Tag: Romance

Gugu Mbatha-Raw is a Superstar in ‘Beyond The Lights’

I thought of Beyoncé often while watching writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s (‘Love and Basketball’) new film ‘Beyond The Lights.’ The main character, pop star Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is supposed to remind us of Beyoncé, as well as Rihanna, with bits of Nicki Minaj, Lauren Hill, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan thrown in. In early scenes we see her in elaborate videos wearing hardly any clothes, her skimpy outfits often incorporating glittering chains. She has first blonde, then purple, long flowing hair.

BeyondTheLightsNoni

About a decade ago, the powers that be were trying to make Beyoncé a movie star in films like Dreamgirls and that Austin Powers sequel where she wore a huge afro. But instead of going the way of Diana Ross (Beyoncé’s part in Dreamgirls was based on her life) with a film career fizzling after she was cast in roles that used fewer and fewer of the qualities that made her so compelling in her Lady Sings the Blues debut, Beyoncé abruptly cut back on film roles to concentrate on her music career. Her videos and award show performances have become increasingly cinematic–culminating in the stunning black and white video for “Drunk in Love” and her performance at the Video Music awards lit from behind with huge blazing letters that spelled out “Feminist.” She didn’t need to be cast in some white guy’s film to be a star in front of the camera.

I thought of Beyoncé often while watching writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s (Love and Basketball) new film Beyond The Lights. The main character, pop star Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is supposed to remind us of Beyoncé, as well as Rihanna, with bits of Nicki Minaj, Lauren Hill, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan thrown in. In early scenes we see her in elaborate videos wearing hardly any clothes, her skimpy outfits often incorporating glittering chains. She has first blonde, then purple, long flowing hair. We see her sing alongside a tattooed white rapper, Kid Culprit (Richard Colson Baker aka Machine Gun Kelly, who is like a taller, more current version of Eminem) while she wears shoes with heels so high it’s a marvel that she–or anyone–can walk in them, let alone dance. She wins an award and chugs champagne as she passes screaming, adoring crowds on the way to her limo. She tells the paid detail cop, Kaz (Nate Parker), outside of her hotel room not to let anyone disturb her, so he shuts out two of her hangers-on but relents to let in her controlling mother, Macy (Minnie Driver). When he hears Macy scream, he goes into the room himself where he sees that Noni is seated on the railing of her hotel balcony, many stories up, ready to jump.

This film is the second one this year in which a Black woman director (with a script from a Black woman screenwriter) has cast Mbatha-Raw as the essential center of a film (the art house hit Belle was the first), and she rewards their faith by giving her all. In contrast to the Jane-Austen-like romantic intrigue in Belle, in Lights she’s a powerhouse, utterly convincing as Noni (if she had faltered for even a moment the film would devolve into camp) whether she’s dancing in a tightly choreographed award show performance, singing (Mbatha-Raw’s voice is the one we hear during all of Noni’s songs: the film has been billed as a love story but doubles as a musical), interacting with other characters, or doing all three: during the award show appearance we see her expressive face send clear messages to both Kaz, who is in the wings and Kid Culprit, who is performing onstage with her. Prince-Bythewood  also seamlessly and sometimes wittily incorporates into the film the modern media landscape: music videos, award shows, talk shows (we see two appearances from famous chastiser of his fellow Black people, Don Lemon), Youtube and Twitter, which perhaps shouldn’t be an unusual achievement, but is.

After a summer marked by the incidents in which white police officers killed unarmed Black people, having a Black police officer as the hero may not be the best fit. But Parker is believable and likeable in the role–and like Mbatha-Raw embodies the character with touching sincerity. He does so even in scenes like the one in which he wraps Noni’s cut hand in the shirt off his back, a flimsy excuse for us to ogle his flawlessly muscled chest, abs, and arms. When this moment came the audience I saw the film with laughed–so did I–but none of us did so in a derisive way.

BeyondTheLightsNoniKaz1
Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and Kaz (Nate Parker)

Minnie Driver as Macy, Noni’s hard-driving manager-mother gets a big speech near the end (the big speeches in this film, like contractions in labor come closer together as it speeds toward its conclusion) in which she explains the desperation behind her ambition for her daughter, but we in the audience never manage to see that desperation ourselves, just the steely mask of Driver’s face. She never really softens, not even in a scene when she asks Noni, “When did you ever tell me that you didn’t want this?”

And Noni answers, “When I was on that balcony.”

While watching most films and TV shows–especially those that take place in Los Angeles and New York–I’ve wondered if anyone associated with the production ever looked up and noticed they were surrounded by Black and brown people–who were neither homeless nor worked in cleaning or wait staff positions. Beyond The Lights is one of the few recent films I’ve seen (besides Dear White People) which takes for granted that Black people, especially Black women, are everywhere; they’re not just entertainers but also political consultants and hairdressers. When Kaz is saving Noni he chants, “I see you. I see you. I see you.” Apparently a Black woman director is one of the few people who can see all the Black women in real life who aren’t “the help.”

I should confess that I dislike most mainstream films. I hated The Devil Wears Prada, which marks the last time I ever believed critics’ raving about a multiplex hit with a woman protagonist. But at Beyond The Lights,  I had almost as much fun as I did watching Snowpiercer.  Lights reminded me of the old ’80s TV series Dynasty (although the story has a somewhat different setting) with better acting and a bigger budget: a compilation of confrontations between beautiful people in (and out of) beautiful clothes: the film even has a scene in which one woman slaps another, echoing Dynasty’s famous fights between women. Parker and Mbatha-Raw have great chemistry together, shown most memorably in a love scene that has Beyoncé’s “Drunk In Love” playing on the soundtrack. Beyond The Lights gives the audience many other simple pleasures and, at least for its duration, makes us wonder what else we could ever want from the movies.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfcfZn8nq3w”]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

‘The Theory of Everything’: A “Great Man” From The First Wife’s Point of View

Do great women exist? The film industry still hasn’t decided. We had ‘Frida’ a dozen years ago and that bio-pic about Margaret Thatcher (like ‘Frida,’ directed by a woman) from a few years back–which won Meryl Streep an Oscar, but tepid reviews along with a completely irredeemable main character kept me from seeing it. Usually the women in the “great man” films are great only by osmosis, because they married or otherwise provide emotional–and other–support to great men. The actresses who play these roles win Oscars too: they make the “supporting” category a literal one. ‘The Theory of Everything,’ the new bio-pic about astrophysicist (and best-selling author) Stephen Hawking seemed like it might be different since it’s based on the book written by the great man’s first wife, Jane.

TheoryEverythingCover

Like a lot of women, I’m impatient with the “great man” films that invade theaters every year just in time for Oscar consideration. The main character is always a man whose name we all know, played by an actor who really wants an Academy Award. We see his earliest struggles then later, his triumphs. The addition of some failures never succeeds in making the film more interesting, just longer.

Do great women exist? The film industry still hasn’t decided. We had Frida a dozen years ago and that bio-pic about Margaret Thatcher (like Frida, directed by a woman) from a few years back–which won Meryl Streep an Oscar, but tepid reviews along with a completely irredeemable main character kept me from seeing it. Usually the women in the “great man” films are great only by osmosis, because they married or otherwise provide emotional–and other–support to great men. The actresses who play these roles win Oscars too; they make the “supporting” category a literal one. The Theory of Everything, the new bio-pic about astrophysicist (and best-selling author) Stephen Hawking, seemed like it might be different since it’s based on the book written by the great man’s first wife, Jane.

But the movie begins by focusing on him (Eddie Redmayne) not her, as he rides a bike, attends classes as a Ph.D. student in the early 1960s at Cambridge and acts as a coxswain (complete with megaphone) for the crew rowing on the river. Hawking meets Jane (Felicity Jones) at a student mixer and they become a couple. Hawking’s physical awkwardness could pass for that of any geeky man who considers his body merely a container for his brain, but we know what’s coming before the characters do when we see scenes in which Hawking trips and falls in a train station or his hand folds in on itself as he writes equations on a blackboard. When he has a fall in the yard he receives his diagnosis, ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease), along with the news “Life expectancy is two years.”

At first he avoids Jane and holes up in his room, but after she finds out from his friends about his illness, in a scene we’ve all watched in countless other films, she marches into his room and declares, “I want us to be together for as long as we’ve got.” Stephen resumes his studies and for his thesis topic chooses “time.”  He and Jane get married and start to have children soon after.

What follows is a portrait of a marriage that combines all the elements of pre-second-wave feminism at once: Jane has to set aside her studies not just to care for her very young children, to make all the meals and clean the house, but also to care for her husband, whose mobility is rapidly deteriorating, even though he’s still a relatively young adult. At the point where he can walk only with the assistance of two canes and can maneuver the stairs in his house only by lying flat on his back and grasping with his few remaining functional fingers the railing to pull himself up or down, we see Stephen hand in a typed dissertation with a barely legible shaky signature; I couldn’t help wondering if the person who typed it was Jane, since he seems unlikely to have been able to do so himself–and so many wives in that era were also their husbands’ de facto secretaries. We’re also seeing an era in which care for disabled family members was often left to a wife or mother (as opposed to paid staff, unless the family was very wealthy), and no one, not Hawking’s family nor Jane’s, ever thinks of taking over his care for even a few hours at a time to give Jane some respite. On the drive back from a dinner at his family’s hillside cottage in the country, a teary Jane tells Hawking she needs help, but he cuts off any further discussion.

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Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking and Felicity Jones as Jane Hawking

Later Jane’s mother can see how stressed she is and (instead of offering to help) suggests she join a church choir (Jane is a regular churchgoer, a contrast to her outspoken, atheist husband). She then meets the handsome choirmaster, Jonathan (Charlie Cox) who becomes a family friend and also helps with Stephen’s care. Stephen seems to see the spark between his wife and Jonathan from the beginning and lets her know in an indirect way that she is free to pursue the relationship. Here the film is at its most interesting: too many “great man” films seem to sum up the wife or girlfriend character struggle of living with the great man as “she was a saint” without considering that she might have needs of her own. Jane’s situation also parallels many others of the 50s and 60s when women got married in their early 20s and found in their 30s and 40s their marriages did not fulfill their own expectations and ambitions. Jane remains devoted to Stephen but is at her happiest when she spends time with Jonathan. The closeness of their relationship invites the scrutiny of others at the christening of her third child, when her mother-in-law follows her into the kitchen and declares the family has a “right to know” whether the child is Jonathan’s. Jane replies that the child’s father could not be anyone but Stephen.

When Stephen has the health crisis that robs him of the ability to talk without assistance, Jonathan steps back and nurses come into the home to help Stephen, along with a man who designs a device through which Stephen can talk again, by slowly “typing” (actually clicking a monitor to choose letters and phrases) and having an electronic voice read the words. Stephen becomes very close to one nurse in particular, Elaine (Maxine Peake), who even helps him to look through the copies of Penthouse that come to his office. He eventually leaves Jane for her. An end title tells us that Jane eventually got her Ph.D., married Jonathan, and that she and Stephen are still friends.

EverythingSpeaks
Jane watches Stephen “speak” through a device while the woman who will be his second wife looks on.

What the film leaves out are the most interesting parts of the story–not just Hawking’s scientific work (we get explanations that are so oversimplified they don’t make much sense), but also that the nurse Stephen lived with (and eventually married and divorced) was the wife of the man who created his speaking device–and that she was also investigated after other caregivers alleged she physically abused Stephen (during their relationship he had unexplained bruises, broken bones and burns). When Jane did publicity for a previous movie based on her and Stephen’s relationship, she said she couldn’t comment on Elaine (who was still married to Stephen then) for legal reasons. She did admit during interviews that she was friends with Stephen mainly for the sake of the children. And she and Stephen weren’t a couple when he was diagnosed, their romance blossomed afterward, which Jane described as being in keeping with the great optimism of the early 1960s that ran parallel with the belief that nuclear war between the super powers could, at any moment, wipe out the world.

Redmayne does a credible job as Hawking (whose character in the film is much more sympathetic than Jane and news sources have portrayed him; this Hawking never runs over anyone’s toes “accidentally” with his electric wheelchair), especially in the later scenes where we see a certain impishness in his face (very like the real-life Hawking’s), while most of his features remain immobile. Jones as Jane does a serviceable job too, but I wish she had been allowed to look and dress less like Jean Shrimpton (the British supermodel popular in the era when the film begins). At least Redmayne (who is also more conventionally pretty than the person he plays) gets to mess up his hair and wear unflattering glasses; Jones, for much of the film, until she starts wearing a crappy short wig and half-assed “aging” makeup, looks like she could have stepped out of a stodgy, British clothing catalogue, even when Jane has three kids and a disabled husband to take care of, and, as Jane points out in her book, and is briefly referenced in the film, very little money. The filmmakers (screenwriter Anthony McCarten and director James Marsh) didn’t seem to think any of these details were worth including. The Theory of Everything is a good, if very conventional, film, but the real story it’s based on could have been made into a great one.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8QYUgO-tZo”]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

‘God Help The Girl’: Sunny Glasgow Hosts a Twee Musical

The songs allow the audience access to the inner minds of the characters, which is especially helpful for a secretive character like Eve. The songs swirl into a beautiful world where shining girls dance through the streets of Glasgow like it’s their own personal playground, always dressed for a costume party in enviable vintage. Songs cut into elaborate sequences of the band playacting on golden hills in school uniforms and battling with umbrellas on courthouse steps, that seem like mini-music videos. The film is so stuffed with beauty and whimsy that it often seems hard to make room for the parts of the story that are truly ugly.

A poster for God Help The Girl which recalls Belle and Sebastian album covers
A poster for God Help The Girl, which recalls Belle and Sebastian album covers

 

The word ”twee” is generally used as a pejorative but there’s no other way to describe God Help The Girl.

Like pornography, it’s hard to define what is twee, but you know it when you see it. Pressed to explain it, there are a few reliable touchstones: striped scarves (preferably homemade), outdated mediums like vinyl and cassettes, the films of Miranda July and of course, the music of Belle and Sebastian, the legendary Scottish band led by Stuart Murdoch, God Help The Girl’s director and mastermind.

In his book, Twee: the Gentle Revolution, writer Marc Spitz explains twee as an artistic movement centering on outsiders, telling stories whose serious or even cynical core is hidden by bright colours, sweet pop songs and a general sense of buoyancy, like a sugar cookie laced with arsenic. Think of the pastel confections produced by Wes Anderson; each feature tragic deaths but they’re not what we remember. Likewise, God Help The Girl has a serious story, following Emily Browning’s Eve on her slow recovery from anorexia and depression, yet it never becomes an “issue movie.” Instead, it’s a pastiche of quirky film references and self-aware wit, all swinging to a host of bouncy, jangly pop songs.

 

The Band: Cassie, James and Eve pose in their best clothes
The Band: Cassie, James and Eve pose in their best clothes

 

God Help The Girl began as Murdoch’s side project, conceived as a 60s girl-group, a soundtrack for the film that didn’t yet exist. The songs, which told the story of a young woman, named Eve entering into a difficult adulthood, were recorded by female vocalists as God Help the Girl back in 2009 and are covered by the cast members in the film.

It begins with Eve (Browning) escaping from a psychiatric ward to go listen to a band she likes. As part of her recovery she begins writing music as way to deal with her feelings. Throughout the film, she improvises songs about her life, simple observations about her day-to-day concerns, forming an amazing soundtrack, that teeters between whimsy and melancholy.

Things pick up when she meets James (Olly Alexander), an under-appreciated musician looking for an identity and Cassie (Hannah Murray playing a version of her Skins character), an outcast who goes to “the posh school” in town. The three misfits are drawn together by their shared love of music, and form a band in a bright, sunny Glasgow, far from the grey rainy days most North Americans imagine.

 

The core band recruit musicians to form their desired pop sound
The core band recruit musicians to form their desired pop sound

 

The music is well-integrated into the story–no surprise, as the story was written around the songs. The songs allow the audience access to the inner minds of the characters, which is especially helpful for a secretive character like Eve. Late in the film, James mentions that he learned all about Eve’s past and her eating disorder through listening to her songs, the only place where she fully exposes herself. Indeed, though she seems to be a strong and self-possessed young woman, Eve can be closed off and defensive. Like James, we only gain insight into her character when she sings.

Like the 60s pop musicals it tries to emulate, the plot of God Help The Girl is essentially a vehicle to get from song to song. It works because everyone involved seems to have such faith in the material. The actors seems to feel the emotions in the songs they sing and the chemistry between the core trio is palatable. Most important, is the film’s function as an ode to art’s power to help us heal, an idea Murdoch appears to evangelize.

 

The group perform an impromptu dance, reminiscent of French New Wave
The group perform an impromptu dance, reminiscent of French New Wave

 

The film is peppered with a dizzying array of surreal visual jokes, like Maria Von Trapp, guitar case in hand, joining the line of musicians, a newspaper that proclaims itself the choice for geniuses and The Smiths’ Meat is Murder t-shirt Eve wears as she sings about cutting meat out of her diet. Dance sequences recall French New Wave classics and in many scenes, the humour recalls the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, such as the band being chased through the streets.

The songs swirl into a beautiful world where shining girls dance through the streets of Glasgow like it’s their own personal playground, always dressed for a costume party in enviable vintage. Songs cut into elaborate sequences of the band playacting on golden hills in school uniforms and battling with umbrellas on courthouse steps, that seem like mini-music videos. The film is so stuffed with beauty and whimsy that it often seems hard to make room for the parts of the story that are truly ugly.

 

Many artistically shot sequences throughout the film seem to be mini-music videos
Many artistically shot sequences throughout the film seem to be mini-music videos

 

For all the talk of Eve’s health problems, the film sure does make her thinness appealing. Though she mentions she carries everything she owns in her backpack, she has a massive, stunning wardrobe, full of skin-tight outfits that would only work on a rail-thin body and would make great thinspo for those sadly inclined. Though she left the hospital before she was deemed recovered, Eve seems to have no self-confidence issues or need to hide her weight as expected in someone with anorexia. She also mentions being happy with the size of her breasts and is comfortable beings seen naked and having sex, all of which don’t appear characteristic of a severe anorexic who quite recently had difficulty having a full meal with her shrunken stomach. Also unusual is the fact that we never see her eat. Though several songs mention her refusal to eat and her desire to recover, we never get the satisfaction of seeing her take a bite.

Each day, she counts out and takes pills for other unspecified mental health problems but the film avoids any real discussion of what else is wrong with her and of her past. We learn she left her home in Australia to follow a boy to Scotland, which hints at further mental instability but it is never elaborated on. It appears as if Murdoch figured the visual iconography of Eve holding her pills in her hands and looking sad would enough to show the depth of the character’s depression. Ultimately, Eve’s problems are boiled down to her inability to live in the adult world.

Befitting of the twee genre, God Help The Girl is tonally inconsistent, going from sappy to silly in the blink of an eye. It often feels over-long and self indulgent, as some scenes drag on longer than they should have. It’s clear Murdoch is in love with his own story and expects us to want to spend as much time in its world as he’ll allow us. Likewise, it can often be a bit too precious. It’s easy to see how it could turn some off, induce toothaches, that sort of thing, in the viewer that isn’t ready to surrender to it’s sweet sweet glory.

Eve, Cassie, and James are the sort of characters mentioned in Belle and Sebastian songs come to life. The insecure hipster boy, the ethereal dancing schoolgirl, the depressive singer who believes in the power of books and faith healing, all appear in Glasgow isolated from anyone but each other. None of their families seem to exist, nor do outside friends, besides Eve’s drug buddy who pops up out of nowhere for a short scene. What little we know of their earlier lives comes from a single conversation.

 

A ‘will-they-won’t they’ romance develops between James and Eve
A “will-they-won’t they” romance develops between James and Eve

 

As expected, James falls in love with Eve. He can’t help it, there’s something about her, mysterious and quiet as she is, that plays into his every romantic notion. Though he’s not alone. Everyone she meets seems attracted to Eve and longs to help her put herself back together. She’s irresistible and she knows it, yet we don’t hate her for it.

God Help The Girl is deceptively posed as a band origin story; you know the sort: three lost individuals come together to form a band, have their dreams of fame come true and fall into an ugly break-up and/or drug addiction. The band in God Help the Girl, forms briefly and dissolves amicably (though not without the obligatory scene of hearing their song on the radio), but it turns out, in the end, it was Eve’s story all along.

She gets on a train to go to music school in London and live a new life, with the structure she needs to function as an independent adult and we realize their summer with Eve was just a momentary phase in James and Cassie’s lives. For Eve, this summer was the last bittersweet gasp of life before becoming a real adult, her oft mentioned anxiety and though they will all remember it fondly, they will never be able to recapture it again. She is greatness and for one brief, shining moment they shared her light. There’s no question she will be a pop music legend someday and they will have known her when.

We’re not sure what will happen to the others. Eve is the singer, the songwriter and she creates their world. She allows us to think on the nature of fiction, of the stories we piece together from the raw stuff of our lives. After all the title pleads for help for Eve, she’s the girl we’re meant to focus on.

God Help The Girl is a movie that really seems meant for bored, yet artistic teenagers isolated in the suburbs and sure that no one else shares their tastes. It’s destined to live on as a cult hit, “discovered” again and again by young people–like a relic of some obscure 60s group no one else has ever heard of.

It’s the kind of movie you step out of and think, “So, there are people like me out there!”

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

‘Life After Beth’ and the Trouble With Absent Presence

Though Plaza gives a committed physical performance, clearly having a ball in monster make-up, it’s really all she’s given to do. She isn’t even given much room to be funny in the supposed comedy. It’s as if Plaza has been cast in a feature length sketch-show, playing all manner of stereotypical “girlfriends from hell.” I imagine it on ‘Saturday Night Live’: first a short musical theme, “The Girlfriend from Hell,” then Plaza making a snarky comment to her boyfriend and vomiting pea soup all over him.

Poster for Life After Beth
Poster for Life After Beth

 

Horror-comedy Life After Beth is the kind of movie that’s very easy to explain.

Girl dumps Boy, Girl dies and comes back as a zombie with no memory of the break-up, Boy continues to date her even though he’s a little afraid of her.

But there’s not a lot else. Even the titular character is scarcely more than a name. After sitting through the slim 89 minutes of I Heart Huckabees writer Jeff Baena’s directorial debut, I’m still left wondering who Beth is. And what did she care about besides her boyfriend and sex?

Aubrey Plaza plays the dear departed Beth Slocum, cut down by a snake bite during a solo hike, leaving behind her stalker ex-boyfriend, Zach (Dane DeHaan). Zach hasn’t taken her death very well. He dresses in black and ignores his parents and brother, preferring to spend time with Beth’s grieving parents (John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon) who treat him like a son. When the Slocums stop contacting him, he stalks and spies on them to find out why. Quickly, he discovers they have been hiding Beth, who has mysteriously returned from the grave, unaware of her own death.

A scheme is hatched. Beth’s parents will continue to cherish “the miracle” of her resurrection and Zach will get his girlfriend back and have a second chance to get it right and take her dancing and on hikes like she always wanted. Keeping Beth a secret is crucial, they will continue to hid her return and keep her in the dark about what had happened to her. But her sudden fits of rage, rotting body, and crazy strength make things difficult.

From Beth’s perspective this would make an intriguing premise; she is confused, strange things are happening to her body, things she can’t control, and that’s the stuff horror movies are made of. Yet, despite her lone presence in the title, the poster, and Plaza’s top billing, the film is never about Beth. The story belongs to Zach.

 

Beth’s all-consuming lust for Zach is painted as monstrous
Beth’s all-consuming lust for Zach is painted as monstrous

 

Though Plaza gives a committed physical performance, clearly having a ball in monster make-up, it’s really all she’s given to do. She isn’t even given much room to be funny in the supposed comedy. It’s as if Plaza has been cast in a feature length sketch-show, playing all manner of stereotypical “girlfriends from hell.” For a good while she’s the horny girlfriend who needs to be reminded not to rip her boyfriend’s clothes off at any opportunity, then she plays the jealous girlfriend who’s convinced any women her boyfriend talks to is sleeping with him, after that she’s briefly Linda Blair in The Exorcist, before finally ending the film as a rabid dog biting at anything that gets too close. I imagine it on Saturday Night Live: first a short musical theme, “The Girlfriend from Hell,” then Plaza making a snarky comment to her boyfriend and vomiting pea soup all over him.

But who was she when she was alive? What does Zach love so much about Beth that he couldn’t get over her, it had to have been more than just her potential to act as a sex robot. What kind of memories do her parents cherish about her?
None of these questions is answered.

To make a film that centers around a death, that death has to mean something to the audience. There are many ways to do this, from the inherently sad (child deaths) to the anguished (and unbefitting of a comedy) mental breakdown of the surviving characters. The main problem with Life After Beth is that the titular character never once felt like a real person, a once living girl who happened to be named Beth. Instead, she felt like a construct invented by writer and quickly named for a catchy title. All she is is a girl named Beth, no more fleshed out in the finished film than she would be in a rough plot line, this guy’s girlfriend and this couple’s daughter. She matters to people but she never achieves personhood herself and so is difficult to care about.

 

Beth and Zach finally go on the hike they always wanted
Beth and Zach finally go on the hike they always wanted

 

While the film opens with a brief glimpse of a scared (still living) Beth lost in the woods and looking for cell service, this is all we see of her. As we are never allowed to know Beth; her presence as a zombie is robbed of any sense of irony or tragedy, which would make it entertaining to watch. The short grief narrative the film opens with only serves to remind us that these stories are about absence. Even when Beth returns, she is absent, a dead girl given a flesh and blood presence, yet never a voice. Throughout the film, Beth is fetishized as a dead girl, and in one scene, Zach masturbates with a scarf she had left behind.

 

Zach keeps Beth’s scarf and uses it to masterbate
Zach keeps Beth’s scarf and uses it to masturbate

 

Beth’s constant desire for Zach is meant as a source of humour, notably as she pops out of the roof to ask him to go for a hike. Though he was originally the one obsessively in love with her, even stalking her family, she is seen as the pathetic one. Her lust is uncontrollable and as it morphs into murderous and cannibalistic impulses, and the high female libido is painted as monstrous. Moreover, the destruction of the attractive female body is intended as a source of dark comedy and Beth is de-personified to the point where, when she finally dies again, it’s with Zach shooting her in the head to put her down, again like a rabid dog.

In this light, there is something disturbing about seeing her tied up and chained to washing machine for the last act. In order to handle her, Beth must be trapped and contained, with her boyfriend, a person she had tried to break up with, in complete control and possession of her.  The situation continues to be horrific for Beth, but but her character’s zombification means she is no longer a person with a perspective of her own. When Zach finally apologizes for how he treated her as a living person, she’s no longer there and the apology is more for him than her.

 

As she becomes less human, Beth is kept captive and watched over by Zach
As she becomes less human, Beth is kept captive and watched over by Zach

 

Parts of the Life After Beth reminded me of 2012’s Ruby Sparks, another film about a girlfriend who exists only as a male fantasy and to tell us something about him. However, Ruby Sparks, whether successful or not, played with this idea to expose something troubling about the stories we tell in our culture. Life After Beth makes no such commentary. Sure Zach needs to come to terms with his girlfriend’s death but Beth’s return didn’t do much to change this central fact. Throughout the film he vacillates between refusing to give her up and feeling burdened by her presence. Narratively, the film would have worked better if Beth’s resurrection occurred because Zach made a selfish wish, as would have given both him and Beth room to grow.

Toward the end, the film changes gears completely, as people everywhere begin returning from the dead. This larger zombie apocalypse creates a rift in the narrative, and expects us to shift gears, stop caring about Beth and Zach, and start caring about the fates of Zach’s family and their fight to survive.

 

Plaza pays an unusual physical role and is allowed to be unattractive
Plaza pays an unusual physical role and is allowed to be unattractive

 

As much as I disliked this movie, I can’t imagine how insufferable it would be without Aubrey Plaza as Beth. She’s obviously enjoying herself, playing a role so different from anything she’s done before, and it’s enjoyable to watch that. There’s definitely some fun in the role of Beth, which allows Plaza to be monstrous and unattractive.

Life After Beth tries to be a romantic comedy and a zombie movie, yet forgets how to deliver either laughs or scares. There are a few bright spots: Mrs. Slocum feeding her hands to her monster-daughter and Beth tumbling down a hill with a stove strapped to her back, but they are few and far between. The running gag, of zombies liking smooth jazz, is one of those touches that seems hilarious on paper but cloying when translated to the screen.

It’s always great to see fresh twists on old stories, but we can’t forget what made the old stories great in the first place. With no build-up of the relationship and no reason for the resurrection, there’s nothing left to care about.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

I Married a Monster: Female Friendship in ‘The Other Woman’

Instead of hating and seeing each other as competition, the women form a bond, increasing their woman-power. Kate decides that she wants to make Mark pay for his unfaithfulness saying, “I want him to have to start over,” but she’s afraid she doesn’t have the killer instincts to do it. Her new friends step in, telling her that she does and that if they work together, they can get their revenge.

This guest post by Chantell Monique appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

What makes female-centered films compelling is the opportunity they have to challenge stereotypes that normally surround female friendships; instead of showcasing the back-biting, competitive, pseudo-supportive nature of these friendships, they provide an alternative more positive perspective. At first glimpse, The Other Woman (2014) looks like a 2010s version of First Wives Club (1996). While both are centered on female friendships, The Other Woman takes on a somewhat different approach. Instead of being old college friends, the women in The Other Woman are actually The Wife, The Mistress, and The Girlfriend. Even though they’ve been betrayed by the same man, his unfaithfulness allows them to forge friendships that would have otherwise never happened. In addition, through this friendship, the women are given the opportunity to evolve into stronger versions of themselves.

Carly and Mark
Carly and Mark

 

The Other Woman opens on Carly, played by Cameron Diaz, clearly in love with her new beau, Mark King, played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. Mark is handsome, sophisticated and sweeping her off her feet with intimate dinners and long conversations in the park.

Carly, a high-powered attorney has “cleared her bench” or in broader terms, stopped seeing other men, in order to focus on her new love interest. It’s clear that this is a big step for her which is made more evident when she decides to introduce Mark to her father Frank, played by Don Johnson. At first Carly is against this but when Mark gives her an “eight-week anniversary” gift, she lets her guard down and agrees to introduce the two.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Carly, Mark is leading another life in Connecticut with a beautiful home and wife. Kate King, played by Leslie Mann, is Mark’s innocent and adoring wife; dressed in bright summer dresses and cardigans, Kate has no idea that Mark is unfaithful to her. She signs any paper he puts in front of her, while lamenting that she needs to go to “brain camp” while also making sure he’s well-dressed and is eating healthy.

Doused in all the love of an oblivious wife, Kate reminds Mark that they are scheduled to have dinner with friends on the very evening Carly has invited him to meet her father. Mark tries to wiggle out of his dinner with his wife but when she offers to visit him in the city, he agrees to the dinner and cancels with Carly, telling her that his place in the suburbs has flooded.

Kate and Carly drinking
Kate and Carly drinking

 

Disappointed at being stood up, Carly confesses her frustrations to her father who insists she gets over it and surprise her boyfriend in a sexy plumber outfit. Empowered by this idea, she arrives at Mark’s home, dressed to kill, and knocks on the door. To her surprise, it’s Mark’s wife, Kate, who answers. After an awkward introduction and a series of embarrassing moments, a mortified Carly hobbles back to the city.

The next time we see Carly, she’s expertly dressed, pulled together and livid. Resigned to the notion that all men are cheats, Carly has sucked it up and moved on. That is until Kate shows up at her office demanding asking questions. In the nicest way possible, Kate inquires as to Carly’s relationship with her husband; Carly politely tells Kate to ask Mark. Kate responds, “Clearly he’s lying to me and sleeping with you.” Carly doesn’t respond to this, and Kate promptly has a meltdown. Poor Kate didn’t think she was actually right when she accused her husband of sleeping with Carly.

Feeling somewhat sorry for her and desperate to end the scene she’s causing, Carly agrees to answer any question that Kate has if she promises to stop freaking out. Kate agrees and they go out for drinks. A drunk and depressed Kate laments about the current state of her life saying, “I quit my job to focus on his career. I even put off having kids!” Unmoved by Kate’s emotions, Carly offers her some “tough love” by telling her that “monogamy is unnatural.” Here we get a clear picture of these two women: Carly, the tough as nails, lawyer who cautiously believed in love only to be reminded that it’s nonexistent and Kate, the sniffling, heartbroken wife who up until now, had no idea how harsh real life could be.

Carly puts drunk-Kate in a car and sends her back to the suburbs, as she screams out the window, “This was the best night ever!” Relieved to be rid of her and content that she performed her “good deed” of the year, Carly returns to her normal life.

Kate and Thunder
Kate and Thunder

 

Shell-shocked and unable to pretend everything is the same, Kate escapes the suburbs again, returning to Carly’s job with her Great Dane, Thunder, in tow. An annoyed Carly hisses, “You think we’re friends…we’re not. I don’t care about you or Mark or your dog!” she shoos Kate on her way only to find her on her doorstep a few hours later. In tears, she tells Carly that she’s the only person in the world who knows what’s going on—that she has no one else. Carly invites her in; the two bond over booze, laughs, and fancy underwear.

Carly becomes Kate’s go-to-person and while Carly is annoyed by the late night/early morning phone calls, she’s always there for her. For example, when an excited Mark gets back from a business trip, he dotes on Kate with all the love and attention she’s been desperate for. Huddled in a restaurant bathroom, she calls Carly, afraid she’s going to sleep with him. Carly tells her that she’s making a mistake and to leave her out of it. A frustrated Kate hangs up, looks in the mirror, and tells herself to keep it together.

She doesn’t; instead, she and Mark end up making out. Kate tells Mark to hold on as she rushes to the bathroom to get prepared for sex. While waiting, Mark gets a call; he sneaks out of the bedroom, whispering in hushed tones. Meanwhile, Kate comes out and sees him—she realizes he’s still cheating and it must be with Carly.

Kate, Carly, and Thunder
Kate, Carly, and Thunder

 

A hurt and upset Kate confronts Carly who vehemently denies seeing Mark. This is when they realize, he’s cheating on both of them with someone else. After some stealthy maneuvers, they track Mark down and meet his other woman, Amber, played by Kate Upton; devastated that Mark has a wife and a mistress, the bubbly Amber vows never to see Mark again and begs to hang out with Kate and Carly. Carly’s against it but Kate pleads, “Can we keep her?” Instead of hating and seeing each other as competition, the women form a bond, increasing their woman-power.  Kate decides that she wants to make Mark pay for his unfaithfulness saying, “I want him to have to start over,” but she’s afraid she doesn’t have the killer instincts to do it. Her new friends step in, telling her that she does and that if they work together, they can get their revenge.

The women set out to destroy Mark with a series of pranks while also trying to figure out how shady his business practices are. The plan moves along smoothly but Kate can’t seem to let go of her perfect life and love for her husband. After spending a weekend away with him, she sleeps with him. She returns to an excited Carly and Amber who have hacked into Mark’s computer and found out incriminating evidence to end his career. Unfortunately, Kate is not on board; she tells them that their plan is more “complicated” than they think. Upon the realization that Kate can’t let go of Mark, Carly lashes out; in order to prove to Kate that he’s still a cheater, she texts him to see if he wants to hang. Kate storms out and Amber follows. Mark immediately returns the text saying, “I’m free on Friday. Let’s do it!”

Kate, Carly, and Amber
Kate, Carly, and Amber

 

With the plan on pause, Carly is saddened by the fact that her loyalty seems to come off too harshly. In the meantime, a happy Kate finally realizes Mark is never going to change when he has her blindly sign yet another set of papers. Tired of being treated like she’s stupid or doesn’t matter, she shows up at Carly’s door again but this time to apologize. The two make up; Kate tells Carly that she stole more evidence from Mark’s desk that can solidify their plan to take him down. Unfortunately, Carly is happy for her but tells her that she can’t help—she must move past the whole situation.

But Carly doesn’t keep her word—she shows up in the Bahamas for Kate who is there to foil Mark’s illegal business deal. She even brings Amber along. The crew is back together and has finally figured out how to leave Mark out to dry. Although they succeed in their plan to ruin the man who betrayed them, they ultimately gain friendships and growth that changes their lives. Through this unlikely bond, Carly becomes more supportive and compassionate while Kate realizes she’s smarter and stronger than she thought. Normally when a woman finds out a man is cheating, they go after the woman, creating an enemy, but The Other Woman challenges this notion by showing women an alternative way to view each other. Instead of competing against each other, Carly, Kate and Amber create a nurturing and supportive friendship that allows them to grow into better versions of themselves. It provides viewers with different perspective on female friendships by highlighting their value and importance.

 

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Chantell Monique is a Creative Writing instructor and screenwriter, living in Los Angeles. She holds a MA in English from Indiana University, South Bend. She’s a Black Girl Nerd who’s addicted to Harry Potter, Netflix and anything pertaining to social justice, and female representation in film and television. Twitter @31pottergirl

Lessons from Underrated Coming of Age Flicks: Part 2: Back To School Edition

Even you’re not in school, September feels like a time for beginnings. It’s when you met the people who would become your close friends, bought new school shoes, and settled into a new year. With that in mind, I decided to look at a selection of coming of age films loosely based around school and learning. As an extra bonus, all five films come from female writer-directors.

See Part 1 here: Lessons from Underrated Coming of Age Flicks

Even you’re not in school, September feels like a time for beginnings. It’s when you met the people who would become your close friends, bought new school shoes, and settled into a new year.

It’s also when you were a bundle of nerves. Will my classes be too hard? Will I wear the right thing? Will anyone want to hang out with me?

I still feel that way in September, and I don’t think it’s an accident; I still have a lot to learn about life–we all do.

With that in mind, I decided to look at a selection of coming of age films loosely based around school and learning. As an extra bonus, all five films come from female writer-directors.

 

The D.A.R. support each other in their career ambitions.
The D.A.R. support each other in their career ambitions.

 

All I Wanna Do/Strike!/The Hairy Bird  (written and directed by Sarah Kenochan, 1998 )

It’s 1963 and headstrong Odette “Odie” Sinclair (perennial 90s coming of age star Gaby Hoffman) is being sent to Miss Godard’s Preparatory School, an all-girl boarding school, against her will. Her parents have discovered she plans to have sex with her boyfriend and believe the all-girl environment will keep her safe from boys. It’s this tension between ambitious girls and their growing attraction to men that sets the films conflict in motion.

At Miss Godard’s, Odie joins the D.A.R. (Daughters of the American Ravioli), a group of girls (including Kirsten Dunst) with the shared belief that they can be more than wives and mothers. When they discover plans for the school to go co-ed, the D.A.R. girls are torn. They like boys and want them about, but at the same time are concerned that the pressure to look good and appear feminine would detract from their learning. In addition, they believe the teachers will concentrate on teaching the boys as their education is seen as more important. First, they try to sabotage the plans and make the boys at a near-by school appear as sex-crazed drunks, then they take over the school and hold a strike.

Writer/director Sarah Kenochan based the film loosely on her own school experiences in that period and it definitely feels true to life. In addition to being immensely quotable (“Up Your Ziggy With a Wa-Wa Brush!”), it’s packed with memorable, off-beat characters and great 60s fashion. Though it’s set in the 60s, the central conflict of girls fighting for the quality of their education and their ability to be successful career women is something we can all relate to.

Lesson: Though many think otherwise, feminism doesn’t mean hating men. You can have crushes and romances without giving up your self and your ambitions. It may have been harder to learn these lessons in the 60s, especially as they didn’t always appear true, but unfortunately women are still fighting for recognition of these basic truths.

 

Hanna finds herself attracted to her best friend
Hanna finds herself attracted to her best friend

 

Emporte-Moi/Set Me Free (directed by Léa Pool and written by Pool, Nancy Huston, Monique H. Messier and Isabelle Raynault, 1999)

In 1963, the Canadian province of Quebec was having a crisis of identity (and many feel it still is). Much of the population felt they needed to their own country rather than a part of Canada. This identity crisis is mirrored in teenage Hanna (Karine Vanasse). Her life is marked by in-betweens: she is not a child or an adult, she is not technically Catholic or Jewish (as her mother is Catholic and her father is Jewish), and as she begins to experiment, she finds she is neither straight nor gay.
She attempts to create an identity for herself by imitating her favourite film star, French New Wave star Anna Karina in the Godard film, Vivre Sa Vie. In one scene, the film cuts between shots of her and Anna Karina doing the same dance. This imitation gets her into trouble when she experiments with prostitution, which she sees as romantic because of Karina’s role in the Godard film, and is raped. After her attack, she finds her own voice by picking up a video camera and creating her own images.
The film feels earnest, identifying its main characters as a clearly working class family, several of whom are struggling with depression and highlighting the appreciation of movies and music so crucial to teenage dreams.

Lesson: You are never going to fit into an image. Your glamourous stars may have tragic pasts, you may have uncool conflicts and interests. Our favourite characters and stars even have fictional, streamlined images meant to tell us the stories we want to hear. They’re never as awkward or as painful as real life.

 

Harper meets Connie at her sister’s wedding, where she is an overlooked bridesmaid
Harper meets Connie at her sister’s wedding, where she is an overlooked bridesmaid

 

Guinevere (written and directed by Audrey Wells, 1999)

Harper Sloane (Sarah Polley, now an acclaimed writer-director herself) is Harvard bound and not happy about it. She’s an overlooked younger sister from a buttoned-up, patrician family concerned with status and wealth. Though she plans to attend law school in the fall, she secretly feels uncomfortable about the decision though she’s never thought about what other kind of life there could be for her.

Enter Connie Fitzpatrick (Stephen Rea), a 40-something bohemian photographer, and the only person who sees her secret discomfort. They become lovers and Connie invites her to move in with him, his latest in a long line of muses all of which he calls, “Guinevere.” As a Guinevere, she has to learn some kind of art (Connie’s practices are often referred to as a school she will eventually graduate from), and Harper decides to take up photography. She follows him as an apprentice, not out of her passion for it, but because she enjoys seeing what he does. When she begins to enjoy it and gains confidence, however he is weary about even letting her take a single picture.

Guinevere is set apart from other films with similar stories of romance between young girls and older men, by the constant assertion that Harper is 19 and the relationship is between two adults, though they are often posed as teacher and student. Great care is also taken to show the reality of the relationship, as Harper ends up having to work to support him as his alcoholism and bohemian principles won’t let him. He is not a “sugar daddy” that takes her every care away.

Despite this, it’s unclear what the film’s stance on Connie is, as it makes his program look quite attractive. It helps Harper come out of her shell and establish a fulfilling career. When she returns to him years after their break-up, she is very affectionate toward him and sees it as her responsibility to take care of him as he dies.

Lesson: There’s a fine line between discovering your passion and coming into your own. Be sure you’re really discovering who you are, not who others, your family, your friends, even your mentors and lovers, want you to be.

 

Bethany graduates valedictorian in a class of one and sees the graduation ceremony as a prolonged humiliation
Bethany graduates valedictorian in a class of one and sees the graduation ceremony as a prolonged humiliation

 

Sassy Pants (written and directed by Coley Sohn, 2012)

To Bethany Pruitt (Ashley Rickards), pink is the colour of oppression. All her life she’s been homeschooled and forcibly sheltered by her impossibly, even cartoonishly cruel mother June (Anna Gunn). June forbids her to go out with people her own age, has as never let her have a job and steals the money she has saved to go to college. Later on, when Bethany escapes, June even tricks her into coming home by telling her her grandmother is dying. As a budding fashion designer, Bethany’s predicament comes to her clearest in the wardrobe full of baby pink clothes her mother has bought for her.

So begins Bethany’s trip to independence. She packs up whatever clothes are salvageable, moves in with her father and his boyfriend and gets a job at a cool clothing shop where she falls in with a bad crowd and finds herself manipulated by a co-worker. But Bethany doesn’t stay down for long, she works hard and enjoys some success designing clothes for a small store. It’s refreshing how the fact that it is very hard to make it in the fashion world is never on Bethany’s mind, she’s just trying to break into its periphery.

The portrayal of Bethany’s mother, June, is the most contentious aspect of the film. She appears to be a terrible mother and possible sociopath through most of the film; however, it’s possible to interpret this view of her as Bethany’s point of view. In the last act, June’s humanity is carefully revealed and she becomes a sympathetic character.

Lesson: Even the worst monsters have their human moments. You don’t have to forgive the cruelty but you can try to understand it.

 

Vanessa and her FUBAR friends plan their strategy for Snowstream Survivor
Vanessa and her FUBAR friends plan their strategy for Snowstream Survivor

 

Dear Lemon Lima (written and directed by Suzi Yoonessi, 2009)

Dear Lemon Lima is a charming story about outcasts fighting back, not with force but with friendship. It follows 13-year-old Vanessa (Savanah Wiltfong), a half Eskimo (note: Vanessa and the other characters refer to her as Eskimo, though this is not usually seen as a politically correct term) girl attending an Alaskan prep school on an ethnic scholarship. Vanessa is uncomfortable with the Eskimo cultural identity because her mother is Caucasian and she does not have a relationship with her father and his culture. It represents otherness to her, so she clings to her whiteness, claiming “I’m from Fairbanks!” as proof of normalcy.

To complicate matters, she has recently been dumped by her boyfriend, Phillip, whom she believes is her true love. They had a very close relationship, where she called him “Strawberry” and he called her “Onion.” The fact that Vanessa sees herself an a onion, sour and not easy to like, is interesting. She yearns to fit in and be popular, choosing to use the ordinary backpack from her ex’s parents over the cool sealskin bag from her grandmother. In school, she finds herself clumped into the FUBAR (military slang meaning fucked up beyond all recognition) group. The other outsiders who aren’t worried about their status and feel they have reclaimed the word FUBAR, are ready to befriend her, but Vanessa brushes them off.

It’s this that originally makes Vanessa difficult to identify with. In addition, Philip is so ridiculously terrible its hard to believe she still wants him. Then again, she’s a teenage girl blinded by love and sure popularity is the only important goal in life, so she’s probably more like most of us than we’d care to remember. Eventually she realizes she’s too good for Philip and becomes the leader and advocate of the FUBARs so it’s clear she realizes her mistakes.

An interesting facet of the film is its examination of cultural appropriation. Each year, the school holds a competition called the Snowstorm Survivor championship where the school’s all-white student body (Vanessa is the sole native student) compete in events inspired by native games. These activities include a cringe inducing scene where white students dress up in eskimo costumes and do elaborate cultural dances. In addition, Vanessa realizes her scholarship was sponsored by a known racist who instituted the program as a PR move. By the end of the film she connects to her Eskimo heritage by forming a Snowstorm Survivor team that values the principles of the World Eskimo Olympics, a games intended to bring people together rather than tear them apart through competition.

Lesson: Cheer for everyone, have fun and don’t worry about pointless competition and popularity contests. You’ll regret the friends and the fun you didn’t have.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Sex, Silver Service, and Fairy Tales: ‘Sleeping Beauty’

In her debut feature, 2011’s ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ director Julia Leigh examines consent, voyeurism, and passivity through the character of Lucy, a beautiful college student who sleepwalks through life as if it doesn’t involve her. Lucy becomes a literal Sleeping Beauty when she takes a job that involves her being drugged to unconsciousness while men are allowed to do anything they please to her naked body, with the exception of penetration. She exists in an eroticized, dream-like landscape and the film often feels like a painting come to life.

Poster for Sleeping Beauty
Poster for Sleeping Beauty

 

In her debut feature, 2011’s Sleeping Beauty, director Julia Leigh examines consent, voyeurism, and passivity through the character of Lucy (Emily Browning), a beautiful college student who sleepwalks through life as if it doesn’t involve her. Lucy becomes a literal Sleeping Beauty when she takes a job that involves her being drugged to unconsciousness while men are allowed to do anything they please to her naked body, with the exception of penetration. She exists in an eroticized, dream-like landscape and the film often feels like a painting come to life.

As a character, Lucy is defined by what we as an audience don’t know about her, the blank spaces in her characterization that match those in her working life and it is as if we have slept through parts of the film along with Lucy. Her passivity in life mirrors her sleeping, as she moves around, distant from her surroundings and unattached to anyone. She is also indifferent to her job, in one scene she haphazardly applies lipstick and is told to take the work seriously, as “it is not a game.” Lucy’s narrative arc is her process of waking from the stupor she has existed in.

Lucy is shot several other times in silent, passive positions. There are prolonged sequences of her sleeping, both in her original student apartment and her luxury pad, blinded by her sleep mask, as well as sitting alone while waiting at the bar, and on her way to meet her boss, Clara (Rachael Blake). Much of the film actually happens around Lucy while she waits, listens, and sleeps. Even when she is awake, things are done to her and her body: she sleeps with strangers because of a coin toss, endures a painful bikini wax and a test where she is examined like an animal as part of her job interview, and has lipstick roughly applied to her mouth, meant to match her labia. There is a marked focus on Lucy’s mouth throughout the film, from the opening where a scientist puts a tube down her throat as an experiment to the end where she hides a camera in her mouth and is later awakened by mouth to mouth resuscitation.

Lucy’s only real connection is with her ailing friend Birdmann
Lucy’s only real connection is with her ailing friend Birdmann

 

However, there are moments of rare activity from Lucy, usually brought about by unfortunate circumstances, where is person beneath her icy shell is revealed. She tends to a sickly friend, Birdmann (Ewen Leslie) and gets into bed with him when he overdoses, though she makes no effort call for help. More crucially, she becomes active when she decides, without an provocation, that she wants to know what happens when she is asleep. Though she this would allow the men to be blackmailed, she purchases and smuggles in a small camera.

Early on, the men who will come to be Lucy’s clients are introduced as a dramatis personae at the silver service dinner which suggests they are members of a secret society. This suggests they are microcosms of different types of clients of sex workers, such as the one who is abusive and takes out his frustrations on her as a woman he is allowed to beat inside of a wife, and the one who falls in love with her and just wants to hold her.

 

At the silver service dinner, Lucy is set apart for her youth and beauty
At the silver service dinner, Lucy is set apart for her youth and beauty

 

Lucy is much younger than the other women in the film and her youth, beauty and pale coloring cause her to be placed on a pedestal. As the silver service dinner, she is covered up with virginal white lingerie while the other women wear black bras with cut outs that reveal their breasts. She is the sole women in white and the main attraction, and even when she makes clumsy mistakes, she is continuously praised.

Because of the value placed in Lucy’s beauty, there is a tension between her and Clara. She scoffs at Clara’s suggestion that her vagina is a temple worthy of respect and ignores her warning that the money earned from her work should be seen only as a temporary windfall not a permanent income she can depend on. These scenes suggest Clara may have been in Lucy’s position one day and aged out of the role. In light at the story’s fairy tale connections, it is interesting that a woman, Clara, is the one who puts her to sleep and looks at her as a commodity.

Lucy is examined by Clara before given the job
Lucy is examined by Clara before given the job

 

In the film’s extended and graphic nude scenes, Lucy’s passive, often sedated body can also be examined by aroused audiences, a notion that suggests audiences use nude star as Lucy’s clients do, as she can never know what they do with her image. Once the nude image is out there, it, like Lucy’s consent to be used by the men while sedated, cannot be controlled and consent cannot be rescinded.

In addition, her motivations for agreeing to this work are left unexamined. Unlike films like Belle De Jour, where a bored woman turns to sex work without seeming financial need, it is never suggested that anything Lucy enters into is her fantasy. Instead, it seems to be something she does without thinking, a path she enters down because she cannot think of anything else to do, and only late into it, when she realizes she is making good money, does she begin to live in the luxury it affords her.

 

Lucy burns her earnings: is the money unneeded or is she unstable?
Lucy burns her earnings: is the money unneeded or is she unstable?

 

However, the constant suggestions of traumas in Lucy’s life: her relationship with Birdmann, mentions of her mother, and of the absence of family or friends, as well as her casual proposal to an acquaintance who alludes to parts of her character he finds flawed, may suggest a conflicted or even ailing mental status. In some scenes, Lucy, as a college student, appears to have great need for money, as she allows herself to be used for science experiments, works in an office doing filing and photocopies and lives in  grotty apartment with roommates who are openly apprehensive to her about her failure to pay rent. In one scene where she burns the money she has earned from silver service waitressing, suggesting she either feels no need for the money or has become mired in the surreal sort of magic in the film and barely registers the experience was real. Because she stares at the burning money as if it has cast a spell over her, the second possibility seems most likely.

 

Lucy consents to be used for science experiments
Lucy consents to be used for science experiments

 

Sleeping Beauty also raises questions of whether sex work is unfairly stigmatized and separated from other menial work. It is suggested that Lucy, highly confident and assured of her attractiveness as she is, has taken her looks into account and believes sex work would be easier and more lucrative than her other jobs. It is also posed as not dissimilar to consenting to be a guinea pig for science experiments with uncertain results, as she had previously done.

Though she has consented to the sexual nature of her sleep work, Lucy is not even given an opportunity to consent to her involvement in her final client’s suicide, plans which were clearly known to Clara as she appears unsurprised he is dead. In this final scene, Lucy realizes that her actions have weight, even if she doesn’t remember them, as she becomes part of these men’s lives. By signing over her body and memory, she allows them ownership of her and knowledge of her as well as agreeing to trust they will not penetrate her. Many of our most beloved fairy tales romanticize passive, sleeping women, such as the original version of Sleeping Beauty, where the prince rapes the unconscious girl. Though Lucy gives her consent, it is unclear whether person can ever consent to something that would happen while they were unconscious as there is no way she can object if she changes her mind or it crosses the line.

It is questionable whether Lucy can consent to things that would happen while she is not conscious
It is questionable whether Lucy can consent to things that would happen while she is not conscious

 

Depending on one’s interpretation of Lucy’s mental state throughout the film, its ending can be taken one of two ways. Either it suggests, Lucy, a literal Sleeping Beauty is waking up to the reality of her life and can begin to live a “normal life” or she is entering into a mental breakdown she has been staving off with her detachment. In addition, the dead man lying in beside her may remind her of Birdmann, whose death she did not fully grieve over and suggests she has been forcing herself not to become attached to him either. With either interpretation, Lucy regains her autonomy and awareness of reality only after negative events, which casts her sex work and her sexual encounters in a wholly negative light. She awakens into the film’s stark reality, where there are no happily ever afters even when the cinematography is this lovely.

As Lucy awakes, not with a kiss but with a slap to the face, it becomes clear that Leigh’s tale of detachment is no fairy tale.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

‘What’s Your Number?’: A Feminist’s Guilty Pleasure

The fact that I need “cover” for watching this movie is not because it is a “chick flick.” I’m a feminist, so I don’t think things have less value when they are geared towards women. It’s not that its a lowbrow romcom. It’s 2014, and I try to pretend I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. It’s that this lowbrow romcom chick flick appears to presuppose that a woman could have too many sex partners. And I could pretend I watched this so I could tear it apart on this website, but the truth is I wanted to watch a romantic comedy and this one has Anna Faris and Chris Evans in it. Even though I was 90 percent sure it was going to be sexist. That, my friends, is a guilty pleasure.

Anna Faris in 'What's Your Number?'
Anna Faris in What’s Your Number?

Man, I wish I knew that What’s Your Number? had a wedding in it back when I was writing weekly wedding movie reviews, because that would have been the perfect excuse to watch it. The fact that I need “cover” for watching this movie is not because it is a “chick flick.” I’m a feminist, so I don’t think things have less value when they are geared toward women. It’s not that its a lowbrow romcom. It’s 2014, and I try to pretend I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. It’s that this lowbrow romcom chick flick appears to presuppose that a woman could have too many sex partners.

And I could pretend I watched this so I could tear it apart on this website, but the truth is I wanted to watch a romantic comedy and this one has Anna Faris and Chris Evans in it. Even though I was 90 percent sure it was going to be sexist. That, my friends, is a guilty pleasure.

Ally's number is 19 which is allegedly a problem of some kind
Ally’s number is 19, which is allegedly a problem of some kind

Here’s the sexist premise in full: Anna Faris plays Ally Darling, who gets dumped and fired in the same morning, and then discovers an even bigger problem with her life: she has nearly twice the average American woman’s number of lifetime sex partners, and is one partner away from the scientifically determined unmarriagable boundary of 20. She decides she can’t have sex again until she meets “The One.” Oy.

But for about 90 seconds during the opening credits of What’s Your Number? I got really excited that this might be a stealth-feminist film. The camera pans over pages from women’s magazines, with headlines perfectly illustrating the judgment, shame, contradictory advice and demented priorities that populate those pages: “Change Too Much For Your Man?” “Decorating Your Bedroom *With Him in Mind,” “Does He Only Want You For Your Bod?” and my personal favorite:

"When Your Sister Is Just Plain Better Than You"
“When Your Sister Is Just Plain Better Than You”

This movie gets it! Women’s magazines are sexist trash piles that primarily function to make women feel inferior. Ally is going to learn not to let a magazine define how many sexual partners she “should” have. Ally is going to learn to tell the slut shamers of the world to shove it and then she’ll go bone the hot guy across the hall.

Shirtless Chris Evans in 'What's Your Number?'
Shirtless Chris Evans in What’s Your Number?

Well, spoiler alert: only the second part happens, and only after lots of get-together plot and mutual declarations of L-O-V-E, which she never would have found with this Chris Evans-shaped charmer who makes her laugh and gets her weird art and is shaped like Chris Evans had she just jumped his bones the first time she saw him mostly naked (which he is, in like, more than half of his scenes, adding another dimension of guilty pleasure. to this movie, because sexually objectifying people is wrong, but…):

I mean seriously.
I mean seriously. This happens in more than one scene.

Chris Evans-shaped Colin only has one night stands, you see, because he becomes paralyzed with fear of hurting women if he knows any humanizing details about them, such as “she once was a child.” So he loves ’em and leaves ’em to find their own way out of his apartment while he hides out in Ally’s. But there’s no article in GQ criticizing Colin’s sexual behavior, and neither he nor Ally really question it, even though her number teetering at less than one tenth of his has sent her life spiraling. This is one of many missed opportunities for What’s Your Number? to critically engage with its central premise.

Colin teaches Ally you can Google people.
Colin teaches Ally you can Google people.

The bulk of the plot is a High Fidelity-style tour of exes, as Ally figures out the loophole where she can get back with someone she’s already banged without adding to her number. [Colin helps her track down these guys with “cop family” secrets he has like being on Facebook.] So we get lots of amusing cameos and windows into different ways Ally has changed herself to get a man’s approval, from dressing like a senator’s wife to pretending to be British. And yes, yes, “You’ll be happiest with someone you can be yourself with” is a fine message, but movie, YOU ALREADY HAVE A MESSAGE, that no one should let a magazine tell them how many people they should have sex with. Right? RIGHT?

The caption of this gif is not "I'll have sex with as many people as I want."
The caption of this gif is not “I’ll have sex with as many people as I want!”

Sigh, no. The “to hell with Marie Claire!” moment I was waiting for never came (I should have known that Marie Claire wouldn’t have agreed to product placement if that was coming). And worse, in the last scene of the movie, Ally gets a voice mail from one of the guys on the list clarifying their sexual history (they only did it “dry style”), and she can triumphantly declare that Colin “is my 20!” and their love is not doomed. Barf.

But, Hera help me, I still really liked this movie. Anna Faris is just so charming! Chris Evans wears nothing but a tea towel in multiple scenes! They have chemistry! Amusing cameos! Including Anthony Mackie miming handling four penises! No “my younger sister is getting married” panic! Said younger sister is Ari Graynor! Raunchy comedy geared toward the women in the audience and not just to appease their male dates! Sex positivity (yes, seriously, in the movie borne from slut shaming)!

"I'm like, super gay."
“I’m like, super gay.”

Seriously, this would be a glowing review of an underappreciated gem if you could just cut out the bullshit last scene (although work the words “dry style” into some other part of the script, because that’s hilarious) and throw in some real talk about how ridiculous our obsession with “Numbers” is. We could have had it all, movie. Instead, What’s Your Number? only bumps up my number. My number of Antifeminist Guilty Pleasures. Which is way, way higher than 20.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town. Her number is somewhere between negative three and seventeen thousand.

‘Baby Mama’ Makes Fun of Pregnancy More Than Poor People

Shockingly, despite both Tina Fey and Amy Poehler being on my Fantasy Dinner Party Guest List, it took me six years to finally watch Baby Mama, the 2008 surrogacy comedy starring everyone’s favorite FFBFFs (famous funny best friends forever). I made the classic error of judging a movie by its trailer and thought ‘Baby Mama’ was going to be 90 minutes of “this old bat has such raging baby fever she lowers herself to associating with—get this—poor people!” and/or “This chick is so poor she sublets her uterus! It’s funny because she’s poor.”

'Baby Mama' movie poster
Baby Mama movie poster

Shockingly, despite both Tina Fey and Amy Poehler being on my Fantasy Dinner Party Guest List, it took me six years to finally watch Baby Mama, the 2008 surrogacy comedy starring everyone’s favorite FFBFFs (famous funny best friends forever).

Aside from having been released during the pop culture blackout period that was my first year of law school my giant mistake, I also made the classic error of judging a movie by its trailer and thought Baby Mama was going to be 90 minutes of “this old bat has such raging baby fever she lowers herself to associating with—get this—poor people!” and/or “This chick is so poor she sublets her uterus! It’s funny because she’s poor.”

Amy Poehler's Angie holds breast pumps over her eyes.
Amy Poehler’s Angie holds breast pumps over her eyes.

Fortunately, Baby Mama is not as grossly classist as I feared. Yes, Tina Fey’s Kate, the wealthy businesswoman who can’t get pregnant, is shocked by her surrogate Angie (Amy Poehler) for everything from her diet (heavily featuring Tastykakes and Dr Pepper) to her manners (discarding gum under a reclaimed barnwood coffee table) to her interests (the American Idol karaoke video game Kate bought for her niece). But the audience is invited to laugh at both sides of the class divide between these characters,  and there are actually significantly fewer jabs at Angie for being insufficiently classy than there are at Kate for being a yuppie snob. It’s just that peeing in the sink makes for better trailer material than jokes about forced nicknames for gentrified neighborhoods.

"You peed in the sink, isn't that against everyone's rules?"
“You peed in the sink, isn’t that against everyone’s rules?”

However, if you’re looking for any kind of meaningful exploration of the power dynamics and body politics inherent to contracted surrogate pregnancies, Baby Mama is not your movie. This is strictly a situation comedy, with a surprising reliance on plot twists and a mostly superfluous romantic subplot involving Greg Kinnear as a slightly more sincere yippie (Young Urban Professional Hippie) than Kate.  A lot of the humor is derived from the absurdities that apply to pregnancy and parenting more generally rather than surrogacy specifically: birth shaming, strollers with airbags, books like 101 Things That Can Go Wrong With Your Pregnancy.

Kate reads 101 Things That Can Go Wrong With Your Pregnancy
Kate reads 101 Things That Can Go Wrong With Your Pregnancy

But, the surrogacy forces the Hollywood Movie Unobtainium that is a central female relationship. And it is the chemistry between Fey and Poehler that keeps this movie afloat despite its meandering pace, some repeated jokes that never quite land (Steve Martin as Kate’s boss is one yuppie joke too many, Sigourney Weaver as the surprisingly fertile surrogacy agent), pointless tertiary characters (Maura Tierney as Kate’s supermom sister, Romany Malco as Kate’s weirdly ubiquitous doorman), and a final plot twist  that made me feel like I had morning sickness.

Really, if the combined powers of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler can make a movie as thoroughly mediocre as Baby Mama so much fun to watch, we should probably be legally requiring them to make at least one movie together a year.  Call your congressperson.

Our fave FFBFFs high five
Our fave FFBFFs high five

 

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who just looked up how many days there are until the next Golden Globes (129).

‘Mannequin’: A Dummy’s Guide to True and Everlasting Love

By any regular standards, even the 1980s, ‘Mannequin’ is a TERRIBLE movie. It never should have been green lit, let alone hit wide release. It’s often lumped in with other Brat Pack pics, thanks to the presence of Andrew McCarthy and James Spader, but it really should be categorized separately, as a romcom gone wrong. Showroom dummies that come to life after hours should be the stuff of horror movies, or episodes of ‘Doctor Who,’ not fluffy fantasies starring a nearly naked Kim Cattrall. John Hughes wouldn’t have touched this material with a ten-foot pole.

mannequin-remake-movie

This guest post by Karina Wilson appears as part of our theme week on The Brat Pack.

By any regular standards, even the 1980s, Mannequin is a TERRIBLE movie.  It never should have been green lit, let alone hit wide release.  It’s often lumped in with other Brat Pack pics, thanks to the presence of Andrew McCarthy and James Spader, but it really should be categorized separately, as a romcom gone wrong. Showroom dummies that come to life after hours should be the stuff of horror movies, or episodes of Doctor Who, not fluffy fantasies starring a nearly naked Kim Cattrall.  John Hughes wouldn’t have touched this material with a ten-foot pole.

It’s hard to believe the filmmakers ever thought audiences would fall for the outrageous plot. An Ancient Egyptian princess, Emmy (Kim Cattrall), escapes arranged marriage to a camel dung salesman by disappearing in a puff of smoke and reincarnating as a showroom dummy in 1987 Philadelphia, where she finds true love with the career-challenged Jonathan (Andrew McCarthy) inside a glittering retail palace (Wanamaker’s, now Macy’s Center City).  She exploits the well-documented Philadelphian obsession with classy department store window displays to turn Jonathan’s life around, defeat the bad guys, and [SPOILER ALERT] get married (in a climactic window display!) and live happily ever after.

mannequin028oz4

Critics, understandably, hated it.  Roger Ebert thought it was, quite literally, DOA (“Mannequin is dead. The wake lasts 1 1/2 hours, and then we can leave the theater”).  Janet Maslin in the New York Times lamented the lack of substance (“In place of a real story, there is just the spectacle of stock characters being put through their paces to fill up the time”) and lousy performances (“It’s never a disappointment when the mannequin, which comes to life only intermittently, turns back into wood”).  Leonard Maltin called it “absolute rock-bottom fare. Dispiriting to anyone who remembers what movie comedy ought to be.”   Yet it was a hit – grossing more than $42 million off a $6 million budget – and was nominated for an Academy Award – for Starship’s theme song, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.”

I willingly confess to loving Mannequin. It’s so wrong, it’s absolutely right.  It’s a big, tatty rescue pooch who plants her paws on your chest and gives you a slobbery kiss of a movie: certain people, dog people, Mannequin people, can’t help but be charmed.  Even now, watching it as a hard-bitten 40-something, it invokes my inner impressionable teen.

mannequin

I adore the unromantic hero, Jonathan Switcher, because he manages to be simultaneously weird and endearing. There’s something a bit off kilter from the top: when we first meet him, he’s salivating over a naked clothes dummy.  He exudes every which way of warning signal, from the pronounced doll fetish to the Frankenstein complex to the social ineptitude. When the dummy-making gig doesn’t work out, he is hired and quickly fired from a succession of menial occupations, which consequently causes him to be dumped by his improbably put-together girlfriend, Roxie (Carole Davis).  Poor Jonathan would drown instantly if forced to dive into the perilous depths of the 2014 dating pool.  However, this was the 1980s, when you could splash about in the shallow end and still qualify as Kim Cattrall’s dream date.  On the plus side, Jonathan rides a Harley, lives in a sweet studio apartment (obviously comes from money, yay 1980s!), and he’s Andrew McCarthy. Andrew fucking McCarthy. Be still, my perpetual adolescent heart.

For those of you who don’t recall, Andrew McCarthy was the Beta Male of the Brat Pack.  He wasn’t as beautiful as Rob Lowe, or as badass as Judd Nelson, or as peppy as Robert Downey Jr., but you’d take him over Anthony Michael Hall or Jon Cryer any day.  He had a burning blue stare, a voice that dropped to a creaky growl when – as often happened – his character was wracked with emotion, and a lift to his chin suggesting a stubborn streak a mile wide.  He was cool enough to pop his collar and run with the in-crowd, but he was also sensitive enough to be an individual, even (shock!) an artist, and follow his dream.  He was the Nice Guy before the term became so ridiculously devalued.  He was the boy who might, quite unexpectedly, offer to walk you home after prom turned to tears, and then turn misery and humiliation into the most enchanted evening of your life through the power of his goofy grin and kind eyes.  I loved him then and I love him still.

mannequin022he8

He’s wasted in Mannequin. He does his best with the material, and manages to make Jonathan geeky and adorable, a whisper away from quietly insane: in lesser hands, the guy would be plain creepy.  McCarthy makes it halfway believable that Emmy, who has had her pick of hot dates (Christopher Columbus!) throughout history, might finally settle for the lowest status employee in the store.  And Cattrall keeps up Emmy’s end of the deal, regarding Jonathan as a feline would a toy stuffed with catnip – with unadulterated delight.  She bats him between her paws, chews on him gently, and, when the montage is done, curls up beside him and goes to sleep.  Girl clearly likes to dominate, and there’s a coy whiff of BDSM about some of their dress-up-and-play.  What else are they going to do with those tennis racquets other than spank each other’s ass?

In a cute subversion of romcom norms, then, Emmy is the Alpha Female who picks out the Nice Beta Male early on in the narrative and seduces him with a plastic smile.  She has been dating for millennia. When she sees it, she knows exactly what she wants – and it ain’t the traditional alpha hero. Jonathan and Emmy are perfect for one another from the moment they lay eyes on one another.  There’s no need for a makeover montage. This is due to bad storytelling rather than feminist innovation, but it’s so refreshingly unusual, it works.  She’s content to dazzle, he’s content to be awed – and when required, he saves her life.  We should all aspire to such a Mr. Right.

mannequin1

The writers, Michael Gottlieb and Edward Rugoff, manage to throw a few obstacles in the happy couple’s way (the course of true love never did run smooth) in the form of manic supporting characters. Forget three-dimensional, thinking, feeling, human beings – crass stereotypes abound. There’s flamboyant, gay, black, promiscuous Hollywood (Meshach Taylor), the set designer who takes Jonathan under his sateen wing.  Estelle Getty pops up as the store’s owner, Claire Timkin.  G.W. Bailey reprises his Police Academy shtick as Felix, the bumbling security guard – Cattrall was a fellow alumni, best known for her sex kitten turns in Porky’s and Police Academy at this point, so he must have felt at home.  And there’s the villainous Richards, James Spader abandoning his usual sexy-husky bad-boy turn in favor of playing a rival storeowner with cartoonish slicked-back hair and outsize spectacles.  None of it makes much sense. But somehow Jonathan and Emmy win and Richards and Roxie lose and the finale is all “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” most triumphant good.

That’s all, folks. Mannequin is fun, but wafer-thin.  Although considered a cult classic, it has zero cultural significance, especially when compared to the canon Brat Pack hits that defined a generation.  It’s a vapid Technicolor fantasy that, by being so poorly conceived and written, accidentally manages to subvert all the other Pygmalion stories.  Flimsy as she is, Emmy is the romantic heroine who doesn’t have to be reshaped or reinvent herself in order to deserve her adoring swain.  All she needs is for us to believe she’s real.

 

Karina Wilson is a British writer and story consultant based in Los Angeles.  She writes a regular column on horror fiction at Litreactor and can also be found at Horror Film History.

‘Sixteen Candles,’ Rape Culture, and Anti-Woman Politics

Holy fuck this movie. I started watching it like OH YEAH MY CHILDHOOD MOLLY RINGWALD ADOLESCENCE IS SO HARD and after two scenes, I put that shit on pause like, WHEN DID SOMEONE WRITE ALL THESE RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY PARTS THAT WEREN’T HERE BEFORE I WOULD’VE REMEMBERED THEM.

Nostalgia is a sneaky bitch.

Movie posters for Sixteen Candles

This post by Stephanie Rogers appears as part of our theme week on The Brat Pack. 

Holy fuck this movie. I started watching it like OH YEAH MY CHILDHOOD MOLLY RINGWALD ADOLESCENCE IS SO HARD and after two scenes, I put that shit on pause like, WHEN DID SOMEONE WRITE ALL THESE RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY PARTS THAT WEREN’T HERE BEFORE I WOULD’VE REMEMBERED THEM.

Nostalgia is a sneaky bitch.
I wanted to write about all the wonderful things I thought I remembered about Sixteen Candles: a sympathetic and complex female protagonist, the awkwardness of adolescence, the embarrassing interactions with parents and grandparents who JUST DON’T GET IT, crushing hard on older boys—and yes, all that stuff is still there. And of course, there’s that absolutely fantastic final wedding scene in which a woman consents to marry a dude while under the influence of a fuckload of muscle relaxers. OH WAIT WHUT.
Ginny Baker getting married while super high

 

Turns out, that shit ain’t so funny once feminism becomes a thing in your life.
The kind of adorable premise of Sixteen Candles is that Molly Ringwald (Samantha Baker) wakes up one morning as a sixteen-year-old woman who still hasn’t yet grown the breasts she wants. Her family, however, forgets her birthday because of the chaos surrounding her older sister Ginny’s upcoming wedding; relatives drive into town, future in-laws set up dinner dates, and poor Samantha gets the cold shoulder. It reminded me of the time my parents handed me an unwrapped Stephen King novel on my sixteenth birthday like a couple of emotionally neglectful and shitty assholes, but, you know, at least they REMEMBERED it.
Anyway, she rides the bus to school (with all the LOSERS), and in her Independent Study “class” the hot senior she likes, Jake Ryan, intercepts a note meant for her friend Randy. And—wouldn’t you know it—the note says, I WOULD TOTALLY DO IT WITH JAKE RYAN BUT HE DOESN’T KNOW I’M ALIVE. Well he sure as fuck knows NOW, Samantha.
Samantha and Randy, totally grossed out, ride the bus to school

 

So, these are the important things in Sixteen Candles: Samantha’s family forgets her birthday; she’s in love with a hot senior who’s dating Caroline (the most popular girl in school); and there’s a big ol’ geek (Farmer Ted) from Sam’s daily bus rides who won’t stop stalking her. Oh, and Long Duk Dong exists [insert racist gong sound here]. Seriously, every time Long Duk Dong appears on screen, a fucking GONG GOES OFF on the soundtrack. I suppose that lines up quite nicely with the scene where he falls out of a tree yelling, “BONSAI.”
Since the entire movie is like a machine gun firing of RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY parts, the only way I know how to effectively talk about it is to look at the very problematic screenplay. So, fasten your seatbelts and heed your trigger warnings.
The 80s were quite possibly a nightmare.
Long Duk Dong falls out of a tree (BONSAI) after a drunken night at the homecoming dance
The first few scenes do a decent job of showing the forgotten-birthday slash upcoming-wedding fiasco occurring in the Baker household. Sam stands in front of her bedroom mirror before school, analyzing her brand new sixteen-year-old self and says, “You need four inches of bod and a great birthday.” I can get behind that idea; growing up comes with all kinds of stresses and confusion, especially for women in high school who’ve begun to feel even more insecure about their bodies (having had sufficient time to fully absorb the toxic beauty culture).
“Chronologically, you’re 16 today. Physically? You’re still 15.” –Samantha Baker, looking in the mirror

 

While Samantha laments the lack of changes in her physical appearance, her little brother Mike pretends to almost-punch their younger sister. When he gets in trouble for it, he says, “Dad, I didn’t hit her. I’d like to very much and probably will later, but give me a break. You know my method. I don’t hit her when you’re just down the hall.” It’s easy to laugh this off—I chuckled when I first heard it. But after five seconds of thinking about my reaction, I realized my brain gave Mike a pass because of that whole “boys will be boys” thing, and then I got pissed at myself.
The problem with eye-rolling away the “harmless” offenses of young boys is that it gives boys (and later, men) a license to act like fuckers with no actual repercussions. The “boys will be boys” mantra is one of the most insidious manifestations of rape culture because it conditions both boys and girls at a young age to believe boys just can’t help themselves; violence in boys is inherent and not worth trying to control. And people today—including political “leaders”—often use that excuse to justify the violent actions of men toward women.
Mike Baker explains to his dad that he hasn’t hit his younger sister … yet

 

Unfortunately, Sixteen Candles continues to reinforce this idea throughout the film.
The Geek, aka Farmer Ted—a freshman who’s obsessed with Samantha—represents this more than any other character. The film presents his stalking behavior as endearing, which means that all his interactions with Samantha (and with the popular kids at school) end with a silent, “Poor guy!” exclamation. Things just really aren’t going his way! And look how hard he’s trying! (Poor guy.) He first appears on the bus home from school and sits next to Samantha, even though she makes it quite clear—with a bunch of comments about getting dudes to kick his ass who “lust wimp blood”—that she wants him to leave her alone. Then this interaction takes place:

Ted: You know, I’m getting input here that I’m reading as relatively hostile.

Samantha: Go to hell.

Ted: Come on, what’s the problem here? I’m a boy, you’re a girl. Is there anything wrong with me trying to put together some kind of relationship between us?

[The bus stops.]

Ted: Look, I know you have to go. Just answer one question.

Samantha: Yes, you’re a total fag.

Ted: That’s not the question … Am I turning you on?

[Samantha rolls her eyes and exits the bus.]

POOR GUY! Also homophobia. Like, all over the place in this movie. The words “fag” and “faggot” flood the script and always refer to men who lack conventional masculine traits or who haven’t yet “bagged a babe.” And the emphasis on “Man-Up Already!” puts women in harm’s way more than once.
Samantha looks irritated when her stalker, Farmer Ted, refuses to leave her alone. Also Joan Cusack for no reason.

 

The most terrifying instance of this happens toward the end of the film when Ted ends up at Jake’s party after the school homecoming dance, and the two of them bond by objectifying women together (and subsequently creating a nice little movie template to last for generations). The atrocities involve a very drunk, passed-out Caroline (which reminded me so much of what happened in Steubenville that I had to turn off the movie for a while and regroup) and a pair of Samantha’s underwear.
This is how we get to that point: After Jake snags Samantha’s unintentional declaration of love during Independent Study, he becomes interested in her. He tells a jock friend of his (while they do chin-ups together in gym class), “It’s kinda cool, the way she’s always looking at me.” His friend responds—amid all that hot testosterone—that “maybe she’s retarded.” (This statement sounds even worse within the context of a film that includes a possibly disabled character, played by Joan Cusack, who lacks mobility and “hilariously” spends five minutes trying to drink from a water fountain. Her role exists as nothing more than a punch line; she literally says nothing.)
Joan Cusack drinking water (queue laughter)
Joan Cusack drinking a beer (queue laughter)
Jake’s girlfriend, Caroline, picks up on his waning interest in her and says to him at the school dance, “You’ve been acting weird all night. Are you screwing around?” He immediately gaslights her with, “Me? Are you crazy?” to which she responds, “I don’t know, Jake. I’m getting strange signals.” Yup, Caroline—IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD NOT REALLY.
Meanwhile, in an abandoned car somewhere on school premises (perhaps a shop lab/classroom), Samantha sits alone, lamenting Jake’s probable hatred of her after their interaction in the gym where he said, “Hi!” and she freaked out and ran away. Farmer Ted stalk-finds her and climbs into the passenger seat. Some words happen, blah blah blah, and a potentially interesting commentary on the culture of masculinity gets undercut by Ted asking Samantha (who Ted referred to lovingly as “fully-aged sophomore meat” to his dude-bros earlier in the film) if he can borrow her underwear to use as proof that they banged. Of course she gives her underwear to him because.
Ted holds up Samantha’s underwear to a group of dude-bros who each paid a buck to see them

 

Cut to Jake’s after-party: everyone is finally gone; his house is a mess; Caroline is passed out drunk as fuck in his bedroom; and he finds Ted trapped inside a glass coffee table (a product of bullying). Then, at last, after Jake confesses to Ted that he thinks Samantha hates him (because she ran away from him in the gym), we’re treated to a true Male Bonding Moment:

Ted: You see, [girls] know guys are, like, in perpetual heat, right? They know this shit. And they enjoy pumping us up. It’s pure power politics, I’m telling you … You know how many times a week I go without lunch because some bitch borrows my lunch money? Any halfway decent girl can rob me blind because I’m too torqued up to say no.

Jake: I can get a piece of ass anytime I want. Shit, I got Caroline in my bedroom right now, passed out cold. I could violate her ten different ways if I wanted to.

Ted: What are you waiting for?

C’MON JAKE WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR GO RAPE YOUR GIRLFRIEND. Or wait, no, maybe let’s let Ted rape her?

Jake: I’ll make a deal with you. Let me keep these [Samantha’s underwear, duh]. I’ll let you take Caroline home … She’s so blitzed she won’t know the difference.

Ted carrying a drunk Caroline to the car

And then Ted throws a passed-out Caroline over his shoulder and puts her in the passenger seat of a convertible. This scene took me immediately back to the horrific images of two men carrying around a drunk woman in Steubenville who they later raped—and were convicted of raping (thanks largely to social media). This scene, undoubtedly “funny” in the 80s and certainly still funny to people who like to claim this shit is harmless, helped lay the groundwork for Steubenville, and for Cleveland, and for Richmond, where as many as 20 witnesses watched men beat and gang rape a woman for over two hours without reporting it. On their high school campus. During their homecoming dance.

Jake and Ted talk about how to fool Caroline

People who claim to believe films and TV and pop culture moments like this are somehow disconnected from perpetuating rape need to take a step back and really think about the message this sends. I refuse to accept that a person could watch this scene from an iconic John Hughes film—where, after a party, a drunk woman is literally passed around by two men and photographed—and not see the connection between the Steubenville rape—where, after a party, a woman was literally passed around by two men and photographed.

Caroline looks drunk and confused while Ted’s friends take a photo as proof that he hooked up with her

 

And it only gets worse. Caroline wakes up out of nowhere and puts a birth control pill in Ted’s mouth. Once he realizes what he’s swallowed, he says, “You have any idea what that’ll do to a guy my age?” Caroline responds, “I know exactly what it’ll do to a girl my age. It makes it okay to be really super careless!”
It makes it okay to be really super careless. 
IT MAKES IT OKAY TO BE REALLY SUPER CARELESS.
So I guess the current anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti-woman Republicans found a John Hughes screenplay from 30 years ago and decided to use this cautionary tale as their entire fucking platform. See what happens when women have access to birth control? It makes it okay to be really super careless! And get drunk! And allow dudes to rape them!
Of course, believing that Caroline is raped in Sixteen Candles requires believing that a woman can’t consent to sex when she’s too “blitzed to know the difference” between her actual boyfriend and a random freshman geek. I mean, there’s forcible rape, and there’s not-really rape, right? And this obviously isn’t REAL rape since Ted and Caroline actually have THIS FUCKING CONVERSATION when they wake up in a church parking lot the next morning:

Ted: Did we, uh …

Caroline: Yeah. I’m pretty sure.

Ted: Of course I enjoyed it … uh … did you?

Caroline: Hmmm. You know, I have this weird feeling I did … You were pretty crazy … you know what I like best? Waking up in your arms.

Fuck you, John Hughes.
Caroline wakes up, unsure of who Ted is, but very sexually satisfied
And so many more problems exist in this film that I can’t fully get into in the space of one already long review, but the fact that Ginny (Sam’s sister) starts her period and therefore needs to take FOUR muscle relaxers to dull the pain also illustrates major problems with consent; her father at one point appears to pick her up and drag her down the aisle on her wedding day. (And, congratulations for understanding, John Hughes, that when women bleed every month, it requires a borderline drug overdose to contain the horror.)
Ginny’s dad drags her down the aisle on her wedding day
The racism, too, blows my mind. Long Duk Dong, a foreign exchange student living with Samantha’s grandparents, speaks in played-for-laughs broken English during the following monologue over dinner: “Very clever dinner. Appetizing food fit neatly into interesting round pie … I love, uh, visiting with Grandma and Grandpa … and writing letters to parents … and pushing lawn-mowing machine … so Grandpa’s hyena don’t get disturbed,” accompanied by such sentences as, “The Donger need food.” (I also love it, not really, when Samantha’s best friend Randy mishears Sam and thinks she’s interested in a Black guy. “A BLACK guy?!?!” Randy exclaims … then sighs with relief once she realizes the misunderstanding.)
Long Duk Dong talks to the Baker family over dinner
And I haven’t even touched on the problematic issues with class happening in Sixteen Candles. (Hughes does class relations a tiny bit better in Pretty in Pink.)
Basically, it freaks me out—as it should—when I watch movies or television shows from 30 years ago and see how closely the politics resemble today’s anti-woman agenda. Phrases like “legitimate rape” and “forcible rape” shouldn’t exist in 2013. In 2013, politicians like Wendy Davis shouldn’t have to stand up and speak for 13 hours—with no food, water, or restroom breaks—in order to stop a bill from passing in Texas that would virtually shut down access to safe and legal abortions in the entire state. Women should be able to walk down the street for contraception in 2013, whether it’s for condoms or for the morning after pill. The US political landscape in 2013 should NOT include talking points lifted directly from a 1984 film about teenagers.
I know John Hughes is a national fucking treasure, but please tell me our government officials aren’t using his screenplays as legislative blueprints for the future of American politics.

 

After The Brat Pack: Ally Sheedy in ‘High Art’

Although a few who had fallen under the brat pack sobriquet (like Demi Moore) continued in mainstream star-vehicles well into the 90s (and Rob Lowe, dismissed as another pretty face in the ’80s, was able to sustain a TV career into the present), most had faded from the public view by then, including Ally Sheedy (after starring in 1987’s ‘Maid to Order,’ her own ‘Weekend At Bernie’s’) –though earlier in her career she, of the whole “Pack,” received some of the best reviews for her work. Sheedy went on to reinvent herself–and make good on her earlier promise–in a series of meaty roles in independent films in the late 90s: the most well known one (for which she won several awards) was Lucy Berliner in writer-director Lisa Cholodenko’s 1998 feature debut ‘High Art.’

HighArtCover

This post by Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on The Brat Pack.

I was already an adult when the term “Brat Pack” was coined to refer to 1980s young actresses and actors who, in spite of being slightly older than I was, usually came to prominence playing high school kids. As the ’80s petered out. most of these actors starred in progressively crappier movies (Weekend at Bernie’s is one notorious example) and audiences became clued in to how bad these films were–and stopped showing up for them.

Although a few who had fallen under the Brat Pack sobriquet (like Demi Moore) continued in mainstream star-vehicles well into the 90s (and Rob Lowe, dismissed as another pretty face in the ’80s, was able to sustain a TV career into the present) most had faded from the public view by then, including Ally Sheedy (after starring in 1987’s Maid to Order, her own Weekend At  Bernie’s) –though earlier in her career she, of the whole “Pack”, received some of the best reviews for her work. Sheedy went on to reinvent herself–and make good on her earlier promise–in a series of meaty roles in independent films in the late 90s: the most well known one (for which she won several awards) was Lucy Berliner in writer-director Lisa Cholodenko’s 1998 feature debut High Art.

Radha Mitchell’s Syd is the main character, a young, ambitious hard-worker at an arty NYC photography magazine. She tells the receptionist of her promotion (one of the many ways to tell this film was made in the 90s: she got her job after working at the magazine as an intern), “I’m not really assisting anyone. I’m an assistant editor,” but we see the male editor uses her as a glorified go-fer. Reading for work in the bath at home she feels water dripping on her from above and interrupts the constant (if subdued) 24-hour drug party going on in the apartment of her upstairs neighbor, Lucy (Sheedy) to find the source of the leak. Lucy lives with her strung-out German girlfriend Greta (Patricia Clarkson, hilariously out of it for much of the film, evoking the equally heroin-addled, famous blonde, Nico, even as she name-drops gay addict-director Rainer Werner Fassbinder). While Syd wraps duct tape around the leak she notices and compliments the framed photos all around the apartment, which are Lucy’s.

Although the style of these photos (and the ones Lucy takes later) look, to contemporary eyes, like the faux-realism of American Apparel and some Calvin Klein ads, in 1998 they seemed to reference the photographer Nan Goldin who also used elements of her own life (including drug addiction, the queer community and domestic violence) as documentary fodder for her work.

Lucy turns out to have been someone who was making a name for herself before she left town a decade before. The clueless male editor Syd reports to has no idea who she is, but his boss Dominique (Anh Duong) does, as does the hot, young male photographer of the moment working on the magazine’s upcoming cover. Through Syd  Dominique enlists Lucy to do their next cover instead, even though Lucy had insisted to Syd, “I don’t really do that anymore.”  Lucy makes Syd her editor.

Syd and Lucy
Syd and Lucy

Syd had, at first, tried to get close to Lucy for professional reasons, but she finds herself snorting heroin with Lucy, in the company of Greta and her drug friends, and, while her live-in boyfriend (Gabriel Mann) cools his heels at a party in Lucy’s living room, Syd makes out with Lucy in the bedroom. Greta rouses herself long enough to notice the attention Lucy is paying to Syd, dismissing her as a “psycho-phant.”

Sheedy herself famously had her own struggles with drugs and because of them had stopped working for a time. The monologue she has in which Lucy explains to Syd how she “fucked up” seems very real. Sheedy’s face is seemingly naked of not just of makeup but of flesh, the point of her chin and cheekbones stretching her pale skin, leaving circles under her eyes. She’s startlingly thin (not merely very slender, as she was in the mid to late 80s, which in turn was a slimming down from her more full-faced look in the early 80s) in the fashion of a lot of downtown types (and junkies): her shoulder blades under thin t-shirts and tank tops are so prominent they seem ready to sprout wings.

One of Lucy's photos of Syd
One of Lucy’s photos of Syd

Sheedy also has great chemistry not just with Mitchell (who was fresh from playing another queer woman in her native Australia in the light-to-the-point-of-complete-forgettability Love and Other Catastrophes) but also with Clarkson (in the film role where critics first took notice of her). In spite of Greta often being on the verge of nodding off, she is still luscious and playful in her black lingerie and long, blonde hair partially piled on her head, like a vintage Brigitte Bardot gone awry. The film’s treatment of women’s sexuality is a nice contrast to the lesbian-bed-death clichés (and anti-chemistry) of Julianne Moore and Annette Bening in Cholodenko’s more recent The Kids Are All Right.

Cholodenko made a couple of spot-on, very funny shorts about queer women before High Art, so I was disappointed with the “tragic lesbian” turn the film takes at the end–both when I first saw the film in 1998 and rewatching it now. In a way tragedy seems like an easy out–and rings less true than the gradual relationship burnout experienced by the main gay couple  also impacted by drug addiction) in Ira Sach’s excellent, autobiographical Keep The Lights On. Substance abuse in the queer community is perhaps a more pressing issue than we think it is: I wonder about the “coincidence” of two of the most closely observed, relatively recent films about drug addiction and art both made by openly queer writer-directors. But artist careers ebb and flow for reasons that are more complicated than a drug overdose: shortly after her run as the newly crowned queen of indie films, Sheedy played the lead, then walked out of an off-Broadway production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and though she’s still around (you can follow her on Twitter @allysheedy1) she hasn’t starred in many films since.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdRkafIrh_c”]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender