Tag: Sarah Smyth

‘The Girl on the Train’: We Are Women Not Girls

Perhaps the depiction of “the girl” in ‘The Girl in the Train’ will reassure my fears by allowing the woman to literally “grow up” on-screen. Yet, the title makes me very pessimistic. Presenting women as “girls” continues to fetishize women’s powerlessness in cinema. By situating this girlhood in a similar way to the male fantasy construction of the Final Girl, and by enforcing an infantilizing return to post-feminism’s “girliness,” these films offer ultimately disempowering images of female subjectivity.

The Girl on the Train

Written by Sarah Smyth.

Earlier this week, the trailer for the adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ best-selling psychological thriller, The Girl on the Train, was released, and the internet went into a melt-down. The film tells the story of Rachel (played by Emily Blunt), a divorcee and heavy drinker, who becomes obsessed with watching a seemingly idyllic couple on her commute to work. When the woman in the couple goes missing, Rachel finds herself dangerously implicated in the investigation. The film obviously parallels David Fincher’s 2014 film, Gone Girl. They are both psychological thrillers adapted from best-selling novels featuring untrustworthy and morally ambiguous leading female characters. They also both refer to their leading lady as the “girl” in the film. It is precisely this that I want to problematize in this piece: why are these female characters specifically referred to as girls when they are clearly women?

After all, both Emily Blunt and Rosamund Pike (who plays Amy, the lead female character in Gone Girl) will be/were 36 years old when their respective films will be/were released. The use of the “girl” in the titles, I argue, continues to position women in a position of vulnerability and weakness in two overlapping ways. Firstly, through “the girl” as a trope within both psychological thriller literature and film, I identify this figuration of girlhood within Carol Clover’s construction of the Final Girl. This figuration, as I will demonstrate, refuses women an autonomous subjectivity, instead constructing them through male fantasies and anxieties surrounding female sexuality. Secondly, by identifying “girliness” and girlhood as a key post-feminist sensibility, the identification of these characters as girls rather than women reinforces an infantilization of women.

Let’s start with the novels. Within the last two year, dozens of popular, mainstream psychological-thrillers have been released featuring “girl” in the title. These include: Girl on a Train (A. J. Waines 2015), The Girl with No Past (Kathryn Croft, 2015, who followed this up with The Girl You Lost, 2016), The Girl in the Ice (Robert Bryndza, 2016), Luckiest Girl Alive (Jessica Knoll, 2016), Little Girl Gone (Alexandra Burt, 2015), Pretty Girls (Karin Slaughter, 2016), The Hanging Girl (Jussi Adler-Olsen, 2016), The Girl in the Red Coat (Kate Hamer, 2015), Dead Girl Walking (Chris Brookmyre, 2015), and Lost Girls (Kate Ellison, 2015). Admittedly, some of the girls of the titles are babies or children, such as Little Girl Gone. Yet, the title of this novel recalls Gone Girl so obviously and even includes references to this novel and The Girl on the Train in it’s marketing on Amazon. In addition, although the “girl” may refer to her daughter, the novel centres around the mother, Beth, who begins ‘an extraordinary and terrifying journey’ after her daughter goes missing. Grown women’s vulnerability and endangerment is clearly the focus here.

The posters for the Swedish-language adaptations of Stieg Larsson's 'Millennium' series

This recent trend became visible through Stieg Larsson’s series of novels. Although collectively known as the Millennium series, within the English-speaking world, they are more widely known through the hook of the “the girl” within the title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire and The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. At 23 years old, the girl of these novels is younger than her Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train counterparts (although Noomi Rapace was 30 when she filmed the Swedish adaptations of the books). Indeed, the novels and films explore Lizbeth Salander’s precarious position between childhood and adulthood, between girlhood and womanhood. Although extremely independent and resourceful, Salander is continually threatened with institutionalisation. When Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist she’s working with, asks her, “How come a 23 year old can be a ward of the state?”, she answers, “I’m mentally incompetent and can’t manage daily life.” Interestingly, the original Swedish title didn’t depend so much on this hook. Although title of the second book remains the same, the first book is called Män som hatar kvinnor (translated as Men Who Hate Women), and the third is called Luftslottet som sprängdes, translating roughly as The Castle in the Sky that was Blasted Apart. The change almost certainly acts as a marketing tool, creating a more easily recognizable brand within, clearly, a crowded marketplace. This book blog also suggests that the English translation attempts to create a thriller with a female character similar to James Bond for potential female readers. While almost certainly true, I ask, would a Bond book or film ever be called, The Boy with the Expensive Watch?

The emphasis on girls rather than women in these novels and the cinematic adaptations continue to reinforce the position of women (as opposed to men) as vulnerable. This, in itself, is not so much the problem. If anything, it is accurate given that women are more likely to experience rape, sexual assault and domestic violence at the hands of men than vice versa. The problem, I argue, is through the fantasies and anxieties that these images of (or identification of these images as) “girlhood” enact. I, here, use the trope of the Final Girl, first identified by Carol Clover’s authoritative and brilliantly titled book, Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in Modern Horror Films, to highlight the way in which this is constructed. Here, she explicitly addresses the trope of the Final Girl in slasher films, although her arguments correspond across genres. The Final Girl, she claims, is the film’s lead character, who, as both the victim but also the only survivor in the film, serves as both the site of the audience’s sadistic fantasies, and the anchor for the spectator’s identification. Primarily aimed at young heterosexual men, the Final Girl must be “masculine” enough so that this (assumed) spectator can identify with her; she is often androgynous or tomboyish in appearance and sometimes in name. More crucially, she must be sexualized but never sexual; she must provide the fleshy site for the heterosexual male’s voyeuristic fantasies but she must never have autonomy over her own body and sexuality.

My interest in the Final Girl, here, is less in the literal mappings of the trope within these psychological thrillers. Rather, I am interested in the way in which, for Clover, girlhood denotes a kind of vulnerability and lack of autonomy within cinema. This vulnerability through precisely her identification as a girl rather than woman positions this figure only through the sexualization which the audience allow her; namely as a bodily site of (male) sadistic fantasies, and as a space to contain and control women’s sexuality. Whether, these psychological thrillers are aimed at or primarily watched by men or women is almost beside the point (although it’s interesting to note that Gone Girl was called the second-worst date movie of all time after Fatal Attraction due to the polarizing and highly essentialist gender reactions the film is apparently likely to enlist). The construction of the image is so insidious, it seeps into films where women are also an intended audience. I am wary, therefore, of the representations of the women in The Girl on The Train and Gone Girl precisely because of this identification with them as “girls.” After all, as much as we can enjoy and celebrate Amy’s “cool girl” speech in Gone Girl (another image of “girlhood” constructed by men), she ultimately becomes a man’s worst nightmare: a “bat-shit crazy psychopath” who falsely accuses men of sexual assault and rape before either murdering them or trapping them into marriage. Progressive.

Gone Girl

Like the psychological-thrillers I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of examples of films with “girl” in the title. Some like Steig Larsson’s novels, do so as an indication of the film’s investigation into a woman’s transition from childhood to adulthood. Some examples include Girl, Interrupted (1999), Mean Girls (2004), and The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015). This was used most interestingly and (accidently) provocatively in Celine Sciamma’s 2014 film, Girlhood. The original French title, Bande de Filles translates as Gang of Girls. The English title recalls Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, a film released in the same year. But while Linklater’s film about white boy growing up in suburban Texas is considered epic and universal, Sciamma’s film about a group of black groups growing up in inner-city Paris received no such accolades. Granted Boyhood boasts an impressive technical achievement, having being filmed over a 12 years. Yet, the distinction nevertheless points to the continual idea that white men’s stories are universal while women’s stories, particularly women of color’s stories, are niche and singular. Inciting girlhood as a title, however, still comes with its own universalizing problems. Lena Dunham’s HBO-produced show, Girls, explores the transition from girlhood to womanhood in often hilarious and sometimes frustrating ways. However, the “girl” of this title has been criticised for its seeming universality. Although recent Pulitzer prize-winning television critic, Emily Nussbaum argues that this show is “for us, by us,” Kendra James pointed out that this “us” is overwhelming white and wealthy.

However, there are plenty of examples of films were the leading character is a woman who is, nevertheless, referred to as a girl: His Girl Friday (1940), Funny Girl (1968), The Good Girl (2002), Factory Girl (2006), Lars and the Real Girl (2007), The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), and, most recently, The Danish Girl (2015). By contrast, films with the word “boy” either fall into my former category of films concerning the transition from childhood to adulthood (Nowhere Boy (2009), Boyz N The Hood (1991)), or refer to an actual child (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), About a Boy (2002)). The disparity between the use of “girl” and the use of “boy” in film titles is, I argue, indicative of women’s infantilization in a wider post-feminist culture. I want now to point to one particular film, Working Girl (1988), as indicative of this problem.

Working Girl tells the story of Tess (Melanie Griffith), a secretary who goes to work in a Wall Street investment bank. After her boss, Katherine (Sigourney Weaver) breaks her leg, Tess uses her absence to put forward a merger deal. As you can imagine, mishaps ensue, but the film ends relatively positively with Tess offered her “dream job,” an office and a secretary. Nevertheless, the film articulates some of the problems, concerns and anxieties of women entering the workplace in the 1980s. Firstly, they still need a female scapegoat in the form of Katherine who becomes the real “evil” figure Tess must fight rather than the institutional sexism of corporate capitalism itself. Secondly, and crucially for my argument, by calling Tess a working girl, the film positions her “threat” to the masculine domain of work as somehow less than if she was a working woman. Indeed, it even recalls the 1986 Working Girls, a film based around prostitution: according to the overwhelmingly male-dominated film executives, is this it for women’s work? Again, I ask my question, if this film revolved around Harrison Ford entering the workplace, would it be called Working Boy?

Working Girl

I locate this obsession with girlhood within post-feminism. There is much debate as to what precisely post-feminism is. However, it is generally understood as a sensibility or aesthetic most generally visible in the late 1980s to early 2000s, after the second-wave women’s movement. Rosalind Gill argues that post-feminism is a distinctive sensibility made up of a number of themes: ‘the notion that femininity is a bodily property; the shift from objectification to subjectification; an emphasis upon self surveillance, monitoring and self-discipline; a focus on individualism, choice and empowerment; the dominance of a makeover paradigm; and a resurgence of ideas about natural sexual difference.’ Crucially, Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young argue in their book, Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies, post-feminist chick culture involves a “return” to girliness:

“Chick flicks illustrate, reflect, and present all the cultural characteristics associated with the chick flick postfeminist aesthetic: a return to femininity, the primacy of romantic attachments, girlpower, a focus on female pleasure and pleasures, and the value of consumer culture and girlie goods, including designer clothes, expensive and impractical footwear, and trendy accessories.”

One of the first key texts to articulate this is Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 book, Sex and the Single Girl (note the title), which was turned into a film in 1964. Gurley Brown advocated for women’s sexual and financial independence. Women, she said, should shun marriage in favor of a career. This sexy, single life, however, must be complimented with a trim figure and fashionable wardrobe in order to remain successful and desirable. It should come as no surprise that Gurley Brown acted as editor-in-chief at Cosmopolitan magazine for 32 years, and her book went on to inspire one of the most thoroughly post-feminist texts of the late twentieth century, Sex and the City.

However, I do not wish to simply dismiss post-feminism as a backlash against second-wave feminism or a return to pre-feminist concerns. After all, post-feminism remained concerned with many of the problems feminism attempted to tackle in the 1960s and 1970s such as women in the workplace, financial independence and motherhood. In addition, I argue that we are currently entering a new wave of feminism, tentatively called fourth-wave feminism, where issues such as sexual violence, intersectionality, body shaming and institutional sexism are more widely discussed and debated. Yet, because of post-feminism’s obsession with “girliness,” particularly as a means to “return” to childish girly pursuits, I remain wary of the dominance of “the girl” in the psychological thrillers I mention. The use of “girl” in both The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl signals a return to the return; a return to the post-feminism construction of womanhood through “girliness” which, in itself, is a return childhood. As infantilizing as it is debilitating, it reinforces women as only valuable in their youthfulness and refuses them the full subjecthood that “womenness” entails.

Perhaps the depiction of “the girl” in The Girl in the Train will reassure my fears by allowing the woman to literally “grow up” on-screen. Yet, the title makes me very pessimistic. Presenting women as “girls” continues to fetishize women’s powerlessness in cinema. By situating this girlhood in a similar way to the male fantasy construction of the Final Girl, and by enforcing an infantilizing return to post-feminism’s “girliness,” these films offer ultimately disempowering images of female subjectivity.

Sarah Smyth is a Bitch Flicks staff writer and recently finished a Master’s degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Winning the Chancellor’s Masters Scholarship, which enabled her to attend, Sarah owes her MA degree to the Kardashians after she wrote about them in her scholarship application. She also has a BA degree in English from the University of Southampton, UK, where she won an award for her dissertation, which examined masculinity in Ian McEwan’s novels. Men are often the subject of her investigation with her MA dissertation focusing on the abject male body in cinema, particularly through the spatiality of the male anus (yes, really). Still wondering whether she can debase herself through writing any further, the body, grotesque or otherwise, continues as a major source of interest. She’s also interested in queer theory, genre filmmaking, television and anything that might be considered “low-brow” culture. She currently lives in London, UK, and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

Death of the (Male) Author: Feminist Violence in Lynne Ramsay’s ‘Morvern Callar’

How significant it is, then, that Ramsay changes the ending from the novel where Morvern discovers she’s pregnant to instead give her a narrative of hopeful escape and adventure. Through the economic, cultural and narrative capitals gained from the violence enacted on the male author both inside and outside of the text, the female protagonist is offered a radical feminist alternative. Rather than by trapped by her class position, socio-economic position, job possibilities or pregnancy, Morvern is, instead, offered freedom, autonomy and authority.

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The poster for Lynne Ramsay’s 2002 film, Morvern Callar

This post by Sarah Smyth appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

What would you do if you found your boyfriend dead on the kitchen floor after committing suicide? Panic? Cry? Call the authorities? This is not the case in British director Lynne Ramsay’s delicious 2002 film, Morvern Callar. The film opens with the titular character, Morvern (Samantha Morton) lying on the floor by her dead boyfriend as the lights on the Christmas tree flash in the background. The scene is silent and utterly absurd. Morvern sits quietly, perhaps contemplating what has happened, although the film never quite reveals what she’s thinking. She then touches and caresses the body in a way which is both sensual and erotic. The scene is visceral and private; it’s almost tender. Yet, underneath it’s silent and passive exterior, there’s a subtle kind of violence, a violence in not doing anything through Morvern’s refusal to act in a “moral,” “normal,” and “citizenly” way. This violence quietly yet insidiously perforates the scene. Morvern eventually gets up and looks at the computer where, on the screen, bears the instructions “read me.” This is her boyfriend’s last command but one to which Morvern gainfully obeys. From here on out, Morvern resolutely and, I argue, violently stakes out her place and takes control over her own trajectory by, ironically, reinterpreting the very instructions which her boyfriend left on the computer.

Morvern

The violence in the opening scene is of Morvern not acting following her boyfriend’s death

Morvern Callar is based on Alan Warner’s 1995 novel of the same name. It centres on Morvern, a young supermarket assistant, who lives in a cold and bleak Scotland. Her boyfriend commits suicide on Christmas day, leaving behind presents for Morvern including a cassette player, mix tape, and a manuscript of his novel with instructions for Morvern to get it published. The instructions read, “I wrote this for you. I love you,” and Morvern takes this quite literally. She deletes his name from the title page and inserts hers instead. After sending the manuscript to a publisher, she then escapes on a hedonistic holiday to Spain with her best friend and colleague, Lanna (Kathleen McDermott), where they spend their time clubbing, taking drugs and having sex. When she’s there, a couple of publishers seek Morvern out and offer her a lucrative book deal, which Morvern gladly accepts. When she returns to Scotland, she plans to use the advance from her deal to leave home and, perhaps, start a better life. She extends this offer to Lanna who declines, and the film ends on an ambiguous but hopeful note as Morvern sits at the station waiting to begin her new life.

Morvern Callar is not obviously nor overtly a violent film. The opening scene – quiet, muted, subtle – informs the tone and even the theme of the rest of the film. Yet, Morvern’s act of deleting her boyfriend’s name – James Gillespie in the film, unnamed in the book – from his manuscript is a violently feminist act. Since the beginning of literature itself, male authors have continually appropriated the voice, narratives and identities of women Perhaps with the flexibility creative licence, this in itself shouldn’t be problematic. After all, women have also appropriated the voice, narratives and identities of men in their work. Rather, the problem arises with the profusion by which this occurs, the privileging of the male-authored narrative within the canon, and the consideration of these narratives as universal rather than explicitly gendered. Morvern’s act, then, is a protest against this and reclamation, perhaps even reparation, for the years of oppression enacted on female voices within literature.

The realisation of this reparation is significant. Morvern gets paid an extraordinarily large sum, £100,000 (about $270,000 today) to be exact, from the publishers for her book deal. Given her background and socio-economic status, this sum is doubly significant. In fact, its life changing, enabling her to reclaim an authority and autonomy over her life not (literally) afforded to her before. When Morvern asks Lanna to go with her on this new adventure, she tells her not to worry about money; Morvern can take care of it. This offer positions Morvern in a traditional heteronormative male role as she proposes a promise of financial security to the woman. Of course, this involves a level of female dependence of male power, here economic, inducing a loss of female independence and freedom so crucial to the subject of modern feminism. Lanna declines, perhaps for this reason or perhaps because she’s too tied to home. But ultimately, this is journey for Morvern to take, for Morvern to reclaim, and the film leaves us hopeful that it will be successful.

SAMANTHA MORTON & KATHLEEN MCDERMOTT

Lanna chooses not to leave with Morvern despite the tempting financial offer…

In order for Morvern to follow through effectively on this violent act, however, this violence must be literalized on her boyfriend’s body. If she informed the authorities of his death, Morvern would also risk sacrificing his financial and intellectual property. She, therefore, leaves his body on the kitchen floor for a while before eventually cutting it up in the bath and burying it in the forest. The film makes no attempt to suggest any moral quandary on that part of Morvern. As Williams says, “Morvern never reports the death, and deals with the body herself. She mourns Him but shows no remorse, no guilt for -as it were- dancing on His grave. If she gets away with it, it’s partly because she doesn’t lie: Morvern is guileless as well as guiltless.” The scene in which Morvern cuts up the body is, in fact, blackly comic as the blood splatters on Morvern’s body accompanied by the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Sticking with You.” Although we get no point-of-view shot – the body is, in fact, never seen – we are privy to Morvern’s subjectivity and interiority through the music which Morvern is listening to on her cassette player. Our sympathies, then, are directed towards Morvern, not her boyfriend. This violence, then, is both an extension and a literalization of the violence enacted on the (male) authorial authority, and, crucially, I argue, an explicit feminist statement.

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Morvern’s authorial violence is literalized on the boyfriend’s body in a darkly comical way

The violence enacted on the authorial authority within the film is also mirrored outside of the film. The novel is written by a man but is narrated by a woman. The film is adapted and directed by a woman, reclaiming the female narrative voice through this female vision. As Shelley Cobb argues in Adaptation, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers, Ramsay inverts the gendered appropriation by excluding Warner’s narrative voice, reflecting Morvern’s usurpation of the ideal figure of the male author. If as Linda Ruth Williams claims, Morvern “purloin[s] a man’s cultural capital,” Ramsay also purloins the symbolic, cultural and economic capital of (male) authorship. This purloining of capital and the subsequent signature of Ramsay’s (female) authorial authority within the film is most obviously found in the changes Ramsay makes when adapting the novel for the screen. How significant it is, then, that Ramsay changes the ending from the novel where Morvern discovers she’s pregnant to instead give her a narrative of hopeful escape and adventure. Through the economic, cultural and narrative capitals gained from the violence enacted on the male author both inside and outside of the text, the female protagonist is offered a radical feminist alternative. Rather than by trapped by her class position, socio-economic position, job possibilities or pregnancy, Morvern is, instead, offered freedom, autonomy and authority.

In this way, then, I disagree with Lucy Bolton who argues that Morvern’s journey is about establishing the lasting communion with her dead lover. In Film and Female Consciousness: Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking Women, Bolton claims that Morvern lodges the memory of her boyfriend in her mind, using her body as a cradle to preserve the memory of touching him. This reading crucially neglects the violence Morvern enacts on her boyfriend both on his body and his authorial identity. Morvern deletes his name and buries his body; it’s a separation rather than a preservation. Morvern Callar, then, is about violence, a reclamation and reparation through violence, which enables women to radically remove themselves from oppressive male structures, and, instead, construct their own narratives, their own voices and their own journeys through this very destruction.

 

Please Look Now: The Female Gaze in ‘Magic Mike XXL’

The trailer offers a kind of meta-advertisement, recognising the very marketing strategies that attracted people, including women, to the previous film. Cutting between clips of the men performing various routines, the trailer includes the line, “We didn’t want to show the best parts of the movie in this trailer but it was very very hard to resist,” before inviting the audience to #comeagain this summer.

The poster for 'Magic Mike XXL'. It's hard not to look...

 

“Are you ready to be worshipped? Are you ready to be exalted?”

 

Oh boy, are we!

 

Magic Mike XXL, this summer’s sequel to the surprise hit of 2012, Magic Mike, is a celebration of (heterosexual) female sexual desire. Centred on male stripping, Magic Mike XXL thoroughly recognises and foregrounds the pleasure of women within the film and within the audience; women are (finally) recognised as having sexual desire, and of gleefully and ravenously pursuing. In this piece, I will discuss how this celebration of heterosexual female desire creates a new space for the female gaze within cinema. Although exciting and radical, I will also flesh out why this conceptualisation is also difficult and slippery. However, ultimately, I suggest that truly productive message of Magic Mike XXL is in the way in which it creates a masculine image, a male spectacle, to be looked at, affording (heterosexual) women the privilege – and the permission – to look.

Magic Mike followed young and unemployed Adam (Alex Pettyfer) who enters the seedy world of male stripping after being introduced by Mike (Channing Tatum). Although the film contained many blatant strip scenes to be used for the audience’s entertainment, it also attempted to be something other than a gratuitous stripping movie. Directed by Academy Award-winning Steven Soderberg, the film was a Serious Picture, all washed-out colours, mumbled dialogue, and loose camera work. The sequel, however, offers a much more conventional (and sexually entertaining) story. We are reunited with Mike who, after leaving stripping to work full-time on his furniture business, is dissatisfied with his new lifestyle. He decides to rejoin his fellow strippers including Matt Bomer’s Ken and Joe Manganiello’s rather subtly named, Big Dick Richie for one last hurrah. After some quick and unimportant narrative exposition to explain the loss of Pettyfer and Matthew McConaughey (in the first film, he played club owner, Dallas), the boys hit the road to perform one last time at a stripping convention (yes, this is apparently a thing).

Channing Tatum is reunited with Matt Bomer and Joe Manganiello in 'Magic Mike XXL'

More explicitly than its predecessor, Magic Mike XXL is aware of the sexual pleasures to be had from male stripping. The trailer offers a kind of meta-advertisement, recognising the very marketing strategies that attracted people, including women, to the previous film. Cutting between clips of the men performing various routines, the trailer includes the line, “We didn’t want to show the best parts of the movie in this trailer but it was very very hard to resist,” before inviting the audience to #comeagain this summer. The previous film may not have been an explicit piece of erotic entertainment, but, for this film, the marketers are clear that Magic Mike XXL is to be enjoyed, to be devoured and, most radically, to be looked at.

In Laura Mulvey’s famous account of the male gaze, she posits that, in traditional Hollywood cinema, men are the active bearers of the look whereas women are the passive objects of the look. She argues,

“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female… In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.”

Positioning the audience’s look with that of the (traditionally male) protagonist, the internal and external male gaze constructs the sexualized and objectified image of woman. In this way, the female gaze is dismissed; female sexual desire and the act of female looking do not exist.

In traditional Hollywood cinema, the man is the possessor of the look whereas the woman is the object of the look

In traditional Hollywood cinema, the man is the possessor of the look whereas the woman is the object of the look

Considering the ways in which the female gaze is privileged in the film, Magic Mike XXL productively breaks down oppressive phallocentric structures within cinema. The men perform strip teases and erotic dances several times throughout the film both for the pleasure of the women in the film and for the women in the audience. Their final show is constructed under a flurry of excitement and anticipation, making the final release of their performance all the more satisfying. Most radically, women are actually depicted as in charge of their sexual desires and pleasures. The film introduces a new character, Rome, played brilliantly by Jada Pinkett-Smith. Rome owns a strip club where the majority if not all of the audience are Black women (side note: Has there been a mainstream film in recent years that so explicitly portrayed sexual desire within women who are not white? That alone is worth celebrating). Mike asks Rome to accompany them to the convention as their MC, and Rome commands the entirety of the performance. She calls the women in the audience queens and goddesses; she asks the audience what they want; she is effectively a Black woman in charge of white men. For the sexual pleasures it affords women, and for the autonomy it gives women over these pleasures, Magic Mike XXL offers a radical construction of the female gaze.

However, as much as we can praise Magic Mike XXL for this construction, the conceptualization of the female gaze problematically works within a heteronormative framework. Queer men and women as well as non-binary genders complicate this construction. Are women the only group of people afforded the space to look Magic Mike XXL? Interestingly, the trailer does not exclusively aim its erotic spectacle at women, creating instead a gender-neutral invitation to look at these men. However, the clips in the trailer and, indeed, scenes in the film, locate this primarily within the realm of heterosexual female desire. The people who attend the shows are women, the people who the men talk about entertaining are women, and the people who are invited to look are women. This is not to say that Magic Mike XXL isn’t aware of a possible homoerotic or even homosexual appeal. In one scene, the men attend a drag show where they also participate in a voguing competition. Developed out of queer African American communities in Harlem, the men’s voguing situates them within the framework of queer male spectacles. Also, as part of the film’s promotional campaign, the cast of Magic Mike XXL attended the 2015 LGBT pride parade in Los Angeles. The cynical may say they did so simply for the free publicity. But their willingness to embrace their sexualised roles in queer communities recognises a step forward in traditional ideas of masculinity, and a more fluid construction of the gaze.

The cast of 'Magic Mike XXL' at LGBT pride in LA

But let’s be clear. The film primarily operates in a heteronormative framework whereby heterosexual women desire the men. Perhaps we should turn our attention not to who is afforded the look, but how the look is set up in the first place. In cinema, men are not to be looked at. To do so risks being feminised or homoeroticised; both run the risk of emasculation that traditional conceptualizations of masculinity cannot handle. Yet, here, the men offer up their bodies as spectacle, as something to be looked at. Of course, the men don’t embody the level of objectification conventionally embodied by women. For one, their bodies – all pecs, arms and abs – display the traits of the traditionally successful masculine body. As Richard Dyer claims in his essay, “Don’t Look Now,” “Muscularity is the sign of power-natural, achieved, phallic.” It is this, then, that even as we look, reminds us that these men are not passive objects, but hard, active, and, most crucially, masculine. For another, this passivity also refuses to extend to the narrative. As Mulvey claims, when objectified in cinema, woman “tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation.” As the active protagonists on-screen and with key roles off-screen (the story is based on Tatum’s own life, and he has production roles in both movies), the men refuse to be simply passive objects of erotic contemplation.

But Magic Mike XXL is more subversive than it seems. Even as these seemingly traditional images of masculinity are renewed within the film, they are undercut by the free way in which the men offer their bodies as spectacle, as something to be looked at. As Tatum says in an interview, “We’re definitely trying to make [our stripping movie] a little different and a little bit less misogynistic. I’m not trying to get very meta about it all because at the end of the day, it’s just for fun.” And, ultimately, isn’t this what feminism is about? Sex is not sinful. When there’s mutual consent, enjoying it visually, aesthetically, and physically, is not sinful. Magic Mike XXL finally offers heterosexual women, if not anyone else, the space to enjoy this kind of sex and, if, as Tatum says, you can have fun while you’re at it, well, then that truly is a pleasure.

No, no, trust us boys, it's been our pleasure...

‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’s Abject Mother

The film relocates the fears surrounding motherhood away from the patriarchal fears of abjection to the female and feminist fears of fulfillment.

We Need to Talk About Kevin

 

Written by Sarah Smyth as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Western society and culture fears mothers. Through her grotesque leaky body and the ambiguous division of the mother/child during pregnancy, patriarchy marks the mother as strange and mysterious. She is nature, opposed to the “proper” masculine position of culture. So prevalent a fear within Western society, the mother is the ultimate embodiment of abjection. In this piece, I will use the theory of abjection in order to examine Lynne Ramsay’s exquisite 2011 film, We Need to Talk about Kevin. In doing so, I hope to locate the film within a post-feminist framework, demonstrating the ways in which the representation of abjection plays into our notions of maternal and female achievement. Ultimately, I argue that the film relocates the fears surrounding motherhood away from the patriarchal fears of abjection to the female and feminist fears of fulfillment.

The poster for "We Need to Talk about Kevin"
The poster for “We Need to Talk about Kevin”

The theory of abjection is most powerfully put forward by Julia Kristeva in her book, Powers of Horror: An Essay in Abjection. Here, she discusses the abject as the grotesque, the repulsive, as that which we want to expel and dispose of. Particular examples of this include bodily waste such as excretions, secretions, vomit and menstruation, rotting food, and corpses. The significance of these abject moments and the reason we fear them so much is, as Kristeva says, not due to their lack of cleanliness or health “but what disturbs identity, system, order”: “What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite”. It is, then, the uneasy position between boundaries that causes or repulsion and rejection of the abject: death and life, clean and unclean, healthy and diseased.

Film academic, Barbara Creed, developed Kristeva’s theory of the abject to suggest the ways in which the maternal body, as particularly represented in horror films, embodies abjection. So obviously and relentlessly fleshy and visceral, the maternal body is linked to the “natural” world of birth, decay and death. Menstruating, lactating and gestating, the maternal body embodies this very ambiguous abject space. The boundaries of her body become blurred, setting her apart from the patriarchal world which continually attempts to remain “clean and proper”. For Creed, many classic horror and science fiction films including Alien, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and Carrie play on this idea of the monstrous abject maternal function. In all of these films, the pregnant woman, or the potential pregnant woman as represented through menstruation, provides the horror of the film through the very abjection of their female body.

Website, Ain't it Cool's poster for "We Need to Talk about Kevin" plays on the original poster for "Rosemary's Baby" suggesting the links between the two films
Website, Ain’t it Cool’s poster for “We Need to Talk about Kevin” plays on the original poster for “Rosemary’s Baby” suggesting the links between the two films

 

Although We Need to Talk about Kevin is not explicitly a horror film, it uses many of the tropes of the genre to create feelings of unease and fear around motherhood. Adapted from Lionel Shriver’s successful novel, the film focuses on Eva (Tilda Swinton), a travel writer, and her relationship with her (sociopathic? disturbed? evil?) son, Kevin (Ezra Miller). The film is told in a series of flashbacks as we learn that Kevin is somehow involved in a terrible criminal atrocity. As we discover what Kevin has done, the film also reveals the relationship between mother and son, posing the continually fascinating question: does familial and social upbringing wholly inform a person’s moral and ethical values or are some people just born evil?

As the film unpicks this question, it deconstructs traditional conceptualisations of the abject and identifications of the monstrous. For Eva, great pleasure is taken in the abject. During one of the first scenes in the film, Eva travels to La Tomatina festival in Spain. Through the shots of Eva wading through the semi-naked bodies and the vivid red tomatoes, the film emphasises Eva’s pleasure or even jouissance (a kind of excessive, orgasmic pleasure) in the visceral, bloodlike, grotesque experience. The film makes clear that Kevin disconnects Eva from these experiences she so craves. She’s not able to travel, and eventually winds up at a menial job in a travel agency. In one particularly painful moment, she finishes decorating her own room, her special room, with rare maps, which Kevin then destroys with paint. But not only is Eva unable to travel, write or occupy a room of her own, crucial activities for the active, challenging, and independent woman as Virginia Woolf so passionately advocated. She is also particularly separated from the physical and emotional experiences of pregnancy. The film gestures towards her pregnancy through an extreme close-up shot of cells splitting. Later, after childbirth, Eva sits quietly and almost mournfully in a cold, clinical hospital as Franklin (John C. Reilly), her husband, coos over the baby. The film presents her pregnancy through a scientific and technological lens, far removed from the abject experiences of pregnancy put forward from the previously mentioned films.

The wide angle of this shot suggests the physical and emotional distance Eva experiences towards her pregnancy and her child
The wide angle of this shot suggests the physical and emotional distance Eva experiences towards her pregnancy and her child

 

Most radically, however, in a reversal of gender, Kevin primarily embodies abjection within the film. He throws, smears and expels food, leaving it to rot and become covered in ants. He refuses to become toilet trained but shows an extraordinary level of control over his bowels as he defecates just after being changed, frustrating his mother greatly. When he’s older, Eva catches him masturbating but rather than feeling embarrassed or chastised, he menacingly holds eye contact with her until she hastily shuts the door and walks away. What’s interesting about these moments is the manipulation of the traditional abject mother-child relationship. As Creed points out, the mother not only embodies the abject body. She must also police the abject body; it is the mother’s job to map and uphold the “clean and proper” body of the child before he/she enters the paternal and patriarchal world of language and culture. In We Need to Talk about Kevin, Eva refuses or is unable to exert this maternal authority in order to keep Kevin’s body “clean”. She doesn’t clear up the food Kevin throws. She cannot potty train or exert any kind of control over Kevin’s bowel movements. She is unable to extend any influence over Kevin’s masturbatory habits. As Sue Thornham claims, “Kevin denies [Eva] control, refusing her transformation of the unknown into an exercise of mapping, of motherhood into a teaching relationship. Instead, his behaviour insists on the messiness of the body, on the fleshy, the organic, the abject – and insists that Eva recognize this, together with her own rage and fear at her entrapment”.

Kevin's not at all concerned that his mother's caught him masturbating...
Kevin’s not at all concerned that his mother’s caught him masturbating…

 

The film’s deconstruction and blurring of the abject roles examines and challenges the post-feminist ideas and ideals of motherhood. In Unruly Girls; Unrepentant Mothers, Kathleen Rowe Karlyn writes that post-feminism purports to celebrate intensive mothering as the liberated woman’s enlightened choice when, in fact, it both replaces subservience to a husband with subservience to the child, and naturalizes motherhood as an essential part of womanhood. By refusing to embody her traditional position as the abject mother, Eva and, indeed the film, challenge the idea that every woman must become a mother, that every woman will find fulfillment in being a mother, and that every mother must take up her position as the abject figure in this patriarchal society.

In all, We Need to Talk about Kevin is not a misogynist depiction of the feared maternal figure. Rather, it is a feminist revelation of the fears mothers have themselves; that they may not love their child, that they may not fulfill the so-called ultimate expression of womanhood and femininity, and that they may, in fact, release the monstrous potential of themselves and their child through the very abjection of their maternal function.

 

Sarah Smyth is a staff writer at Bitch Flicks who recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

The Fat Stardom of James Gandolfini

What’s clear is that, in our contemporary society and culture, the male body is not invisible. Although the female body continues to be more heavily regulated and controlled, particularly in terms of weight and appearance, the male body is no longer removed from similar considerations. As we continue to look more intensely and critically at the male body, we can anticipate a time when new images of masculinity become not only realized but embodied.

James Gandolfini and his formidable body
James Gandolfini and his formidable body

 

Written by Sarah Smyth as part of our theme week on Fatphobia and Fat Positivity.

Early in his career, James Gandolfini starred in Tony Scott’s blood-pumping, adrenaline-rushing military action film, Crimson Tide. Like Scott’s cult-classic, Top Gun, the construction and display of the male body within Crimson Tide symbolises the “masculine” tensions centralised within the narrative. Set in an American submarine, the film follows Captain Frank Ramsey (Gene Hackman) and Lieutenant Commander Ron Hunter (Denzel Washington) who butt heads throughout a series of nuclear missiles crises. Particularly, through the racial dichotomy between the two lead characters, Crimson Tide explores the ideas and ideals of rationality, logic, nationalism, supremacy and power, inverting the traditional racist narrative of the irrational, brutal and animalistic black man through Lt. Commander Hunter triumphant ending. However, although the film challenges conventional depictions of racial embodiment, its investment in the young, slim, athletic body as the traditional symbol of (masculine) strength, restraint and power remains prevalent. Compared to Capt. Ramsey’s ageing and paunchy body, Lt. Commander Hunter remains slim and fit with key scenes depicting him running, skipping and boxing in the submarine. Despite the (literal) visibility of Gandolfini’s overweight body throughout his career, Gandolfini’s weight is not central to the role he plays in this film; another actor takes on the role of the “excessive” and “revolting” fat crewmember. Nevertheless, in this piece, I use the symbols of masculinity imbued in the male body, particularly the fat male body, suggested in Crimson Tide as the starting point for my analysis into Gandolfini’s stardom. Particularly, in the piece, I will look at the specificity and uniqueness of Gandolfini’s fat stardom, asking what his literal fleshy embodiment reveals about the masculine image portrayed on screen.

In his most famous role, playing Tony Soprano in the hit HBO series, The Sopranos, Gandolfini embodies the complex relationship contemporary Western culture has with male fatness. One the one hand, Tony’s fatness most obviously represents his over-indulgence and lack of control. He constantly eats, smokes, drinks and sleeps with numerous women. His body, therefore, is a reflection or extension of the excessive bodily desires in which he continually indulges. Gandolfini’s body was particularly used to represent this in the 2012 film, Killing Them Softly. He plays Mickey, an ineffectual hitman to Brad Pitt’s partner-in-crime, who spends the film a slave to his bodily desires, smoking, drinking and sleeping with prostitutes throughout. He fails to complete a single hit and make any money. He’s lazy, stupid and a slob – and the film represents this through Gandolfini’s body.

Mickey (James Gandolfini) enjoys a drink or three with Jackie (Brad Pitt) in Killing Them Softly
Mickey (James Gandolfini) enjoys a drink or three with Jackie (Brad Pitt) in Killing Them Softly

 

In contrast, Brad Pitt’s character, Jackie Cogan, touches neither drink nor women. He’s an effective and successful hitman who maintains his authority within the Mafia throughout the film. Although Pitt doesn’t display the slimness and athleticism of his body in the same way as Washington in Crimson Tide, Pitt’s stardom or, more specifically, the stardom derived from Pitt’s much desired and desirable body imbues the character with the symbols of power and authority. At its most ambitious, Killing Them Softly attempts to link this to the American dream. At the end of the film, Jackie claims, “[Barack Obama] wants to tell me we’re living in a community? Don’t make me laugh. I’m living in America, and in America, you’re on your own. America is not a country; it’s just a business. Now fucking pay me.” The ultimate self-made man, Jackie/Pitt literally and figuratively embody the ideal of the American dream. In the twentieth and twenty-first century, fatness symbolises defiance against the middle-class interest in constraint, discipline and moderation; as consumerism became the site of approved indulgence, fatness became the site of necessary restraint. Within this indulgence/restraint paradigm, then, Pitt/Jackie represent the successful image of masculinity through the very slimness of his body.

Yet, male fatness is not always disempowering. As the gangster genre demonstrates, the fat cats really do get rich. Although Mickey may not exploit his potential monetary earnings, Tony certainly does. Throughout the show, Tony maintains a powerful position because of, rather than despite of, his fat body. This is done in two ways. Firstly, through the figure of Bobby Bacala, The Soprano transfers any of the disempowering features of fatness away from Tony. A carer to Tony’s uncle, Bacala is domesticated, feminised and removed from the main action of the mobster activities. In contrast, Tony looks aggressive, powerful and masculine. Secondly, like other fat figures in the gangster genre, which was epitomised by Marlon Brando’s Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, The Soprano’s foregrounds Tony’s body as a crucial indication of his excessive financial greed and the violent measures he will take to pursue them, enabling him to maintain control over the mob.

The Sopranos plays into the tradition of the fat gangster figure as epitomised by Don Vito Corleone in "The Godfather"
The Sopranos plays into the tradition of the fat gangster figure as epitomised by Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather

 

Throughout the show, Tony’s embodiment of financial greed becomes embroiled with the complexities of class politics. Whereas Jackie’s embodiment of the American dream in Killing Them Softly was warped, Tony’s embodiment of the American dream in The Sopranos is completely corrupted. In the pilot episode, as Tony collects his newspaper at the end of his drive, his sloppy appearance – all dishevelled dressing gown and protruding belly – contrast hugely with the wealthy middle-class neighbourhood in which he lives. Tony may have the money to afford such a house, but his illegal and immoral mobster activities and the excess of his consumer consumption continually place him outside of this social order. The Sopranos makes clear that, rather than failing to embody the successful image of the self-made man, Tony, in fact, embodies it too much. Through the excesses of his fat body, Tony embodies the extremes of consumer and capitalist culture.

Tony Soprano's "excessive" body contrasts with the social values of restraint and moderation
Tony Soprano’s “excessive” body contrasts with the social values of restraint and moderation

 

The Sopranos also makes clear that, despite Tony’s fat body, he’s never considered undesirable by women. He never fails to get laid by women inside or outside of his marriage, and, in this way, never “fails” as a heterosexual man. Furthermore, when on display, the slim and athletic man has to deal with the potential feminizing and queering repercussions of his body; within traditional structures of on-screen looking, the heterosexual male body looks but is never looked at. The Soprano’s undermines this potential emasculation by refusing to position Tony’s fat body as something to-be-looked-at. Instead, through his fatness and male privilege, he has full autonomy over his body and sexuality.

In contrast, in Enough Said, the relationship between Gandolfini’s weight and desirability is centralised and discussed primarily by women. In a very different role, Gandolfini plays Albert, a divorcee who starts dating Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Eva. During the film, we see Albert’s body through Julia’s eyes as she starts off uncertain about him, claiming “he’s kind of fat,” to discovering she enjoys sex with him. Nevertheless, the problems that arise in their developing relationship are consistently linked to Albert’s weight. As Julia (unknowingly) befriends Albert’s ex-wife, Marianne (Catherine Keener), she lets Marianne’s fat-phobic opinions influence her attitude toward Albert and his body. Marianne was always repulsed by Albert’s weight, calling him a slob. Similarly, Julia jokes about buying Albert a calorie book which deeply upsets him. Likewise, Marianne always hated the way Albert picked the onions out the guacamole. When Julia sees Albert doing this, she can’t help but comment on it and remind him that guacamole has a lot of calories in it. By opening up a new space of (heterosexual) female desire and looking and by consistently linking Albert’s flaws to his weight, Enough Said refuses to excuse the male body, particularly the fat male body, as some thing not to be examined, as something not to be looked at.

James Gandolfini's body becomes subject to female scrutiny in Enough Said
James Gandolfini’s body becomes subject to female scrutiny in Enough Said

 

The representation of Gandolfini’s body on-screen continues to reveal and contribute towards the hugely complex and often contradictory image of masculinity within our contemporary culture. He is as much powerful as powerless, effectual as ineffectual, desirable as undesirable. His untimely death in 2013 demonstrated just how polarizing his body is. For every fat shaming response to his death, another person celebrated him for being an inspiration and an icon. What’s clear, however, is that, in our contemporary society and culture, the male body is not invisible. Although the female body continues to be more heavily regulated and controlled, particularly in terms of weight and appearance, the male body is no longer removed from similar considerations. As we continue to look more intensely and critically at the male body, we can anticipate a time when new images of masculinity become not only realised but embodied.

 

Triumphing ‘Mad Men’s Peggy Olson

What exactly, then, makes a character “unlikable”? How can we define this complex term? Broadly, a character is unlikable when they behave in an amoral or unethical way (which, of course, depends upon our individual morals and ethics), particularly when their motivations are unclear. However, when it comes to female characters, this term seems to diversify and pluralize.

This post by staff writer Sarah Smyth appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women. 

In the proclaimed “golden age of television,” female characters, it seem, get a pretty raw deal. Not only is there a lack of female-driven shows (or, perhaps more accurately, a lack of critical consensus surrounding female driven shows), but there’s also a keen hatred towards any female characters deemed “unlikable.” Take, for example, Breaking Bad. Despite Walter White becoming a drug kingpin, murderer, and rapist, Skyler, his wife, elicited a vitriolic response from the audience. Most worryingly, as the actress who played Skyler, Anna Gunn, noted, this response was deeply rooted in sexism and misogyny: “I finally realized that most people’s hatred of Skyler had little to do with me and a lot to do with their own perception of women and wives. Because Skyler didn’t conform to a comfortable ideal of the archetypical female, she had become a kind of Rorschach test for society, a measure of our attitudes toward gender.” 

A charming example of the response towards Skyler...
A charming example of the response toward Skyler…

Aside from the deeply troubling attitudes toward “unlikable” female characters from the audience, another problem we encounter when attempting to examine “unlikable” female characters is the programme’s lack of detailed, nuanced and critical explorations and examinations of these characters. Returning to the problem of Skyler, Bitch Media’s Megan Cox puts it neatly: “While the show revolves around Walt’s struggles along the spectrum of morality, Skyler never gets much space to be an independent character. Her story really revolves around the choices her husband makes. It’s hard to build empathy with a character whose internal conflicts are never fully explored—instead, she often seems to just be getting in the way of the story, as another obstacle for her husband.”

What exactly, then, makes a character “unlikable”? How can we define this complex term? Broadly, a character is unlikable when they behave in an amoral or unethical way (which, of course, depends upon our individual morals and ethics), particularly when their motivations are unclear. However, when it comes to female characters, this term seems to diversify and pluralize. With a strict code of behaviour, even in the Western world, women can be more easily identified as “unlikable.” We’re supposed to dress in a certain way. We’re supposed to behave in a certain way. We’re supposed to be excellent partners, mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends. We’re supposed to have a “hot” body. We’re supposed to be sexy but never sexual ourselves. We’re supposed to be strong but not too strong, ambitious but not too ambitious, smart but not too smart. We’re supposed to be pleasing, pretty and altogether agreeable. And we’re supposed to have a sense of humour about the whole darn thing. Any departure from these set of expectations and we risk being marked as a deviant, a failure, a thoroughly unlikeable woman.

In Mad Men, Peggy Olson is often constructed- and construed, both by other characters and the audience – as “unlikable.” Introduced on the show as Don Draper’s secretary at advertising powerhouse, Sterling Cooper, she goes on to develop a hugely successful career as a copywriter, breaking several glass ceilings along the way. What is notable about her character, particularly in the early seasons, is the way in which Peggy fails – or refuses – to exploit her sexuality in the workplace. Unlike the other secretaries in the office, she fails to look sexy or even stylish. This is particularly crystallised in the pilot episode, “Smoke gets in your eyes,” when Peggy is mocked by her colleagues, Pete Campell and Joan Holloway, for her dowdy dress sense. As the show progresses, however, it is clear that Peggy will not play by the rules of the blatantly sexist workplace, rules which, as Joan demonstrates, the women clearly internalise. There is only one notable moment when Peggy attempts to “sex up” her look. In a season two’s episode, “Maidenform,” Peggy finally takes Joan’s advice to “stop dressing like a little girl,” and goes to the strip club where her (male) colleagues are enjoying a sleazy night with their account, Playtex, dressed in a revealing outfit. However, what’s clear is that Peggy refuses to do so in order to make herself appealing to men. Earlier in the episode, the boys mock her in a meeting for being neither Jackie or Marilyn but Gertrude Stein. Peggy retorts that she’s neither Jackie nor Marilyn because she refuses to be categorised by their male world. By boldly defying rigid and narrow expectations of femininity, and by displaying her sexuality only when its on her terms, Peggy not only retains a level of control and autonomy that was rare in the 1960s. More crucially, she refuses to be perceived as attractive, appealing or likable for her male colleagues.

mm_peggy_olson_g16-425x299
A rare moment of Peggy displaying her sexuality

For the audience, however, this may not make her character “unlikable” as such. In fact, this kind of badassery is exactly the kind of thing which earns Peggy a worshipping Buzzfeed article. What becomes more troubling – and, arguably, unlikable – is the development of her character, particularly in the later seasons. Peggy becomes bitter, harsh and critical, particularly towards her colleagues. Seemingly disillusioned with her career, she becomes a harsh task master, and lacks any sense of humour in the office or outside of it. Her already “outsiderness” from being a woman intensifies as her hostile attitude fractures her relationships with her colleagues further. As James Poniewozik in Time puts it: “Where have you hidden our Peggy, Mad Men? And how did you replace her with this hostile, unpleasant basket case, lashing out at everyone in sight and pining over a long-lost married man [Ted, an older married man who also happens to be her boss]?”

Poniewozik suggests that Peggy’s unlikability both from the audience and from the other characters on the show is precisely down to the show’s writing: “The problem here is that right now Angry Lovelorn Peggy is all the show is giving us. Right now, though, the balance [between her personal and professional life] seems badly off; what we see of Peggy at the office is refracted almost entirely through reminders that she’s shattered over Ted to the point of seeming like a different person… It isn’t about the show being obligated to make Peggy perfectly likeable, or empowered, or happy. It is about maintaining the complexity of a character who, over six seasons, has become the de facto female lead; or, at least, if her character radically changes, providing a reason beyond, ‘She went through a really bad breakup last season.’”

In one particular episode, “A Day’s Work,” Peggy mistakes flowers sent to her assistant, Shirley as her own. Thinking they were from Ted, she spends the day fretting over them before throwing them out and leaving an abrupt message for Ted with his assistant. When Shirley finally reveals who they were actually intended for, Peggy, angry and embarrassed, demands a new secretary. Peggy is presented as petty, selfish, and thoroughly unlikable. This is magnified later in the episode as her demands for a new secretary results in Dawn, a Black woman, being assigned as the new receptionist, something which the firm’s partner, Bert Cooper objects to purely on racist grounds. In this moment, Peggy fails to recognise both her privilege at being white within the working world. But, more crucially, she fails to recognise and empathise with someone who faces disadvantages and obstacles in the workplace, something she faced only a few years previously.

Peggy's confusion over the flowers reinforces her "unlikeability"
Peggy’s confusion over the flowers reinforces her “unlikeability”

However, we may judge, pity, and despise female characters like Peggy, but we must always triumph them. For as long as we have “unlikable” woman – well-developed, nuanced, and centralised woman, particularly on television – we not only defy highly gendered codes and expectations and triumph deviancy. We can also further gains toward producing characters as complex, multifaceted, and unlikable as male characters.

‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’: Looking at Kim Kardashian’s Naked Body

Kardashian quite literally embodies the complex construction of the female body as something to be looked at. And with her body being so readily, excessively, and continually put on show, can we help but do anything but look?

Written by Sarah Smyth as part of our theme week on Reality TV.

Kim Kardashian is, arguably, one of the most visible celebrities of the 21st century. She’s prolific in all forms of popular media including the tabloid press, television, social media, and other internet outlets, and her recent attempt to “break the internet” demonstrates her power and command over these sources. Yet, her prolificacy resides not only in the sheer outlandishness, excess, and controversy of her fame. Rather the success of her celebrity status is situated in the hyper-visible presentation of her body. In particular, through the continual display of her naked body (something in which certain magazines are particularly interested), Kardashian quite literally embodies the complex construction of the female body as something to be looked at. And with her body being so readily, excessively, and continually put on show, can we help but do anything but look?

kim.paparazzi
Who’s looking at you, Kim?

 

Using Kardashian’s hit reality television show, Keeping up with the Kardashians, as a framing device for the presentation of her body, in this article, I will attempt to unpick the multiple ways in which Kardashian’s naked body becomes looked at. Looking at three examples of her nakedness, her sex tape, Playboy photo shoot and Paper photo shoot, I will demonstrate how Kardashian both internalizes and reasserts the strict social and cultural monitoring of the female body’s naked display, as well as the construction of the naked female body as a sexually objectified and fetishized image for the male gaze.

Firstly, I will consider the way in which Kardashian’s naked body becomes looked at through her sex tape. In the pilot episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians, appropriately named, “I’m watching you”, Kardashian worries about going on The Tyra Banks Show to discuss her sex tape. Eventually she does – who can turn down that free publicity?! – but only to show remorse and regret for her “inappropriate” actions. She tells Banks, “[The tape] was [made] with my boyfriend of three years that I was very much in love with, and whatever we did in our private time was our private time, and never once did we think that it would get out… I made it. I need to take responsibility for what I’ve done. I have little sisters. I need to teach them what not to do.” Kardashian’s worries about going on the show and her eventual plea for forgiveness demonstrate the way in which we rigidly monitor and discipline the presentation of the (naked) female body and female sexuality. Leading social critic and philosopher, Michel Foucault explains in his book, Discipline and Punish, that we are not only surveyed by various forms of authority and power, but that we also learn to internalise this surveillance causing us to discipline ourselves. Using the structure of the Panopticon, a kind of prison where the prisoners are constantly watched by guards who are themselves hidden, Foucault demonstrates the way in which we are constantly monitored in our everyday life to the extent that we learn to maintain and embody a kind of self-surveillance.

Although not in a literal prison, Keeping up with the Kardashians reflect this monitoring in several ways. Firstly, as Lucia Soriano claims, “In Foucauldian terms, the viewer [of the show] takes on the role and monitors the Kardashians’ bodies to “assess it, to judge it, to calculate its qualities or merits.” Foucault conveys that “the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action” hence, “the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary.” In other words, when we think about Keeping Up with the Kardashians, regardless if the camera is on or off, they are conditioned to continuously inspect themselves.”

However, the show is not the only place where this monitoring occurs. Kardashian’s appearance on The Tyra Banks Show also demonstrates this surveillance, both by the viewers and by Kardashian herself. Attempting to emphasize her long-term relationship with her partner, as well as her position as a role model for other young girls, Kardashian is aware of but crucially never challenges the societal and cultural demand for women to embody and also present a private and heteronormative constructed naked body.

Kimplayboy
Playboy legitimizes the display of Kardashian’s naked body

 

This moment directly contrasts with a later episode, “Birthday Suit,” in which Kardashian now struggles with the decision of whether or not to pose naked for Playboy magazine. Again, Kardashian demonstrates an awareness of the socially and culturally sanctions placed on women’s presentation of their bodies as she worries about how the nude shoot would impact on her image. She claims, “Ever since the sex-tape scandal, I have to be really careful in how I’m perceived.” Kardashian, it seems, has internalized the wider monitoring of her body to the extent that she now places boundaries and sanctions on the presentation and visibility of her naked body. In the end, she decides to do it. Again, this kind of publicity is too good to pass up.

The difference in this situation, however, is that, framed within male sexual desire, Playboy legitimizes her naked and sexual(ized) body through what Alexandra Sastre calls the normative and regulated sexual practice of posing for Playboy. As Laura Mulvey argues in her famous essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” (heterosexual) men have the authority of the look. Examining film in particular, Mulvey argues that male protagonist is the active subject in contrast to the women who functions as a passive and erotic object. Functioning as the identificatory anchor for the (assumed) male spectator, the man is the bearer of the look whereas the woman is there to be looked at. In this way, through Playboy’s conventional heteronormative and phallocentric structures of looking, the magazine legitimizes the display of Kardashian’s naked body. Whereas Kardashian’s sex tape suggests an authority and autonomy over the creation of the tape which makes ambiguous the intended spectator  – Kim jokingly says on the show that she made it because “[she] was horny and [she] felt like it” – Playboy reasserts normative and accepted forms of looking at Kardashian’s naked body.

Although both my examples occurred in an early part of Kardashian’s career, the way we look at her naked body continues to be a point of discussion, controversy, and criticism. The backlash surrounding her now famous photo shoot for Paper magazine demonstrates the way in which Kardashian’s body or, perhaps more accurately, the display of her body is still a site for intense scrutiny, monitoring and judgment. Some, including this Bitch Flicks piece, explored Kardashian’s use of cultural appropriation by presenting her body in a similar way to “freakish” yet fetishized Black bodies. Not only is this particularly disturbing and offensive in itself, but it also adds another complex layer as to how we look at Kardashian’s naked body. In her essay, “Eating the Other,” bell hooks discusses the way in which “ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is white cultural.” What particularly interests me is the way in which hooks discusses the young white male’s fascination and desire to have sex with women from ethnic minorities. She says, “To these young males and their buddies, fucking was a way to confront the Other…  They claim the body of the colored Other instrumentally, as unexplored terrain, a symbolic frontier…”

What becomes disconcerting, then, when considering who is looking at Kardashian’s naked body in Paper is the way in which her cultural appropriation directly feeds into the fetishizing, objectification, and commodification of the black female body in particular by white males. In this way, her body continues to function as a complex and ambiguous site of problematic form of looking. As Kardashian’s body continues as a hyper-visible image in the collective cultural consciousness, we can only hope that we learn to break down the ways of looking at her body in order to dismantle our complicity in the policing, objectification and fetishization of her naked body.

Kardashian's photo shoot for "Paper" magazine was heavily criticized for its appropriation of black female bodies
Kardashian’s photo shoot for Paper magazine was heavily criticized for its appropriation of black female bodies

 

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Sarah Smyth recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

‘Little Miss Sunshine’: Masculinity’s Losers

As each male character tackles a personal problem which has either implicit or explicit links to normative constructions of successful masculinity, ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ examines the burden of this masculine ideal. So difficult to maintain yet so embedded in the social, cultural, economic, and political conceptualization of “manliness,” men who fail to embody this ideal inevitably become marked out as “losers.”

Written by Sarah Smyth.

When talking to a group of high school students, Arnold Schwarzenegger apparently claimed, “I hate losers. I despise losers.” Multi-Mr. Universe and Mr. Olympia winner, Hollywood mega-star, entrepreneur and Governor, Schwarzenegger dedicates his life to the pursuit of the hyper-masculine ideal and American dream. Wealthy, powerful and incredibly buff, Schwarzenegger embodies the Western conceptualization of a successful man.

The men of the 2007 hit film, Little Miss Sunshine would be, in Schwarzenegger’s eyes, “losers.” Indeed, Michael Arndt, the film’s scriptwriter, claims this troubling quote provided the framework through which he constructed the characters and deconstructed the notion of “loser.” As each male character tackles a personal problem which has either implicit or explicit links to normative constructions of successful masculinity, Little Miss Sunshine examines the burden of this masculine ideal. So difficult to maintain yet so embedded in the social, cultural, economic, and political conceptualization of “manliness,” men who fail to embody this ideal inevitably become marked out as “losers.”

The poster for 'Little Miss Sunshine'
Little Miss Sunshine

 

Little Miss Sunshine tells the story of the Hoover family, which includes the heroin-snorting grandpa, Edwin; the failing motivational speaker father, Richard; the suicidal uncle, Frank; politically mute brother, Dwayne; and stressed mother, Sheryl; as they go on a road trip from Albuquerque to California to support 7-year-old Olive as she competes in a beauty pageant. Along the way, they face many setbacks – some mechanical but many personal – as each character comes to face the primary difficulty in their life.

Before I examine the particular ways in which Little Miss Sunshine deconstructs the image of “failing” or “inadequate” masculinity through the male characters, it is crucial to examine the ways in which this impinges on women. For one, the film most obviously and explicitly highlights and examines the markers of success which are most acutely and destructively felt by women. For another, the metaphor of the beauty pageant which, as I will examine later, comes to define the identification of the “successful” masculine existence, is literalised in the film through Olive’s narrative. Although only seven years old, Olive’s body is subject to the social, cultural and familial surveillance which continues to monitor a woman’s body for the rest of her life, identifying her body as a “success” or “failure.” The opening credits make clear the juxtaposition between Olive’s body and the pageant queen’s body; whereas the pageant queen is “slim,” Olive is “chubby.” Later, after Olive orders ice-cream for breakfast, Richard explains to her that “the fat in the ice-cream will become fat in your body.” Even though Sheryl explains to Olive that “it’s OK to be skinny, and it’s OK to be fat if that’s what you want,” Richard makes clear that in order to be a winner, she must be thin, claiming, “Ok, Olive, but let me ask you this. The women in Miss America: Are they fat or are they skinny?” Despite the rest of the family’s encouragement to not listen to Richard and eat the ice-cream, Olive is visibly shaken by this and later asks her grandpa, “Am I pretty?” She’s upset because, as she says, “Daddy hates losers.”

The film identifies the beauty pageant as "grotesque", and marks Olive's body as "failing" to conform to the beauty standards put forth by the pageant
The film identifies the beauty pageant as “grotesque,” and marks Olive’s body as “failing” to conform to the beauty standards put forth by the pageant

 

The surveillance of Olive’s body eventually culminates as the family arrive at the beauty pageant. Exaggerated and (arguably) grotesque in fake tan, makeup, big hair and swimsuits, the other pre-pubescent contestants demonstrate the complex way in which we monitor young girls’ bodies. On the one hand, we may identify these bodies as freakish, suggesting our rigid policing of the presentation of the young female body, particularly with reference to sexuality. On the other hand, through Olive, we are also presented with another kind of bodily monitoring which, pitting her body against the other contestants, already marks her out as a unable to fulfill the requirements of being a beauty queen. Anticipating this assertion, Dwayne attempts to protect her by claiming, “I don’t want these people judging Olive.” Not embodying the beauty standards constructed by the pageant – slim, tanned, poised, with big hair and full make up – it’s clear that, within the context of the pageant, Olive’s body is identified as a “failure.”

In some ways, the male characters of the film embody a kind of privilege which makes them exempt from this monitoring and, by extension, marking out as a “failure.” At no point does the male body become subject to the superficial yet extremely destructive bodily surveillance in the film which so rigorously contours the female existence. In fact, the film suggests that male privilege not only makes them exempt from bodily monitoring but actually enables them the authority to construct the ideals through which female bodies are judged. During the ice-cream scene, Edwin tells Olive not to listen to her father because “I like a woman with meat on her bones.” The “success” of the female body, it seems, is still very much monitored by men. However, by presenting the ways in which the “failings” of each of the male character threaten to compromise his socially and culturally constructed masculinity, Little Miss Sunshine demonstrates the way in which his privilege is comprised by other conflicting factors.

Olive already begins to internalize the monitoring of her body
Olive already begins to internalize the monitoring of her body

 

In Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men, Lynne Segal claims, “Dominant ideals of masculinity come from social meanings which distinguish these ideals from what they are not.” Therefore, to be “masculine” is to not be “feminine,” “queer” or racially, ethnically or bodily “inferior.” In Little Miss Sunshine, the male characters attempt to battle various “weaknesses” that may comprise their masculine identity. Edwin attempts to maintain a tough exterior despite his aging body. He claims to “fuck a lot of women” and “still has Nazi bullets in [his] ass.” Yet, he cannot escape the fallibility of his body as a drug overdose eventually leads to his death. Dwayne, also, attempts to harden and toughen his body in preparation for joining the hyper-masculine world of the US Air Force Academy. He continually works out in the film and even takes a vow of silence, suggesting the determinacy of his ambition. However, his body also lets him down as he discovers he’s colorblind, shattering his dream to fly planes. Frank, on the other hand, feels threatened primarily through his academic failings. This is particularly significant because, as a gay man, the narrative could have easily slipped into exploring the “failings” of Frank’s masculinity through his queer identity. After all, as Leo Bersani claims in Is the Rectum a Grave?, phallocentrism aligns women and gay men, particularly through their bodies and the way in which they are penetrated. Therefore, dominant images of masculinity must deny these bodily “weaknesses.” However, rather than attempting to commit suicide due to any queer masculine crisis, Frank tries to kill himself after his academic rival, Larry Fisherman, won a genius award, threatening his position as the number one Proust scholar in the USA. Representing a particular image of masculine competitiveness, Frank fears being considered a “loser.”

The men of 'Little Miss Sunshine' all face being marked as a "loser"
The men of Little Miss Sunshine all face being marked as a “loser”

 

Richard, however, most explicitly reflects the masculine anxiety of being marked out as a “loser.” A motivational speaker and life coach, throughout the film Richard attempts to secure a contract to turn his “Nine Steps to Success” program into a lucrative business. For Richard, winning is paramount. At one point, he tells Olive that luck has nothing to do with winning. Rather, it’s about “willing yourself to win.” In fact, he emphasizes the point of winning so much that he claims that “there’s no point going [to the pageant] unless you think you’re going to win.” Richard’s desire to win or, to put it another way, his fear about being marked as a “loser,” explicitly intersects with Schwarzenegger’s definition of “successful” masculinity. Both Richard’s program and narrative uphold the American Dream. Stating that prosperity, success, and upward social mobility can all be achieved through hard work, the American Dream advocates the kind of success represented by Schwarzenegger; despite not being a born-and-bred American, he is the ultimate self-made man. However, maintaining the Liberal and Neoliberal structures of economy which privileges the economic freedoms of individualism and laissez-faire, the American dream, will always privilege the straight white man.

As Lisa Duggan claims in The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy, “Neoliberalism, a late twentieth-century incarnation of Liberalism, organizes material and political life in terms of race, gender, and sexuality as well as economic class and nationality, or ethnicity and religion.” In this way, Schwarenegger’s definition of the “loser,” a definition which is explicitly embedded in the notion of a “failing” masculinity, refuses to acknowledge the privileges afforded to white, heterosexual, able-bodied, economically privileged and cis-gendered men. In this way, it refuses to acknowledge that hard work does not always turn you into a winner. Despite his many privileges, Richard’s program, ironically, fails. For one, as his potential business partner says, “no one’s heard of you.” For another, Richard’s current economic situation compromises his privilege. The success of the program is paramount to keeping the family financially afloat. Money issues plague the family throughout the film – indeed, the reason they travel to the pageant in their van is because they can’t afford flights – and Richard promises that securing this deal will “start generating some income.” Failing to provide for his family, Richard fails to fulfill the traditional male (and masculine) role of the breadwinner. More crucially, however, Richard demonstrates that the American Dream is not available to everyone. Not everybody, it seems, can be a winner.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Embodying ideal masculinity a bit too much...?
Arnold Schwarzenegger: Embodying ideal masculinity a bit too much…?

 

In the end, Dwayne sums up the problems they all face: “Fuck beauty contests. Life’s one long beauty contest: school, college, work… Fuck that.” The emphasis on external appearance – enormous wealth, a slim body, successful career, big house and beautiful partner – ensures that dominant Western, Neoliberal and hyper-masculine ideals are maintained, and anything that may compromise this – what Segal identifies as “inferior”- remains rigidly monitored and surveyed. However, by “failing” to conform to these standards, by saying “fuck the beauty pageants,” and by willing ourselves to lose, we may find a way to resist these ultimately oppressive and destructive ideals.

 

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Sarah Smyth is a staff writer at Bitch Flicks who recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

Why ‘The Babadook’ is the Feminist Horror Film of the Year

Firstly, ‘The Babadook’ complicates the depiction of women as primarily victims by presenting Amelia as a complex and multi-faceted figure. For one, she is a not a young big-breasted girl but a mother and fully grown woman. This is not necessarily groundbreaking in itself.

Written by Sarah Smyth.

“If it’s in a word, or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook…”

The poster for 'The Babadook'
The poster for The Babadook

 

So begins the bedtime story read by Amelia (Essie Davis) to her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman) in the hit Australian horror film, The Babadook. The story focuses on Amelia, a single mother whose husband died in a car crash on their way to the hospital to have Samuel, as she struggles in her role as a parent to her difficult, troubled, and increasingly erratic son. Samuel is afraid of monsters, believing them to be waiting to get him come nightfall. He frequently sleeps in bed with Amelia, and makes his own contraptions to protect both of them. His behaviour becomes so disruptive, however, that he is kicked out of school. One night, Amelia and Samuel read the story of the Babadook in a creepy pop-up book which Amelia has no recollection of owning. The Babadook, a sinister and scary ghoulish figure, will never leave after its presence becomes known. After they read the book, strange occurrences take place, and the rest of the film follows their terrifying encounters with the Babadook.

Amelia and Samuel read the creepy book about the Babadook together
Amelia and Samuel read the creepy book about the Babadook together

 

The main strength of the film, in terms of both narrative and gender politics, is the role of Amelia. Before we even consider how women are represented on film, the fact that women are represented on film, particularly by taking on the central role, is an achievement. Not only did only 30 percent of the top-grossing films of 2013 have lead female characters, but a huge number of films still fail the Bechdel test. In terms of race, the picture gets even worse as 73 percent of female characters are white. However, simply making female-led films and passing the Bechdel test is not enough. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Transformers: Age of Distinction all pass the test, yet the film’s treatment of women on (and apparently off) screen is atrocious. After Megan Fox quit the franchise, apparently likening Michael Bay, the films’ director, to Hitler, Shia LaBeouf commented that Fox developed “this Spice Girl strength, this woman-empowerment [stuff] that made her feel awkward about her involvement with Michael, who some people think is a very lascivious filmmaker, the way he films women.” The Transformers franchise makes apparent that, in order to get a more accurate look at the role women play and the impact women have in the film industry, we must look at how women are represented on screen as much as whether women are represented at all.

The 'Transformers' franchise demonstrates why the Bechdel test doesn't always cut it...
The Transformers franchise demonstrates why the Bechdel test doesn’t always cut it…

 

Horror films, in particular, demonstrate this case. Although women are often the lead character in this genre, the representation of women as a whole is often problematic at best. When filming The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock famously claimed he always follows the advice to “torture the women!” something which apparently happened as much off-screen as on-screen. As Sydney Prescott noted in the horror-parody franchise, Scream, horror films often depict “some big-breasted girl who can’t act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door.” Both Hitchcock and Sydney’s comments demonstrate women’s twofold role in the horror genre: victim and sexual object.

Firstly, The Babadook complicates the depiction of women as primarily victims by presenting Amelia as a complex and multi-faceted figure. For one, she is a not a young big-breasted girl but a mother and fully grown woman. This is not necessarily groundbreaking in itself. The Others, The Ring, and Dark Water all depict their central characters as mothers. However, none so brilliantly present their central character as complicated as Amelia in The Babadook. Amelia is not only a victim and a mother but a colleague, potential lover, sister, neighbor, and grieving widow. The strength of the narrative is the way in which the film meshes the difficulties of being a mother to a troubled child with the haunting of the Babadook, and the way in which this complex combination strains all Amelia’s relationships. It also causes her to lash out at her neighbor, miss days at work, refuse advances from potential partners, and fall out with her sister. But whether it’s the stress of being a mother or the terror of the Babadook remains ambiguous as the film presents her identity, relationships and experiences as layered and complicated.

Secondly, The Babadook consciously subverts the conventional depiction of female sexuality in horror films. Broadly speaking, female characters are either presented as “virgins” or “whores,” where they are punished “appropriately,” or female sexuality is presented as something excessive, disgusting and monstrous. In her authoritative and brilliantly titled book, Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in Modern Horror Films, Carol Clover outlines the trope of the Final Girl in the slasher film. The Final Girl, she claims, is the films lead character, who, as both the victim but also the only survivor in the film, serves as both the site of the audience’s sadistic fantasies, and the anchor for the spectator’s identification. Primarily aimed at young heterosexual men, the Final Girl must be “masculine” enough so that this (assumed) spectator can identify with her; she is often androgynous or tomboyish in appearance and sometimes in name. More crucially, she must be sexualised but never sexual; she must provide the fleshy site for the heterosexual male’s voyeuristic fantasies but she must never have autonomy over her own body and sexuality. In fact, she is often virginal. If a woman does have sex in these films, she is branded a “whore” so quickly gets killed off. Examples of films which conform to these tropes include Halloween, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and, more recently, You’re Next. Post-modern pastiche horror films including Scream and The Cabin in the Woods also play on the trope. On the other hand, as Barbara Creed discusses in her book, The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis, female sexuality is also presented as grotesque and terrifying, reflecting, she claims, male anxieties over female sexuality. Examples include The Exorcist, The Brood, and Carrie.

Laurie in 'Halloween' is a typical example of the Final Girl trope
Laurie in Halloween is a typical example of the Final Girl trope

 

The Babadook subverts these conventions by presenting woman in possession of (healthy) sexual desire and needs. In one scene, Amelia watches a romantic film alone before going up to her bedroom and taking out her vibrator. Her night of pleasure is ruined, however, after Samuel interrupts her claiming he is terrified of his own room and so cannot sleep in it. Her disappointment is evident; motherhood, it seems, can be as much frustrating as it can be difficult. Crucially, however, the film not only radically foregrounds female sexuality and desire, something which horror films, as I demonstrate, conventionally dismiss. It also links the terror of the Babadook with Amelia’s frustrated lack rather than an excess of grotesque and monstrous sexuality. At moments, the Babadook manifests itself in the form of her late husband. When Amelia first sees him, she passionately hugs and kisses him, clearly missing the affection and sexual intimacy offered from a romantic partner. Only after the Babadook, disguised as her husband, asks for her to bring him the child does she realise that this is a trap. Her husband cannot and will not come back to fulfill the needs she so desperately craves. The Babadook, like the grief she feels for her husband, will continue to haunt Amelia forevermore, serving as a constant reminder of the loss of sexual desire and intimacy which the death of her husband so tragically caused. The terror of the Babadook, then, is as much about the loss of a treasured presence as well as the intrusion of an unwelcome presence.

The Babadook offers a hope for feminist horror fans who are tired of cliché-ridden depictions of two-dimensional, victimised, hyper-sexualised female characters. A film which not only passes the Bechdel test, but presents a complex, multi-layered, sexually autonomous central female protagonist, The Babadook offers hope that the horror genre will shift its depiction of lead female characters to create more compelling, engaging and accurate representations of women onscreen.

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Sarah Smyth is a staff writer at Bitch Flicks who recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

‘The Good Wife’: Being Bad

The premise of ‘The Good Wife’ brilliantly sets up and challenges particular gender roles and expectations. Julianna Margulies plays the lead character, Alicia Florrick. Given Margulies’ age – she was 43 when the show began – and popular culture’s continual privileging of youth, particularly with reference to women, this is an achievement in itself. Alicia’s married to Peter Florrick (Chris Noth, who’s no stranger to playing “bad boy” partners after his role of Mr Big on ‘Sex and the City’), who has just been jailed following a string of political and sexual scandals. The pilot sees Alicia dutifully standing by her husband, remaining silent as he apologises for his indiscretions, before the show cuts to several months later as Alicia returns to work as a defence attorney following 13 years as a stay-at-home mom.

Written by Sarah Smyth.

The Good Wife centralizes the conventionally marginalized wife figure
The Good Wife centralizes the conventionally marginalized wife figure

 

Warning: Contains MAJOR spoilers!

Like many other fans of the hugely popular political and legal drama, The Good Wife, a few months ago, I sat down to watch the latest episode, “Dramatics, Your Honor,” only to be rudely awakened from the state of pure escapism which the show pleasantly induces. Although often clever, complex, and compelling, the show is also a somewhat ridiculous yet highly entertaining romp, with a taste for outlandish storylines and theatrical, scheming characters. In other words, I do not watch the show to get a reflection of or even a reflection on Real Life. Real Life sucks, and The Good Wife allows me, and others I assume, to escape life’s often mundane, tedious, and sometimes downright brutal existence. However, in this episode, Will Gardener (Josh Charles), one of the main characters who also serves as the love interest to the leading character, Alicia Florrick, dies. Taking this extremely personally – how could the writers do this to me? ­– I took to Twitter to find answers. Here, I came across this letter written by the creators and executive producers of the show. In it, they wrote a rather jarring sentence: “The Good Wife, at its heart, is the ‘Education of Alicia Florrick.’” As I reflected on this statement, I began to wonder to what extent Alicia Florrick needed to learn something and, more worryingly, to what extent this need to learn is highly gendered.

The premise of The Good Wife brilliantly sets up and challenges particular gender roles and expectations. Julianna Margulies plays the lead character, Alicia Florrick. Given Margulies’ age – she was 43 when the show began – and popular culture’s continual privileging of youth, particularly with reference to women, this is an achievement in itself. Alicia’s married to Peter Florrick (Chris Noth, who’s no stranger to playing “bad boy” partners after his role of Mr Big on Sex and the City), who has just been jailed following a string of political and sexual scandals. The pilot sees Alicia dutifully standing by her husband, remaining silent as he apologises for his indiscretions, before the show cuts to several months later as Alicia returns to work as a defence attorney following 13 years as a stay-at-home mom. Through this premise, The Good Wife centralises the conventionally side-lined figure of the wife by giving her a voice and an identity beyond this primary label of “the good wife.” Alicia not only embodies a complex and multifaceted identity as a lawyer, but also as a mother, sister, daughter, friend, and lover. The show also complicates the label of “the good wife” itself. For every character who praises Alicia for standing by her husband, another lambasts her for sticking with him, claiming she fails both herself and women everywhere. The show makes apparent that a woman’s “choice” – for how much autonomy did Alicia really have in this situation? – is intensely scrutinised and criticised. The show then follows Alicia’s struggle with the complexities and obstacles of her identity as she attempts to navigate marriage, motherhood, and the workplace, as well as her increasing sexual attraction for Will, her boss and one of the named partners at the firm where she works.

Alicia navigates the many aspects of her identity including mother, wife and lawyer
Alicia navigates the many aspects of her identity including mother, wife, and lawyer

 

With a set-up that continually explores and challenges the traditional idea of what is meant for a woman to be “good,” I was puzzled by the idea that Alicia needs an education. As television enters a golden age with shows particularly examining the moral complexities of their lead characters, I wondered whether the need to educate rather than explore Alicia’s character is specifically gendered. As Bitch Flicks examined last year, women are critically neglected from this exploration in two ways. Firstly, women’s contribution is neglected from the critical consensus and canonisation of the television revolution. The title alone from Brett Martin’s book, Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad, makes clear the absence of female-driven television shows within the consideration of this revolution. In The New Yorker, Emily Nassbaum criticises the degradation of “female” and “feminine” culture within the canonisation of television, and proclaims Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City as “the unacknowledged first female anti-hero on television.”

This, then, leads me onto my second point. The privilege of exploring a morally ambiguous character is primarily afforded to white, cis-gender, heterosexual, able-bodied men. Female characters, as well as other oppressed groups, in contrast, are refused this privilege. Not only are there fewer critically acclaimed female-driven shows than male-driven shows, and even fewer with Black or queer-identifying leading women. But when there are shows which attempt to explore complex female characters, they face a much harsher moral and critical assessment. For example, whereas the greed, selfishness and pure pigheadedness of Tony Soprano from The Soprano’s and Walter White in Breaking Bad are continually held up as an exploration of character, earning them a cult status within popular culture, Hannah Horvath from Girls is positively reviled (see here, here and here). Although Hannah’s characteristics are less extreme that Tony and Walter’s, she also shares a tendency to be narcissistic, self-absorbed and, at times, unlikeable. Whereas male characters are entitled to be bad, female characters, it seem, must always be good.

Male television characters can be bad...
Male television characters can be bad…
...whereas a female character must always be good
…whereas a female character must always be good

 

Ensuring women remain “good” ensures they also remain passive, docile, and unthreatening. As Carol Dyhouse demonstrates in her book, Girl Trouble: Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women, the lives of young women in comparison to the lives of young men has been plagued with social anxiety and moral panic from the nineteenth century. However, the more I thought about Alicia’s education in The Good Wife, the more I realised that her education is not about being good; it’s about being bad.

Near the end of season one, Alicia makes her first difficult and morally ambiguous decision. As the recession hits, the partners at her law firm, Lockhart & Gardener, must decide which first year associate to lay off, Alicia or Cary Agos (Matt Czuchry). In order to save her job, Alicia pulls in a favour with her husband’s campaign manager, Eli Gold (Alan Cumming), asking him to switch legal representation to her firm, enabling her to bring in top lucrative clients. Not only does Alicia unfairly exploit her advantages, advantages to which Cary simply cannot live up, in order to ensure she secures her positions at the firm. She also uses Peter for her own career prospects, much in the same way that he uses her – Eli continually makes it apparent that Peter’s resurrected career as the States Attorney and, later, as the Governor of Illinois depends on Alicia’s support. Her education in complicating, if not rejecting, her “good” label comes to a head at the end of season four when she accepts Cary’s invitation to start their own firm, pinching Lockhart & Gardner’s top clients along the way.

After Will discovers Alicia’s plans at the beginning of season five, he tells her, “You’re awful, and you don’t even know how awful you are.” As Alicia’s complicated love interest in the show – although at times they engage in brief sexual encounters, Alicia is not “bad” enough to involve herself in a full-blown illicit affair, even if her relationship with Peter is strained at best – Will’s words are highly charged. Nevertheless, there’s some truth to them. Alicia’s come a long way from the relatively meek and unsure character of the pilot. As Joshua Rothman claims, “Everyone, including Alicia, thinks that she’s a victim—but, in fact, she’s a predator, all the more dangerous for being stealthy.” With season six currently airing, the show remains committed to this education. As Alicia considers running for States Attorney, the definition of “good” and “bad” become redefined. The latest episode, “Oppo Research” demonstrates the way in which, within the landscape of politics, what’s defined as “good” and “bad” becomes, simultaneously, much more black and white, and much more tenuous – it all depends on outward appearance and surface. As (politically defined) unpleasant aspects of Alicia’s life are made apparent – although, interestingly, they relate to Alicia’s family members rather than Alicia herself – the show reveals that even good girls have skeletons in their closets.

Cary Agos begins as From colleague to rival to partner, Cary Agos motivates Alicia to be bad
Cary Agos goes from colleague to rival to partner, Cary Agos motivates Alicia to be bad

 

Without wanting to be prescriptive or wishing the integrity of Alicia’s character away, a significant part of me wants Alicia to fuck up. And I mean, really fuck up. I think this is why I became so invested in the relationship between Will and Alicia, and why I was so saddened by the death of Will. I wanted Alicia to ditch her “Saint Alicia” label and embrace being bad. But the success of female-led shows is not in swapping one side of a dichotomy for another. It’s about embracing a nuanced portrayal of women in television and wider popular culture. The Good Wife succeeds in presenting a character who, despite her best efforts, remains flawed. In this way, Alicia Florrick can finally shed “the good” label for good.

 

Sarah Smyth is a staff writer at Bitch Flicks who recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.

 

The Queer Female Friendship of ‘Frances Ha’

For ‘Frances Ha’ is not a film where “boy-meets-girl,” and there is definitely no diamond ring. The love story of ‘Frances Ha’ is between the titular character, Frances (Greta Gerwig) and her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), and it is precisely this friendship between two women which questions, resists, and challenges the definition of love posed by the (primarily) heterosexual and (almost always) heteronormative romcom genre.

This guest post by Sarah Smyth appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.

Frances Ha is a love story.

The film opens with a montage of the central couple play-fighting, dancing, reading, cooking, and doing laundry together, which establishes the seemingly blissful and idyllic domestic set-up between the two characters. As the narrative progresses, however, the couple become subject to the usual trials and tribulations of the characters in romantic comedies. Their relationship is complicated by external forces, which becomes intensified by jealousy and miscommunication, before the couple are finally reunited and reconciled.

However, despite the possibility of reducing Frances Ha to a set of generic conventions, to do so is not hugely productive. Firstly, this undermines the charm, intelligence, and self-awareness of the film. Secondly, by only examining Frances Ha in terms of how it upholds generic conventions, we remain unable to see the ways in which the film challenges this very generic set-up. For Frances Ha is not a film where “boy-meets-girl,” and there is definitely no diamond ring. The love story of Frances Ha is between the titular character, Frances (Greta Gerwig) and her best friend, Sophie (Mickey Sumner), and it is precisely this friendship between two women which questions, resists, and challenges the definition of love posed by the (primarily) heterosexual and (almost always) heteronormative romcom genre.

Frances Ha is a love story between two friends, Frances and Sophie.

Frances Ha is a love story between two friends, Frances and Sophie. Frances and Sophie are sitting at a table outside eating
Frances and Sophie are sitting at a table outside eating

 

Discussing the friendship between Frances and Sophie in an interview in Sight and Sound magazine, Greta Gerwig claims:

“We never started out saying we were going to make a love story between these two friends but it just emerged in the writing of the scenes. Then we went back and actually beat it out like a romcom: she has the girl, she loses the girl, she tries to make the girl jealous. It’s like a will-they-won’t-they tension to the story but you’re never quite sure what they will or won’t do.”

Co-writing the film with Noah Baumbach, who also directed Frances Ha and is Gerwig’s real-life partner, Gerwig’s comments make clear the intended underlying “romantic” trajectory and generic mapping of the film.

Although the friendship between Frances and Sophie sits within the structure of a conventional romantic narrative, Frances Ha never presents these two women as having an explicitly homosexual relationship. Frances and Sophie never engage in sexual activities with each other, nor share anything other than an asexual bed. Yet, within the heteronormative romcom genre and, indeed, wider Western society, which rigidly privileges the heterosexual, monogamous, and cis-gendered couple, the friendship between Frances and Sophie is figured as distinctly queer. In one moment, Frances even jokes to Sophie that, “we are like a lesbian couple that doesn’t have sex anymore.”

In “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,”  Adrienne Rich writes, “if we consider the possibility…that all women exist on a lesbian continuum, we can see ourselves as moving in and out of this continuum, whether we identify as lesbian or not.” I move away from Rich’s use of the term “lesbian” in favour of the term “queer” as, in this context, the use of “lesbian” reinforces the binary construction of gender and sexuality which, in turn, undermines her proposition of a fluid sexuality. Nevertheless, Rich helpfully dispels the notion of heterosexuality as naturally or essentially given, broadening out the consideration of a fulfilling and satisfying love as going beyond the constraints imposed by rigid heterosexuality. In addition, Rich also demonstrates the way in which Western society’s continual re-iteration of “natural” heterosexuality only serves to reinforce patriarchal interests and perpetuate gender inequality: ‘”The enforcement of heterosexuality for women [is] a means of assuring male right of physical, economic, and emotional access.” In this way, through the centrality of the female friendship to the film’s love story, Frances Ha suggests the possibility of women breaking free from the oppressive constraints of heteronormativity and heterosexuality. By suggesting the possibility of finding love, commitment, satisfaction, and fulfilment from female friendship, Frances Ha not only breaks down a construction of sexuality, love, and relationships which privileges patriarchal power, dominance, and authority. It also proposes a future where there is an alternative, or at least coexistence with, the conventional heteronormative “female” script of marriage, children, and a house in the suburbs.

Frances and Sophie lying in bed together indicates their queer, but not homosexual, relationship.

Frances and Sophie are lying in bed together
Frances and Sophie are lying in bed together

 

However, before we proclaim to have arrived at a feminist utopia, and run off into the sunset with our best female friend, Frances Ha makes plain the difficulties and complications faced by these friendships.  The film continually presents a dissonance between the Frances and Sophie’s fantasy of the future and the expectations of conventional heteronormativity. These expectations continually impose themselves on Frances and Sophie’s friendship, threatening to destroy this queer alternative of female fulfilment. Near the beginning of the film, as the two women sit in bed together, Frances asks Sophie to “tell me the story of us,” which, within cinema, is the kind of pillow talk that’s reserved for heterosexual couples. Frances says Sophie will be “this awesomely bitchy publishing mogul,” and Sophie says Frances will be “this famous modern dancer.” They will have lovers, no children, and honorary degrees – “so many honorary degrees.” Their fantasy subverts heteronormativity’s conventional trajectory of a woman’s life, with Frances and Sophie privileging economic independence, career and academic success, sexual satisfaction, and, most importantly, their friendship above husbands and children. However, Sophie is also in a conventional, heterosexual, monogamous relationship with Patch (Patrick Heusinger), which continually attempts to destroy Frances and Sophie’s queer friendship. In one poignant moment, Frances says to Sophie, “it’s just, if something funny happens on the way to the deli, you’ll only tell one person and that’ll be Patch, and I’ll never hear about it.” Frances’ anxieties make clear the realities of the heteronormative construction of relationships, which privileges the monogamous and heterosexual couple, causing Frances and Sophie’s relationship to wither in comparison.

Sophie most explicitly represents the conflict between alternative forms of female fulfilment through queer friendships and heteronormativity’s imposed expectations of success and satisfaction. In the end, she does not follow the fantasy that she shares with Frances. More concerned with the outward appearance of success than her own happiness, she gives up her job in a publishing house and, possibly, her financial independence, to move to Tokyo with Patch. Although she writes a travel blog in which, as Frances says, she “looks so happy,” she later reveals to Frances that she wants to leave Patch and Japan. In this confessional scene, Frances hopes to repair their relationship and renew their fantasy claiming, “maybe we’ll move back to New York at the same time and be like women who rediscover themselves after a divorce… We should get apartments close to each other in Brooklyn.” However, this idyllic moment is temporal, and the fantasy never becomes realised in the film as Sophie leaves the next morning to return to her boyfriend. Despite acknowledging her unhappiness, Sophie ends up marrying Patch at the end of the film. Frances Ha, it seems, is deeply pessimistic towards women finding fulfilment and satisfaction within their female friendships so long as heteronormativity continues as the dominant social order.

Sophie and Patch’s conventional romantic relationship poses a continual challenge to Frances and Sophie’s friendship.

Sophie and Patch stand together
Sophie and Patch stand together

 

Nevertheless, Frances Ha offers the possibility of women finding happiness and fulfilment both within their own terms and within their female friendships. Frances’ success at the end of the film is not in finding a man and getting married, but in choreographing her own show and finding her own place to live. In addition, the film suggests that the friendship between Frances and Sophie may not only continue to exist but to flourish. During a disastrous dinner party, in a moment of disarming honesty, Frances explains what she wants from a relationship:

“It’s that thing when you’re with someone and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it. But it’s a party, and you’re both talking to other people, and you’re laughing and shining, and you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes, but not because you’re possessive or it’s precisely sexual, but because that is your person in this life. And it’s funny and sad, but only because this life will end, and it’s this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. It’s sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don’t have the ability to perceive them. That’s what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess. Love.”

In the final scene between Frances and Sophie, they look over to each other in a crowded room, catch each other’s eye and flash a goofy smile. In that moment, they both exist within their own alternative dimension. In that fleeting and temporal instant, they exist outside of the heteronormative construction of what constitutes a meaningful and satisfying relationship. In that look, they confirm to each other and to the audience that their relationship, so difficult, complex, challenging, powerful, passionate, and meaningful is one of support, fulfilment, and, ultimately love.

Greta Gerwig’s interview appears in the August 2013 issue of Sight and Sound.

 

Sarah Smyth recently finished a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory with an emphasis on gender and film at the University of Sussex, UK. Her dissertation examined the abject male body in cinema, particularly focusing on the spatiality of the anus (yes, really). She’s based now in London, UK and you can follow her on Twitter at @sarahsmyth91.