Rethinking ‘Say Anything’ and the Film’s Actual Protagonist Diane Court

The problem isn’t that audiences misremember Lloyd Dobler; it’s that they forget about Diane Court. … Not only is Diane an equal player in the action; she’s the film’s protagonist. … While Diane has a clear narrative of growth, Lloyd is a static character.

Say Anything

This guest post written by Charlotte Orzel appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 80s. | Spoilers ahead.


In the fall of 2014, an early example of “peak nostalgia” saw a television adaptation of Cameron Crowe’s 1989 rom-com Say Anything announced and then canceled within twenty-four hours at NBC. According to Deadline, the series would have continued where the film left off:

“Set in present day, the Say Anything series picks up ten years later. Lloyd has long since been dumped by Diane and life hasn’t exactly turned out like he thought. But when Diane surprisingly returns home, Lloyd is inspired to ‘dare to be great’ once again, get Diane back and reboot his life.”

This pitch gets straight to the core of the troublesome way Say Anything has been remembered. People think of the film as synonymous with its iconic image of Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) holding a boombox over his head with his heart on his sleeve. Audiences remember Lloyd as the rare romantic lead who approaches the girl he loves with respect, earnestness, and unshakable optimism. They appreciate the way love let Lloyd “dare to be great.”

The problem isn’t that audiences misremember Lloyd Dobler; it’s that they forget about Diane Court.

Even though the two characters share the screen more or less equally, Diane (Ione Skye) is often treated more as a love interest than a romantic lead. Take this example from Total Film’s 50 Best Romantic Comedies:

“The sweet Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) might be an average student, but he aims high when he asks valedictorian Diane Court (Ione Skye) out on a date. Her affluent lifestyle and his humble upbringing make the two a perfect ‘opposites attract’ pair as he helps her overcome her shyness and the ability to drive a stick shift, and she… well, loves him.”

From this summary, and others like it that have been published since the film’s release, you get the picture of a romance that sees Lloyd Dobler as a sweet, earnest slacker, rise to his potential to win the heart of a beautiful, sheltered girl. He teaches her how to live, and she is eventually won by his charm, wit, and ability to raise a boombox over his head for the entire length of “In Your Eyes” (an admittedly impressive five and a half minutes).

Say Anything

What really happens is quite different. Not only is Diane an equal player in the action; she’s the film’s protagonist. While we spend a great deal of time with Lloyd, the movie’s story is structured around Diane’s life. In the summer after graduation, she has much more on her plate than Lloyd, who when asked about what his summer job is, replies, “I want to see you as much as possible before you leave.” Lloyd’s future is uncertain, but he’s not too worried about it, as long as it includes Diane. Diane, on the other hand, is incredibly anxious about what lies ahead — she has been offered a prestigious fellowship to England and her father is being investigated by the IRS — and her growing feelings for Lloyd complicate things considerably. We watch her navigate her fears for the future and reconcile them with Lloyd’s idealism which, despite her crushing sense of responsibility, she finds incredibly appealing. These issues are not merely set dressing for the romance, like many romantic comedies that give their heroines a wisp of a life to differentiate them from one another, like a set of Career Barbies. Her father’s investigation forms a solid B-plot that is frequently left out of retellings.

In the first few minutes we spend with Diane, she gives a valedictory speech which communicates not only the tremendous expectations on her shoulders, but her own ambivalence about life after high school. It becomes immediately apparent that Diane’s fears run far deeper than a kiss from Lloyd can soothe. In a later scene with her father, when she learns that she’s won a competitive fellowship in England, her initial response is to sink to the ground, worrying: “I’ll have to go on a plane” (we later learn that she has been afraid of flying since she was young). Diane is not only brilliant, shy, and beautiful, but desperately afraid of what the future holds.

Say Anything

Meeting Lloyd opens Diane up to the possibilities of life outside the rigor of constant achievement. Their first date is not a swoony, candlelit affair or a twee romp, but a bustling graduation party where they spend little time together, but keep track of each other over the heads of their classmates. Diane, initially asking if it would be “terrible if [she] wanted to go home early,” enjoys herself and talks eagerly, if awkwardly, with the other students, eventually calling her father to tell him that she’ll be home before dawn.

In the car on the way back from the party, the two finally connect in a conversation about how their classmates perceive them. Unlike her father, who constantly and almost unconsciously affirms her, Lloyd listens with a kind ear to Diane’s insecurities and doubts. Lloyd represents more than the potential for romance, which Diane has in the droves of suitors (and their droves of cars) her father fields on the phone. He offers her a chance to be afraid, imperfect, and vulnerable, to reach out and connect genuinely with other people, and, most importantly, to be known in turn.

Say Anything

Rather than holding Lloyd at a distance, Diane brings him into her world, introducing him to her father and showing him around the nursing home where she works. He teaches her to drive stick shift, gently letting her be bad at something for what might be the first time in her life. They share their first kiss. Inseparable after that, they soon have sex, which Diane awkwardly has to explain to her worried father when she doesn’t come home that night. Tentative but sure, she pushes at the boundaries of her old life, neglecting to call her father and unable to reason her way out of her attraction to Lloyd.

Then, with her fellowship in England looming on the horizon and the IRS investigation growing ugly, Diane breaks it off suddenly when Lloyd tells her he loves her. She shares her feelings, but begs him not to “put things on this level.” The seriousness of their relationship seems to only deepen her worries about the murky future. Both parties despair, Lloyd leaving Diane a string of voicemails that she screens anxiously, clearly longing for him. Though she is touched by his attempts to change her mind, including the iconic boombox scene, these gestures are not what eventually move her to return to him. Far from the popular idea of Lloyd as the persistent, charming guy who wins the girl through earnest passion, he doesn’t win her back at all. Instead, she turns to him when she discovers her father is guilty of tax fraud. This revelation not only shatters any hope of her returning to her sheltered life, but reminds her of the value of her relationship with Lloyd, who is as open and honest with her as she is with him.

Confronting her father, she is devastated that he lied to her and shrinks from the idea that he wants to use his illegal gains to “set [her] up so [she] doesn’t have to depend on anybody.” When she goes back to Lloyd, she tells him that she needs him. Lloyd asks, “Are you here because you need someone, or because you need me?” following it up by telling her, “Forget it. I don’t care.” But Diane does. The girl who kept everyone at arm’s length has finally found someone she truly knows and can rely on.

The final scene of the film seals this realization, as Diane embraces the uncertainty of her future in England with Lloyd by taking on her major fear: flying. Diane confronts the doubts surrounding her relationship with Lloyd and her fear of flying by accepting the potential for failure. Like Diane, the ding of the smoking light that signals the most dangerous part of the flight is over reassures us, but doesn’t eliminate our worries about the couple’s fate. We don’t know what their future holds, only that the scariest part is over. The plane could still crash. It’s just more likely that it won’t, and that’s enough.

Say Anything

While Diane has a clear narrative of growth, Lloyd is a static character. The film opens on him declaring his intention to win Diane’s heart, and closes on him having achieved his goal, but he remains earnest, steadfast, and optimistic throughout. Diane’s choices, not his, push the story forward. The movie flirts with remedying his lack of career ambition, having first his guidance counselor and then Diane’s father scorn his refusal to commit to a plan for the future. However, he ultimately concludes that his relationship with Diane is enough to sustain him. The movie cheekily points out his lack of development in a scene when he visits her father in prison, and tells him that he probably should start working on his own goals, but has decided to go to England with Diane instead.

This lack of ambition is what has led some to argue that Lloyd and Diane never would have made it work in the long run. In what may be the most cynical article of all time, Dustin Rowles speculates about how things turned out for the characters, concluding that Lloyd’s slacker attitude would wear on Diane and sooner rather than later, she would have cut him loose to go after a graduate student. The NBC pitch also suggests that a breakup between the two was inevitable. But assuming that Lloyd and Diane would split reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what brought them together in the first place. Lloyd doesn’t win Diane with his wit and laid-back attitude; his honesty and warmth encourage her to open up and make herself vulnerable enough to forge a real connection. Eventually, she chooses him because his unflagging optimism balances out her stymieing fear of the unknown. If we imagine that Lloyd won Diane over with his persistence, it’s easy to imagine her becoming disillusioned later on. If we remember that she chose him, and in doing so, took a step forward in becoming the kind of person she wanted to be, writing off their relationship as misguided becomes much harder.

Say Anything

In light of Diane’s place at the center of the story, why is Lloyd given so much more prominence when we talk about Say Anything?

In the years before and since the movie’s release, John Cusack’s star has burned brighter than Ione Skye’s. Since the two actors have almost an equal amount of screentime, that may make it slightly easier to imagine Cusack as the lead. While one could conceivably argue that Lloyd is a more unique and fully realized (or better acted) character, a close look at Diane suggests that conclusion is unfair. Not only is Diane’s shy, anxious braniac just as uncommon a sight onscreen as Lloyd’s witty, earnest slacker, but Crowe and Skye fill her in with loving detail. Diane is just as complex and interesting a character as Lloyd. However, for the audience of teen romance, imagined by marketing executives as young, female, and heterosexual, the male character is often made the object of desire and attention in both marketing and the film itself. This is particularly true in a genre that often makes its female characters bland and one-dimensional on the assumption that it will allow female viewers to more easily insert themselves into the story. And naturally, when male protagonists are more common and valued more highly than female ones, many viewers are already in the habit of bending over backwards to sympathize with the male perspective. These ways of watching are so ingrained that we may end up imposing them ourselves, even when films like Say Anything offer us a more nuanced alternative.

The NBC series pitch leans on these viewing habits by setting Lloyd up as the main character of the show. He is the one whose “life hasn’t turned out like he thought,” who must “reboot” to regain his old energy and idealism. But the movie worked in the first place by watching Diane grow out of her fear of the future. By undermining the ambiguity of the original ending, the TV pitch ignores the way that accepting both the hope of success and the possibility of failure was an essential resolution for Diane’s character arc. The pitch assumes that Diane was a catalyst for change in Lloyd once before and will be again, even though the movie works precisely the other way around. Say Anything didn’t dare Lloyd to be great. It dared Diane to embrace her greatness, and let us watch as she rose to the challenge.


Charlotte Orzel spent a few formative years scooping popcorn at an independent movie theatre, and in the process fell in love with film, television, and criticism of all kinds. She is a Master’s student in Media Studies at Concordia University in Montreal where she studies new initiatives in film exhibition. She tweets about her interests and adventures in writing and academia at @charlotteorzel.

‘Pretty in Pink’: The Only Team to Be on Is Team Andie

I fixated on the Team Duckie vs. Team Blane aspect of the film so much that I entirely missed the point. I was so Team Duckie that I blamed Andie for not choosing him. …I realized I had fallen into a trap that society has conditioned us to fall into: the dreaded sexist “friend zone.”

Pretty in Pink

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


I first saw Pretty in Pink in middle school. Seated next to my mother, who was working through her list of favorite 80s films to show me, I fell in love with it almost immediately. I saw in Andie (Molly Ringwald) what I wanted for myself. She was confident and outspoken in the ways I wasn’t; she didn’t care what people thought about her clothing and she rocked it. I wanted to be her so badly that I scoured swap meets for “vintage” clothing (and am still on the lookout for some of Duckie’s scuffed, white duck shoes). My closet consisted of blazers with large shoulder pads, lacy shirts, flower earrings, and one t-shirt that has a picture of Duckie (Jon Cryer) and reads, “I would have picked Duckie.” Oh yes, I was one of those.

I was Team Duckie through and through. I couldn’t even hide my disdain when my mom told me that her and her friends were Team Blane. Not only did I try to channel Andie in my everyday style, I also longed for a Duckie: a best friend who was hopelessly devoted to me, who would pine for me while listening to The Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want,” who would only want what’s best for me. And in the end, I would open my eyes and realize what I had been missing out on all along. When Andie saw Duckie at the prom and asked to admire him, in the same way he asks to do that with her, I would’ve chosen him right then and there. Blane who? I would’ve righted what I thought was Andie’s wrong when she chose Blane. I fixated on the Team Duckie vs. Team Blane aspect of the film so much that I entirely missed the point. I was so Team Duckie that I blamed Andie for not choosing him. I thought she was foolish for not loving him romantically. How could she be so clueless?!

My Duckie shirt_Processed with VSCO with hb2 preset

It wasn’t until I grew up some more, graduated high school, and went through several re-watches that I realized I had fallen into a trap that society has conditioned us to fall into: the dreaded sexist “friend zone.” The general definition is when one of two friends seeks to turn their friendship with the other person into a romantic and/or sexual relationship, but the other person doesn’t want to. That person just wants to remain friends. And so, the first person is “stuck” in a friendship when they really want it to be a romantic relationship. The “friend zone” comes with very common side-effects that usually disparage women. If a man, in this case Duckie, falls in love with his friend, it’s up to her to return the favor and love him back. If she doesn’t or, heaven forbid, she likes someone else, she’s seen as being in the wrong and at fault. I, unfortunately, had this mentality as a young girl, which a lot of people still have: if your best friend likes you, you owe it to them to choose them over the person you actually have a crush on. It’s harmful for girls to grow up with this outlook because it further discourages them to act on their actual feelings. It makes girls scared of being accused of leading their friend on so they feel they have to reciprocate. Women and girls don’t owe anyone a relationship.

On one of my re-watches after I graduated high school, I noticed that my reaction to Andie not loving Duckie the way he loved her paralleled Steff’s (James Spader) reaction after he asked her out towards the beginning of the film. When he starts to notice the animosity Andie holds for him, he retaliates in anger. Not only is he leaning against her car door, forbidding her from escaping, but he begins to put her down. He doesn’t see what makes her so special from all the other girls that won’t go out with him, he calls her a “bitch,” and tells her to go to a doctor to get that condition checked out. Sure, I didn’t do all these things, but I definitely thought that Andie was wrong to not get with Duckie. I wanted her to open her eyes and just see him there. Steff and I shared the same disbelief when she didn’t show interest. If Duckie loved her so much then she should love him too, right?

Duckie's heartbroken after finding out Andie's going on a date with Blane

It was wild to me that Andie didn’t like Duckie back, but after recently re-watching the film I don’t know why I ever blamed her. She stuck true to what she wanted. She didn’t feel guilted into pursuing a romantic relationship that she didn’t want with Duckie. She acted the way she did with him because they’re friends and that’s it. The way that Andie platonically acts with Duckie can be — which I did — misconstrued to be romantic. They’re touchy, they talk “20 times” a day, they care about the other’s feelings. All of these are friendly behaviors; Andie didn’t lead him on in any way.

If you still like Duckie and Andie together and you’re now feeling bad about it, don’t. There’s nothing inherently wrong with liking the idea of Duckie and Andie together. They are cute. He really cares about her and she for him. But what is wrong is to belittle Andie and her emotions and blame her for not loving him. You can’t help the happiness you feel when Duckie shows up at the prom for Andie. You can’t help but feel a sense of hope when they run to each other, hug, and reconcile by walking into prom together. But what you can help is how you react to her not “choosing” him.

Andie’s father, Jack (Harry Dean Stanton), puts it perfectly when Duckie first tells him that he loves her: “You can love Andie, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to love you back. I mean, it doesn’t mean that she won’t, but what I’m trying to say is you can’t make it happen, you know? It either will or it won’t. It’s all in the heart.” Andie stayed true to her heart. Although she could’ve gotten with Duckie, she defied expectations and didn’t. She didn’t waver. She was strong. Now that I watch it, I can see the appeal of both Blane and Duckie, but I can’t choose a side anymore. The only team I’m on is Team Andie.


See also at Bitch Flicks: ‘Pretty in Pink’: A Desire for AutonomyProm and Female Sexual Desire in ‘Pretty in Pink’ and ‘The Loved Ones’; ‘Pretty in Pink’: Side Effects from the Prom


Isabella Garcia is a California-based aspiring TV writer who can be found crying over movies, books, and TV on her Twitter @isabellagrca, PopInsomniacs and It’s Just About Write.

Revisiting ‘Desert Hearts’ and Its Lesbian Romance

For heterosexual women, movies and television series show them every day what a loving relationship is and what the expectations are to grow up, fall in love, and find a handsome prince (however flawed that may be). For lesbians prior to Donna Deitch’s ‘Desert Hearts,’ nothing of the kind existed on-screen.

Desert Hearts

This guest re-post written by Angela Beauchamp appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.


We all hold dear particular films that made an indelible impression on us. Somehow they connected to us as a viewer on an emotional or even a spiritual level; we identified with the story or characters in unusual ways; or we appreciated the craftsmanship so much that we could recite lines or remember the sequence of shots and all of the details in a scene. That ability to touch individuals while also reaching very large groups of viewers is part of what makes film such a powerful medium.

Desert Hearts is one such film for me. In the fall of 1986, still a kid of 22 who had just moved to the city from Podunk, Indiana, I went to the theater in a Boston suburb. There I remember looking around at the audience. I had a hard time believing that I was watching a lesbian romance film in a public place. I don’t think I breathed during the love scene. For the first time in my life, in a mainstream movie theater, I watched a film that gave me a model for what love could be. It made me want to fall in love, to find my own Cay or Vivian, and hop on the train to start a life together.

For heterosexual women, movies and television series show them every day what a loving relationship is and what the expectations are to grow up, fall in love, and find a handsome prince (however flawed that may be). For lesbians prior to Donna Deitch‘s Desert Hearts, nothing of the kind existed on-screen. We relied on romance novels from mail order houses like Naiad Press and feminist bookstores if we were lucky enough to live in a large college town or progressive city. Desert Hearts had a limited distribution (i.e. it was not shown in Podunk, Indiana), but it did find an unheard of large audience on screens across the country and abroad.

It is a conventional romance, which is one of the reasons that it is so successful. As Jackie Stacey points out, “it uses the iconography of romance films: train stations, sunsets and sunrises, close-up shots, rain-drenched kisses, lakeside confessions, ‘I’ve never felt this way before’ orgasms.” It is those Hollywood conventions that conjure shared memories of hundreds of heterosexual romances. Thus the filmmaker uses what are sometimes clichés as shortcuts to elicit particular emotions and reactions from the audience. Although the world of 1959 would certainly have been more challenging for these two lovers in the real world, the cinematic world Deitch created signals that there is an all-important happy ending coming up: a romantic Hollywood ending.

Deitch’s use of music also contributes to the romance convention. The country songs of Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash are very emotionally evocative. In particular, they evoke a feeling of wanting that comes from knowing the themes and voices that accompany these artists’ work. The soundtrack, which took up a large portion of the film’s budget, makes brilliant use of the audience’s previous knowledge. We know how we should feel before the scene plays itself out.

Placing the film’s setting in Reno also taps into our shared impressions of the West from movies and popular culture. It is a place in which one can start a new life and throw caution to the wind. The chances for romance certainly would not have felt so hopeful without the wide open spaces and bright, beautiful colors of the Nevada desert. Cay’s cowboy boots and western clothes make her the equivalent of the cowboy who sweeps the newcomer to town off of her feet. It’s the wild westerner who charms the shy school marm, just like we’ve seen a million times in the movies.

Others (like Mandy Merck) discuss Desert Hearts as conventional, criticizing it for not being challenging enough, not tackling issues of lesbian identity, for example. For me, that criticism totally misses the point. Deitch intentionally did not make an issues kind of film. She took a Hollywood formula and tilted it on its ear, creating a lesbian love story that audiences still crave today.


Angela Beauchamp is a cinema lover, film scholar, and most recently, a zombie mashup junkie. She is preparing to teach a course on Post-Apocalyptic Cinema in the fall.

The Vietnam War Through a Teen Girl’s Eyes in ‘In Country’

Sam is an underrated, if not widely unknown 1980s heroine. She serves as a symbol for America’s 1980s attempt to reconcile with its most controversial war. The 1980s experienced a boom in Vietnam War films, as the temporal distance from the war allowed filmmakers to fully deconstruct the experience. Rarely is the locus of these films a woman.

In Country

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


Norman Jewison’s 1989 film In Country is based on Bobbie Ann Mason’s young adult novel by the same name. The story revolves around eighteen-year-old Samantha Hughes (Emily Lloyd), a.k.a. Sam, during the summer after high school graduation in Hopewell, Kentucky. Sam struggles to understand her Vietnam veteran uncle as she tries to learn more about her father, who died in the Vietnam War before she was born. Sam’s Uncle Emmett (Bruce Willis) wrestles with the symptoms of his PTSD, but refuses to tell Sam about his triggers or experiences. She barely knows anything about her father; her mother only knew and was with him for a few months before he was sent off to war and now she rarely discusses him. Sam spends the summer trying to solve the mysteries of the Vietnam experience and the patriarchal figures in her life.

Sam is an underrated, if not widely unknown 1980s heroine. She serves as a symbol for America’s 1980s attempt to reconcile with its most controversial war. The 1980s experienced a boom in Vietnam War films, as the temporal distance from the war allowed filmmakers to fully deconstruct the experience. Rarely is the locus of these films a woman. Sam’s character manages to break through the barriers of a primarily masculine film genre. In Country uniquely explores both the female and child experience of the Vietnam War and its aftermath. This is a departure from the wide variety of films depicting the male veteran’s assimilation into post-Vietnam life, such as Born on the Fourth of July (1989) or First Blood (1982).

The exclusion of the female is central to both real life and cinematic Vietnam War narratives. As laid out in Susan Jeffords’ seminal gender study of Vietnam, The Remasculinization of America: Gender and the Vietnam War, she discusses this idea of male bonding, or male collectivity. Men’s fellowship is predicated upon the segregation of the woman — they must bond together to reclaim their lost masculinity from the war. “Why don’t any of the vets I know get along with women?” Sam asks Emmett’s friend Tom. Sam hears the same mantra from various veteran characters throughout the film, “You ain’t never going to understand it. You don’t want to,” Emmett says. “Well, you weren’t there. So you can’t understand it,” says Tom. To the veterans of In Country, Sam will never share in their communal brotherhood of war and thus they must always exclude her. Sam frequently witnesses the impairment in the veteran’s post-war masculinity that keeps them from connecting and actively disengaging from women in primarily romantic and even friendly ways, such as her uncle’s rejection of Sam’s set-up with a local nurse and Tom’s inability to sexually perform.

In Country

Women in Vietnam War films are often pushed away from men who refuse to discuss the war. However, many of these characters remain passive and do not pressure them to divulge information. In Country portrays a woman as an active investigator that truly longs to understand the men’s minds. Sam constantly engages with her uncle and his friends about the war, but any of her sincere questioning about their wounds or memories are met with sarcastic jokes or proclamations that she would not understand. Just as Emmett and his friends dismiss Samantha, her father, Dwayne, also excludes her from the dead. Her friend Dawn finds a box of his letters, photographs and war memorabilia. The text of the letters revolves around soldier camaraderie, emphasizing the bonds of brotherhood. Dwayne excludes his female reader by insisting, “Don’t ask me to tell you how it is here. You don’t want to know.” This feminine segregation, a key component of most Vietnam narratives, is mobilized by all the men in In Country.

These letters begin to change Sam’s idea of her father, who was once a phantom figure in her life, now becomes idealized and heroic. Since Sam is not able to see the ramifications of Vietnam in her father’s post-war life, she can only picture him as a romantic war hero with a good heart. She pins his photograph onto her mirror and speaks to it, “You missed everything. You missed Watergate, E.T., the Bruce Springsteen concert. You were just a country boy and you never knew me.” By defining him as a ‘country boy,’ she envisions him as the embodiment of wholesome heartland America, a beacon of innocence who was harshly victimized after being thrown unwittingly into the dangers of Vietnam. The image of her father becomes as revered as that of a pop star — akin to the Bruce Springsteen posters that loom over her — an unattainable figure which exists as a pure, steadfast body of goodness that is constantly present but ultimately unreachable.

In Country

Sam mourns that her father has not only missed her entire life, but that her father never got to see what life has been like for Americans in 1980s post-Vietnam. She prioritizes Watergate, which changed American political culture forever, and iconic 1980s pop culture. Sam particularly engages with the rock icon Bruce Springsteen, whose career skyrocketed in 1984. Although his presence is more prevalent in the novel, the film still positions Springsteen as important to Sam. It is necessary to consider In Country’s engagement with the text of Springsteen’s hit song “Born in The U.S.A.,” which no doubt speaks to Sam’s observations of the Vietnam veteran’s predicament. The song discusses veterans’ disillusionment and disappointment upon returning to America after fighting its unpopular war, which Sam sees daily living with Emmett. Part of the song’s lyrics reflect his state of being, “You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much/Till you spend half your life just covering up.” Emmett has been both literally and metaphorically covering up. He fears the outside world, confining himself to the home, remaining unemployed, and refusing to work at the tire plant. He is plastered to the couch playing Pac-Man or spends his time digging a hideaway hole under the house. To Sam, Emmett is a living embodiment of Springsteen’s struggling small-town and blue-collar protagonist.

Another song off the iconic 1980s album is used non-diegetically in the film, “I’m On Fire.” The lyrics play as Sam jogs throughout the town. The lyrics, “Hey, little girl is your daddy home?/Did he go away and leave you all alone?” is an on-the-nose reference to Sam’s absent father. The amalgam of the song’s sexual nature and reference to a patriarchal figure reflects Sam’s complex sexual relationship with the significantly older Vietnam veteran Tom, who she attempts to sleep with after a dance. Tom is both an agent of her growing sexuality, as she develops into a young woman, and a platform for Sam to mediate her lost childhood role of father’s daughter, for Tom can be seen as more of a father figure than a potential boyfriend. Her connection and relationship to him can be read as a strange way for her to reconnect with her father. Sam is torn, particularly in this relation to Tom, between seeing herself as the little girl within the family she never got to have and growing up as a young woman.

In Country

In addition to understanding the Vietnam experience, In Country depicts a young woman at a crossroads in her life that many can relate to. All throughout the film, characters ask Sam if she is going to marry her boyfriend Lonnie. Her mother married her father and got pregnant at a young age, and now that Sam is freshly graduated from high school, many expect her to follow in those footsteps. Sam repeatedly tells her interrogators she has “other things on her mind.” It never occurs to them that she could have other ideas for her future, such as college or a career. Sam’s conflicts of these feminine roles are embodied in the character of Dawn, her friend that deals with an unplanned pregnancy. Dawn serves as a reflection of Sam’s alternate path, to marry Lonnie and start a family, and of the past, her mother’s young marriage and pregnancy.

Interactions with Dawn also trigger Sam’s unrest about her familial relationships. In one scene, Dawn pierces her ears and asks if her mother will be upset. Sam insists that her mother is “provincial and misguided” and brags that Emmett lets her do anything she wants to do, including let her boyfriend sleep over. Dawn responds that her father would never let her do that. Dawn’s insistence at having a protective father rubs salt in Sam’s wound about her own father’s absence. Sam does not truly celebrate her absent and misguided parental figures, (as her mother lives with her stepfather and half-sister in the city) they have left her unmoored and bereft. There are no parental figures that care enough to stop and discipline Sam from having sleepovers with her boyfriend. Sam is torn between attending college in the fall and marrying her boyfriend — two seemingly disparate feminine ideals. But overall, she is conflicted because she has never been able to see herself as a daughter within a nuclear family.

Sam’s volleying between the female roles of daughter and independent young woman and her struggle to relate to the Vietnam veterans in her life are resolved within the finale. Throughout the film, Sam had been constructing an idealized picture of her father as a perfect war hero. She obtains his war diaries from her grandparents, and their candor causes her to confront the reality of his wartime experiences and his ultimate humanity. The diaries describe his unremorseful killings of the Vietnamese enemy. Up until now, the letters she has read have only been of fraternizing with his war buddies or fantasizing about home. It never occurred to Sam that her father had to kill, the equation of murder and war was far from her mind as she envisioned her heroic father fighting for his country. Sam spent the majority of the film trying to determine why the Vietnam veterans she knows are so troubled, what happened over there to cause their problems. But when the truth of Vietnam is exposed to her through her father’s experience, she recoils, frightened and upset. It tarnishes her sainted image of the innocent ‘country boy.’ As Sam reveals this to Emmett, he finally unloads the memories that he has been keeping inside, the wounds in which he spent the film “covering up.”  The uncovering of these wounds allows Sam to recognize just how Vietnam’s turmoil affected those she loves, unraveling the romantic notions of her father while allowing her to fully support her troubled uncle. Through this confession, the Vietnam veteran’s feminine exclusion, regulated through silence and hostility, is finally closed off.

In Country

In the final scene, Sam and Emmett travel to the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial. Sam leaves a portrait of herself at her father’s spot on the wall. At the end of one of his letters, Dwayne said he wanted to see a picture of his child. This gesture allows her closure in the lack of connection she felt to him. Now, Dwayne is able to “see” the picture of his child, fulfilling his wish and thereby “acknowledging” her as his daughter. This allows Sam to fully heal and move on. We learn that she decides to attend college in the fall, pursuing her passion for higher education instead of others’ wishes for her to become a young housewife.

What is important about In Country is that it depicts a 1980s female protagonist with agency who carves out a path for herself, makes choices amidst the confusion and pressures of dominant ideologies and complex relationships. Sam Hughes is neither iconic nor well-remembered, but she should be. In Country depicts perhaps the most delicate time in a woman’s life: the transition from girl to young woman. Furthermore, it places the feminine experience within the canon of the Vietnam veteran film, a genre in which male narratives are overwhelmingly present and female characters are often reduced to largely invisible or supporting characters.


Caroline Madden has a BFA in Acting from Shenandoah Conservatory and is currently an MA Cinema Studies student at Savannah College of Art and Design. Other writing can be found on Screenqueens, Pop Matters, and her blog Cinematic Visions. Film and Bruce Springsteen are two of her most favorite things.

‘Crossing Delancey’: Isabelle Needs a New Perspective on Life and Love

This romantic comedy has always been more of a cult classic. But it was unusual in its female writer and director, along with its distinctly Jewish cultural setting, its generational custom-clash regarding matchmaking, and its conflicted independent protagonist, Isabelle, who could be read as a late 1980s precursor to ‘Sex and the City’s protagonist Carrie Bradshaw.

Crossing Delancey 2

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


Crossing Delancey (1988) is a romantic comedy featuring Amy Irving, directed by Joan Micklin Silver and written by Susan Sandler, based on her original play of the same title. The tagline was, “A funny movie about getting serious.” This rom-com has always been more of a cult classic. But it was unusual in its female writer and director, along with its distinctly Jewish cultural setting, its generational custom-clash regarding matchmaking, and its conflicted independent protagonist, Isabelle, who could be read as a late 1980s precursor to Sex and the City’s protagonist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker). An independent, straight single woman with a successful career, Isabelle has professional and romantic options, ambitions, and flawed preconceptions about the incompatibility of those options and ambitions as she tries to decide between an internationally acclaimed poet or a neighborhood. Yes, you read that correctly: poet or pickleman.

Isabelle “Izzy” Grossman (Amy Irving) is irritating and relatable at the same time. She’s an ambitious and successful publisher in Manhattan, where, as she insists to her grandmother, she organizes “the most prestigious reading series in New York City.” She sees herself as modern, forward-looking, cultured, and sophisticated. But she’s also self-centered, snobbish, dismissive, and deceitful. While she possesses many fine attributes, she’s flawed; I like both of those aspects of her that make her fully human. At 33, with one of her peers becoming a new mother, Izzy looks around at her life, wondering about advancing her personal life as she has her professional one. This is a common theme among 1980s romantic comedies, such as Baby Boom (1987) with Diane Keaton and Working Girl (1988) with Melanie Griffith. One of her romantic prospects, a novelist, quotes Confucius to her at dinner one night, “Ripe plums are falling. Now there are only three. May a fine lover come for me”, adding reassuringly, “Lots of ripe plums left on your tree, Izzy.” He seems to recognize her distraction over the passage of time and still being single, which has become an issue with her grandmother.

Crossing Delancey

Izzy has three men in her life: Nick (John Bedford Lloyd), an old boyfriend/friend with benefits, now married, but who crashes at her place on a regular basis when he and his wife fight; Anton Maes (Jeroen Krabbe), a NYC-based Dutch critically acclaimed novelist, also married but separated, famous, creative, cosmopolitan, and intellectual; and Sam Posner (Peter Riegert), who lives and works on the Lower East Side near her grandmother’s home, the owner and operator of his father’s pickle shop on Delancey Street. Sam and Izzy meet through the pressure of her grandmother, “Bubbie” Kantor (Reizl Bozyk), and Mrs. Mandlebaum (Sylvia Miles), a traditional professional Jewish matchmaker.

To Izzy, to cross Delancey is to return to the past, “100 years” and “a million miles away” from her own life, to her grandmother’s world. She does so often and willingly, providing company and care for her beloved grandmother. But she has no interest in a man who has chosen to remain in that neighborhood, doing the same food sales work that his father did, and, she assumes, contracting a matchmaker to find a bride. It clearly seems archaic and a little desperate to her.

Crossing Delancey

The setting takes place half in Manhattan — in Izzy’s apartment, her place of employment, and out socializing with friends — and half on the Lower East Side — in Bubbie’s vibrant and diverse neighborhood, historically a predominantly Jewish community. It’s clear that, in trying to leave the old world and its ways behind as she makes her way in the new, modern world, Izzy has made some arrogant and faulty assumptions that will require Bubbie’s willingness to interfere.

Passing the Bechdel test, Crossing Delancey features conversations between Isabelle and Bubbie about Bubbie’s health, the neighborhood, Izzy’s dreams and what they might mean, and Izzy’s parents. Izzy actively seeks to support her friend Rickie’s new role as a single parent with a sometimes supportive boyfriend. She also supports her publishing colleague Chinchilla Monk’s new public access show on the local performance art scene, which features a feminist performer.

Izzy attends a bris for the baby of a high school friend of hers, where the film shows us a group of four women in their thirties sustaining a friendship from their teenage years. Two are single, one is married, and one is a new mother with a boyfriend. One of the women refers to the bris as, “Our first baby!” We see the women friends together in varying pairs throughout the film. This group resembles Sex & the City’s foursome of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda, minus the multi-thousand dollar stylish and sexy wardrobe. Marilyn, in particular, reminds me of Elaine Benes from Seinfeld, which debuted a year after this film came out.

Crossing Delancey 4

The film’s costuming is refreshing given the frequent sexualization of women in film through wardrobe today in most mainstream movies. The late 1980s is the era of the three-quarter or tea-length casual dress, with both dresses and shirts buttoned to the top, but without appearing constricting. Izzy’s clothes are appropriate for her varied activities: jogging, working at the bookstore, spending time with her grandmother, going on a date. What struck me most was that she looked nice and comfortable and her shoes were practical; she was dressed as many women in real life dress. There were no extra tight outfits, short-short skirts, stiletto heels, or plunging cleavage — at her place of employment or anywhere else. She was obviously meant to be doing things, not just to be the object of the Male Gaze: on display but not functional.

Crossing Delancey and Sex and the City share parallels as both Izzy and Carrie Bradshaw are thirty-something straight white women with successful careers and a support network of female friends. Both long for romance, question the idea of meeting someone who meets their requirements for a boyfriend, much less a husband, and both make selfish and deceitful decisions.

Izzy decides she doesn’t have chemistry with Sam but she likes him, so she attempts to set him up with her high school friend Marilyn, who recently complained that on a given first date she has “forty-five minutes to make this guy think I’m great, when I’d rather be home in my pajamas watching baseball.” But Izzy doesn’t tell Sam that she’s setting him up. Instead, she offers an apology for some of the things she said to him earlier and invites him to have dinner. She plans with Marilyn to “run into her” at the end of dinner, then leave her with Sam. Only the more Izzy talks to Sam, the more she likes him, and the longer she delays the introduction until Marilyn calls her on it and introduces herself. Sam feels used, but blames Izzy, not Marilyn, demanding “What’s there to be sorry about? She’s funny, direct, honest,” with the clear implication that Izzy is lacking in the latter two areas in particular. Afterward, Izzy pines after Sam with her other friends and her grandmother, until Bubbie brings Sam back into contact with Izzy.

Crossing Delancey 7

Despite things finally seeming to click with Sam, Izzy allows Anton to persuade her to stay late after work to read part of his new novel. He flatters her and, knowing she has a date with Sam, encourages her to make him wait. Foolishly, she does, despite having spent time and money purchasing a new dress for the date and being eager to see Sam. Izzy realizes belatedly her error, in thinking that the mysterious and suave Anton wants a romantic and professional relationship with her when he’s looking for a part-time assistant and a convenient casual sex partner. Astonishingly, Sam has waited for her. He’s a man with the patience of a saint, but he’s not a doormat. In some ways this is a gender-reversed romantic comedy. It’s Izzy who races frantically across town, having come to the belated conclusion that she has been grossly overlooking, underestimating, and underappreciating who Sam is and what he has to offer.

The film presents us with three vivid visual images of groups of women in the city: at the senior center the women’s defense workshop that Bubbie participates in as Izzy watches in amusement; the after-work crowd in the deli/grocery, which includes Izzy, selecting dinner for one to-go from the salad bar; and the long line of pregnant women who file past Izzy and Sam in the entrance to her apartment building. These seem to suggest possible futures for Izzy: older, alone, and in need of self-defense; a solo continuation of her life as it is, focused mostly on work, eating deli take-out at the end of a long day; or preparing to become a mother when paired with Sam.

To choose one is to leave one unknown. Izzy doesn’t want to choose wrongly, or perhaps Izzy simply doesn’t want to choose at all. She’s mistaken in her arrogant and condescending assumptions about Sam, though, when she believes him to be not well read, inarticulate, and not cultured. When she mentions feeling ambivalent and then offers a definition, he interrupts to say that he knows what the word means. He adds, angrily, “You think my world is so small, so provincial? You think it defines me?” His defense of himself moves her as much as learning that he was interested in her because he had seen her around the neighborhood with her grandmother long before Mrs. Mandlebaum showed up with a picture of her (given by Bubbie) to peddle to him. He’s not trapped in the past as Izzy believed.

Crossing Delancey 5

Although Sam suggests that Izzy needs a new perspective (i.e. a new hat), the Harry Shipman story doesn’t make that point clearly. In the story, Shipman’s new hat allowed the girl he had his heart set on to see his eyes for the first time. She couldn’t see his face for his original hat. But it isn’t Izzy who needs a new hat to be viewed differently. Instead, she needs a more realistic view of him, rather than her preconceived and uncompromising one as she’s frustratingly obtuse when it comes to Sam. She’s selfish in her decisions to keep juggling all three of men and she’s ultimately dismissive of her friend Marilyn after setting her up with Sam.

In some ways this is a film about narrative, including the stories we tell ourselves. We’re given multiple smaller narratives within the main narrative. The excerpt from his novel that Anton reads to the bookstore audience; Sam tells Izzy the Harry Shipman-hat story; Mrs. Mandlebaum peddles other peoples’ stories, poet Pauline Swift’s only referenced story of her, the four men, and a cabbage; Sam’s story of how Izzy came to his attention; the story of Sam’s father, who did a Milton Berle impression in drag, recalled by Nick to Sam and Izzy; and Bubbie’s story of meeting her husband, which she tells Sam. Izzy’s description of Anton’s fiction also describes her story in this film: “Deceptive accessibility. Reads like pulp fiction, but then you hear music.” Some lines are so lyrical they sound like poetry. Some are poetry. And they don’t all belong to the novelist.

The film ends refreshingly only with the promise of a continued dating relationship between Izzy and Sam, no grand declarations, promises, sex, or vows. Sam’s question to himself, to her, “How do I talk to Isabelle?” is an invitation, an openness to collaborate, to teach one another how to better communicate. Although Bubbie seems assured that a wedding will be taking place for them in the future, neither of them takes it that far. They like each other, they’ve admitted that, kissed, and agreed to see one another again. And for this charming romantic comedy, that’s more than enough.


Susan Cosby Ronnenberg is a transplanted Southerner in the upper Midwest, where she has been an English professor for 16 years, specializing in the English Renaissance and Early Modern Women Writers. Currently working on a book through McFarland on Shakespeare and the HBO western series Deadwood. Email: sgcosronn@gmail.com Twitter: @Ouachita9 Blog: Caustic Ginger.

‘She’s Gotta Have It’: The Audacity of Sex and the Black Women Who Have It

I appreciate this film now because it centers on a Black woman who unabashedly is exploring and thoroughly enjoying her sexuality. By doing this, Spike Lee took long held beliefs and perceptions of Black women and pushed back on the constrictions and perceptions of society.

She's Gotta Have It

This guest re-post written by Reginée Ceaser appears as part of our theme week on Ladies of the 1980s.


When I was not quite a teenager, I watched Spike Lee’s movie entitled She’s Gotta Have It. I watched and enjoyed the characters’ monologues and the way Spike Lee’s character, Mars, repeated questions during conversation. I knew it was about a young woman who had three boyfriends but did not understand much else, let alone its importance in the framing of the sexuality of Black women. Released in 1986, She’s Gotta Have It chronicled Nola Darling balancing a relationship with three different men at the same. The three men know about each other and constantly vie for Nola’s attention and affections in hopes of being the one she chooses to have a monogamous relationship with.

An issue brought up in the film between the men is maybe Nola is being a “freak” because she’s lacking something emotionally (like daddy issues). The remedy to attempt this “freak” behavior is make Nola go to therapy to work out her issues. Her therapist, a Black woman, feels that Nola does not have the deep emotional issues originally perceived, and is enjoying her healthy sex drive. Satisfied that she’s had enough therapy, Nola continues her relationships with her suitors. Looking back on the film today, I appreciate this film now because it centers on a Black woman who unabashedly is exploring and thoroughly enjoying her sexuality. By doing this, Spike Lee took long held beliefs and perceptions of Black women and pushed back on the constrictions and perceptions of society. Films like She’s Gotta Have It come out few and far between due to the “sensitive” context.

Preconceived notions of Black women in society have permeated into the fabrics of the stories of Black women in film and television creating flat, one-dimensional characters that are forced to speak to the humanity and womanhood of all Black women. Black women characters have been defined for decades by barely developed characters to serve their “larger than life” trope. For instance, there is the angry Black woman, the sassy Black woman, the fat and sassy Black woman, as well as the fat Black woman with low self-esteem, and the fat Black woman that desperately wants the love of a man but in the end is humiliated by him. There is also the frigid Black woman or the hypersexual Black woman. Lastly, and an all-time favorite, the Black woman that must choose between having a career or having a man (read: a dependable, steady sex life) to be fulfilled.

Many stories regarding Black womanhood are deeply rooted in sex and the respectability of sexual behavior projected upon them. Black women are often forced to live in a very tiny box with huge expectations of them and anything less than is being a renegade and a menace to society. We are supposed to be high achievers, while wearing our skirts to our ankles and necklines to our chins. Sex before marriage is frowned upon, having sex outside of a serious relationship can garner side-eyes and distance from friends, and having the audacity to freely explore sexuality outside of the norms of committed relationships and marriage is a disownable offense. There is no gray area allowed, no progression of full womanhood to be pursued and any open, honest conversation about sex and sexuality of Black women is relegated to girls’ night with friends.

Being Mary Jane

Fast forward to 2013, and Mara Brock Akil debuts a new scripted drama, Being Mary Jane, centering on a Black journalist named Mary Jane, portrayed by Gabrielle Union. I fell in love with Being Mary Jane when Mary Jane sat her in office and masturbated with the help of a mini vibrator before going on a date. Another aspect that I loved about the scene is that Mary Jane didn’t immediately turn to porn to aid in her arousal; she had a computer and a smartphone and yet depended on herself and the vibrator. It is a choice that audaciously and efficiently wrestled down and shattered the myth that only way Black women achieve sexual pleasure is through men. It was gratifying to watch a long-held belief of Black women being scared, frigid and afraid to touch themselves and love themselves sexually evaporate on prime-time television.

Mara also crafted a nuanced woman that balanced a progressing career, taking care of family, evaluating and redefining friendships and of course, navigating an intricate and messy personal life. With Mary Jane’s intricate and messy personal life, Mara takes another bold opportunity to rebuff sexual respectability and cement agency and consent by introducing Mary Jane’s friend with benefits.

Friends with benefits is a subject that is frequently discussed but is tap danced around to avoid being labeled as promiscuous and “loose.” Also hinging on that fear is the thought of losing control of the ability to just have sex with no other emotional attachment. Mary Jane’s friend with benefits, or Cutty Buddy as he is affectionately known by fans, is paramount because he represents more than just surface level sex. He’s a beautiful, muscular, handsome man with a voice that sounds like hot butter on a fresh oven biscuit. He respects her and even cares for her but is fully aware of their agreement, makes no illusions about it, and is committed to upholding it. There is a mutual understanding and reciprocation of attraction that is delightful to see play out. That reciprocation is exciting to see, because too often we see or read about men who have casual sex or play the role of friend with benefits and then immediately degrade and shun them for engaging in sex outside of societal norms of a relationship. For example, in She’s Gotta Have It, Nola Darling did choose a man to have a monogamous relationship with and he in turn verbally attacks her and sexually assaults her for making him feel used. It is the ultimate act of “punishment” that is unfortunately used when sex isn’t played by the rules.

Navigating womanhood is not a straight shot; it’s not perfect but the chance to develop and nurture it on one’s own terms is a perfect realization in the feminist school of thought. Being Mary Jane provides the dialogue and the safety net in saying out loud ,”I see you, I’ve been there too and you are not alone.” The embracing of positive sexuality of Black women on television is not progressive feminism. It is the hope that future depictions of such will not be labeled progressive, but just as common as the stereotypes that have lingered for too long.


Reginée Ceaser is a New Orleans native who is a rockstar in her daydreams, retired daytime soap opera viewer, and proud television binger. Reginée can also be found giving dazzling commentary on Twitter @Skiperella and on her blog, Skiperella.com

‘Working Girl’ and the Female Gaze

We so often view films through the Male Gaze with camera shots that are more interested in capturing the way a woman’s body looks under the guise of “sex sells” that it’s become somewhat of the norm. While ‘Working Girl’ is appreciative of the beauty between Sigourney Weaver and Melanie Griffith, it employs a “female gaze” so to speak with Harrison Ford.

Working Girl

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


In any other film (9/10 times at least) just reading the synopsis of this movie would have greatly aggravated me and, to be frank, still did a little. There aren’t many films about women competing that paint the characters in question as anything more than shrewd, conniving and petty. Working Girl, much to my delight, doesn’t do that. Or, at least, it isn’t the main character’s objective. Hers is to simply find success and prove to herself and others that she has the talents and the skills to be more than what meets the mind.

The she in question is Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith), who lands a job as a secretary at a big company with a powerful woman, Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver) as her boss. At the start Tess is utterly enamored with Katherine, seeing her as a woman to look up to and admire, someone who has already achieved what she’s seeking and, in another film, I would have loved to see a buddy work comedy between the two, because who doesn’t want to be friends with Weaver? Of course, this isn’t to be because movies don’t like it when women are friends and instead, Katherine steals ones of Tess’s ideas and passes them as her own, leading Tess down a path of claiming her agency as a business woman looking to make a mark in the working world. What’s interesting is to see that despite her mounting disdain towards Katharine, Tess still adopts her mannerisms of how she operated in a work environment from the way she dresses and cuts her hair, playing a part to imbue herself with confidence she’s not sure she has yet. The difference is she’s coming at the role with a sense of selflessness and ambition, opposed to Katharine’s selfish nature.

Part of this is impacted by the actresses performances in the roles. Griffith who had been known for much more flightier characters brings a warm sense of empathy to Tess and a thread of naturalism as she too was undervalued as a performer until this Mike Nichols film gave her a bigger break out chance. Weaver, meanwhile, had at this point already played one of cinema’s greatest badasses in Ridley Scott’s Alien as Ripley, and her screen presence was one that captured attention; Weaver to this day is effortlessly enigmatic and it’s easy to understand why someone — real or fictional — would want to follow in her footsteps.

The contrast is one of the stronger aspects of the film which, to its benefit, never pits the characters against one another due to petty or contrived reasons. Tess is never aiming to purely undermine Katharine or trying to steal her position, but rather using Katharine’s absence to pursue her own career, even if it’s through dubious means.

The added element that solidifies the difference between Working Girl and other workplace dramedies — something that more fully flips the script?

Enter Jack Trainer.

Working Girl gif

A film that understands Harrison Ford’s beauty (and, frankly, exploits it) and treats it as such is a winner in my book automatically (Raiders of the Lost Ark — hello) and late 80’s Ford was on a roll as it is in taking more challenging work with some of cinema’s greatest talents, Mike Nichols being a wonderful addition to that list. While he certainly isn’t played strictly for eye candy (that would be something) he is, in a way, played a “prize” between the two women while also having his own role to play. We so often view films through the Male Gaze with camera shots that are more interested in capturing the way a woman’s body looks under the guise of “sex sells” that it’s become somewhat of the norm. While Working Girl is appreciative of the beauty between Weaver and Griffith, it employs a “female gaze” so to speak with Ford. So much so that there’s a scene that goes to great lengths to express this as he changes in his office and women looking in through the window catcall and whistle.

Perhaps it’s not enough to turn convention on its head, but it’s a welcome change of pace.

Also a change of pace is the fact that by the end of the film, Katharine and Tess aren’t fighting over Jack. They’re fighting over their place in the working world and, to narrow it down to a single moment, they’re fighting over a great idea that Tess had, one Katharine wishes she could have come up with and resents Tess for.

Working Girl

I wouldn’t call Working Girl a feminist call to arms and this is largely due to how broadly Katherine’s character is painted towards the end of the film. At the start she’s written to be calculated, sure, but not the caricature that she becomes halfway through and if she’s distrustful of other employees there’s sense to that too, considering she’s found herself in a sea of suits, in a position of power that’s so at odds with what society had dictated she be. There’s reason to her hostility even but then, rather than exploring her further to make the dynamics between she and Tess more intriguing, the film takes the rather easier route and lets Katharine remain in the two dimensional realm with Weaver doing everything in her might to make her into something more.

Add to that the lack of diversity and there was definitely room to grow — a lot of room.

Writer Kevin Wade and director Mike Nichols crafted a film that is both celebratory of the female experience while also skewering the system that placed them in gendered boxes in the first place. The biggest success of the film isn’t the romance or the drama, but the implications of what lead the characters to their positions in the first place. Katharine fought for the position she has and Tess fought to catch up and achieve the same goal. It’s imperfect, but ambitious, just like its leading ladies.


See also at Bitch Flicks: The Corporate Catfight in ‘Working Girl’; ‘Working Girl’ Is ‘White Feminism: The Movie’


Allyson Johnson is a 20-something living in the Boston area. She’s the Film Editor for TheYoungFolks.com and her writing can also be found at The Mary Sue and Cambridge Day. Follow her on Twitter for daily ramblings, feminist rants, and TV chat @AllysonAJ.

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.

Dirty Dancing and Fast Times

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.

Dirty Dancing

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.

Dirty Dancing

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.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

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.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

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.


See also at Bitch Flicks: Reproduction and Abortion Week: ‘Dirty Dancing’; Reproduction and Abortion Week: ‘Dirty Dancing’ and the Dancer’s Dilemma


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.

‘Pretty in Pink’: A Desire for Autonomy

Re-watching the film recently, it seems apparent that rather than Andie allowing herself to submit to Blane and all that he represents, her narrative arc is really a search for a sense of autonomy rather than a desire to transition into a world of privilege. …Blane represents an opportunity to take control of her life, to become increasingly autonomous in her decisions.

Pretty in Pink

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


John Hughes’ ability to represent a believable, empathetic, and most importantly, a realistic teenage experience has long been recognized. His characters are rightly flawed, and often blunder their way through their narrative as they begin to recognise their wants and desires, and attempt to turn these desires into reality.

Pretty in Pink was the first John Hughes film that I saw, and as such, has been especially formative for me, particularly so in terms of the characterization of Andie Walsh (Molly Ringwald). Andie is entirely relatable as she struggles to reconcile her own place in society (being from the ‘wrong side of the tracks’) and her desire for Blane (Andrew McCarthy), whose wealth seems emblematic of the life that Andie could have if she too was gifted with a privileged background. Andie is all too aware of her lack of social status, refusing to allow Blane to see where she lives, or admitting to her principal that she believes that she is lucky to be receiving a good education and as such, her relationship with Blane can be interpreted as an attempt to transcend her social status.

Much of the film’s discussion surrounds the reshot ending (as evidenced by the plethora of tribute videos on YouTube), an ending that, rather than depicting Andie with Duckie, showed her reuniting with Blane, despite his ill treatment of her. Watching this ending on previous occasions, it seemed to stretch incredulity: Why would Andie select Blane, whose embarrassment proved stronger than his own feelings, over Duckie, who has been devoted to Andie throughout her life? Re-watching the film recently, it seems apparent that rather than Andie allowing herself to submit to Blane and all that he represents, her narrative arc is really a search for a sense of autonomy rather than a desire to transition into a world of privilege.

Pretty in Pink

Andie, despite her circle of friends, appears to be lonely and isolated throughout the film and there is a clear sense that she cannot be her true self with anyone she interacts with, aside perhaps, from Blane. She is friends with Duckie, but as seen in her first interaction with him as they walk down the school hallway, she isn’t really interested in what he has to say. Similarly, as she drives home from Cats with Duckie, the pair are barely registering what one another is saying. Ignoring Grice’s Maxims as featured in his theories of Conversation Principles, the pair fail to maintain relevancy, quality and manner in their discussion. Andie regards the palatial houses en route, while Duckie spends much of the conversation complaining about the music, or stating to Andie in response to her admiration of the houses, “You want beautiful, look in a mirror.” Superficially, it might appear that Duckie is engaged in what Andie is saying, but in reality he’s not. Her comments highlight a clear state of dissatisfaction with her life, and notably, come after her interaction with her friends in Cats, in which she posits the idea of embarking on a relationship with a “rich guy,” a suggestion that is rapidly quashed by Jenna (Alexa Kenin). Andie is not happy, despite outward appearances, and it is clear that for her, Blane represents an opportunity to take control of her life, to become increasingly autonomous in her decisions. This dissatisfaction is not recognised by Duckie, and he chooses to redirect the conversation into a sexual sphere, once again stating his admiration for Andie despite her continued disinterest. Duckie’s unheeded desire for Andie, as has been noted by Kevin Smokler at Salon, is not to be encouraged. His belief that Andie is the one for him leads Duckie to feeling that Andie in some way owes him, or should return his affection. Learning of Andie’s forthcoming date with Blane, Duckie reacts angrily, stating that she can’t respect herself if she goes out with him. This mean-spirited reaction is not the response of a kind and caring potential partner, but rather a vindictive character who is unable to afford the object of his desire autonomy. Andie doesn’t want Duckie, but is currently unable to make this clear to him; it is not until she embarks on her relationship with Blane that she begins to assert her own sexual identity and indeed, her own sense of self.

On a simplistic level, it might seem rather tenuous to draw links between Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and Hughes’ Pretty in Pink, but their female protagonists both share a clear lack of, and desire for, autonomy. Academic writing on Coppola’s film has regularly noted Marie Antoinette’s lack of voice and in turn, her lack of control:

“Having no equals in the world with whom to share themselves, they are severed from an intellectual life that would allow them to speak themselves into existence” (Lane and Richter, 2011: 197).

This concept of lacking an equal with whom, through sharing oneself, a protagonist can become validated seems rather apt when considering Andie’s relationship with Blane. Unlike Duckie, Blane’s desire for Andie is measured and considered. His arrival at Tracks, the record store at which Andie works, is clearly a planned and calculated move. While Duckie almost rather literally screams to get Andie’s attention (intentionally setting off the alarm), Blane seeks her advice on a record, highlighting that he not only values her opinion, but trusts her ability to form one. It is Blane’s attention that provides Andie with the strength to confront the classmates who earlier in the film made their disdain for her apparent. While this strength through male attention could be seen as reductive, Andie’s strength isn’t buoyed by Blane himself, but rather the realization that she too is desirable and worthy of attention.

Pretty in Pink

Later, when going to a party, Andie makes it clear that she doesn’t want to attend but allows herself to be convinced by Blane. As they walk around the party, Blane is clearly attuned to Andie’s reactions; watching her closely, he quickly recognizes that she feels uncomfortable so seeks a space in which the pair can be alone, and thus separate from others. Blane is similarly uncomfortable and similarly accosted when they attend Andie’s venue of choice and it is apparent that the pair’s relationship cannot exist within the confines of the society in which they currently interact with. Initially, this need to be separate proves too difficult for Blane and he succumbs to the pressures excised by his apparent friends. Conversely, the experience for Andie only makes her desire for autonomy stronger, and she declares that she wants to attend prom in order to show that “they didn’t break me.”

Realizing that Blane has attended the prom on his own away from his friends, Andie understands that he has set out to distance himself from the privileged world which he inhabited and in doing so, has also made it clear that he also seeks autonomy over his own desires. This statement of control allows Andie to finally realize her own control over her life and her actions, and in turn, state her desire and love for Blane. Now that the pair have willingly removed themselves from a public sphere and space, they are able to create their own private space (both literally and metaphorically) and gain true autonomy.


References:

Lane, C. And Richter, N. (2011) ‘The Feminist Poetics of Sofia Coppola: Spectacle and Self-Consciousness in Marie Antoinette (2006)’ in H. Radner and R. Stringer (ed.) Feminism at the movies. Oxon: Routledge.


See also at Bitch Flicks: Prom and Female Sexual Desire in ‘Pretty in Pink’ and ‘The Loved Ones’; ‘Pretty in Pink’: Side Effects from the Prom


Siobhan Denton is a teacher and writer living in Wales, UK. She holds a BA in English and an MA in Film and Television Studies. She is especially interested in depictions of female desire and transitions from youth to adulthood. She tweets at @siobhan_denton and writes at The Blue and the Dim.

When Brienne Met Jaime: The Rom-Com Hiding in ‘Game of Thrones’

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

Game of Thrones _ Brienne and Jamie

This guest post written by Victoria Edel appears as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones.


There’s a girl. She’s an outsider, derided for her looks. Girl meets a handsome, golden boy. Girl hates boy. Boy hates girl. Girl and boy are thrown together by a situation outside their control. Girl and boy begin to slowly like each other, their bickering boarding on flirtation. Their new bond is tested, they tell each other their secrets, and they help one another. Just as they balance starts to shift, girl and boy no longer have to be together. A mean, beautiful woman mocks the girl for loving the boy. The two are separated, perhaps to never be together again.

That’s three-quarters of the plot of many romantic comedies. The girl might be nerdy, or wear glasses, or dress badly, or whatever Hollywood has decided is supposedly unattractive that year. The boy might be popular or have a fancy job or be a successful athlete.

It’s also three-quarters of the plot of Brienne and Jaime’s storyline on Game of Thrones. She’s a tall, stereotypically masculine woman who longs to be a knight, and he’s the most handsome and — probably — the most reviled man in Westeros.

Many Game of Thrones fans would claim that the show’s appeal is “realism” — anyone can die, good guys and bad guys are almost indistinguishable, nothing is guaranteed. But those viewers have confused realism with pessimism. Sadness is no more “realistic” than happiness, defeat no more honest than victory. (Of course, what “realism” even means in the context of dragons and magic in a fictionalized world could be its own think piece.) Game of Thrones gets too gloomy for me sometimes. It doesn’t feel real to me — it feels endlessly contrived.

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

Brienne of Tarth is tasked with delivering Jaime Lannister to King’s Landing, ordered by Catelyn Stark to trade him for her daughters. After they get kidnapped by a roving band who cut off Jaime’s hand and threaten Brienne with sexual violence, they start to come together. And they share some gorgeous romantic moments, namely his confession about why he killed the Mad King and when they escaped the bear pit. Their love is apparent, if never uttered aloud.

When they finally reach King’s Landing, you can see the sadness on their faces as they realize what this means, that here they cannot be together. And Cersei drives this home when she mocks Brienne for loving Jaime. In a teen movie, she’d be a cheerleader. In a rom-com she’d work for a fashion magazine.

And so Jaime sends Brienne off to try to finish her mission, to protect the Stark girls, giving her a new suit of armor and a new sword. Like any good couple in Act Three of their story, they don’t say “I love you,” but you can see it in their eyes.

Game of Thrones_Brienne and Jamie 2

The most recent season contained not a single Jaime and Brienne interaction, which might explain my decreased interest in Westeros. But I remain hopeful that this unlikely pair will reunite before the series ends, even if they don’t get to ride off into the happily ever after I want them to have.

In many movies and television shows, supposedly “ugly” women are still stunningly beautiful, their flaws just small quirks. Think of teen movies with makeovers that amount to removing a pair of glasses and getting a blow out. But Brienne actually represents a different standard of beauty, one that would not be appreciated in her fictional world and is rarely appreciated in ours. So when this handsome, flawed, but (arguably) good, man loves this flawed but wonderful woman, it means something different.

I see myself in Brienne. We’re domineering, strong women (though she would clearly win in a fight) who aren’t traditionally beautiful, who beautiful, handsome men usually overlook. There are no fat women who get to be main characters in Game of Thrones, so Brienne is the character I’m left to identify with.

It sounds bizarre to say the romantic storyline I relate the most on television right now takes place on a show with dragons and magic and endless war and mysterious ice monsters and the woman is a super-tall warrior and the man is an incest-y blonde with one hand — and yet.

Perhaps this says more about the rest of television than it does Game of Thrones. On shows with traditional romance, everyone is stunningly gorgeous. And on shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or You’re The Worst or The Mindy Project, where they’re deconstructing romance from the inside, everyone is still beautiful. Fat women are set apart from these love stories, almost completely absent from TV. And having Brienne is not the same as having a fat woman, but it’s the closest I’ve got.

In a way, Jaime and Brienne’s story is also deconstructing and analyzing the rom-com genre, since it places the tropes in an absurd environment. Jaime is this very despicable person for a long time, until his relationship with Brienne begins to change him (and even then, his actions in King’s Landing are not without reproach, though that’s a can of worms for another time). But maybe that reveals the truth of rom-coms that is often lost in silliness — people can make each other better, they do change, and they do love each other in spite of the odds.

If this really were a rom-com, they’d get married and live in a shack somewhere winter never comes. But this is Game of Thrones, so they’ll probably accidentally kill each other or something. But I just want to see them kiss. Even if they both die immediately after. I just want a weird-looking lady to be loved and kissed by a very handsome man. We get the reverse of this all the time. And if Game of Thrones did this, maybe it would, for a moment, live up to its claim of “realism,” of being daring and different.


Victoria Edel is a writer, funny person, and loud-mouthed fat lady. Follow her on Twitter @victoriaedel and retweet your two favorite jokes. She really needs the ego boost.

Individuality in Lucia Puenzo’s ‘XXY,’ ‘The Fish Child,’ and ‘The German Doctor’

In the end, it is this focus on individuality that is the most striking common theme of Lucia Puenzo’s works. Each of her characters undergoes intense scrutiny from outside forces, be it Alex in ‘XXY’ for their gender, Lala in ‘The Fish Child’ for her infatuation with Ailin, or Lilith from ‘The German Doctor,’ who is quite literally forced into a physical transformation by a Nazi.

XXY film

This guest post written by Sara Century appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.


Regardless of the time period or setting, there is a constant element of moody rebellion in the films of Lucia Puenzo; a deep-rooted distrust of authority that informs them at their core. Characters often become metaphors for larger issues of political strife. Good or bad, each individual’s humanity is shown via their shared vulnerability to forces outside of their control. Her work questions not only the desire to fit in, but asks why humans feel that desire to begin with. There is a tendency in her characters to challenge the status quo by their very existence in some way or another. As of this writing, she has written and directed 3 films, 2 of which were based on earlier novels of hers. She has also written a few screenplays, notably serving as one of the screenwriters on her father Luis Puenzo’s 2004 film The Whore and the Whale. Most recently, she co-created a television series in collaboration with her brother Nicolas for Argentina’s TV Publica called Cromo.

Puenzo’s solo directorial debut was 2007’s XXY, based on a short story by Sergio Bizzio. XXY is the story of an intersex teen who is raised with female pronouns, and how their family, friends, and lovers respond to their choice to stop taking hormones. The story begins with their mother and father inviting a plastic surgeon, his wife, and their son to stay with them in order to solicit advice on Alex. The plastic surgeon has an alienating affect on Alex and their family due to his disturbing lack of empathy for others, but his son Alvaro interests Alex, and they develop a mutual attraction. The narrative follows their interactions with one another as their self-discoveries coincide.

There are a plenty of heart-wrenching scenes in XXY but, in the end, it is most defined by its unwillingness to impose identities on its characters. Rather than defaulting to the gender binary, both Alex and Alvaro are given the option not to change, to exist simply as they are. By introducing another gender fluid character late in the film, Alex is shown in the context of a larger community, and accusations of abnormality from other characters seem to fall completely by the wayside. Up to that point, Alex lives in a world where society imposes an ideology that completely alienates them, and even their well-meaning parents tend to treat it as a burden to bear. Additionally, even their parents seem to believe that adherence to the norm is inevitable. By the time we meet the family, Alex would have been hearing these conversations for their entire life, and their alternating wordlessness or aggressiveness in response to these conversations comes across as understandable. The character studies in XXY are subtle and revealing, and critical response to the film was favorable, with many reviewers praising it for the tenderness with which it treats its characters.

The Fish Child

This tendency towards deeply felt empathy has become a directorial trademark of Puenzo’s. Her follow up to XXY was the also fascinating The Fish Child, released in 2009. The Fish Child is an adaptation of her first novel, and follows Lala, the daughter of an influential judge. Lala is in love with her family’s maid, Ailin, who is roughly the same age as her, but from a much darker and more violent world. Lala’s father has been sleeping with Ailin as well, although their relationship is significantly less consensual. He is murdered, and Ailin is immediately blamed, which lands her in prison. Lala refuses to accept this fate for them, and determines to free Ailin. The film manages to fall into several genres at once; thriller, romance, drama, modern fairy tale. The dreamily in-and-out-of-focus cinematography and non-linear storytelling would even put it in the category of art house film. Connecting this work with her other films is the stylish aesthetic choices, and in this example in particular, the camera’s shifting focus and Puenzo’s meticulously chosen locations serve as characters in and of themselves, equally as defining to the overall tone as the dystopian political climate.

The Fish Child sees the return of Ines Efron, who played the lead, Alex, in XXY. She is equally compelling as the dreamy, naive Lala. The necessarily complicated relationship between Lala and Ailin is wildly endearing, conveyed expertly by both actors via body language as much by any part of the script. The commentary on Ailin’s position in life, and the way her poverty and history of sexual abuse has hardened her and limited her choices, makes her a fascinating character, and it’s easy to see why Lala falls for her. Ailin’s inner resolve and the way she switches quickly into survival mode is highlighted and contrasted by Lala’s optimistic naiveté. The two girls are very similar, but their outlooks and responses to conflict are separated at their very roots by the realities of class privilege, and this element of the film offers a sense of stark realism to this otherwise dreamy tale.

In 2013, Puenzo told her most ambitious story yet with The German Doctor, a fictional account of the infamous Nazi Josef Mengele. For those blissfully unaware, this is the man otherwise known literally as “The Angel of Death” in Auschwitz, where he conducted his famously horrific human experiments during World War II. After the fall of the Third Reich, it is well known fact that Mengele fled to Argentina, where he was protected by local authorities, civilians, and fascists still loyal to Hitler and the false science of eugenics. Based on her 5th novel, Wakolda, the film takes place during the months Mengele spent in or around Buenos Aires after the war. A young girl named Lilith, who is considered to be too small for her age, encounters a mysterious German doctor who promises her parents that he can make her grow. This should probably set off more alarms in her parents than it actually does, but, before long, he is conducting experiments on her as well as her recently birthed twin brothers. Watching this develop onscreen is absolutely chilling for anyone familiar with his history. At one point, he is shown sketching out plans for his monstrous experiments in a notebook while having a casual conversation with a child he intends to inflict them on. Small details such as that one stayed with me a long time after the credits rolled. The German Doctor succeeds in being utterly horrifying without ever even remotely resembling a horror film, which is an individual accomplishment in and of itself.

The German Doctor

Also interesting is the way the development of the film seems to have been curbed at times by its own subject matter. In a 2014 interview with Elle, in anticipation of the film’s release, Puenzo openly discussed some of the conflict of speaking of history that some consider to be best left buried. She was quoted as saying:

“For example, we would have a location, but when we arrived, somebody had made a call and we didn’t have that location anymore. That happened a lot. Whoever was in charge had of course read the novel and knew we were mentioning the German School and that it actually existed before the war, and were very bothered by the idea. Another example was with the hotel that we shot the film in, which is also where we lived. We thought because it was closed for the holidays it would be a great proposition to rent that hotel. But in the beginning we were met with a lot of resistance. And then we found out that this hotel has a lot of German money in its origin — was made with German money. The whole time we were making the film we were confronted with facts of history, which made it very difficult to make.”

The German Doctor is a fascinating film, particularly when viewed as the culmination of the observations first made in XXY and The Fish Child. In XXY, the outside world is pressuring a young person to change something about their own bodies in order to fit in. In The Fish Child, the poor are shockingly vulnerable to the whims of the rich. Consistent with both, Puenzo’s sympathy is with the outsider. Uniquely, The German Doctor shows how the fear of not fitting in can lead to otherwise good people doing horrible things, for instance allowing Nazi war criminals to experiment on not one but three of their children.

In the end, it is this focus on individuality that is the most striking common theme of Lucia Puenzo’s works. Each of her characters undergoes intense scrutiny from outside forces, be it Alex in XXY for their gender, Lala in The Fish Child for her infatuation with Ailin, or Lilith from The German Doctor, who is quite literally forced into a physical transformation by a Nazi. In Puenzo’s films, each of these characters are threatened with the worst of all fates, which is to be just like everyone else. In each case, conformity is presented as being insidiously tantalizing. As in life, these seemingly benign choices will have a sweeping effect what kind of person each character will ultimately become.

This fascination with personal choice shows through in interviews with Puenzo. For instance, when asked in an interview with Indiewire in 2009 how she would define success, Puenzo responded, “Success for any artist is having a personal world that can be seen or felt in whatever they do,” and concluded that, “My personal goal is to be able to keep telling whatever story I want with no speculations but my own desire.” In a world where those outside of the norm are so often left voiceless, films like hers, which prize individuality above all else, are welcome and needed.


Sara Century is a multimedia performance artist, and you can follow her work at saracentury.wordpress.com.

No Apologies: The Ambition of Gillian Armstrong and ‘My Brilliant Career’

However, Armstrong also doesn’t mock Sybylla’s ambition or treat it as a joke. In Armstrong’s world, the fact that Sybylla has desires and wants outside of marriage and men is treated seriously because Sybylla takes it seriously. She never needs to prove herself worthy enough for her desires.

My Brilliant Career

This guest post written by Rebecca Hirsch Garcia appears as part of our theme week on Women Directors.


It’s almost impossible to think of Australian cinema without women directors. In recent years with her debut film The Babadook, Jennifer Kent has been declared a director to watch, but there’s also Julia Leigh, Sue Brooks, Cate Shortland, Shirley Barrett and Jocelyn Moorhouse, all of whom have had films play at Cannes and achieved various degrees of success and critical acclaim both in their home country and abroad. Not to mention Jane Campion who, while officially a Kiwi, went to film school in Australia and made some of her early films there.

Shocking then to realize that this flourishing of Australian women directors came after a near fifty year gap, a gap that began after Paulette McDonagh’s now lost 1933 film Two Minute Silence and finally ended in 1979 with Gillian Armstrong’s debut film My Brilliant Career.

The auspiciously named movie takes its title from the 1901 novel of the same name by Australian author Miles Franklin. Though the novel was popular, it wasn’t till the mid-70s that serious efforts were made for it to be adapted into a film. It was at that time that producer Margaret Fink bought the rights and began to cast about for a director that was right for the material. Fink reportedly considered Roman Polanski before setting her sights on Armstrong, a film-grad with a series of internationally acclaimed shorts under her belt who, at the time she met Fink, was working in the props department on another director’s movie.

There is much that is familiar, and loveable, about Armstrong’s first film. Set just before the turn of the century in 1897, it features a plain-looking and plain-speaking tomboy by the name of Sybylla Melvyn living on a farm in the Australian outback and dreaming of a better, i.e. more glamorous, life. Charmingly played by a young Judy Davis, in what was her first leading role in her second ever movie, Armstrong introduces us to Sybylla as she is sitting at her desk on a dusty farm while the rest of her family toils outside, prematurely beginning her memoirs, reflecting back on the career she has yet to even begin. As she pens her foreword she openly proclaims, “I make no apology for being egotistical, because I am.”

But Sybylla is quickly brought back to reality by her mother who supports her right to work; as a servant. Sybylla, despite being the daughter of a penniless farmer, has loftier ambitions of being a pianist (despite her discordant key bashing and minimal skills) or an opera singer (despite her untrained voice and the fact that she knows only drinking songs gleaned from the hours spent with her alcoholic father) or a writer (despite the fact she knows little of the world and her days are filled with drudgery). Armstrong never shows Sybylla as being particularly prodigious at any of the things she wants to do, in fact many times she shows just the opposite. However, Armstrong also doesn’t mock Sybylla’s ambition or treat it as a joke. In Armstrong’s world, the fact that Sybylla has desires and wants outside of marriage and men is treated seriously because Sybylla takes it seriously. She never needs to prove herself worthy enough for her desires.

Shortly after the dispiriting conversation between mother and daughter, good news arrives. Sybylla is sent to her wealthy maternal grandmother’s home to live a life closer to the luxury she dreamed of. In her grandmother’s house, her grandmother and her aunt Helen attempt to turn Sybylla into a proper young lady; montages involving the brushing of her unruly hair, face masks and various home remedies are applied. Armstrong’s film, and Sybylla herself, aren’t content to simply wallow in luxury however. Filmed standing in a giant bird’s cage or behind a mosquito net, it is clear, even before Sybylla says the words, that she is not exactly happy, still desperate for the chance to prove herself and to develop the career in the arts that she longs for.

Her ambitions are temporarily pushed aside however once her physical transformation is complete. Sybylla is courted by two potential suitors: the first a smarmy trainee of her grandmother’s and the second, and more interesting prospect, Sybylla’s childhood friend, Harry Beecham (Sam Neil). From the start the chemistry between Sybylla and Harry is electric. Sybylla is unwilling to act coy with Harry and he is willing to meet her on her level playing along when she shows her mischievous spirit by capsizing the boat during a romantic river ride. Sybylla declares them “mates” but the term, which Sybylla means in friendship has a double meaning. From almost the first time they meet it is clear that Harry is fascinated with Sybylla and means to marry her. The romance between them falls along conventional beats right up until an exasperate Harry finally proposes, a proposal which Sybylla declines right before whipping Harry in the face with a riding crop when his romantic overtures become too aggressive.

The moment feels as revolutionary to modern audiences as it must have felt when the movie was first screened in 1979. It is one thing for Sybylla to simply say that she doesn’t want to get married or to turn down the advances of a suitor she finds ridiculous. But in Harry, Sybylla finds not only a handsome, rich man but also a peer, someone who is not only at home getting whacked in the face by a pillow but whom she can talk to about the unfairness of the world, someone who easily apologizes for stepping out of line by acting too aggressively, who empathizes with her need to take two years to try to figure out, “What’s wrong with the world, and with me, who I am, everything.” Watching Sybylla say no to what would be considered the height of success in the society in which she lived in order to feed her own ambition is a sight all too rare in cinema. Despite the love Harry feels for her, and the fact that Sybylla feels, or nearly feels, the same way, she becomes through her rejection, a woman who bravely acts according to her own desires, someone willing to risk everything in order to have what she wants and who recognizes that men and romance are not the sum total of her world.

Armstrong never tells us whether or not Sybylla will have the brilliant career she so desperately craves. There are no scenes of an editor appearing to tell her she is a literary genius and no scenes of anyone reading her work and declaring her a prodigy. In the final scene of the film, a calm and confident Sybylla walks to the mailbox of her father’s farm to post the manuscript she has written, its destination a publishing house in Scotland. It might be a masterpiece or it might be junk, but after Sybylla posts her manuscript she turns her attention to the setting sun, her face filled with hope and the confidence that no matter what happens she can take pride in the fact that at least she tried.

My Brilliant Career

It is easy to imagine that Armstrong was filled with a similar feeling as she crafted her debut film. Women filmmakers today still face an uphill battle having their work financed and distributed. At this point in time, gender parity for directors, at least in the U.S., seems like an unrealistic dream. But at the time in which Armstrong was filming, it wasn’t even a matter of a few women directors fighting to get in the room to pitch their ideas to studios or struggling for financing. In Armstrong’s case, there was very little Australian cinema to speak of and a gap of nearly 50 years separating her from the last feature length Australian film directed by a woman. Like her audacious main character, Armstrong carved her work out of pure ambition, uncertain of the future but willing to try.

The movie may leave Sybylla and the audience forever waiting and wondering as to whether she was able to write her way to a better life. But in terms of Armstrong and her career, the answer is much clearer. My Brilliant Career became a seminal part of what was later termed the Australian New Wave (a movement that also included George Miller and his Mad Max series, the first film of which coincidentally was also released in 1979). Armstrong and the film went on to play In Competition at the Cannes film festival, something that to this day is exceedingly rare for women directors. The film would go on to be nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and win several awards at the Australian Film Institute (AFI) awards including Best Director for Armstrong making her the first of many female Best Director AFI winners.

Perhaps best known for her 1994 adaptation of Little Women, Armstrong continues to work in film to this day, and has directed cinematic luminaries like Cate Blanchett, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Kirsten Dunst, and Diane Keaton. By anyone’s standards she has had a brilliant career.


Rebecca Hirsch Garcia is a Canadian cinephile. She has previously written for Awards Watch. You can find her on twitter @rhirschgarcia.