The American Lens on Global Unity in ‘Sense8’

‘Sense8’ is a clusterfuck of clichés, mediocre storylines and inept world building. Still, binge watch the series to enjoy the human journey of the eight sensates and maybe the Wachowskis and Netflix will take note and improve season 2 – they’ve mapped out five seasons. ‘Sense8’ will prosper on Netflix.

The Sensates "Mom" Angelica
The Sensates “Mom” Angelica

 


This is a guest post by Giselle Defares.


The paradoxical desire for global inclusivity that is created or controlled from an American perspective is characteristic for our modern pop culture. Harsh, maybe. We are in the 21st century after all, so it seems more than natural – albeit refreshing in our current cinematic climate of reboots – to explore an array of themes such as religion, gender identity and politics (LGBT) all served with a thin layer of sci-fi. The Wachowskis put their own spin on the mosaic narrative with Sense8. Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia and Alejandro Gonzaléz Iñárritu’s Babel paved the way. Sense8 aims to portray the brittleness of cultural barriers and the importance of global unity. Do the Wachowskis succeed?

Directors Lana and Andy Wachowski ventured from the start of their career into the field of “mindfuck” cinema. Their previous work on the Matrix trilogy, V for Vendetta, Speed Racer, and Ninja Assassin prepared them for their Magnum opus: the film version of the incomparable deemed novel of David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas – or was it the critically panned Jupiter Ascending?

The announcement of the series created a lot of buzz online but criticism rose against Lana Wachowski as a result of her previous comments when it came to the racial insensitivities in Cloud Atlas; and the fact that Wachowski was a keynote speaker at the Chicago Trans 100 – this annual event honors influential voices that are leading the transgender movement. In her speech she tried to focus on the “eradication of otherness,” but made several anti-Black comments, compared the current trans movement and its hardships to the American Civil Rights Movement, and appropriated Indigenous language. This is the same woman who brought us the premise of diversity with Sense8. Dilemma.

Sun and Capheus connect
Sun and Capheus connect

 

Sense8 has a challenging narrative structure. Eight different places, eight protagonists and eight stories that seemingly fit together as matryoshkas. The eight characters all influence each other in subtle ways and thereby change the course of events. In an interview with Buzzfeed director Joe Straczynski states,It’s a global story told on a planetary scale about human transcendence and what it ultimately means to be human in a contemporary society.” Right.

The plot centers around the idealistic Chicago cop Will (Brian J. Smith) who has father issues; Icelandic DJ Riley (Tuppence Middleton) who runs from her traumatic past; happy-go-lucky Kenyan bus driver Capheus who is obsessed with Jean Claude Van Damme (Aml Ameen); Korean business woman Sun (Bae Doona) who is a kick ass martial artist at night and deals with her inept brother and father; Mexican telenovela actor Lito (Miguel Angel Silvestre) who is closeted and afraid to come out, Indian scientist Kala (Tina Desai) who is stuck in a “love match” with a man she doesn’t love; German criminal Wolfgang (Max Riemelt) who struggles with his Slavic family; and San Franciscan blogger and ex-hacktivist Nomi (Jamie Clayton) who is a transwoman and is haunted by her family’s disproval. The series was shot in San Francisco, Chicago, Mexico City, London, Berlin, Iceland, Mumbai, Nairobi, and Seoul.

The eight strangers have one thing in common and that is that they’ve evolved into “sensates” and thus can share the thoughts, feelings, memories, skills, and experiences of other sensates. At the start of the series, the sensate Angelica (Daryl Hannah) and Jonas (Naveen Andrews) give “birth” to the group of adult sensates which ties them together into a “cluster”, which means that they can reach out to each other without being in physical contact first. The cluster is composed of eight sensates who are all born at the exact same time but are scattered all over the world. Conveniently enough they can use each other’s language, knowledge and skills. Well, no story is complete without the big bad wolf. The cluster is haunted by the Biologic Preservation Organization (BPO) under the leadership of Whispers (Terrence Mann).

The series has a very slow start. The Wachowskis take their sweet time to introduce all the characters. Will is the one who sets the story in motion when he finds out he can connect with other people – and has had a similar experience in his childhood. Jonas contacts Will and reassures him, “You’re not losing your mind, it’s just expanding.” Nomi often questions the ability of the sensates and her girlfriend’s mother quips, “ To be something more than what evolution would define as ‘yourself,’ you’d need something different from yourself.” Lovely pseudo-profound statement.

Nomi and Amanita
Nomi and Amanita

 

The Wachowskis made the creative choice to focus more on the day to day lives of the sensates and their relationships with their loved ones instead of fully embracing the sci-fi element. There should be a better balance between the sci-fi elements and the different relationships of the sensates. It truly distorts the flow of the series. The Wachowskis try to embrace the equality of different world culture and underline the universality of the human experience. It seems that they aimed for a similar vibe as seen in documentary films such as Baraka or Koyaanisqatsi.

However, they opt to include every cliché in the book when it comes to the non-western countries and the characters. Mexico City looks like it was copied out of a popular telenovela; Mumbai is multicolored, lots of jewelry, flowers, Hindu iconography and Kala busted out the classic Bollywood dance with her fiancé; Seoul is almost sterile with a grey-futuristic aesthetic and lots of mirrors and windows; Nairobi looks sweaty and lots of earth tones were used; and Reykjavik and London look like glossy tourist commercials and so on and so forth…

Naturally, Kala is a smart scientist who is stuck in a “love match” but knows that the arranged marriage will make her family very happy. Capheus is a poor yet happy bus driver who cares for his sick mother. Her illness? AIDS. He also has several battles with the local gangs. At first glance, Sun’s story seemed the most fleshed out. Only her arc reaffirms several stereotypes on East Asian culture, see the manifestation of sexism (“Oh, I wish my daughter was a son”) and she’s the ultimate fighter. Despite filming in Korea, the city is only used as a backdrop in the ultra-masculine business where Sun works or a seedy night club scene; Lito is the colorful, sensitive yet conservative homosexual telenovela actor who doesn’t want to bring his career in jeopardy by coming out. Honorable mention goes to Will as the idealistic white cop who tries to safe a black child’s life after he’s been shot and the Black nurse at the ER refuses to help at first and asks him if it will be worth it. Luckily this element of his arc was quickly dropped.

When it comes to (pop) cultural influences, they’re all American. Capheus is obsessed with Jean-Claude Van Damme. Wolfgang and his friend live by the philosophy of Conan the Barbarian and Riley inspires the cluster to a sing along with the 4 Non Blondes song “What’s Going On?” We are not introduced to the local (pop) culture of Mumbai, Mexico City, Seoul or Nairobi – besides the tired cliché of Kala’s Bollywood dance.

The creative decision to let all the characters speak English albeit with a hint of an accent here or there seemed unnecessary. In the other Netflix show, Daredevil, several characters spoke their native language and subtitles would suffice. On the other hand, there are small moments in the series where you know that the sensates speak to each other in their own language but because of their connection they understand each other, e.g. when Sun and Capheus meet and they understand each other, Sun asks him, “Do you speak Korean?” and Capheus says, “No.”

It has to be said, all eight storylines are mediocre when you look at them separately. Riley’s tragic loss is wonderfully acted but looks too familiar. Capheus’ narrative brings at times some lighthearted relief but it doesn’t add to the general arc. Lito, his boyfriend Hernando and beard Daniela have great chemistry- a Tumblr dream come to life. Yet, Lito’s narrative stands on his own until the last couple of episodes where’s he’s pulled into the fight of the sensates to rescue Riley. The only exception could be Nomi – played by the trans actress Jamie Clayton (!) – who plays an important part as a San Franciscan trans female character who fight society’s standards and the occasional TERF. Her arc is natural, layered and she has wonderful chemistry with her very supportive girlfriend Amanita.

Some of the performances fall flat and the swishy camerawork definitely doesn’t add to the quality. You can’t escape the cheesiness and terrible, terrible dialogue. Sure, Sun and Wolfgang are always used as the fighters when the others are in trouble; Will brings his critical thinking skills in times of duress; Capheus knows how to drive the get-a-away car; Lito will tell the perfect lie; Nomi can erase you from the internet; and Riley plays the white damsel in distress whilst being in a bland relationship with Will. All the sensates are seemingly good, kind and idealistic. Nevertheless, it still is a welcome change from the usual assholes that parade on our screens. Plus: Diversity (!).

Why should you watch Sense8? A) The genuine bond between all the sensates; B) The series really flows when the sensates finally work together to fight against Whispers and BPO and manage to control their skills; C) The Wachowskis do know how to aptly bring fight choreography to life on screen.

Sense8 is a clusterfuck of clichés, mediocre storylines and inept world building. Still, binge watch the series to enjoy the human journey of the eight sensates and maybe the Wachowskis and Netflix will take note and improve season 2 – they’ve mapped out five seasons. Sense8 will prosper on Netflix.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKpKAlbJ7BQ”]

 


Giselle Defares comments on film, fashion (law) and American pop culture. See her blog here.

 

‘Splice’: Womb Horror and the Mother Scientist

‘Splice’ explores gendered body horror at the locus of the womb, reveling in the horror of procreation. It touches on themes of bestiality, incest, and rape. It’s also a movie about being a mom.

Splice+poster


This repost by Mychael Blinde appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

NSFW | Trigger warning for survivors of sexual assault
Warning: Spoilers abound!

Splice explores gendered body horror at the locus of the womb, reveling in the horror of procreation. It touches on themes of bestiality, incest, and rape. It’s also a movie about being a mom.
Though it received somewhat lackluster reviews, I encourage anyone interested in feminism and film to give Vincenzo Natali’s sci-fi body horror film a try. Splice features female characters who are intelligent, emotionally complex, and in control. They’re not perfect, but they are three-dimensional characters whose decisions drive the story. (One of them morphs into a male, but we’ll get to that.)
Splice asks a lot of questions about the terms and conditions of conception, gestation, birth, and motherhood, all without stabbing the viewer in the eye with reductive answers.
It also features some campy moments. Hipster scientists shout things like “It was the only way!” Academy Award winning actor Adrien Brody expresses his frustration by throwing down not just his jacket, but his scarf as well!
If you can stomach the juxtaposition of big thinky concepts and stilted clichéd dialogue, you will find Splice a thoroughly enjoyable mindfuck of a film.
Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) and Clive Nicoli (Brody), long-term partners in romance and biochemistry, have developed a method to splice the DNA from various animals together to create hybrid creatures.
Viewers are actually birthed into the film from the perspective of Fred, the couple’s latest scientific endeavor, a male companion to their first hybrid, Ginger.
Splice
Splice

Elsa and Clive aspire to splice human DNA to develop cures for genetic diseases, but the pharmaceutical company funding their research puts a halt on all splicing until the duo can synthesize the medicinal protein necessary to create a commercially viable lifestock drug.

Newstead Pharma’s financial interests are represented by Joan Chorot (Simona Maicanescu), who insists Elsa and Clive begin “Phase Two: The product stage.”
Joan Chorot (Simona Maicanescu) in Splice
Joan Chorot (Simona Maicanescu) in Splice
Joan doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but her brief appearances are a pleasure to watch. She’s articulate and always in control. It’s awesome to see a woman kicking ass in the role of the money-grubbing corporation, and Joan is a stellar example of how to do it right.
After their splicing research is shut down, Clive suggests they quit, but Elsa convinces Clive to proceed with the human splicing and to generate an embryo.
Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) in Splice
Clive Nicoli (Adrien Brody) and Elsa Kast (Sarah Polley) in Splice
In both the romantic and the professional relationship between Clive and Elsa (and this is a movie very much interested in the conflation of work and sex), Elsa is in charge.
Over and over, Elsa insists that they take the next step. She is the opposite of what I call the Male Protagonist’s Girlfriend — a  pretty lady bystander who supplements the male protagonist’s story arc.
Elsa and Clive also deviate from the typical representation of long-term monogamous heterosexual partners: it is he, not she, who desires to have a child:

Elsa: “You are talking about having a kid.”
Clive: “Is that so unreasonable?”
Elsa: “Yeah, because I’m the one who has to have it…”
Clive: “Come on. What’s the worst that can happen?”
Elsa: “How about after we crack male pregnancy?”

Meaningfully, this discussion is cut short by an alert sent from the machine housing the hybrid fetus. When they arrive at the lab, the embryo is all grown up and preparing to evacuate the biochemically engineered womb.
Though Elsa doesn’t gestate and birth the baby from her own body, the birth experience is physically traumatizing for her. She becomes trapped in the birth canal and is injected with poisonous serum. In a rare moment of control, Clive saves Elsa. But after the birth, Elsa again takes charge: she refuses to allow Clive to kill the female hybrid and insists that they raise her in the lab.
Weirdly, the couple begins to function less like scientists and more like normal parents: frustrated because the baby won’t eat, stressed out because it won’t stop crying. However, unlike most parents, their baby has a stinging whip tail, and they are forced to relegate their progeny to the laboratory’s basement to keep her existence a secret.
Elsa (Sarah Polley) in Splice
Elsa (Sarah Polley) in Splice
Elsa becomes more and more emotionally attached to the creature, and eventually names her Dren. Clive is worried about their secret being revealed and disturbed by Elsa’s displays of maternal affection. Nevertheless, he resigns himself to raising her, and Dren grows to be a young adult in a matter of months.
One night, Clive and Elsa realize they haven’t boned down lately. Clive doesn’t have any condoms, but Elsa says, “What’s the worst that could happen?” – suggesting that she’s decided she wouldn’t mind gestating a child, maybe? – and they have at. This is the first of three sex scenes in Splice.
Cinematically, their lovemaking is depicted as underwhelming. Neither Elsa nor Clive take off any clothing. Creepily, Dren watches.
Meanwhile, pressure is building at the pharmaceutical company.
Their presentation at the shareholders’ meeting goes disastrously wrong. Unbeknownst to Clive and Elsa, their specimen Ginger has changed into a male, and Ginger and Fred tear each other apart and splash guts and blood all over the audience. Not good PR.
In deep shit with the company, Clive and Elsa are forced to relocate Dren to Elsa’s deceased mother’s farm.
Here we learn the backstory of Elsa’s childhood; themes of feminism, motherhood, and family history come into play.
We learn that Elsa’s mother forbade Barbies and makeup. Elsa explains that “She said makeup debased women.” The word “feminist” is never used in Splice, but Elsa’s mother’s Barbie-banning and makeup-denying seem emblematic of a certain type of feminist parenting.
We also learn that Elsa’s mother raised her in substandard living conditions, relegating her to a ramshackle, barely furnished bedroom.
Initially I viewed this as a problematic conflation of being a feminist with being a neglectful person and bad mother. But it’s far more complicated than that.
Elsa expresses her love for Dren by giving her the very things her mother denied her.
Dren (Delphine Chanéac) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) in Splice
Dren (Delphine Chanéac) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) in Splice
But the Barbie and the makeover don’t make Dren happy; in fact, the Barbie explicitly makes Dren sad. Looking into a mirror, she holds the doll’s long blonde tresses against her bald head and becomes upset.
Over the course of the film, Elsa locks Dren up in a lab, then a basement, and eventually her mother’s barn, and Dren resents her for it. Elsa seems unable to break the cycle of her own mother’s physical and emotional neglect.
Perhaps the idea is that makeup is not a substitute for ideal living quarters and engaged parenting. What matters isn’t whether or not you give your daughter a Barbie, but whether or not you lock her in a barn.
And it turns out, Dren really is Elsa’s genetic daughter. To his chagrin, Clive discovers Elsa used her own DNA to create Dren: “Why the fuck did you want to make her in the first place? Huh? For the betterment of mankind? You never wanted a normal child because you were afraid of losing control. But an experiment…”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, but it seems clear that Elsa is using science as a way to disassociate herself from motherhood while still being able to create and raise a child. Presumably we’re to understand that Elsa’s desire for complete control stems from her tragic upbringing: “Look at your family history,” Clive exhorts.
Elsa tries to convey her genetic connection to Dren by explaining to her: “You’re a part of me, and I’m a part of you. I’m inside you.” She strives to smooth over their mother-daughter animosity, but the two wind up in a physical altercation that results in Elsa knocking Dren unconscious, tying her up, stripping her naked, and removing her tail and stinger. This scene has undertones of both castration and rape. Elsa has become a monstrous mother scientist.
Clive is horrified by Elsa’s actions, but she informs him that she is going to use Dren’s amputated stinger to finally synthesize the protein and heads to the lab, where she succeeds.
Elsa (Sarah Polley) in Splice
Elsa (Sarah Polley) in Splice 
She tells off her obnoxious supervisor: “When some real scientists get here, come take a look.”
While Elsa’s away, Dren seduces Clive. If Elsa’s sin is her obsessive need to control, Clive’s sin is his inclination to relinquish control.
This is the film’s second sex scene. Cinematically it is sensual, queer in a fantasy-mythical-creature sort of way, strange but beautiful. Ominously, Dren grows back her tail stinger. Then Clive notices Elsa has come back and is watching them. She storms out and he chases her. Back at their apartment, Clive and Elsa decide that they finally have to kill Dren.
But when they return to the barn, it turns out Dren is already dying. After she dies, Clive’s brother (who also works in the lab) and their supervisor show up. He announces he knows their secret and demands to see the human-spliced creature. Elsa informs him that Dren is dead, throws a shovel at him and says, “See for yourself.”
Except Dren is no longer buried behind the barn. Like Ginger, she has morphed into a male, and in the film’s climax, he kills everybody but Elsa.
Dren as male in Splice
Dren as male in Splice
A note on the gender transition: I am uncomfortable with the representation of Dren’s metamorphosis from female to male. It is predicated on the idea that transitioning from a female body to a male body is horrific, and it exploits trans individuals by sensationalizing the transitioning body as evil and freakish. It’s not trans positive. I understand that Splice’s story necessitates this metamorphosis and that Dren isn’t exactly a human, but let’s call out problematic shit when we see it.
Chasing women through the woods at night is a staple of slasher flicks, but this movie isn’t about slashing – it’s about splicing. Dren chases Elsa through the woods, but instead of slaughtering Elsa, Dren rapes her.
This is Splice‘s third sex scene. Cinematically it is gut-wrenchingly horrifying, as any rape depicted onscreen needs to be in order to convey the awfulness that is sexual violation. Dren’s rape of Elsa is as disgusting and awful as Dren’s sex with Clive is beautiful and sensual.
When Elsa screams, “What do you want?” Dren replies: “Inside…of…you.”
Clive stabs Dren with a branch (wielding the metaphorical phallus) as Dren orgasms, but Dren is not killed, and attacks Clive. Elsa pulls her pants back on and bashes Dren in the head with a big rock. This critically injures Dren, who takes a moment to survey the situation – then stabs Clive with his tail. Elsa bashes Dren in the head again, killing Dren once and for all.
Elsa is the character who cut off Dren’s stinger and the one who deals Dren the death blow. And yet in his final moments, Dren chooses to kill Clive. Why?
Because inside of Elsa is a womb, the growing space for a new creature. And sure enough, in the film’s resolution we discover that Elsa is pregnant. Of the three sexual encounters that take place in this movie, the reproductively viable encounter is the rape. Elsa lives to be the final girl not because she wields a chainsaw, but because she wields womb. (And a big rock.)
Unlike Veronica of The Fly (“I want an abortion!”) or, more recently, Elizabeth of Prometheus (“Get it out of me!”), Elsa decides to gestate her monster progeny to term.
I appreciate both The Fly and Prometheus because each asks its audience to empathize with a woman who desperately needs an abortion. I also appreciate Splice for asking its viewers to honor Elsa’s decision not to abort. Joan makes it clear that Elsa has a choice: “Nobody would blame you if you didn’t do this. You could just put an end to it and walk away.” (Would that this were the standard response to women experiencing unwanted pregnancies!)
But Elsa does not to put an end to it. Why does she decide to bring it to term?
Sure, the company’s giving her a shitload of money for gestating Dren’s offspring. But throughout the film, Elsa has insisted on moving forward with human splicing experiments. Perhaps she sees this as a necessary extension of that research.
Or maybe this is another chance for Elsa to use science to mediate motherhood. Is the pregnancy Elsa’s punishment, or her redemption? We’ll never know. All she says is, “What’s the worst that could happen?”
The film closes with a shot of the two women, the film’s only surviving characters, looking out a window.
Splice

Mychael Blinde is not a scientist, but she is afraid to give birth. She is interested in representations of gender in popular culture and blogs at Vagina Dentwata.

‘Ex Machina’: Scavenging for Parts in a Patriarchal World

For Ava is not naïve; she is about to enter a world of patriarchal capitalism, and in order to survive, she must take from other women, not give. The moment for collectivism is lost as Ava chooses to free herself as a whole woman, gorgeous and nubile.

 

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Two men hanging in the ultimate man cave, drinking beers, talking about how “fucking amazing” the woman in question really is.  One lifts weights, pounds liquor, and then detoxes for a few days.  The other is invited to be the buddy, the wing man on a journey to encounter women. While watching Ex Machina, I couldn’t help feeling like I was watching a buddy pic like The Hangover–just some bros hanging in their crib, considering women. A few days into the week, a hot Asian woman appears out of nowhere, fulfilling their desires for food and–for Nathan–sex. Kyoko is the perfect woman: she doesn’t speak; she just serves.

Man cave
Man cave

 

But when Nathan and Caleb are discussing the woman of greater interest, Ava, they use coding jargon to analyze her language capabilities.  It is not that they are interested in her for her brain; they are interested in her for her “brain,” if her artificial intelligence can pass the Turing Test and convince the men that she is a woman.

Ava looks like a girl child, a nymph. Viewers first see her silhouette, her breasts and ass covered with metal sheeting; otherwise, we can see right through her into her circuits.  We watch her through the same glass through which Caleb will watch her.  She is encapsulated in the fortress Nathan has made for her, a glass fortress that boasts cracks from unexplained incidents.

A Session
A Session

 

When Caleb, invited to visit the research facility as the winner of a (SPOILER–and this will be your last warning) constructed contest, first meets Ava, he is in awe of her language capabilities, the first baseline he uses to determine her viability as a “human.”  She tells him, “I always knew how to speak,” then asking if that is odd.  They have a heady-ish discussion of linguistics before he has to leave the session.

Caleb soon discovers that the only channel on his TV is the “spy on Ava” channel.  At first he is disgusted, but it doesn’t take long for him to have it on while he is dressing.  Ava–sweet, constructed, feeling–does not know she is being watched.  Nathan takes Caleb on a tour of his workshop where he creates only female models.  They spend most of the conversation marveling at her “brain,” the constructed machinery that gives her thought and feeling.

The "Brain"
The “Brain”

 

However, the week progresses, and quickly the talk turns away from her intelligence to whether or not she is fuckable after Ava asks Caleb if he is attracted to her.  Caleb and Nathan sit next to each other to discuss her gender and sexuality, terms that they incorrectly elide.  For men so interested in constructs, one would think they would get these two straight.  From this point on, the film focuses on her body and its uses.  In his brusque way, Nathan pronounces, “You bet she can fuck,” answering the question Caleb has been pondering but won’t ask.  Nathan continues: “I programmed her to be heterosexual.”  He tells Caleb that she has an “opening” with “sensors” that allows her to feel physical pleasure.  He does not use the word vagina, eschewing her humanity–or questioned humanity–making it all about the hole that they can penetrate.

Meanwhile, Ava is using her body to create power surges that allow her to speak freely with Caleb about her desire to see the outside world. She would spend time on a street corner watching the humans interact with each other. Caleb is taken with becoming her hero. To him she is the damsel in distress; to Nathan she is the daughter. The former chivalrous, the latter paternalistic: both are complicit in her creation and entrapment.  Caleb’s determination of her viability will do nothing to save Ava from Nathan’s desire to reboot and update her model.

And for this, they both must die.

Whispering the Plan
Whispering the Plan

 

Staring Down The Creator...And Enemy
Staring Down The Creator…And Enemy

 

Through a derring-do of masculinity, the men end up working against each other and orchestrating each other’s death, both at the hands of Ava and Kyoko, part of an A.I. army of sexy female models enclosed in Nathan’s room.  Ava benefits from Kyoko’s quickness with her chef’s knife, deftly stabbed into Nathan’s back.

attack

 

Ava benefits from Nathan’s diabolical need for privacy in his subterranean lair with computer-operated, hermetically sealed doors.  Ava has no pity for her knight in shining armor now screaming in panic to be left to die.  Those that have constructed her and desired her have been used–she is ready to go out into the world they have denied her.  Caleb is not an innocent; he wants to save her so he can have her for himself.  He wants her as a partner and lover; he is not simply interested in freeing her for the good of her humanity.

Ava then goes to the other “women.”  I thought she would free them all in an act of feminist collectivity, a liberating moment for the women that have been enslaved in sexual service to Nathan in his lair where no other humans visit. He has surrounded himself with “yes”-women, all thin, gorgeous, naked in storage waiting for his needs to call them out.

breasts gif

 

 arm gif

 

But she doesn’t free them. Instead, she acts as a scavenger, taking parts from each woman to create herself. An arm from one, hair from a second, a pristine white dress from a third. For Ava is not naïve; she is about to enter a world of patriarchal capitalism, and in order to survive, she must take from other women, not give. The moment for collectivism is lost as Ava chooses to free herself as a whole woman, gorgeous and nubile. She leaves the other women behind, broken and lifeless in their pens. Her artificial intelligence has given her enough knowledge to understand that the world she is entering requires a denial of others’ needs; in that understanding, she is a perfect subject in the capitalist system, and her lack of humanity helps her disavow the compassion that gets in the way of such systems. Ava greets the helicopter meant to airlift Caleb back to his life; she wears stilettos and carries a purse, about to greet the world she has wished to enter, a trace of destroyed souls and “souls” left in the wake of her desire to survive.

 

‘Ex Machina’s Failure to Be Radical: Or How Ava Is the Anti-thesis of a Feminist Cyborg

Caleb has won a trip to spend time at Nathan’s research-lab/home. While there, Caleb is given the task of giving Ava (the lead robot) a Turing Test to determine if she can “pass” as human. During his stay, Caleb learns of another female robot, Kyoko, who is basically a sex slave for Nathan. Yes, that is right, the males are human, the females are (fuck) machines.

ex_machina_2015_movie-wide-750x400


This guest post by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at Skirt Collective and is cross-posted with permission.


I am going to admit: Ex Machina profoundly disturbed me – so much so that at one point I had to leave the theatre and catch my breath. It is very rare for me to walk out of a film. Rarer still for me to walk out not because the film is horrible, but because it is so disturbing that it makes me physically nauseaous and emotionally weary.

The film, with only four characters, poses key questions about artificial intelligence, gender, and sexuality – yet, as noted in the Guardian review, “the guys keep their clothes on and the ‘women’ don’t.”  The “guys” of the film are human – Nathan, an egotistical scientist with a god complex (hence the film’s title) and Caleb, a computer programmer who works for Nathan’s Internet search company.

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Caleb has won a trip to spend time at Nathan’s research-lab/home. While there, Caleb is given the task of giving Ava (the lead robot) a Turing Test to determine if she can “pass” as human. During his stay, Caleb learns of another female robot, Kyoko, who is basically a sex slave for Nathan. Yes, that is right, the males are human, the females are (fuck) machines.

Before seeing Ex Machina, I had high hopes it would be a movie that actually addressed sexism and females as sexualized in profoundly misogynistic ways, especially as the writer and director, Alex Garland, gave various interviews that made it sound as if the film was going to critique such matters. His claim that “Embodiment – having a body – seems to be imperative to consciousness, and we don’t have an example of something that has a consciousness that doesn’t also have a sexual component,” made me envision a film that would suggest alternative, more feminist models of sexuality – perhaps ones not based on power, jealousy, ownership, and control, but ones based on mutual pleasure, desire, and consent.

“…wouldn’t it be so much easier for the real humans (meaning male humans) if their lowly female counterparts could just be sexy in all the ways they desire, obedient, and easily modified, then upgraded or tossed away without fuss when they no longer ‘work.’”

Garland’s claim that “If you’re going to use a heterosexual male to test this consciousness, you would test it with something it could relate to. We have fetishised young women as objects of seduction, so in that respect, Ava is the ideal missile to fire” also gave me hope, given Garland specifically notes woman are fetishized and objectified. Alas, I should have instead latched onto his other suggestion – that Ava is no more than a “missile” that will be used to fire up human male sexuality.

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Admittedly, the film does explore sexuality and gender in intriguing ways, but fails to explicitly condemn how the sex/gender paradigm is used as a tool of domination in profoundly deleterious ways. Instead, the film delivers the same message so many movies with female robots/replicants have – namely: wouldn’t it be so much easier for the real humans (meaning male humans) if their lowly female counterparts could just be sexy in all the ways they desire, obedient, and easily modified, then upgraded or tossed away without fuss when they no longer “work.”

Alicia Vikander is excellent in the role of Ava, and I don’t wish my repulsion towards the film to reflect badly on what an obviously talented actor she is. In fact, everyone ACTED the heck out of their roles. The film also had an amazing mis-en-scene, immersing viewers in Nathan’s technological man-cave replete with techno-gadgetry, minimalist design, and, yup, a closet full of female body parts, presumably “out of date” sex slave robots. Nathan’s hangout also has the handy ability to SEE everything, making it rival Hitchock’s vision of the predatory male gaze enacted in Rear Window.

Nathan (Oscar Isaac), as the lead scientist, is your garden variety, bearded intellectual. He is an alcoholic, mega-maniacal ego, with dark skin and hair, subtly cluing the audience to the fact he is a “bad guy” (yes, the film has problematic racial depictions too – not only is the “dark dude” the bad one, Kyoko, the sex slave, is Asian, while Ava is coded as normatively porn-star white).

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Caleb, as the nubile male ingénue (with the requisite blonde hair and blue eyes), is a bit too innocent, too ready to fall in love with Ava, too reluctant to quell his male gaze.

On this note, did Ava’s body HAVE to be so sexualized and so transparent, forcing us to gaze inside of her along with Caleb, as if her body has no boundary? Or perhaps this is just the point – we can finally see INSIDE a woman’s body, and she is not that musty, smelly, hairy thing of so many nightmares (Freud’s included), not the vagina dentata or a giver/taker of life – no, she is built like a car of all things – and under her roof her parts sing and hum like a well oiled engine.

“Nathan has PROGRAMMED gender into her system, much the way our culture programs us each day to live within a world defined by a binary gender system.”

As the film continues, it forces the audience to be complicit in the covetous gazing Nathan and Caleb enact, a gaze that is linked to Ava’s sexualization. Indeed, Ava has been built to match Caleb’s porn preferences by Nathan, which prompts Caleb to ask, “why did you give her sexuality?” and “Did you program her to flirt with me?”

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The suggestion is ultimately that Nathan gave her sexuality simply because he wanted to and he could (as a “male god/creator”). Garland’s remarks on the subject are telling: “If you have created a consciousness, you would want it to have the capacity for pleasurable relationships, so it doesn’t seem unreasonable that a machine have a sexual component. We wouldn’t demand it be removed from a human, so why a machine?” But, what Nathan/Garland don’t own up to is that they are the CREATORS – they are not REMOVING sexuality from their creations but CONSTRUCTING it in, and doing so in an incredibly heterosexist, misogynist way. (In the film, Nathan notes of Ava “in between her legs is a concentration of sensors”…WTF?)

As noted in a HuffPost review, “Ex Machina is a very smart movie…but it’s not immune to the everyday misogyny of our world.” Arguing that if robots have access to the history of internet searches of all humanity, with “all of its tropes, and all of its prejudices,” it does not make sense that Ava “chooses” to present as female, that when she makes her escape at the end of the film “It’s almost hard to imagine she wouldn’t have grabbed a dick on her way out into the world.” However, I would counter Ava does not have free choice – Nathan has PROGRAMMED gender into her system, much the way our culture programs us each day to live within a world defined by a binary gender system.

“….most films display extreme anxiety around the issue of female empowerment”

Though films about artificial intelligence have the possibility to deconstruct gender/sex norms, most films trade in stereotypes with those featuring female robots according to misogynist memes of women as sex-bots (Blade Runner, Cherry 2000, The Stepford Wives), destructive forces (Eve of Destruction, Lucy, Metropolis), or a combination of the two (Austin Powers). Even Wall-E promotes the idea good robots are male and constructs female robots as useful only in terms of how they can please males and/or be good “seed receptacles” for male (pro)creation (as noted in my review here). To be fair, male robots don’t fair that much better and are also depicted in stereotypically masculine ways (as discussed here).

There are a few exceptions to this stereotypical gendered script, however. For example, Star Wars’ C-3PO was modeled on the female robot from Metropolis, with breasts and hips removed, leading the Guardian reviewer to name him “the first transgender robot.”

Alas, as argued by scholar Sophie Mayer, most films display extreme anxiety around the issue of female empowerment, and as Mayer notes, within their narratives “these empowered women must be punished” so that a happy-patriarchal ending can ensue, or, as she puts it, “The resolution always assures us the status quo is going to be preserved.”

Sigh. When might we see a film that brings Donna Haraway’s notion of the cyborg to life – a feminist hybrid that eschews binaries; a creature that lives in a post-gender world? “This is the self,” as Haraway puts it, “feminists must code.” It is also the self film’s have – as of yet – failed to code. So come on feminist filmmakers, give us a female cyborg we can root for…


Natalie Wilson teaches women’s studies and literature at California State University, San Marcos. She is the author of Seduced by Twilight and blogs for Ms., Girl with Pen and Bitch Flicks.


‘Coherence’ Is the Best Movie You Didn’t See Last Year

‘Coherence’ is a triumph of low-budget filmmaking, a reality show about an extreme acting challenge, a disturbing science fiction take on human nature and identity, a fascinating puzzle box, and a movie with a well-written, well-acted female lead. Bet you wish you’d seen it, now.


Written by Katherine Murray.


Coherence is a triumph of low-budget filmmaking, a reality show about an extreme acting challenge, a disturbing science fiction take on human nature and identity, a fascinating puzzle box, and a movie with a well-written, well-acted female lead. Bet you wish you’d seen it, now.

Emily Foxler stars in Coherence
Emily Foxler as Emily in Coherence

 

It’s awfully hard to talk about Coherence without wrecking all of the surprises in the story – even the central conceit is secret that’s buried until you’re well into the film. Without giving away too much more than the trailer, the story is about a group of friends at a dinner party where really weird shit starts to happen. There’s a comet passing overhead, and – we are told – the last time this comet passed by, people got confused about who they were, and where they were, and what was going on.

During the dinner party, cell phone service goes down, and the power goes out. Two of the characters walk to a house two blocks over, which seems to have power, to ask if they can use a landline phone. When they get back, they’re visibly shaken and don’t want to share what they’ve seen.

From that point forward, everything starts to get weird. People act strangely; they repeat themselves; events seem to happen out of order; the characters discover a box that seems like it shouldn’t exist. As they try to piece together what’s happening, and what they should do to survive, the stress of the situation puts pressure on their relationships, and the darker sides of their personalities come to the surface.

The explanation of what’s happening, when we get it, is internally consistent with everything we’ve seen – and the finale is disturbing, but eerily believable. It’s a movie you have to watch twice – once for the experience of suspense and confusion, and once for the experience of piecing all the clues together, and seeing how carefully plotted each event was. It’s the kind of awesome, well-made film that grabs you right away, makes you want to find out more, and then delivers on its promises in the final act.

Nicholas Brendon, Lorene Scafaria, and Elizabeth Gracen star in Coherence
Nicholas Brendon as a guy who used to be on a TV show

 

Although this isn’t clear at first, the protagonist of Coherence is Emily (played by Emily Foxler), a dancer who regrets the trajectory her career path has taken. Without giving too much away, it’s fair to say that the film follows her from beginning to end, and that she’s the character who’s forced to make a choice in the final moments – about who she wants to be, what she wants to have, and what she’s willing to do to get it.

The second most important character, from a narrative standpoint, is Mike – played by Nicholas Brendon as an exaggerated version of himself (spoilers in the link). Mike is the former star of a cult-hit TV show and doesn’t like who he turns into when he’s drinking. He goes dark as soon as things start to get strange, exhibiting a mix of paranoia and self-hatred, followed by radical, destructive behaviour. Eventually, he starts drinking again, much to the others’ dismay.

By the end of the film, it’s clear that Mike’s story exists to prepare the audience for the choices that Emily’s going to face later on. The dark side of his personality is so close to the surface that it comes spilling out right away, priming us to look for signs of darkness in the other characters. He also states one of the movie’s biggest themes during a small, self-pitying speech, but I can’t tell you, here, what it is.

The reason I bring this all up – in annoyingly cryptic terms – is just to say that, in a lot of ways, Coherence is one of the movies I wished for when I wrote about how big idea movies usually don’t have female leads. This is a story about selfhood and the way we understand ourselves as individuals, in very broad, universal terms, and we’re invited to follow and identify with a woman as the centre of that story.

Also – perhaps because this is a dinner party made up of heterosexual couples – half of the characters in this movie are women. I notice that, in general, the male characters are more action-oriented and push the story forward through doing things, whereas the women tend to push the story forward by talking about and discovering things, but I don’t think that’s necessarily bad. If Emily weren’t the central character, then the way that men seem to make all the really explosive decisions would be more annoying, but, since the story comes back to her in the end, the whole thing feels more balanced.

Emily Foxler and Lauren Maher star in Coherence
The cast as confused, but intrigued

 

The other really cool thing about Coherence, and the reason I recommend watching it, is that, in addition to telling a good, suspenseful, interesting story, this movie is also a reality show about acting. Writer/director James Ward Byrkit, and one of the actors, Alex Manugian, spent a year plotting the story before filming it in Byrkit’s home. Manugian was the only actor who knew the whole plot – the others were given notes every day, explaining background information that their characters would have, talking points that they should try to hit in group discussions, and what their motivations were at present. They then had to improvise their way through each scene, working together to tell a story that only one of them knew, trying to stay in character while it was happening.

Not to sound like I normally overlook acting, but this is the kind of movie that reminds you of what actors actually do, and of the skill, self-control, and self-awareness required to do it.

I’m sure that good editing plays a role in making Coherence look seamless, but there’s still something really exciting about watching eight people (seven, if you don’t count Alex Manugian) dive into an acting experiment and just try to do their jobs. Knowing how the film was made, and then watching it play out on screen, I’m reminded that acting is about collaboration – in every scene, each of these actors has to split their attention between hitting the marks set out before them, and helping the others do the same – in this case, without knowing ahead of time what’s actually going to happen. And while all of that’s going on behind the scenes, inside their heads, they have to make it look like it’s just natural, and like they’re the people they’ve been cast to play.

Coherence, for me, involves that sense of pleasure that comes from watching people who are good at something do that thing well. It also makes me wonder what other cool things actors could do, if there were more experiments like this.

When you put it all together, you’ve got an interesting, suspenseful, tightly-plotted movie about identity, starring a female protagonist, full of good acting and editing. There is absolutely no reason you would not want to watch this, so go watch it now.

 


Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.

 

On Jonathan Glazer’s ‘Under The Skin’

It’s only until Laura begins to question herself and her place in the world when she observes the women around her in the next scene. She’s in her van and as she listens to the report of the missing couple and child she witnessed drowning, a scene of just women, conversing, talking, and walking begins. For a bit, it’s like the montage of her looking for her male victims, with the foreboding background music to match. Later on this same sort of montage occurs, but instead of the scary soundtrack, we hear the hustle and bustle of the street as our eyes scan the women on the screen.

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This guest post by Jacqueline Valencia previously appeared at These Girls on Film and is cross-posted with permission.

Contains spoilers.

The mulling over of Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin is an entirely different beast than the actual watching of the film. In fact, I started writing this sentence a few months after writing the one before it. I had to re-watch it and digest it, read the original book by Michael Faber, and then re-watch it again. I have to backtrack a bit though (and please forgive the ramble or pleonasm, it always ends up somewhere…at least I hope it does for the reader). Since the film is very loosely based on the book, I won’t use the names of the characters from it, instead I will refer to Scarlett Johansson’s character as the alien, Laura, and Jeremy McWilliams as The Biker.

I’ve just finished reading Joanna Russ’s The Female Man. When the book first came out, it left a major impression on feminists and the science fiction community. The novel is set in various times and numerous dimensions within the varying perspectives of all the women that inhabit those worlds. Each character has her chance at inquiring and defining what it means to be a person living as a female. The book isn’t connected to Under The Skin, but it did open up some inner discourse about how gender identity is part of the film’s unsettling nature, thus making it a big part of this film.

In Under The Skin, we first witness a series of enigmatic shapes and sounds, some of them analogue or the voice of someone figuring out a language, and a flash of what seems like a space ship hurtling through the blackness. The images dissolve into The Biker riding a long stretch of road. The lights of  a city are reflected on his helmet (reminiscent of the psychedelic light show in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001). He then goes into a ravine and grabs the body of dead woman and places her in an unmarked van. In the next scene we see Laura, naked, taking off the dead woman’s clothes to put them on herself. This dead woman could possibly be another alien that Laura is replacing. The Biker’s job is to observe and keep tabs on Laura and since The Biker knew where to find this dead woman, it’s more than likely he was following her all along. The dead women also has the same body shape as Laura and looks like her.

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Laura looks at the dead woman’s body, water from the river The Biker recovered her from, is released from her dead eyes, like tears onto the sides of her face. She picks up an ant from the dead woman’s body and watches it crawl over her fingers as she examines it. I think of formication here, the sensation of having insects crawling under your skin. The aliens here inhabit a foreign skin like a human suit to capture their prey. Laura will undergo a psychological transformation while in the suit and since we are unaware of her emotions or motivations, we witness her visibly struggling with the world that this human suit is made to navigate. Although she is a predator, she is like the ant, a tiny being away from its colony, defenseless in a foreign world.

Glazer displays a combination of completely silent moments with scenes plucked out of reality through the use of hidden cameras and non-actors. As Laura goes shopping for new clothes at the mall and The Biker goes about riding through the Scottish countryside, neither of them utters a word. It’s only when Laura goes about searching for and grooming her possible prey, that she speaks. She selects her prey (always male) by asking them if they are connected in any way to anyone or anything. If they are, she lets them go, if they aren’t, she seduces them by asking them back to her place.

Her place is an old building with decaying walls which is dank and dark. The men follow her in and out into a black room with a slick black floor. Laura walks provocatively away, coaxing them without letting the men touch her. Walking forward the men keep their eyes fixed on Laura even though the black floor soon becomes a liquid and they are swallowed up into it. Laura retraces her steps, picking up her clothes and the floor is still solid under her feet. The victim will look above to see her walking away, yet he seems unable to struggle or swim back to the surface. At one point, one of the victims observes another man’s innards sucked out, just before he goes through the same fate, only his outer later of skin left, floating in the jetsam. The meat of the victims then travels onto a conveyor belt of fleshy innards to a light source in the distance.

In the book, Laura the Alien is named Isserly, an extraterrestrial who is genetically modified by a corporation on her home planet to look human. Isserley “hunts” heavy set human males so her employer can harvest their meat. Human meat is a delicacy in her world. In the film, no mention is made about her job or who she is doing this for, just that this is what she does and what she is made to do. Her nature is subtly implied in two scenes. First, we see The Biker obdurately inspect her; an ominous beat plays in the background. Laura stands at attention while he examines her, carefully looking at her profile, then up close into her eyes in an intimidating stance. Her eyes are blank and looking off into the distance. In another scene, she brings home a disfigured man. He’s the only one she’s made herself completely naked for and as he descends into the black pool, an alien stares back at her from across the way. Is she looking at her real self or is she looking at a superior? It is unclear, but it is known that she is continually being watched to make sure she doesn’t deviate from her function: to capture men to bring into the black pool.

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Laura doesn’t seem to question anything about herself for awhile, even when she witnesses a couple drowning and leaves their child alone to die with the tide coming in. There’s no empathy for her prey. She is given a rose by a stranger through a rose salesman. She notices blood on it and for a moment her expressions are of confusion. Does she believe the blood is hers? How can it be, if she isn’t human? Her breathing is laboured and she seems out of breath in the van. Then she looks around and sees that the salesman has cut himself with the rose thorns. Laura looks almost sad and disappointed.Was she beginning to think she was human after all?

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It’s only until Laura begins to question herself and her place in the world when she observes the women around her in the next scene. She’s in her van and as she listens to the report of the missing couple and child she witnessed drowning, a scene of just women, conversing, talking, and walking begins. For a bit, it’s like the montage of her looking for her male victims, with the foreboding background music to match. Later on this same sort of montage occurs, but instead of the scary soundtrack, we hear the hustle and bustle of the street as our eyes scan the women on the screen. There are men in the montage, but overall there are mostly women. There’s a quick flash of Laura’s eye and instead of blackness, we see her pupil and the green-gold iris around it. A calming drone plays on as we watch women laughing and interacting with each other. Their images coalesce into collage of gold lights, much like the intricate gold in Gustav Klimt paintings. Laura’s face dissolves and eventually comes back to the surface among the golden images.

Scarlett Johansson Under the Skin

 

She is back on the hunt right after, but something feels a bit different. A roaring sound is heard as she waits in her van. A man knocks on her window and suddenly her van is surround by men trying to get in. She is indifferent at first until she realizes she might be in danger and drives off. The predator has all of sudden become possible prey.

After she has put the disfigured man in the pool, she catches her reflection in a small mirror on the way out of the building. She looks at herself closely. She turns to hear a fly buzzing to be let out by the door. The light from outside is reflected in her eyes as is the fly’s movements. This creates the effect of a galaxy in her eyes. From then on, her eyes go from blank and dark to shiny and much more prominent in her display of emotions.

These are all signs of her questioning her existence. Obviously, by the end of the film we are shown that her Johansson exterior is merely a suit to the similarly looking alien we see earlier in the film. Something compels her to explore herself as human and a woman on earth. Laura tries a piece of chocolate cake at a restaurant and chokes on it, frustrated that she cannot eat like humans do. She walks out and is taken in by the kindness of a stranger. In his home, she stands in the corner, like a helpless creature until he leaves her on her own. In a room by herself, she takes off her clothes and looks at her body: the movement of her joints, the curve of her back, are all a sort of scientific delight for her. Scarlett Johansson, besides being an incredibly talented actress is also known for her voluptuous and almost perfect beauty. Yet there’s nothing sexual about this scene. Here lies before our eyes a gorgeous woman, but the scene elicits more questions than physical reactions. It’s like when you’re a kid and realize, by some sort of infantile enlightenment, that you can move your hands just by thinking about it. The scene with its red porn lighting becomes absurd and odd in its rendering.

She tries to have sex with the kind stranger and something isn’t right there either. Laura stops him and looks between her legs with a flashlight. Upset, she leaves the house and treks into the woods. There she loses herself to the extreme wilderness of the area only to be found by a logger who eventually tries to rape her. As she tries to escape the ranger ends up tearing her clothes and eventually her human suit comes apart. This frightens the logger. Laura takes part of the suit into her hands and looks into the blinking eyes of her suit. The logger returns, pours gasoline on her, and sets her on fire. Laura runs off and surrenders to her fate as her ashes mix with the snow. In the book, the ending is similar, but she is in full control of her death because she sets off an explosion to eliminate any trace of herself.

The scariest part of this scene isn’t the final unmasking of her true alien form. The scariest part of this scene is the logger coming back so easily with gasoline and setting fire to her. Is this first thing that comes to people’s brains when confronted with the unknown? Or does this logger have a can of gasoline and a match ready to set his rape victims on fire? It came to mind because as I was watching this with my friend, they asked, “Who does that? Wouldn’t they call someone on the truck radio or a cell phone? Call the police?”

Another thing that’s quite odd and unsettling is that in both scenes where Laura finds herself in danger (her van being attacked, her attempted rape and eventual murder), we’ve gone from being frightened of her to being afraid for her. The audience is left empathizing with something that is responsible for the deaths of many people. Glazer accomplishes this feat by giving us a film where the main focus is the predator’s/Laura’s point of view. Without an inner dialogue the audience is forced to inhabit and decipher her movements and expressions. The hidden cameras utilized to film most of the movie and its spontaneous dialogues, adds to that foreign feel, especially with the thick Scottish accents of the town’s inhabitants. Laura is the only one we can readily hear and make sense out of, yet she’s an alien we know almost nothing about.

This brings me back to Joanna Russ’s The Female Man. All of the woman in the book, inhabit different worlds that they cannot make sense of, they are aliens in each others worlds as well, but they find meaning and motivations out of their struggle to identify away from men. Not only that, but the author herself has admitted that all the females within the book are facets of herself, at times, even she interjects as the narrator. There is much complex navigation required for the reader in the book, but there are clues throughout making the book more like an identity game, than a passive read. At one point, the characters all find each other in Whileaway, a world where men have died off from a plague eight hundred years ago. Women procreate using technologies and create a utopian world. As Joanna, Jeannine, Janet, and all the various Js interact on Whileaway, Vittoria, Janet’s wife tells the story about a girl raised by bears. The girl grows to find her difference to much and goes to live with the humans, but finds that unsatisfying as well. Through riddles and tribulations the girl continually struggles to find her place.

“Wait a minute,” said I. “This story doesn’t have an end. It just goes on and on….”

“I tell things,” said by dignified little friend (through Vittoria) “the way they happen,” and slipping her head under the induction helmet without further comment (and her hands into the waldoes) she went back to stirring her blanc-mange with her forefinger. She said something casually over her shoulder to Vittoria, who translated:

“Anyone who lives in two worlds, ” (said Vittoria) “is bound to have a complicated life.”

(I learned later that she had spent three days making up the story. It was, of course, about me). –  Russ, Joanna. The Female Man. Boston: Beacon, 1986. pg 99. Print.

The power Laura’s character finds to move away from her passive relationship with her employer is through her identification as a woman among men on earth. That power is in the male gaze and much has been written about it since the film came out in 2013:

Laura doesn’t have a man touch her or see her nude (except for the disfigured man). She merely lures them into the pool with her body, and the expectation from her sexuality. Reduced to her body as a passive weapon, she is also empowered by it. She doesn’t hunt women and she doesn’t interact with them, but she is one of them. It’s a very confusing process for her because she has been programmed to interact with only the male gender. Even when she exhibits wonder and emotions through observing other women does she look to interact with females, instead she goes off on her own and escapes the city, only to be at the mercy of her helpless female exterior. Surely she does run and she does hit back when she is being attacked. But she is shocked, demoralized, and it’s the first time that she finds herself fearing for her own life.

I am intrigued with the fact that The Biker is a male as well and the fact that towards the end, we see him with other bikers like himself. They search for her along the winding, treacherous roads of Scotland. In the end, The Biker is seen looking off into the snowy wilderness, probably aware that he’s completely lost Laura already to the elements. Are there more aliens like Laura out there since there are more Bikers, or were there just sent there to find her?

This film leaves more questions than it answers which has led to much speculations by critics if the movie is merely trying to be too art house by leaving everything up to interpretation or if it’s at its core and intelligently filmed and well-timed work? In its defence, I posit the analysis above and the divisive reviews that the film has garnered. It’s a slow moving narrative with blank spots filled in with thought and wonder. Today’s filmmaking world is out to feed the all encompassing instant gratification machine. However, not every book film or film will touch every audience member. Cinema, no matter if its blockbusting or if its high-brow, thrives on inhabiting difference and expressing it progressively, not stagnantly. There’s hope in films that question how to tell a tale, how to film a film, what makes up a film, and what is an artist’s intention. If anything films like Under The Skin, question the now and how through its premise. It definitely got me thinking more about how disenfranchised and alien-like woman can be in different portrayals of themselves as women.

The alien Laura is, confounds audiences, it makes them question why we have not had female characters like her before. She is a lonely woman in a lonely man film world. While her existence might astonish some, for some women, we find ourselves in her. Who am I, if not a woman who fulfils certain duties within her highly regulated domain? While laws, without question, are continually placed on how I use and make my body up, very rarely do we find ourselves combatting laws that place these same restricting laws on men’s bodies. Woman find themselves often as the meat on the conveyer belt, a delicacy to society’s standards, but here we are, alien in a world that negates that we are very much human. See? The thought or overthought is amazing when trying to decipher this film and in that I can see more than what lies beyond what is presented on the screen.

Much like the scene in Taxi Driver where a dyspeptic Travis Bickell walks through the wet streets of NYC, alienated from the city he must work on, there’s a gorgeous scene that sticks with me in Under The Skin. It’s this one:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrMP3yfF-Yw”]

Laura looks around herself and finds herself alone in a strange land. Her sight is obscured by the white fog that surrounds her. It’s an eerily calming scene. The film itself hints at dangers at every corner or a darkness that follows Laura, yet in this scene, she is still isolated, but on the verge of something entirely new to her. The possibilities beyond that moment are endless. She is human and can be anything and anyone.

 


Jacqueline Valencia is a Toronto-based poet and critic. She the author of The Octopus Complex  (Lyrical Myrical Press, 2013) and featured in the 2015 anthology Gods Memes And Monsters (Stone Skin Press). Jacqueline is  the senior staff film critic at Next Projection and the founding editor of These Girls On Film.

‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I’ and What Makes Katniss Everdeen a Compelling Heroine

While watching ‘Mockingjay Part I,’ I had an epiphany. I asked myself why Katniss Everdeen is such a compelling heroine to audiences and why other heroines modeled after her are popping up all over the place? There’s no denying that audiences (especially young women) are hungry for strong female representation on screen. We love to see Katniss use her wits and her bow to save the day, but in ‘Mockingjay Part I,’ there is very little action (Katniss uses her bow only once), and Jennifer Lawrence’s performance is still riveting. Why, do you think, that is?

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.

Mild Spoilers Ahead

First off, let’s get the unpleasant part out of the way. Serious fans of The Hunger Games series will likely hate me, but we’ve all got to face the truth. The third installment in the series, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I should not have been made. Splitting movies into two parts is an ever-growing trend in Hollywood’s never-ending quest for more money. Over the course of the two-hour film, not enough happens to warrant its existence. There is little moving the plot forward, and the ending itself is anticlimactic as our heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) isn’t even involved in the ultimately uneventful final showdown mission to rescue the captive tributes. The vital events that do happen in Part I could have easily been condensed into the first 20 minutes of the finale of a legitimate trilogy.

Katniss in her one action scene in Mockingjay Part I

 

With that out of the way, let’s talk about what does work in Mockingjay Part I. There are a lot of women involved in the film itself, from the writer of the novels, Suzanne Collins, who adapted her books for the screen, to Nina Jacobson, the producer of the entire series, to our tenacious heroine Katniss, played by the increasingly popular, amazing performer and feminist Jennifer Lawrence.

The ever talented Julianne Moore as President Coin

 

I particularly liked that Mockingjay Part I also sets up the opposition between patriarchy and matriarchy with the introduction of Julianne Moore as President Coin of District 13. Under the patriarchal tyranny of President Snow (Donald Sutherland), the districts of Panem suffer as the people are used for their labor and their districts’ resources while fear and capital punishment are the norm. His Capitol, however, is rich, fashion-obsessed, and completely self-serving. The matriarchal President Coin, on the other hand, represents revolution with a strict focus on democracy and a socialist emphasis on the sharing of resources. District 13 is a militaristic, utilitarian underground compound that eschews fashion in favor of function (as evinced by the monotone uniforms all residents wear). Those of us who have read the books know that a lot will shift before the series concludes, but for now, this embodiment of a nontraditional representation of matriarchy in Coin is refreshing. She is decisive, smart, calm when under attack, and always thinking about the greater good of the people.

Katniss visits a hospital in District 8

While watching Mockingjay Part I, I had an epiphany. I asked myself why Katniss Everdeen is such a compelling heroine to audiences and why other heroines modeled after her are popping up all over the place? There’s no denying that audiences (especially young women) are hungry for strong female representation on screen. We love to see Katniss use her wits and her bow to save the day, but in Mockingjay Part I, there is very little action (Katniss uses her bow only once), and Jennifer Lawrence’s performance is still riveting. Why, do you think, that is?

Katniss stares in horror at President Snow's gift to her

 

Two words for you: emotional range. While there are a plethora of limitations and stereotypes by which female characters are plagued, audiences are getting tired of the limited range of emotion that male heroes are allowed to exhibit due to the strictness of masculinity within our culture. Women are increasingly allowed to showcase a greater range of emotions without it damaging their perception as a strong, good leader.

Katniss is overcome by gut-wrenching grief

 

In Mockingjay Part I, Katniss is suffering from intense PTSD. She has flashbacks, night terrors, uncontrollable bouts of crying, and dissociates from her surroundings. Throughout the film, she is an emotional wreck, as she should be after what she’s gone through, from being hunted and forced to kill for sport, to having her home of District 12 genocided as a result of her actions.

Katniss is overcome by fear in her 2nd participation in The Hunger Games

 

We watch Katniss go through an emotional roller coaster as she experiences shock, horror, terror, guilt, sadness, loss, anger, grief, and devastation. She is overcome with love for her family, Gale, and Peta, and, at her core, we are the most compelled by Katniss’ compassion and her instinctual drive to protect others. Katniss is sometimes wrong and often rash in her actions. In truth, it is her vulnerability displayed on screen like a raw wound from which we cannot look away.

Katniss weeps at the devastation of her home, District 12

 

This is the stuff of heroes. We see her experiences nearly break her time and time again, but she won’t give up. Carrying on is so hard that it nearly destroys her, but her sense of what is right is so strong that she cannot turn her back on her fellow oppressed district dwellers.

Like Katniss is the symbol of revolution as the mockingjay, she’s also the symbol of a movement that values women as nonsexualized leads with rich, complex characterization. We’re increasingly bored with the stoic male hero and instead crave the strength and vulnerability of the growing number of female sci-fi action heroines that are emerging thanks to the success of Katniss Everdeen and The Hunger Games.

Aside: The United States IS the Capitol. The storyline of The Hunger Games is so popular in the US, but we’re missing the point if we don’t confess that we are the oppressive world superpower that tyrannizes the rest of the word, exploiting the labor and resources of others so that most of us can live in relative wealth and comfort. End rant.


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. Her short story “The Woman Who Fell in Love with a Mermaid” was published in Germ Magazine. 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.

The Women of ‘Interstellar’

I very much enjoyed ‘Interstellar’; It depicts a realistic species-threatening crisis with the dwindling success of food cultivation. It has an expansive vision of our future as human beings, and it has super cool science that it manages to make accessible to the layperson. But… (I wish there didn’t always have to be a “but”) the film’s depiction of its female characters was lacking to say the least.

Interstellar movie poster
Interstellar movie poster

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.

Spoiler Alert

Director Christopher Nolan’s latest opus, the dystopian space/time/dimensional travel film Interstellar, is impressive. It’s beautifully shot with stunning visuals (the black hole is amazing). It depicts a realistic species-threatening crisis with the dwindling success of food cultivation. It has an expansive vision of our future as human beings, and it has super cool science that it manages to make accessible to the layperson. Despite a running time of two hours and 40 minutes, I very much enjoyed Interstellar, but… (I wish there didn’t always have to be a “but”) the film’s depiction of its female characters was lacking to say the least.

Interstellar star Matthew McConaughey with the two female leading hanging off him.
Interstellar star Matthew McConaughey with the two female leads hanging off him

 

Interstellar is about Coop (Matthew McConaughey) and his struggle to save the human race and get back to his family. Make no mistake, despite there being two strong, female supporting leads, this movie is all about Coop; his quest, strength, morality, ingenuity, and righteousness. Even at the end of the film when he discovers that everything had always been about his daughter Murph (Jessica Chastain) and her ability to solve the “gravity equation,”  we linger very little on her story or her life as it exists outside of her father.

Murph destroys the last vestiges of corn crops
Murph destroys the last vestiges of corn crops

 

Even the long-awaited father/daughter reunion is rushed and anticlimactic with Murph insisting that she isn’t important and that Coop has better things to do than spend time with her. What the hell? Aside from the payoff being weak from an objective standpoint, this scene reinforces the idea that even the most beloved female characters exist solely to spur on and facilitate the journey of the male hero.

Thankfully, there was no real sexual tension between Coop and Dr. Brand
Thankfully, there was no real sexual tension between Coop and Dr. Brand

 

On the space expedition with Coop is his mentor’s daughter, Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway).  She is a scientist, but I’m not exactly sure what her area of expertise is. She’s in charge of the “Plan B” genetic material, which is sort of a mother role, but she also claims to be the expert on which planet they should choose based on its proximity to the black hole. Regardless, her duties aboard the Endurance are a bit fuzzy.

Dr. Brand cries after her massive fuck-up
Dr. Brand cries after her massive fuck-up

 

Dr. Brand’s most distinguishing characteristic, though, is that she is a fuck-up. In her obsession to retrieve logged data (which proves useless) from one of the potential new homeworld planets, Brand jeopardizes the entire mission, gets a fellow scientist killed, and loses the crew a lot of years. She cries about her mistake while Coop lays into her. I couldn’t help wondering why the sole woman on the expedition had to be the one who supremely fucks over the crew even worse than the male rogue scientist who is actively trying to sabotage them?

Proximity to the black hole causes time to move differently on-world (one hour is seven years).
Proximity to the black hole causes time to move differently on-world (one hour is seven years)

 

Brand also makes the case that the final planet the crew should investigate is the one on which her lover awaits them in cryo-sleep. Her scientific reasoning that the planet being far enough away from the black hole that it would be unaffected by its gravitational pull is sound. However, she then launches into an impassioned, weepy speech about love and how love drew her across the universe. In the theater, I almost puked all over myself. Though the film then adopts the concept of love being the only force that can traverse all dimensions, it’s hokey and annoying that the only female scientist on the mission must be the one to deliver that saccharine sweet, touchy-feely message, especially since it runs counter to her reserved and logical character.

The ship spots the black hole on the horizon
The ship spots the black hole on the horizon

 

I’m not saying that women can’t be sensitive or fuck-ups or supporting characters, but it gets tiresome when this is frequently the case in films. It’s getting old hat to constantly see female characters on screen who lack dimension, exist solely to further the plot, or whose ability to do their jobs is questionable. At least Interstellar didn’t grossly sexualize the women of the film? Interstellar is a good, solid film that entertained my brain (which seems like a rarity these days), but it fails to be a great film due to its inability to create a female character worth watching in any of the 200 minutes of its run-time.


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. Her short story “The Woman Who Fell in Love with a Mermaid” was published in Germ Magazine. 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.

Lack of Diversity in Hollywood Blockbusters is “Staggering”

Examining the top 100 domestic grossing sci-fi and fantasy movies as reported by Box Office Mojo, the study finds that only 14 percent of the movies feature a female protagonist and only 8 percent feature a protagonist of color.

This is a guest post from LEE & LOW BOOKS.

As moviegoers flock to theaters this weekend to see Lucy and Guardians of the Galaxy, a new study released by children’s book publisher LEE & LOW BOOKS illuminates the dramatic lack of diversity in top-grossing Hollywood blockbusters in the science fiction and fantasy genres. Examining the top 100 domestic grossing sci-fi and fantasy movies as reported by Box Office Mojo, the study finds that only 14 percent of the movies feature a female protagonist and only 8 percent feature a protagonist of color.

 

Click for larger image.
Click for larger image.

The study also finds that no movies on the list feature a woman of color as the protagonist; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender protagonists are likewise absent. Only one movie (Avatar) features a protagonist with a disability. Perhaps most surprising, the study reports that only two actors of color have appeared in lead roles: Will Smith, who plays six out of the eight protagonists of color, and Keanu Reeves (The Matrix Reloaded). The last protagonist of color is Aladdin, a cartoon character voiced by a white actor.

“The statistics are certainly striking, especially since sci-fi and fantasy belong to a genre that prides itself on creativity and imagination,” says Marissa Lee, co-founder of the international grassroots organization Racebending.com, which is dedicated to furthering equal opportunities in Hollywood and beyond. “Hollywood has managed to market some weird stuff, like a tentpole movie about talking teenage turtle martial artists, or cars that change into space robots. I don’t buy that when it comes to marketing diverse leads, suddenly this giant industry can’t do it.”

Imran Siddiquee, director of communications at The Representation Project, a movement that uses film and media content to expose injustices created by gender stereotypes, says Hollywood blockbusters are rarely accidental. “Just look at the top ten films in each of the last five years: nearly every single one had a budget of more than $100 million,” Siddiquee says. “Meanwhile, there hasn’t been a single film released this year starring a person of color with a budget of more than $50 million.”

 

See also: Where’s the Diversity, Hollywood? Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blockbusters Overwhelmingly White, Male at LEE & LOW Books

 


For more than 20 years, LEE & LOW BOOKS has published award-winning children’s books that are “about everyone, for everyone” (including science fiction and fantasy under the Tu Books imprint). The company is committed to fostering conversations about race, gender, and diversity in publishing and beyond. For more information, visit leeandlow.com.

Three Reasons Why ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ is Not a Feminist Film

I dreaded seeing this trite sexism applied to Saldana’s character, Gamora. To be fair, while she does require saving by male characters on multiple occasions, Gamora has moderately strong agency throughout, and her character is a load-bearing beam rather than a Trinity-esque distraction. If only her last lines could’ve been less deferential.

Release Poster.
Release Poster.
Written by Andé Morgan.
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), one of the summer’s most anticipated blockbusters, was released today. It was directed by James Gunn and written by Gunn and Nicole Perlman.
Guardians stars Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation) as Peter Quill, Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket Raccoon, Vin Diesel as the voice of Groot, Dave Bautista as Drax the Destroyer, and Zoe Saldana (AvatarStar Trek) as Gamora.
Full disclosure: I’ve never read the comics and I knew nothing about the characters, their backstories, or their places in the Marvel Universe. I’m guessing that most viewers will share my ignorance. That’s OK, just go with it and let the tongue-twisters and blasters work their magic.
Make no mistake — Marvel Studios’ Avengers franchise is big business with plenty of big business oversight. Wisecracking animals, walking trees, pratfalls, space battles…it can be hard to fit in all of those beats while preserving some directorial distinctiveness. Fortunately, Gunn’s style comes through well and gives Guardians a joyful spark missing from its brethren (I’m looking at you, Iron Man 2). [Note: While writing this, I was unaware of the controversy surrounding Gunn due to the 2012 spotlighting of some awful, terrible, horrible, homophobic, misogynistic so-called satire that he spewed on his blog two years before before he was confirmed for GotG. I am now aware. The original post has long since vanished from the interwebs, but you can read about it here.]
Fans of Pratt’s Andy Dwyer will recognize the same genial man-child at the heart of Quill, but Pratt also shows that he can play the street smart pirate when necessary. More surprising is Bautista’s excellent performance as Drax. Athletes-turned-actors tend to have issues with timing and diction, but Bautista nailed it.
The most compelling characters in the movie are both animated. Rocket’s sullen abrasiveness belies palpable loneliness. Groot carries some of this sorrow as well. In the third act we learn just how strong the connection is between the two, and I was moved.
Quill is a thief and scavenger with a type of situational morality — sort of like a less violent, more personable Mal. He steals a blue orb that the Big Bad, Ronan (Lee Pace), covets. Pace lays the evil on thick, and it works. Ronan has genocidal ambitions, and wants to Death Star the peaceful planet Alderaan Xander. An aggressively shiny utopia, Xander looks like a cross between Dubai and a new outdoor outlet mall.
What unfolds is a standard space western, but with excellent performances, animation, and humor. It even has a female authority figure, Glenn Close (she’s the one with pieces of the set between her teeth) as Nova Prime, leader of Xander. You will be entertained. Aside from the somewhat clunky exposition sequences, I don’t really have much to criticize.
Except:
1. The first act features not one, but two disposable women. We learn that Quill suffers from parental abandonment. His father is absent, and his mother succumbs to cancer in the prologue. Later, Melia Kreiling portrays Bereet, a vaguely-alien humanoid whose key scene involves Quill shamelessly admitting to forgetting her existence even though they’d recently had sex. In the next scene (two of two for her), she speaks broken English and is servile to Quill; it struck me as an extraterrestrial variation of the Asian girlfriend trope. This was one of the few moments in the film where I actually didn’t like Pratt’s character. Unfortunately, this a-girl-in-every-spaceport sexism is leaned on for laughs throughout the film. Pratt is still playing a heterosexual white male lead, and Gunn won’t let you forget it.
Soldana as Gomora.
Saldana as Gamora.
2. I dreaded seeing this trite sexism applied to Saldana’s character, Gamora, the cybernetic assassin (why is it that sexy female aliens are always either green or blue?). When I saw her catsuit and a gratuitous booty shot towards the end of the first act, I felt that my fears were partly born out. To be fair, while she does require saving by male characters on multiple occasions, Gamora does display moderately strong agency throughout the film. Her character is a load-bearing beam rather than a Trinity-esque distraction. If only her last lines could’ve been a little less deferential.
More troubling are some of Saldana’s comments in recent interviews. For example, she told the Los Angeles Times that part of the appeal of the character was the chance to play someone “…so different from herself…”
“Gamora, she’s not feminine in the typical sense of how women are supposed to be. I feel like she has to melt that ice for you to find that little girl in there. She’s very tough, she’s able to relate to the hard talks of it all. When Quill comes at her with that luscious, ‘Hey baby’ [attitude], I’m pretty sure she’s throwing up in her mouth. I liked that, and I thought, ‘OK, that’s something I can incorporate of myself and just shave off a little bit of my femininity.’ Even though I like to believe I’m a tomboy, I’m very feminine, so I just always have to de-train myself and allow my masculinity to seep through because Gamora is much more masculine than I am.”
Her comments seem to imply that combat prowess and femininity are necessarily mutually exclusive, and that it’s not feminine to rebuff the advances of horny dudebros. Those connections elicited a little side eye from this critic.
3. There is a female character credited only as Tortured Pink Girl (Laura Ortiz). For some reason, Benicio Del Toro plays the sadistic Collector (kind of an older, huskier Ziggy Stardust), with whom Quill seeks to do business. We see that the Collector has enslaved at least two women; both are displayed in pigtails and pink jumpers. One is forced to wash the glass cage of the other. The woman in the cage is on her knees, bound and gagged with electric sci-fi ropes, a clear look of pain and fear in her eyes.
Quill and crew are less concerned with the fate of the women than with money and exposition. When the uncaged woman, Carina (Ophelia Lovibond), desperately attempts to use the power of an ancient artifact to free herself, she’s immolated instead. We’re left to assume that the other captive woman is also killed in the subsequent cataclysm (though a dog and an arguably misogynistic duck survive).
Despite these faults, the film is still just too good to skip. While its story and characters are hardly groundbreaking, Guardians of the Galaxy’s combination of dopey humor and frenetic action hits the sweet spot between stupid, exciting, and endearing.

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about film, television, and current events. Follow them @andemorgan.

The Neverending Search for Good Sci-Fi: ‘Defiance’ Edition

‘Defiance’ is good solid alien-full science fiction television, it’s reliably entertaining each week, and it definitely has better feminist cred than many other shows.

Written by Max Thornton.

Syfy, the erstwhile Sci-Fi Channel, is not renowned for the high quality of its original programming – Sharknado 2, anyone? Still less did I expect to be especially interested in a show with a tie-in MMORPG. (I talk a big talk about interactivity and fan culture, but I’m fundamentally too lazy to participate much myself.) But the involvement of Rockne O’Bannon, creator of my beloved Farscape, was sufficient motivator for me to at least give Defiance a chance, and I’m glad I did. In our post- and sub-Battlestar Galactica televisual landscape, pure science fiction shows tend to the dreary and the grim, leaving things like “fun” and “watchability” to fantasy, whether it’s the high fantasy of Game of Thrones or the campy fantasy-horror of Sleepy Hollow and Supernatural.

One day I will write about this wonderful, wonderful show.
One day I will write about this wonderful, wonderful show.

God knows I try. I gave The Tomorrow People a fair chance, I gave Helix a fair chance (incredibly, it’s been renewed), I’m giving Extant a fair chance. I want good SF on my TV, preferably something with spaceships and aliens, to fill the void left by assorted Star Treks and Firefly and Farscape, but in all honesty Orphan Black is the only really quality sci-fi show on television at the moment.

Enter Defiance. Now, Defiance is not BSG, but it is good solid alien-full science fiction television, it’s reliably entertaining each week, and it definitely has better feminist cred than many of the other shows I have already mentioned.

A few decades after the arrival of extra-terrestrial life, Earth hosts an uneasy peace between humans and the various alien species. The former St. Louis is now the titular polis, where a number of different species, languages, and cultures coexist under the mayoral leadership of Julie Benz, whose improbably-named sister Kenya runs a brothel. Perhaps the central characters of the show, insofar as a show whose setting is its true protagonist can be said to have central characters, are the young alien Irisa and her adoptive human father.

Stephanie Leonidas as Irisa. You can tell she's an alien because she has a funny forehead.
Stephanie Leonidas as Irisa. You can tell she’s an alien because she has a funny forehead.

Irisa is one of my favorite things about the show. She appears to be some sort of Chosen One, and it’s amazing how much better the hoary old Chosen One trope becomes when its beneficiary is not a white man. She’s part of a chosen, interspecies family, and while she and her father love each other dearly, they sometimes struggle to understand one another. Irisa’s efforts to understand herself and her place in the world are somewhat analogous to the issues faced by transracial adoptees, who may have rather complicated relationships with their ethnicity.

Indeed, Defiance offers a number of sci-fi analogues to real-world issues (and, God help me, this is something I adore in my speculative fiction). One subplot follows an interspecies couple as the human wife faces difficulties in comprehending her husband’s alien culture, with its powerful honor/shame culture and its communal bathing habits. Another subplot explores workers’ rights and collective action as both human and alien laborers work in dangerous conditions in the mines. All of the aliens are immigrants, trying to negotiate the place of their culture and customs within those of the humans among whom they live, and there are resonances of (post)colonialism and the fight for independence in the masterplot of Defiance’s struggle for self-governance.

Defy ALL THE THINGS!
Defy ALL THE THINGS!

There’s an instructive comparison to be made with new show Dominion, which airs immediately after Defiance and of which I could only stomach two episodes. Its Chosen One is a deeply boring white dude, and its one significant female character is defined entirely by her father (the city’s leader), her love for the Chosen One, and the arranged marriage her father wants to push her into. There’s a waifish cancerous-looking child that the Chosen One has taken under his wing because he’s just such a good guy, and the Chosen One has a lot of manpain about putting his boring girlfriend and his blonde lisping surrogate daughter at risk by being the Chosen One. It’s all offensively tedious.

Perhaps neither Dominion nor Defiance is doing anything we haven’t seen before, but Defiance is at least doing it with good politics, interesting characters, and a fair amount of style.

Take, for example, a powerful exchange in the most recent episode between the current and former mayors. The new and heretofore unlikable mayor, quite shaken by a minor assault, talks about his teen experience of being violently raped. The ex-mayor opens up about her own rape and subsequent abortion, and the following exchange ensues:

Why are you telling me this?”

I didn’t want you to think you were alone, because you’re not.”

That’s the kindest thing… thank you.”

Rape As Backstory is a trope that surely needs a few centuries of retirement, but I have rarely seen a male and a female survivor bond in a scene of such sensitivity. Let’s hope the show continues to handle it well.

Mayor Darla? I'd vote for her
Mayor Darla? I’d vote for her

Defiance is no replacement for Farscape, but it’s about as close as we’re currently getting.

_____________________________

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’: A Three-Hour Explosion of Contempt for You and Your Family

You don’t have to be an intellectual elitist to hate ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction.’ It is a terrible movie for reasons that have nothing to do with a lack of originality and everything to do with an abundance of vulgarity, violence, misogyny, and racism.

Written by Andé Morgan.

Here is all you need to know about Transformers: Age of Extinction: You Don’t Have To See It.

I'm pretty sure that's not in the Bible.
I’m pretty sure that’s not in the Bible.

The fourth installment of the Transformers movie franchise, Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), dropped this Friday, June 27. It has done well at the box office, becoming the first film this year to break $100 million in its opening weekend, and dwarfing the returns of competitors like 22 Jump Street (2014) and How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014). Directed by Michael Bay (again) and written (such as it is) by Ehren Kruger, it features Mark Wahlberg as Cade Yeager, the heroically hunky everyman hero. Shia LeBeouf was unavailable, as lately he has been fully occupied with losing his shit.

Yeah, the critics don’t seem to like the movie very much – it’s currently coming in at 17 percent at Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest rating yet for a Transformers film. I didn’t like it, either. In fact, I hatedhatedhated it, for all the reasons that every other critic mentions. Very original, I know. Actually, my original angle for this review, originally, was to gripe about the film’s lack of originality. You see, it’s very important to me that as many people as possible know that I listen to NPR while driving my Subaru to the farmer’s market, and I was going to tie in my theme with the subject of the latest TED Radio Hour episode, What is Original. However, maybe I’m maturing as a critic, because I’ve concluded that it’s just not fair to expect a film like Transformers (2014) to be original. I mean, it was loud, senseless, clunky, and almost THREE HOURS LONG. But, as Stephanie Palmer wrote recently, summer blockbusters aren’t usually intended to be original. Rather, they’re designed to minimize risk and maximize profit. Fair enough.
I also thought about making the best out of it, as Charlie Jane Anders does in her review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2011). After all, when life gives you poop, make poopjuice, right? No. Nope, in fact. It doesn’t matter that this is an action figure movie designed to appeal to adolescent males, I just can’t muster the good will to hold my nose, wink, and keep my tongue in cheek.
You don’t have to be an intellectual elitist to hate Transformers: AOE. It’s a terrible movie for reasons that have nothing to do with a lack of originality and everything to do with an abundance of vulgarity, violence, misogyny, and racism.
By vulgarity, I don’t mean expletives, I mean excessive tastelessness. Shiny, five gallon buckets of Dom Pérignon tastelessness. Bay is a master of landscape cinematography, and it shows since almost every shot in the movie is a landscape onto which a CGI robot will be projected. For example, after the prologue (dinosaurs), we’re introduced to Yeager. He’s just a regular guy – he drives a rusty blue pickup, he’s dirty, he wears tight T-shirts (yeah, his biceps are dreamy), and he cares about his teenage daughter, Tessa (Nicola Peltz). He’s also a single dad and a small businessman, struggling to make ends meet with his barn-based cassette tape and film projector repair shop/ROBOTICS ENGINEERING LAB. While establishing Yeager’s down home bonifides and cat-saving prowess, Bay treats us to endless shots of cornfields, soybean fields, and field fields. I haven’t seen so much lingering on a cornfield since Field of Dreams (1989) mated with Children of the Corn (1984).
Similarily, the viewer endures an excess of shallow, inarticulate references to the concerns of the day. Posters and billboards in the background allude to our national discussion of immigration policy, while mean Kelsey Grammer and his très chic CIA deathsquad reflect our trepidations about government surveillance.
Violence certainly has a place in storytelling but, like its predecessors, Tranformers (2014) has an excess of violence. Mr. Bay, where is the blood? We see countless buildings ravaged by rockets and errant robots, but where are the human bodies falling from the 55th story, blown out or jumping to escape the flames? Likewise, those same rockets strike countless vehicles, robots slice cars in half, space magnets lift tour buses half a mile into the air only to drop onto elevated trains full of commuters. I’m guessing Paramount couldn’t afford to break off some of that $210 million budget to cast a few hundred thousand dead bystanders. To be fair, I could ask that same question of Godzilla (2014) or Pacific Rim (2013) (and I do).
Was that one of those driverless Google cars?
Was that one of those driverless Google cars?
It’s not like this so-called family film shirked from depicting violence and death entirely. In one disturbing scene, a government agent holds a gun to Tessa’s head while she pleads for her life as Cade looks on, helpless; later, we see Cade’s affable best friend Lucas (T. J. Miller) burned to death, leaving an obscene smoldering effigy that Cade and Tessa…absolutely do not react to. Maybe they’re just like the film’s young audience as the exit the theatre – numb to death.
Bay doesn’t just excel at bloodless mass murder or at getting actors to stare skyward at imaginary robots, he’s also good at casual racist caricature. Early on, our white male protagonist has to defend his home from a real estate agent who is not a black woman who is also large, she’s a Fat Sassy Black Woman. Later we’re reacquainted with Brains, a small robot with a cybernetic afro and dialogue co-opted from a minstrel show. We also see Orientalist cliches, including Every Asian Knows Martial Arts and a Wise (Robot) Samurai.
While the film passes the letter of the Bechel Test, women don’t fare well, either. Bay’s camera often lingers on the female character’s bodies. Lucas’ introductory scene begins with his verbal sexual harassment of two women crossing the street separating him from Yeager. This harassment goes unrebuffed by Wahlberg’s character. Boys will be boys, I guess.
Yep.
Yep, that looks about right.
Sophia Myles plays a geologist, Darcy Tirrel; while she’s the first main character to be introduced, she spends the remainder of the film playing The Watson for Stanley Tucci’s Steve Jobs character, Joshua Joyce, to explain Transformer tech to. During the climatic battle (I think it was the climatic battle, it’s kinda hard to tell), she marks Joyce’s development (now he’s a friendly capitalist!), saying “I’m proud of you.”
Bingbing Li plays Su Yueming, Joyce’s Chinese attaché. She wears tight pantsuits, knows Kung-Fu, and can drive a motorcycle. While initially she rebuffs his creepy-boss advances, she relents in the end and they sunset into the credits.

Li BingBing as Su Meuyung.

Tessa exists a perpetual protectorate for Yeager. For example, an hour and a half, i.e., midway, through the film, Yeager boards an alien prison ship to rescue her. While Tessa is hiding from her captors, a masculine green alien prisoner wraps a slimy green tongue around her bare leg. As the tongue gets longer and longer, it starts to reach for her genitals. I was reminded of the infamous tree rape scene in Evil Dead (1981).

Buy a Chevy.
Buy a Chevy.
As Rebecca Phale at The Mary Sue notes, the most disturbingly misogynistic scene is also the most subtle. On the aforementioned prison ship, Hound, a horribly erratic and violent Autobot voiced by John Goodman, murders an alien – essentially, a walking vagina dentata with an unfortunate sniffle – because it is “too ugly to live.” He punctuates the act by calling the corpse a “bitch.”

Buy a Chevy!
Buy a Chevy!
And so on. I intended to discuss the plot, but there wasn’t one. I was going to use phrasing like “soul crushing,” but I will decline in the interest of originality. How about “a long, loud, and dreary exercise in post-postmodern nihilism,” has that been taken? I will say that you, reader, are free to not see this movie. By all means, see a summer blockbuster, but hold out for one that shows more respect for women, minorities, and your ears.
Buy a Chevy, goddammit!
Buy a Chevy, goddammit!
OK Mr. Bay, I’m done, I’m broken, just leave me alone and I’ll buy a fucking million pack of Bud Light.

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