Stephanie Rogers – Page 6

Review in Conversation: Black Swan

Sometimes a movie needs more than a review–it needs a discussion. See our previous Reviews in Conversation here and here.

Nina is cracking…

Amber’s Take:
There’s a lot to say about Black Swan, and the more I think about it, the fewer definitive, and perhaps positive things I have to say. Before getting too ahead of myself, though, I must say that the performances–particularly Natalie Portman’s–were amazing, the dance sequences were compelling and seemed very well done, and the film was, overall, visually stunning. This is the most intensely visceral film I’ve seen in some time, and simply remembering certain moments still causes me to cringe. I loved the image of the goose flesh appearing on Nina Sayers’ (Portman’s) skin, as she began to physically embody her role as the Swan Queen, and the nod to Cronenberg’s The Fly when thick, black feathers began to sprout from Nina’s skin (as the hairs sprouted from Jeff Goldblum’s Seth Brundle during his physical transformation into, well, a fly).

On a literal level, the film seems to be about the transformation of an artist–in this case, a dancer–into a role. It also is, very specifically, about the physical rigor of ballet, and the lengths an artist will go to in perfecting her performance. Ballet is a physically grueling art form that seems diametrically at odds with the female body. Like gymnasts, from what I understand, a ballet dancer must fight against a mature woman’s body, maintain an impossibly thin-yet-strong physique, and endure at times severe physical pain. On a more metaphoric level, this is what society expects all women to endure, though I don’t think we can read the white swan/black swan as a direct metaphor of the virgin/whore dichotomy or expectation for women in our culture. There are several other things going on in the film, one of the most problematic being (s)mother love.

What on Earth is Barbara Hershey’s character doing in this film? In a near-deranged, over-the-top role, we see a woman who couldn’t make it out of the corps during her own ballet career, and who blames her daughter for the unhappy end to that career. Erica Sayers infantalizes her daughter, dominates her life, pummels her with guilt for under-appreciating her (the cake scene, anyone?), and generally serves as the movie’s biggest villain–worse than an artistic director who sexually assaults and torments Nina. Oh, that’s nothing compared to Mommy Dearest. So what do we make of Nina’s mother–and why was she even in this movie?

Stephanie’s Take:
While I share some of your concerns with (s)mother love, and Barbara Hershey’s character in general, I really enjoyed the film. So before I respond to some of the issues you mention, let me say what I liked so much about Black Swan:

First, a fairly obvious but no less interesting way to read the film is as an indictment of prescribed femininity. Nina’s entire existence is wrapped up in an attempt to be perfect, whether it’s striving to be the perfect ballerina or the perfect daughter. We see what her breakfast looks like, grapefruit and a hardboiled egg (if I remember correctly), and as you mention, the struggle to maintain a child’s body resonates throughout. While that may be particularly important for careers in ballet and gymnastics, it’s also our society’s ideal body type for all women, so I very much like that Black Swan delves into (however metaphorically) the potential consequences of restrictive and unattainable “perfection” in women.

When Nina can’t live up to the casting director’s Perfect Ballerina or her mother’s Perfect Daughter, she basically loses her shit. Thomas (the casting director, played by Vincent Cassel) wants her to embrace her sexuality, to seduce the audience with it (channeling the Black Swan). Erica (her mother) wants her to remain childlike and innocent (channeling the White Swan), and both Thomas and Erica represent the double-edged sword that all women face: be sexy, but not slutty; be sweet, but not a total prude. In the words of Usher, “We want a lady in the street but a freak in the bed.”)

When Nina can’t fulfill both these roles simultaneously, as much as she tries, the film shows us her breakdown: her body betrays her in literal ways, with bleeding toes and scratch marks that suggest self-mutilation (another hallmark characteristic of young women struggling to cope with similar stress); and her body betrays her in ways that suggest hallucinations: pulling “feathers” from her flesh, or ripping off her cuticles, only to discover moments later that her hand is fine. I found that part of the film, the hallucinatory transformation into the Black Swan, super interesting because it seems to happen to her accidentally—as she experiences the transformation, she doesn’t understand what’s happening, and it frightens her.

In fact, I would argue that her body isn’t her own at any time during the film. Thomas wants to control her body in a sexual way, often groping her and kissing her against her will. And when Nina attempts to explore her sexuality, to take ownership of it through masturbation, she suddenly realizes her mother is in the room (to the gasps and laughter of audiences nationwide), and she buries herself under her covers like a child. Erica constantly explores Nina’s body either by looking at her or physically touching her, often insisting that she remove her clothes—creating an inappropriateness in their relationship that I don’t quite know what to do with.

Regardless, I like that Black Swan implies that these ideals for women can’t actually exist without women destroying themselves in the process of attaining them. We live in a society where women’s bodies exist as pleasure-objects for men, as dismembered parts to sell products, as images to be dissected, airbrushed, made fun of, all under a government that continues to chip away at women’s rights to bodily autonomy. In that kind of environment, when does a woman’s body ever feel entirely her own? Black Swan sets up that metaphor quite well, asking the viewer to experience Nina’s struggle to live up to society’s ridiculous expectations for women through several cringe-worthy moments.

That rocks. But I wonder if that effort gets trumped by some of the more objectifying scenes, like the “lesbian sex scene” and the masturbation scene. Is it possible to comment on society’s expectations of women and beauty without also objectifying women in the process? Does Aronofsky linger a little too long at times? And, in response to your second paragraph, why can’t we read the Black Swan/White Swan as a direct metaphor for the virgin/whore dichotomy? (Oh, and yeah, I’ll throw it back to you—what the hell is happening with Nina and her mom?)

Amber’s Take:
You make a lovely and convincing reading of the film as an exploration of the impossibility of society’s contemporary take on womanhood. I think my resistance to this reading—or, more specifically, my dissatisfaction of this being the ultimate reading—has everything to do with Erica Sayers, though neither of us is certain how to exactly read her character. More on that in a moment (ha ha). Though meaning doesn’t end (or begin, necessarily) with a director’s intention, I also think this reading gives Aronofsky too much credit; in other words, I don’t know that the film is that good—that altrustic, that interested in women’s experience—or that cohesive.

Aronofsky has a clear interest in the limits of the human body. While watching Black Swan, I thought about his previous movie, The Wrestler, and the ways in which that solitary person pushes his body to limits most us of (those of us who aren’t professional wrestlers or ballerinas) find absurd and painful to even see. We could extend our conversation indefinitely by bringing in other movies as objects of comparison (The Red Shoes), but I do see some structural similarities between Black Swan and The Wrestler that warrant at least a cursory comparison–and I’m sure others have done this comparative work in reviews around the web.

An important question to ask when we’re trying to figure out Black Swan is this: How do we see Nina Sayers at the end of the film? Is she a victim of her society/mother/creative director? Or is she victorious, in that she conquered the perceived limits of her body to achieve her own stated goal: to be perfect in her Swan Lake performance. (Did we see the protagonist of The Wrestler as victorious or defeated in his final leap?) Nina masters her performance, nailing the Black Swan to the point she imagines her arms transforming into wings. This was the most thrilling sequence in the film—her performance was beautiful, and much more impressive than any of the other dance sequences. Is the Black Swan a villain? In the ballet, yes, and the White Swan is the tragic heroine. Films generally tend to do a better job of making the villain more compelling than the hero, but if both roles are (metaphoric) unattainable goals, how do we read those final moments?

It’s not that I disagree with your reading—I really want that to be what the movie is ultimately about, but there are too many half-baked ideas competing with each other to allow me to say Okay, it’s about X. And, frankly, there’s an awful lot of pleasure to be had by gazing at tormented bodies in the film for me to wholly believe its feminist message. Before Nina gets the lead role in Swan Lake she looks hopefully at a woman walking toward her at a distance, and sees herself in the face of a stranger. So, she’s looking for her a reflection of herself, evidence of her own existence in other people. I don’t think this is a statement about a woman’s unstable identity; I think it’s what an artistic performer does. And possibly a person grappling with mental illness. What about Lily (Mila Kunis)? Her cheeseburger, ecstasy, and alcohol-fueled night with Nina, leading to empowered club dancing (sarcasm), random dude-kissing, and imagined sexy lesbian action between the two, does…what, exactly? Neither the skeezy artistic director’s advice (masturbate!) nor San Francisco Lily’s trite transgressions work to sexually liberate Nina…or do they? At least they bring her into active conflict with her mother.

Now. Nina lives with a mother who is basically a lunatic. I mean, let’s just say it: Nina’s mother is fucking nuts. Why (in the world of the film) does Nina need to have a mother who is fucking nuts? Couldn’t she have been moderately nuts, like most of us, with contradictions, who acts in moderately selfish ways which can moderately mess up a daughter? That would’ve allowed the themes we’ve discussed to be played out just as intricately and interestingly. How does this character fit into the movie? Taken literally, Nina’s mother is at fault for her child’s problems. As mothers tend to be in films made by men, and as psychiatrists believed in the 1960s (I’m thinking of the concept of the schizophrenogenic mother here–the idea that an oppressive mother could actually cause schizophrenia in her children). While we might be seeing a version of Erica Sayers from Nina’s untrustworthy perspective, what good is it—even if it’s not an accurate representation—for Nina to see her mother this way? Taken metaphorically…what? There’s no feminist reading I can discern in a film that I want to be feminist.

Stephanie’s Take:
I completely agree that it might not be useful, or even possible in a film as complicated as Black Swan, to come up with a definitive reading. But I still believe so much is at stake with regards to women and identity and the fluidity of that identity, in a culture that forces women to possess multiple, often contradictory identities. Maybe I’m giving Aronofsky too much credit, but I disagree with your suggestion that Nina’s literal reflections aren’t a statement about a woman’s unstable identity.

Yes, this film comments plenty on the artist and how performance can impact an artist’s life, how the artist must take on certain traits to enhance her performance, and how that act might impact her life when she isn’t on stage. However, given the fact that we’re all “performing” our identities to an extent (like the prescribed gender roles we’re taught from birth to perform), it’s worth looking at how Nina, a character whose identity seems so wrapped up in the expectations of those around her, copes—or doesn’t cope—with the pressures of womanhood and what’s required of that particular role.

It’s impossible not to notice Nina’s reflection everywhere. She sees herself reflected in mirrors as she dances, or when she’s reading the word “whore” on the bathroom mirror of the dance studio, or when she sees her face in the subway car windows. And as you mentioned, she sees her face superimposed on the faces of strangers in public—and even in the mirror at her own house, where she and Lily’s faces are superimposed.

It happens again during the sex scene; Lily’s face becomes Nina’s own face at one point, and we can hear Lily creepily whispering the words of Nina’s mother, “my sweet girl” over and over. Since we learn later that this sex scene is most likely Nina’s hallucination (and I think there’s enough evidence to even make the argument that Lily’s entire existence is a hallucination), it’s useful in interpreting the film to think about why Nina sees Lily, hears her mother’s words, and even sees her own image during a sex scene.

All this swapping of voices and faces (identities, if you will, haha) lead me to read all these people, Erica, Beth (Winona Ryder), and Lily as facets and projections of Nina’s identity. Beth, Thomas’s first “little princess,” is the aging ballerina who gets replaced by Nina, the younger ballerina. Erica, her mother, is the ballerina who slept with her director, got pregnant, and had to end her dancing career as a result. And Lily is the ballerina who embodies everything Nina tries so desperately to find within herself. She’s a carefree, sexual woman who repeatedly threatens Nina’s role in the ballet. Both when Nina is late to rehearsal and when Nina is late to the show’s opening—Lily stands in the background, threatening to take Nina’s place.

Keeping that in mind, it’s interesting that Nina “murders” Lily; on one hand, Nina seeks to absorb Lily’s empowerment, but on the other, the only way she can ultimately accomplish that is by killing it. Since murder is a pretty empowered act, I guess I get that. In fact, I think I liked it. Because Nina basically says Fuck You to the idea that Lily, who represents Nina’s unattainable sexual identity, is separate from herself, her whole self. In that moment, Nina transforms fully into The Black Swan, allowing Lily’s metaphoric death to push Nina to do what she previously thought herself incapable of accomplishing.

You argue that the alcohol-fueled, “imagined sexy lesbian action between the two” does nothing to really sexually liberate Nina. I struggled with this scene in the film probably more than any other scene because it feels exploitative and objectifying in the same way most Hollywood faux-lesbian sex scenes do. But I also believe it’s important to pay attention to all the stuff I mentioned previously. There’s tons of identity-shifting in this scene. Nina’s eventual sexual liberation (if we equate her successful transformation into the Black Swan with sexual liberation) begins here; when identities become interchangeable in this scene, we get the first images of the gooseflesh appearing on Nina’s skin. Something empowering seems to be happening. Whether it’s actual sexual liberation or the first signs of Nina embracing all these facets of herself (Beth, Erica, Lily), it complicates things. But what does it mean?

Well! I’ll go back to my original argument: Black Swan implies that these ideals for women can’t actually exist without women destroying themselves in the process of attaining them. How many identities can we effectively perform before we forget entirely who we are? Women struggle with that in a way that men never will. More often than not, it’s women who have to give up careers for children (Erica). They get pushed out of their professions when they get older (Beth). They’re expected to balance innocence with sexuality and to know when (and when not to) express them (Nina/Lily). And the attempt to balance, express, and suppress these prescribed roles often doesn’t work without having a detrimental impact on women individually and as a whole.

Interestingly, Nina and Lily both “die” in the end. So women in this film end up visibly crazy, hospitalized, or dead. In a less complex film, that would seriously piss me off. But the death and/or disappearance and/or insanity of these women make a larger point: if they’re all separate facets of Nina’s own personality and identity, which I believe they are, it’s necessary to watch each separate character struggle—it reinforces the idea that these performed identities aren’t possible without sacrificing one’s entire self.

You asked: If the Black Swan/White Swan “roles are (metaphoric) unattainable goals, how do we read those final moments?” Good question. It fascinates me most of all that Nina claims, after the White Swan’s suicide, that her performance was perfect. But, it wasn’t. She fell down in the middle of the damn ballet. To a gasping and appalled audience (not to mention, director). If her “I was perfect” claim applies only to the ballet, then she’s referring only to her performance as the Black Swan; after all, it’s the Black Swan whose dance partner whispers “wow” as she’s walking off stage; it’s the Black Swan whose audience gives her a standing ovation; it’s the Black Swan whose director beams with pride when she leaves the stage.

So yeah, I see Nina as a victim at the end of the film. Because she wasn’t perfect; she was never perfect. The conquering of her role as the Black Swan comes at a great sacrifice to her role as the White Swan (her fall during the ballet and her metaphoric death at the end of it). The two identities can’t coexist perfectly, as much as she wants them to. In the end, she still hasn’t attained the superhuman ability to perform competing identities for a critical audience. Sure, the audience may have loved Nina’s empowered, sexualized Black Swan, clearly enough to forgive the earlier screw up as the White Swan, but that isn’t surprising if you read the audience as a metaphor for society (why not?), a society that loves more than anything to be seduced by its women.

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We still have more to say! Let the conversation continue in the comments section, and leave links to reviews you’ve written or read.

Ripley’s Pick: ‘Tiny Furniture’

Tiny Furniture. Starring Lena Dunham, Laurie Simmons, Grace Dunham, and Jemima Kirke. Written and directed by Lena Dunham.

The film follows Aura (played by writer/director Lena Dunham), a 20-something self-described misanthrope who, after graduating from a film program at a small liberal arts school in Ohio, moves back to New York City to live with her famous-artist mother, Siri (played by Dunham’s real-life mother Laurie Simmons) and her budding-genius sister, highschooler Nadine (played by Dunham’s real-life sister Grace Dunham). The film wants to show that Aura is, in fact, Having a Very, Very Hard Time, as the tagline reveals, and it puts her through the typical hell that’s common in the heterosexual coming-of-age stories of early twenties womanhood: the struggle to find a reasonably paying job, a desire to make that college degree mean something, and, of course, a few random hookups with emotionally unavailable men.

But more than anything, Tiny Furniture is a film about the relationships among women.

When Aura arrives home from college, she’s immediately confronted with her mother photographing her younger sister among a setup of, literally, tiny furniture. And, while the first indication of sibling rivalry appears, it already seems more refreshing and complicated than the traditional cliched portrayal of sister-hate and woman-on-woman divisiveness. The women converse with one another as if Aura hadn’t been in Ohio for four years; in fact, the casualness of their interaction–her mother barely looking up from her photography, her sister making sarcastic comparisons about her slender legs versus Aura’s heavier frame–suggests a comfort with one another that transcends their almost performed familial coldness.

Perhaps most intriguingly, the on-screen relationships feel so authentic that the unmentioned absent father is hardly noticeable. Who cares, after all? Women rock the screen, and, unlike a couple of recent woman-centric films (The Kids Are All Right, Winter’s Bone–both arguably feminist) it has nothing to do with a need to compensate for the failings of the men in their lives.

Almost immediately when Aura moves back to New York, she meets up with her childhood friend Charlotte (played by Jemima Kirke) at a party. Charlotte is portrayed as a spoiled, drama-craving brat, but Aura clings to her, at one point even referring to Charlotte as her best friend. (Her mother later says sarcastically in response, “After two weeks?”) They hang out in Charlotte’s apartment, getting high together and talking about art, men, joblessness, addiction, their parents–and they flatter each other; the audience is never encouraged to view these women as rivals. The point of their friendship is to illustrate the absolute aloneness of being an aimless twenty-something and not knowing what the hell to do in life. In several hilarious scenes, Charlotte begs Aura not to leave, once going as far as to roll around on her bed saying, “Please stay,” which the audience is meant to find both endearing and pathetic.

And while the relationship between Charlotte and Aura works mainly because of their shared loneliness and need to connect, the onscreen relationship between the two sisters thoughtfully investigates the obstacles inherent in familial relationships. In fact, it didn’t surprise me at all when I discovered that they’re actually real-life sisters because their sibling rapport feels incredibly authentic. While Aura drinks bottle after bottle of her mother’s wine with her friends, Nadine runs on the treadmill, does crunches while reading a book, writes award-winning poetry, and teases Aura about her directionless existence. But the back-and-forth nitpicking between them is perfectly juxtaposed against scenes exhibiting such tenderness as can only occur in close relationships.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie involves Nadine throwing a party while her mother is out, leaving Aura to supervise things. Of course, the party gets out of hand–we’re dealing with a slew of highschoolers railing against Aura-as-Authority-Figure (because, let’s face it, if Aura is anything, Authority Figure isn’t on the list)–and Aura starts to have a panic attack. She does the only thing she can think to do, call Charlotte to come over and help her get the party under control. Which is hilarious. Because Charlotte is more of a disaster than Aura is. So, it isn’t surprising at all when Charlotte starts giving lap dances and Aura starts walking around the party in her underwear.

The screaming match that ensues between Aura and Nadine could’ve been taken from a direct transcript of a real-life sibling fight. I cringed at the truthfulness of Nadine’s accusations as she criticized Aura for craving the attention of high school boys. (Those boys, however, reciprocated by making fun of Aura and dissing her body.) And when Nadine starts smacking Aura with a spatula and storms off, the audience feels sympathy for both sisters; neither is the villain in this film, and Dunham’s navigation of that terrain seems effortless from beginning to end. I won’t spoil the brief make-up scene between Aura and Nadine because the film is worth watching for that moment alone.

Aura spends much of the film, when she isn’t fighting with her sister, thinking of herself as somewhat of an artist/filmmaker, as evidenced by her YouTube videos (where she usually wears only her underwear or a bathing suit). Since Aura isn’t traditionally beautiful, and isn’t a size two like most of the half-naked women we’re used to seeing onscreen, at first it’s almost shocking to watch her walk around barely clothed throughout the film (which further illustrates the level of comfort and intimacy she feels with her mother and sister). But Dunham doesn’t include those scenes merely for shock value. The comments left on her YouTube videos consistently make fun of her weight and her looks. She reads the insulting feedback aloud to Charlotte, and they both try to blow it off, but not without Aura remarking on how difficult it is to put that negativity out of her mind.

For anyone who’s ever browsed the comments on YouTube videos, it’s impossible not to notice the disgusting misogyny and homophobia that plague them. Not only does Dunham subtly comment on that, but she also manages to reinforce the importance of supportive women friendships as a way to help combat the barrage of bullshit women deal with daily, especially when it concerns unattainable beauty ideals. It’s interesting to note, too, that Charlotte is traditionally attractive, and yet their friendship never digresses into any sort of competition, least of all one that involves some stereotypical competition over men.

The film doesn’t completely shy away from the subject of men, though, and the two men Aura meets both basically suck. One spends the first half of the movie mooching off Aura–and she lets him–staying in her house, eating her food, drinking her mother’s wine, but when she tries to take their “friendship” to the next level, he refuses. For Aura to attempt to hook up with such a caricature of a loser further drives home her loneliness and desire for connection. With anyone. So it isn’t surprising either when she goes after the chef she works with, who likes “Asian tentacle rape” pornography–whatever the hell that is–and exploits Aura’s obvious crush on him to get her to give him pills (even though he has a girlfriend).

Watching the film, one can’t avoid thinking, “C’mon, Aura, you know better than this.” But the material is so impossible not to relate to–who hasn’t lusted after the entirely wrong person, and known it?–that one can’t fault her for putting herself through it.

Those interactions with men accompanied by Aura’s reading aloud of her mother’s diary (written during her twenties) give further insight into the relationship Aura has with her mother. In many ways, regardless of how often the two women clash, Aura admires her. She’s a successful artist who’s clearly independent. She’s rich. She has no apparent need for a man in her life. Yet her diary reveals many of her obsessions in her twenties: with body image–she constantly journaled her food choices, with men and their inadequacies, and particularly with feeling like she wasn’t living up to her potential as an artist.

The final scene of the film, with Aura curled up with her mother in her mother’s bed, discussing the diary, openly discussing Aura’s horrid sexual encounter from earlier in the evening (completely absent of judgment from her mother–her only concern is that Aura practices safe sex), discussing Aura’s own fears of failure, which her mother squashes with, “Oh, you’ll be much more successful than I am,” feels so heart-wrenchingly honest it’s almost difficult to watch. And the ending, which features a literal ticking clock that could’ve felt contrived and artificial, totally works. It isn’t that the two women desire to stop time; they just don’t want the obvious reminder of its passing.

As Aura struggles with all these issues, reading her mother’s diary (and sharing it with the audience) serves to remind us that even though coming-of-age ain’t fun, particularly for young women navigating the patriarchy, it’s still possible to come out on the other end fairly unscathed.

Disembodied Women Take Five: Mouthing Off

According to the following posters, women have bright red mouths. Wide open mouths with perfect white teeth. That they can put things inside of. See, women often have objects inside their bright red mouths, like golf balls or strawberries, that they’re usually biting. And if they aren’t visibly biting anything, it’s implied that they’ve recently bitten something, what with them all sexy-licking the dripping blood off their–in case you forgot–bright red mouths. Or maybe they’re just biting their own mouths. Or maybe their mouths actually become food (bright red food, even). But if they aren’t biting anything, then the least those bright red mouths can do is stay silent. In fact, looking at the posters in succession, one could even argue that all those bright red mouths (oh yeah, and the completely erased mouths) represent the silencing of women. Who can talk while wearing an implied ball gag? Or while eating? Or when you don’t have a mouth? Or when your mouth is, you know, really just a pair of red chili peppers? Or if you’ve got a bloody knife pressed against it? Or if that shit is zipped shut?

As discussed in the other parts of this series, separating women from their body parts in media images subtly reinforces women’s status as commodities, or pleasure-objects, or victims, who aren’t valued as whole, and who are, as a result, denied their humanity. And we all know, because we live in This Society and it’s 100% inescapable, that the representation of women’s mouths is all kinds of tied up in the mouth-as-vagina metaphor–with the accompanying requisite phallic cigarette and lipstick images apparently never getting old. (And I’d be thrilled to never have to hear the phrase “dick-sucking lips” ever. again.) But if the mouth isn’t a vagina, then it’s a nonstop, life-ruining motormouth (ever hear someone call a man a motormouth?) that even Mr. Potato Head wants to slap the shit out of. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, have a look at the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head commercial that ran during the Superbowl.)

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Molly Ringwald putting her lipstick on with her cleavage in The Breakfast Club is one of the most famous scenes in all of 80s film. We’ve come a long way, baby!

Disembodied Women Take Four: … Look Closer

The first installments of Disembodied Women focused on film posters that use close-ups of women’s backsides and bare legs to promote movies, and one that illustrated the removal of the woman’s head entirely. This post gives examples of film advertising that uses women’s airbrushed stomachs, and in several instances, divorces pregnant women from the rest of their bodies. (Because we all know, once a women becomes pregnant, she ceases to exist.)

As if reducing women to a collection of nothing more than unrealistically portrayed body parts weren’t enough, the accompanying taglines of these particular film posters also caught my attention.

The Women and 27 Dresses don’t use a catchy tagline on the posters shown below. Maybe the designers of the posters felt that random words shaped into a woman’s torso would suffice, considering these two films exclusively target women audiences. And what do audiences comprised of women want to see in The Women? Nouns, apparently: Bonding Joy Jealous Kids Tears Struggles Laughter Thighs Balance Intuition Fighters Passion Elegance Shoes …

With the 27 Dresses poster, what else could we possibly need? She’s already been made into a fucking dress. (Get it? The movie is called 27 Dresses, so Katherine Heigl’s body is like totally a dress. Neat! Way to objectify a woman by turning her into an actual object.)

Juno’s “Due this holiday season” is the least offensive of the remaining taglines, again because the advertisers perceive no marketing bonus in sexualizing her … she’s a cute little indie hipster weirdo. Still, the fact that the poster emphasizes the pregnancy, rather than the woman who’s actually pregnant (except for the nametag, ha), sends the message that the pregnant woman is no longer as important as Her Pregnancy. (Think Hollywood starlets and the constant Baby Bump Watch.)

The other two posters depicting a pregnant woman each emphasize two men, the first one showing two men in a photo, and the other showing two men smiling ridiculously while cradling the woman’s stomach. Also note the … what, shaving cream smiley face? … painted on her stomach.

Then the taglines.

In Misconceptions, we get: “Good things come in other people’s packages.” Um, okay. Whose “package” are they referring to here exactly? The woman-as-baby-making-machine who will deliver a package in nine months? Or one of the two men apparently involved in providing sperm? With his … package? What the hell is happening here.

In the poster for The Brothers Solomon, they just come out and say it: “They want to put a baby in you.” Great! A film about a woman’s pregnancy that’s actually somehow about two men. Thanks, Hollywood.

The remaining posters that incorporate taglines:

Tomcats: “The last man standing gets the kitty.”

Swimming Pool: “On the surface, all is calm.”

Threads: “The fashion world … unzipped.”

American Beauty: ” … look closer”

The Babysitters: “These girls mean business.”

A couple of them might not be so terrible if they weren’t accompanied by the image of a woman’s bare stomach. But since they are, what differentiates the descriptions of these Hollywood films from the descriptions of soft-core porn?

Ripley’s Rebuke: The Big C

I decided to give The Big C a try, thinking a television show that stars Oscar-nominated Laura Linney, and the very recently Oscar-nominated Gabourey Sidibe, just might successfully pull-off a series about a woman dying from Stage IV melanoma. Instead, The Big C comes across as a slew of quirky characters competing in the Who Can Be the Biggest Asshole contest.

The show centers around Cathy (Laura Linney), a middle-aged woman diagnosed with Stage IV melanoma. As of the first five episodes, only her neighbor knows that she has cancer, and she refuses to discuss the issue with her immediate family. It’s easy to identify with Cathy’s unwillingness to open up to her husband, son, and brother about her diagnosis; she’s spent most of her life mothering all of them. She wants to avoid their pity. And she wants to avoid the role reversal of going from caretaker to taken care of.

But the show goes way too far in its depiction of Cathy as a cancer-stricken woman who, instead of undergoing treatment, forgoes it in favor of “grabbing life by the balls” (the show’s actual tagline). The writers make her boringly crazy in her new zest for life: “Look, I’m pouring red wine all over my expensive couch!” … “Look, I’m shooting my son with a paintball gun on his school bus!” … “Look, I’m doing cartwheels!” … “Look, I just stole a live lobster from the restaurant tank!” Worst of all, they make her mean, not in a way that showcases her strength or even her fear, but for sheer “comedic” effect, all the while asking the audience to forgive her for lashing out—remember, she’s got cancer for god’s sake!

Check it:

In the first episode, Cathy, who apparently teaches high school (summer school in this case), fat shames Sidibe’s character, Andrea, in front of the entire class. After Andrea makes a joke about Cathy’s recent unfocused and apathetic attitude toward teaching, Cathy responds with:

You can’t be fat and mean, Andrea … If you’re gonna dish it out, you gotta be able to lick it up. Fat people are jolly for a reason. Fat repels people, but joy attracts them. Now I know everyone’s laughing at your cruel jokes, but nobody’s inviting you to the prom. So you can either be fat and jolly or a skinny bitch. It’s up to you.

Watch the Clip

Really, Showtime? You took a gorgeous, talented actress and cast her as The Fat Girl who gets paid $100 by her teacher for every pound she loses? And, of course, it’s important that you make sure the teacher verbally and emotionally abuses The Fat Girl first. And that she chastises The Fat Girl about diet and exercise and her lack of motivation, even after The Fat Girl lists a slew of her past unsuccessful dieting attempts. And that her teacher totally, believably just happens to pull up beside her in a car, immediately pouring The Fat Girl’s giant slushy onto the street. (Because we all know, a Fat Girl can’t say no to a giant slushy.)

What gives, Showtime? Are we supposed to laugh our asses off at Andrea’s apparently disgusting fatness? (Admittedly, it’s just hilarious every time Andrea gets caught with another bag of potato chips that Cathy’s forced to take away from her.) Or, do you just want us to feel bad for Cathy for projecting her own desire to be “healthy” onto a young highschooler who has her whole life ahead of her, earnestly telling The Fat Girl, “I just don’t want you to drop dead before you graduate … “? Read: I might have to die young, but I can make sure Andrea doesn’t!

This is all a hoot, really.

And, if I can take this further, Showtime, what are we to make of The Fat Girl’s willingness to put up with Cathy’s behavior toward her? Oh, I forgot—Fat Girls don’t feel the way “regular” people feel; they’re too busy simultaneously pounding milkshakes and scarfing Big Macs to be bothered with the nonsense of experiencing emotions. The Fat Girl’s abysmal self-esteem must not even allow her to fathom standing up for herself, right? Because all Fat Girls deep down hate themselves and sit on the couch binge-eating pizzas, gaining more and more weight, never getting invited to the prom and, therefore, never deserving authentic love (ie, not the charity-case kind) or self-respect.

Or maybe she just wants the $100 for every pound she loses. Thank god for good, old-fashioned motivation wrapped up in a little Fat Hatred, right?

Really, hilarious.

The thing is, this could’ve been an intelligent show, if it weren’t so desperately trying to avoid sentimentality and any hint of darkness. Heather Havrilesky suggests, in her review over at Salon, that perhaps the show’s creator received direction to make the whole thing a little less dark, a little less … “deathy.” She writes:

I’m going to guess that either show creator Darlene Hunt or Laura Linney or both of them were given the following note at some point: “Lighten it up!” Maybe some test audience thought the story was too gloomy, too depressing, too focused on death. “Death? Yuck!” they said. “We don’t want death! We want zany pot-dealer moms who shrug and slurp on frappuccinos! We want zany multiple-personality-disorder moms who shrug and toss back canned beer! We want zany nurse moms who shrug and pop prescription drugs and have affairs with their pharmacist buddies! But zany control-freak moms who shrug and get naked in the back yard, because they’re about to die? No thank you!”

But the strategy to “lighten up this whole Stage IV cancer thing” ultimately fails in its cliche-ridden execution.

The over the top attempt to prevent the audience from getting too bogged down in death gives us Marlene (Phyllis Somerville), Cathy’s feisty old neighbor who refuses to mow her lawn or watch her dog or interact with anyone, blah. It gives us Paul (Oliver Platt), Cathy’s husband, the witty, schlubby yet lovable man-child in constant need of mothering by his wife. It gives us Adam (Gabriel Basso), Cathy’s son, the angsty, video game playing, mother-hating teenage boy who, in one absolutely necessary scene, gets caught masturbating by his mom. It gives us Sean (John Benjamin Hickey), Cathy’s brother—my favorite, really—an eco-extremist who eats leftover food from the garbage, protests gas-guzzling SUVs with a megaphone, refuses to bathe, avoids the dentist (fuck the system, you know?), and deliberately lives as a homeless person because he’s, like, so above the establishment.

(I find Sean particularly problematic because of the unapologetic excess of white, heterosexual, male privilege, as if there aren’t people who actually don’t have the means to go to the dentist, as if millions of people aren’t actually homeless, and, by the way, who don’t also have the convenient luxury of an upper middle class sister showing up every other day with food and clothing and money. See above for previous examples of the man-child.)

Basically, the show wallows in stereotypes but doesn’t take them far enough to make much of a commentary on … anything. I want the show to say something about class issues and privilege. I want the show to say something about the health care system and how financial prosperity, or lack thereof, might impact treatment decisions. I want the show to say something about victim-blaming, about the very real challenges of a woman living with men who don’t respect her, about aging and how it feels to navigate the world in a body deemed less desirable, less able.

But this show wants to laugh at those things: “Look, I’m setting my expensive couch on fire, because I can.” … “Look! I’m paying the workers double to install my swimming pool immediately, because I can.” … “Look! I’m shaming an obese student into losing weight, because I can.” Perhaps what disappoints me most is that the show expects the audience to root for Cathy in all her reckless, carefree, unacknowledged privilege abandon, like, “Look! She’s totally grabbing life by the balls, just like the tagline said she would.”

Disembodied Women Take Three: Leggy Perfection

In 1978, Hustler magazine depicted a headless woman shoved into a meat grinder on their June cover. Thirty two years later, Spike TV chose virtually the same image to promote their television show Blue Mountain State. Also, note the poster image for the film Choke, pictured below. This installment of “Disembodied Women” focuses on the continued use of dismemberment, in this case exposing women’s bare legs, to advertise films. The posters vary considerably, promoting horror films and romantic comedies, as well as foreign films and period pieces. The problem with such advertisements, as media activist Jean Kilbourne argues in her book Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel, is that this perpetual sexual objectification of women encourages men to think of women as inferior. Additionally, women begin to view themselves as a collection of body parts, where a perceived flaw in only one area of the body leads to an obsessive desire to perfect the whole. For more disturbing evidence, check out our first and second installments, The Rear View and The Headless Woman, and feel free to add to our growing list of offending films in the comments section.

Disembodied Women Take Two: The Headless Woman

The Headless Woman is the second installment in our Disembodied Women series, where we illustrate how production companies continue to market films through the dismemberment and objectification of women’s bodies. For more, see our first post, The Rear View.

Disembodied Women Take One: The Rear View

You see it constantly in print advertising and commercials: advertisers show close-ups of women’s legs to sell razors; they show close-ups of women’s breasts to sell bras; they show close-ups of women’s backsides to sell underwear. And they show close-ups of a combination of women’s body parts to sell beer, fast food, cigarettes, cologne, cars, shampoo, and countless other products. By dismembering women in such a way, the women being objectified, and hence, all women who live in the society where the advertised products can be consumed, ultimately become the objects of consumption themselves, and as such, cease to exist as human beings with feelings, intellect, and identities.

In a society that treats women merely as a collection of body parts, airbrushed to perfection, it caters to the pleasure of men, who then reduce women to body parts in everyday life. It’s no wonder women can barely walk down the street without being cat-called or ogled by individual men or entire groups of them, which serves as yet another patriarchal power trip, further subjugating women and their existence as actual people.

Unfortunately, movie posters also fall into the all-too-easy and uncreative trap of exploiting womens’ bodies in order to sell their films. I find it most disturbing that even films such as Bend It Like Beckham and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants also fall into the stereotypical “advertise women’s asses” approach to promoting a film. Both movies can be (and have been) read and reviewed as feminist in that they promote sisterhood and also significantly pass The Bechdel Test (which we’ve established seems embarrassingly elusive to most mainstream films).

Here’s a selection of movie posters advertising different genres that all use a woman’s backside to sell a film. Leave your thoughts about the posters, or other films that use similar imagery, in the comments.

Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: New Moon

The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Starring Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson, and Billy Burke. Written by Melissa Rosenberg (screenplay) and Stephenie Meyer (novel). Directed by Chris Weitz.

Critics have rightly argued that Twilight gives off a certain metaphor for teen abstinence vibe. Edward desires Bella so much that he refuses to let himself lose control with her. So, the audience gets a couple of scenes of passionate, intense kissing before the two melodramatically pull away from each other and decide to spoon innocently on the bed instead. If they decide to fornicate, after all, Bella could easily end up wounded by Edward’s thrusting vamp-strength or sucked completely dry. Of her blood. By Edward, her lover, who would of course be entirely unable to stop himself from sucking.

(For those of you unfamiliar, the Cullens, who are Edward’s vampire family, only drink the blood of animals to survive, even though they prefer human blood. The other, evil vampires in the movie, murder humans at will. Tsk, tsk.)

Twilight portrayed Bella as the passive object of vamp-Edward’s desire, who needed constant saving by him, from other vamps and from other men and from runaway cars, and who couldn’t make any decisions on her own throughout most of the movie. It shifts a little in the end, when Bella runs off to save her mother, ignoring the advice of the vampires who want to protect her. But by becoming an active subject in that scene, she’s punished, ultimately finding herself in a situation where Edward must save her yet again, literally by sucking poison from her blood.

But New Moon! How did you make me like you? It makes no sense—Bella still ends up in constant need of boy-saving, and she loses her freaking mind for months when Edward breaks up with her, which is not melodramatically showcased at all I swear, ha, by her constant nighttime screaming fits that force even her dad to run to her rescue. For the most part, Bella seems powerless, at the mercy of Edward, at the mercy of her nightmares, and eventually, at the mercy of the evil vampires who want to kill her (as punishment for Edward, who killed a vampire in Twilight).

So why did I find myself finally turning into an uber-fangirl as I watched? Because this time, the film is, dare I say … complicated.

Enter Jacob, Bella’s good friend who just happens to be a werewolf and who just happens to have the most incredible abs I’ve seen since Brad Pitt in Fight Club and who just happens to walk around with his shirt off constantly. And let’s remember the early scene in the school parking lot, where Bella watched as Edward walked toward her in exaggerated slow-motion, hair and button-down shirt blowing wistfully in the breeze, the camera steadied on him as Bella and me and fangirls across the country, yes, I’m going to say it, swoon. And then I started to wonder, “Is Bella entirely powerless?”

Not necessarily.

Because what strikes me most about the men in the Twilight saga is their desire to be looked at by Bella, which (fangirls everywhere unite!) positions Bella as the active subject (the gazer) and the men as passive objects (the gazed at). In the first film, Edward removes his shirt in the sunlight, revealing his twinkling vampire skin, and, upon seeing it, Bella says, “You’re beautiful.” She uses those words again in New Moon, this time with Jacob. When he says something along the lines of, “Why are you looking at me?” She responds with, “You’re sorta beautiful.”

Interestingly, (fangirls everywhere unite!) this direct physical objectification of women doesn’t exist in either movie—for instance, we don’t get traditional scenes of scantily clad girl-vamps trying to seduce men who they eventually eat (played as girl-power when it’s really just male fantasy).

But Bella isn’t without self-scrutiny. In the opening scene of the film, Bella dreams of herself as an old woman with Edward still at her side. That scene reveals an important plotline: fear of aging. Bella sees herself through the eyes of Edward (and therefore, men in general). She sees herself getting older while he stays young and twinkly-beautiful. She says, “You won’t want me when I’m a grandmother.” These feelings stem from living in a society that devalues aging women, and I like that the film explores the issue. Edward’s response? “You obviously don’t understand my feelings for you, Bella.”

Okay, so this is a total fangirl fantasy, right? I mean, a beautiful man loving you for what’s on the inside? I mean, honestly, we’re smarter than that, right? Right?! (Am I kidding?)

Still, in New Moon, even though Bella performs reckless acts, like jumping off a cliff and wrecking a motorcycle, just so faux-Edward will magically appear in some wavy fog-mist to male-dominate and tell her it’s dangerous, she still performs reckless acts. She makes decisions. She risks her life. For love! Ha. Of course, the fact that Edward can no longer save her—he isn’t physically there for real—means Jacob must step in. He does nice things … like taking off his shirt to reveal his Brad Pitt in Fight Club abs and to coincidentally wipe the blood from her forehead. He turns into a werewolf and saves her from one of the bad vamps. He performs CPR. Oh Jacob!

But then, after all this constant being saved by vampire-men and wolf-men, something amazing happens. Bella saves Edward. And even after she saves him, she saves him again, by convincing the Lead Evil Vampire God or Whatever to kill her instead of Edward. He doesn’t kill Bella, of course, because he becomes interested in—check out this awesomeness—her immunity to vampire powers. That’s right: the vampire mind readers can’t read Bella’s mind and the Dakota Fanning vampire can’t inflict mystical pain on Bella just by looking at her. It’s like Bella’s a vamp’s version of a superhero!

Look, is the film flawed? Yes.

The objectification of the men, for instance, also becomes an objectification of The Other (vampire/werewolf). Bella wants Edward to turn her into a vampire so they can be together forever but also because she doesn’t want to age (i.e. become undesirable). Bella can’t function when Edward leaves her, and she risks hurting herself just to get a glimpse of him again. Edward is 106 years old and she’s 18—would that work if the genders were reversed? And, when Edward agrees to turn Bella into a vampire, he insists that they marry first, which plays an awful lot like some creepy, conservative, let’s-get-married-before-I-take-your-virginity nonsense, creating that metaphor for teen abstinence vibe again.

But Bella isn’t a one-dimensional character anymore. In New Moon, she’s much more fleshed out, and perhaps most importantly, she doesn’t have to take her clothes off or perform a certain kind of femininity to get the boy. Edward falls for her because he finds her intriguing: he can’t read her thoughts (see True Blood), and he’s drawn to her because she smells delicious, sex metaphor? Jacob falls in love with Bella after they spend significant time together; it’s not some love-at-first-sight fantasy where he sees Bella, and the camera pans from her feet all the way up her legs and finally to her face where she either smiles coyly or looks down shyly.

As Dana Stevens writes in her review of New Moon:

The feminist in me wishes a lot of things. But say what you will about the Twilight films; they take female desire as seriously as a grad student from the early ’90s. The whole overcooked vampire vs. werewolf mythology (which also involves packs of shirtless wolf-boys and a sort of vampire Pope, played with camp glee by Michael Sheen) is, in essence, an excuse to place the viewer in Bella’s Timberland boots: torn between two flesh-eating monsters, feelin’ like a fool. Haters may construe Bella as a passive victim eager to be served up as vampire meat, but she’s the subject of this love story, not its object; she’s the lover while Edward and Jacob are her diametrically opposed beloveds, one hot-blooded (Jacob runs a constant body temperature of 108 degrees), the other pale and cold as stone.

Be sure to check out the Salon article, “Could New Moon Be a Feminist Triumph?” where Kate Harding argues that the movie’s box office gross could be a game-changer for the future of women in film.

Review in Conversation: ‘Sex and the City: The Movie’

Welcome to our second installment of the Review in Conversation: Sex and the City: The Movie. Our first RiC discussed the film Black Snake Moan.I had liked the early seasons of Sex and the City when it was on HBO, and while acknowledging its problems–unawareness of class most troubling, though in the late 90s perhaps it was permissible in our cultural imagination for a newspaper columnist to live a fabulous life –I thought it was funny and well-written. Oh, how things have changed. The fantasy of a newspaper writer being able to afford shoes with designer names I can’t pronounce has morphed into a successful book writer being so fabulous that she receives a free couture wedding gown from a designer I’ve even heard of, and her super-rich boyfriend buys a multi-million dollar penthouse apartment. The silly consumerist fantasy exploded like a vomit balloon all over this materialistic movie.Here’s a secret: I like fashion. It’s an art form, and its creators are capable of beautiful design and cultural statements. It’s also an industry, and like all major industries, has a very ugly side. I liken it to professional sports: I watch from the sidelines, aware of the way I’m being manipulated, but enjoy it nonetheless—all without expressly participating. In the TV show, Carrie Bradshaw stepped into the world of New York fashion, and we could laugh at her ridiculous ensembles and her forays into a world in which she didn’t—and probably didn’t want to—completely belong. In the movie, we’re watching The Carrie Bradshaw Brand, and she’s become very much a part of that thing called fashion. The fact that she wore a bird on her head as part of her wedding ensemble isn’t a joke, but played straight and serious. In other words, we’re no longer identifying with an outsider to fashion; she’s now part of the machine.Carrie’s friends have all been similarly transformed from dynamic characters into commodities—who are all far too rich and insincere for any comedy to ensue. There were clearly moments in the film when we were supposed to laugh (and during which I imagined a cheesy sitcom laugh track), but all felt so dated, so out of touch, and so, frankly, ADOLESCENT MALE, that they completely fell flat. I mean, come on, Charlotte shits herself? Samantha gets a pocketbook dog that humps everything in sight (standing in for her own caged libido)? A 50-year-old woman gains ten pounds and is OMG! FATTY McFAT FAT? Are you fucking kidding me? This is only the tip of the iceberg, but my question is this: In a movie we can’t possibly take seriously (in terms of reality), which claims to be nothing more than a (guilty) pleasure, did you laugh at all?

The women go through Carrie's wardrobe — The women go through Carrie’s wardrobe

Stephanie’s response:

No, I didn’t laugh. I didn’t laugh when Charlotte shit her pants. I didn’t laugh at Samantha’s dog humping its (his/her?) way through the film. I didn’t laugh at Charlotte’s screaming over-reaction to Carrie’s engagement, where she went as far as to stand up and announce it to the entire restaurant. (That’s just the kind of crazy stuff women do, isn’t it ladies?) I didn’t laugh at Miranda’s unshaved bush. I didn’t laugh at the stereotypical workaholic Mom who won’t fuck her husband (forcing him to cheat!). And I certainly didn’t laugh at Jennifer Hudson’s role as Carrie Bradshaw’s slave. Yeah, I said it. I’m not sure we weren’t meant to take this film seriously. Where’s the evidence of that? Because I’m an intelligent person, I can discern ridiculousness from reality, but I also personally know many people, men especially, who would most certainly walk away with the notion that women actually behave this way. Call me a humorless feminist, but honestly, were there actually any women in this movie?

However, when this film opened, it dethroned Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull for the number one spot at the box office. It seemed as if women (who comprised about 85% of the audience, according to sources that keep track of such things) couldn’t wait to see it, and it’s since been touted as the biggest box office opening for a women-centered film (and romantic comedy) … basically ever. When I read about these female-driven films raking in the money, like The Proposal, for instance, which made tons of money as a woman-centered romantic comedy, I never know quite how to handle it. On one hand, yes! Go women! But on the other hand … seriously? We can’t do better than characters who start off as gung-ho career women who, by the end of the film, ultimately validate the dominant ideology that women are, by their nature, relationship-obsessed?

Sex and the City also wants to claim it’s about female sisterhood, but I couldn’t take that seriously so much. I’ve heard some women in the blogosphere describe this film as nothing more than Pop-Feminism. To me, that might be a criticism of the idea of female sisterhood showing up as shoe-obsessions, clothing-obsessions, (eg “Big, please build me a gigantic closet for all my shoes and clothing,”) obsessions with thinness and fashion in general, and other materialistic obsessions that ultimately become symbols of female empowerment. And let’s not forget, this is also a film about white women. Doesn’t that seem to be the trend, especially in the most recent onslaught of romantic comedies?

Amber’s response:

While I dismiss the film itself as pure fantasy—in the way that a prince-charming fairy tale is fantasy—you may be right to question that reaction. It’s naïve to think that the Disney princess fantasy is anything but insidious, so why give the adult fantasy a free pass? Hyper-consumerism has become inseparable from female identity in the media, and I don’t think we really need yet another citation of this ideology. Purchasing the right products doesn’t equal empowerment, and while the film half-assedly nods to this fact, its product obsession completely undermines any real effort to argue that friendship is the most important thing in life.However, Pop-Feminism or not, these are women who sincerely love one another–who aren’t conniving against each other, who aren’t in direct competition with one another. Also, they are over twenty-five, have healthy sex lives, and aren’t shamed in any way for being sexual beings. This was a revolutionary element of the TV show when it premiered in 1998, and considering the cultural environment, is no less revolutionary ten years later. Yet, ten years later, we should expect something more than basic “women are human beings” arguments masquerading as feminism. And, yes, we should expect something more than thin, beautiful, wealthy, fashionable, white ladies representing female empowerment.Jennifer Hudson’s role was abominable. Not only was she Carrie Bradshaw’s servant and charity recipient, we didn’t see her character grow and mature. What she learned, apparently, while working as a PA in NYC, is that boys are really important, and that knowledge led her back to her hometown to get married. Hell, maybe working for that vortex of narcissism, I’d run too. But the only thing I see about the inclusion of her character is a cynical instance of tokenism. It’s really as if the filmmakers said, “Hey, there are a whole lot of black women out there–maybe we should try to not completely alienate them. Let’s give Carrie an assistant!” FAIL. Is it just me, or does mass media seem more segregated now than in any other time during our lives? Also, how many sequels do you predict?

Stephanie’s response:
The reason I refuse to take Sex and the City’s self-proclaimed celebration of sisterhood very seriously is because the women rarely permit one another to slack off on their duty to maintain Fabulous Fashionista status at all times. As I stated earlier, Miranda gets shit for not porn-waxing and Samantha gets shit for gaining weight (from comfort-eating due to her tanking relationship—because that’s another thing we all do, ladies!). They permit Carrie’s days of depression when Big leaves her at the altar, literally feeding her at one point, but I still couldn’t help but cringe at that simultaneous depiction of female-infantilizing coupled with creepy mommy-moment.

Yet I believe they do really love one another. You’re right to point out the refreshing portrayal of women who aren’t in direct competition or who aren’t conniving against one another. One could also point out many scenes where genuine love exists among them—my favorite scene is when Carrie sucks it up and takes the train (but not without fur coat!) to Miranda’s apartment so she won’t be alone on New Year’s. It feels … honest, in a way that so much of the rest of the film doesn’t.

I never saw the television series. From what I’ve heard and read, the women were very much unashamed sexual beings. So I had to ask myself after I saw the movie, “Where the hell is all this sex I’ve been hearing about?” Samantha has sex exactly zero times on-screen. Miranda struggles with sex and her husband’s infidelity—it’s very much implied that he cheats because she won’t sleep with him (another one of her wife-duties shirked). Charlotte claims to have a wonderful sex life, but … where’s the evidence? Perhaps the film wants to show the progression of their lives and the complications that might come with aging, but they chose to do it by regressing to traditional gender expectations regarding marriage and pregnancies and preoccupations with couple-hood.

I get the feeling that the show, while still portraying the women as rich and fashion-obsessed, actually represented their shunning of traditional, more conservative ideas regarding adult womanhood. They didn’t have to get married and have babies and buy houses. They could have sex! And live in the city! And have fulfilling careers! If that’s the case, the film-version seriously dropped the ball.

With scenes like Miranda telling her child to “follow the white person with the baby” when they’re looking for a new apartment in a less-rich neighborhood; with scenes like Carrie showing up to reclaim her metaphorical glass slipper while her metaphorical prince conveniently awaits in her giant, specially built metaphorical (closet)-castle—the film only reinforces good ol’ traditional American values about class, heterosexual relationships, and especially about womanhood.

Movie Review: ‘The Blind Side’

No. No to the over-abundant racial stereotypes showcased throughout the film. No to the kind-hearted southern woman as the Black man’s White Savior. No to the shallow, embarrassing, surface-level portrayal of class issues. No to the constant heavy-handed references to God and prayer and sexual morality. No to falling back on the tired tropes of wives as mommies and women as over-bearing and emasculating ball-busters. No to this film’s best picture nomination. Just … no.

imdb synopsis, as composed by Anonymous:

The Blind Side depicts the story of Michael Oher, a homeless African-American youngster from a broken home, taken in by the Touhys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. At the same time, Oher’s presence in the Touhys’ lives leads them to some insightful self-discoveries of their own.

Living in his new environment, the teen faces a completely different set of challenges to overcome. As a football player and student, Oher works hard and, with the help of his coaches and adopted family, becomes an All-American offensive left tackle.

The real synopsis, as composed by me:

The Blind Side depicts the story of a white woman who sees a Black man walking down the street in the rain. She tells her husband to stop the car, and he obliges—oh, his wife is just so crazy sometimes!—then, out of the goodness of her white heart, she allows him to spend the night in their offensively enormous home.

Unfortunately, she can’t sleep very well—the Black man might steal some of their very important shit! But the next day, when she sees that he’s folded his blankets and sheets nicely on the couch, she realizes that, hey, maybe all Black men really aren’t thieving thugs.

Then she saves his life.

There’s a way to tell a true story, and there’s a way to completely botch the shit out of a true story. Shit-botching, in this instance, might include basing the entire film around an upper-class white woman’s struggle to essentially reform a young Black man by taking him in, buying him clothes, getting him a tutor, teaching him how to tackle, and threatening to kill a group of young Black men he used to hang out with.

However, a filmmaker might consider, when telling the true story of Michael Oher’s struggles to overcome his amazing obstacles, to actually base the film on the true story of Michael Oher’s struggles to overcome his amazing obstacles.

Instead, we get Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) as the adorable southern heroine. We get the white football coach’s unwillingness to stand by his Black player, until one day, he has a revelation on the field and screams at a referee for making yet another terrible call against Oher. The result? The viewer gets to cheer—not for Oher, mind you—but for the lesson the coach finally learned: racism is bad! Yay white people! We rock! This is all very problematic because the story, which should’ve been about Oher, plays from beginning to end like a manipulative montage of white guilt.

Basically, each white person learns a valuable lesson in this movie: Black people aren’t bad, as long as they’re reformed by upper-class white people.

While we have Oher, a soft-spoken, likable football player, we also have Oher’s former friends, a group of young Black men based entirely on stereotypes of inner-city gun-toters. In those scenes, Black men are the polar opposite of Oher, consistently sexually harassing women, waving guns around, starting fights, and generally looking all dangerous and shit. So when Tuohy confronts them for messing with Oher, the viewer can’t help but root for her; she’s merely protecting her adopted son after all.

As a result, the audience strongly identifies with an upper-class conservative white woman as she threatens a group of inner-city Black men. She says, “If you so much as set foot downtown you will be sorry. I’m in a prayer group with the D.A., I’m a member of the NRA, and I’m always packing.”

We’re meant to find that funny. I don’t find it funny. Because overall, the moral of that scene, and of this entire fake true story about Michael Oher, basically goes like this: White woman good. Black men bad. White woman make one black man good.

She even stands up to her upper-class white friends who also, as luck would have it, are based on the worst stereotypes of upper-class white women you can possibly imagine: cold, snobbish, morally superior, complete assholes who occasionally get together for lunch and discuss money or something. The scenes with these women serve one purpose: for them to act overtly racist so that Leigh Anne Tuohy can go all heroine on our asses again, telling off the women and leaving them alone and flabbergasted at the table. How dare she!

If you count those non-conversations about nothing as “conversations among women,” then I suppose this film technically passes the Bechdel Test. But the portrayal of women in this film? Embarrassing.

At first, I wanted to identify with Bullock, to see her as a strong, complicated female lead. But when I realized her character is nothing more than a vehicle for upper-middle-class white America to feel good about itself, well, that pretty much killed it for me.

To make matters worse, if possible, the filmmakers use Tuohy’s outspoken personality to emasculate men, especially the football coach. She’s overly feminine, too, which makes her outspokenness almost adorable, and, in turn, permitted. Even her husband has given up trying to argue with her, which is played as a cutesy marriage thing, where the emasculated husband does whatever his wife says because she’s all blunt and endearing.

And as a mommy, my god! What does she think she’s doing bringing a looming Black man into her home? What kind of mother would do that? These are the questions asked by the stereotypes-disguised-as-upper-class-white-women, and they jar Tuohy enough that she goes immediately into Good Mother mode, having a sit-down with her daughter to discuss Oher’s presence in their home. Maybe that’s fine, but where’s Daddy in this discussion?

What I’m saying is this: I don’t know what the hell the Academy was thinking this year when it tossed up The Blind Side as a Best Picture contender, but remember, this is also the same group of people who awarded the Best Picture Oscar to Crash in 2005. Five years have passed—is it already time to recognize yet another racist film that blindly (ha) reinforces the exact stereotypes it attempts to rail against?

Director Spotlight: Allison Anders

Welcome to our first installment of Director Spotlight, where we explore the biographies and filmographies of an often overlooked group: women film directors.

Here is an excerpt from the AMC biography on Allison Anders:

The hardships encountered and overcome by director Allison Anders are often reflected in the grittiness and strength of her female characters, a quality that lends her stories a tough but refreshing honesty. Anders cares about her characters, but she refuses to give them falsely happy endings and this refusal distinguishes her from other directors of so-called women’s films who make their movies into little more than celluloid Hallmark cards. Anders’ approach to this kind of storytelling has given her distinction in the film industry and she continues to make films that challenge conventional attitudes toward both women and films about women.

Born November 16, 1954, in Ashland, KY, Anders had an upbringing that was nothing if not traumatic. At the age of five, she, her mother, and four sisters were abandoned by her father, and were forced into an unstable, itinerant lifestyle. At the age of 12, Anders was raped and then endured abuse from her stepfather, who at one point threatened her with a gun. Anders suffered a mental breakdown when she was 15 years old, after her mother took her daughters to Los Angeles to escape further abuse. Following time in psychiatric wards, later in foster homes and jail, Anders ventured back to Kentucky, then moved to London with the man who would father her daughter.

Be sure to read her entire biography here. You can also check out several interviews with Anders where she discusses her childhood and the making of her films in great detail here, here, and here.

***

Border Radio: 1987

Starring Chris D. and Chris Shearer

Independent Film Quarterly critic Todd Konrad summarizes the film as follows:

Chris D plays Jeff, an underground singer-songwriter who along with his bandmate Dean (played by Doe) and hanger-on Chris (played by Chris Spencer), rob a local rock club of both money and drugs. In order to avoid retribution from the club owner and his henchmen, Jeff escapes across the border to Mexico where he hides out to let the heat die down. Left in the lurch is Jeff’s wife Luanna and their young daughter Devon (played respectively by Anders’ real life sister and daughter, Luanna and Devon Anders). In order to keep things together, Luanna, a local rock journalist, is left to play detective in order to figure out exactly what happened to send Jeff away. The hope being that she will find a way to bring her man back from across the border and fix whatever problems he may have incurred in doing so.

***

Gas Food Lodging: 1992
Starring Brooke Adams, Ione Skye, Fairuza Balk, and James Brolin

In her New York Times Critics’ Pick Review, Janet Maslin writes:

Imagine “The Last Picture Show” shot in color and shaped by a rueful feminine perspective, in a place where women are hopelessly anchored while the men drift through like tumbleweed. The becalmed town of Laramie, N.M., is the setting in which Nora (Brooke Adams), a hard-working waitress with a knowing, generous grin, has tried to bring up her two unruly daughters.

***

Mi Vida Loca (aka My Crazy Life): 1993
Starring Angel Aviles, Seidy Lopez, Devine, Monica Lutton, and Christina Solis

Check out the New York Times, where Caryn James opens her review with:

In “Mi Vida Loca My Crazy Life,” Allison Anders tries what few directors would have had the interest or intelligence to think of. She looks beyond the surface of the lives of Hispanic girl gangs and attempts to create a deeper portrait of young women in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles. They use gang names, like Sad Girl, Mousie and Whisper. And though violence is part of their lives, they are likely to be teen-age mothers struggling to get by.

***

Four Rooms (segment “The Missing Ingredient”): 1995
Starring Sammi Davis, Valeria Golino, Madonna, Ione Skye, and Lily Taylor

This film was widely panned by critics. Four directors participated, and each director created their own segment. Anders wrote and directed “The Missing Ingredient,” about which James Berardinelli of reelviews.net writes:

The story—what little there is—revolves around a witches’ coven trying to resurrect the spirit of a stripper. All the ingredients (mother’s milk, virgin’s blood, sweat of five men’s thighs, and a year’s tears) are ready except for a sperm sample. Since witch Eva (Ione Skye) failed in her assignment to bring this vital component of the mixture, she is charged with seducing Ted and getting what she needs from him.

***

Grace of My Heart: 1996
Starring Illeana Douglas, Sissy Boyd, Christina Pickles, and Jill Sobule

Time Out Magazine writes:

Loosely inspired by the life of Carole King, this is a light, feminist take on 15 years of pop: hits and Ms, if you will. It begins with a bright, peppy tone, pastiching the nascent rock’n’roll scene with an affectionate smile and perfect pitch—the Larry Klein-produced soundtrack is spot on. But it’s not all kitsch nostalgia: the period coincides with great social changes, particularly regarding the role of women, a recurrent Anders theme. Sharp cameos include Patsy Kensit’s rival songwriter and Bridget Fonda’s teen songbird with a secret love.

***

Sugar Town: 1999
Starring Jade Gordon, John Taylor, Michael Des Barres, and Martin Kemp

David Ansen at Newsweek writes:

It isn’t easy growing old in the land of youth and beauty. It’s even harder if you’re a rock-and-roller who hasn’t had a hit in decades, or a sexy leading lady now being offered parts as Christina Ricci’s mother. “Sugar Town,” an agreeably scruffy L.A. satire co-written and directed by Allison Anders and Kurt Voss, is filled with sharp, funny snapshots of the hustlers, has-beens, recovering junkies and Topanga Canyon earth mothers on the fringes of the Hollywood music biz.