Sexism – Page 4 – Bitch Flicks

The Academy: Kind to White Men, Just Like History

The hunters write history. The hunters glorify themselves. The hunters’ history infiltrates itself into the very fabric of our cultural narrative, so we’re only comfortable with seeing the complexities of the hunters, and the simplicity of the lions.

It is what we’ve been trained for since birth.

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Last year, after Django Unchained was largely snubbed at the Oscars (compared to the Golden Globes), I looked at the history of the Black actors/characters who were awarded by the Academy over the years. The results were troubling, but not surprising–much like the infographic The Huffington Post posted today about what roles that women won for over the years (here is Feministing‘s take on the findings).

It’s fairly clear what roles Hollywood is most comfortable with: for Black characters, passivity, tired stereotypes, and villainy get the highest awards. For women, wives/daughters/mothers/sisters/girlfriends–all roles in relationship to men–are rewarded.

Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. (The Black actors up for 2014 Academy Awards--Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong'o--play a kidnapped freed man/slave and slave.) — Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. (The Black actors up for 2014 Academy Awards–Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong’o, and Barkhad Abdi–play a kidnapped freed man/slave, slave, and Somali pirate, respectively.) *Click to enlarge.*

For men (who are almost all white), the category with the most winners is “Historical.” For men, there are countless historical roles to fill, so filmmakers can tell the stories of those who have shaped our history and culture–or at least, those whom we see and are told about. And this has been a history that has been largely unkind to Black people and women.

In an interview, late author Chinua Achebe quoted the following proverb: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

It is what we’ve been trained for since birth.

This is a history that the lions have had to fight and claw their way out of, yet we don’t see them in Hollywood. The lions write, the lions pitch, but the hunters are not interested. (And the hunters have the money, from generations of oppressing the lions.)

I’d be happy to see the hunters start telling the lions’ history, even just a little bit (I salivate at the thought of Quentin Tarantino taking on suffragettes).

Three of this year’s Best Picture nominations (12 Years a Slave, Wolf of Wall Street, and American Hustle) are films that are based on real stories–and each of these stories, on some level, is about white men fucking people over so they can get rich. And at the end of these stories, the white men don’t really get punished. This is our history.

This is our history.

So how can we blame the Academy for reflecting this history back at us? Art is imitating life, and life keeps imitating art. If the two are so inextricably related (which they are), where do we go from here?

I’m not one who argues that it’s all about the Bechdel Test, or that we need to demand the Perfect Feminist Film. Some of the most potentially empowering films that I’ve seen (that feature female and Black protagonists) would be solidly placed in the “exploitation” category (Blaxploitation especially). We need to demand female and Black anti-heroes if we want true, complex characters and stories.

See this, this, and this. (Who gave the lions a dictation machine, anyway?!)

As I argued in regard to 12 Years a Slave, we have barely started to deal with our country’s history, and we need to, desperately. But still–the only white American actor who is prominently featured in the film was Brad Pitt, who plays a heroic Canadian. It’s hard to face.

In American Hustle and Wolf of Wall Street, the white male protagonists are complex–they aren’t good, but they are whole. They are criminals. They are cheaters. But audiences kind of like them–or at the very least, accept them.

Our goal as lions, then, may not be to just tell our stories. We need to become hunters, and find those stories and demand that they be told. We need to face a history in which Black hunters and female hunters have been punished, and white male hunters have prevailed. We may not be able to rewrite that history, but we can live within it, and force it into our cultural narrative. (Or, as my husband said after we sat through previews last weekend, “They could just quit telling World War II stories for a while.”)

But here we are, in 2014, facing how the Academy’s choices clearly reflect our history. What do we do with this? We should get angry at history, and attempt to rewrite our future. We should be angry at an American history that has oppressed women and Blacks since its inception.

If Wolf of Wall Street reflects modern history, which it does, we see that white men are still winning (case in point: I can’t use the term “winning” without thinking about a white male actor who “allegedly assaulted, threatened, harassed, abused, and—in one incident—shot women” and yet still was the highest-paid actor on television in 2010).

If we want to tell revolutionary women’s and Black people’s stories, we’ll have to settle for a lot of tragedies. There aren’t slaps on the wrists or a few months in a cushy white-collar prison for these historical figures. There’s torture, lynching, and shame. And the villains are almost always white men.

So we’re back to the hunter. And what we know about hunters is they don’t come back bragging about their losses; they brag about their wins. It’s time for them to stop winning, and for the lions to be heard. Then, and only then, can we expect the Academy to reflect a new reality.

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

Gillian Anderson, Feminism, and BBC’s ‘The Fall’

The most important thing The Fall is doing, though, is calling out misogyny. Yes, Gibson gets to hand it to Spector, the serial killer, labeling him a “weak, impotent” misogynist, but we already knew that. What I find more intriguing is the way the show implicates the police force and the audience itself for the casual misogyny, assumptions, and stereotypes that perpetuate victim-blaming.

Spoiler Alert

The Fall is a BBC2 crime series starring Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame as Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson in charge of a serial killer case in Belfast. In a lot of ways, The Fall reminds me of the show The Killing because both feature female leads who are strong, capable, and dogged. The way in which The Fall differs, though, is that it impressively wears its feminist agenda on its sleeve.

Before I get into all the amazing things that The Fall is doing right, I want to get out of the way the biggie that I think it’s doing wrong. While this series is taking huge strides to turn a particularly sexist genre on its head, The Fall, like many crime shows, exploits the bodies of the women who are victimized. The camera lovingly caresses and lingers upon these women’s terror, their struggles, their bound limbs, their exposed flesh, and finally their corpses. The excuse can be given that it’s all in the name of “getting into the killer’s head”, but the camera’s gaze goes too far into the realm of prurience, ultimately becoming gratuitous and indulging in fantasies of rendering women helpless and objectified. This is a dangerous trope that threatens to dehumanize its female characters (and women in general), which is the OPPOSITE of what The Fall is trying to do.

Granted the objectification and sexualization of victimized women is disturbing (to say the least), but conversely The Fall provides its lead heroine a strong, unapologetic sexuality. Stella Gibson picks out a sexual partner at a glimpse (fellow officer James Olson who seems to be working the Irish equivalent of Vice), openly propositions him for a one night stand, has sex with him, and then refuses to engage with him afterwards because he can’t keep it casual. Gibson takes on the traditionally ascribed male role as sexual pursuer as well as the one who dictates the terms on which the encounter occurs.

Superintendent Stella Gibson is a woman who knows what she wants.

Due to an unexpected turn of events, Gibson is repeatedly questioned by her police force colleagues about her relationship with Olson, each interrogator is male, and each is accusatory and incredulous at Gibson’s behavior, judgmental of her unapologetic sexuality, her unwitting role in Olson’s infidelity to his wife, and her lack of remorse for her actions as well as her lack of attachment to a man with whom she spent a single night. In a way, these men even go so far as to heap some measure of blame on Gibson for Olson’s death. With a self-satisfied smile, one of her questioners asks, “When did you first meet Sergeant Olson?” Gibson replies,

That’s what really bothers you, isn’t it? The one night stand. Man fucks woman. Subject: man. Verb: fucks. Object: woman. That’s ok. Woman fucks man. Woman: subject. Man: object. That’s not so comfortable for you, is it?

DSI Gibson seems to always have to hold her ground when it comes to her male colleagues. — DSI Gibson has to hold her ground when it comes to her male colleagues.

My jaw dropped when Gibson delivered this speech. She simply and elegantly exposes all the sexism inherent in everyone’s attitude toward her private sexual relationships. She unearths the wider cultural misogynistic discomfort with female sexual agency. I wanted to clap or call someone and say, “It’s happening! Feminism is hitting mainstream TV with a brutal right hook!” Yes. Yes. YES.

Inherent in Gibson’s self-assurance about her sexuality is an even greater independence and self-possession. Gibson is the shining star of a cast full of strong, capable women who take charge when necessary and are very professionally accomplished. In fact, the serial killer solely targets women he finds threatening and emasculating due to their career success (we may or may not learn more about this in the as-yet unproduced Season Two). Not only are many of the female cast members strong, but they’re well-developed AND friends with one another. First, we’ve got the up-and-coming Constable Dani Ferrington played by Niamh McGrady.

Ferrington deeply regrets not taking the break-in at the house of future victim Sarah Kay — Ferrington regrets not taking seriously the break-in at Sarah Kay’s home.

Ferrington very casually comes out as gay to Gibson, her commanding officer. Gibson takes the information just as casually, which is refreshing. Ferrington also strives to protect Gibson by cleaning up her hotel room of its evidence of “male company”. Gibson doesn’t hide her encounter with Olson, but Ferrington’s effort to shield her friend and superior’s private life is admirable. Not only that, but Ferrington comes clean about having responded to a break-in call from one of the serial killer victims and admits that she may have been knocking on the victim’s door while the murder was occurring. Though this admission means Ferrington may face potential charges of incompetence and blame, she behaves with integrity, putting the case above her personal stake in the matter. Ferrington is ambitious, honest, and loyal, and Gibson recognizes and appreciates those qualities and promotes her onto the serial killer case.

Another example of powerful women not only liking each other but working together (and not competing) is the relationship between Gibson and the case’s pathologist, Dr. Tanya Reed Smith, depicted by the talented Archie Panjabi (Panjabi also adds a bit of much needed diversity to the cast).

Chief Medical Examiner Reed Smith & DSI Stella Gibson — Pathologist Tanya Reed Smith & DSI Stella Gibson

Reed Smith is a highly respected police medical professional…who arrives at a crime scene on her motorcycle (badass).

Together, Reed Smith and Gibson examine crime scenes, review the details of the case, and talk about their personal lives. We find out Reed Smith has two daughters and is deeply troubled when she has to perform exams on live victims. With Reed Smith, Gibson lets down her guard and is far more open and honest than she can be with her male co-workers about her transient lifestyle and the duality she finds necessary to separate her professional and private lives. The women bond, sharing coffee and alcohol in friendship and as an important release from the stress of the case.

Strong female characters: Reed Smith & Stella Gibson.

In an unexpected turn of events, Reed Smith shares with Stella a bit of information gleaned from a college friend about an old abusive boyfriend who may match the killer’s M.O. Gibson interviews the victim, and we see this as a potential break in the case. This plot development is crucial because it illustrates the power in the unity of women. Though the old abuses went unreported, this network of women remembers the crimes. Gibson is then able to use her new-found knowledge against the serial killer (Paul Spector played by Jamie Dornan).

The most important thing The Fall is doing, though, is calling out misogyny. Yes, Gibson gets to hand it to Spector, the serial killer, labeling him a “weak, impotent” misogynist, but we already knew that. Even other misogynists can probably recognize that murdering women for sexual pleasure is over-the-top. What I find more intriguing is the way the show implicates the police force and the audience itself for the casual misogyny, assumptions, and stereotypes that perpetuate victim-blaming.

Gibson must insist that the victims not be identified as “innocent” because it implies some women, especially ones coded as sexual, might then be more deserving of brutal murder. Gibson refuses to indulge the media in the virgin/whore dichotomy, and she also declares that no judgements against the victims or their life choices are allowed. With the early blunder in which Ferrington and her partner didn’t take the break-in at victim Sarah Kay’s house seriously, we begin to see that this kind of stereotyping and victim-blaming can be deadly. It takes the emphasis off the perpetrator, and it increases the likelihood of repeat occurrences of crimes against women while also making those crimes less likely to be solved. The Fall is then exposing institutional sexism and misogyny in a radical and important way.

I’m excited to see what Season Two of The Fall will have in store. I trust it will continue to depict its female characters with integrity while ferreting out corruption within the police force and illuminating the nuances of institutional misogyny. It’s wonderful to have a well-produced, well-written, and excellently performed TV show that really strives to advance a feminist agenda. Though this approach seems revolutionary, it’s bizarre that we have so many crime shows that focus on the victimization of women that somehow do NOT employ a feminist lens. I hope The Fall is the first of many crime shows that don’t use the abuse and murder of women as a punchline or an empty premise, but as a means to expose a great inequity in our world that must be corrected or else women will continue to be beaten, abused, raped, and murdered at an alarming rate.

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

Ja’mie: Mean-Spirited Impression of a Private School Girl

Power dynamics mean something in comedy. Making fun of someone less powerful than you is sort of like beating up someone who’s small, or taking advantage of someone naive. It’s not very sporting, and it makes you look mean. The problem is that the same person can be powerful in some contexts and not in others. A rich, white 17-year-old girl, for example, might be very powerful in contexts where she’s bullying her classmates at school, but less powerful in contexts where she’s trying to meet the demands of a sexist culture. If you’re an adult man nearing 40, it’s hard to make fun of the way a teenage girl dresses, flirts, and moons over boys without starting to look kind of petty.

This guest post by Katherine Murray appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Ja’mie: Private School Girl features a drag performance from Australian comedian Chris Lilley that’s sometimes funny and sometimes uncomfortable to watch. Join me as I do the least funny thing in the world, and try to explain how a joke works.

Currently airing on HBO, Ja’mie: Private School Girl has plenty of funny moments as well as plenty that seem more mean-spirited, and the combination creates an uncomfortable viewing experience. Ja’mie, portrayed by Lilley, is a narcissistic and socially tone-deaf villain who was previously featured in We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year and Summer Heights High. Like The Office’s David Brent before her, Ja’mie craves admiration from others, but rarely does anything commendable. Instead, she inadvertently reveals herself to be racist, snobbish, bullying, and homophobic, while trying to sing her own praises. Private School Girl is the first series to focus exclusively on Ja’mie, following her through her day-to-day life as she prepares to graduate from the exclusive Hillford Girls Grammar School, and attempts to win the coveted Hillford Medal.

Ja’mie is one of Lilley’s most popular characters, and it isn’t hard to see why. A quick YouTube search returns some really funny clips from Heroes and Summer Heights High, where most of the comedy comes from Ja’mie’s hypocrisy. In Heroes, Ja’mie tries to gain recognition for her charity work—sponsoring African children through a World Vision analog—but reveals herself to be shallow and racist as soon as she tries to explain the project. She admits that she doesn’t know the names of any of the children she sponsors, because their names are “weird,” but she sings to their pictures “in their language” by making up words and clicking her tongue. When she learns that most of the children she sponsors were killed in a horrible flood, she’s devastated by the idea that this might hurt her chances at winning Australian of the Year, and calls the charity to make a customer complaint.

In Summer Heights High, Ja’mie is an exchange student at the titular public school, and she continually insults her classmates for being poor and ugly under the guise of finding common ground. She introduces herself by giving a prepared speech about how private school students are more likely to go to university and earn more money, whereas wife-beaters and rapists are statistically more likely to come from public schools. “People always go, ‘Private schools create better citizens,’”she says, “But I would say they create better quality citizens.” Later, when she campaigns for an end-of-year dance, she begins by telling everyone that dances give poor people (or “povos”), like them, something to live for. Under her leadership, the dance then becomes so expensive that no one can afford to buy tickets.

As of this writing, four of Private School Girl’s six episodes have aired, and the funniest moments rely on the same type of humour—scenes where Ja’mie congratulates herself for being nice to everyone, juxtaposed with documentary-style footage of her bullying other students. Fittingly, her nemesis at Hillford is an unpretentious girl named Erin who seems genuinely nice, and cares about helping others. Ja’mie recoils in disgust whenever Erin says or does anything heartfelt, and hypocritically accuses her of faking kindness in order to be admired. Though one might wish there were more characters for Ja’mie to play against, those scenes work really well, as do most of the scenes where we see Ja’mie whiplash between the falsely humble face she wears around people she wants to impress, and the vicious, Eric Cartman-like monster within.

Unfortunately, there are other scenes in Private School Girl where it seems like the joke is just “Ha! She’s a girl!” which makes things a little uncomfortable. Chris Lilley also gave this cringey interview where he said that straight guys love the show, because “The show is sort of like making fun of girls. It’s doing all the annoying things that our girlfriends do.” Unless the annoying things their girlfriends do include grossly misusing charity outreach programs and tyrannizing strangers at school, I’m not sure that “annoying things girls do” is an awesome target for a grown man’s comedy—especially when the annoying things aren’t otherwise hurting anyone else.

For example, there are lot of scenes where Ja’mie and her friends talk over each other excitedly, dissolving into a wall of noise and screeching for seemingly endless minutes. In the first episode, there’s a scene where they goof around, taking a long time to say goodbye to each other, yelling back and forth about how they’ll miss each other SO MUCH, and how they’re best friends, before running back for hugs. There are scenes that are just about Ja’mie being excited because a cute boy accepted her friend request on Facebook, or because she gets to throw a party. In most of these instances, the events aren’t exaggerated to the point that they become absurd and therefore funny — instead, they feel like a fairly true-to-life impression of a certain type of teenage girlhood, and it feels like the show takes for granted that it’s OK to just make fun of that.

From a practical standpoint, the scenes aren’t particularly funny — they feel too much like watching a real reality show, where people you don’t particularly like have conversations that aren’t particularly important. At the same time, there’s an uncomfortable undercurrent, since the inclusion of most of these scenes tells us that they were supposed to be funny—that there’s supposed to be something inherently laughable in the way that (some) teenage girls talk to each other, or the way they express their emotions—so laughable that you don’t even need to make up a joke for the scene; you just have to show it. As satire, it’s a far cry from the wicked hypocrisy of Ja’mie’s charity mission in Africa.

There are other jokes, though, that cut a little closer to the bone, and most of them involve Ja’mie’s brazen but awkward sexuality. Mistakenly believing herself to be a good dancer, she repeatedly tries to gain attention by performing sexually charged (or “slutty”) choreography and undoing the top buttons on her uniform to show her bra. She flirts with her school principal and, when a boy stays over at her house, she makes sure to casually pass by his room wearing only a towel. She constantly seeks reassurance that she’s not fat, while obsessing over the idea that her breasts are too small, and there’s an ongoing plot about the etiquette of sexting. Internet spoilers assure me that the ongoing discussion of Ja’mie’s breasts, and whether or not she should flash them, is building toward conflict in the final episodes, but, as others have pointed out, it isn’t always clear whether the show is making fun of Ja’mie or of the culture that’s placed her in this position.

When it comes to sex, teenage girls are at a disadvantage. They’re subject to conflicting demands, telling them both that the need to be sexually available and that sexual availability is not OK—they inhabit a world where developing a sexual identity is a Choose Your Own Adventure that always ends in scorn. Although I’ll withhold judgement about the finale until I’ve seen it, there’s an uncomfortable sense that Private School Girl has so far treated Ja’mie’s conflicted sexuality as another instance of her personal hypocrisy—that she’s pretending to be modest when really she’s the kind of girl who wants to flash her tits, or she’s pretending to be sexually experienced when really she’s too frigid to get it on—rather than a relic of a culture that would shame her both for wanting and not wanting sex.

Altogether, Private School Girl works really well when its satire is aimed at racists, bullies, and snobs, but significantly less well when it’s aimed at the more diffuse target of “girls.” Watching it, you come away with the sense that Chris Lilley has gotten a little bit too good at playing this character; that he’s revelling in his ability to imitate a certain set of mannerisms, while the point of the joke has been lost.

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

In ‘Boondock Saints,’ the Men Shoot Gangsters, and the Women Don’t Exist

The ethics of the film are one thing, but it says a lot about the world of the movie that it’s able to go nearly two hours without a single important female character showing up on screen. There are no women cops, there are no women in the mob, there are only a couple of wives or passers-by or maybe a drug-addled girlfriend or two. But no one who matters. The acting characters in the film are all overwhelmingly and vocally male.

Even the ethos of the characters, that they will destroy that which is evil, but leave alone the pure and blameless, is inherently sexist. Because when they say pure and blameless, what they mean is the women and children. In this universe, women are not even people enough to do things wrong. We do not have enough agency even to commit evil.

This guest review by Deborah Pless appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

I fell in love with Boondock Saints the summer that I turned sixteen, about four days before I went off to live and work at a Christian summer camp for eight weeks – a torturously long time when you’ve just fallen in love with the most profane and violent movie possible. I was told that I shouldn’t watch it, that I couldn’t watch it, because it was too violent, too swear-y, too much for my faint little heart to take. I told them to eff themselves and watched it anyway. And I fell in love instantly.

It was a long lasting love affair too. I had the poster hanging above my bed, I still own a copy on DVD, and I saw that film so many times that I could recite it in real time as my college roommate watched in horror. I even went to see the sequel. In theaters. On purpose.

But it wasn’t until last year, when I started to write out a list of my all-time favorite movies that I realized something important: I might love Boondock Saints, but it doesn’t love me back. Or, specifically, it doesn’t love my gender. That was when the romance started to fade.

To back up a little, Boondock Saints is a cult shoot-em-up film released in 1999 and written and directed by Troy Duffy. It stars Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus as the McManus twins, two good old Irish boys living in South Boston who receive a message from God to go kill gangsters. Which they then proceed to do with alarming vigor and good humor. They’re pursued by Agent Smecker, played by Willem DeFoe, and helped by good friend Rocco, played by David Della Rocco.

Also, Billy Connolly turns up as a terrifying hit man known only as “Il Duce,” and Dot-Marie Jones makes a brief cameo as Rosengurtle Baumgartner, who kicks one of the boys in the crotch. But I digress.

The film is weird and violent and profane, like I said. The basic premise, that Connor (Flanery) and Murphy (Reedus) are on a holy mission to rid the world of evil is both strange and deeply non-Biblical, but there is a thrill to it that makes you want to believe. The plot kicks off when the boys are involved in a bar fight with two enforcers for the Russian mob. After the fight, the mobsters go track down our heroes and try to finish the job, but Connor and Murphy get the drop on them (literally), and kill the two men.

Agent Smecker is then called out to figure out what the hell happened. Smecker, who is inarguably DeFoe’s best and most interesting character to date, deduces the exact events effortlessly and is proven right when the two boys show up at the police station, turn themselves in, and claim self-defense.

The story would end right there if during the night spent in jail, the two men didn’t receive a vision from God. A mission, you might say, that calls them to “Destroy that which is evil, so that which is good may flourish.” This all tracks in with a sermon shown in the beginning of the film that cites the murder of Kitty Genovese as a sign that good men must do something to stop evil from spreading. All well and good, but I’m not sure the priest was calling for mass murder.

Which is precisely what happens. Connor and Murphy start picking off members of the Russian and Italian mobs, with a little help from their friend Rocco, a low-level numbers runner. They get so good at it, in fact, that Smecker is at a complete loss and the mob is running scared. It all comes to a climax when they try to take out the Don of the Italian mob in Boston, get captured, and come face to face with the man hired to kill them – Il Duce. Except Il Duce is actually their father, and the men happily reunite to go off and kill another day.

Like I said, it’s a weird, violent movie.

There are, in all honestly, a lot of things worth discussing with Boondock Saints, from the way it is one hundred and ten percent a white, male fantasy of justice and badassery, to the fact that it’s so Biblically inaccurate as to be kind of painful, to Agent Smecker as one of the most interesting gay characters to grace the silver screen, to the fact that it’s honestly just a very strange story, chock full of coincidences and arguably terrible writing that somehow becomes awesome instead of cliché. But let’s focus in for a minute on what turned me off of it. Let’s talk about the ladies.

Or, rather, let’s talk about the lack of them. In point of fact, the women of Boondock Saints are most notable by their absence. I can count the number of named female characters on one hand, and none of those characters appear in more than two scenes. That’s actually a false representation as well, because only one of them appears in more than one scene at all. Of all of the female characters in the film, not a single one receives more screentime than the scenes of Agent Smecker in drag toward the end of the film.

That is bad enough in and of itself, but there is also the actual characters to consider. Of the female characters shown or mentioned, one is an unnamed stripper (who, ironically, is the most visible woman in the film, appearing in two whole scenes), two are junkies and sluts (according to Rocco), and one is Rosengurtle Baumgartner, an avowed lesbian who we are supposed to laugh at for taking offense to one of Connor’s jokes. She kicks him in the nuts. He deserves it.

There are two more women of note in the story, but both had their stories cut down in the final version of the film and appear mostly in the deleted scenes on the DVD. One is Connor and Murphy’s mother, who calls them to wish them a happy birthday, and the other is a nice girl outside the courtroom who gives the news cameras a completely convincing and not at all ridiculous explanation of why she is perfectly fine having seen someone shot to death right in front of her moments before.

Like I said, that’s pretty much it. There’s a waitress, a nun in a hospital, an Italian grandmother, and a female news reporter, but I genuinely struggle to think of any more female characters. At all. In the entire movie. It would seem that in the world of Boondock Saints, women are not just irrelevant to the narrative, but also virtually invisible. They just don’t seem to exist.

I suppose it makes sense, given that the film is a white, male power fantasy. Connor and Murphy are the ultimate slacker heroes, the guys we’re supposed to want to be. They have no formal education, but somehow happen to know about six languages fluently. They seem perfectly content living on the fringes of society, because tough guys don’t need furniture or shower curtains or functioning plumbing, I guess. They’re religious, but in the cool way. They don’t have to learn how to use guns, or find out where to buy weaponry, or even struggle as they assume their mission. They just effortlessly seem to know what they need to do and then do it. No fuss, no muss. Without a second of training they are the two most proficient hit men ever to grace the streets of Boston.

It’s a fantasy, and you can see why it would be intoxicating. They’re good at what they do. They’re cool. What they do is unassailably (within the context of the movie universe) right. They get to shoot people and have fun and laugh with their friends, and it’s fine because it’s all justified by God. They don’t kill women or children, so it must be okay, right?

Well, no.

But here’s the problem. I know all of this, and yet I still like the movie. I mean, I’m not in love with it anymore. The scales have lifted off my eyes, and I can see it for what it is – a bloated, self-aggrandizing, violent ode to vigilantism – but I still enjoy it.

How?

I think ultimately it comes down to something deeper. Something about how it took me eight years to realize that the movie was toxic for women. I genuinely did not expect this story, or really any story like it, to include women. I naturally didn’t even think to look for a female character to relate to, because it inherently assumed there wouldn’t be one.

Troy Duffy, aware of the criticism he received for this first film, included a major female character in the execrable sequel, Boondock Saints: All Saints Day. In it, Agent Smecker is gone and in his stead we have Agent Bloom (Julie Benz). But this is just another stunt meant to show how “progressive” and “totally not sexist” Duffy is. Bloom is relegated to a backseat role, and shown to be yet another innocent in the world. She’s a badass lady cop, but actually just a scared little girl who needs to be protected. And if she happens to fulfill a couple of fantasies about women in power suits and heels while she’s at it, then so much the better.

I wish I could tell sixteen-year-old me not to bother with this movie, that I should, for once, listen to my friends and back away slowly, but I don’t think I would, even if I were given the chance. Because as much as I now can see this movie for the sexist doggerel it is, it still has a place in my heart. It was the movie that taught me how much fun schlock flicks could be, the one that showed me that a movie doesn’t have to be good to be fun, and the movie that introduced me to one of my all time best friends. I wouldn’t take it back.

But I still wish it didn’t make me feel so gross inside.

Deborah Pless runs Kiss My Wonder Woman and works as a youth advocate in Western Washington. You can follow her on twitter, just as long as you like feminist rants and an obsession with superheroes.

The Feminism and Anti-Racism of ‘Boardwalk Empire’ (And the Critics Who Don’t Get It)

Boardwalk Empire

Written by Leigh Kolb

Spoilers ahead

Boardwalk Empire returned for its fourth season on Sunday, Sept. 8. This season is poised to continue important representation of struggles involving gender and race in the award-winning show, which is aesthetically gorgeous and well-written.

The few, but incredibly important, female characters on Boardwalk Empire are fascinating. I wrote last year about the remarkable story lines in season 3 that focused on birth control and reproductive rights. Boardwalk Empire has always kept a keen eye on women’s issues–from suffrage to health care.

Season 4 is set up to be more of the same–long-form debauchery and violence with moments of poignant sub-plots featuring the female characters. Gillian is slipping deeper into a heroin addiction, and is selling herself instead of selling her house. Cora escapes a violent bedroom scene (which we will revisit in a moment). A young actress attempts to take Billie’s place in Nucky’s life for her own gain, but he rejects her. Richard has traveled to reunite with his twin sister, Emma, on her farm.

As often is the case in these seemingly masculine dramas, women are essential to the plot, even if they often aren’t the focus of most reviewers, or even the bulk of the action. Nucky is king, Al Capone is pulling strings, and Chalky is set to be a power player.

Drink, talk, shoot, repeat.

But those moments that the women of Boardwalk Empire are on screen are among the best of each episode. Their parts are small. Their scenes are brief. But each is meaningful and powerful. The women characters are complex–evil, moral, conflicted, good mothers, bad mothers, addicts and everything in between. They are three-dimensional. This is a good thing.

The female-centric subplots in Boardwalk Empire are treasures buried in a pile of empty whiskey bottles. Most reviewers, however, focus on the men. Hollywood Life only mentions the male characters (except for the mention of Nucky getting smarter about women). The Huffington Post mentions Gillian briefly and Cora (but not by her name). Rolling Stone does do a better job of fully describing and summarizing the episode.

The fact that critics often ignore or reduce women characters isn’t surprising, although it’s always frustrating. What’s horrifying, however, are a few critics’ responses to the aforementioned violent sex scene.

Just like Boardwalk Empire has woven in subplots of women’s struggles, it has also presented the endemic racial tension in Nucky’s world in a way that makes viewers uncomfortable (especially since our culture is still so steeped in racism). Not everyone seems to get this, though.

From left, Dickey, Cora, Dunn and Chalky.

At Chalky’s new club, he sits watching the new talent with his right-hand man, Dunn, and a white talent agent, Dickey, and his girlfriend, Cora. Cora sketches an erotic drawing of her and Dunn, and asks him to come upstairs. The two start having sex, and Dickey makes himself known in the room as he draws a gun against Dunn. Dunn scrambles to put on his pants, and Cora immediately says he had forced her. This is all a game, though, for Dickey and Cora. Dickey forces Dunn to resume having sex with Cora, and all the while Dickey is throwing racial epithets, heavily peppering his slurs with the N-word and claims about how black men behave.

Dickey starts masturbating. “It’s all just some fun,” Cora says with a smile.

Then Dickey says, “There’s no changing you people.” With this, Dunn breaks a bottle over Dickey’s head and proceeds to stab him repeatedly and viciously. We are surprisingly comfortable with this outcome of the scene, because Dunn’s humiliation and objectification is so visceral, as is the racism. This scene is indicative of not only the racism and degradation of black Americans at the time (echoed by Nucky’s almost-mistress who says the Onyx Girls are “deliciously primitive”), but also the demand that they perform as objects for whites’ entertainment and sexual purposes, without agency. The power that Dickey wields over Dunn–his whiteness, his gun, his hand down his pants–is nauseating and historically accurate. This scene is about racism. This scene is about power, humiliation and resistance when one is caught up against a wall of disgusting degradation.

However, the aforementioned reviewers had a different reading of this scene.

From Hollywood Life:

“…Chalky finds out that being the boss requires a lot of cleanup. Like when after his sidekick Dunn Purnsley (Erik LaRay Harvey), in the most awkwardly violent scene of the episode, murders a booking agent after the guy catches him sleeping with his wife — and then forces Dunn to continue while he watches. Boardwalk Empire, ladies and gentlemen!”

Certainly a brief show recap isn’t always the place for heavy cultural analysis, but to brush off the scene with such flippant commentary? Privilege, ladies and gentlemen!

Not to be topped, the Huffington Post saw Dunn’s actions as self-defense:

“So Dunn did what he had to do, smashing the guy’s head with a liquor bottle to get himself out of danger. And then he went the extra murderous mile, repeatedly stabbing the guy in the throat with the broken bottle, because it’s Boardwalk Empire.”

Are you kidding me? Dunn murdering Dickey had nothing to do with him being in danger. It had everything to do with him being degraded and humiliated.

Rolling Stone acknowledges Dunn’s true motivations, but still misses the mark:

“He may have moved up the ranks from jail antagonist to kitchen worker to Chalky’s right-hand man, but Dunn doesn’t know shit about doing business, especially with white folks in 1924. I can’t blame him for pounding a broken bottle into Dickey’s face repeatedly – not only was he forced to have sex with Cora at gunpoint, but Dickey degraded him even further with regular use of the n-word and vicious taunts like, ‘There’s no changing you people.’ Except Chalky knows that you can’t go around killing Cotton Club employees (Cora manages to escape) just for ’15 minutes’ worth of jelly.'”

Yes, perhaps Chalky knows how to do business with white folks, but his “jelly” comment is inaccurate–that’s not what Dunn killed for. Except for killing Dickey (which even this reviewer acknowledges a motivation for), Dunn didn’t really do anything wrong.

And perhaps most egregious, buried in an approximately 2.5-million-word recap from New Jersey:

“‘It’s all just some fun,’ the wife assures. Not to Purnsley who, after they begin the humiliating deed, blasts a whiskey bottle clear across Dickie’s face. It’s doesn’t just stop there, however, the beating continues until the booking agent is dead and his wife, in horror, escapes through the window, naked. Purnsley stands there a bloody mess.”

There are some pretty pertinent details missing here. In this review, Dunn seems to be painted as a savage villain, lashing out for no clear reason. That’s not what happens.

Reviewers saw Dunn acting in self-defense (which further reduces his perceived power), not understanding how to do business with white people (blaming his sexuality and ignorance), or lashing out in savage violence without clear motivation.

Reviewers ignore the implications of racism.

Reviewers sideline female characters.

Reviewers do this because too frequently, the lens they are looking through is of the white male experience. This is privilege.

Even when the artifact itself deals with gender and race in a way designed to challenge viewers, reviewers often overlook it. I was uncomfortable, horrified and excited during the premier of Boardwalk Empire this season. I continue to see complex female characters and pointed commentary on racism.

Sally, Margaret and Gillian.

I’m disappointed, then (and even horrified), when critics ignore these aspects, or get them terribly wrong. Their recaps and analyses help shape the conversations surrounding these shows, and if they just focus on those smoke-filled rooms and the power brokers, without fully paying attention to the other characters, they are insulting women, people of color and those who work so hard to write about and represent them.

However, if we can look past the critics, there is much to be excited for in season 4. Still to come this season, Patricia Arquette will play a speakeasy owner and Jeffrey Wright will play a Harlem gangster who is seeped in the politics of the Harlem Renaissance. These moments that have made Boardwalk Empire exceptional–the moments of clear gender and racial historical context and commentary–are poised to take center stage in season 4. Hopefully we can all look through the clouds of white male smoke to see what lies ahead.

Valentin and Maitland

________________________________________________________

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

The Bechdel Test and Women in Movies

The original Bechdel Test

This piece by Magda Knight originally appeared at Mookychick and is cross-posted with permission.

A 1985 comic strip by US cartoonist Alison Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For, features a character who says they’d only go to see a movie on three conditions:

The film has at least two named women in it

Who talk to each other at some point in the film

About something other than a man

The idea of the Bechdel Test caught on, and you can now visit the Bechdel Test Movie List, a giant community-run resource that catalogues over 4,000 films which have women talking to each other about not-man things. I highly recommend you check out it out. Partly because it’s really interesting and eye-opening (Straw Dogs just makes it), but mainly because you’ll see passionate and lengthy discussions of the merits of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls and whether the lead females, being ponies, pass the test. AND OH, THEY DO. THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS IS RESTORED.

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls

How do I feel about the validity of the Bechdel Test? My only reservation about it is that I think it’s terribly neat, and I fear tidy things because, as Erma Bombeck said, “My idea of tidy is to sweep the room with a glance.” Tidy is not something I demand of my hair, my house, my film theory or my beliefs. Tidy is rigid, and life ebbs and flows like a vast, floppy, wet and ultimately quite messy ocean teeming with potential and things with too many legs and other things, also with probably too many legs, all of which I’d honestly rather not have to tidy up. If you’re something with that many legs, you can tidy up after yourself. I’ll be on the sofa reading a book.

Einstein believed the universe would eventually boil down to just one universal constant, but I don’t even think art can be condensed into one neat little set of rules, however awesome they are. After all, Fight Club is one of many excellent movies that fails the Bechdel Test, and I’m not going to harsh on Marla the Magnificent’s buzz for not talking to any women in the movie. Hot damn, Marla.


Helena Bonham Carter as Marla in Fight Club

Bride Wars, on the other hand, gets a flying pass, and it’s a hideously cynical chick flick about two “best friends” who have sculpted their life ambitions around weddings. They discover they’re booked into the same hotel for a wedding on the same day and turn on each other like rabid dogs and dye each other’s hair blue without asking first because HEY THAT’S WHAT WOMEN BEST FRIENDS DO. The first rule of Fight Club is you don’t talk about Fight Club (unless it’s to gush about the wonderfully dark things it says about the human condition). The first rule of Bride Wars is, obviously, to just not watch it.

What I really do love about the Bechdel Test is the wonderful questions it encourages us to raise. I think it’s excellent for filmmakers and screenwriters to have in the back of their minds: Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if this film I’m creating had some women who talked to each other? Whose lives didn’t triangulate around men like bogeys on a radar screen?

Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson in Bride Wars

A study by the University of California looking at the 100 most successful box office films in 2012 found that just under 30% of the speaking roles were for women, and nearly 30% of those had revealing clothes, a figure which jumped to 56% for teenage girls. And never mind the clothes–how many of those speaking roles were for first or second billing, I wonder, and how many of them involved saying something other than, “We showed each other our private parts yesterday so let’s talk about where this relationship is headed, Dave,” or “Honey, of course you’ll make it through the robot jungle alive. I knitted you a robot handkerchief for good luck; now kiss me, you great big loveable robot fool”?

Helen Mirren

2013 has been a particularly tricky and vocal year for women in films and visual entertainment:

In March, Helen Mirren publicly criticised Sam Mendes for not including any women filmmakers in his list of inspirations and spoke out against the lack of women in the film industry when accepting her Empire Legend Award. BOOM.

Professor Maggie Gale of the University of Manchester revealed to the Daily Telegraph that more plays were written by women in the Sufragette era than there are today.

Thandie Newton told CNN how she’d been forced to have a movie camera stuck under her skirt as a teenager for a screen test. And how the resulting footage had been played to other people privately. Eurgh.

Audrey Tatou (Amelie, The Da Vinci Code) told the Radio Times that she decided not to pursue a Hollywood career because she did not want “every single millimetre” of her body being scrutinised, because the Hollywood approach to an actress’s figure was “unforgiving.” If even Audrey Tatou feels she can’t aspire to be Audrey Tatou, what chance does a young female actress following in her footsteps have?

It’s not just western cinema, either; Aruna Irani has spoken out against the lack of good roles for middle-aged women in Bollywood, saying, “There is no role for female characters, especially of my age group. Actresses like Hemaji, Rakhiji and Moushmiji, they all are just at home. And if sometimes they get the chance to be part of a film, then that is for three or four scenes.”

Audrey Tatou

It’s almost a case of: if you’re a young and talented actress, you better make the most of those apples in your cheeks while you’ve still got them, apple-face, because only three women of your generation will get to be Maggie Smith or Helen Mirren, and you’re going to be expected to fight other actresses tooth and nail–almost as if you’d booked a wedding in the same place on the same day–to be one of them. And that percentage of women with speaking parts in film? The number’s been going down since 2009, not up. Speaking roles for women in film are currently at their lowest in five years.

Sony’s Amy Pascal, who ranks 14th on Forbes‘ 20 Most Powerful Women in Business list, gave a really interesting interview on closing the pay gap between men and women in Hollywood, and why women get paid less than men. I literally couldn’t figure out how to fit that into this article tidily (see above), so I’m just going to throw it in there. Enjoy!

Sony’s Amy Pascal

If we take some positives from this…

If you’re creating a film or play, consider the Bechdel Test. Could your script do with more speaking parts for women? Even older women? About non-man things?

If you’re not creating a film or play but have always wanted to, give it a go. There are more Jane Campions and Kathryn Bigelows out there in the filmosphere, and one of them might be you.

If you’re an actress, ALL POWER TO YOU. Things will be addressed, and they will get better. If it gets to the point where you’re giving an interview to CNN or accepting an Empire Legend Award? It’s not just acknowledgement for your talent and hard work, it’s a platform. If you speak out, people will hear you…

@MagdaKnight is the Co-Founding Editor of Mookychick. Her YA fiction and other writings have been published in anthologies and in 2000AD. She likes you already, so Email her and say hi, or visit her blog. She is on Google+.

Women in Sports Week: Bend It Like Bynes: Ambivalent Empowerment in ‘She’s the Man’

Everybody has a secret …

This is a guest post by Caitlin Moran.

The first time I saw She’s the Man, I was in the middle of a 23-hour band trip bus ride, and probably in the first stages of delirium. I had low expectations for the movie, and even lower expectations for what remained of my sanity—and yet, when one of the chaperones popped in the She’s the Man DVD, I found myself loving it. I was sitting next to my best friend and varsity soccer teammate, and we were both loopy enough from extended time on the road to enjoy the goofier moments of the movie while still reveling in the extended soccer scenes. Still, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I returned to the movie seven years later to examine its depiction of high school sports—watching Amanda Bynes change clothes and genders on a Spin the Apple carnival ride can only be funny so many times, right? (Wrong—I will never not laugh at that scene.) But whether the rest of the movie would uphold the integrity of the female athlete was a different story altogether.

Justin and the rest of the Cornwall boys. You’re gonna regret this, bro.

Like that other perennial high school favorite set on an unbelievably beautiful campus, She’s the Man is based loosely—loosely—on Shakespeare, in this case Twelfth Night. Bynes plays Viola Hastings, a high school soccer star, living out the last days of summer playing the beautiful game with beautiful people, including her boyfriend Justin (Robert Hoffman), on the beach. But the start of school brings unwelcome surprises: in the first ten minutes of the movie, Viola and her teammates discover that their school, Cornwall Prep, has eliminated the girls soccer team, leaving them without a way to showcase their skills for prospective college scouts. (Viola harbors dreams of wearing the Carolina blue at UNC Chapel Hill, no doubt a nod to the women’s soccer legends like Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly, among others, who played there.) If this were a very different movie, Viola would have brought a Title IX claim against Cornwall, and we would have been treated to courtroom montages instead of training scenes. But Viola takes a different route: after Justin laughs in her face at the idea of the girls trying out for the boys’ team—and gets himself epically dumped—Viola hatches a plan to impersonate her twin brother Sebastian (secretly in London with his bandmates) at rival high school Illyria, make the boys’ soccer team there, and beat Justin at his own game. Literally.

Hell hath no fury like a girls soccer team scorned

Complications ensue, as they must. Viola-as-Sebastian finds herself in the middle of a messy love triangle between her hunky roommate Duke (Channing Tatum, at his most bro-with-a-heart-of-gold) and Duke’s object of affection, Olivia (Laura Ramsey), who begins falling for “Sebastian” during intimate chats over dissected animals in science lab. Circling this sticky wicket are Monique (Alexandra Breckinridge), the real Sebastian’s horrid girlfriend who refuses to be dumped, and Viola’s mother (Lynda Byrd), who cherishes dreams of seeing her little tomboy walk across the stage as a debutante. Oh, and there’s a tarantula.

Even in the midst of all the hullabaloo, the movie does manage to devote a fair amount of time to soccer. Viola tries out for the boys’ team and makes second string, after informing Coach Dinklage, played by real-life footballer/testicle-grabber Vinnie Jones, that she is unable to play on the “skins” team in shirts v. skins because she is “allergic to the sun”—and yes, you can buy that phrase on a hoodie. Second string, however, isn’t good enough to get Viola on the field against Cornwall, so she strikes a bargain with Duke: he’ll help her up her game enough to make first string in time for the Cornwall game, and she’ll convince Olivia to give Duke a date. They both succeed, but when the real Sebastian returns from London the night before the big game, Viola’s tangled web begins to unravel. But still—I’m sure you can guess where this is going, in the end, right down to the final game-deciding penalty kick awarded to Viola against—surprise!—Cornwall goalie Justin.

Who is that handsome fellow?

Viola’s conquest of her gross ex is facilitated through this penalty kick, on a pitch where the winners and losers are clearly delineated. This isn’t a symbolic victory: Viola literally puts the winning point on the board. Unlike the weak, intolerable Monique, who is destined to storm in and out of scenes in a constant state of prissy frustration, Viola uses soccer to transcend her status as a girl, which otherwise would mark her as an idolized object of desire (Olivia), a walking punchline (her unfortunately headgeared classmate Eunice), or tokens of sexual conquest (her former teammates Kia and Yvonne, who pretend to be her desperate exes to increase her cred with the Illyria boys). Through her athletic talent, Viola gets to vanquish the boy who insulted and belittled her on a playing field where the subsequent victors are easily recognizable.

Amanda Bynes as Viola in She’s the Man

Interestingly, although Justin almost immediately becomes the villain who Viola must overcome, it didn’t start out that way. In fact, the first lines of the movie are Justin’s, emphatically celebrating Viola’s goal during the beach soccer game, before telling her that she’s better than half the guys on his team. Here is a perfect example of the affirming boyfriend that sunny, sassy Viola deserves. It’s only when Viola threatens to encroach on Justin’s (literal) turf that he changes his tune, agreeing with Cornwall coach Pistonek that girls can’t play sports at the same level as boys. Obviously we’re meant to revel in the downfall caused by his misogyny, and I certainly did, but we’re also meant to celebrate the willingness of Duke—and Coach Dinklage—to give Viola a spot on the team despite her gender once she’s found out. Yet I find myself unable to believe that the eminently “no homo” Duke we met in the first half hour of the movie would have reacted any differently than Justin did, if he knew that “Sebastian” was a girl all along.

In the end, She’s the Man is ambivalent about the role of soccer in Viola’s life. On one hand, Viola does prove that she can play with the boys, and at times even exceed them. She conquers Justin and Coach Pistonek, who doubted and mocked her. But everything about her soccer career is irreparably tangled up with her relationships with boys. When she decides to impersonate her brother, she’s doing it just to stick it to Justin—no UNC Chapel Hill scouts will come to see her as a boy. Even the side volley she uses to score on Justin in the final game wouldn’t have been possible without a setup from Duke (who taught her the move in the first place).

Viola (aka Sebastian) hanging with the guys

The last shot of the movie shows Viola and Duke together on the field in Illyria red, seemingly bearing out Coach Dinklage’s rather touching commitment to equality on the pitch. But whether this equality can be sustained long term—especially on a team of guys who were so impressed when Viola-as-Sebastian cruelly humiliated Monique in front of an entire restaurant—remains to be seen. And even if it can be, what happens to the rest of Viola’s former teammates, still stuck at Cornwall without a team or a twin brother to impersonate? Don’t they deserve a revenge penalty kick as well? For real-life Violas—and Kias and Yvonnes—the importance of Title IX protection can’t be overstated. What the movie could have done was show that all female athletes—not just the ones good enough to play with the boys—deserve their day on the pitch. Perhaps there will be a sequel—She’s the Man: Title IX Lawsuit. Now that’s a sports movie I would pay to see.

Caitlin Moran is a textbook editor with a penchant for sassy footnotes. After spending many years battling Western New York winters, she now lives in Queens with a cat and too many books for her apartment. Her work has appeared in Post Road, Pleiades, Pure Francis, and the Women’s Media Center blog.

Where Have You Gone, Sarah Connor?

Remember Linda Hamilton (playing Sarah Connor) and her guns in Terminator 2?

This guest post by Holly Derr is cross-posted with permission from The Ms. Magazine Blog.

Summer always makes me a bit nostalgic for childhood. I remember fondly the excitement of being out of school, the long days with nothing to do but read and the cool refuge from the hot Texas sun provided by a matinee of a summer blockbuster at the local movie theater.

Unfortunately, this summer’s action movies have left me nostalgic for more than the air conditioning. Only a few of the most highly anticipated movies of the summer feature more than one woman, and those women are primarily co-stars, not leads. After Earth and World War Z have wives who stay home while the man goes on the adventure. Elysium co-stars Jodie Foster as a bad guy, but from what little information has been released on the plot, her weapon of choice appears to be government red tape. Even Monsters University only has one female student—and she’s a cheerleader.

Anne Hathaway as Catwoman

To make matters worse, the characters who do get in on the action are mostly played by women who cannot believably fight. The Heat is a buddy cop movie starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, but it looks to be more comedy than action. The female hero of Kick Ass 2 is a young girl. And though Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts in Iron Man 3, Zoe Saldana as Uhura in Star Trek: Into Darkness, Gal Gadot as Giselle and Michelle Rodriguez as Letty in Fast and Furious 6, and Rinko Kikuchi as Pacific Rim‘s Mako Mori are supposedly tough, they are so thin that it’s hard to believe that they’re actually capable of action. In fact, though Uhura is present for two of the fights in the new Star Trek, in the first, she mainly hides behind a wall, and in the second, she merely fires a phaser which, being a phaser, doesn’t even have any kickback.

This trend is disturbing but not accidental: The diets these women go on to prepare for their roles mean that no matter how much training they do, they’re not eating enough to build muscle. To prepare for Catwoman, Anne Hathaway went vegan and was, by her own account, exhausted all the time. Not surprisingly she failed to build any muscle despite intensive training: most scientists agree that the full range of amino acids responsible for muscle growth is only found in animal products. (Think about it–have you ever seen a muscular vegan?) Gwyneth Paltrow published her “elimination” diet in her book, It’s All Good, and indeed it does appear she does more eliminating than eating. And Alice Eve, whose totally unnecessary underwear scene as Carol Marcus in Star Trek: Into Darkness has prompted its fair share of criticism, told Allure that to prepare for the role she ate nothing but spinach for five months. Perhaps that’s why she and her counterpart in the film, Saldana (who clocks in it at a whopping 115 pounds) spend most of the movie looking like they are about to cry.

Ellen Ripley

I say we bring back Ripley. To prepare for her role in Aliens, Sigourney Weaver did dumbbell chest presses, squats, shoulder presses, and rows—all with weights—and she didn’t diet at all. Did you hear that? Not at all. I say we bring back Sarah Connor. In Terminator 2, Linda Hamilton did basic soldier training and ate a high-protein diet, and, indeed, she has guns in her hands and on her arms. Or remember when a 140-pound Jamie Lee Curtis did a strip tease to protect her “cover” in True Lies? Now that was a motivated underwear scene. (Note to J.J. Abrams: Having Eve take her clothes off in the middle of rushing from one place to the next for no reason at all is simply objectification.)

These female heroes of yore were popular not just because they were badass: They were also fantastic characters. Unfortunately, the summer movie with the best female fights (and the most diverse casting) is probably going to be the one that provides the least opportunity for character development. Gina Carrano, an actual Mixed Martial Arts professional, and Michelle Rodriguez did almost all of their own fights for Fast and Furious 6, and those fights are pretty damn cool. But because Rodriguez’s character Letty has amnesia, she moves through every moment of the film when she’s not driving or fighting like she’s in a daze. Carrano as Riley never speaks more than one or two lines per scene.

Saldana, Eve and Paltrow are gorgeous and talented, and the problems with their performances are largely the result of underwritten characters. I don’t mean to body shame this summer’s starlets for being slender, though I do wish they would eat. I mean to shame Hollywood for asking them to starve themselves, and to shame a culture that thinks starving women are beautiful. It’s not a coincidence that many women action heroes are actually children—that’s about as big as Hollywood lets women get these days.

Media-saavy Geena Davis, in an interview about her movie The Long Kiss Goodnight (in which she played amnesiac CIA agent Samantha Caine who, like Jason Bourne, has forgotten who she was but not how to fight), explained why this matters:

Thelma and Louise had a big reaction, there was a huge thing at the time, that, ‘Oh my god, these women had guns and they actually killed a guy!’ … That movie made me realize—you can talk about it all you want, but watch it with an audience and talk to women who have seen this movie and they go, ‘YES!’ They feel so adrenalized and so powerful after seeing some women kick some ass and take control of their own fate. … Women go, ‘Yeah – fucking right!’ Women don’t get to have that experience in the movies. But hey, people go to action movies for a reason; they want to feel adrenalized and they want to identify with the hero, and if only guys get to do that then it’s crazy.

Long live Samantha Caine. Long live Thelma and Louise.

Holly L. Derr is a writer, director, and professor living in Los Angeles. She writes regularly for The Ms. Magazine Blog on theater, film, television and reproductive rights. Her tumblr Feminist Fandom addresses representation of sex, gender, sexuality, and race in the media. Follow her @hld6oddblend.

Nothing Can Save ‘The Walking Dead’s Sexist Woman Problem

Michonne in The Walking Dead

Written by Megan Kearns | Warning: spoilers ahead!

So the season 3 finale of The Walking Dead. What can I say? Is there less sexism than last season’s appalling anti-abortion storyline with Lori’s pregnancy? Did the addition of badass Michonne change the gender dynamics?

I’m going to warn you right now. This post isn’t going to be pretty. Not with all the misogyny. When it comes to its female characters and depiction of gender, The Walking Deadhas progressively deteriorated. It incessantly pisses me off with its rearticulation of patriarchy and sexist gender tropes. And no, it’s not a commentary on patriarchy. Rather it’s a defense of hyper-masculinity.

I’ve written before about The Walking Dead’s shitty job portraying women and its depiction of sexist retro gender roles. I was finally excited when Michonne (Danai Gurira) arrived as we hadn’t witnessed a fierce woman in any leadership role yet. Finally, we would see a fearless, powerful, clever, complex female character. And a woman of color! Yet I remained skeptical due to the tissue thin female characters and all of the sexism contaminating the show in the previous two seasons. My prediction came true: Michonne couldn’t save the show’s sexism.

In the comics, Michonne is a fan favorite. She’s complex, interesting, with resiliency and strength. Sadly we get little of that same warrior woman in the TV series. Yes, she’s a badass. Yes, she’s adept with a sword. But that’s pretty much it.

Michonne enters the show in an aura of mystery. Cloaked, sword-wielding, holding the chains of two Walkers. But typically we need to see beneath the veneer in order to care about a character. But we haven’t been allowed in to her backstory at all. We need to see their vulnerabilities, weaknesses, struggles, hopes. Even awesome Daryl is given moments to shine, like when he grieves for his brother Merle or holds baby Judith, nicknaming her Little Ass-Kicker. The only time we witness anything of the sort in Michonne is when she holds Andrea (Laurie Holden) in a tender embrace in the finale — before Andrea commits suicide to avert zombiehood – and we get a glimpse in the episode when Michonne protects Carl and reveals to Rick that she hears voices too, letting him know he’s not alone.

When we first meet Michonne, she saves Andrea, serving as a “black caretaker,” perilously playing out the “Magical Negro” trope. Even her friendship with Andrea became a missed opportunity, barely explored, something Laurie Holden, the actor who plays Andrea, laments as well. Michonne is regarded with suspicion by Rick’s Prison Camp Crew, even though other people, like the inmates, were considered to be “one of them.” And yes, I’m aware that they eventually bestow this distinction onto Michonne as well. But only after Carl — a 13-year-old boy — says so. When a teenaged boy gets more respect than the grown-ass women??? Can’t. Even. Deal.

When it comes to the potential for female leaders, the series does have Michonne who not only survived alone but also saved Andrea. But why must Michonne have to prove her worth in relation to saving Andrea, Carl or Rick — all the white characters? Michonne essentially proves her worth not by being a strong survivor, not through intelligence, not through empathy — but by how she rescues and serves white people on the show.

So how were the other women depicted this season?

Andrea in The Walking Dead

I know Andrea pissed off a ton of people with her ridiculous decisions. She continually annoyed me…and I liked her! I mean, c’mon, am I really supposed to believe such a smart woman would make such stupid choices when it came to men? Choosing psychopaths Shane AND the Governor?? Oh wait, women do choose shitty dudes in real life. But the problem here isn’t that Andrea makes the worst romantic choices; I mean who hasn’t made horrendous decisions?

No, the problem is that Andrea’s life didn’t revolve around her friendship with Michonne, the woman who saved her, or her friendships with the people at the prison. Ultimately, the outspoken woman who strived to make the moral choice, a woman who was a lawyer before the zombie apocalypse, her life eventually revolved around dudes. Correction, in season 3, just one dude: The Governor. That’s right, the same dude who sexually assaulted another female character.

In probably the most heinous act of the season, in the episode “When the Dead Come Knocking,” Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Glenn have been captured by the Governor. The Governor separates the two of them and interrogates Maggie alone. But his interrogation quickly dissolves into full on sexual assault. He terrorizes her. He forces her to undress. He bends her over and slams her against a table. He threatens her with rape. He uses intimidation and humiliation to exert his power and dominance.

Sexual assault should never be used as a plot device. What purpose did this incident serve? To show what an unhinged, misogynistic douchebag The Governor is? Perhaps. But it was completely unnecessary. And don’t tell me that Michonne is raped in the comics so what Maggie endures isn’t that big a deal because it was just the threat of rape. Yeah, it’s a big fucking deal. Women are raped and sexually assaulted and harassed daily. Our rape culture normalizes violence against women and conflates violence with sexuality.

It’s also interesting to note that the writers changed the sexual assault survivor from a black woman to a white woman. Too often, the media erases the narratives of black women rape and assault survivors, choosing to focus on white women survivors.

Maggie in The Walking Dead

Maggie started off last season so ballsy and opinionated. But she’s devolved as the show progresses to being fairly deferential to Glenn. If she became quieter, more withdrawn and introverted after the trauma of her sexual assault, that would make sense. But her passivity started happening long ago. Maggie, who was promoted to series regular this season, was given nothing of a storyline other than hot sex with Glenn and surviving the trauma of sexual assault. And we only get a brief moment where she lashes out at Glenn because of that trauma. The rest of the time, we see how it affects Glenn, not Maggie. As if it matters more how the Governor’s rape tendencies impact Glenn (the dude) more than Maggie, the one assaulted.

And the depiction of masculinity is problematic too. Glenn wasn’t “a real man” until he was tortured. And let’s not forget that Glenn is an Asian American man which plays into the pervasive stereotype that depicts Asian American men as emasculated in U.S. media.

But women aren’t just punished with sexual assault, but also by death. Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) doesn’t have a huge role this season. She argues with Rick and Carl and laments to Hershel that they hate her. She worries that something will go wrong and she’ll die in childbirth. Which she does. When she’s losing a lot of blood, she asks Maggie to perform a C-section, knowing she will bleed out. Then Lori is killed by her son, aka potential-sociopath-in-training Carl, so she won’t come back as a walker. Lori must be punished for her infidelity (and insipid annoyance) in the previous seasons. And so she dies. Shameful slut!

In addition to Lori’s death, we also have Andrea — who’s an excellent shot and warrior, and never would have gotten bit — bitten by Mitch. She then dies by a self-inflicted gunshot to the head so she won’t become a walker. Will Andrea’s death catalyze vulnerability in Michonne? Or will it be leveraged to show how Rick and the other dudes handle pain??

Now, I’m not saying that female characters can’t or shouldn’t die. It’s a zombie apocalypse. Of course there’s going to be brutal deaths. But when the women’s deaths exist as a vehicle to convey the pain of the men, that’s a problem.

Lori and Carl in The Walking Dead

What we’re witnessing with the women of The Walking Dead is the Women in Refrigerators Syndrome — women killed, raped, stripped of their power — in order to propel the plot and show the progression and struggles of the male characters. Also, as T.S. Christian told me on Twitter, in a Black Girl Nerds podcast, @TheRayVolution astutely asserted that women always die to illustrate the horrendous state of the world.

Again, it’s all about the men. The women, even the awesome ones, are nothing more than props to propel the male characters’ emotional journeys and transformations.

So what about the other women on the show? Thankfully, we’re starting to see Carol in a more assertive role. She speaks up and voices her opinion and seems to be more resourceful. We also meet Sasha, a good shot who teases her brother Tyreese. Oh yeah and then there’s the blond girl, Maggie’s sister, whose name I can’t even remember, that’s how unforgettable she is. Why? Because all she does is sing and hold the baby. Seriously.

None of the women are truly respected on the show. None of their opinions are valued or considered. When Rick has a problem, he confides in Hershel and Darryl. He listens to their advice. None of the women sway him. And of course none of the women lead, nor can we even consider them as leaders, as we saw when Glenn talked about how he was second in command. Um, okay.

So why can’t ladies lead in a post-apocalyptic world? Well according to Robert Kirkman, it’s science. I shit you not. In fact The Walking Dead comics creator and TV producer/writer said in an interview:

“I don’t mean to sound sexist, but as far as women have come over the last 40 years, you don’t really see a lot of women hunters. They’re still in the minority in the military, and there’s not a lot of female construction workers. I hope that’s not taken the wrong way. I think women are as smart, resourceful, and capable in most things as any man could be … but they are generally physically weaker. That’s science.”

Here’s a hint to all you mansplainers out there. It’s never, ever, ever a good idea to start your statement with “I don’t mean to sound sexist.” Why? Because clearly you’re about to drop some shit that is indeed sexist. So women remain a minority in the military and as construction workers because of science. You know, not because of sexist gender prejudices about women’s physical abilities. Right. Silly me. Why didn’t I think of science??? Must be because of my ladyparts.

Now to be fair, that interview was about the comics and it transpired 4 years ago. But as evidenced by the repetition of sexist tomfoolery in the TV series, which is interesting considering the depiction of women is much better in the comics, Kirkman obviously hasn’t changed his stance on gender. Nor have any of the other TV writers apparently. It explains so much.

Hmmm so which season is worse? The season 2 horrendous handling of emergency contraception and its anti-abortion plotline? Or is it Season 3 with sexual assault used as a plot device and women dying to propel men’s emotional journeys? It’s all bullshit.

It’s very apparent The Walking Dead doesn’t care about exploring gender dynamics in any meaningful way or deconstructing gender roles to explore societal limitations. And to an extent that’s fine. Not everything has to be some massive social commentary. Although believe me, I’d be delighted. But as I’ve written before, when you’re dealing in the realm of fantasy or playing with the bounds of reality, why depict sexism? Why not imagine something different?

And don’t even get me started on the idiotic argument, “Well, that’s life. That’s what would happen during an apocalypse of any kind.” I call bullshit. Am I really supposed to believe that if the shit hits the fan, women can’t or won’t be able to pull themselves together and not only survive but take leadership roles? Obviously that’s ludicrous.

With Robert Kirkman reinforcing the notion that sexism builds the foundation of the series, my hope that The Walking Dead will improve regarding its depiction of women, race and gender has shattered. So I’ll stop hoping it will get better and just keep on hate-watching it.

Guest Writer Wednesday: "Girls Make Movies Too": Riding on Kim Swift’s Call to Arms

This is a guest post from the New York Film Academy Faculty.

A few weeks ago, the incredibly talented Kim Swift wrote an outspoken blog post which resonated with people who are keen to see a positive shift in the industry.

Now rightfully recognized as a creative powerhouse in the industry, Swift notes that it was only down to parental support and determination which got her so far in a male-dominated industry rather than any notable female role models. “I didn’t see a person with two X chromosomes that I could point and go ‘Yes, if she did it, so can I!’”

Swift went on to add: “So, I have a secret wish. Whenever I’m in the public eye, whether it’s doing PR or giving a talk – and this is going to sound amazingly corny — I hope that there’s a little girl out there that sees me and thinks to herself, “Oh look! Girls make games too.”

And save for the last two words of that quote, or any prior knowledge of Kim’s work, you’d think she was talking about the film industry.

Although the gaming and film industry has many parallels, none are more prevalent than the male-centricity which run deep in both. If anything, girls in gaming have had a rougher ride over the past few decades than chicks in flicks, especially since leading ladies in film are often treated in reverence whereas their virtual sisters are nearly always sexualized to the point of banality. Either way, we can still borrow a lot of Kim’s wisdom when it comes to women driving the engine behind the curtain.

Is it Getting Better Anyway?

Arguably, yes. There has been a big paradigm shift in the last five years in gaming and the same is true – of an arguably lesser scale – in Hollywood. Even if the possibility of direct intervention is slim, the more the community writes on feminist issues in film, the more we raise consciousness amongst the general moviegoer and studios gradually move to meet demand. Although they had a few minor issues, movies like last year’s Brave and Hunger Games were a step in the right direction and proved to the establishment that they won’t be punished in the box office for empowering female leads.

So that’s the front of the house seemingly in order, or at least on the up. But what about the back of the shop?

It’s not looking good.

Around a decade ago, the figures were extremely grim. The representation of women in the fields of writing, directing, production and cinematography have always been shocking – bouncing up and down by a couple of percent points every year for the last decade – but as of 2011 (the latest figures we have) show that things are about as worse as ever.

According to long-windedly named (but totally brilliant) Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film, only 5% of the top grossing films of 2011 were directed by women. That’s the lowest its been in… well, we can’t find statistics for any year in which we’ve had less female directors. Women wrote 14% of the top grossing films for 2011, a four-point improvement over 2010, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. A good overview of all the figures available was posted on Indiewire which, when collated like this, posts a pretty embarrassing picture.

And there’s no excuse for such shockingly low numbers. The Center itself published an illuminating study into box office returns back in 2008 (well worth reading in full), demonstrating that: when women and men filmmakers have similar budgets for their films, the resulting box office grosses are also similar. In other words, the sex of filmmakers does not determine box office grosses.

Blowing The Winds of Change

It would be very easy to look at such figures and become despondent. But this is where a touch of positivity – a la Kim Swift – rather than negativity comes into play.

As she rightly points out, in such competitive industries it can be career suicide to put your head above the parapet too much or too often. But we need female professionals to wax lyrical about their craft in a public forum now more than ever. We’re not talking about the film writers and reviewers – heck, we’ve always been out to make as much noise as possible, and always will. We’re also not talking so much about the actresses who are already doing fine PR work.

What we want to see is every ‘invisible’ female film professional being more vocal about what it means to be a female working in a male-dominated industry, even if it’s someone who considers themselves to be ‘just a sound editor’ starting up a blog to talk about how much she loves her job. Only with a focus on all- inclusive film making, be it on a college level or higher, can we expect a positive swing into the next generation of creatives over the next couple of decades.

And if you’re not in the industry but a film fanatic nonetheless, be sure to spread the above figures (or this blog post) anywhere you can.

Change comes from the bottom up.

———-

At New York Film Academy, all programs are based on the philosophy of “learning by doing.” NYFA offers an intensive, hands-on, total immersion approach to learning. The academy maintains an unparalleled faculty and one of the largest film and production equipment inventories in the world. Courses offered include Filmmaking, Acting for Film, Producing, Screenwriting, Documentary, Cinematography, Game Design, Animation and Photography.

The Women of The Walking Dead: A Comparative Analysis of the Comic vs. TV

Written by Amanda Rodriguez

*Spoiler Alert*

If you’re at all like me, you’re constantly frustrated by the characterizations of the women of The Walking Dead AMC series, their choices, and their actions. The show has received significant criticism for its paternalistic attitude, its throwback gender roles, and its lack of strong, capable female characters. Though the current season (Season 3) has made some positive changes with the greater development of Maggie, Andrea, and Carol as well as the addition of the samurai sword-wielding Michonne, a lot is left to be desired. As a huge fan of the sometimes flawed, but overall intelligent and compelling graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman, I feel it is my duty to show you what you’re missing. Through a comparison of the women of The Walking Dead comic and TV series, it’ll become clear that the negative and weak representations of women are conscious, deliberate choices that the writers of the show have made in a departure from the original source material of the comic series.

Let’s start with Lori Grimes, the pregnant wife of Rick and mother of Carl who dies in childbirth in Season 3 of the TV series.

Yes, TV Lori does a lot of laundry & traditional “woman’s work.”

Lori has an affair with Shane, Rick’s best friend, when she’s under the impression Rick died during the zombie outbreak. Interestingly enough, the TV Lori is given far more reason to believe Rick is dead because Shane lies to her, telling her he saw Rick die. In the comic, she, like most people, can’t realistically hope that loved ones survived the outbreak, especially because Rick was comatose in a hospital. Despite the fact that she is given ample validation for seeking comfort in the arms of a long loved and trusted friend, TV Lori is consistently villainized. Her character is unlikeable, weak-willed, flighty, and she refuses to take a stance on important issues for her group, then blames others when things don’t work out. In fact, she Lady Macbeths (that’s a verb now) Rick and Shane into fighting over her to the death. Shane dies very early on in the comic series, and his beef with Rick is only partially his rabid love of Lori (the rest being their fundamental disagreement concerning how best to protect the group as well as Shane’s growing mental unbalance).

Together, comic Lori & Rick look adoringly upon their new baby

Though Lori wasn’t my favorite character in the comics, we empathize with her affair, and her bond with Rick is cemented and deepened when they choose together to raise the baby she’s carrying as their own, regardless of its parentage. Her TV pregnancy and resulting death in childbirth are punishment for her affair and for the continued implication that she’s a bad mother to Carl. It seems the writers believed that the only way for Rick and the viewers to forgive Lori was to have her die in unspeakable pain; she is given a C-section with a dirty pocket knife and no anesthetic in a dingy basement. The only way for her to redeem herself, they seemed to think, was for her to selflessly sacrifice her life for that of her infant. In the comic, Lori lives through childbirth along with the infant, Judith, and they die together during an attack upon the prison that proves to be a bloodbath. Comic Lori’s death is shocking and tragic, revealing to the readers that no one is safe in the most visceral way imaginable. Her death in its chaotic meaninglessness becomes the most meaningful death in the entire series thus far.

Then there’s the badass Michonne who is deadly with a katana blade and makes her first appearance during the season finale of the TV show’s second season.

Both Michonnes are gallows serious & stone-cold warriors

Luckily, there’s not too terribly much different between the comic and TV Michonne characters…yet. TV’s Michonne is even more laconic and untrusting than her comic counterpart, though. Comic Michonne is obviously intelligent and admits to being a lawyer before the outbreak. She also suffers from some schizophrenic tendencies as a result of enduring the harsh road alone for so long (she hears the voice of and talks to her dead boyfriend). Unlike her TV version, comic Michonne knows she needs Rick’s group to keep her sane and to fight back those symptoms of mental instability she experiences early on. Her fierce independence is tempered then by a knowledge that working together with a group is the only way to survive and thrive. I’m seeing tendencies, however, in her TV version toward an almost debilitating anti-authoritarianism and a propensity to go rogue. This is evinced by her inability to “play nice” with the Governor even just to find out answers as well as her separating from the Rick group during their raid on Woodbury in order to exact her personal revenge. Her behavior makes Rick eager to send her packing, unlike in the comic where she is one of the most valued members of the group upon whom Rick relies always.

So, so much badassery

Her introduction to the Rick group on the TV show is problematic in the way that it diverges from her comic introduction. TV Michonne shows up at the prison badly injured, falling unconscious from her wounds after an impressive display of her skill at dispatching walkers. As the remaining walkers descend upon her inert form, the Rick group rushes to save her and treat her wounds. When she regains consciousness, she growls to Rick, “I didn’t ask for your help,” which is, of course, ridiculous because we all know she would have died without it; this is more of that display of self-destructive anti-authoritarianism. In the comic, she rescues Otis (yup, he’s still alive at the prison) from a zombie horde. Otis vouches for her, which gains her entry into the prison and the basic trust of the group. Instead of joining the group as a valued, proven member as she did in the comic, TV Michonne remains of questionable trustworthiness and is immediately indebted to Rick, his rescue of her a display of innate dominance. Even the fact that she rescued and cared for Andrea for months in the series becomes a strange downplay of her comic rescue of a male member of the group, as if the life of Andrea, a woman, isn’t as worthy as the life of Otis, a man.

Finally, we have Andrea. Tsk. Tsk. Andrea, Andrea, Andrea. Sigh.

I promise you’re missing so much Andrea awesome if you don’t read the comic

The paths of TV and comic Andrea are unrecognizably dissimilar, and her character, more than any other, proves that the TV writers cannot bring themselves to fully empower a female character. TV Andrea claims to be a good shot, but we have no evidence of it…other than her shooting Daryl instead of a walker. She is suicidal for quite some time, randomly sleeps with Shane, and ends up being sheltered and protected by Michonne for months as she recovers from sickness. Not only that, but she ends up ignoring Michonne’s warnings about Woodbury and having an affair with the psychotic Governor. In the most recent episode “The Suicide King,” the Governor’s unjustifiably erratic and cruel behavior becomes obvious even to Andrea (pitting brothers against each other in a fight to the death, admitting that he held Glen and Maggie without telling Andrea, and refusing to provide much needed leadership to the community he built). Andrea says to him, “Don’t push me away. Not now.” With my eyebrows climbing all the way to my occipital lobe, all I could think was, “Girl, why aren’t you running for the hills?!” TV Andrea lacks self-esteem and is consistently making bad choices with regards to men as well as her own safety. She takes orders from the Governor even though she knows better and can’t seem to realize, despite a plethora of evidence, that the Governor is simply bad news bears.

Now comic Andrea’s badassery rivals that of Michonne.

Blam, Blam, Blam is right

Between comic Glen and Andrea, I’m not sure which of them is the MVP of the group, both having a skillset that would be really difficult to train into a replacement. Glen’s ability to hide, scavenge, and stealth his way past walkers may actually be trumped by Andrea’s uncanny sharpshooting talents. She saves the group on countless occasions, and she’s the real reason why the body count after the prison raid wasn’t 100%, as she stood up in the guard tower picking off attackers like they were soda cans at a carnival. The scar across her freckled face is a manifestation of the toughness and survival instinct that defines her character. Not only that, but she does not have an affair with the repugnant Governor; her romantic relationship is with a much more likeable comic Dale. The two form a unique and lasting bond that brings them both solace amidst unspeakable loss and terror. They are together until Dale dies.

Comic Andrea is always an asset and never a liability to the group. Her stalwart character is too robust, too invaluable for the TV writers to translate to the screen, so they undercut her at every opportunity in a blatant attempt to make her weak, dense, and unlikeable to the audience. Both Michonne and Lori suffer similar fates in that many of their finer qualities of strength, perseverance, and cooperation are lost in translation. It’s hard to see these changes as anything less than the creators of AMC’s The Walking Dead being threatened by or at least incredulous at the prospect of powerful female characters. For any of you who think they make these changes for the sake of drama, I’ll tell you a little anecdote. I once had a friend who said, “I want to watch a horror movie where the characters do all the right things; they’re smart and skilled, and shit still goes sideways.” For the most part, that is the case with the graphic novel series. It’s a page-turner, a gut-wrencher, a heartbreaker, and without fail all the characters are more well-rounded, empathetic, and ass-kicking than their TV counterparts. The drama is in those pages, along with plenty of strong women. I hate to say this, but the writers need to STOP being “creative” and stick to the complex, morally fascinating dystopian story that inspired the series.

Conservative Political Cartoons II: The Jerkassening

Conservative Political Cartoons II: The Jerkassening
By Myrna Waldron

I had an absolute ball skewering misogynistic political cartoons last year, so I’ve decided to make this, er, “showcase” a semi-regular feature. It gets a little dull doing feminist analyses of only film and television – feminism is both a political position and a philosophy, so you can apply it to anything. And one thing I have always had an interest in is political cartoons. Particularly, I like ranting about the shitty ones. It’s probably intellectual masochism.

My thanks goes once again to the Something Awful Political Cartoon Thread, whose contributors scour the many political cartoon syndicates and godawful blogs to find these polished turds…mostly so people can yell at them. They have saved me a lot of time and possible loss of sanity. (Not that I had much in the first place)

Last time I limited the focus to the most misogynistic cartoons I could find – this time, it’s just recent cartoons that pissed me off. Variety is the spice of life, donchaknow. Plug your noses, kiddies, cause we’re diving into the dung heap.

A.F. Branco:

Liberal Media Goliath vs. Poor tiny little FOX News David

Why won’t someone think of poor little FOX News! Why, it’s just a plucky lil’ guy standing up to the big bad liberal media! The…liberal media almost exclusively owned by giant conglomerates. The liberal media whose ratings can’t even begin to match FOX News’. The liberal media that is only considered liberal in comparison to FOX News, which is so far right wing they’ve shot off into the goddamn stratosphere. Also, check out the reagan.com e-mail address. I love it when they’re unabashed stereotypes.

Bob Gorrell:

A “child’s” letter to Obama is spelled bad and therefore they are wrong.

Aww, look at the stupid little kid. They can’t spell, therefore they are stupid, and the real letters children sent to Obama pleading for gun control are also stupid. How dare those kids become frightened of being murdered when only 20 or so of them were shot to death recently! Guns are far more important than stupid children with pathetically exaggerated spelling errors. Look at that stupid kid equating guns to broccoli. Stupid kid.

Chuck Asay:

A teenager decides against a mass killing because assault rifles are banned. Good?

Well, he sure got us there! You’re right, Mr. Asay. We should instead ban guns altogether, because simply banning the massively overpowered assault rifles isn’t enough. And while we’re at it, let’s pour some more funding into mental health services so we can help kids like this! Wait, was that what you were arguing? I’m not sure anymore.

It used to be idyllic 1950s bullshit! Now women are all divorced and working and stuff.

Hoo boy look at those gender roles. “Mommy is cooking and wears a skirt! Daddy is fixing a car and wears a hat! And we live in beautiful idealized suburbia that is not at all a figment of an old man mixing his own memories with Leave It To Beaver! …Oh no! Mommy and Daddy got divorced! How awful! Divorce should never happen ever! And Mommy’s working instead of cooking! She’s supposed to be in the kitchen! Waaaa! Okay give me welfare check now please no that isn’t a non-sequitur what are you talking about.”

Pinocchio has a dilemma. He wants to deny his employees contraceptive coverage because he’s an idiot.

Isn’t it cute that Asay has completely misunderstood how Plan B/Emergency Contraception works, calling it an Abortion Pill when all it does is prevent a conception that hasn’t happened yet? How appropriate that he has used Pinocchio as his mouthpiece for saying something that is a lie.

Conservative Brony:

Women are now allowed to serve in combat! Now let’s be misogynistic pricks!

I don’t remember what this guy’s name is. He’s printed in a bunch of college newspapers, but actually published THIS, so he’s Conservative Brony to me forever. The comic strip is called Ralph and Chuck if you care. So, check out this tired and cliched Men’s Rights argument. The draft hasn’t been used in the US since the Vietnam War – a generation ago – and I’m going to go out on a limb here and posit that an almost exclusively left-wing/liberal political movement like feminism is against the draft. And that the main reason why women were exempted from the draft is because of the patriarchal belief that we should be home taking care of the children, and that we’re physically weak or something. And looky here, one of the female characters says “I can’t even kill a spider.” Proving that this concept of weak women is pretty pervasive. Go back to watching ponies, Conservative Brony. You suck at arguments.

Day By Day:

Lance Armstrong is a “pussy,” therefore he is a cheater. Or…something.

A daily webcomic written by Chris Muir. I talked about this comic a bit in the last Political Cartoon rant, but I’ll summarize it again. The grey haired dude is Muir’s self-insert. The redhead is Sam, who is half-Irish, half-Japanese and all T&A. He uses this fictional woman as a mouthpiece for MRA bullshit. He also has a black male character named Damon who he also uses as a mouthpiece on racial issues. It’s about as pathetic and offensive as you can imagine. So check this shit out. Male values are honour, truth and logic. Female values are feelings-over-fact, group-think and consumerism. He says this crap to his wife. And she somehow gets a “Lance Armstrong has been emasculated and that’s why he cheated” inference from this, and uses a misogynistic insult? Is this also making fun of his testicular cancer? I…don’t get it…what?…okay, moving on.

HILLARY CLINTON IS UGLY AND I DON’T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PUPPETS AND MARIONETTES!

HILLARY CLINTON IS 65 YEAR OLD WOMAN WHO NEEDS GLASSES MUST INSULT LOOKS FIRST HELL YEAH I GOT ONE OVER ON THAT BITCH. I’m not going to even read the rest of this shit. His arguments and talking points are unreadable and his metaphors make no sense. (You don’t put your hands up marionettes you moron) Also, fun fact, Muir’s single. I wonder why.

Eric Allie:

Liberals are dumb and they don’t know how guns work.

Allie is one of the great tragedies of political cartooning. Such a good artist with a distinctive style, and occasionally very funny…but manages to take the worst possible position about everything. But I suppose I’m just as partisan in my left-wing views as he is in his right-wing ones. I included this cartoon not because it’s particularly offensive (it’s mostly vacuous) but because the labels on that gun are actually pretty funny. Mourn that we have lost this talent to the “enemy.”

Gary Varvel:

You should feel bad about abortion because of Dead Baby Heaven!

It’s depressing how little pro-lifers actually understand about the abortion process. Varvel either thinks that all aborted babies are practically full-term, or that they magically stop being blobs of cells once they go to heaven. I have to wonder if miscarriages, stillbirths, etc are also included in this charming Dead Baby Heaven. So tell me, Mr. Varvel, if all 55 million of those babies were born, would you have been willing to give up more taxes so that the mothers could receive prenatal care and compensation for missed work, and so that these kids could be housed, clothed, and fed? Would you endorse comprehensive sex-ed that discussed contraception? Judging from your pro-life peers, I wouldn’t think so. (Also thanks for drawing the Asian babies with slanted slit eyes. Very inclusive of you.)

Glenn McCoy:

HOLLYWOOD IS TO BLAME FOR EVERYTHING GOD BLESS AMERICA

What a tired, boring, flawed and cliched argument. It astounds me how many people will point their fingers at violent media and claim it is the cause of gun violence. Canada gets the exact same media that the US does. A lot of people don’t seem to get just how similar our countries are when it comes to our culture. Want proof? I’m a Canadian ranting about American politics. Now, I’m going to throw a few statistics at you guys. In 2011, there were a total of 598 homicides in Canada, 27% of which were firearm related. Now get ready for this one. In the US, there were 12,664 homicides in 2011, and 8,583 of those were firearm related. The US has approximately 10 times the population of Canada, but I’m pretty sure those statistics aren’t proportional with that. There is a systematic problem with violence in the United States. You guys are absolutely infatuated with firearms and militaristic jingoism. Canada has the same media. Canada has a large hunting population. But we don’t have the gun violence problems that you do. The cause of gun deaths is not Hollywood violence, which is merely a symptom of gun culture, it’s YOU, America. And it’s time to admit it.

Soldiers who died in combat are equivalent to aborted fetuses. Okay then.

Is it 55 million abortions or 54 million? Come on guys, if you’re going to make this a talking point at least be consistent about it. What happened to the extra million fetuses? Did Obama eat them? Also, that must be an enormous dumpster if it can hold all those fetuses. I don’t even have a real argument or any sarcasm for this one. It’s just exasperating.

Lisa Benson:

Women in the military don’t want to be on the front lines, don’t be silly!

Isn’t it nice of Ms. Benson to speak for all women? She personally does not want to go on the front lines, therefore no women will, I guess? Even though they’ve basically been in combat (or at least very dangerous) situations all along? And since she’s wearing the same football uniform, she volunteered for this? And hey, notice how tiny she drew the woman in comparison to the big hulking man on the bench there. Teeny tiny women have to be protected from big bad Muslims!

Me And Folly:

WOMAN = BABY. DEAD BABY BAD. NO BABY IN COMBAT. WHO CARES ABOUT WOMAN.

I think this is just some small time blogger rather than a published cartoonist. But, uh, wow. Let’s dissect this one. The caption literally associates women solely with babies. The captured woman is drawn with a cute little blonde ponytail and ribbon, needlessly re-identifying her as female (we can see the pregnant stomach, buddy) while infantilizing her at the same time. Her being blonde is also subtextually significant – blonde women are usually white, and in the media, it is almost always white women in peril who make the news, not anyone else. This cartoon colludes with the media’s implication that white women are of more value than women of colour. So how about that baby? The baby is apparently very close to full-term. And I guess it’s making a lame draft joke? So…is the argument seriously that the US Military would be sending heavily pregnant women to the front lines, and that women are basically assumed to be constantly pregnant? Also, once again, teeny tiny white woman captured by the big bad Muslim.

Mike Ramirez:

Hillary Clinton desecrates the Benghazi victims’ graves because she is a Democrat.

Fffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. The first time I saw this cartoon, I had a verbal nuclear explosion on Twitter. If you’re unfamiliar with the names on those tombstones, they were the victims of the attack which took place at the Libyan embassy in Benghazi. This incident will always be a very sensitive issue for Something Awful forum members, as Sean Smith, aka Vilerat, was a well-respected moderator of the Debate & Discussion subforum where the Political Cartoons thread is located. Regardless of my personal feelings, there are two BIG problems with this cartoon.

First, laying the blame for these attacks at Hillary Clinton’s feet is both unfair and pointless. He has also used her “What difference does it make?” quotation out of context in a pathetic attempt to discredit her. She was not shrugging off the Benghazi deaths – she was arguing that wasting time trying to place blame for the deaths is pointless and counterproductive. Regardless of how this could have been prevented, 4 Americans are still dead, the past cannot be changed, and what is more important now is to find their killers, bring them to justice, and prevent this from happening again. His answer, “The difference between life and death,” makes no sense in reference to the context of her rhetorical question – proving that he’s just regurgitating talking points without actually researching them.

The second major problem is Ramirez’s use of the Benghazi victims as political mouthpieces. These men were murdered while doing their jobs. It’s a terrible tragedy, and whether it could have been prevented or not is irrelevant now. These men are dead. They cannot speak for themselves anymore. But Ramirez is using murdered men to speak for him. He’s depicting Hillary Clinton desecrating their graves, while hypocritically desecrating their memory by using them to promote complete bullshit. Using those who cannot speak to speak for you is the utmost of cowardice. Ramirez is a liar, a coward, and a hypocrite. I hope his God forgives him, cause I sure as hell won’t.

Obama is a far-left liberal because American conservatives have no goddamn idea what “far-left” means.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No.

Randy Bish:

Mental Health in America will kill stupid monkey Obama because he’s making stupid gun laws.

I was initially annoyed and insulted at the insensitive depiction of mental health problems as a giant murderous gorilla, but I’m going to instead digress a little and talk about that Obama caricature. Lots of Obama caricatures are terrible (Ramirez’s being one of the worst ones) and a lot of them are subtly racist. But none can match the sheer racism of Bish’s Obama. Here’s a second example of his Obama caricature from last year. Giant flappy ears, giant eyebrows, giant lips. He has not drawn an African-American human being. He’s drawn a monkey.

Terry Wise:

Parents should beat their kids to discipline them and then something about abortion?

So what’s your point, Wise? People say stupid things? You haven’t somehow discredited the entire liberal/progressive movement by depicting a conversation in which a dumbass blurted out a poorly reasoned non-sequitur. Also, stop trying to justify beating your kids you psycho. Jesus.

NOOOOOO MY ROSE-COLOURED 1950S CHILDHOOD IS DEAD BECAUSE A MAN IS GAY

You heard it here first, folks. A loving same-sex couple trying to open an orphanage is exactly as evil and offensive as a meth addict and a murdered prostitute. If this was inspired by Jim Nabors’ coming out (and it probably was), Wise is an astoundingly hateful old man. Nabors married the man he’s been with for almost 40 years. What is so wrong with an elderly man finally getting to legalize his relationship with the love of his life? What prompted these ridiculous comparisons? What harm has Nabors done? Why won’t Baby Boomers give up their fucking delusional idyllic memories of the 1950s?

Mallard Fillmore:

Her name is Purge Daley. Bulimia. Ha ha.

Purge Daley is a rich snob. Ha ha.

Purge Daley hates fat people. Ha ha.

Everyone in Hollywood is liberal including Purge Daley. Ha ha.

Purge Daley doesn’t get how guns work. Ha ha.

Purge Daley watches films not made in America, the traitor. Ha ha.

Finally, I present a series of strips from the conservative comic strip Mallard Fillmore, drawn by Bruce Tinsley. It’s billed as the conservative Doonesbury, but it isn’t even 1/8th as clever. The premise is just…a talking duck that is a conservative news reporter. He’s also an incredibly petty asshole – every Martin Luther King Jr. Day, he goes out of his way to not acknowledge it, and instead depicts a strawman telling him off for not acknowledging “Squirrel Appreciation Day.” So what we’ve got here is basically the same joke repeated 6 times. El oh el, the supermodel’s name is Purge Daley. Bulimia, geddit? Eating disorders are high-larious! And this is the strawmanniest strawman that ever strawed. I don’t even know where to begin with this. He criticizes fat-shaming, and yet hypocritically insults people with eating disorders at the same time. I don’t think I should have to bother engaging with deliberately nonsensical arguments. But I will say that people who refuse to watch movies with subtitles DO suck, so go to hell Tinsley, you xenophobic sexist fuck.

…I think I need a stiff drink.

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.