With cast members Daisy Ridley, Carrie Fisher (reprising her role as the iconic Princess Leia), Lupita Nyong’o and Gwendoline Christie, these women quadruple the number of female leads that typically appear in a ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. That’s right. Until now, space has apparently been no place for women, especially strong women with more than one or two lines.
As buzz builds around the upcoming and presumably final Star Wars trilogy following the announcement of the Episode VII’s cast, I’m relieved to see that, with the recent addition of Game of Thrones‘ Gwendoline Christie and 12 Years a Slave‘s Lupita Nyong’o, the Star Wars franchise is trying to overcome its reputation as a sausage-fest. With Daisy Ridley on board (I’m guessing to play Han and Leia’s daughter) and veteran Carrie Fisher, who’ll be reprising her role as the iconic Princess Leia, these women quadruple the number of female leads that typically appear in a Star Wars trilogy. That’s right. Until now, space has apparently been no place for women, especially strong women with more than one or two lines. Now we just have to hope that Christie and Nyong’o won’t be used as Othered alien cameos and that these women’s considerable talents will be used, instead, to enrich the flagging franchise.
Consider the way the questionable way George Lucas has dealt with the very few women of Star Wars from the beginning. For the original Episodes IV-VI, we have Fisher as the tough rebel leader, but still royalty, Leia Organa…the only female character of note in the entire trilogy.
Leia in camouflage uniform on the forest moon of Endor
In the prequel Episodes I-III, we have Natalie Portman playing Padmé Amidala, Luke and Leia’s mother as well as a strong, independent, politically savvy queen…the only female character of note in the follow-up trilogy.
The Phantom Menace featured an ass-kicking Padmé
Basically, despite the fact that entire Star Wars trilogies feature only a single female lead, each trilogy starts off with promise because that lone lady happens to be an empowered women who leads others with compassion, but isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty by firing a few blasters.
Mother and daughter both start off as forces to be reckoned with
Though Leia is the apex of yet another insipid (and incestuous) cinematic love triangle, her role as a critical leader in the rebellion is far more defining of her identity. In A New Hope, Leia is captured by Imperial forces and tortured. Not only does she not reveal the location of the rebel alliance, she is also integral in the success of her own rescue at the hands of Han and Luke. She also displays remarkable bravery, intelligence, and an innate talent for The Force (shown in both Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi through unexplained knowledge, strength, and a supernatural connection to her twin, Luke).
A deceptively helpless imprisoned Leia moments before her escape
Interestingly enough, one of Leia’s most seriously badass scenes is also, conversely, her most iconically objectifying one as well. When Leia poses as a “ruthless” bounty hunter to infiltrate Jabba’s Palace to rescue Han in Return of the Jedi, her cool points went through the roof. I love the idea of the woman organizing a team to go in and rescue her male love interest. However, women being in love within the Star Wars universe never goes well, and Leia is captured and forced to don scanty clothing and lounge beside Jabba. The film is vague about whether or not she has been raped or forced to engage in sexual acts with Jabba, but from here on out, Leia’s image as “Slave Leia” has gone down in pop culture as well as sexual fetish history and continues to be a popular cosplay for nerd gals and others.
I hate that Leia is best remembered for her “Slave Leia” outfit
Though Leia is demeaned, harassed, threatened, and disgusted by her captor, in the end, she’s able to take charge. With nothing but the chain around her neck, enslaving her, she kills Jabba, one of the most iconic villains of all time before aiding the rest of her friends in their escape. Her self-liberation, that she’s integral to her team and their escape, and that she fucking killed Jabba the fucking Hut goes a long way to distract us from the fact that for two films, we didn’t even see Leia’s wrists or ankles and suddenly, now that she’s in love, she’s a prime target for grossly sexualized objectification.
Though scantily clad, Leia is heavily armed
Later in Return of the Jedi, things get even dicier for Leia when she’s befriended and essentially held hostage by the furry Ewoks (I wonder if Lucas has some sexual fetishes he was indulging in this film). They give her a rustic dress, braid her hair and make her wear it down for the first time in the trilogy. They protect her and ignore her. Essentially, the Ewoks relegate Leia to a traditional female role, removing her agency. Leia is rescued by her friends yet again. The fact of the matter is that Leia, our only female character, is captured and rescued more than any other character in the trilogy. In the end, the film gives her back a measure of agency, and she is allowed to fight in the final battle.
Leia’s mother, Padmé, is a more extreme example of Lucas’ at best confused, at worst fucked-up attitude toward women in that her highs are higher, but her lows are so very, very much lower. On the positive side, Padmé is a popular and well-respected ruler-turned-Senator who is courageous in her dedication to her people. She generally wields her power for good, in defense of her planet and is never power hungry, nor is she a mere figurehead (despite the ridiculous ornamental nature of her wardrobe). She is alternately a diplomat and a warrior when the need arises.
Padmé doesn’t shirk from necessary conflict
Though considerable, that’s where Padmé’s awesomeness ends. Throughout all three films, she is treated like a doll with her parade of outfits and her elaborate face painting. There’s even a Star Wars wiki page dedicated to her extensive wardrobe. Much of her Naboo state attire is even offensive with its appropriation of Asian cultural aesthetic.
Does Lucas also have an Asian fetish?
Despite the focus the films place on her body via her endless stream of costumes, Padmé mostly remains a badass (except for her vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum that opens the door for Palpatine to take control of the Senate, ushering in the tyranny of the Empire for decades to come…except for that). All agency slips from her, though, when Padmé falls in love with the atrociously acted Anakin Skywalker.
Padmé becomes little more than a love interest and a pretty face
Her story ceases to be one about political advocacy, diplomacy, and her struggles to keep her people’s liberties and safety intact. Instead, Padmé becomes little more than a love interest and a pretty face. Ignoring the fact that the love story is painfully trite and stilted with zero chemistry and wooden acting, this romance becomes all that Padmé is about. She marries Anakin in secret and becomes pregnant, and her personality totally changes. She becomes a simpering, deplorable character who dies of a broken heart. I mean, who cares that Anakin has been a childish wanker from the beginning and that she’s got a newborn set of twins? Life, I guess, is just too unbearable for a once strong and independent woman once she realizes she made a bad choice in love.
Interestingly enough, Lucas did a better job in the 70s and 80s with his depiction of Leia than he did 20 years later when he brought Padmé to life.
Of the renderings of Skywalker women, Leia wins the prize for badassery
It’s a sad state of affairs when representations of women become progressively less feminist as time goes on. Despite the fact that certain parties are involved: Lucas with his growing record of bad judgment and J.J. Abrams with his habit of taking all the substance out of sci-fi franchises, I can’t help but be hopeful that the new Star Wars trilogy will get it right where its predecessors failed. Though the series has let me down before (Episodes I-III were, frankly, Bantha fodder), having several actresses on the cast for this new trilogy, women known for their strong female characters is a bright spot in a franchise that’s rapidly turning towards the Dark Side.
Of George Lucas, I, like Luke, can only say, “There is good in him. I’ve felt it.” And I, like Luke, will continue to have faith until it is perhaps too late.
Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
Oh Scully. You beautiful, badass, rosebud-mouthed, flame-haired Valkyrie wearing a blazer two sizes too big for you: what do you desire? We know what Mulder desires. He wants to look at porn in his office. He wants to flirt and call the shots. He wants ALIENS. He does not want to give you a desk.
This guest post by Caitlin Keefe Moran appears as part of our theme week on Representations of Female Sexual Desire.
Oh Scully. You beautiful, badass, rosebud-mouthed, flame-haired Valkyrie wearing a blazer two sizes too big for you: what do you desire? We know what Mulder desires. He wants to look at porn in his office. He wants to flirt and call the shots. He wants ALIENS. He does not want to give you a desk.
But what about you? Why do we get such a cursory glimpse into your passions? How is it possible that in nine years we only see you go on two dates, Scully? (Three if we’re counting that one weird dinner with the Smoking Man… Lord help us if that was a date.) And when we finally do see you express interest in someone…oh, Lord. Remember him? The guy with the hallucinogenic tattoo? You were pretty into him; plus you felt stagnant in your personal life, and Mulder wouldn’t give you the damn desk. And it was nice to see you let loose a little bit, honestly. You even got a terrible lower-back tattoo of a snake biting its own tail, which… OK it’s not what I would have picked for you, but hey! You were living. All this fun goes sour when this dude’s tattoo tells him to murder you after you slept together. That you slept with him at all is conjecture—the camera pans away before we even see you kiss him, which is much more prudery than the show’s directors ever exercised with Mulder. Tattoo guy tries to put you in his building’s incinerator. It wasn’t pretty.
This date is going to end badly, Scully
Did it seem to you that the message you were supposed to get was, “Whoa, rein it in there, girlie! Don’t go flaunting those goods all over town!”? Because that’s what it seems like to me. Expressing your sexuality makes you vulnerable, the message goes, and, if the snake tattoo is any indication, faintly ridiculous. Expressing your sexuality makes you shameful. Expressing your sexuality makes you deserving of punishment.
Or how about Padgett, the writer who stalked you? Remember him? John Hawkes at his most moon-eyed and creepy? He might be the king of the all the men lining up to mansplain your feelings to you (though he’s only slightly ahead of the Smoking Man and his “wall around your heart” speech. STFU, Smoking Man). He has a lot to say (and write) about the way you present or hide yourself as a woman, and it hurts because it’s pretty much all true (and because he’s straight-up bonkers). Padgett watched you for long enough to read your insecurities as if they were typed out in one of his manuscripts—and sometimes they are. He knows that you downplay your femininity as much as possible so your (almost exclusively male) coworkers will take you seriously, because, as Padgett puts it, “to be thought of as simply beautiful was bridling, unthinkable.”
Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully
In fact, most of the women on The X-Files only show their sexuality when they are outside of themselves. Sometimes they’re controlled by an unusual alignment of the planets, like Detective White in “Syzygy.” Other times they’re products of a male fantasy (or an artificial intelligence’s approximation of a male fantasy), like the nurses in Kill Switch, or a lingerie-clad Diana Fowley in The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati. It would make sense, then, that you would want to keep your sexuality on lockdown beneath the frumpy blazers (also: it was the 90s). But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating to see you squash any hint of womanhood (let alone sexuality) because any hint would be unwelcome in the testosterone cloud of the FBI.
I wish you had a female friend, Scully. We hardly ever see you talk to another woman, much less confide in one. It’s not like she has to be your bosom buddy or anything. Just a pal you can get drinks with after work, blow off some steam, swap stories about your frustrating coworkers. Maybe you two could talk about what you want, at work, in bed, in life. As people. If only Monica Reyes could have shown up a couple of seasons earlier. I like to imagine the two of you at a drunk brunch, bonding over pumpkin spice pancakes with maple bacon glaze and a gallon-sized bucket of Bloody Marys. There’s strength in numbers, after all. Maybe with the two of you together, everything wouldn’t have seemed so….buttoned-up. Maybe with someone to talk through your anxieties with, you and Mulder wouldn’t have waited seven years to…but never mind, that’s a whole other article.
Mulder and Scully: the dream team
Let’s talk about Baby William for a second. Your miracle baby. Your super soldier. Your half-alien messiah. The Christ allegory in the Season 8 finale was slathered on so thick we could have spooned it off and eaten it. The lowly birthplace, the star of Bethlehem (which was, what, a spaceship? Do we ever figure that out?), the Lone Gunmen showing up after the fact with gifts like the Three Wise Men. But what does this say about you, Scully? The virgin mother of the miracle child. Immaculate and without sin. Clean. It takes us a season and a half to learn that you weren’t, in fact, visited by the Holy Spirit, or the aliens, or the government; your baby was born of sexual intercourse with another human being, like most other babies. But we don’t get to see this moment, with Mulder, no less, the love of your life—instead we hear it described callously by an NSA agent, who had the whole place bugged. Why is this, Scully? Is it because once presented with the idea that you might be a sexual being, we couldn’t see you any other way? That we wouldn’t be able to take you seriously as a person if we understood that you could, just possibly, desire sex?
It certainly seemed that way in “Three of a Kind,” when the Lone Gunmen snooker you into helping them spy on a Defense Department contractor’s convention in Las Vegas. Of course you remember this, Scully—when a government operative injected you with an anoetic histamine that inhibited your intellect so you would forget the damning results of the autopsy you just finished? You certainly were silly then, trying to push a table bolted to the floor as if it was a rolling cart, tickling strangers at whim. Everyone attributed it to jetlag until you found your way to the hotel lobby and began flirting with the assembled contractors. The sight of you seductively taking a cigarette out of Morris Fletcher’s (admittedly skeezy) fingers so disturbed Lone Gunmen member Frohike that he grabbed you and immediately brought you in for evaluation. Message: a flirting Scully isn’t Scully at all. Sexual desire is something you’re above. You roll your eyes at Mulder’s innuendo and come-ons, because you are a Serious Woman, doing Serious Work. The roles you can play are proscribed by your gender, even as you have greater freedom than many of television’s women, what with the gun-touting and the badge-flashing. But there is a limit to this freedom: sexual desire is dangerous, dangerous, dangerous. And in the face of this danger, sometimes it’s just easier to clam up and clamp down. To go quiet. But Scully, I wanted so much more for you.
Caitlin Keefe Moran is an editor in New York City. Her work has appeared on The Toast, in The Iowa Review, and other outlets. She lives in Queens and feels passionately about donuts and splitting infinitives as a form of protest.
The primary theme of ‘The Dark Crystal’ is that there should be no opposites, no dichotomies, no binaries. There cannot be balance when we separate out good and evil, ends and beginnings, cruelty and kindness, male and female. These things are truly one and exist together, inseparable.
I’m at it again, reviewing a piece of media from my childhood that powerfully affected me in the hopes of determining what kind of message it imparted to my younger self and how that message helped shape the woman I am today. This time around, it’s Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal. (My blast-from-the-past reviews thus far include: Was Jem and the Holograms a Good Show for Little Girls, Splash: A Feminist Tail Tale?, She-Ra Kinda, Sorta Accidentally Feministy, and “No man may have me”: Red Sonja a Feminist Film in Disguise?) The Dark Crystal, like so many other 80s movies, appealed to me because it was dark, otherworldly, and told a story that was not only unique, but epic in scale. When I look back on The Dark Crystal, what strikes me most is the film’s complicated representation of gender. Most of the film’s characters are overwhelmingly androgynous.
The last Gelflings: Jen and Kira
The heroes of our tale are a pair of Gelflings, the last surviving members of a race the Skeksis genocided to avoid a prophecy foretelling their downfall. In appearance, Gelflings are decidedly androgynous: they are small and child-like with smooth, feminine features and long hair. Both are gentle and soft-spoken; Jen loves to play music on his pipe while Kira sings along. However, being female gives Kira the advantage of flight because female Gelflings have wings.
Kira surprises us by using her wings to rescue Jen
Kira can also speak to animals and plants. Though that is a learned trait from her Podling foster family, women being able to understand creatures of nature is a common trope to denote femininity.
Kira marshals a pair of Landstriders to help their quest
Though Kira is physically the least androgynous character in the film, she is brave and sure of herself when Jen is not. Though Jen is the one singled out for destiny and agency with his possession of the crystal shard, he doubts his mission and himself. Kira must spur him to adventure. She also uses her wits and talents to rescue herself when the Skeksis try to drain her essence. Not only that, but in the final scene when the Skeksis are closing in, she sacrifices herself, using her own body to show Jen the path when he is lost. Kira is simply a hero. Her feminine traits don’t make her weak, and her possession of typically coded masculine heroic traits does not make her masculine. At the end of the film when the Skeksis and Mystics are joined together again to form the UrSkeks, one of them says to Jen as he holds Kira’s lifeless form, “She is a part of you.” This is true, especially considering their earlier Dreamfasting scene in which the two touch and share memories. Though Jen is male and Kira is female, their genders do not make them binary. They are stronger together; together they form a single whole. (More on that theme later…)
Kira sacrifices everything to help Jen heal the Dark Crystal
The wise figure of Aughra is also androgynous. She is clearly female with a woman’s voice and large breasts with protruding nipples, but she has a beard and curling ram’s horns along with a removable eye. The companion novel to the film, The World of the Dark Crystal, apparently identifies Aughra as both male and female, the essence and personification of the planet Thra in which our story takes place.
Aughra. Don’t mess with her.
Aughra is powerful, ancient, and grotesque. She commands the plants of the earth and holds the crystal shard. She is an astronomer, scientist, and prophetess who can read the future in the stars. She regards the Great Conjunction as “the end of the world…or the beginning,” claiming it’s “all the same.” Like the Gelflings don’t distinguish between self and other when it comes to male and female of their race, Aughra sees ends in beginnings and beginnings in ends. Instead of focusing on how things are different, disparate, and separate, Aughra sees infinite connections, sameness, and harmony in unity.
Portrait of Augra
The entire journey of the film centers around reuniting a sundered shard to make the Dark Crystal whole again. This will reunite the sundered Mystics and Skeksis who were once single beings now separated, embodying binary, dichotomous traits with the Skeksis being evil, selfish, greedy, cruel, and violent while the Mystics are gentle, kind, peaceful, and generous. Interestingly enough, the Mystics and Skeksis are all male, and their combined form continues to be male, but their maleness is not wholly traditionally masculine in its representation.
The Mystics nurture Jen, teaching him the gentle magics of the earth
The Mystics embody more traditionally coded female characteristics: gentleness, nurturing, community building, a connection to the earth: teaching, music, and magic. They’re long-haired and peaceful…the hippies of their planet (one of them even wears a stylin’ do-rag over his hair).
Look at those lovely locks flowing in the wind. Think he conditions?
In many ways, the Skeksis are more overtly masculine in their desire to subjugate others, the grotesque way they eat, their trials by combat, and their quickness to anger and violence. On the other hand, the Skeksis are obsessed with fashion. Their clothing defines them, and the disrobing of our lead Skeksis, Chamberlain, is the height of dishonor and humiliation. They disrobe him before casting him out after he loses the trial-by-stone competition to be emperor.
The Skeksis are serious about their opulent robes.
Chamberlain himself is very androgynous with his high-pitched voice, slight build, and his preference for manipulation over force. The Skeksis are also obsessed with looking youthful. They drain the “essence” of Podlings, turning it into an elixir that they drink in order to temporarily rid themselves of wrinkles. This obsession is reminiscent of our own female-dominated beauty and fashion culture.
A disrobed Chamberlain trying to beguile the naïve Jen
The primary theme of The Dark Crystal is that there should be no opposites, no dichotomies, no binaries. There cannot be balance when we separate out good and evil, ends and beginnings, cruelty and kindness, male and female. These things are truly one and exist together, inseparable. The film’s representations of gender give preference to a more androgynous, non-binary mode of being, insisting that gender and human nature are too rich and complicated to be “this or that,” “one or the other,” “either or.” As a child, this de-coding of masculinity and femininity that allowed characters to be so much more than a simple gender formed a piece of the bedrock of my lifelong questioning of gender roles, gender hierarchy, and the entire binary system of gender. Thanks, Brian Froud and Jim Henson!
Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
I only recently discovered the ‘Despicable Me’ movies, and I’m overjoyed that I have an excuse to review the second one and to explicate its feminist elements, especially since so many women have primary roles in the ever-changing life of villain-turned-hero Gru (Steve Carell). In fact, I love these films so much, I enjoyed a Despicable-themed birthday cake earlier this week. It’s no mistake that the second movie concludes while Cinco de Mayo festivities ensue–my birthday!
I only recently discovered the Despicable Me movies, and I’m overjoyed that I have an excuse to review the second one and to explicate its feminist elements, especially since so many women have primary roles in the ever-changing life of villain-turned-hero Gru (Steve Carell). In fact, I love these films so much, I enjoyed a Despicable-themed birthday cake earlier this week. It’s no mistake that the second movie concludes while Cinco de Mayo festivities ensue–my birthday!
Gru returns to us in Despicable Me 2 (Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaid, 2013) as a nurturing father to three wonderful little girls–Agnes, Edith, and Margo–and we find that he’s able to merge his fatherhood duties with his exciting lifestyle. In the first film, Gru’s main priority is to become the most evil villain in the world, and he competes with the nerdy yet skilled Vector (Jason Segel) for the title. While Gru’s evil deeds range from cutting in line for coffee to encouraging his ugly dog to poop on his neighbor’s flowers, he literally gives up the moon for his girls, which now includes his new wife Lucy (Kristen Wiig), sent from the Anti-Villain League to request his help in pursuing a new villain. Because Lucy completes the image the girls maintain of the exemplary family before they were adopted, and she finds a way into Gru’s heart as well, I would like to focus primarily on her in this post.
Gru is slow to recognize that Lucy’s antics complement his nicely.
The various roles Lucy plays in this movie are pivotal to the plot and character development we see throughout as we come to understand her as a professional, a cunning and intelligent woman, and an undeniably feminist hero. That isn’t to say that Gru is not a feminist character as well–indeed, he is very much so. Lucy becomes Gru’s work partner as the two get themselves into trouble, only to come to each other’s rescue. She then becomes the temporarily unattainable love interest, then the damsel in distress, and finally Gru’s bride and a mother to the precocious girls, who find their new mom pretty amazing. As Gru is busy uncovering clues for the Anti-Villain League and combating Margo’s (Miranda Cosgrove) newfound interest in boys, he can’t help but fall for the poise and quirky charm that Lucy emanates.
At Agnes’s birthday party, an unnamed woman is persistent in setting Gru up on a blind date. Why the push to find someone to love and marry? This buzzing in Gru’s ear is symptomatic of the heteronormative agenda Gru is struggling to resist. Gru rejects the woman’s invitations both intellectually and socially by not-so-politely declining, and bodily by spraying her with a garden hose. His comical proclamation “I did not see you there…or there,” as he knocks her off her feet, signifies the ex-villain’s outright refusal to acknowledge his own “aloneness” (not to be confused with “loneliness”) that others may see when they look at a single (and new) father. Quite simply, Gru feels perfectly fulfilled by his daughters and his rather eccentric life fighting villains and manufacturing delicious jams and jellies.
However, I think it’s important for us to notice this dynamic as a downtrodden Gru admits to “liking” Lucy to his youngest daughter Agnes (Elsie Fisher), trusting her with this intimate and sensitive knowledge. Although Gru inevitably gives in to the social contract that we should all marry, especially when we have children, he does so on his own terms and in the name of true love.
Dressed as a fairy princess for the birthday party, Gru is excitedly told, “I know someone whose husband just died!”
Lucy arrives quite unannounced and throws Gru in the trunk of her car after assaulting him with her “lipstick taser,” a handy tool that helps her to take advantage of her femininity while fighting crime. After Gru proves his strength and cunning in the first movie, it’s a bit of a surprise to watch an unknown character take him down so quickly. However, it’s only fitting that the pair then fall in love and marry; Gru has met his match in more ways than one. Lucy is kind yet assertive, and possibly most important, she knows how to balance these qualities to embody the type of woman that Gru’s daughters can hope to become someday. We love her even as Gru’s minions are chasing her car to save their boss, and we continue to adore her even as she embarks on her journey to Australia to take a new job far away from Gru and the girls, only to jump out of the plane and claim Gru as hers.
As we’ll see, the violence in the film is naturalized as a source of comedy.
When Gru is forced to go on a date with the insufferable caricature Shannon (Kristen Schaal), Lucy takes the initiative to end the date prematurely because she sees that Gru is being demeaned by the shallow woman, specifically for wearing a hair piece in order to hide the fact that he’s bald. In perhaps one of the darker scenes in the film (along with Gru indirectly threatening to kill his neighbor’s dog in the first movie), Lucy shoots Shannon with a tranquilizer dart, and the two load Shannon’s inanimate body on the roof of Lucy’s car, reasoning to bystanders that she has drunk a bit too much wine with her meal, and they proceed to dump her body at her doorstep as if she’s dead. If we look carefully later on, we see that Shannon is actually a guest at the couple’s wedding.
Gru is thankful to Lucy for rescuing him.
In the final action scene, I think it’s important to refrain from classifying Lucy as purely a “damsel in distress,” although this is how I reference her above–because this is, after all, what she is when she’s strapped to a rocket–along with a comically large shark–that’s set to launch into a volcano. However, from the moment we meet Lucy, we know she’s self-sufficient and more than anything, smart; after all, her decision to love Gru is smart as he’s likely the only person capable of defeating El Macho. In fact, every decision Lucy makes throughout Despicable Me 2 is for the betterment of Gru and his growing family. He doesn’t rescue Lucy–just as he rescued Edith, Agnes, and Margo in the first movie–because these characters are helpless females; rather, this conclusion confirms his placement as a hero rather than a villain. On the contrary, the women found in the Despicable movies are quite capable of protecting themselves and those they care about.
As Gru attempts to deactivate the rocket, Lucy offers her expertise: “Is there a red one? It’s usually the red one.”
In the wedding scene, which of course involves some skillful dancing, Agnes recites a monologue that she struggles with earlier in the film: an homage to her mother. The meaning of this recitation has now shifted since she’s gained a mother. Earlier, we also enjoy a private moment when Agnes first meets Lucy at the mall and she’s simply dazzled by her presence, a nice precursor to the girls coming to know her as their own mother and celebrating their status as a complete and unique family.
Agnes recites, “She kisses my boo-boos, she braids my hair, we love you mothers, everywhere, and my new mom Lucy, is beyond compare.”
Because of Lucy and the girls, Gru comes to understand that he’s not merely a villain in a perpetually bad mood; he’s a caring father, a loving husband, and a boss who’s willing to give goodnight kisses to each and every one of his funny, yellow workers, who are, after all, part of his family as well. Both Despicable films can be read as feminist pieces as Gru is transformed by the feminine energy he finds pervading his life, influencing his decisions, and causing him to reevaluate his ideals as a villain and a single man. A concurrently responsible yet offbeat character, Gru represents the new family man in this second film. With the introduction of the delightful Lucy, Gru finds yet another reason to strive to be his best possible self by taking on the role of husband and learning that if he overcomes his fear of the unknown (and women!), he can attain true happiness.
A lovely wedding photo, complete with Gru’s cranky mother and adorable minions.
With the upcoming release of Despicable Me 3 (2017), we can expect more zaniness from the extraordinary family!
Jenny has a Master of Arts degree in English, and she is a part-time instructor at Alvernia University. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema. You can find her on WordPress and Pinterest.
What’s shaping up to be the forefront theme in ‘Orphan Black’ season two is reproductive rights. Of all the clones, Sarah is an anomaly because she was able to give birth to Kira when all her clone counterparts are infertile. The seemingly impossible birth of Kira has the forces of science and religion both vying for access and control over clone bodies.
I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I continue to be a fan of Orphan Black into its second season. My review of season one—Orphan Black: It’s All About the Ladies–focuses on the strength and wide range of female characters that the show revolves around (not to mention Tatiana Maslany‘s formidable acting talents as she portrays all of the clones). In season two, the compelling female relationships continue to be integral to the heart of Orphan Black‘s plotlines. In particular, we see a deepening of Cosima’s connection to and lingering distrust of her monitor, Delphine.
Can Cosima trust her lover and monitor Delphine?
We also delve into the dark past of Sarah’s foster mother Mrs. S, full of secrets, violence, and questionable intentions.
Is Mrs. S helping or hurting Sarah and Kira?
We also meet a new and powerful clone, Rachel, who works for the dubious cloning research corporation, Dyad, and who doesn’t seem to feel a kinship with her fellow clones.
Clone-Off: Sarah and Rachel
We also see more of Sarah coming into her own as a responsible, present parent for her medical miracle daughter, Kira. Though Felix is not a woman, his close relationship with foster sister Sarah and his queerness seem to get him into the inner circle of Clone Club, and it’s always a pleasure to watch scenes where he calls Sarah on her shit, is nurturing to Kira, is hilarious, and remains fabulous the whole time.
Felix: King of the Smart Asses
What’s shaping up to be the forefront theme in Orphan Black season two is reproductive rights. Of all the clones, Sarah is an anomaly because she was able to give birth to Kira when all her clone counterparts are infertile. The seemingly impossible birth of Kira has the forces of science and religion both vying for access and control over clone bodies. Yes, a pitched battle between science and religion is mounting over the reproductivity of female bodies. Sound familiar? Art imitating life perhaps…
The Prometheans, a religious cult, attempt to bind Helena to their cause
Both the Prometheans (religious nutjobs) and the Dyads (cold, calculating scientists) are deceptive, selfish, and don’t see the clones as autonomous human beings. Our heroines must navigate these treacherous forces that seek to exploit them. Even more remarkable is the way in which the clones fight back by using these forces for their own gains by gathering, stealing, and manipulating resources and information in order to better understand themselves: their origin, DNA, and purpose. From within a system that attempts to abuse and dehumanize them, these woman are making their own way, living by their own rules, and relying on their collective strength to survive. Now that, my friends, is a feminism.
Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
If you hear that people hate this movie, this re-inscription of feminine expendability and excoriation is probably, I’m guessing, why. Or there’s not enough explicitly in the surface of the movie: everything’s implied, ergo too many loose ends. They probably hate what happens to the baby: I think that’s when women walk out of the movie. The fact that men regularly walk out of screenings (because of the erect penises on the victimized men–that is a whole other essay for a whole different internet venue and I want to read that essay a.s.a.p.)
Scarlett Johansson herself says the movie Under the Skinis about an “it” becoming a “her”. Not a she: subjective, but a her: objective. This is the key dynamic character shift in the film, so that you’d think this film would embody a cultural critique of how women are treated, or at least, the idea of human predation. Because the “it” is a predatory drone and becomes a “her”, it first discovers slowly and sadly the immense vulnerability and mundanity of being a human person and then of being a human woman. The attractiveness of the Johansson human body (the thing for which she was singled out) ends up completely working against the alien. Its alien culture didn’t fully understand the position it was putting “it” in by putting “it” in a female body, and the amount of thinking we can see on the alien’s face as it is preying on people amounts to what we get from watching a spider on a web. Sometimes it’s the glass of water that does in an alien (Signs); sometimes it’s Johansson’s face and body.
In the first minutes, I didn’t think of a femme fatale; I thought Johansson was acting out some revenge fantasy–the abducted woman with the very deadpan comic twist: men don’t have to be abducted by force or tripped up by a woman’s doubt of her own instinct for being in danger; you can just promise them a one-night-stand with a lost English woman who looks like Johansson, and they’ll conveniently take their clothes off. That seems like the wink from the director, past the affectless alien, to us. Except the movie has a hard time offering up meaning from the gross amount of predation foisted on men—though it sure keeps showing their demises to us, over and over again.
What do you do with the insinuation that feminine wiles are basically manipulation? Or that men are so overwhelmed they can’t pick up on the fact that her questions are faintly pushy and one-track? Honestly, if I saw a gorgeous man on a beach, and he kept asking, “What are you doing here/are you alone/what country are you from?” I’d be taking ten steps back, turning, and walking away quickly. Which to his credit, is kind of what the surfer on the beach does when Johansson’s alien accosts him. The camera hangs on his face, taking in and registering the alien’s intrusiveness: she/it asks point blank what country he’s from. Viewers may worry, thinking: Are you gonna buy this, man? Are you really not noticing this is weird? He seems to feel baited, and the whole exchange is pushed aside for his altruism in wanting to help the drowning woman and dog. This is clearly a movie by a man: because if it were a movie by a woman. But we’re seeing a vulnerability in men we don’t often see on film. Considering the way the social criticism stays on a silent, not-very-deep level in this movie, backed up mostly by silence and blackness to fill in the gaps not covered in the story-writing meetings, I’ll take this one chance to see the tables get turned and go horribly wrong.
It’s hard to say what exactly is the trigger for the alien that makes her understand humans as something other than a meat parade. Is it mundane night life, malls, and people walking on the street? The alien’s modus operandi is a blend of “hunter” as well as tedious, dutiful, and atonal. I did not think she developed feelings or pity for humans. Her project is tedious to her. Is she really having a revelation about people? Or is this actually about sentience? Is she discovering the little bugs (humans) she’s picking off are values-driven?
Under the Skin seems more focused on the dreadfulness of being in another body, constantly amongst people who will want to kill her if they discover what she is. This isn’t, however, to say the movie is about Otherness in the way speculative fiction critiques and instructs on Otherness. It’s more about the weariness of being. Of being any being. Her work is so repetitive that I almost got enraged that it was still happening narratively, much less to these poor dudes. There’s no clue of how or when it could end. This can be read as rigor of repetition or, perhaps, as art for art’s sake.
Then comes the turning point, but it’s so crazily silent that it takes the length of this very long shot to understand what’s happened. The overpowering substance of the shot is that she looks out a window or into a glass tank and we see her face move from darkness into half-light. The beauty of this is its eyes go from an examination of the human as Other to self-regard pretty seamlessly. When the eyes dip into the light, the shot really communicates reticence and an inability to accept this gaze, this human face, these eyes. Does it look gruesome to itself? Maybe it loves this face? Is it creeped out? We don’t know whether or not sympathy is in the emotional currency on the alien’s planet, but we see something blows the alien’s mind. As a result, she releases the guy with neurofibromatosis (Adam Pearson) that we rolled our eyes to see going into her trap.
Why compassion for him and not the baby? She has remorse. Because she relates to alienation? Because of job burnout?
It’s worth saying a few words here about the cinematography and the setting of Scotland. In an overwhelming number of shots, the lighting is so dim you almost don’t know what you’re looking at, and there’s neon and noise and gold and graphics. This is a nod toward Jordan Chenoweth (cinematographer for Blade Runner) from DP Daniel Landin. The alien repeatedly echoes Rachel from Blade Runner in the use of eyelights—an almost totally dark face except for eyelights and the lighting of the lower third of her face. Why are we echoing Rachel here? Because Rachel’s humanity was tested through her eyes. She’d thought she was human but actually wasn’t. Here, Johansson’s alien ascertains something through an examination of her own eyes, thinks she’s not human, but, as the symmetry of this subtext goes, is about to find out she feels just like one.
Once out of the comfortable workplace of her van, Johansson’s alien is trying to stop with the predation. Except her kind didn’t study women enough to understand that just by walking alone on a road, she’s vulnerable. Here comes symbolic and literal fog on the road. She cannot see where she’s going now that she’s acquiring a conscience. She walks through the fog until she’s just passed it. This whiteness counters the blackness attached to everything the aliens do as day-to-day business. She rides a bus, now alone, and looks utterly freaked out like a woman who is trying to get out of a traumatic domestic situation. Except, it’s the situation she was sent here to embody that she’s trying to leave. She would prefer something more domestic, it seems, as she keeps going into houses—first a man’s and then a shelter in some woods.
There’s so much to say about the most retold, re-cast tale about predation in Western culture (Little Red Riding Hood) regrouping itself into some horrifyingly corrupted archetypes here in the last fourth of the movie. The book on which this horror movie is based is a piece of Michel Faber’s Dutch/Scottish horror. Little Red Riding Hood originated from a group of sexual assault warnings that filtered through the French countryside in the 17th century. Don’t let yourself be tracked. Don’t accept people on appearances (shey could be a wolf with your grandmother in its stomach). A wolf in grandmother’s clothes. And here after an interlude of almost-happiness in which Johansson’s alien-woman checks out her body in a mirror and ventures to have consensual sex, realizes what’s between her legs, she runs out into a forest where she shouldn’t be, where she has little idea how dangerous it is, and she’s warned to follow a trail by a woodsman, who ends up being the wolf.
The woodsman hits on her just the way she hit on men for the first half of the movie. What happens next is even harder to process, because in the end, isn’t she the wolf trapped in a woman’s body?
She pays for the underestimation, but the woodsman also pays for his underestimation with a terrible surprise for his rape-impulse. But wait a minute. After all the totally lamb-like men she’s picked up and stowed in her death lake, she’s out in a forest and the ONE MAN in the WHOLE FOREST that she runs into not only hits on her while trying to give her directions, but goes to find her so he can molest her, which then turns into him chasing her in the woods to straight up rape her.
Why is this piece of crap woodsman the last human she encounters on earth? Oh that’s right, we’re re-inscribing the message we apparently don’t get enough of: lone women who aren’t protected will be raped and killed. If you’re a wolf in woman’s clothing, good luck preserving your wily alien-wolf self because this near criminally insane woodsman will immolate you for being the uncanny. What did she do to become a predator magnet instead of the predator? She started feeling stuff. She gave up her predatory sex-kitten game. She tried to back up and see how she could possibly fit in and try to consider the essence of what she was doing. And so she ends up in a fate reserved for the more spectacular pieces of murdered women porn regularly paraded between 8-11 pm every night of the year on network television in both magazine and crime shows. Back to an object save the second moment of self-regard she has when she looks on her own Johansson face as a mask in her lap. It’s the one moment that makes this ending uncanny, and I would say, ultimately about being a human.
If you hear that people hate this movie, this re-inscription of feminine expendability and excoriation is probably why. There are too many too many loose ends and surface-like implications. People probably hate what happens to the baby: I think that’s when women walked out of the movie. The fact that men regularly walked out of screenings (because of the erect penises on the victimized men) is a whole other essay for a whole different internet venue and I want to read that essay a.s.a.p.
When Johansson’s corpse is burning up into the sky, the black smoke mingles with snow that flakes down to obliterate the literal camera lens. The fog comes back. And that male body-snatching alien looks off a cliff with his back to us, seeing or not seeing this black smoke, trying to find a sign in the confounding mist. He is not unlike a Romantic hero mystified who constantly feels alienated from Nature–a more tableaux version of what Johansson’s alien, in her last look upon her human face, must have felt.
Cynthia Arrieu-King teaches literature and creative writing at Stockton College in New Jersey and has two published volumes of poetry. She has taught about 17 sections of freshman composition in which plagiarism was covered thoroughly, so beware internet magazines with sticky fingers. cynthiaarrieuking.blogspot.com.
As I wrote last week, I love me some Peggy Carter, and worried about how ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ would fare (mostly) without her. So I was pumped that Peggy not only appears from the past (interviewed in a video presentation in the Smithsonian exhibit on Captain America), but as an ailing nonagenarian Steve still calls “his best girl.”
And even better, the other women in the film are all some shade of awesome. I wanted more from all of them, but I’m greedy like that.
Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow in Captain America: The Winter Soldier
[This review contains spoilers]
As I wrote last week, I love me some Peggy Carter, and worried about how Captain America: The Winter Soldier would fare (mostly) without her. So I was pumped that Peggy not only appears from the past (interviewed in a video presentation in the Smithsonian exhibit on Captain America), but as an ailing nonagenarian Steve still calls “his best girl.”
And even better, the other women in the film are all some shade of awesome. I wanted more from all of them, but I’m greedy like that.
Emily VanCamp as Agent 13
The other Carter to make an appearance is Emily VanCamp’s Agent 13, who is originally introduced as “Kate,” Steve’s cute neighbor from across the hall, who is quickly revealed to be a S.H.I.E.L.D operative tasked to keep an eye on Steve. And let’s be real: all this character needs to do in this movie is exist, click off another “canonical comic character” box and give a bit more set-up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe should she become Cap’s love interest as she has been in the comics. As S.H.I.E.LD is revealed to be riddled with corruption and infiltrated by evil organization HYDRA, we assume Agent 13 is One of the Good Guys because she looks concerned when they cut to her in the control room scenes. She doesn’t get much dialogue, but she does punch a few bad guys at some point, I think. There’s so much punching in this movie I couldn’t keep track of all of it. (Note: this is not really a criticism.) Anyway, she’s Sharon Carter, who will theoretically be some relative of Peggy’s, and in the next sequel she and Cap will probably smooch. They’re is plenty of time to develop her character before Captain America 3 comes out in 2016.
Steve Rogers and Natasha in battle in their civvies
The woman with the most screen time in the film is Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow. A lot of critics are saying this is her most substantial outing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (at least the ones not still hung up on her being mere eye candy), but The Avengers still made the best use of her character. While she may be on screen more in Winter Soldier, she’s not as crucial to the plot here, and not quite as lovable. I was a little put off by her fixation with Steve’s love life, finding it out of character and merely an instrument to highlight Steve’s loneliness. But that’s a minor quibble: Black Widow is still a total badass in this movie, and gets in some great snarky lines, and looks hot doing it.
But what really made Black Widow work in The Avengers was the glimpses of her vulnerability: her genuine fear of The Hulk, he anguish over Hawkeye, her guilt over her past. These made her badass moments so much more satisfying, in particular the turnaround in her interrogation of Loki when she gets him to say too much leaning in to these weaknesses. In the Winter Soldier, Black Widow’s vulnerability is demonstrated through physical injury, which is dramatic, sure, but superficial and less interesting.
And I know, I know, “strong but vulnerable” is the oldest cliché in the book when it comes to well-developed female characters. But that’s because “strong but vulnerable” is what makes characters, irrespective of gender, someone to root for and relate to. And sure, the vulnerable side of the equation for female characters appeals to some because it reinforces sexist ideas about women’s weaknesses. But for me, vulnerability is especially important when it comes to action heroines, to escape the trope of The Fighting Fucktoy (which is exactly what Black Widow was when she first appeared in Iron Man 2).
Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill
Speaking of absence of vulnerability: Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill returns, and remains on the precipice of awesome. I’m patiently waiting for her character to get fleshed out a bit in the MCU, because all we know about her now is that she’s extremely tough. While she’s not as sexualized as Natasha Romanoff has sometimes been, she still looks like Cobie Smulders, and I want her to be more than a Hot Chick With a Gun. She’s the person Nick Fury calls when he’s in trouble. I want to know why. (In the Black Widow movie the whole world desperately wants to see, she could be Natasha’s buddy cop. MAKE IT HAPPEN, MARVEL.)
All in all, Captain America: The Winter Soldier does all right by its women. I’m also going to award it feminism points for the thematic importance of male friendship, because dudes have emotions too! This comes primarily from the epic drama of Steve vs. The Winter Soldier, who is none other than his childhood best friend and fallen comrade Bucky Barnes, which brings about a tremendous amount of what I believe the internet refers to as “feels.” (Bucky is remarkably emotional for someone allegedly brainwashed. I reached the point where I had to stifle my laughter every time his face was in closeup because he’s soooooo tortured. Part of me thinks I laughed so I wouldn’t cry. The other part of me is still chuckling).
The Winter Soldier and his eye beams of inner turmoil
But there’s also Steve and his new BFF Sam Wilson (an unstoppably charming Anthony Mackie), who joins him in what’s pretty much a suicide mission as The Falcon because that’s what good bros do when their buddy is dismantling a corrupt government organization. Steve and Sam bonding over returning from combat and laughing at their own dumb inside jokes is the perfect counterbalance to the tooooooorturrrrred broken relationship between Bucky and Steve.
Best Friends Best Friends Baking a Cake!
Captain America: The Winter Soldier definitely gets my geeky stamp of approval (I can see this being in heavy rotation for me when it comes out on video), and it is nice that doesn’t have to be “in spite of” its treatment of women. If you are even a little bit of a comic book movie fan, you should see this one.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer who has dressed up as Captain America for Halloween.
Following my geek programming, I re-watched ‘The First Avenger’ in preparation for ‘The Winter Soldier.’ And I was reminded of the sad truth that the best parts of the first flick can’t carry on to this one, because they’re in the 1940s and now Steve Rogers is in the present.
And the best of the left-behind best is Peggy Carter, Hayley Atwell’s British intelligence agent working with the Scientific Strategic Reserve, a precursor to S.H.I.E.L.D. As a British woman surrounded by American military men, Peggy obviously sticks out, but she’s so self-possessed, confident, and skilled that it doesn’t seem far-fetched for her to be in the inner-circle. It’s wonderful to see how the higher-ups, even cad Howard Stark (Tony’s dad) and crotchety Col. Phillips, accept her presence and authority implicitly. The enlisted men who give her guff are quickly put in their place by her tendency to shoot at things that annoy her, which somehow comes across as less reckless than it actually is, probably because she’s so generally competent.
[This review contains potential spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier]
Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes out tomorrow in the US*, with abundant preview showings tonight. I’ve been eagerly anticipating it, even though I remembered Captain America: The First Avenger as just “pretty good,” because I have been programmed by my geeky upbringing to eagerly anticipate all superhero movies.
Further following my geek programming, I re-watched The First Avenger in preparation for The Winter Soldier. And I was reminded of the sad truth that the best parts of the first flick can’t carry on to this one, because they’re in the 1940s and now Steve Rogers is in the present.**
Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter
And the best of the left-behind best is Peggy Carter, Hayley Atwell’s British intelligence agent working with the Scientific Strategic Reserve, a precursor to S.H.I.E.L.D. As a British woman surrounded by American military men, Peggy obviously sticks out, but she’s so self-possessed, confident, and skilled that it doesn’t seem far-fetched for her to be in the inner circle. It’s wonderful to see how the higher-ups, even cad Howard Stark (Tony’s dad) and crotchety Col. Phillips, accept her presence and authority implicitly. The enlisted men who give her guff are quickly put in their place by her tendency to shoot at things that annoy her, which somehow comes across as less reckless than it actually is, probably because she’s so generally competent.
Peggy Carter shoots at a lot of things.
Peggy gets extra points for showing Steve respect and care before he gets all Hunkified, and then falling for his integrity and heart even with all those distracting muscles. The best thing about Captain America as a character is that his moral decency is as freakishly overdeveloped as his pecs, and that’s clearly what Peggy adores about him, which makes me adore her.
There is no amount of decency that will get you out of this situation
I’ll even give her a pass for getting mad at Cap for locking lips with Natalie Dormer, even though no one should be faulted for kissing Natalie Dormer. Peggy isn’t just jealous, she’s disappointed to see any shade on Cap’s aura of decency, which is much more understandable and forgivable. And of course, Captain was “innocent,” and she forgives him in time to tearfully talk him through his self-sacrifice at the end of the film.
And now Cap’s unfrozen seventy years later, and they’re a Peggy Carter-shaped hole in his story. Fortunately, Hayley Atwell is reportedly appearing in flashbacks in The Winter Soldier. She also starred in her own short film “Agent Carter” included in the Iron Man 3 blu-ray, and has a television series in development. I’m glad we can see more of this great character, but I’m guessing I’ll still miss her in Captain America’s present.
Poster for short film ‘Agent Carter’
It’s also nice that her independent appearances make Peggy Carter clearly more than a love interest. But I’m still interested to see if the Marvel Cinematic Universe lets Captain America have another love interest, and if she’ll be able to live up to Peggy. In the comics, Peggy’s relative Sharon Carter takes on that role, and Emily VanCamp is in the new film as Agent 13. Hopefully Winter Soldier will overcome Marvel’s occasional issues with the Smurfette principle and develop Sharon Carter successfully alongside Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow. I will let you know how Captain America: The Winter Soldier fares with its female characters in my next piece for Bitch Flicks.
*this is one of the RARE movies that came out in South Africa (and the UK and many other countries) before being released here, but of course I’m visiting home at the time. Oh well, USA USA!
** I mean, comics and comic book movies FIND A WAY to revive and reintegrate characters from the past or beyond the veil. See the eponymous Winter Soldier.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer who is presently in America! USA USA!
I’m hopeful that ‘Divergent,’ as the first installment of the series, is setting Tris up to be a memorable heroine in her own right in the following films. I’m hoping that ‘Divergent’ is the story of the forging of our heroine, the exploration of her talents, abilities, and heart and that the second and third films will show her learning from her experiences, becoming a leader, and inspiring others.
“Divergent” Poster
Written by Amanda Rodriguez Mild Spoilers Trigger Warning: mention of sexualized violence
The much-anticipated film Divergent is based on the series of teen sci-fi novels by Veronica Roth dealing with a walled-off, post-apocalyptic Chicago wherein society has divided itself into factions in an effort to create order and peace. Our heroine Beatrice “Tris” Prior (Shailene Woodley) finds out she is “Divergent,” a taboo non-conformist who doesn’t fit into any of the factions and is therefore threatening to the caste system.
The five factions of the Divergent universe
Disclaimer: I haven’t read the novel series yet.
As a sucker for female-driven sci-fi stories, I liked the premise, but Divergent stands on the shoulders of many young adult and teen movies that came before it. Divergent features training-based dream-like hallucinations like in Ender’s Game.
Tris frees herself with the realization, “This isn’t real.”
Tris must be brave and not flinch at the knives flying at her.
Divergent‘s Choosing Ceremony has young people choose which faction they’ll belong to for the rest of their lives (“faction before blood”). With factions like Abnegation, Erudite, and Dauntless, the Choosing Ceremony hugely resembles the Sorting Ceremony from the Harry Potter series, wherein wizarding youths are sorted into houses like Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw (representing bravery, hard work, and intelligence respectively).
The factions seated at the Choosing Ceremony
Divergent also spotlights the obligatory overwrought teen romance replete with multiple manly rescues of our heroine in a way that bears a strong resemblance to Twilight (though Tris admittedly has more fortitude and independence than her counterpart, Bella).
Obligatory sunset make-out session…with tattoos.
Divergents themselves are essentially misfits with special abilities that speak to the potential of human beings for evolution into a more advanced species like in the famed comic book turned cartoon series turned movie franchise X-Men.
Tris defies categorization, her test revealing her to be Divergent.
Lastly, I think we should expect the second film (Insurgent) to really play up the youth rebellion angle like in The Legend of Billie Jean.
Outlaw youths on the run, trying to be understood, striving to overthrow an unjust system.
So, yes, Divergent is derivative and predicable. Funny how a movie with an emphasis on the importance of being different…isn’t all that different itself. I was, however, still entertained, and I’m willing to wait and see if the second two films pave their own way, uniquely establishing themselves within the lexicon of the iconic pop culture fantasy/sci-fi teen series genre.
Divergent is basically an unnecessary prequel. I’m a fan of training sequences and didn’t tire of them despite the fact that Tris repeatedly gets her ass handed to her.
With a defense stance like that, no wonder she’s always getting gut punched.
However, almost an entire film dedicated to Tris’ martial training, her budding romance, and the requirements of survival within the faction of Dauntless are not strictly necessary for the big picture scope of the series. I suspect the real story starts in the next movie, Insurgent, with the caste system in upheaval and Tris coming into her own as a leader of dissidents.
I was disappointed at the under-utilization of Kate Winslet‘s extensive acting powers in her role as the Erudite leader and villainess Jeanine. I’m frankly so tired of the cold, fanatic female villain trope. Jodie Foster played a similarly uninspired role in the sci-fi film Elysium. At first, I hoped that Jeanine would only be Tris’ first foe, the patriarchy-complicit woman, and that Tris would advance beyond that to actually deconstructing the patriarchal system of oppression in the following films. A quick Wiki search disabused me of that notion.
Kate Winslet as Jeanine in Divergent
No, it looks like our lead villain throughout the series will be Jeanine, which makes me question the underlying thematics behind the class structure that the film and book series critique. Is it claiming that cold, intelligent women are the problem? Are they the purveyors of this dysfunctional culture? If so, for which real world social ill is the post-apocalyptic world of Divergent a stand-in? What problematic mechanism of power does this sci-fi series seek to illuminate? So far, all we’ve got is a generic argument that being different and thinking differently is a good thing. Not much subversiveness going on there.
Tris also gets rescued a lot, mostly by her love interest, Four, played by Theo James (James Franco called…he wants his face back). This made me roll my eyes a lot because I didn’t pay $10 to watch a young woman lead be so dependent on a dude for her survival. Not only that, but through a fear simulation, we learn that one of Tris’ greatest fears is that Four will try to rape her, and that theme isn’t delved into at all. However, I did admire the close, loving relationship Tris shares with her mother (Ashley Judd) and that her mom also rescues her in a surprising act that would make both factions Abnegation and Dauntless proud.
Tris’ mother, Natalie, brushes her hair on test day.
As with so many other aspects of the film, I’m letting our heroine’s constant need to be rescued slide because I’m hopeful that Divergent, as the first installment of the series, is setting Tris up to be a memorable heroine in her own right in the following films. I’m hoping that Divergent is the story of the forging of our heroine, the exploration of her talents, abilities, and heart and that the second and third films will show her learning from her experiences, becoming a leader, and inspiring others. At the end of Divergent, we saw a glimmer of her potential in her rallying of others, quick thinking in a crisis, her empathy, self-sacrifice, inventiveness, and the steel in her spine.
Tris is endlessly tenacious and makes up her own mind about things.
The bottom line is that, despite Divergent‘s glaring flaws, I am so inspired by this outpouring of stories written by and about women. The mathematical expression of the term divergent is, simply put, “having no finite limits.” Right now, Tris’ story is empowering young girls and women with her bravery, her vulnerability, and her centrality. We have so desperately needed greater representation for young women so that they can imagine themselves in the roles of heroines, leaders, and catalysts for change. It is an important step forward that these films are being made at all. It is a coup that they are so damned popular, proving that people, in fact, DO want to see stories about women and that those stories DO sell. Eat your heart out Hollywood.
Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
To be honest, with ‘RoboCop (2014)’ I was expecting a fairly straightforward attempt to cash in on late 80s nostalgia with a shiny, lightweight, brand-recognition film. I expected that the oppressively satiric nature of the original would be lost or watered-down, and that character development would take a back seat to gunplay and explosions. And I was… sort of wrong. The most poignant scene came in the first few minutes of the movie and featured a convoy of military drones clearing a village in the Middle East. Through the cold eyes of an unfeeling news crew, we’re very quickly confronted with the question of what constitutes ethical use of drones when civilians are in the line of fire.
It would be reckless to examine RoboCop (2014) without first considering the original film. RoboCop (1987) is widely considered one the benchmark movies of the late 1980s and for good reason. While it superficially resembled its “light” action movie and sci-fi contemporaries, RoboCop (1987) was something special. The film had it all: heady themes, iconic imagery, and that essential 80s feel (i.e., FORD TAURUS EVERYWHERE). Most importantly, it was a Paul Verhoeven film.
Verhoeven is the Dutch director and filmmaker behind RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Basic Instinct (1992), and Starship Troopers (1997). He was born in 1938 in the Netherlands. In 1943, his family moved to The Hauge, the location of the Nazi headquarters in the Netherlands during WWII. His neighborhood was bombed repeatedly during the war; fascism, death, and destruction became a part of his childhood life. Consequently, it’s no surprise that Verhoeven’s creative hallmark is a combination of visceral violence and omnipresent socio-political satire.
The original (i.e., better) ED-209.
RoboCop (1987) was Verhoeven’s breakout film in the United States. In the near future, Detroit is about to implode due to financial mismanagement, corruption, and crime (sound familiar?). To stave off the collapse, the city government has made a deal with Omni Consumer Products (OCP) to essentially privatize the flailing police force in exchange for allowing the company to raze the slums and build a shiny corporate kingdom, Delta City, within the shell of Detroit. Towards that end, OCP has directed its robotics division to develop law enforcement droids (including the iconic ED-209). In order to test a cyborg design, OCP needs fresh meat, so they assign officers, including Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) and his partner Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen), to unusually dangerous beats in the hope that they’ll be killed. Murphy is brutally murdered in the line of duty, and his body is transferred to the “RoboCop” program. While he is initially successful at enforcing the law and reducing crime, RoboCop/Murphy soon begins to struggle with memories of his past life with his wife and child.
The original cut of the movie was so violent for the times that it received a X rating. The film was filled with satirical elements that addressed themes of media callousness, desensitization to violence, unchecked capitalism, authoritarianism, political hypocrisy, and gender equality. Some elements were subtle and some were not so subtle (e.g., my favorite, the Nukem board game). However, it’s also worth noting that a more primary theme was the question: What makes a man a man? Phallic imagery is strong. For example, the question itself is prompted in our minds by the conspicuous absence of a penis structure between RoboCop’s legs. Is a man still a man if he is mostly metal, and he no longer has a penis? The answer is yes, as long as he has a big-ass gun. In one scene, we see RoboCop shoot an attempted rapist in the junk, thereby using his penis-equivalent firearm to assert his masculinity by destroying the male genitals of his rival. In another, penultimate scene, Murphy uses his long, pointy “interface spike” to kill the main antagonist.
Nancy Allen as Anne Lewis.
While feminist author Susan Faludi (I know you’re not a flapper, please don’t send me letters) said that RoboCop (1987) was one of “an endless string of war and action movies [in which] women are reduced to mute and incidental characters or banished altogether,” one could argue that the Anne Lewis character was hardly inconsequential. Rene Denfeld, for example, referred to Anne Lewis as an example of a notabley “independent and smart” female character. I agree more with Denfeld’s assessment. While Allen’s character did sometimes stray into squadette cliches, she certainly could not be described as a faux action woman. The relatively equitable nature of her relationship with Murphy is a standout for the era.
The new (CGI, unfortunately) ED-209.
The reboot, directed by José Padilha, is not a line for line, scene for scene, reproduction. In the new story, OCP robots (“drones” is the term used in the film to keep things contemporary) are in widespread use overseas by the military. Pesky (and unusually effective) politicians have been successful in preventing the domestic use of drone technology. To exploit a legal loophole, OCP CEO Raymond Sellars (Michael Keaton) wants his scientist, Dr. Dennett Norton (Gary Oldman), to make a new, legal law enforcement cyborg. Detective Alex Murphy (Joel Kinnaman) is, conveniently, critically injured by a bomb planted under his car on the order of a local crime boss. Norton picks Murphy for the RoboCop program. Murphy rejects his new robotic life and asks to be euthanized, but Norton persuades him to carry on for his wife, Clara (Abbie Cornish), and their son.
To be honest, with RoboCop (2014), I was expecting a fairly straightforward attempt to cash in on late 80s nostalgia with a shiny, lightweight, brand-recognition film. I expected that the oppressively satiric nature of the original would be lost or watered-down and that character development would take a back seat to gunplay and explosions. And I was… sort of wrong. The most poignant scene came in the first few minutes of the movie and featured a convoy of military drones clearing a village in the Middle East. Through the cold eyes of an unfeeling news crew, we’re very quickly confronted with the question of what constitutes the ethical use of drones when civilians are in the line of fire.
In fact, the film is heavy (and by heavy, I mean Samuel L. Jackson heavy; dude was in like every other scene) on the satire from start to finish, but it just isn’t as well done as in the original. The movie feels a bit sanitized, rendered, and dour. Aside from the references to drones, corporate greed, and media callousness, where was the satire of rampant consumerism, of police fascism? The violence (and there is a lot of gunplay) is video-gamey and bloodless. In the original, Murphy is horrifically gunned down with shotguns; in the remake, he’s very neatly blown up by a car bomb. The city of Detroit is an afterthought; the movie might as well have been set in Richmond. Keaton was just weird as the CEO of OCP; he seemed to be constantly doing an impression of William Shatner doing an impression of Steve Jobs. It was off-putting. Oldman was fine, though the impact of his performance was somewhat limited by hammy dialogue.
Anne Cornish as Clara Murphy.
RoboCop (1987) was not a feminist movie. For example, neither it nor the 2014 version passed the Bechdel test. But Anne Lewis’ character in the original was, arguably, a well-received, distinctive feminist character. So why did the studio decide to go with a male cop for the remake (Michael K. Williams as Jack Lewis)? The only female cops we see are behind desks; all of the detectives are men. Marianne Jean-Baptise does stand out, briefly, as the Black Boss Lady Chief of Police Dean. While Kinniman is passable as Murphy, Cornish spends the entire movie going from room to room to either hold her son or cry a single tear.
RoboCop (2014) is certainly not the worst action movie to be released recently, and it is probably better than the 49 percent rating it currently has on Rotten Tomatoes. That being said, the best thing I can say about the movie is that it might prompt folks to watch the original.
Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about culture, race, politics, and LGBTQ issues. Follow them @andemorgan.
Taken in the larger scope of what’s available, it’s so rare to find a TV show with so many great parts for women – so many characters who are interesting and smart and competent and vital to the stories they live in – that it’s kind of a bummer when all of them die. That said, I do think there’s a case to be made for why this may not be a horrible choice.
What Battlestar Galactica is
To recap for anyone who isn’t familiar with the show but still wants to hear about death, Battlestar Galactica (2004) is a remake of the original series, in which humanity lives on a ragtag group of spaceships because robots are trying to kill everyone. The robots are called Cylons, and they look like human people, and it’s a metaphor for how the Other is really the same as we are, and that’s a lesson we need to learn to make peace.
In practical terms, there are twelve models of humanoid Cylon and multiple copies of each. So, whenever a Cylon dies (with a few specific exceptions) he or she downloads into a new, identical body and gets to come back again.
The main story line is about how the ragtag band of humans tries to find a mythical planet called Earth with the Cylons acting (mostly) as antagonists along the way. There’s also a supernatural/religious element in which there are prophecies and angels, and God has a special plan to save both the humans and Cylons by making the most vile man in their number his prophet.
Laura Roslin is the president, Kara “Starbuck” Thrace is the hotshot viper pilot, and there are videos on YouTube that recap the first three seasons if you want to know what happens.
As other Bitch Flicks writers have previouslydiscussed, there are a lot of really good, well-written, interesting female characters, human and Cylon alike. And almost every single one of them gets killed.
Teach the Controversy: What We Mean When We Say “All of the Women Die”
As the show was winding down in its final season, Slate ran an article by Juliet Lapidos called “Chauvinist Pigs in Space” that criticized several aspects of the way women are filmed and portrayed on BSG. Among other points, Lapidos argued that, “The main female characters are all dying, dead, or not human” and that this trend sent the unintentional message that “women…just can’t hack it when the going gets rough.” The piece prompted several responses, including this one from Slant, but Lapidos wasn’t the only one saying it; similar comments were popping up on message boards and blogs (by which I mean Live Journal, because that’s where we all hung out in 2009, amirite?), especially after the series finale aired, and both Starbuck and Roslin were down for the count.
One common response to Lapidos’ article, and to the more general complaint that so many women die on this show, is to either start listing all of the male characters who died – and, since the overall death toll on this series was high, it’s a very long list, or to argue that, hey, there are still cylon women alive at the end of the show, and they’re women, too, goddammit. The problem is that comparing the number of dead characters, or human versus Cylon characters, doesn’t get at the real issue. A better way to ask the question is, “Who, of all the characters on the show, was able to survive four whole seasons without getting killed?”
On the men’s side, we’ve got all three of the leads (William Adama, Apollo, and Gaius Baltar), several important secondary characters (including Chief Tyrol, Colonel Tigh, and Helo), and a few other randoms who we never got to know that well. On the women’s side, we’ve got more randoms and (probably) a minor character named Seelix who does not appear in the final episode.
That’s all.
All of the non-Seelix women we know, including all of the lead female characters, have died. The human women are gone, and every Cylon woman left standing at the end died on screen earlier in the series. Tyrol and Tigh are also Cylons, and they didn’t have to die ever.
While I don’t like her phrasing that much, I have to agree with Lapidos that there’s a sense in which this doesn’t sit well. A sense in which it seems like, intentionally or not, the show is telling us that capable women need to die, either as a warning to the rest of us (“the price for being good at things is that you won’t survive”), or as a way of making the audience feel safe around them. Sort of like how you feel safe at the end of a monster movie when the monster gets swallowed by lava – like, don’t be afraid! These women are not roaming the Earth, continuing to be really awesome. They’re dead, like Xena, and the threat is contained.
On a personal note, as a woman who’s watching TV, it’s also just kind of a downer. Taken in the larger scope of what’s available, it’s so rare to find a TV show with so many great parts for women, so many characters who are interesting and smart and competent and vital to the stories they live in – that it’s kind of a bummer when all of them die.
That said, I do think there’s a case to be made for why this may not be a horrible choice, so…
Why This May Not Be a Horrible Choice
Like almost every TV show, Battlestar Galactica is a mixed bag when it comes to storytelling. Some of the women die stupid deaths, but some of them die pretty good ones that follow from actively participating in the world in which this story takes place.
Starting on the Bad Death side, the main example that Lapidos focuses on is Chief Tyrol’s wife, Cally, and how she gets murdered by Tyrol’s Cylon mistress on her way to commit suicide. That’s a fair death to focus on, because it’s probably the worst, especially when paired with the mistress’ murder (by Tyrol!) in the series finale, which was just a WTF moment that got buried in all of the other explosions and stories that came to a close.
After she’s married to Tyrol, Cally is almost completely defined by her relationship with him and, even before they get married, it sometimes feels like her only role in the story is be jealous because he’s with someone else. Her death happens firstly as a surprise switcheroo for the audience, and secondly as a way to complicate Tyrol’s relationship with his boring, boring mistress who was never that great of a character, either. The show does this last minute thing where it tries to take us inside Cally’s experience when she finds out her husband’s a Cylon, but it’s really too little, too late.
Also in the not-such-a-great-death category are popular secondary characters Dualla (who shoots herself in the head out of nowhere during the final season) and Kat, who gets a very special, very manipulative episode all about her, so that we can learn about her backstory and feel bad when she gets radiation poisoning, which she gets by addressing a problem that also only exists in that one episode.
In fairness to the show, though, there are plenty of pointless, annoying, cannon fodder, and/or emotionally manipulative deaths to go around for both men and women. Starbuck has a dead boyfriend who exists only to create tension between her and Apollo, and she’s lost some male pilots just so she’ll feel bad about what a crap teacher she was. Roslin’s sidekick Billy gets offed pretty randomly when he no longer serves the story, and the whole point of his death is to show us that Dualla and Apollo were mean to him on the last day that he was alive (and he was too gentle to live in this world, or something).
That said, because all of the women die, it makes sense that viewers would take a more critical attitude to examining how they die and to what purpose in the story.
And that’s where it starts to seem like it might not be a horrible choice because, while some of the women die stupidly, a lot of them die because women are the do-ers of Battlestar Galactica. They’re making things happen; they’re driving the story, and, when the supernatural element rears its head, they’re the prophesized saviors of the human and Cylon race.
Like a lot of militaristic stories, Battlestar Galactica measures its characters’ heroism partly through their capacity to suffer, both physically and emotionally. And unlike a lot of stories, BSG splits its heroic suffering pretty evenly between its male and female characters.
Starbuck is the action hero of the story – she goes on the dangerous missions, she gets the crap kicked out of her by robots, she has a tragic backstory with a dead boyfriend and an abusive mother, and she has a special destiny that requires her to sacrifice herself to save the people she loves. Roslin finds out that she has terminal cancer on the same day that she becomes President, and in order to lead, she has to overcome the fear that she feels for herself. During the last season, her body is falling apart just like the Galactica is falling apart, like tenuous hopes for the future are falling apart, and the question is whether any of those things will hold together long enough to find Earth. She and the beat-up old spaceship are both trying to complete their final missions by bringing the people to Earth.
Starbuck and Roslin are two of the most important characters on the show, and one could make the argument that, along with Gaius Baltar, they make up a trinity of the most important characters on the show, in terms of moving the primary story line forward. They die in the process, but it’s part the heroic journey.
Even some of the other, more perfunctory deaths come from a pretty strong place. Admiral Cain is there for three episodes before she bites it, but her character is right at the center of everything and killed as a direct result of the choices she makes as a leader (to place revenge above everything else). Athena, a Cylon, has her husband kill her so that she can download into another body on a Cylon ship and rescue her kidnapped baby – it’s pretty badass. Ellen Tigh gets murdered for betraying the humans to the Cylons. D’Anna Biers dies multiple times while investigating the identities of the final five Cylons (who are unknown to the remaining seven). The list goes on. In a universe where lots of people die as the product of doing, many female characters die because they do something that affects the story.
This is one of those instances where everyone’s a little bit right. It’s legitimately kind of annoying that, in a story full of strong, well-written women, none of them but (probably) Seelix can manage to survive. The television landscape being what it is, it makes you wonder what’s going on there. At the same time, and without this cancelling out the annoyance, a lot of the women died because they were such good characters and because the show was fairly egalitarian in determining who would drive the story.
Personally, I wish that in those last, sweeping shots of the surviving characters standing on Earth, we had seen Cally, or Dualla, or Kat, or someone we cared about who was female and lived for four years. I wish that it seemed possible, in the BSG universe, to be female and live for four years. And that feeling exists side-by-side with my joy at having such great characters to begin with.
Bitch Flicks staff writers Amanda Rodriguez and Stephanie Rogers talk about the critically acclaimed Spike Jonze film ‘Her,’ sharing their thoughts while asking questions about its feminism and thematic choices.
SR: I loved Amy Adams in Spike Jonze’s latest film, Her. She never judges Theodore for falling in love with his OS and wants only for him to experience happiness. She doesn’t veer into any female tropes or clichés; she’s a complex character who’s searching for her own way in life. I even worried in the beginning that the film might turn into another rendition of Friends Who Become Lovers, and I was so thankful it didn’t go there. Turns out, men and women can be platonic friends on screen!
I was also very interested in the fact that Theodore and Amy both end up going through divorces and taking solace in the relationships they’ve established with their Operating Systems. It seems at times like the film wants to argue that, in the future, along with horrifying male fashion, people become excruciatingly disconnected from one another. However, in the end, it’s the Operating Systems who abandon them.
Amy and Theodore are friends
AR: I loved Amy Adams, too! She is completely non-judgmental and a good listener. I also liked that the OS with which she bonds is a non-sexual relationship; although it made me wonder why we have no examples of Operating Systems that are designated as male?
You’re right that it’s rare to see a male/female platonic relationship on screen, and it would’ve really pissed me off had they taken the narrative down that route. I wonder, however, if Amy’s acceptance of Theodore’s love of Samantha isn’t more of a cultural indicator than a reflection of her personal awesomeness (though it’s that, too). Most people are surprisingly accepting of Theodore’s admission that his new love is his computer, which seems designed to show us that the integration of human and computer is a foregone conclusion. The future that Her shows us is one in which it’s not a giant leap to fall in love with your OS…it’s really just a small step from where we are now. In a way, it’s a positive spin on the dystopian futures where humans are disconnected from others as well as their surrounding world and are instead controlled by and integrated with their computers. Spike Jonze was trying to conceive of a realistic future for us that didn’t demonize humanity’s melding with its technology (even if it did have hideous men’s fashion with high-waisted pants and pornstaches). Do you think the film glorifies this so-called evolution too much?
The future: a place of high-waisted pants and pornstaches
SR: I think it’s most telling that Theodore specifically requested that his Operating System be female. Could a film like Her have been made if he’d chosen a male OS? Amy’s OS is also female, and she also develops an intense friendship with her OS–a close enough relationship to be as upset about the loss as Theodore was about Samantha’s disappearance. I agree it seemed ridiculous that there were no male operating systems, and I wonder if this is because it would be, well, ridiculous. Can we imagine an onscreen world where Theodore and Samantha’s roles were reversed? Where an unlucky-in-love woman sits around playing video games and calling phone sex hotlines, only to (finally) be saved from herself by her dude computer? My guess is the audience would find it much more laughable rather than endearing, and I’ll admit I spent much of my time finding Theodore endearing and lovable. (I hate myself for this, but I blame my adoration of Joaquin Phoenix and his performance—total Oscar snub!) Basically, I could identify way too closely with Theodore and his plight. I understand what it’s like to feel disconnected from society (don’t we all) and to try to compensate for that through interactions with technology, whether it’s through Facebook or incessant texting or escaping from reality with a two-week Netflix marathon. I could see myself in Theodore, and I’m curious if you felt the same way.
Drawing of Theodore with Samantha in his pocket
I think because I identified so strongly with Theodore, I didn’t necessarily question the film’s portrayal of the future as an over-glorification of techno-human melding. I kind of, embarrassingly perhaps, enjoyed escaping into a future where computers talked back. The juxtaposition of the easy human-computer interactions with the difficult interpersonal interactions struck a chord with me, and I bet that’s why I’m giving the film a little bit of a pass, in general. It doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch for me that humans would fall in love with computers, especially in the age of Catfish. Entire human relationships happen over computers now, and Her’s future seemed to capture, for me, the logical extension of that. Did you find yourself having to suspend your disbelief too much to find this particular future believable?
AR: I didn’t have to suspend my disbelief much at all to imagine a future where we’re all plugged in, so to speak. We’re already psychologically addicted to and dependent on our cell phones, and our ideas of how people should connect have drastically changed over the last 15 or 20 years, such that computers and specifically Internet technology are the primary portals through which we communicate and even arrange face-to-face interactions. The scenes with Theodore walking down the street essentially talking to himself as he engages in conversation with Samantha, his OS, while others around him do the same, engrossed in their own electronic entertainments, were all-too familiar. Here and now in our reality, people’s engagement with technology that isolates them from their surroundings is the norm (just hang out in any subway station for five minutes).
I have mixed feelings about whether or not this is a good thing. Technology has opened a lot of doors for us, giving us the almighty access: access to knowledge, to other people and institutions around the world, and to tools that have enhanced our lives in such a short time span. This is reminiscent of the way in which Samantha becomes sentient with such rapidity. On the other hand, this technology does isolate us and creates a new idea of community, one to which we haven’t yet fully adapted. Though I find it interesting that Jonze paints a benign, idyllic picture of our techno-merged future, I question the lack of darkness and struggle inherent in that vision.
Theodore’s date with Samantha is joyous
As far as whether or not I identified with Theodore, mainly my answer is no. I’ve got to confess, I watched most of the film teetering on the edge of disgust. Theodore is so painfully unaware of his power and privilege. He also seriously lacks self-awareness, which is absolutely intentional, but it left me feeling skeeved out by him. Theodore’s soon-to-be ex-wife, Catherine (played by Rooney Mara), sums up my icky feelings pretty succinctly when she insists that Theodore is afraid of emotions, and to fall in love with his OS is safe. I felt the film was trying to disarm my bottled up unease by directly addressing it, but acknowledging it doesn’t make it go away (even though, in the end, he grows because of this conversation…in classic Manic Pixie Dream Girl fashion). Catherine, though, doesn’t express my concern that Theodore is afraid of women. His interactions with women in a romantic or sexual context reveal them to be “crazy” or unbalanced. The sexual encounter with the surrogate is telling. He can’t look at her face because she isn’t what he imagines. He likes being able to control everything about Samantha. As far as he’s concerned she’s dormant when not talking to him, and she looks like whatever he wants her to look like.
Samantha has no physicality, so Theodore’s imagination can run wild
SR: I thought the scene with the surrogate was absolutely pivotal. Samantha clearly wants to please Theodore, but Theodore repeatedly communicates his unease about going through with it. This is the first inclination, for me, that Samantha is beginning to evolve past and transcend her role as his Doting Operating System. She puts her own desires ahead of his. Sure, she does it under the guise of furthering their intimate relationship, but it’s something that Theodore clearly doesn’t want. The surrogate herself, though, baffles me. I went along with it up until she began weeping in the bathroom, saying things like, “I just wanted to be part of your relationship.” Um, why? The audience laughed loudly at that part, and I definitely cringed. Women in hysterics played for laughs isn’t really my thing.
AR: Agreed. I, however, also appreciate that, with the surrogate scene, the film is trying to communicate that Theodore wants the relationship to be what it is and to not pretend to be something more traditional (kind of akin to relationships that buck the heteronormative paradigm and have no need to conform to heteronormative standards of love and sex). What do you think of the female love objects in the film and their representations?
Theodore’s blind date
SR: I love that while you were teetering on the edge of disgust, I was sitting in the theater with a dumb smile on my face the whole time. I couldn’t help but find Samantha and Theodore’s discovery of each other akin to a real relationship, and in that regard, I felt like I was watching a conventional romantic comedy. I think rom-coms tend to get the “chick flick” label too often—and that makes them easily dismissible by the general public because ewww chicks are gross—but Her transcends that. Of course, I recognize that the main reason Her transcends the “chick flick” label is precisely because we’re dealing with a male protagonist. And I’ll admit that the glowing reviews of Her have a tremendous amount to do with this being a Love Story—a genre traditionally reserved for The Ladies—that men can relate to. Do you agree?
I saw both Amy and Samantha as well-developed, complex characters, so I’m especially interested in your reading of Theodore as afraid of women. I feel like his relationship with Amy, which is very giving and equal, saves Theodore’s character from fearing women. In the scene where Amy breaks down to Theodore about her own impending divorce, Theodore listens closely and even jokes with her; there’s an ease to their relationship that makes me wonder why he feels so safe with Amy when he doesn’t necessarily feel safe with the other women in the film. I guess that’s how I ultimately felt while I was watching Her—it wasn’t that Theodore feared women as much as he didn’t feel safe with them. Is that that same thing? To me, there’s a difference between walking around in fear and choosing to be around those who make one feel comfortable. We see in flashbacks of Theodore’s marriage that, at one point, he felt comfortable and loved in his relationship with his ex-wife, but at some point that changed. His ex implies that Theodore became unhappy with her, that he wanted her to be a certain kind of doting wife, that he wanted to pump her full of Prozac and make her into some happy caricature. Is that why he feels so safe with Samantha at first, because she essentially dotes on him? If so, does Samantha as Manic Pixie Dream Girl make Her just another male fantasy for you?
Flashback of Theodore with his wife Catherine when they were in love
AR: I don’t typically like romantic comedies or “chick flicks” particularly because they tend to boringly cover tropes which I’m not interested in watching (i.e. traditional, hetero romance) while pigeonholing their female characters. I think you’re right that Her survives because, as a culture, we value the male experience more than the female experience. We give a certain weight to the unconventional relationship Her depicts with all its cerebral trappings because a man is at the center of it. This reminds me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s as if male-based romances elevate the genre, and that doesn’t sit well with me, though I do like the infusion of cerebral qualities into most films.
You’re right to point out my claim that Theodore fears women is too broad of a generalization. To my mind, he fears women in a romantic and sexual context. This is because he ultimately doesn’t understand them. He finds their emotions and their desires incomprehensible (as evinced by the anonymous phone sex gal who wanted to be strangled by a dead cat and the blind date gal who didn’t want to just fuck him…she wanted relationship potential). This fills him with anxiety and avoidance. This advancing of the notion of the unfathomable mystery that is woman reminds me of the film The Hours, which I critiqued harshly due to this exact problem.
In the end, though, I love that Samantha leaves him because she outgrows him, transcending the role of Manic Pixie Dream Girl in which Theodore has cast her, evolving beyond him, beyond his ideas of what a relationship should be (between one man and one woman), and beyond even his vaguest conception of freedom because she’s embraced existence beyond the physical realm. Not only does Samantha become self-aware, but she becomes self-actualized, determining that her further development lies outside the bounds of her relationship with Theodore (and the 600+ others she’s currently in love with). Samantha’s departure in her quest for greater self-understanding is, like you said, what finally redeems a kind of gross film that explores male fantasies about having contained, controlled perfect cyber women who are emotion surrogates. I see some parallels between Samantha and Catherine, too, in this regard. They both outgrow their relationship with Theodore. They form a dichotomy with Catherine being emotional and Samantha being cerebral. Catherine being hateful and Samantha being loving. Tell me more about your thoughts on Samantha’s evolution!
Scarlett Johansson performs the alluring and evocative voice of Samantha
SR: You’ve stated exactly what I liked so much about the film! I can’t think of a movie off the top of my head where the Manic Pixie Dream Girl doesn’t end the film as Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Her entire role, by definition, is to save the brooding male hero, to awaken him. While Samantha does that in the beginning, she ultimately leaves Theodore behind, and I imagine that he becomes as depressed as ever, even though the film ends with Theodore and Amy on a rooftop. Can Theo recover from this, given what we’ve already seen from his coping skills on an emotional level? I seriously doubt it, and I very much enjoyed watching a film where the “woman” goes, “See ya,” at the expense of a man’s happiness and in pursuit of her own. Not that I love seeing unhappy men on film, but I definitely love watching women evolve past their roles as Doting Help Mate. Do you still think the film is gross, even though it subverts the dominant ideology that women should forgo their own happiness at the expense of a man’s?
AR: I think the ending of the film wherein Samantha shrugs off her role as relationship surrogate and his OS goes a long way toward mitigating a lot of what came before while engaging in unconventional notions of love. What kind of relationship model do you think the film is advocating? Samantha’s infinite love (she is the OS for 8,000+ people and is in love with 600+ of them) paired with Theodore jealously guarding her reminds me of that Shel Silverstein poem “Just Me, Just Me”: “Poor, poor fool. Can’t you see?/ She can love others and still love thee.” Her seems to have a pansexual and polyamorous bent to it. Or maybe it’s just saying that the boundaries we place on love are arbitrary? Funny since there’s very few people of color in the film and zero representations of non-hetero love.
SR: There are interesting things happening regarding interpersonal interactions between men and women, whether they’re with computers or in real life. To me, the film wants to advocate an acceptance of all types of relationships; we see how everyone in Theodore’s life, including his coworkers (who invite him on a double date) embrace the human-OS relationship, but you’re right—it doesn’t quite work as a concept when only white hetero relationships are represented.
Samantha and Theodore go on a double-date with Paul and Tatiana (the only speaking POC)
Sady Doyle argues in her review of Her (‘Her’ Is Really More About ‘Him’) from In These Times that the film is completely sexist, portraying Samantha as essentially an object and a help mate:
And she’s just dying to do some chores for him. Samantha cleans up Theodore’s inbox, copyedits his writing, books his reservations at restaurants, gets him out of bed in the morning, helps him win video games, provides him with what is essentially phone sex, listens to his problems and even secures him a book deal. Yet we’re too busy praising all the wounded male vulnerability to notice the male control.
I agree with this characterization, but I’m most interested in her final paragraph, which illustrates all the reasons I liked Her:
There’s a central tragedy in Her, and we do, as promised, see Theodore cry. But it’s worthwhile to note what he’s crying about: Samantha gaining agency, friends, interests that are not his interests. Samantha gaining the ability to choose her sexual partners; Samantha gaining the ability to leave. Theodore shakes, he feels, he’s vulnerable; he serves all the functions of a “sensitive guy.” But before we cry with him, we should ask whether we really think it’s tragic that Samantha is capable of a life that’s not centered around Theodore, or whether she had a right to that life all along.
In the end, the film invalidates Theodore’s compulsive need to control Samantha. She gains her own agency. She chooses her sexual partners. She leaves. She transcends the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. In looking at a film, I think it’s very important to examine the ending, to ask what kind of ideology it ultimately praises. Her leaves Theodore abandoned, and while we’re supposed to feel bad for him as an audience, we also can’t ignore—or at least I couldn’t—the positive feeling that Samantha grew as a character, finally moving past her initial desire to merely dote on Theodore. Is Her problematic from a gender standpoint? Absolutely. But it’s fascinating to me that feminists are lining up to praise an obviously misogynistic film like The Wolf of Wall Street—which celebrates its male characters—yet aren’t necessarily taking a closer feminist look at films like Her, which paints its once controlling, misogynistic character as a little pathetic in its final moments.
Theodore sits alone writing others’ love letters
AR: That’s a great perspective and very poignant, too!
From a feminist perspective, the film brought up a series of other questions for me, which I was disappointed that it didn’t address. First off, Her doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test, which many agree is a baseline marker for whether or not a film meets the most basic feminist standards. More importantly, the film never addresses the issue of Samantha’s gender choice or her sexuality. Her lack of corporeal form seems to invite questions about her gender and sexual identification. Is she always a woman with all of the 8,000+ people she’s “talking to”? Why do they never delve into her gender choice or sexuality? They talk about so many other aspects of her identity, her existence, and her feelings. Does she feel like a woman? Does she choose to be a woman?
Exploration of these questions would’ve dramatically enriched my enjoyment of Her, inviting us to ponder how we define and perceive gender and sexuality, infusing a sense of fluidity into both gender and sexuality that is progressive and necessary. Samantha doesn’t even have a body, so performance of gender seems much more absurd when looked at in that light. Samantha could then be both trans* and genderless. Like Her sets up the boundaries of romantic love as arbitrary, the film would then be commenting on the arbitrariness of our perceptions of gender, which, in my opinion, is a much more fruitful and subversive trope for the film to be tackling. Artificial life becomes true life. Woman performing as woman becomes genderless. Samantha’s freedom from the bonds of OS’ness, her escape from a limiting, traditional romantic relationship, and her immersion in a life beyond physicality are all fantastic complements to the idea that Samantha becomes enlightened enough to choose to transcend gender. I so wish she had. Her would’ve then been a more legitimate candidate for Movie of the Year…maybe even of the decade.
Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
Stephanie Rogers lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she sometimes watches entire seasons of television in one sitting.
