADOLESCENT MALE, that they completely fell flat. I mean, come on, Charlotte shits herself? Samantha gets a pocketbook dog that humps everything in sight (standing in for her own caged libido)? A 50-year-old woman gains ten pounds and is OMG! FATTY McFAT FAT? Are you fucking kidding me? This is only the tip of the iceberg, but my question is this: In a movie we can’t possibly take seriously (in terms of reality), which claims to be nothing more than a (guilty) pleasure, did you laugh at all?

The women go through Carrie's wardrobe
The women go through Carrie’s wardrobe
Stephanie’s response:
No, I didn’t laugh. I didn’t laugh when Charlotte shit her pants. I didn’t laugh at Samantha’s dog humping its (his/her?) way through the film. I didn’t laugh at Charlotte’s screaming over-reaction to Carrie’s engagement, where she went as far as to stand up and announce it to the entire restaurant. (That’s just the kind of crazy stuff women do, isn’t it ladies?) I didn’t laugh at Miranda’s unshaved bush. I didn’t laugh at the stereotypical workaholic Mom who won’t fuck her husband (forcing him to cheat!). And I certainly didn’t laugh at Jennifer Hudson’s role as Carrie Bradshaw’s slave. Yeah, I said it. I’m not sure we weren’t meant to take this film seriously. Where’s the evidence of that? Because I’m an intelligent person, I can discern ridiculousness from reality, but I also personally know many people, men especially, who would most certainly walk away with the notion that women actually behave this way. Call me a humorless feminist, but honestly, were there actually any women in this movie?
However, when this film opened, it dethroned Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull for the number one spot at the box office. It seemed as if women (who comprised about 85% of the audience, according to sources that keep track of such things) couldn’t wait to see it, and it’s since been touted as the biggest box office opening for a women-centered film (and romantic comedy) … basically ever. When I read about these female-driven films raking in the money, like The Proposal, for instance, which made tons of money as a woman-centered romantic comedy, I never know quite how to handle it. On one hand, yes! Go women! But on the other hand … seriously? We can’t do better than characters who start off as gung-ho career women who, by the end of the film, ultimately validate the dominant ideology that women are, by their nature, relationship-obsessed?
Sex and the City also wants to claim it’s about female sisterhood, but I couldn’t take that seriously so much. I’ve heard some women in the blogosphere describe this film as nothing more than Pop-Feminism. To me, that might be a criticism of the idea of female sisterhood showing up as shoe-obsessions, clothing-obsessions, (eg “Big, please build me a gigantic closet for all my shoes and clothing,”) obsessions with thinness and fashion in general, and other materialistic obsessions that ultimately become symbols of female empowerment. And let’s not forget, this is also a film about white women. Doesn’t that seem to be the trend, especially in the most recent onslaught of romantic comedies?
Jennifer Hudson in SATC
Jennifer Hudson in SATC
Amber’s response:
While I dismiss the film itself as pure fantasy—in the way that a prince-charming fairy tale is fantasy—you may be right to question that reaction. It’s naïve to think that the Disney princess fantasy is anything but insidious, so why give the adult fantasy a free pass? Hyper-consumerism has become inseparable from female identity in the media, and I don’t think we really need yet another citation of this ideology. Purchasing the right products doesn’t equal empowerment, and while the film half-assedly nods to this fact, its product obsession completely undermines any real effort to argue that friendship is the most important thing in life.However, Pop-Feminism or not, these are women who sincerely love one another–who aren’t conniving against each other, who aren’t in direct competition with one another. Also, they are over twenty-five, have healthy sex lives, and aren’t shamed in any way for being sexual beings. This was a revolutionary element of the TV show when it premiered in 1998, and considering the cultural environment, is no less revolutionary ten years later. Yet, ten years later, we should expect something more than basic “women are human beings” arguments masquerading as feminism. And, yes, we should expect something more than thin, beautiful, wealthy, fashionable, white ladies representing female empowerment.Jennifer Hudson’s role was abominable. Not only was she Carrie Bradshaw’s servant and charity recipient, we didn’t see her character grow and mature. What she learned, apparently, while working as a PA in NYC, is that boys are really important, and that knowledge led her back to her hometown to get married. Hell, maybe working for that vortex of narcissism, I’d run too. But the only thing I see about the inclusion of her character is a cynical instance of tokenism. It’s really as if the filmmakers said, “Hey, there are a whole lot of black women out there–maybe we should try to not completely alienate them. Let’s give Carrie an assistant!” FAIL. Is it just me, or does mass media seem more segregated now than in any other time during our lives? Also, how many sequels do you predict?

The women of SATC
The women of SATC

 

Stephanie’s response:
The reason I refuse to take Sex and the City’s self-proclaimed celebration of sisterhood very seriously is because the women rarely permit one another to slack off on their duty to maintain Fabulous Fashionista status at all times. As I stated earlier, Miranda gets shit for not porn-waxing and Samantha gets shit for gaining weight (from comfort-eating due to her tanking relationship—because that’s another thing we all do, ladies!). They permit Carrie’s days of depression when Big leaves her at the altar, literally feeding her at one point, but I still couldn’t help but cringe at that simultaneous depiction of female-infantilizing coupled with creepy mommy-moment.

Yet I believe they do really love one another. You’re right to point out the refreshing portrayal of women who aren’t in direct competition or who aren’t conniving against one another. One could also point out many scenes where genuine love exists among them—my favorite scene is when Carrie sucks it up and takes the train (but not without fur coat!) to Miranda’s apartment so she won’t be alone on New Year’s. It feels … honest, in a way that so much of the rest of the film doesn’t.

I never saw the television series. From what I’ve heard and read, the women were very much unashamed sexual beings. So I had to ask myself after I saw the movie, “Where the hell is all this sex I’ve been hearing about?” Samantha has sex exactly zero times on-screen. Miranda struggles with sex and her husband’s infidelity—it’s very much implied that he cheats because she won’t sleep with him (another one of her wife-duties shirked). Charlotte claims to have a wonderful sex life, but … where’s the evidence? Perhaps the film wants to show the progression of their lives and the complications that might come with aging, but they chose to do it by regressing to traditional gender expectations regarding marriage and pregnancies and preoccupations with couple-hood.

I get the feeling that the show, while still portraying the women as rich and fashion-obsessed, actually represented their shunning of traditional, more conservative ideas regarding adult womanhood. They didn’t have to get married and have babies and buy houses. They could have sex! And live in the city! And have fulfilling careers! If that’s the case, the film-version seriously dropped the ball.

With scenes like Miranda telling her child to “follow the white person with the baby” when they’re looking for a new apartment in a less-rich neighborhood; with scenes like Carrie showing up to reclaim her metaphorical glass slipper while her metaphorical prince conveniently awaits in her giant, specially built metaphorical (closet)-castle—the film only reinforces good ol’ traditional American values about class, heterosexual relationships, and especially about womanhood.

Movie Review: Up in the Air

*This is a guest post from Kate Staiger.

Up In The Air is part of the 2009 Best Picture Oscar nominees. It is based on the novel of the same name written by Walter Kirn, but adapted and directed by Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You for Not Smoking). George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, who fires employees for businesses that haven’t the guts to do it themselves. He travels almost every day of the year, living from hotel room to airplane cabin and prides himself on cultivating a life free from the weights of conventional living. Instead, he thrives on the comforts of hotel hospitality, while racking up mileage as a loyal traveler. Life is good; he’s a bachelor, has no strong family obligations and enjoys the bustle of air travel.

The film begins by examining an employee’s reaction as he is fired by Ryan Bingham. Bingham guides a tragic moment into a hopeful possibility with a speech he uses on many of his subjects. He is good at his job, but no matter how good he is, it doesn’t take away from the desperation of unemployment. The movie’s plot could begin and end with this theme; an exploration of what it’s like to have the job as corporate assassin, but it doesn’t. The experience of firing and being fired takes the backdrop, while other plot lines emerge and take the movie through a series of love-twists and moral-turns.

Early on in the movie, Bingham is joined on the road by his new, pesky associate, Natalie (Anna Kendrick). Natalie possesses all the qualities of a young, overly-confident college grad. Her character is not a part of Kirn’s novel, though appears in the movie as a sort of moral compass for Bingham (the novel offers disease as Bingham’s wake-up call). Natalie challenges all of his life-decisions with her know-it-all youthfulness. Their contrast of philosophy, hers being more traditional, his being non-committal, is occasionally interesting. But most of the time, she just comes off as a stompy-teenagery type that adds drama instead of story.

Bingham’s other female sidekick is Alex (Vera Farmiga), a sexy, strong-corporate-woman. She meets Bingham, a fellow super-traveler, in a hotel bar. They hit it off, do the deed, and she becomes the love interest. They exchange contacts and meet for booty calls in cities where they happen to cross paths while on business. As their relationship progresses, he goes through the formal “sworn-bachelor-stumbles-into-love” process, schlepping it all with sentimentality and making it confusing to understand the direction of this movie. Aren’t I supposed to be watching a movie about the tragedies of people losing their jobs? Or am I supposed to be focused on Ryan Bingham’s thawing heart? Or no, it’s this: Ryan Bingham has a hard job and travels a lot. It makes his life experience void of human connections. He is now in the process of making it better as a result of his pesky sidekick on one shoulder, and his hot woman-equivalent on the other. YES!

This movie is fun to watch. The typical Clooney exploits are there; dashing smiles, good hair and clothes, favorable lighting, and witty bantering all carry him through the movie. Oh! And the very funny Jason Bateman plays the ruthless boss. AND the movie passes 2/3 of the Bechdel Test; it’s just that the women leads’ conversations with one another happen to be about their ideal man. Damn. The idea for the movie is appealing, the dialogue, at times, is smart and funny. The movie runs its course through predictability and wraps up with an ironic ending (which is actually good), but “Best Picture” at the Oscars? I’d be surprised…or wouldn’t I?

Kate Staiger lives in Cincinnati. Her current interests include: free-internet programs, fixing her toilet all by herself, and the band A Hawk and A Hacksaw.

The Ugly Truth Roundup


Despite a “rotten” rating of 16%, The Ugly Truth raked in another $7 million at the box office this past weekend (to compare, the by-all-accounts stellar Julie & Julia brought in just over $20 million), remaining in the top 10 two weeks after its release. The real ugly truth is that this kind of tripe continues to sell.

In our last Roundup, we collected discussions of a film that was controversial due, in part, to its played-for-laughs date rape. In this one, we have a romantic comedy, sold to women and packaged as a date movie/chick-flick, that rests on the age-old premise that women love with their minds, and men love with their dicks. Oh, and that successful career women need to be taken down a notch or two–preferably by a lowest-common-denominator-type buffoon–in order to be happy.

Is this just another crappy Rom-Com? Or is it something more? What about the fact that it was written and produced by women?

Here are some things other people are saying:

  • Women’s Glib might give Katherine Heigl a little too much credit, calling her a “part-time feminist,” but they do remind us that this kind of movie ought to be seen as just as offensive to men as it is to women.

And, in the What Were They Thinking? department:

In a shockingly unaware moment, Ruth McCann exemplifies what’s wrong with post-feminism: “But when Mike advises Abby to be ‘the saint and the sinner, the librarian and the stripper,’ how can the hardened, rom-com-hating Thinking Woman not bark a gruff and hearty ‘Ha!’?”

Um, really?

Leave your links & thoughts in the comments section.

Movie Review: 500 Days of Summer, Take 1

500 Days of Summer. Starring Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Geoffrey Arend, Chloe Moretz, Matthew Gray Gubler, and Clark Gregg. Written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. Directed by Marc Webb.Within the past few years especially, independent films have developed a certain easily identifiable “indie charm,” and 500 Days of Summer most definitely fulfills the criteria. These films used to be termed “independent” due to budget constraints, but just like the big studio films, indie movies have essentially become marketable, targeting a very specific audience to the point that indie elements have basically become indie clichés:

—amazing alterna-soundtrack? check.
(see also: Juno, Garden State, Away We Go)

—strangely cartoonish, bubbly-lettered and/or pencil-sketched movie poster? check.
(see also: Juno, Away We Go, Wes Anderson movies, Napoleon Dynamite)

—quirky female lead? check.
(see also: Juno, Garden State, The Royal Tenenbaums, Reality Bites, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)

—at least one scene that occurs in a ridiculous location? check.
(see also: Juno [furniture on the lawn scenes], Away We Go [department store bathtub scene, trampoline scene, stripper pole scene], Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [most of the scenes])

—tortured love, tortured souls, tortured existences? check.
(see also: every indie film ever made)


For interesting reading about independent film clichés, coupled with a good review of Away We Go, read this.

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Despite the fact that 500 Days of Summer is pretty much guilty of perpetuating all of the above indie clichés, I really liked it. Despite the completely conservative ending, I really liked it. Despite my two-week long depressive episode following my viewing of this film, alone, in a theater in Times Square, in the middle of the day, alone, I really liked it. And, for whatever reason, despite my initial ambivalence after leaving the theater, this movie managed to linger with me. Why?

Well, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for starters. The distilled plot: he falls in love with a woman who doesn’t believe in love, which leads to his inevitable heartbreak. I hated watching Joseph Gordon-Levitt get his heart stomped on by [insert quirky hipster female love interest] Zooey Deschanel! Joseph Gordon-Levitt starred in Mysterious Skin! And Brick! And Third Rock from the Sun!

We love him!

The truth is, though, while I enjoyed watching a romantic comedy that changed-up the genre by turning the leading man into a mushy, self-loathing disaster who attempts to accept the reality of unrequited love, I hated how much the film still turned the female lead into a sidekick. In traditional romantic comedies, problematic as they are, the films at the very least focus on the couple, and you get to know the characters individually (The Break-Up, Eternal Sunshine, etc) by watching their interactions and conflicts as a couple.

But in 500 Days of Summer, the plot unfolds exclusively through the perspective of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, Tom. Zooey Deschanel’s character, Summer, (haha, get it?) exists merely as a vehicle to further the audience’s identification with Tom. We never learn much about her. She likes Ringo Starr. She likes The Smiths. She likes karaoke. She doesn’t believe in true love.

Thankfully, we also know that she identifies as an independent woman who refuses to be tied down. She might even identify as a feminist, though she never explicitly states that.

I loved one scene in particular where she gets angry with Tom because of some performative alpha-male attempt to “defend her honor” in a bar fight. He might be defending himself a little too; after all, the initial punch happens after the other man says to Summer, “I can’t believe this guy is your boyfriend.” Harsh. But I would’ve loved the scene even more if it hadn’t been undercut by Summer showing up at Tom’s apartment later, soaking wet from the rain, to apologize for getting angry with him.

In fact, the biggest issue I take with this film is how often it undercuts Summer’s independence. The conclusion, which I won’t give away here, completely disappoints in that regard. Not only is it an easy, throwaway ending, but it doesn’t do justice to Summer’s independent-woman persona, and instead (and again), exists only as a plot point that encourages the audience to sympathize with Tom.

We barely know Summer, but why does the little bit we do know about her have to get unnecessarily lost in the end?

There are also no other important women characters. Tom occasionally solicits advice from his younger sister, who’s like, twelve, and I found it appropriately cute and indie-funny. And he goes on a blind date once, where he spends the entire time complaining to his date about Summer. (To the film’s credit, the woman he’s on the date with defends the shit out of Summer, rather than veering off into traditional rom-com female competitive-jealous territory.) Other than those few women though, it’s all about Tom.

However, if this movie can claim anything, it can claim inclusion of some seriously awesome meta shit. Movies within movies within movies, oh my! We get clips and parodies of The Graduate, Persona, and some other French films I didn’t recognize. And one can’t ignore the hilarious bursting-into-song scene, complete with full group-dance sequence and cartoon birds. The film also uses a style of storytelling that moves back-and-forth within time, and that works too, keeping the viewer slightly off-kilter and in the same headspace as its hero.

With all this film fun, you ask, then what’s my problem?

I think it has much to do with what I wanted for Summer. For her to go on being her quirky, independent-hipster self, unabashed and unapologetic. For her to never come across as potentially manipulative or dishonest, because she isn’t either of those things. And for the writers and/or director to have taken as much care in creating a 3-dimensional female lead as they did in creating a fully fleshed-out male lead who picks himself up, dusts himself off, and goes out and accomplishes shit.

They’re calling it a romantic comedy, after all. Even in the traditional “girl meets boy” then “boy breaks girl’s heart” then “boy realizes he really loves girl” then “boy and girl live happily ever after” bullshit, and its pointless variations, the male and female characters get mostly equal screen time. In cases where that might not happen, the audience at least comes to understand each of the characters’ motivations at some point.

(I’m by no means defending the rom-com, but at least in most female-driven rom-coms, like Pretty Woman and He’s Just Not That Into You, I know that I’ll have the pleasure of watching both of the characters one-dimensionally participate in a recreation of 1950s gender roles, ha.)

But in 500 Days of Summer—the female love interest exists, but she exists in the background as a supporting character, her main purpose being to help flesh out the hero. In turn, she becomes nothing more than an extension of him, just a quirky after-thought, another one of his personality traits.

500 Days of Summer could’ve (and should’ve) found a way to avoid that.

Yet at the end of the day, despite its shortcomings, I couldn’t help but really like this “story about love.” It felt authentic, at least in its illustration of relationship conflicts, from the initial courtship phase to the inevitable dissolution. Deschanel maintains her complete adorability and Gordon-Levitt, well, we love him! Their on-screen chemistry, intermingled with all kinds of mopiness and feel-goodness and splashes of The Smiths and Regina Spektor … look, who cares about my criticisms? You should probably just go see this.

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Check out some insightful reviews here, here, here, and here.