Prom and Female Sexual Desire in ‘Pretty in Pink’ and ‘The Loved Ones’

In this piece we focus on prom as a densifying trope for teenage female sexual desire in many cultural representations (think of ‘Carrie,’ ‘She’s All That,’ ‘My-So-Called Life,’ or ‘Glee,’ to name just a few). We are doing so by complementing John Hughes’ rather classic romantic-comedy and “Brat Pack” movie ‘Pretty in Pink’ with the horror/torture movie with comedy elements ‘The Loved Ones’ directed by Sean Byrne – two examples of female desire as imagined by male writers.

This is a guest post by Ingrid Bettwieser and Steffen Loick for our Representations of Female Sexual Desire week.

Girls want relationships, boys want sex. The notion that adolescent girls don’t act on their own sexual desires (and just look sexy) still seems to be a prevailing cultural organizing principle perpetuated by many media illustrations. For us the concept of “Prom” brings together – in a pop-cultural genealogy – diffuse notions of (predominantly) heterosexual teenage desire, depictions of romantic love and binary coupling combined with teen-horrors of social exclusion, acknowledgement and coming-of-age. Prom epitomizes the time and place where sexual subjects/objects of desire are ordered normatively. Individual freedom (not to go to prom but fall out of the place of acknowledgement) and social force (go to prom but subject to normalizing scripts) are negotiated accordingly.

In this piece we focus on prom as a densifying trope for teenage female sexual desire in many cultural representations (think of Carrie, She’s All That, My-So-Called Life, or Glee to name just a few). We are doing so by complementing John Hughes’ rather classic romantic-comedy and “Brat Pack”-movie Pretty in Pink (1986) with the horror/torture movie with comedy elements The Loved Ones (2009) directed by Sean Byrne – two examples of female desire as imagined by male writers.

Pretty in Pink: Prom and female heterosexual desire economized

In Pretty in Pink we follow Andie Walsh, a white working class high school student, whose symbolic entrance into upper class is negotiated in a romantic Cinderella narrative. As the story unfolds it becomes evident that Andie is motivated by economic desire that she can only satisfy through a makeover. In this process she turns from quite independent but socially marginalized teenager to coupled with a “richie” but silenced.

Due to a scholarship Andie attends a private high school and falls for yuppie Blane. The two start dating despite Andie’s geekish best friend Duckie (also a so called “mutant” e.g. working class member), who follows her around quite intrusively and whose love for her is unrequited since she doesn’t show any romantic interest in him. Duckie even warns Andie of the potential sexual motives Blane might have: “He is gonna use your ass and gonna throw you away!” But regardless of any peer skepticism, Andie assumes that hating people because of their money would be some kind of reversed injustice.

Pretty in Pink: Duckie is no object of Andie’s desire
Duckie is no object of Andie’s desire

 

After a disastrous date, where Blane’s rich friends humiliated Andie at a party, Blane asks Andie to go to prom with him. This important question leaves Andie utterly speechless and she kisses Blane right away in front of his BMW. Only as soon as she enters her house she screams out loud and tells her father, “I can’t believe it happened!” As if Andie is not entitled to have sexual feelings on her own, she uses a passive voice without seeming to be involved in any action. Being asked to prom and the couple’s first kiss intermingle to a single event that alludes to the sexualization of prom.

But in due course Blane stops answering Andie’s calls and freezes her off because of peer pressure and out of his own doubt in the relationship. After dramatic events, Andie decides to go to prom nonetheless to prove that “they didn’t break” her. Moreover Andie bonds with her elder friend Iona, a strong and creative record store manager, who advises Andie to go to prom in the first place when she questions the necessity of it being a “stupid tradition.” Iona stresses it would be essential in later life: “It was the worst, but it’s supposed to be, you know, you have to go.”

Lamenting her wasted creative talents, Iona asks Andy in another situation, “I am good in bed, should I be a whore?” It becomes clear that sexual abilities are to remain outside the realm of economic usability. In the course of events Iona goes through a transformation from punkish and outstanding to “mom-ish” in order to progress in her own cross-class relationship. When she is dating a “yuppie” she aligns the criteria for her happiness: “He is so nice, he is employed, he is heterosexual.”

Pretty in Pink: Andie cares for her part-time working father
Andie cares for her part-time working father

 

The desired combination of nice/employed/heterosexual is combined with a degrading of working class masculinities in homophobic modes as inefficient and therefore undesirable throughout the movie–Andie’s father, who hangs around the house during the day, is taken care of by Andie herself as he doesn’t get over the abandonment by her mother; Duckie, who doesn’t seem to be interested in finishing high school is mistaken for a male sex worker in one scene (the character’s sexual orientation/gender is still speculated on as supposedly “effeminate” or “gay”). Iona has an argument with her obviously incapable partner who demands not only house-work and sex but also transportation services and even Blane is “degraded” by his upper class friends as a “faggot” when seen with Andie.

Not so decent Benny and Steff
Not-so-decent Benny and Steff

 

Andie’s sexually decent behavior is contrasted by upper class Benny, who is obviously sexually active and in one scene tells her boyfriend Steff that she would be “one more step away from virginity” for which he labels her a “slut.” Andie’s character, however, doesn’t seem to be sexually motivated at any time and instead rather marked by protestant chastity. Female sexual desire is not absent here; it is told as economized and rationalized desire that can be satisfied through expressive self-entrepreneurship and working – even on a prom dress. Material wealth as represented here is therefore fetishized but corrected in its moral degeneration via Andie’s display of female sexual decency and DIY diligence. In order for her not to be labeled a “slut,” she cannot display sexual agency.

Andie's father gives her a pink prom dress
Andie’s father gives her a pink prom dress

 

In the end Andie creates herself an outfit out of two pink prom dresses–one of them given to her by her father, the other one being her friend Iona’s old dress. After days of working Andie goes to prom alone where she is met by Duckie and they walk in together as friends. As soon as Blane spots Andie he comes along and tells her he would’ve always believed in her whereas she didn’t believe in him. (Which is pretty implausible considering his behavior.) With Duckie’s approval, Andie finally follows Blane to the outside parking lot without many words. The movie ends with their final uniting kiss.

Final kiss
Final kiss

 

Prom and the monstrosity of female sexual desire: The Loved Ones

The Loved Ones (1999) could have been the ultimate feminist revenge-fantasy I have long craved. I imagined the film to be an utopist notion against the always similar plot-narrative of prom night as a heterosexist spectacle of the male desire. The heroine does not transform into a beautiful “swan,” the mandatory happy ending does not occur, and the anticipated couple does not find each other. Instead, a nerd-stereotyped boy experiences in a subplot that the reality of actually going to prom with the female object of desire is sad, awkward, and leaves a hollow feeling.

The film torpedoes the classical structure of the prom night narrative from the beginning: The female main character Lola, who is orchestrated to appear as unimposing and weird in her first scene, asks her crush, the melancholic school-bad boy Brent, to the ball herself. She is active and autonomous and waiting for a boy to ask her seems not to be an option. After Brent rejects her request, she secretly observes him having oral sex with his girlfriend in a car. Lola’s face is rigid and empty. In the next scene we find her sitting in her pink-colored room, gluing Brent’s yearbook-picture into her scrapbook. She even paints a heart around his face. While doing this Lola listens to a song of the singer/songwriter Kasey Chambers, which might become the hymn of the next generation of sad teenage girls: “Am I not pretty enough? Is my heart still broken? […] Why do you see right through me?”

One finally realizes that this self-dramatization as the sad outsider girl is just a performance when her father gives her a pink dress with matching shoes as a present. Unlike in Pretty in Pink, the dress scene takes places in a very early stage of the storyline, but it’s also one of the most important scenes of all. Thrilled Lola tries on the dress in front of her mirror, while her father – whom she tells to stay – watches her from the door. This two-sided lustful action, posing and watching, marks Lola via the insinuation of father-daughter incest, one of the most far-reaching narrative taboos, as sexually monstrous.

 

The moment of transformation: Lola and her dress
The moment of transformation: Lola and her dress

 

The pink dress simultaneously initiates her transformation: Lola shifts to a bloody prom queen and anti-heroine who acts out sadistic desires in a series of violent acts against Brent’s body. They are all bizarre persiflages of prom rituals. She carves her initials into Brent’s chest, after the obligatory posing and picture-taking and pretends to dance with the enamored boy, whose feet are nailed to the floor while her father showers them in glitter.

Lola experiences lust through torture
Lola experiences lust through torture

 

These tableau viands of violence begin with the annexation of Brent: The drugged and kidnapped boy wakes up wearing a smoking jacket in a kitchen tied to a chair. The room is decorated with balloons, there’s even a disco ball at the ceiling. Lola moves close and injects him something that suppresses his ability to talk. Brent, by the way the actual hero of the story, becomes a victim; he has to remain silent and subject to Lola’s haphazard power. This increases Lola’s lust and her desire to put him at the center of her enactments of torture, pain, and degradation.

A grotesque version of prom night pictures
A grotesque version of prom night pictures

 

Unfortunately this is not about taking revenge for all the rejected high school girls. The film points out clearly that father and daughter have done this before and that especially Lola is a sheer monster. Not because her violence seems to have no boundaries–Lola is finally portrayed as completely monstrous when she becomes less sexually devoted to Brent, who starts to resist her. In the course of them dancing together, she admits to her overwhelmed father: “Your are the prince, that’s why I can’t find what I want. It’s you, it has always been you, Daddy.” The indicated kiss between them is stopped by Brent, who escapes and kills Lola’s father, what finally marks the restoration of sexual normativity and social order respectively.

Monstrous desire: Lola and her father
Monstrous desire: Lola and her father

 

In the end Lola represents abnormity, because she has violently abandoned her family. She not only cut the ties to her mother, like Andie does in Pretty in Pink, she also lobotomized and killed her. Lola’s sexual desire toward her father led to his death by Brent’s hand. When she is eventually killed by Brent and his girlfriend, it seems like the only plausible solution: disappointment. Not only is The Loved Ones not a feminist film, it’s also not a revenge-fantasy or even a film about a cool, crazed, pink female killer. It’s about a path of ordeals of a young man, who finds – after rightfully killing his sexually deviant female torturer – his long lost place in society with a more or less silent girlfriend.

 


Steffen Loick is doing his PhD on the relationship between gender identity and body optimation at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, German. Ingrid Bettwieser just finished school and works as an extracurricular educator at a memorial in Berlin, Germany.

Catherine Breillat’s Transfigurative Female Gaze

The grotesque is enmeshed with sexual pleasure and violent death–all images and storylines that patriarchal cultures have been weaving together for centuries. A woman’s sexual desire and her actions stemming from those desires are often presented as horrifying and punishable: “unwatchable.” Much of what Breillat shows supports the reality that female sexual desire is real, and the societies in which we must function are at best, uncomfortable with that desire, and at worst, violently hostile.

Written by Leigh Kolb as part of our theme week on Representations of Female Sexual Desire.

“… a person who can find the transfiguration of sex in her life is no longer a person who can be directed.”

– Catherine Breillat

French filmmaker Catherine Breillat has spent her career exploring female sexuality. She hasn’t done so in a comfortable, easy way. When The Woman says to The Man, “Watch me where I’m unwatchable” in Anatomy of Hell, this could very well be Breillat’s message to her audiences as she presents female desire in harsh, jarring narratives that completely subvert the male gaze.

Normally, if we talk about subverting the male gaze and focusing on the female gaze in film, it’s cause for celebration. Finally! We scream. We’re coming!

Breillat’s female gaze is different, though. It pushes us to places of complete discomfort and sometimes disgust, and forces and challenges us to think about the deeply twisted cultural expectations surrounding women and sex.

Sometimes a shock is what it takes to bring us to places of transfiguration. We can’t smoothly transition to the female gaze after centuries of being surrounded and objectified by the male gaze. Breillat delivers shock after shock that serve to transfigure how we see ourselves and our culture. This isn’t comfortable, but it’s powerful.

The grotesque is enmeshed with sexual pleasure and violent death–all images and storylines that patriarchal cultures have been weaving together for centuries. A woman’s sexual desire and her actions stemming from those desires are often presented as horrifying and punishable: “unwatchable.” Much of what Breillat shows supports the reality that female sexual desire is real, and the societies in which we must function are at best, uncomfortable with that desire, and at worst, violently hostile.

A Real Young Girl (Une vraie jeune fille)
A Real Young Girl (Une vraie jeune fille)

 

Breillat’s first film, based off her novel, Le Soupirail, was A Real Young Girl (Une vraie jeune fille). Produced in 1976, it was quickly banned and wasn’t released in France until 1999. The film centers around 14-year-old Alice, who is discovering and attempting to navigate her sexual awakening. A Real Young Girl is avant-garde puberty.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4FXxS9VevE”]

There are moments in the film that are confusing and grotesque (most notably one of her fantasies that involves barbed wire and a ripped-up earthworm). While I found some of these scenes disturbing, I like being disturbed. The worm scene horrified me at first, but then I realized that when I was in high school, the hit teen comedy involved a dude literally fucking a pie. Teenage sexuality is weird and when we are faced with a teen girl’s sexuality–something we are not used to seeing (unless she is a sexual object)–in all of its confusion and vacillation between intense desire and disgust, we are uncomfortable. Breillat wants us to be uncomfortable; she wants to push us to the edge to that visceral experience that will challenge how we see both female sexuality and film depictions of female sexuality.

Fat_Girl_poster
Fat Girl (À ma sœur!)

 

Fat Girl (À ma sœur!), released in 2001, follows two sisters–Elena, 15, and Anaïs, 12–as they vacation with their parents. Elena is conventionally beautiful, and while she likes boys and has experimented sexually, she wants to remain a virgin until she’s with someone who “loves” her. She quickly develops a relationship with a young man who is frustrated with her desire to not have sex. He pressures her into anal sex (which hurts her), tries to force her to have oral sex, and finally convinces her he loves her and she has sex with him. In all of these instances, Anaïs is in the room–feigning sleep, asking them to stop, or, when they finally have sex, crying.

Anaïs’s views on sex are very different than Elena’s. She is starting to feel sexual–she’s not a teenager yet, but she’s not a child. Her desires range from banana splits to having sex just to get it over with. She has sexual desires, and her responses to Elena’s sexual experiences show both naiveté and jealousy. Their ages, their exterior looks, their sexual experiences (or lack thereof) all inform Breillat’s treatment of the sisters’ relationship with one another, with their own burgeoning sexuality, and with a culture that insists on sexualizing Elena and ignoring Anaïs. Their desires–Elena as internalized (and then disappointed) object, Anaïs as frustrated subject–are common categories for adolescent girls to fall into.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHRJRbM2EAg”]

Fat Girl (read Breillat’s commentary on the title here) is disturbing in its depictions of some of Elena and Anaïs’s experiences. However, the end of the film is shocking and violent. After Elena and her mother are brutally killed at a rest stop, the murderer rapes Anaïs in the woods. The next morning, she tells the police she wasn’t raped, and she looks at the camera, in an ending that clearly reflects The 400 Blows. Like the Truffaut classic, we are saddened and disturbed at the life trajectory of our young protagonists, and have no idea where their lives will go from here. We just have a frozen young face staring at us, implicating us in their fate.

Anaïs, at the end, seems to embrace her rape (as her meaningless loss of virginity that she wanted) and deny its violence. This is made even more traumatic since her rapist murdered her mother and sister (her sister who had just become sexually active, and her mother who wanted to punish her for it).

The message here is that girls cannot win. A patriarchal culture–full of boys who think they’re entitled to sex and men who violently rape and kill women–cares little for female desire and agency. This world is a dangerous place for girls. This world treats pretty girls like objects, and unpretty girls like nothing. Their desires are complicated and real, but are eclipsed by toxic masculinity.

Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie de l'enfer)
Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie de l’enfer)

 

Released in 2004, Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie De L’Enfer) is a film that pulls together pornography, misogyny, and female sexuality in a way that shocks and disgusts (male reviewers in particular wrote scathing, condescending reviews of the film). The Woman visits a gay bar and attempts suicide in the bathroom–she is tired of being a woman and being hated by men, and surmises that gay men hate women the most. The Man, however, saves her and she offers to pay him to stay in her home for four days to “watch her where she is unwatchable.” What follows is, for some viewers, unwatchable.

The Woman is naked for most of the film (a body double is used for vaginal shots), and The Man is played by an Italian porn star. His homosexuality serves to completely upend the typical male gaze. He’s disgusted by much of what he’s seeing and experiencing, and the understanding that this primal, visceral, shocking female desire is at the focus of the film (and has absolutely nothing to do with male desire) reflects a culture that typically focuses only on the male gaze and male pleasure. In this culture, female sexuality isn’t a consideration.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbFSZiT2-a4″]

When The Man drinks a glass of water with a used-tampon teabag, certainly the audience is meant to feel disgust. Perhaps some audience members actually gagged at the sight. How many scenes, however, in porn (explicitly) or mainstream film (suggested), feature women swallowing male excretions? Do we blink? Or is it just part of what we expect it means to be a heterosexual woman?

Jamie Russell astutely observes at the BBC, “For all the shocks, though, this is a stoically serious movie: it’s anti-porn, a transgressive sex movie that’s not against pornography but against the (male-dominated) objectification of women’s bodies.”

Breillat’s complete oeuvre (which certainly demands our attention beyond these three films) delivers continually shocking treatment of female sexuality presented though the female gaze. She wants us to be uncomfortable and to be constantly questioning both representations of female desire and our responses to those representations, and how all of it is shaped by a religious, patriarchal culture.

In an interview with The Guardian, Breillat articulated that her female gaze should directly threaten the male gaze, and that men should examine their own sexuality in the face of female desire:

“It’s a joke – if men can’t desire liberated women, then tough. Does it mean they can only desire a slave? Men need to question the roots of their own desire. Why is it that historically men have this need to deny women to be able to desire them?”

The reporter points out that Breillat had said “that censorship was a male pre-occupation, and that the X certificate was linked to the X chromosome,” and Breillat goes on to discuss the religious and patriarchal reasons to censor female desire, which is directly connected to keeping power away from women.

Breillat’s 1999 Romance was originally given an X rating (or banned in some countries). At Senses of Cinema, Brian Price notes that “Breillat’s statement was echoed in the French poster for the film, which features a naked woman with her hand between her legs. A large red X is printed across the image, thus revealing the source of the trouble: a woman in touch with her own sense of sexual pleasure.”

Romance
Romance

 

And that’s always the problem, isn’t it? Breillat’s work pushes boundaries and forces us to live in the intense intimacy and discomfort of a female gaze that we are unused to due to social oppression of women and women’s sexuality (at the hands of patriarchal religious and government systems). The literal and figurative red X over Breillat’s work–and female sexuality–needs to be stripped away to reveal what’s underneath–which isn’t always pretty.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpH-V6kkOwI”]

___________________________

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

An Early Take Down of Nice Guys in ‘Broadcast News’

At the time of its release, ‘Broadcast News’ was lauded as feminist for depicting talented, authoritative, driven career women while only mildly pathologizing their dedication to their work. Sure, Jane Craig takes a few minutes out of her busy schedule every day to privately sob, and her personal life is inextricably tied to her work life, but the film does not judge or punish her for her priorities.

But there’s more to ‘Broadcast News’ feminism than women in the workplace. It also presents an ahead-of-its time criticism of the Nice Guy™ phenomenon.

The newsroom of 'Broadcast News'
The newsroom of Broadcast News

Growing up, I wanted to grow up to be a nosy reporter. I blame His Girl Friday, Lois Lane, and to a lesser extent, Broadcast News. I wanted to be a fast-talking, four-steps-ahead, take-charge champion of the truth and master of storytelling, just like Holly Hunter’s Jane Craig. That was my childhood proto-feminist power fantasy.

Revisiting the film as an adult, I expected Broadcast News feminism to feel somewhat dated, even though it is less than 30 years old, just barely predating the swell of Third Wave feminism.

Holly Hunter as Jane Craig
Holly Hunter as Jane Craig

At the time of its release, Broadcast News was lauded as feminist for depicting talented, authoritative, driven career women while only mildly pathologizing their dedication to their work. Sure, Jane Craig takes a few minutes out of her busy schedule every day to privately sob, and her personal life is inextricably tied to her work life, but the film does not judge or punish her for her priorities.

But there’s more to Broadcast News‘ feminism than women in the workplace. It also presents an ahead-of-its time criticism of the Nice Guy™ phenomenon.

Nice Guy Aaron (Albert Brooks)
Nice Guy Aaron (Albert Brooks)

Jane’s colleague and best friend Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) is a Nice Guy™. And he’s one of the worst kinds of Nice Guys. On top of the entitlement and resentfulness and extreme self-centeredness, he’s not even remotely nice. He’s sometimes astonishingly mean, especially to Jane, whenever she dares to choose another man over him, personally and/or professionally.

The “Unworthy Jerk” in this case is Tom Grunick (William Hurt), a handsome but dim newscaster being groomed for lead anchor. To his credit, Tom is upfront that he’s uninformed and relatively unintelligent, and seeks Jane’s help because he wants to do better. And to Jane’s credit, she tells him flat-out that she doesn’t have the time to teach him “remedial reporting,” in spite of her attraction to him.

Despite his intellectual shortcomings, Tom is talented on camera, and tries to be a better newsman. He produces a powerful (although it will be revealed, fatally flawed) segment on date rape (which, in perhaps his worst moment, Aaron loudly dismisses as a fluff piece, declaring “you really blew the lid off nookie.” Nice Guys notoriously and dangerously dismiss rape, so this is a crucial detail).

Jane yields to her attraction to Tom as he reveals his competence. When he’s placed as last-minute lead anchor in a breaking news update, Jane is terrified he won’t be mentally up to snuff. But he effortlessly relays the information Jane feeds him through his earpiece and proves his strong presence on camera.

Slick but stupid Tom (William Hurt)
Slick but stupid Tom (William Hurt)

Tom says their interplay was like “great sex,” and it seems they are headed for the real thing. But Jane misses the opportunity when she stops to check in on Aaron while he bitterly indulges in a spectacular bender. I enjoyed seeing that side of the “friendzone” depicted: the actual friendship that goes unacknowledged because the Nice Guy is being deprived the sex he “deserves.” As toxic as their relationship ultimately is, Aaron is Jane’s closest friend, and she shows him a lot of care and support. And he’s perpetually mean and judgmental, under the guise of wanting the best for her. But when he finally confesses his love and she rejects him, he cruelly wishes her a lifetime of loneliness while he finds his happy ending.

Jane and Aaron in the Friendzone
Jane and Aaron in the Friendzone

Aaron also pettily reveals that Tom unethically re-shot a cutaway to his faked on-camera tears in his date rape piece, prompting Jane to dump him. It’s a relief to the viewer; Tom is ultimately too hollow a person and Jane will never truly respect him, even without this egregious incident focusing her disdain. I hate to agree with Aaron, but Tom is just not good enough for her.. And it is nice that Broadcast News racks up some more proto-feminist points with the “I choose me” resolution to its love triangle.

The film’s epilogue does present some problems. Several years later, we see Aaron did get his happy ending with a wife and adorable child, even though he’s now working in the meager Portland market. Tom has followed his upward career trajectory to the lead anchor position and is engaged to a beautiful blonde. Jane is in the beginning of a relationship, but it may be threatened by her true love, her job, as she moves to New York for a major promotion. I’m relieved Future Jane isn’t a lonely spinster suffering for her choices, but the relationship disparity still feels pointed. And Aaron’s happy ending suggests he’s meant to be a more sympathetic character than he seems to a feminist watching this film in 2014.

But this is no (500) Days of Summer. Even if there is some sympathy for Aaron, there’s also plenty of criticism of his attitudes, and next to none for Jane for not returning his affections. We’re meant to question how much Jane puts into their friendship because of the negative effects on her life, not because it is “unfair” to Aaron. The film pointedly values Jane’s emotional needs more than Aaron ever will, despite his declarations of love. For a film pushing 30 years old, Broadcast News offers quite the nuanced deconstruction of the Nice Guy™ trope.

 


Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who counts the theme song scene in this movie as one of the greatest moments in the history of film. 

Aria and Ezra’s Problematic Relationship on ‘Pretty Little Liars’

One big problem with how this relationship is portrayed, especially its beginnings, is that it feeds into the mythology that teenage girls are temptresses who seek out older men and seduce them, applying pressure until these helpless men give in against their better judgement. This mythology has real world implications.

Spoiler Warning

The relationsip between Aria and Ezra is established in the pilot episode of Pretty Little Liars. At the beginning, I think the relationship very much represents the ultimate realization of the school girl fantasy that the older guy/teacher/pop-star that you are hopelessly crushing on will see you. Not just notice that you exist but see you for who you really are. Someone who is “different” from all those other girls, someone who is not just a child but a whole person.

1114660_1347107871602_full

 

 

While Spencer considers herself to be the most mature of the Liars, it is Aria’s relationship that is the least like most high school relationships. She and Ezra at times behave like a young married couple. She makes him tea before he goes to work, and they stay in and watch classic movies. Their problems tend to be driven by external factors, Ezra’s mother wanting him to make an appropriate match, Ezra finding out he has a child. these are challenges that we expect to see in a relationship between people in their 20s and of course Ezra  IS in his 20s.

Initially their story follows a fairly well-trodden arc when it comes to older-guy younger-girl relationships. They run into each other at a cafe and get to talking. Ezra assumes she is in college and she does nothing to dissuade those assumptions. They end up kissing in a toilet. Later on in that same episode Ezra finds out pretty abruptly that Aria is only 16 when he turns out to be teaching her English class. He makes out that he wants to do the right thing and says they can’t see each other anymore. She claims that  they have a special connection and is deeply disappointing with his decisions. However he reneges when Aria is sad and kisses her deeply, re-establishing their relationship.

ezra-birthday

Generally Ezra’s interest in Aria is presented as fairly unproblematic. Aria’s parents react really badly initially, and they are both conscious that if the truth comes out the consequences could be dire. A fact that doesn’t come up till season four when Ezra returns to teach at Rosewood, is that in Pennsylvania where the show is set, while  the age of consent is technically 16  if  the minor is under the age of 18, the adult can be charged with “Corruption of a Minor,” a  misdemeanor offence,  and if the adult is in a position of power (teacher, clergy, or police for example) it is a felony.

In one scene Aria imagines what would happen if A leaked evidence of the relationship to the school administration and the end result is that Ezra is arrested and ends up in jail. However these appear  to be minor intrusions into their happy life of domestic bliss. Under pressure from their daughter, Aria’s parents become tacitly permissive of the relationship and they manage to avoid any problems with the school administration despite sometimes not being very circumspect on the school grounds. Ezra considers it prudent to leave his position at Rosewood High and moves on to teaching at the local college. He ends up getting fired from there in a last ditch endeavor by Aria’s father to get him to stop seeing his daughter.

The relationship lives in this sort of netherworld where it is both seen as illicit but also fundamentally acceptable because they are in love with each other and that has to mean something. While Aria’s parents react badly the question of why Ezra, a college-educated man in his 20s is attracted to and in love with Aria, a 16-year-old high school girl, the power differential between them is never ever addressed. The subtext that we are meant to swallow is that it is because Aria is exceptional, she is mature and amazing. One of the problems with this though, is that this perception of Aria doesn’t really jive with the many poor decisions she makes on the show that are pretty understandable in a teenage girl.

One big problem with how  this relationship is portrayed, especially its beginnings, is that it feeds into the mythology that teenage girls are temptresses who seek out older men and seduce them, applying pressure until these helpless men give in against their better judgement. This mythology has real world implications. A tragic example of this is the case of Stacey Dean Rambold, who was convicted with raping one of his 14-year-old students repeatedly but only given a 30-day sentence because he believed that  she was “older than her chronological age” and was “as much in control of the situation” as the man who raped her. The judge has since been censured but, this should never have happened in the first place.  Rambold’s victim has since committed suicide in the aftermath of the case.

One could argue that for much of their relationship Ezra is not actually Aria’s teacher; they didn’t meet in that context and so the power differential is not really an issue. I do not believe that large gaps in relationships are intrinsically negative, so if you take the teacher part out of the equation does that make it less problematic? I’m not sure. I don’t want to deny Aria’s agency as a young woman but I still think we would have to question why Ezra would want to have a relationship with someone so young, It would be a little different if he was a 35-year-old interested in a 23-year-old because adolescence is a very difficult time.

 

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The whole thing is made very (even more?) creepy in season four when it is revealed to us that Ezra knew who Aria was from the very beginning. He was aware of her age, he was aware that she was a student at the high school he was going to teach at, and he was aware of her relationship with Alison. So Ezra knowingly committed a felony in order to gain insight into Alison and her friends for his book – at least this is what he claims. He is effectively a stalker who manages to convince Aria that they have a very special relationship. He uses his prior knowledge of her to manipulate her. This pretty much sinks the final nail into the coffin on this relationship with me. I think overall I come down on the side that the Aria/Ezra relationship is highly problematic and I am interested to see how the show goes on to handle these new revelations about him.

 

pllezria

 

 


Gaayathri Nair is currently living and writing in Auckland, New Zealand. You can find more of her work at her blog A Human Story and tweet her @A_Gaayathri.

Joss Whedon’s Indie Film ‘In Your Eyes’ Disappoints

Though beautifully shot with surprising and genuine performances, Joss Whedon’s ‘In Your Eyes’ disappoints with its lazy storytelling and ultimately trite plotline.

In Your Eyes Poster

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.

As a dedicated fan of much of writer/director Joss Whedon‘s work (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Cabin in the Woods, and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog to name a few), I looked forward to watching Whedon’s latest film: Vimeo’s video on demand indie flick In Your Eyes. The film is a supernatural love story, featuring a man (Dylan) and woman (Becky) who live on opposite sides of the country and discover they’ve been psychically linked since adolescence when Becky had a sledding accident.

Sledding
Young Becky steels herself to face a fearful, snowy descent on her sled

 

In Your Eyes is beautifully shot with rich colors that starkly contrast Dylan’s arid New Mexico home with Becky’s snowy New Hampshire location. Not only that, but I enjoyed the hip, indie soundtrack, featuring songs from Iron & Wine, Santigold, and The Lumineers (among others). The concept of having a couple telepathically fall in love when separated by great distances poses unique challenges to filming, and those were all handled surprisingly well: mainly the conceit of the characters seeming to carry on conversations with and by themselves while evincing chemistry and a growing affection. This is the equivalent of green screen acting where the performers can’t feed the scene with one another’s delivery or energy. Unlike, say, the new Star Wars trilogy where all the acting was wooden (in part) because of the green screen challenge, In Your Eyes managed to convey a warmth and liveliness to Becky and Dylan’s interactions that are missing from the flatness of their real-life encounters with others in their day-to-day lives.

Through Dylan's eyes, Becky watches a breathtaking New Mexico sunset.
Through Dylan’s eyes, Becky watches a breathtaking New Mexico sunset.

 

Interestingly, the vibrancy of Becky and Dylan’s love brings these two oft misunderstood loners together but further isolates them from the outside world. Though both characters evolve as a result of this new intimacy, we find them even further withdrawing from the potential for interdependency in aspects of their “real” lives like work, marriage, and social interactions. Neither of them are happy with their lives, but using a secret, long-distance romance and fantasies of escape as lifelines are not particularly healthy or sustainable solutions. As a writer, I also find this to be lazy storytelling. So many scenes are of our lead characters alone in rooms talking to themselves. Not only that, but the more interesting story is what life looks like once Becky and Dylan don’t have the obstacles of distance and unhappy lives between them. Do they integrate better into the world as a unit? Do they continue to feel compelled to speak to each other telepathically all day, every day if they see each other daily? Is this connection all it really takes to heal each other them? We’ll never know.

Dylan sabotages a date as he telepathically communicates with Becky
Dylan sabotages a date because he’s busy telepathically communicating with Becky

 

Speaking of lazy storytelling, the psychic premise of In Your Eyes is never fully explored. Why are these two linked? Does this make them soulmates? Do they have other yet undiscovered abilities? Are there others like them in the world? Even the boundaries of their telepathic link are haphazardly explained. For example, we learn that they can hear, smell, and feel things in each other’s environments (as evinced in an awkward mutual masturbation session), but can they physically control things in each other’s environments, too? Does distance matter, i.e. does their communication get stronger when they’re closer and fainter when they’re further apart? Not only that, but Dylan and Becky are simply not that curious for answers. If I discovered a psychic link between myself and a stranger across the country, you can bet your ass I’d be obsessed with understanding the why and how of it.

Becky's piss-poor friend thinks her isolation is due to an affair
Becky’s piss-poor friend thinks her isolation is due to an affair

 

My final and greatest critique of In Your Eyes is how damned trite the story is at its core. When you take away the gimmick of the unexplained and unexplored psychic connection, we have a pretty tame hetero, long-distance love story about two white people who conform to traditional gender roles. Dylan actually hops a plane and ends up in a standard car chase with the cops because he’s white knight’ing it up, on a mission to rescue Becky, the imprisoned/institutionalized damsel in distress. Frankly, that’s boring and uninspired. Simply reversing the gender roles, making Becky the ex-con and Dylan the kept trophy spouse, would have made this story more compelling. I’ve come to expect a lot more from Joss Whedon. At the very least, I expect him to have a more racially diverse cast, amazing dialogue that delights, plotlines that subvert expectations, and, most importantly, empowered female characters.

 


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

Apparently Suicide and AIDS are Real Problems in the Vampire Community: ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’

‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ is vampire romance for grown-ups. It’s the rare vampire film that tries to convey what it would actually mean to live for centuries, questioning the world around you and turning your nose up at everything human and mortal. The titular lovers here are shadowy figures lurking just on the edge of history, indulging in a tortured and eternal love, more believable and sexual than any of the recent rash of tween vampire lore.

The film poster for Only Lovers Left Alive
The film poster for Only Lovers Left Alive

 

Only Lovers Left Alive is vampire romance for grown-ups. It’s the rare vampire film that tries to convey what it would actually mean to live for centuries, questioning the world around you and turning your nose up at everything human and mortal. The story spins out in an intoxicating swirl of music and high-culture; at the centre of it, a couple who can’t live without each other but don’t live together any longer. The titular lovers are shadowy figures lurking just on the edge of history, indulging in a tortured and eternal love, more believable and sexual than any of the recent rash of tween vampire lore.

The film takes ideas we’ve seen in films like Interview with a Vampire , Let The Right One In and Byzantium, and adds commentary on our modern world. What would an elegant immortal being who’s seen it all think of our quick consumer culture and digital devices that allow us to feel to connected to people continents away.

Plus, answers to the question many have wondered. What would vampires think of iPhones? Of Techno-music and videos on Youtube?

Sure to be a cult fav, Only Lovers Left Alive is dark and decadent, saturated by haunting rock music and an unshakeable air of impending danger. Indie-hero Jim Jarmusch wrote and directed this vampire tale, pumped full of wry, intelligent humor and some delightfully silly historical references with a stylized production as rich and decadent as it’s story. The Palm d’Or nominated film chronicles the reunion Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton), beautiful vampires who have been lovers for centuries and married several times. Recently, they have been living apart: him in a crumbling house on the outskirts of Detroit, her, swathed in silks in Tangiers.

 

A picture taken of Adam and Eve the third time they got married. Eve remarks: “We looked so young”
A picture taken of Adam and Eve the third time they got married. Eve remarks: “We looked so young”

 

Adam is your basic emo-rocker. He’s got the long, unwashed hair, shirts unbuttoned to his navel and the distaste selling out, but underneath, he has the face and sickly-sexual comportment of a romantic poet. Isolated in a town where no one seems to live anymore, he spends his days playing guitar and composing music he isn’t ready to show anyone. He only leaves his home to procure blood for a local hospital, where he struggles to control his thirst around bleeding patients. He relies on Ian (Anton Yelchin) to do errands, bringing him instruments and keeping the fans away. As the story begins, he is considering killing himself and asks Ian to bring him a wooden bullet.

Meanwhile, Eve is an ultra-sophisticated vaguely European jet-setter, drawn to exotic locals and excited by life. While Adam has his music, Eve has literature. In a scene any book lover would adore, she packs suitcases full of books for a visit to Detroit. She gazes over the texts, some medieval with woodcut illustrations, some in ancient languages, some modern, her faces enraptured at the beauty she sees. Her close confidant is Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt), the real author of Shakespeare’s plays, he keeps a picture of the bard on his wall to throw knives at.

It’s hard to imagine better actors for the lead roles. Swinton and Hiddleston both appear uncanny and otherworldly, in appearance, in the way they carry themselves and in the way they find they inhabit the film’s world, that they seem like members of some unknown species that includes only each other. Swinton in particular has never looks less human, she wanders around Tangiers like some strange white unicorn trying to take on human form.

It is perhaps too on the nose that they are Adam and Eve, but the names highlight the connection between them. They have a mystical connection that draw them to each other, highlighted by Adam playing guitar in Detroit while Eve dances in Tangiers as if she can hear it. Though they are not the first man and woman, through history they seem to be the only couple that always endures, their relationship only thing that will live on as empires come and go.

 

Adam and Eve look like an ordinary couple, happy to be together
Adam and Eve look like an ordinary couple, happy to be together

 

Adam and Eve are well-developed, each with their own separate but intertwining lives, passions and histories. They seem remarkably real for centuries old vampires, You can easily imagine them roaming around in the dark corners of a dying city. Though they live separate lives much of time, there is a magnetism that pulls them together when they reunite, seeming as if they each want to consume the other, breathe in their air and connect by running their hands along each other’s bodies just to experiences and remember each other. Their intimacy is tasteful and personal, suggesting that on top of sexual attraction, they just want to be near each other and as content to lie beside each other nude as they are to play chess together and eat blood popsicles.

It’s a very romantic tale, both in the modern sense and in poetic tradition. For all his protests, Adam is a romantic hero, lost in a desolate wasteland that mirrors the ravages of his soul. He has isolated himself in the dying city of Detroit, whose loss of the auto industry has made it a virtual ghost town. When Eve visits, he takes her on a tour of its wilderness, showing her where people used to live, taking her to an old gilded theatre falling into ruins. At home, his wall is covered in photographs and portraits of the dead luminaries he has known, so he can never forgot the temporary nature of human life, passing him by.

He is disillusioned with musicians and his old heroes, the scientists, dead and destroyed by the cultures around them. He sees science as destroying  human lives, contaminating water with chemicals and blood with diseases and long ago stopped considering himself part of this humanity. He calls humans zombies and decides he can’t be around them anymore, disgusted by  their fears of their own imaginations.

Eve is the light to Adam’s darkness, all in white while he’s always in black, yet remains a realistic character because of implied darkness of her own. Swinton plays Eve like an ethereal vision who can’t escape the weight on her shoulders, she always seems  struggling to stay afloat. It is this weight and her passionate love for culture, the books she reads through while packing, the Shakespeare volume she sighs after finishing and the rapturous dancing and yen to explore, that keeps her from being a mere servant to Adam’s moods. Eve is so well in synch with the world, that she has slight psychic senses, able to intuit the age of a guitar just by touching it and maintaining a deep connection to the moon. She believes in living and experiencing as much as possible of each era that passes by. THough she is implied to be older than Adam, she is still able to appreciate lie and wax poetic about the lights and color, the dancing and friendship that are all part of the experience.

From her point of view, Adam’s depression is a waste, so she devotes herself to bringing him back into the world, reassuring him that even if the world is destroyed for humans, they’ll still be around. She resents that he treats her like a part in his story, a means to the end, rather than a real person to rely on when in times of need. She feels taken for granted like, he sees her as another one of the transitory zombies who will come into his life and leave it. Despite the specific references to thing like immortality, it’s not unlike the typical conversation between an ordinary couple in any other movies. The supernatural elements added to what is essentially a woman trying to help her depressed partner, serve to make the story larger in scope, more evocative of gothic conventions and tortured love and dangerous.

 

Adam examines a guitar, showcasing his passion for music
Adam examines a guitar, showcasing his passion for music

 

Jarmusch skillfully integrates modern technology into their ageless world experienced as just another culture’s momentary trends. He also includes references to both modern pop culture and ancient history without either seeming shoehorned in. Eve is as taken in with Jack White and David Foster Wallace as Mary Shelley and Marlowe’s ghostwritten Shakespeare plays, while Adam’s doctor disguise includes name tags like “ Dr. Faust ” and “ Dr. Caligari”.

Eve notes all the things she has been through and survived, the different cultures that seemed dangerous that she has watched die around her. She considers modern times no different, an age that any other, with its transitory values that will end and tries to enjoy our technology as part of the experience of this time and place. While Adam uses retro pieces of equipment and hooks his phone up to an ancient TV to talk, Eve is comfortable speaking on her iPhone’s Facetime and interacting with the outside world to make travel arrangements for the pair.

For all his speeches denigrating humanity, Adam has all too human concerns. He is attached to his possessions and secretive about his music, worried about it getting out before it’s ready. As a rock musician, his entire lifestyle and tortured-rocker identity is supported by human fans, ones who his complains about and just wants to leave him alone. While ethereal Eve believes in traveling light and replacing anything tangible, Adam is of the world and tied to his possessions.

 

After feeding on Ian, Ava’s teeth are extended, making her look monstrous
After feeding on Ian, Ava’s teeth are extended, making her look monstrous

 

About midway through and after a lot of anticipation, as Adam, Eve and Marlowe all had dreams about her, Eve’s sister Ava (a spacey-fairy Mia Wasikowska) arrives at Adam’s house decked out like a 60s groupie. Party girl Ava is invasive and impolite, entering uninvited, forcing her way into their dreams and into their house and to Adam’s annoyance, listening to his music without permission. There is a genuine big brother-little sister relationship between Ava and Adam, and as old as she is, she’s a teenager out to have fun, even if it means intruding on an important moment between the couple. She bounces around, jumping on the bed where the couple is sleeping, as if she is their child.

In addition, Ava is an even stronger force than Eve at drawing Adam out of himself. In one scene, Ava is enjoying a TV show that depicts Dracula dancing on psychedelic backdrops. While Eve comes and watches it with her, Adam, perpetually brooding turns off the TV and spoils their fun. In one hilarious moment, the women try to get Adam to go to a club with them. Though Adam insists he is not going to go, the next scene shows the three vamps in dark sunglasses at a hipster bar. Though meant as a joke here, his brooding can become unintentionally humorous at times.

After the night out, Ava bites Ian, killing him and destroying much of Adam’s prized possessions. Ava’s feeding off Ian is played as a clear metaphor for sex, based on the language she uses: “I didn’t mean to do it, but he was so cute. I couldn’t help myself.” It’s suggested that Ava is wild and unable to control her sexuality, and with that it mind it’s a little uncomfortable that she is berated for it. Unlike Adam and Eve, who have figured out ways of constraint, subsisting through hospitals and Marlowe’s connections, she refuses to live by a set of rules and is punished for it when Adam kicks her out of the house.

Scenes of the vampires drinking blood are shot similarly to how scenes of drug use are often filmed, with characters rising in the air and come back down, sighs of euphoria on their faces. This comparison makes a lot of sense within the film as the characters appear perpetually strung out, floating around their environs.

 

Eve enjoys a dose of blood, drugged by the drink
Eve enjoys a dose of blood, drugged by the drink

 

There’s something dream-like and hazy about the film, like the domestic drama at its core, the basic story of a depressed man and his bon vivant wife visited by her annoying sister at an inconvenient time that causes them to reassess their relationship, is filtered through the mind of someone on a bender. Blood and gore function as necessary ephemeral to a vampire tale, but are never fetishized or allowed to become too much of a focus. The film’s end utilizes feeding to solidify their bond as a couple. In the only real horror shot of the film, we see a close-up of Eve with her fangs full extended and her eyes widening, reminding us that these people are monsters.

I can see how someone might dislike the film’s pacing, as it is often slow and full of silences. Short scenes of dialogue are broken up by what seem like music videos, sequences of actors dancing, driving, pacing, wandering around the city, drinking blood and having sex, while Adam’s curls around them. But it works well, for the hazy, hallucinatory tone of the story, more about characters and feelings than plot. Silences and musical scenes give the characters time to breathe and interact on a deeper level than they could easily put into words, making them feel more alive and complete.

However, there is a certain amount of regression in the relationship between Adam and Eve, who often feel like hipster teenagers looking with distain at everyone who isn’t as cool as they are. They think music sounds best on records, refer to everyone else as zombies and have only ever been friends with people who’s names we know from out history books. At times, their namedropping can begin to feel incessant. I suppose it wouldn’t make an interesting story, but why does every immortal character in fiction travel through the important moments in history like Forest Gump?

 

All put together for a night out, the lovers are glamorous and ethereal
All put together for a night out, the lovers are glamorous and ethereal

 

Strangely, there’s no very much that happens in Only Lovers Left Alive. The only real conflict is Adam’s depression and his contempt for the people around them, who we rarely see. The characters’ fear of contaminated blood, previously a mere quirk of their universe, does become a real conflict, but only toward the end, when they is not much time left to explore it.  After much warning that Ava’s going to come and something terrible will happen, she visits for a couple night, kills Ian and is kicked out, never to be see again. Adam and Eve panic about how difficult it will be to hide the body, but accomplish the task with ease and are never caught nor in any danger. Marlowe appears only to impart wisdom, gripe about Shakespeare and die (perhaps in poor taste) of AIDS or some other blood borne disease. There’s no giant battle, no mysterious enemy lurking in the shadows, no finagling  their way around the cops and keeping their secret. Instead, it’s a lovely atmospheric meditation on romance, the passing of time, and the impermanence of cultures.

 

See also on Bitch Flicks: Guest Writer Wednesday: Melancholia, Take 2

Recommended Reading: Jim Jarmusch’s Petrified Hipness , “Only Lovers Left Alive”: Jim Jarmusch’s Boho Vampire Rhapsody

 

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

Quirky Free-Spirit or Mentally Ill?: The Mystery of ‘Barefoot’

You wouldn’t be entirely mistaken to assume ‘Barefoot’ is a light-hearted romcom centering on a free-spirited hippie who doesn’t like to wear shoes, instead of the story of a naive mental patient falling in love with an inveterate womanizer and gambler. The former certainly seems to be what the movie is trying to be.
‘Barefoot’ is emotionally manipulative, full of unchecked exploitation, sexism and ableism and worst of all, portrays a woman who supposedly has severe mental illness as something akin to a fairy tale princess.

You wouldn’t be entirely mistaken to assume Barefoot is a light-hearted romcom centering on a free-spirited hippie who doesn’t like to wear shoes, instead of the story of a naive mental patient falling in love with an inveterate womanizer and gambler. The former certainly seems to be what the movie is trying to be.

 

Jay falls for Daisy, enchanted by her unique view of the world
Jay falls for Daisy, enchanted by her unique view of the world

 

Directed by Andrew Fleming (of The Craft ) and adapted from the 2005 German film, Barfuss, Barefoot is emotionally manipulative, full of unchecked exploitation, sexism and ableism and worst of all, portrays a woman who supposedly has severe mental illness as something akin to a fairy tale princess. As Daisy Kensington, Evan Rachel Wood spends most of the movie wandering around slack-jawed and amazed by everything she encounters. She’s scared of airplane toilets, thinks driving a car gets you pregnant, is flattered to be asked to perform a hand job (“I’ve never had a job before!”), and on one occasion, asks her companion and pretend boyfriend if she can “go potty.”

Though she tells her doctor in an early scene that she hears voices, the extent of her mental instability as portrayed in the film appears to be panic attacks and extreme naivete caused by being raised in isolation, only interacting with her recently deceased mother for her entire life. Instead, she’s quirky, she knows how to dance because she watched hours of VH1 growing up, she doesn’t like to wear shoes because they hurt her feet, she has no qualms announcing at a fancy dinner, that foie gras looks like cat food. It’s no wonder, Jay Wheeler (Scott Speedman), the estranged son of a wealthy family falls in love with her. Like any manic pixie dream girl worth her salt, she makes his life better, teaches him to take responsibility for her actions and learn how to love. As a free spirit, she strips away from pretentious facade of his family’s extreme wealth and teaches them to value small moments.

 

Daisy spends most of the film wandering around amazed by everything she sees, it’s all new to her
Daisy spends most of the film wandering around amazed by everything she sees, it’s all new to her

 

And of course, right at the end of the movie, it’s revealed that Daisy isn’t crazy after all, so she and Jay can ride off into the sunset together, any complications from her total lack of knowledge of the world or of literary any other person besides him be damned. Watching it, I wasn’t sure to what degree a movie that suggests a character is mentally ill, yet portrays her illness inaccurately for most of the film is redeemed by a last minute revelation of her sanity. Indeed, the revelation comes about from an investigation of Daisy’s past, not from an analysis of her behavior.

Right from the start, Jay is always saving her. Their “meet cute” occurs when he swoops in to rescue her from an orderly who is attempting to molest her, under the pretense of a secret exam. He has no sympathy for Daisy’s innocence or the real issue of abuse suffered by powerless mental patients, instead telling her she needs to learn to take care of herself. Shell-shocked, she escapes the hospital and follows him home, already acting like he is her messiah.

But Jay’s certainly no prize. He’s on probation for assault, holds down a job as janitor at the mental hospital and regularly gives alcohol and pornography to the most catatonic and psychotic patients. He owes thousands of dollars in gambling debts and believes his only option to get the money is to attend his brother’s upcoming wedding with a serious girlfriend, so his family see he’s got his act together.

Originally, he tries to hire a stripper to pretend to be his girlfriend. He’s stunned she considers it degrading and tells him the idea of pretending to be a nurse (used as a fetish object) makes her uncomfortable. A choice quote: “You hump a pole naked for money and this makes you uncomfortable?” Throughout the film, Jay speaks to women like they are children, here insisting the stripper owes him a favor because he is a loyal patron and insinuating that she is unintelligent. After this rejection, Jay sees an opportunity in Daisy, a woman he can easily manipulate.

 

Jay dresses Daisy in revealing clothing, including ‘stripper shoes’ she can't walk in
Jay dresses Daisy in revealing clothing, including “stripper shoes” she can’t walk in

 

In the film’s world, Daisy’s mental illness gives him permission to talk to her like a child, instructing her that they’re not lying, only pretending and he’ll explain the difference to her later. He is allowed to tell her anything, ordering her to be quiet, to go to sleep, even telling her what to say and how to dress, like his doll. It seems incredibly abusive that he gives her low-cut and revealing clothes borrowed from a stripper to wear on the trip, given that she does not understand their sexual undertones and did not chose to wear them. In one scene, a maid is shown unpacking her suitcase, which included several pieces of sexy lingerie and corsets.

She has to trust him, because he knows things that she doesn’t. When he fleetingly calls her his girlfriend to explain their relationship, she takes him seriously, believing they have an actual relationship. She says it’s always been her dream to be someone’s girlfriend, something her mother told her would never happen. Note that she never refers to the dream of having him as her boyfriend, it’s all she’s ever wanted to be the object, his possession.

 

When Jay finds Daisy cleaning his parents house, he teaches her that she doesn’t have to do favors to earn love
When Jay finds Daisy cleaning his parents’ house, he teaches her that she doesn’t have to do favors to earn love

 

Later on, Jay starts to feel romantic feelings towards Daisy only after she brags about his accomplishments to his family, expanding on the script he gave her. They bond over not being understood, she never went to school and he think of no reason.

After knowing her for only a few days, Jay believes (and is proven right) to have a better knowledge of her condition than her doctor and they quickly become a happy couple, driving around holding hands.

He seems to truly fall in love with her when she tricks a suspicious cop into leaving them alone with her charm, explaining she did it so they can be together. When she despairs that she “can’t do the things other people can do,” he patronizingly explains that by escaping the hospital and helping him lie to his family and evade arrest, she’s been learning how to become a responsible person in the real world.

Near the end, the film flirts with the notion of real consequences when Daisy admits that she was in the hospital because she killed her mother. But alas, she’s only hyperbolic and misunderstood, she didn’t go help her mother when she heard her screaming and thought that meant she killed her. In addition, Daisy never heard voices–her mother did, and kept Daisy isolated because of it.

 

As Jay spends time with Daisy, he becomes convinced she is perfectly sane and refuses to listen to her doctor
As Jay spends time with Daisy, he becomes convinced she is perfectly sane and refuses to listen to her doctor

 

So everything ends up fine. The girl Jay took from the mental hospital isn’t crazy, she shouldn’t even be in the hospital. By taking her, he saved her from misdiagnosis.

Their love is held up as true love. She has no frame of reference, but she knows its’s love because “you just know.” This opinion, which she tells her doctor, is taken as true wisdom. In the end, Daisy is released to begin her real relationship with Jay, instead of going to a group home where she can learn basic skills. In the last scene, her bare feet are highlighted, a sign that she’s still a quirky, free-spirit, even though she’s officially sane.

In Barefoot, Daisy is othered as a mental patient. She and Jay are introduced as being from two different worlds, he has a job and an apartment and responsibilities and she is a patient, unable to take care of herself. Her instability is used as a way to create division between her and Jay and to give him authority over her. It’s used as a way to create a bright-eyed innocent who believes every interaction between a man and a woman is true love and is fully ignorant of the modern world and social mores without entering fantasy dimensions. It’s probably an unsuccessful attempt to avoid being considered sexist: she’s not stupid or childish or an alien fetish object, she’s mental unstable. However, the decision to make this sort of character mentally ill makes an already tired love story truly uncomfortable.

 

Jay’s mother gives Daisy a makeover, which allows he to fit in at the wedding. That is, until she takes off her shoes
Jay’s mother gives Daisy a makeover, which allows he to fit in at the wedding. That is, until she takes off her shoes

 

When she has a panic attack at the wedding and Jay’s family learn who she really is, her condition paints her as inhuman, someone that everyone needs to talk to in hushed tones, stop everything they were doing and coddle and stare at her. In one scene, a flight attendant loudly asks Jay while Daisy is present, what is wrong with her, highlighting that she is not an independent person but his charge.

When she is briefly returned to the hospital, Daisy contrasted with the other more patients who present more cinematic  markers of mental illnesses, such as delusions, paranoias, unkempt appearance and strange voices, to make it clear that she doesn’t belong there. Only by separating Daisy from the idea of mental illness, does the film gives her back her humanity and develop her. To become no other, a person viewers can identify with, she has to become “not crazy.”  We’re only meant to sympathize with her, when the hospital becomes a nightmare she is wrongly trapped in.

Just once, I’d like to see a movie where a person falls in love with someone with a mental illness and realizes their partner is actually ill and needs help they cannot provide alone. Or their partner makes an informed decision to support them and becomes educated in strategies for helping them cope. In Barefoot, mental illness is just quirkiness, a lack of social graces that makes a person honest and selfless, it requires no real adjustment. And as with Daisy, it might not even be real.

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.

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Also on Bitch Flicks: , Crazy Bitches Versus Indulgent Little Girls: The Binary of Mad Women in Girl, Interrupted

How I Met Your Misogyny

Tonight, ‘How I Met Your Mother’ will end its nine-year run with a one-hour season finale. A show that spawned countless catchphrases and running gags, ‘How I Met Your Mother’ will be remembered for its nonlinear storytelling and its portrayals of romance and friendship.

It will also be remembered as one of the most misogynistic sitcoms on TV.

Written by Lady T

The cast of How I Met Your Mother
The cast of How I Met Your Mother

 

Tonight, How I Met Your Mother will end its nine-year run with a one-hour season finale. A show that spawned countless catchphrases and running gags, How I Met Your Mother will be remembered for its nonlinear storytelling and its portrayals of romance and friendship.

It will also be remembered as one of the most misogynistic sitcoms on TV.

Okay, I admit it – I’m exaggerating a little to make a point. I haven’t seen enough shows to determine whether or not it’s one of the most misogynistic sitcoms. But over the years, How I Met Your Mother has devolved into a show rife with anti-woman nastiness, making me grateful that the program is finally coming to an end.

I’m also saddened by the devolution in the show over the years, because once upon a time, I would have considered How I Met Your Mother a more progressive sitcom than most.

Robin (Cobie Smulders) and Ted (Josh Radnor) on their first date
Robin (Cobie Smulders) and Ted (Josh Radnor) on their first date

 

In the first few seasons of the show, I was impressed with the show’s different take on stereotypical gender roles. I liked that Ted was the hopeless romantic who wanted nothing more than to settle down, get married, and have children, while Robin was the more pragmatic, career-minded person who wanted a more casual relationship. I liked that, even in the context of Marshall and Lily’s super-sweet relationship, Marshall was still the more sentimental of the two. I was moved by Lily’s “career vs. romance” subplot in the end of the first season because the show recognized the emotional weight of what she was feeling. I liked that Lily and Marshall’s wedding followed a typical “bride freaks out on a wedding day” plot with an unexpected and very funny “groom freaks out EVEN MORE on wedding day” plot with Marshall shaving part of his head.

Robin (Cobie Smulders), journalist and career woman
Robin Scherbatsky, journalist and career woman

 

Even Barney, the most problematic character on the show through a feminist perspective, wasn’t so terrible in the first two seasons. Back then, Barney’s womanizing wasn’t the only aspect of his character. Barney was just a person who wanted to make every night legendary no matter what, whether it involved creating elaborate stories to get women to sleep with him, licking the Liberty Bell, paying Robin to say ridiculous things on camera, inventing a drink called the “Thankstini,” setting Ted’s jacket on fire to stop him from drunk-dialing. His treatment of women wasn’t okay, but it didn’t come from a place of showing complete contempt for anyone around him.

Somewhere along the line, all that changed.

Barney became a person whose primary goal was to trick as many women as possible into sleeping with him, and his behavior toward them became increasingly nasty and downright criminal. In season three’s “The Bracket,” he admits to having sold a woman, and in season eight’s “The Fortress,” he shows the feature of a “Ho-Be-Gone” system which wheels one-night stands into a wall. And we’re supposed to be happy that Robin married this man.

Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and his bracket
Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and his bracket

 

Unfortunately, the misogyny that has pervaded How I Met Your Mother isn’t just limited to Barney. Here’s a list of just some of the most memorable misogynistic moments from the show’s history:

– Season five’s “Of Course”: Jennifer Lopez appears as a character whose sole purpose is to peddle the “Power of No.” Because we need more characters who affirm the stereotype that women like “playing hard to get.”

– Season five’s “Say Cheese”: Lily, angry that Ted has brought yet another date no one knows to her birthday party, shows him a photo of a previous year’s celebration and asks him to “name that bitch.” Not wanting strangers to attend your birthday party: fine. But what did these women do to Lily to warrant being called “bitches?”

– Season five’s “The Playbook”: All of it. But I’ll get to that later. (/SagetTed)

Barney and his "scuba diver" scam
Barney and his “scuba diver” scam

 

– Season six’s “Baby Talk”: Marshall worries about having a daughter because he remembers the way he and his high school classmates used to be sexist towards the female students. (Sexual harassment is bad when it’s happening to women you care about, boys, but random bitches are free game and THEN cat-calling is hilarious!)

– Season six’s “Canning Randy”: the men leer at the day-after-Halloween parade of women walking down the street in costumes, guessing at their one-night stands. Could have been a funny gag if it had been the entire gang watching a parade of men and women returning from one-night stands, but as it was, it was just a bunch of guys snarkily judging women.

Ted, Barney, and Marshall (Jason Segel) leer at women
Ted, Barney, and Marshall (Jason Segel) leer at women

 

– Season seven’s “The Slutty Pumpkin Returns”: Lily has pregnancy brain and Marshall and Robin treat her like she has the intelligence of a two-year-old, and they prove to be right when Lily gives a stapler to a kid on Halloween.

– Season seven’s “Now We’re Even”: Barney delivers what’s supposed to be a moving monologue about the difficulties of dating a stripper and how it makes him feel to know that Quinn is dancing naked for other men, and we’re actually supposed to feel sorry for him after years of him treating women like dirt.

– Season eight’s “Lobster Crawl”: Robin acts like a simpering idiot when she’s desperate to win Barney back. She continues to be mean to poor Patrice for no reason and it’s supposed to be funny (probably because Patrice is fat).

– Season eight’s “The Final Page”: Barney proposes to Robin after a long con of making her believe that he didn’t want her, and it’s one of the most glaring examples of emotional abuse disguised as romance in recent memory.

Robin reacts to Barney's manipulative proposal
Robin reacts to Barney’s manipulative proposal

 

– Season eight’s “The Fortress”: Like I said – Ho-Be-Gone.

– Season nine’s “The Broken Code”: Robin realizes she has no female friends and acts astonishingly rude to the women around her, finally confirming that she and Barney really are meant for each other, since she hates women just as much as he does.

And those are just a few.

But the biggest examples of misogyny are, of course, Barney’s two books: The Bro Code and The Playbook. Two books that are actual books that people can now buy.

And The Playbook? Is a pick-up artist’s wet dream.

Before anyone argues that it’s “just a joke,” keep in mind that there are actual websites out there dedicated to coaching men on tricking women into sleeping with them – and some of these sites actually use the character of Barney Stinson as a role model.

Yes. This book exists.
Yes. This book exists.

 

How I Met Your Mother isn’t entirely hopeless even at this late stage. The writers handled Robin’s infertility with respect. Season eight’s “The Time Travelers” was one of its best episodes, truly romantic and poignant. Marshall and Lily’s renewed vows were moving. I love everything about the Mother herself and Ted’s relationship with her, proving that this show still has a soul. But the stink of misogyny has tainted what was once one of my favorite sitcoms.

And if, at the end of tomorrow’s finale, it turns out that I dealt with all that anti-woman crap on a weekly basis only to find out that the Mother is dead in the future…if that is the direction the writers have decided to take…then burn it, burn it to the ground.

Ted and the Mother (Cristin Milioti), who had better NOT be dead
Ted and the Mother (Cristin Milioti), who had better NOT be dead

 


Lady T is a feminist blogger, sketch comedy writer/performer, and author of Fanged, a young adult novel available for purchase today.

 

‘Divergent’ is Not So Divergent But Still Crucial for Feminism

I’m hopeful that ‘Divergent,’ as the first installment of the series, is setting Tris up to be a memorable heroine in her own right in the following films. I’m hoping that ‘Divergent’ is the story of the forging of our heroine, the exploration of her talents, abilities, and heart and that the second and third films will show her learning from her experiences, becoming a leader, and inspiring others.

"Divergent" Poster
“Divergent” Poster

Written by Amanda Rodriguez
Mild Spoilers
Trigger Warning: mention of sexualized violence

The much-anticipated film Divergent is based on the series of teen sci-fi novels by Veronica Roth dealing with a walled-off, post-apocalyptic Chicago wherein society has divided itself into factions in an effort to create order and peace. Our heroine Beatrice “Tris” Prior (Shailene Woodley) finds out she is “Divergent,” a taboo non-conformist who doesn’t fit into any of the factions and is therefore threatening to the caste system.

The five factions of the "Divergent" universe
The five factions of the Divergent universe

 

Disclaimer: I haven’t read the novel series yet.

As a sucker for female-driven sci-fi stories, I liked the premise, but Divergent stands on the shoulders of many young adult and teen movies that came before it. Divergent features training-based dream-like hallucinations like in Ender’s Game.

Tris frees herself with the realization, "This isn't real."
Tris frees herself with the realization, “This isn’t real.”

 

Tris is another thin, white heroine who learns she is more capable than she ever suspected, much like Katniss from The Hunger Games or Clary from The Mortal Instruments: City of Ashes series.

Tris must be brave and not flinch at the knives flying at her.
Tris must be brave and not flinch at the knives flying at her.

 

Divergent‘s Choosing Ceremony has young people choose which faction they’ll belong to for the rest of their lives (“faction before blood”). With factions like Abnegation, Erudite, and Dauntless, the Choosing Ceremony hugely resembles the Sorting Ceremony from the Harry Potter series, wherein wizarding youths are sorted into houses like Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw (representing bravery, hard work, and intelligence respectively).

The factions seated at the Choosing Ceremony
The factions seated at the Choosing Ceremony

 

Divergent also spotlights the obligatory overwrought teen romance replete with multiple manly rescues of our heroine in a way that bears a strong resemblance to Twilight (though Tris admittedly has more fortitude and independence than her counterpart, Bella).

Obligatory sunset make-out session...with tattoos.
Obligatory sunset make-out session…with tattoos.

 

Divergents themselves are essentially misfits with special abilities that speak to the potential of human beings for evolution into a more advanced species like in the famed comic book turned cartoon series turned movie franchise X-Men.

Tris defies categorization, her test revealing her to be Divergent.
Tris defies categorization, her test revealing her to be Divergent.

 

Lastly, I think we should expect the second film (Insurgent) to really play up the youth rebellion angle like in The Legend of Billie Jean.

Outlaw youths on the run, trying to be understood, striving to overthrow an unjust system.
Outlaw youths on the run, trying to be understood, striving to overthrow an unjust system.

 

So, yes, Divergent is derivative and predicable. Funny how a movie with an emphasis on the importance of being different…isn’t all that different itself. I was, however, still entertained, and I’m willing to wait and see if the second two films pave their own way, uniquely establishing themselves within the lexicon of the iconic pop culture fantasy/sci-fi teen series genre.

Divergent is basically an unnecessary prequel. I’m a fan of training sequences and didn’t tire of them despite the fact that Tris repeatedly gets her ass handed to her.

No wonder she's always getting gut punched with a defense like that.
With a defense stance like that, no wonder she’s always getting gut punched.

 

However, almost an entire film dedicated to Tris’ martial training, her budding romance, and the requirements of survival within the faction of Dauntless are not strictly necessary for the big picture scope of the series. I suspect the real story starts in the next movie, Insurgent, with the caste system in upheaval and Tris coming into her own as a leader of dissidents.

I was disappointed at the under-utilization of Kate Winslet‘s extensive acting powers in her role as the Erudite leader and villainess Jeanine. I’m frankly so tired of the cold, fanatic female villain trope. Jodie Foster played a similarly uninspired role in the sci-fi film Elysium. At first, I hoped that Jeanine would only be Tris’ first foe, the patriarchy-complicit woman, and that Tris would advance beyond that to actually deconstructing the patriarchal system of oppression in the following films. A quick Wiki search disabused me of that notion.

Kate Winslet as Jeanine in "Divergent"
Kate Winslet as Jeanine in Divergent

 

No, it looks like our lead villain throughout the series will be Jeanine, which makes me question the underlying thematics behind the class structure that the film and book series critique. Is it claiming that cold, intelligent women are the problem? Are they the purveyors of this dysfunctional culture? If so, for which real world social ill is the post-apocalyptic world of Divergent a stand-in? What problematic mechanism of power does this sci-fi series seek to illuminate? So far, all we’ve got is a generic argument that being different and thinking differently is a good thing. Not much subversiveness going on there.

Tris also gets rescued a lot, mostly by her love interest, Four, played by Theo James (James Franco called…he wants his face back). This made me roll my eyes a lot because I didn’t pay $10 to watch a young woman lead be so dependent on a dude for her survival. Not only that, but through a fear simulation, we learn that one of Tris’ greatest fears is that Four will try to rape her, and that theme isn’t delved into at all. However, I did admire the close, loving relationship Tris shares with her mother (Ashley Judd) and that her mom also rescues her in a surprising act that would make both factions Abnegation and Dauntless proud.

Tris mother, Natalie, brushes her hair on test day.
Tris’ mother, Natalie, brushes her hair on test day.

 

As with so many other aspects of the film, I’m letting our heroine’s constant need to be rescued slide because I’m hopeful that Divergent, as the first installment of the series, is setting Tris up to be a memorable heroine in her own right in the following films. I’m hoping that Divergent is the story of the forging of our heroine, the exploration of her talents, abilities, and heart and that the second and third films will show her learning from her experiences, becoming a leader, and inspiring others. At the end of Divergent, we saw a glimmer of her potential in her rallying of others, quick thinking in a crisis, her empathy, self-sacrifice, inventiveness, and the steel in her spine.

Tris is endlessly tenacious and never gives up.
Tris is endlessly tenacious and makes up her own mind about things.

 

The bottom line is that, despite Divergent‘s glaring flaws, I am so inspired by this outpouring of stories written by and about women. The mathematical expression of the term divergent is, simply put, “having no finite limits.” Right now, Tris’ story is empowering young girls and women with her bravery, her vulnerability, and her centrality. We have so desperately needed greater representation for young women so that they can imagine themselves in the roles of heroines, leaders, and catalysts for change. It is an important step forward that these films are being made at all. It is a coup that they are so damned popular, proving that people, in fact, DO want to see stories about women and that those stories DO sell. Eat your heart out Hollywood.

 


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

Self-Sacrifice in ‘Casablanca’: Not Just for the Men

But what stands out among all this entertainment, what makes ‘Casablanca’ feel like a better movie than say, ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ are the stirring emotions of self-sacrifice. And discussions of the capital-G Greatness of ‘Casablanca’ are often centered on masculine concepts of nobility. Despite all his regular protests that he won’t “stick his neck out,” Rick Does the Right Thing and gives the letters of transit to his love Ilsa and her husband (and major player in the Czech resistance) Victor Laszlo. For the good of the world.

And perhaps as a feminist I should take issue with how Rick appears to decide for Ilsa what she is going to do with her life—where to live, which man to be with. But throughout the movie, Ilsa chooses to be with Laszlo, from abandoning Rick at the train station in Paris to threatening him with a gun to get the letters of transit. Rick’s big speech at the end just reconfirms the rightness of her own decisions.

Thank goodness for Casablanca, an unquestionable answer to give when asked the loaded question “what’s your favorite movie?”

 

Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in an iconic image from 'Casablanca'
Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in an iconic image from Casablanca

As Roger Ebert put it, “Casablanca is The Movie. There are greater movies. More profound movies. Movies of greater artistic vision or artistic originality or political significance…” but it doesn’t matter. I’ve never met a person who doesn’t love Casablanca, and I’m not sure I care to.

Casablanca is one of those movies that “has it all”: sweeping romance, scathing political commentary, pristine dialogue (every third line is a famous quotation), surprising amounts of humor (“What watch?” “Ten watch.” “Such much?” “You will get along beautiful in America”).

But what stands out among all this entertainment, what makes Casablanca feel like a better movie than say, Raiders of the Lost Ark, are the stirring emotions of self-sacrifice. And discussions of the capital-G Greatness of Casablanca are often centered on masculine concepts of nobility. Despite all his regular protests that he won’t “stick his neck out,” Rick Does the Right Thing and gives the letters of transit to his love Ilsa and her husband (and major player in the Czech resistance) Victor Laszlo. For the good of the world.

Ilsa
Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman)

And perhaps as a feminist I should take issue with how Rick appears to decide for Ilsa what she is going to do with her life—where to live, which man to be with. But throughout the movie, Ilsa chooses to be with Laszlo, from abandoning Rick at the train station in Paris to threatening him with a gun to get the letters of transit. Rick’s big speech at the end just reconfirms the rightness of her own decisions.

Ilsa and her husband Victor Laszlo
Ilsa and her husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid)

It’s not just, as Sally Albright puts it, a practical decision, choosing “to be first lady of Czechloslovakia” over “living in Casablanca married to a man who runs a bar.” Ilsa chooses to be the proverbial Great Woman behind Great Man Victor Laszlo, even though it means choosing an admiring love over a passionate one. She knows, well before Rick tells her, that she is what keeps Laszlo going. Ilsa’s self-sacrifice shouldn’’ be swept away by focus on Rick’s sudden shift back to acting noble.

Annina (Joy Page)
Annina (Joy Page)

A minor subplot also sees Rick’s goodness overshadowing hard choices made by women. One of the first times we see Rick act nobly is when Annina, a Bulgarian newlywed, considers having sex with Captain Renault in order to obtain the exit visas they cannot afford. Annina is distraught by the idea of breaking her marriage vows and exchanging sex for escape, but is desperate enough that she’s nearly decided to do it as she seeks Rick’s absolution. Rick chooses to make it irrelevant by letting her husband win at his roulette table. Again, Rick’s minor intervention distracts from the great personal sacrifice a woman makes in the face of the horrible circumstances of Nazi-occupied Europe.

It’s all right that Rick’s noble actions get the most attention, as he is the main character. I just wish to highlight that the women of Casablanca also choose to set aside First World Problems to address World War II problems. We must celebrate the nobility and selflessness of Ilsa and Annina alongside Laszlo and Rick.


Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who must keep in mind she is not threatened by Nazis as she waits, and waits, and waits for a visa extension. 

 

So, Your Dad Wrote a Romantic Fantasy: ‘Winter’s Tale’

The monogamous, heteronormative, patriarchal narrative is strongly entrenched in our culture. Women, in particular, are taught to seek out one person, their “soulmate.” We’re told that only that one person will make us happy and whole, and that only that person should fuck us (after we’re married, of course) for ever and ever. This is the Romantic Myth, and it kills.

Theatrical release poster.

Written by Andé Morgan.

The recently released dramatic fantasy, Winter’s Tale (based on the 1983 novel of the same name by Mark Helprin), was adapted for the screen and directed by Avika Goldsman. It features Colin Farrell and Jessica Brown Findlay as star-crossed (haha) lovers, and Goldsman-regulars Russell Crowe and Will Smith as the heavies.

Farrell is Peter Lake, an orphan thief who lives in the rafters above New York’s Grand Central Station circa 1916. While escaping crime boss Pearly Soames (played here by an over-inflated Russell Crowe) on a magical, metaphysical, metaphorical white horse, Lake comes across an Upper West Side mansion that’s just too juicy to pass up. Inside, he surprises the lone occupant, Beverly Penn (Findlay), an heiress to the Penn newspaper fortune and victim of tuberculosis (they call it “fever” because this is a period piece, dammit!). Beverly, by the way, plays the piano very enthusiastically, can see that “everything is connected by light,” and stoically comments, “You never think you’re as old as you’re ever going to be.” Because so many loving, lasting relationships begin with home invasion, Beverly asks Peter to stay for tea. We learn that she was born in England, which conveniently explains why she has such an awful English accent when all of her kin speak ‘Murican.

Stranger with a gun? Serve 'em some tea!
Stranger with a gun? Serve ’em some tea!

Tea time with the armed robber goes well because love-at-first-sight, so Beverly invites Peter to join her upstate at the family castle. We then get some other rom-com standards: never-been-kissed, what-are-your-intentions-with-my-daughter?, ruffian-in-a-tuxedo, last-dance, and magic-mechanic.

Meanwhile, Pearly goes to visit Will Smith, who is currently being stored in a dark room under a bridge (really, a good place for him). Mr. Smith is Lucifer, of course, and Pearly (superpower: glowering) is one of his demons (or a human who became a demon, or a human-demon hybrid, who knows?). Pearly wants to kill Beverly because of love and miracles, or something. Unfortunately, the devil is a stickler for the rules, and since the northlands are out of Pearly’s jurisdiction, no dice. Being a demon, Pearly goes behind the Devil’s back (lack-of-omniscience slam!) and calls in a favor from an angel (Pearly really has more depth than I’m giving him credit for; he enjoys finger painting with blood, and really wants a pair of shiny angel wings, aww).

Pearly deploys the Standard Female Incapacitation Attack.
Pearly deploys the Standard Female Incapacitation Attack.

So Beverly is poisoned (by light, naturally) from afar by Pearly, and expires after some now-or-never sex (kind of a lot of O face for a PG-13 movie. MPAA, won’t you please think of the children?). Peter tries to save her with his miracle, True-Love’s-Kiss, but to no avail. Apparently, Beverly had all the magic, because Peter gets bridged by Pearly and goes on to spend the next 100 years (Bev’s miracle) making street art and growing a beard.

Colin Farrell as Jaret Leto as Peter Lake.
Colin Farrell as Jared Leto as Peter Lake.

With a little help from a ~***magical negro***~, Peter regains the memories he lost when Russell Crowe Brooklyn accent-ed at him. He then uses his holy lips to save the life of the Abby (Ripley Sobo), the Littlest Cancer Patient. After he defeats Pearly in the Final Battle, he rides off into the sunset to be reunited with Beverly (now a flaming ball of gas).

From the snark, you can probably tell that this movie was a big glob of romantic fantasy cliches and pseudo-spiritual ridiculousness propelled by Mammon and held together by Warner Bros.’ hubris. Unfortunate, but sadly, not unexpected. However, I do take issue with the film’s central conceit. As we are told over and over – by children, demons, and Findlay’s narration – each one of us has a miracle, and we can only give it to our One True Love.

Clean-shaven, white horse, evening wear.
Clean-shaven, white horse, evening wear.

The monogamous, heteronormative, patriarchal narrative is strongly entrenched in our culture. Women, in particular, are taught to seek out one person, their “soulmate.” We’re told that only that one person will make us happy and whole, and that only that person should fuck us (after we’re married, of course) for ever and ever. This is the Romantic Myth, and it kills. It fails to recognize the reality that people fall in and out of love, or that people are fully capable of loving more than one person, sequentially or concurrently. By reinforcing this destructive myth, movies like Winter’s Tale perpetuate slut-shaming, self-hatred, and discrimination against divorcees and polyamorous people.

Strong female characters? None. Yes, the film passes the Bechdel Test, if you count discussions about starlight and cooking. But please, don’t waste your time, and please, please don’t take your child to see it.


Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about culture, race, politics, and LGBTQ issues. Follow them @andemorgan.

Why We Need to Stop Worshiping the Elusive Heteroflexible Femme

Queer inclusion has become downright trendy lately. Even Disney has jumped on the bandwagon. However, as we all know, just because a minority makes an appearance in the media doesn’t mean the mainstream won’t continue to compulsively shape their narratives. One thing show-runners can’t seem to get enough of is sad lesbians (and I say lesbians because according to most representation, bisexuality clearly doesn’t exist!).

...or are you?
…or are you?

Written by Erin Tatum.

Queer inclusion has become downright trendy lately. Even Disney has jumped on the bandwagon. However, as we all know, just because a minority makes an appearance in the media doesn’t mean the mainstream won’t continue to compulsively shape their narratives. One thing show-runners can’t seem to get enough of is sad lesbians (and I say lesbians because according to most representation, bisexuality clearly doesn’t exist!). Those women with their angst and their impulsiveness and their multiplied sex drive! Tragedy is almost always imminent, whether in the form of death or infidelity.

In the event that these go-to methodologies of misery are rightfully perceived by the powers-that-be as cheap and melodramatic, they’ll opt for the next best thing–an unrequited crush on a straight girl!

Our beloved lesbian (usually endowed with enough snark, swagger, or sheer adorableness to easily claim her place as estrogen brigade bait among the queer fandom) will pine her little heart away, hoping that the object of her desire will see the rainbow-tinted light. She may also spend a lot of time wallowing in self-loathing for loving someone who could never love her back.

Crushes on straight girls are a pretty common occurrence among queer women, and I’m sure it’s comforting to be able to relate to what the characters are going through. However, sexually incompatible crushes between women are used to codify some pretty unfortunate biases around gender, orientation and sexual expression that are frankly hella problematic.

I couldn’t think of a better segue to discuss Betty and Kate from Bomb Girls.

Kate (left) and Betty (right).
Kate (left) and Betty (right).

Bomb Girls is set in early 1940s Canada, about a group of women who work in a munitions factory during the war. Its storylines are almost exclusively focused on feminist issues and female empowerment, so of course it had to be canceled. But I digress. One of the central B-plots of the series involves the relationship between Kate Andrews (Charlotte Hegele), a wide-eyed runaway who fled the clutches of her abusive pastor father, and Betty McRae (Ali Liebert), a deeply closeted lesbian who also works in the factory. The two quickly become close friends, and Betty even helps Kate protect her false identity. Naturally, Kate’s strict religious upbringing makes her very naïve, giving her a fixed worldview of how things are supposed to operate in society. Betty feels incredibly protective of her. Can you see where this is going? Unable to hold back her growing feelings any longer, Betty impulsively tries to kiss Kate, much to the latter’s shock and disgust. Kate is so rattled that she contacts her father to take her back home and tearfully leaves the factory in spite of Betty’s desperate last-minute declaration of love.

Betty and Kate share a seemingly platonic moment in bed together at the end of season 2.
Betty and Kate share a seemingly platonic moment in bed together at the end of season 2.

The second season renders them even more ambiguous, if that’s possible. Betty rescues Kate and they become friends again, with Kate doing her best to pretend nothing ever happened. Betty briefly dates her other coworker, Ivan (Michael Seater), in an effort to deflect growing suspicions around her sexuality and as a means of denying it to herself. Although she quickly drops the ruse and actually manages to find a girlfriend, Theresa (on the DL), it’s clear that Betty still harbors unresolved feelings for Kate. Making matters more complicated, Kate begins dating Ivan soon after Betty dumps him. It also doesn’t take Kate long to connect the dots between Betty and Teresa, but it remains deliberately unclear whether or not her apparent discomfort with Teresa stems from homophobia, friendship possessiveness, romantic possessiveness, or some combination of the three. Needless to say, it’s all confusing and resolves nothing. When Betty’s crush does creep indirectly into the conversation, Kate either dodges the topic or something will conveniently interrupt them. The season two finale kept them firmly within the same innocent cat and mouse territory that they’d been in since the beginning.

Betty gets up close and personal with Kate.
Betty gets up close and personal with Kate.

While many viewers expressed frustration with Kate for leading Betty on, this follows the same whiny friend-zoning logic that we see all the time in any portrayal of heterosexual friendships. Kate doesn’t “owe” Betty anything for being treated kindly, and Betty’s actions post-kiss make it clear that she she loves Kate independently of romantic ulterior motives. On the flipside, I still find Kate to be a pretty shitty person, not because she might not reciprocate Betty’s feelings, but because she continues to knowingly deny Betty formal closure. Betty remains totally helpless, and the outcome of the whole scenario hinges on Kate’s every whim. I know you can try to pass it off on the fact that it’s a period piece and homosexuality was a criminal offense, but why is Betty’s lack of control so romanticized? Just kidding, we all know the answer to that. Kate’s a pretty femme straight girl, and Betty will always be socially perceived as a grotesque deviant, no matter how many friends she has! Hell, Betty herself validates the gay inferiority complex by repeatedly putting someone on a pedestal who she knows full well has zero implications of returning the same level of emotional investment, whether romantic or otherwise. But it’s okay, because we can always hope against hope that Kate will turn out to be queer, right?

And that’s the problem. We can’t keep worshiping straight femme agency as central to our validation. If they choose women, it’s some impossible Herculean feat that solves all of the lesbian’s problems forever. If they don’t, you’re still expected to trail after them like a lost puppy at their every beck and call because they’re clearly superior to you, and you’re just perennially unlovable. Why is that noble or sympathetic in any way? Neither outcome reflects a coherent grasp of self-worth or healthy relationships. Don’t let women who aren’t even in our community dictate the way you view yourself.

Delphine (left) and Cosima (right).
Delphine (left) and Cosima (right).

Another radically different example can be pulled from Orphan Black. The relationship between everyone’s favorite dreadlocked scientist Cosima (Tatiana Maslany) and sexy French biologist Delphine Cormier (Evelyne Brochu) quickly became a fan favorite. Orphan Black handles the subject of sexual fluidity very well, which is one of the many reasons that you should be watching it, if you aren’t already. Following an awkward failed first move, Cosima apologizes for assuming Delphine was gay. Delphine says that while she’s never considered bisexuality, she can’t deny her attraction to Cosima. Refreshingly, none of the angst in their relationship is caused by gay panic. However, all of that is tarnished when it’s revealed that Delphine has betrayed her by orchestrating their relationship as a pretext for spying on her (trying to avoid too many spoilers). This drags the authenticity of her queerness into question because it raises the real possibility that she was faking her feelings for Cosima. The storyline may not villainize straight/fluid/questioning women explicitly, but you can’t deny that Delphine’s moral duplicity serves as a fairly obvious metaphor for cautionary tales against the untrustworthy bisexual or the illusory, unattainable straight girl. Faced with the reality of Cosima’s discovery and understandable outrage, Delphine insists her feelings for her are genuine and begs forgiveness. Cosima is heartbroken, but unmoved.

By the end, after seeing Delphine’s remorse, the audience is arguably compelled to feel more sympathy towards her than Cosima herself. As usual, it’s supposed to be incredibly romantic, playing on common themes of finding love with the wrong person and love conquering all. I like them together and think there’s still potential, but I’m not digging the free pass and endless showers of adulation Delphine receives from the fandom. She fucked up massively and that shouldn’t be forgiven in the span of an episode because of some tears and melodrama. Who’s to say she isn’t still lying? What if she isn’t even queer? Who am I kidding? They’ll end up together next season with minimal reconciliation because they’re obviously ~meant to be~!

Delphine tries to explain herself to Cosima.
Delphine tries to explain herself to Cosima.

I don’t mean to pour on the cynicism, but we can’t let our cravings for sentimentality obscure our perspective. Love stories formed on the premise of sexual incompatibility should not be idealized. The only message that it sends to queer women is that it’s noble to martyr your own happiness by wishing for the improbable. Not only does it build up your unrealistic expectations, but it’s also kind of uncomfortable for your crush if you persistently carry a torch for them based on the off-chance that you could turn them one day. Sure, feelings oftentimes can’t be helped and it can be cathartic to see characters sharing your experiences onscreen, but treating potentially heteroflexible straight girls as the Holy Grail of love objects doesn’t exactly set yourself up for the most positive of queer futures. You don’t need their validation, and for the media to suggest otherwise is counterintuitive because straight girls have absolutely no bearing on our sexuality. If they want us, cool. If they don’t want us, that shouldn’t inherently make us pathetic.

You might not flip her, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a confident, kickass queer woman.

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Erin Tatum is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, where she majored in film and minored in LGBT studies. She is incredibly interested in social justice, media representation, intersectional feminism, and queer theory. British television and Netflix consume way too much of her time. She is particularly fascinated by the portrayal of sexuality and ability in television.