Tag: Sexuality

On Sex, Disability, and Helen Hunt in ‘The Sessions’

Movie poster for The Sessions

Written by Stephanie Rogers. 


I hadn’t heard of Mark O’Brien before I saw The Sessions. I only knew that the film starred John Hawkes (of Deadwood, Winter’s Bone, and Martha Marcy May Marlene fame) and Helen Hunt, who I’ve always admired because of her role as the rebellious, dance-obsessed Lynne Stone in the 1985 film Girls Just Want to Have Fun. I was seven years old when I saw that shit, and I’d now consider it one of my first introductions to (somewhat problematic) pop culture feminism. I refuse to let go of it. Also, Helen Hunt was in Twister, a movie about storm chasers who say stuff like, “It’s coming! It’s headed right for us!” and “Debris! We got debris!” Oh yeah, and she won that Best Actress Oscar for As Good As It Gets in 1997.

What I’m trying to say is: Helen Hunt is awesome.

Her latest Sundance Film Festival hit is based on an essay Mark O’Brien wrote for The Sun called, “On Seeing a Sex Surrogate,” which chronicles his experience losing his virginity in his late thirties. Hunt plays Cheryl Cohen Greene, the sex surrogate, and Hawkes plays O’Brien, a man who contracted polio at the age of six and became paralyzed except for limited use of muscles in his right foot, neck, and jaw. He couldn’t spend more than a few hours outside of an iron lung (a metal chamber that forces the lungs to inhale and exhale) and, despite that fact, went on to earn a graduate degree in journalism from UC Berkeley—by traveling back and forth between the university and the iron lung at home. With the ability to move only his head, he wrote articles and poems by holding a stick in his mouth and tapping out letters on a computer.

The audience learns all this within the first ten minutes of the film, and that’s about the time I started telling myself to stop going through life like a lazy fuck. 

Helen Hunt as Cheryl Cohen Greene and John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien in The Sessions

That’s some pretty intense subject matter … not me being a lazy fuck—that’s for my therapist and me to work out SOMEDAY—but the serious exploration of a disabled man’s sexuality. While the focus remains on O’Brien throughout, The Sessions also gives us several comedic moments with other physically disabled characters as O’Brien interviews them for an article he’s writing about the sex lives of the disabled. I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to see an on-screen depiction of people with disabilities who do things like omg have sex and who also enjoy talking candidly and unapologetically about having sex. O’Brien’s reactions are hilarious; he gets fairly embarrassed and weirded out during the interviews, but the stories he hears ultimately empower him to think seriously about his own sex life, or lack thereof.

Enter the inimitable William H. Macy (yes!). He plays O’Brien’s priest, Father Brendan, who listens to O’Brien’s confessions every day while guiding him through the guilt he feels about seeking out a sex surrogate. That relationship soon evolves (once O’Brien begins spending time with the surrogate) into more of a friendship, and it’s wonderful to see those lines blurred; watching Macy go from praying with O’Brien in church for the first half of the film to showing up in sweats with a six-pack at O’Brien’s house in the later half got the whole theater cracking up. That friendship grounds the film and keeps it from veering into sentimental territory; the audience looks forward to their light-hearted conversations about some truly heavy subject matter. At the same time, their friendship adds emotional depth to the characters. We realize it isn’t just O’Brien’s physical disability that complicates his sexual exploration, but his Catholic faith as well. These two immensely likeable men clearly like each other—and their pontifications about the role of religion in their lives, and what God will and won’t forgive—keeps this from turning into yet another film about a dude just trying to get laid. 

William H. Macy as Father Brendan and John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien in The Sessions

Before seeing the movie, I hadn’t heard about sex surrogates. The real Ms. Greene (who still practices at the age of 68) describes the difference between her profession and prostitution as follows: 

If you go to a prostitute, it’s like going to a restaurant. You read the menu, you choose what you want, they prepare, they hope that you love it, and hopefully you want to come back.

With a surrogate, it’s like going to cooking school. You get the ingredients, you learn to make a meal together—and then the point is to go out into the world and share that and not come back.

I love that explanation, mainly because it doesn’t denigrate prostitutes (or sex workers in general). From what I’ve read, the people who appear to take issue with the sex surrogate profession are running around like, “… but … but … PROSTITUTION WHORES SLUTS BURNING IN HELL,” and regardless of what one thinks about prostitution as a profession, I hope we can all agree that it’s a much more complicated issue than “Prostitution bad. Waiting till marriage for sex good.” (For me, personally, it boils down to the question, “What more can we do to keep sex workers safe?” But, yeah.) 

Helen Hunt as Cheryl Cohen Greene in The Sessions

Most reviews I’ve read of The Sessions focus on Hawkes’ ridiculously good performance as O’Brien—after all, his acting essentially comes from nothing more than his voice and facial expressions. Oscar nomination? Probably. But I’d like to focus on the women in the film, particularly Hunt’s portrayal of Cheryl Cohen Greene.

Helen Hunt ultimately brought The Sessions to life for me. She treats O’Brien with such care, both emotionally and physically, while always maintaining a directness with him that undercuts any potential melodrama. One of my favorite scenes in the film happens right after O’Brien’s first, very brief moment of vaginal penetration. Afterward, he asks, “Did you come, too?” to which she responds, “No, Mark, I didn’t.” I fell in love with the film right then; the innocence of his question and the honesty of her response created more intimacy than most faux-passionate, desperation-filled Hollywood sex scenes could ever hope for.

And that’s the thing about Hunt’s performance. Hawkes, while indisputably great, wouldn’t be half as good in this role if he weren’t playing opposite Helen Hunt. She portrays Greene as confident and self-assured, with no lacy-underweared attempts at sexiness, and with only a tinge of sweetness. This isn’t a film about seduction. It’s mechanical and complicated and wonderful—at one point he has to stop performing cunnilingus because he can’t breathe; at another, she goes to the bathroom in front of him with the door open. Though she forges a strong bond with O’Brien emotionally, the goal always lingers: to help him lose his virginity and help him discover new ways to use and appreciate the human body, his own especially. Hunt says as much in an interview with the L.A. Times: 

Maybe it all gets blurry near the end for a second … But I think that’s life—you can have some errant arrow prick your heart, but these two characters have an intention to keep to their mandate that this all is supposed to serve him. And both of them stick to that, painful as it is.

John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien and Moon Bloodgood as Vera in The Sessions

I’d like to say that all the women in the film were as wonderfully fleshed out and complex as Hunt’s character, but that isn’t true. O’Brien works with three women caretakers throughout, the first (and least conventionally attractive of which) he fires because she just kind of huffs around acting like an asshole. The second is a beautiful woman whose name I can’t remember, and her character development consists mainly of O’Brien gazing longingly over dreamy sequences of her hair blowing in the breeze and shit. Of course he proposes to her (why not!), at which point she quits … but then randomly shows up again later for an impromptu picnic in the park. Okay. The third woman caretaker, well, I kind of loved her. Vera (played by Moon Bloodgood) eases his anxiety more than anything, often making funny quips about sex and the not-a-big-dealness of it as she transports him to and from his sessions with Greene. That affords her an authentic intimacy that the other women characters—other than Greene, of course—don’t get to have. While the previous caretakers exist as shallow plot points to move O’Brien’s story forward, Vera shares a true friendship with him; in many ways, their relationship mirrors the directness and openness of his relationship with Greene.

John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien in The Sessions

For all the bodies on display and the frank sexual discussions, The Sessions deals mostly with trust—how to trust that another person can accept our flaws and cracks and insecurities without judgment; that we’re loveable; that it’s okay to need things from people, and to ask for them. In the end, the graphic sex scenes take a back seat to the emotional connections the characters develop with one another. It’s the expressions on the actors’ faces that tell us everything we need to know.

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Xander Harris: Hyena Boy

Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon) in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Guest post written by Monika Bartyzel originally published at The Hooded Utilitarian. Cross-posted with permission.

As soon as Buffy hit television on March 10, 1997, Joss Whedon became the poster boy for geek feminism. Raised by a radical feminist, he always merged his creativity with gender studies which he called his “unofficial minor.” Buffy was created to defy stereotypical expectations, a blonde superhero whose adolescent growing pains were the blueprint for the supernatural evil she vanquished. This balance struck a chord in viewers, inspiring theoretical interpretations running as rampant as fanfic. But it was never the feminist dream that we thought it was. It couldn’t be, as long as Buffy was friends with Xander Harris, the thorn destroying any so-called feminism in Sunnydale.
Ironically, Alexander LaVelle Harris is based on Joss himself. As he told NPR in 2000, “Xander is obviously based on me, the sort of guy that all the girls want to be best friends with in high school, and who’s, you know, kind of a loser, but is more or less articulate and someone you can trust.” But instead of the radical feminist upbringing, Xander is the product of a highly dysfunctional family. He has no healthy male role models or friendships. (His only male friend, Jesse, is turned into a vampire he accidentally kills, and the act barely fazes him.) Xander only has Willow, the awkward girl who is in love with him, who he romantically ignores. 
When Buffy Summers arrives, Xander immediately wants her. His first words to her: “Can I have you?” He lusts over her power, sexiness, and defiance of school politics and adult authority. His willingness to accept her position of power has often been seen as an example of his feminism; moreover, it’s been used to frame him as a “subversive image of masculinity,” because “confronted with the feminist reality that women are at least equal to him … he doesn’t try to dominate it, he doesn’t try to deny it, and he doesn’t try to ignore it.” But that is precisely what he does. 
Xander sexualizes power, instead of maintaining a respectful attitude towards strong women. He lusts for most of the powerful women he meets, good or bad – Buffy, preying mantis lady, Incan mummy, Willow (as she begins to mature), Cordelia, Faith, and Anya. At the same time, he finds himself at odds with this attraction, which manifests into this strange almost self-loathing that drives him to assert dominance. Since he’s a rather awkward boy without strength, he uses his tongue, throwing insults and off-the-mark opinions as “Xander, the Chronicler of Buffy’s Failures.”
It begins rather benignly. Xander complains about Owen’s “shifty” eyes and rants that Angel is a “girly name.” But it becomes a real problem after “The Pack.” When Xander is possessed by a hyena, he becomes the misogynist alpha male. Though he acts like an animal, he also reveals observations he wouldn’t dare to as human. He acknowledges that Willow likes him, and he challenges Buffy: “We both know what you want… You like your men dangerous.” Hyena juju might make him sniff things and eat piglets, but hyenas aren’t cognizant of high school politics. Possession merely removes Xander’s filter.

Xander possessed by a hyena spirit
Though he is quickly freed of hyena (which he never apologizes for, claiming amnesia), the possession seems to spark an egocentric attitude deep within – Xander’s questionable moments increase in a flurry of sexism and hypocritical commentary that sometimes wanes, but never disappears. In “Angel,” he begins calling Cordelia a hooker. There is no provocation for the term, he’s merely trying to neutralize Cordelia’s power by slut-shaming her, and sadly, the show backs these opinions by drawing a line between acceptable and over-the-top Cordelia-centric insults in “When She Was Bad.” “Hooker” is okay, but Buffy calling Cordelia a “moron” is framed as highly questionable.
“Angel” also marks the beginning of Xander’s war against the souled vampire. When Buffy learns that Angel isn’t human, Xander fails to think of anyone but himself. Though it isn’t wrong for him to note that Buffy should slay Angel (they don’t yet know about his soul), it is not for her benefit or Sunnydale’s. Xander wants Buffy to remove his competition, and urges her to kill him without thinking of her feelings.
Even Willow suffers Xander’s egocentrism. As she develops feelings for someone else (“I Robot, You Jane”), he is immediately critical: “I don’t like it; it’s not healthy.” For these women to be his friend, each must tolerate jealousy and/or insults. Xander is loyal and will help in any deadly fight, but if there is even the slightest question or challenge to his “territory” or masculinity, Xander’s sexual interests and ego come first. He even makes boundaries for Buffy’s strength – it’s okay for her to be an unstoppable Slayer, but she should not protect him from the class bully. Female strength is okay in their private, vampire night, not in the public halls of high school.
Sadly, Xander is continually rewarded for his worst moments. Increasing, sexualized insults towards the most popular girl in school lead Xander to win over Cordelia, creating one of his two highly problematic relationships. When Cordelia momentarily dumps Xander because of her waning popularity, he wants to control her by blackmailing Amy into performing a love spell. He yearns to remove Cordelia’s free will and gain the power, and he’s rewarded for the action. Though Giles chastises him, Buffy praises him for being a gentleman when the spell goes wrong and she hits on him. Likewise, Cordelia is charmed by what Xander has done, and is willing to lose her friends and social standing to be with him.
Dating Cordelia, however, doesn’t stop Xander’s Angel hatred. Yes, Angel killed Ms. Calendar and Xander has a right to be mad. But while the rest of the team hope for the best outcome in “Becoming,” and are concerned for Buffy’s feelings, he just wants Angel dead and couldn’t care less about its effect on Buffy. “The way I see it, you want to forget all about Ms. Calendar’s murder so you can get your boyfriend back.” One might forgive his reductive anger in this particular situation, but it’s not a one-time event. Xander again refuses to acknowledge Buffy’s feelings, or provide comfort that could possibly make her job easier. Instead, he lies, giving her a false message from Willow to “kick his ass.”
Buffy kills a freshly re-souled Angel and runs away. When she returns, Xander quickly condemns her in “Dead Man’s Party” as “incredibly selfish and stupid.” As he sees it: “I’m sorry your honey was a demon, but most girls don’t hop a Greyhound over boy troubles.” Xander is so wrapped up in his own ego-driven world that Buffy’s wildly complicated and emotionally scarring situation is framed as “boy troubles.” Again, no one questions him for his actions. Zombies descend, fighting begins, and everyone forgives each other. Xander begins to be framed as the voice of reason who tells her how it is. 
Cordelia, meanwhile, is treated terribly. Xander, with his overt weakness for Slayers, openly gushes over a newly arrived Faith in “Faith, Hope, and Trick,” until Cordelia tersely asks him to “find a new theme.” He’s in love with Buffy, lusting for Faith, and dating Cordy. Two episodes later, he’s cheating on her with Willow, having become increasingly attracted to his rapidly maturing friend. And this fictional incarnation of Joss isn’t done. When Cordelia discovers the affair and nearly dies, Xander can only feel anger over his loss. He repeatedly gripes about his own unhappiness, blaming his actions on other people, and is desperate to make Cordelia feel even worse. He is completely unable to atone for his actions: “You want to do a guilt-a-palooza? Fine. But I’m done with that.” As Xander later states about his incessant, mean-spirited ranting: “I can’t help it; it’s my nature.”
Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Xander (Nicholas Brendon)

If the show ever decided to question Xander for his sexist, problematic nature, these moments would serve a purpose and help the character evolve into a more worthwhile person and true “heart” of the group. Instead, the Powers That Be continue to reward him for his bad behavior: he loses his virginity to Faith. She’s not Buffy, but she is a powerful Slayer.
When the girls head off to college and Xander becomes the townie, the series gets a break from the sexism. This does not mean Xander is silent; he’s just the marginalized menace. He continues to joke about his lust for Buffy; he never lets her forget that he wants her, marking her as his ideal prey. He might stubbornly accept that they won’t be together, but he lets it fuel his every action as a friend, and the show never questions it or lets him evolve beyond it. 
Meanwhile, Xander begins a rather combative relationship with Anya, chastising her every comment and story – whether they’re demon memories or normal interpersonal communications. When she tells him he isn’t showing an interest in her life in “Hush,” he retorts: “You really did turn into a real girl, didn’t ya?” No man comfortable with female equality equates real concern with nagging, though we can’t be surprised that Xander does – not only because of his many previous and problematic actions, but also because of his attitude towards Anya. He clearly believes he is the better person, the moral center who will teach Anya to be human. Luckily, as he grows into his relationship with Anya, he seems to mellow, becoming a regular Scooby member and friend until Buffy’s relationship implodes in “Into the Woods.” 
Riley and Buffy are a good-on-paper couple. He’s the strong and heroic human offering the security Angel never could. But he’s also a deeply flawed man who cannot stomach Buffy’s strength, especially when she’s in crisis. When Joyce becomes ill and Buffy refuses to fall apart and cry on his shoulder, Riley’s inferiority complex leads him into the arms of blood-hungry vampires he willingly feeds. When she discovers his infidelity, he issues an ultimatum: immediately give him a reason to stay, or he’s going to run off with the Army and leave her forever.
It’s a ridiculous, callous ultimatum, and Xander supports it. Once again, instead of comforting her, he ridicules her. He chastises her for wanting to hide, though she’s barely had a second to process what’s happened. (Riley, meanwhile, had tons of time to process the back story Xander told him about Angel and Buffy.) Xander castigates her for not seeing the problems earlier, though she’s been dealing with her mother’s very serious illness and the arrival of a sister-shaped key. Buffy asks: “What am I supposed to do? Beg him to stay?” Xander looks downright shocked at her hesitation and asks: “Why wouldn’t you?” He continues: “you’ve been treating Riley like the rebound guy, when he’s the one that comes around once in a lifetime. He’s never held back with you. He’s risked everything, and you’re about to let him fly because you don’t like ultimatums? … Think what you’re about to lose.” It’s not much of a jump to wonder if Xander is pro-Riley not because Finn is perfect for Buffy, but because he’s the safe, human choice – the almost-Xander. He continues to be the voice of faulty reason, setting the stage for his utter hypocrisy in season 6 and 7.
Xander is relatively normal for the next year, until his wedding to Anya. He disappears when he’s presented with an obviously fake ‘50s version of his so-called marital future; he flees just like Buffy did, but for much less. (And of course, Buffy and Willow don’t ever condemn him for fleeing, they only support him.) Xander leaves Anya at the altar, telling her “I don’t want to hurt you. Not that way. I’m so sorry.” He lets fear guide him to publically humiliate her and break her heart as if it’s some sort of moral, heroic choice. 
Astonishingly, he destroys her, yet still expects to be with her. Everything surrounding Xander’s cancelled wedding speaks to his egocentrism and hypocrisy. He’s so used to Anya being head over heels in love with him that he expects their relationship to go back to normal. And though he finds it simple to ignore Riley’s infidelity, he prepares to kill when he discovers that his ex is having sex with Spike. Xander questions Anya’s maturity and insults her: “I’m not joking now. You let that evil, soul-less thing touch you. You wanted me to feel something? Congratulations, it worked. I look at you, and I feel sick, cuz you had sex with that.” Though he left her at the altar, he still believes he is the moral center with a right to judge her choices.

Xander and Buffy
Yet it’s Buffy’s sex with Spike that really breaks him. Again, it’s up to Buffy to explain herself in “Seeing Red,” as if she needs to apologize for her own personal life. Ever the egomaniac, when Buffy says: “You don’t know how hard it’s been,” he thinks she’s talking about lying to him about Spike, not about struggling with her newly revived life. Xander even stretches to condemn her choice based on Spike’s previous violence: “I didn’t say I haven’t made mistakes, but last I checked, slaughtering half of Europe wasn’t one of them. He doesn’t have a soul, Buffy.” Though he’s never believed that having a soul makes a vampire an okay bedfellow, he uses that qualifier to denounce Buffy and absolve his own choice of Anya — who was was much more dangerous than Spike, and killed and tortured men for over a thousand years.
Anya rightly tries to temper Xander’s egocentrism in “Two to Go,” but it doesn’t work. She explains that sex with Spike “wasn’t vengeance. It was solace,” and she refuses to let him “play the martyr,” but Xander is still too wrapped up in his own ego. In the next episode he carelessly removes Buffy’s agency and tells Dawn about Spike’s attempted rape. Not only that, but he continually and persistently brings it up through the rest of the series. He takes that power and repeatedly uses it against her.
Xander’s hypocrisy is finally center-stage in “Selfless,” yet he still manages a hypocritical attack. Though he fiercely fought for Angel’s death, he now insists that “when our friends go all crazy and start killing people, we help them.” When his feelings aren’t enough to change Buffy’s mind, he chooses to once again attack her sexual choices: “You know, if there’s a mass-murdering demon that you’re oh, say boning, then it’s all grey area.” He refuses to acknowledge that Anya consciously chose to become a demon both times, and tries to frame Buffy’s responsibility as another example of her capriciousness: “You think we haven’t all seen this before? The part where you just cut us all out? Just step away from everything human and act like you’re the law?”
But it’s the next words that really sum up his complete and utter refusal to acknowledge or consider Buffy’s feelings and power: “If you knew what I felt,” Xander says. He can’t see the similarities between killing Anya and killing Angel, or notice what Buffy went through when she sent Angel to hell. This is our moment to finally call Xander out for his hypocrisy and chastise him for lying about Willow’s message those years ago, and his attitude since. Yet only one line is tossed in, and Willow’s reaction to the “kick his ass” quote is buried in the heated argument. As much as Xander’s hypocrisy is displayed for those eager to see it acknowledged, it’s all words of anger – Xander never learns a damn thing from the exchange; he never gets punished, or feels remorse for his actions. 
The series continually, passively, upholds Xander’s skewed viewpoint, never forcing him to repent and never allowing him to change. Instead, they give him the ultimate gift – Buffy’s strength. In the series’ penultimate episode “End of Days,” Buffy says: “You’re my strength, Xander. You’re the reason I made it this far.” By this point, the idea of the Slayer is already problematic – she’s the result of a vicious supernatural rape on the first Slayer, a lineage controlled by a white, patriarchal council. And now she attributes her strength and survival to the man who constantly sexualized her, belittled her, and condemned her. Not only that, but he’s given more power in the comics, having dominion over all the slayers as the “unofficial Watcher.” 
Upon reflection, it’s hard to link Buffy the Vampire Slayer to feminism because Xander, the self-proclaimed “perspective guy,” continually nullifies the agency of the women around him. His respect for powerful women is qualified. No woman enjoys her power without Xander trying to exert some form of control (judgment) over it. As one fan once described it, “he hurts people with an uncanny casualness of a true bully.” Through casual banter, his egocentric power struggle is framed as comedy. We’re supposed to laugh at this superficially witty and charismatic everyman, and ultimately listen to him as the group’s moral compass, which undermines the show’s push for female empowerment.
This isn’t mere oversight or writer missteps, these moments come again and again and they cannot be excused. The minute Joss and his team embraced the feminist label and strove to create a feminist heroine, they accepted the responsibility of upholding those ideals, or at the very least, not continually undermining them. Buffy cannot be a feminist heroine if her strength comes from a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do man, especially one happy to remove her agency and morally judge her.
Monika Bartyzel is a freelance writer and creator of Girls on Film, a weekly look at femme-centric film news and concerns, currently residing at Movies.com. Her work has appeared in the likes of The Atlantic, Moviefone, Collider, Splice Today, Hooded Utilitarian, Toronto Screenshots, and the now-defunct Cinematical, where she was a lead writer and assignment editor. You can follow Monika on Twitter at @mbartyzel.

Guest Writer Wednesday: ‘Prometheus’ and the ‘Alien’ Movies: Feminism and Anti-Feminism

Guest post written by Rhea Daniel. Cross-posted from her blog Short Stories with permission.
Warning: Some images NSFW and links below lead to some NSFW images.
Long after I had seen and re-seen the Alien movie series, I was shocked to learn that they possess intense anti-feminist themes, articulated in the brilliant essay by Michael Davis and in the psychoanalytical study of horror movie tropes by Barbara Creed. The underlying themes in the Alien series reflect humanity’s intense fear of penetration and childbirth, with alien spawn tearing its way out of the womb (chest cavity, call it what you will) well in rhythm with Giger’sown biomecha art and his surreal visual concoctions of birth, death and human sexuality.
Victory V (Satan), HR Giger, 1983

Both Giger and the movies reflect our ancient patriarchal religious fears of the monstrous feminine1combined with our modern germophobic clinical distaste for the disease-spreading organic and the abject: secretions, menstrual blood, placenta, amniotic fluid, seriously drippy mucosa, include semen if you will. For Giger the womb is not a place where a child is nurtured and childbirth something that has to be embraced, forget that tired old eco-feminist claptrap, it is a claustrophobic deathtrap that has to be survived, even if it results in the death of the parent2
Biomechanoid, HR Giger,1976

However my reading of what the critics had to say did not diminish my enthusiasm to see Prometheus. I remember clearly the days sitting together, thoroughly enjoying any movie with my family while ripping it to bits at the same time. The job of the critic is to analyze what they see, and the fact that the Alien movies have more to them than I first thought only makes them more interesting.

***(Be wary for there are several references to human whatnots about to follow)***
 
Prometheus pushes this notion of the ‘death of the parent’ when David lightheartedly addresses Dr. Elizabeth Shaw after her frightful operation, but that’s not all Prometheusis riding on. If anyone noticed, all the Engineers seem to be dudes, and in addition to the myth of Prometheus, this brings up the story of the Goddess Athena emerging perfectly formed from Zeus’s head3, and I allude to this because the scientifically advanced Engineers seemed to have created, cleanly, without the need for the crude, organic, stifling enclosure of the womb, an entire race in ‘Their’ likeness*,read identical DNA, eliminating the need for the female, which is what the existence of an all-male race proposes. The design of the clone-like marble sculpted super-bodies of the Engineers further substantiates the Greek mythological reference.

Hermes, Engineer

Prometheus simplifies what Alien proposed, it interchanges between penile and vaginal imagery: creature with knob-like head that flowers into a vagina, gigantic vagina dentata scene, penis-probe emerges, both male and female genitalia are likely villains. In the proud tradition of a design that’s been rumoured to be inspired by human body bits, skeletons and BMW car parts, it’s all perfectly justifiable.

The eco-feminist opinion of the medicalization of childbirth is that it alienates the child from the mother and vice versa, the mother has to be delivered from her baby, the child has to be saved from its mother’s stifling uterine constrictions, and now I refer quite obviously to Elizabeth’s self-inflicted caesarean. Okay, fine, she didn’t do to herself literally, she got the reluctant machine to do it for her, to get that twisting, bulging, rapidly expanding alien body out of herself. I got an intense feeling of déjà vu during that scene: seriously, get the damned thing out quickly. More painkillers please. The scene has been hailed as a pro-choice metaphor, an assertion of reproductive rights, a claim to ownership of the female body by the female herself, the machine being calibrated for the male body hindering Elizabeth’s attempt to save herself a reference to the ongoing battle for reproductive freedom in the United States, but it is also a modern feminist embrace of medical technology. I agree with the movie’s usage of the term ‘caesarean’; ‘abortion’ would imply a vaginal expulsion of the thing, after killing it within the womb, considerably more invasive and terrifying. Eco-feminism not only gets the boot in that scene with the embrace of mechanistic, but also because Elizabeth, as opposed to cloned Ripley in Alien Resurrection4, isn’t keen to claim any part of the alien growing inside herself as her own.

Prometheus is gorgeous but sports little of the multi-layered psychological profundity of its predecessor (I can barely think of Prometheus as a prequel to Alien, so let’s just say it tried to ride on its predecessor’s glory and it partly succeeded. It has its niggling flaws, like I don’t know why a biologist would approach an entirely new alien species in a ‘here kittykittykitty’ manner, or why with all that fantastic technology the geologist and biologist got lost in the first place. It’s okay, they’re expendable. Elizabeth Shaw however is important and impressive, she’s softer and smaller than the androgynous, tough warrior that is Ripley, however no less formidable as a heroine.

I’m all geared up for a sequel now and want to know how the Engineers are going to react when a female version of themselves lands up at the door with an android’s head in a duffle bag, questioning them about an experiment gone awry.

Notes:

1 Barbara Creed “The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis”, Routledge, 1993

2 Stanislav Grof “HR Giger and the Soul of the Twentieth Century”, HR Giger, Taschen 2002

3 Jane Caputi, “Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power, and Popular Culture”

4 “I’m the monster’s mother”, Ripley, Alien Resurrection (1997)

*Edit 27/6–This is what I assumed the DNA scene from the movie was suggesting. I’m not sciencey enough to know what kind of life forms exist out there or how they come about. When and where the female human is supposed to have come into the picture I can only guess. It was a pretty scene though.

**Edit 4/7–It just occurred to me that this whole thing might be orchestrated by a Queen. Is Ridley going to spring a surprise on us??

Rhea Daniel got to see a lot of movies as a kid because her family members were obsessive movie-watchers. She frequently finds herself in a bind between her love for art and her feminist conscience. Meanwhile she is trying to be a better writer and artist and you can find her at http://rheadaniel.blogspot.com/.

 

Preview: Albert Nobbs

Albert Nobbs (2011)
Playing in limited release since December 21st, Albert Nobbs opens in full theatrical release this coming weekend. There’s been a lot buzz about the film (much of it surrounding star Glenn Close and whether this role will finally win her that Oscar), but aside from clips on the 2012 Golden Globes (where it received nominations for Best Original Song, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress), I hadn’t even watched a full trailer until today.
Here it is, in case you haven’t seen it either:

Judging from the trailer (including the music), the film looks romantic and sad, with the hint of danger that always seems to come with bucking traditional gender norms. Although the film is set in 19th century Ireland, contemporary Hollywood is a place of traditional gender roles, so I’m always excited to see a big, mainstream movie that takes on gender as a major subject and theme–although I suspect class will also feature heavily (another subject Hollywood has trouble with), as the film’s official synopsis places work at the center of Nobbs’ motivation:

Award-winning actress Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs) plays a woman passing as a man in order to work and survive in 19th century Ireland. Some thirty years after donning men’s clothing, she finds herself trapped in a prison of her own making. Mia Wasikowska (Helen), Aaron Johnson (Joe) and Brendan Gleeson (Dr. Holloran) join a prestigious, international cast that includes Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Janet McTeer, Brenda Fricker and Pauline Collins. 

Rodrigo Garcia directs from a script that Glenn Close, along with Man Booker prize-winning novelist John Banville and Gabriella Prekop, adapted from a short story by Irish author George Moore.

Although period pieces about sexism, the difficulty of of transcending social class, and conforming to gender roles seem to emphasize “how far we’ve come” rather than tuning us in to how far we still need to go, I’m still interested in this movie. Glenn Close is a great actor, and I must say I resent the cynicism surrounding discussions of her supposed motivation (Oscar!) to take on this role. Similar accusations flew around Kate Winslet for her role in The Reader, which won her an Academy Award in 2008 (her first, despite several prior nominations). As usual, I wish the buzz focused more on the actual film, rather than its lead actor.

I’ll have to wait and see how well Albert Nobbs handles its themes, but until then:

Have you seen Albert Nobbs yet? If so, what do you think?