The Walking Dead – Bitch Flicks

A Feminist Guide to Horror: Torture Porn TV

Small screen torture porn, at least in the cases of ‘American Horror Story’ and ‘Penny Dreadful,’ seems to be serving rather to take our fear of sex and women out of the dark and into the light, giving us an opportunity to vicariously take women apart and show them as disgusting as a substantial portion of our society fears we might be.

This guest post written by Holly Derr is an edited version that originally appeared at her site. It is cross-posted with permission. | Spoilers ahead for Penny Dreadful.

When what film critic David Edelstein called “torture porn” became a trend in 2004 and 2005, its relationship to the growing awareness that the U.S. had become a country that tortures was clear. On-screen representations of people being tortured by evil but human monsters served as a means of taking what had been kept secret about Abu Ghraib and putting it in full view in all its gore. Even films like Hostel and Turistas, that deliberately built their stories around Americans in foreign locations, served as a kind of collective catharsis upon accepting that our country also engaged in such horrific practices.

Twelve years later, with the Saw franchise eight movies in, torture porn has made its way into television. Between American Horror Story and The Walking Dead still going and Penny Dreadful having recently ended, it occupies a fairly important space in the supernatural television landscape.

For this year’s Feminist Guide to Horror Movies, I had the ridiculous idea that I would watch all three of these television series from beginning to end, determining, if not which show is most feminist, at least which is least sexist. I couldn’t do it. I made it through only one show all the way – Penny Dreadful – and in the course of just three seasons I watched women tortured by demons from the inside out, tarred and burned alive, branded, poisoned, smothered and brought back to life, a woman was driven to cut her own throat, and multiple women were shot by their father, creator, and closest friend.

Bringing together characters from Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, with a werewolf thrown in for good measure, Penny Dreadful’s main theme is that we are all possessed by demons; we all have a monster lurking inside. Creator, writer, and showrunner John Logan uses the Victorian backdrop to great effect. In season one, the Grand Guignol delights audiences with its onstage violence and spurts of blood. Season two features a subplot about a wax museum of gory crime scenes with ambitions of becoming a full-on freak show. Season three features the trusty horror trope of the mental institution in which people are experimented upon. All three elements anchor the show firmly in its gaslight era and constantly remind us that, despite a lot of talk about faith and sin, Victorians were really obsessed with bodies and their physical limits.

The potential for feminism is high. The focus of the show on a woman, Vanessa Ives (Eva Green), as its protagonist gives the audience a chance to identify with and follow the story through a woman’s perspective. Patti LuPone’s second-season cut-wife character Joan Clayton – unnecessarily violent depiction of abortion aside – is a strong, single mentor and good witch/doctor. Her third-season psychiatrist, a gender-flipped Dr. Seward from Dracula, is a smart woman succeeding in a man’s world who can handle herself in a fight to boot.

But the show’s feminism falters by treating the female characters differently from the male ones. Though minor male characters in Penny Dreadful are the victims of some pretty horrifying violence, too, the women really get the worst of it, and there are fewer of them to start with. Furthermore, for the male characters, the connection between what haunts them and their sexuality remains the subverted metaphor that it is in the Gothic horror novels in which they were created, with greed, ambition, and failure to be a good father/son mixed into an all-encompassing idea of their sins/demons.

For Vanessa Ives, however, acting upon her sexual feelings literally brings out the demon in her, creating a one-to-one relationship between her sexuality and her dark side. Though her suffering is centered, her character is actually less complex and therefore less fully human than the male ones. Other than one early sexual misstep, she has no flaws at all. To make matters worse, the female character who fully owns her sexuality, Brona/Lily (Billie Piper), one of Dr. Frankenstein’s creatures, is also a fully evil murderer, even when she connects to the early feminist movement and becomes a leader of disenfranchised women.

Finally, the presence of the same female body (Patty LuPone’s) in two different characters (something that is not a recurring aspect of the show, as it is with American Horror Story, but rather only happens with this one actor) keeps female heroism in the realm of archetype. In fact, the most interesting character in the series is not Vanessa Ives but the werewolf, Ethan Chandler (Josh Hartnett), whose relationships with three different father figures and his past as a soldier and an adopted Apache give him far more to grapple with than his sexuality (which is interesting as he is a queer character), which, despite the Victorian setting, doesn’t seem to be a problem for him at all.

No possible alternative to her fate is ever implied for Vanessa Ives, for whom acting on her sexual desires is to bring about the end of the world, and the audience is given little opportunity for hope. Accordingly, Penny Dreadful lacks a key component of horror: the moments of relief, whether in the form of humor or love, that are essential to keeping audiences vulnerable to the coming terrors – nothing is so rewarding when watching horror as a laugh that turns into a scream. Torture porn as a genre has very few of those moments, creating a rhythm that is not about suspense and jump-scares but merely about the ongoing horror of watching, head on, what terrible things people will do to people.

Penny Dreadful comes close to performing feminist work by showing how hard it is for women to live in a society that thinks of their sexuality as dangerous and their bodies as “nasty” and “disgusting,” with blood coming out of their wherevers. In the end, however, it doesn’t just depict the oppression of women, it reifies it, concretizing the idea in audience’s minds by making the women’s suffering disgusting.

I couldn’t get further than one and a half seasons into American Horror Story, which puts even more torture on screen than Penny Dreadful. Though some bad things happen to the men in that show too, the rape, mutilation, deliberate transmission of the bubonic plague, and unnecessary amputations in the episodes I’ve seen are reserved for female bodies. The buzz around this year’s season premiere of The Walking Dead indicates that it has gone from being a means of examining the variety of ways that people form societies and families to a means of examining the variety of ways people kill one another. Some scenes in the premiere were too graphic to be shown during prime time in the U.K.

At this point, our culture is no longer using torture porn to work out our guilt about our conduct abroad. Small screen torture porn, at least in the cases of American Horror Story and Penny Dreadful, seems to be serving rather to take our fear of sex and women out of the dark and into the light, giving us an opportunity to vicariously take women apart and show them as disgusting as a substantial portion of our society fears we might be.

Perhaps these depictions of torture are a necessary step to take before we finally accept that sexual women are not demonic, the women’s movement is not led by a superhuman killer with a vagenda of manocide, and our bodies don’t need to be tortured to be made pure. If anything good can be said about recent public discussions of sexual harassment, abuse, and oppression, it’s that they are public. Women all over the country are sharing their stories of being grabbed in the pussy and kissed against their will, women are owning the descriptor of “nasty” as a badge of pride, and women are refusing to be seen as anything less than fully human, inside and out.

Unfortunately, Penny Dreadful doesn’t ultimately reject the notion that women need to be tortured to be sure that they’re not evil. I can’t tell you where American Horror Story and The Walking Dead are going because, even though I am a hardened, life-long horror fan, I can’t take any more torture, and I don’t want to keep seeing bodies, and women’s bodies in particular, used to create disgust.

I watch horror because identifying what we are afraid of tells us a lot about ourselves, but also because it’s fun to be scared. As my Halloween binge-watching experiment draws to a close, I’m a lot more scared by what it means that torture porn TV is so popular than I am by torture porn itself.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Sex and the Penny Dreadful

Holly L. Derr is a feminist media critic who writes about theater, film, television, video games and comics. Follow her @hld6oddblend and on her Tumblr, Feminist Fandom.

We Need to Talk About Tara: ‘The Walking Dead’ and Queer Body Positivity

…To have a relationship like Tara and Denise’s was such a glorious prize. Moreover, in a time where femininity is so ensnared in the constant rhetoric surrounding the sizing of women’s bodies, and fixating on labels and valorizing or castigating a language of weight and body image that completely reduces feminine identity, to have two strong and two queer women feature prominently in a way that refuses to submit to those standards and dialogues is such a boon in so many regards.

This is a guest post written by Eva Phillips.

Rarely do the shows that I rapturously and actively nerd-gasm correspond with shows that I eagerly seek out for positive or intriguing queer narratives. With the exceptions of Orphan Black, the ever-confounding subplots on American Horror Story and my nostalgic revisiting of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, my queer reading of nerd-tastic texts is often relegated to the imagined on my part, and infrequently prominently feature explicitly queer characters and storylines for more than an episode or two. Thus, this piece originated as a way of professing my adoration for one of the few queer characters (and her consequent queer relationship) that happened to emerge in one of my most cherished nerd-series of all time (for better or for worse). And then, upon beginning to pen my praises, a really enraging media-kerfuffle transpired involving Amy Schumer, and the irritatingly age-old issue of discussing and analyzing women’s body image and size based on language that strips them of their autonomy resurfaced yet again. My vitriolic response to the uproar then galvanized me to reconceptualize my piece, reexamining my thoughts on the character/relationship I so adored in the context of its statement on body/selfhood positivity and assertion in conjunction with its queer elevation.

So given that buildup, it might seem a bit peculiar that the show that I chose to write on is the oft-beleaguered AMC giant, The Walking Dead. But perhaps halt scorn for a moment. For a show that started off with some of the most flamboyantly misogynistic storylines, machismo engorged characters, T Dogg and “the problem of race”, and manipulatively or even scurrilously portrayed women (the laughably awful attempt to cast Lori as some sort of Lady Macbeth in Season 2? Always a personal “favorite”), The Walking Dead has surprisingly evolved into one of the more complex, multi-persona infused shows. Though it may not be the pinnacle of diversity in the ever-expanding canopy of televisual representation, and it is plagued by some of the worrisome trends of disregarding certain actors (like the irksome detail of Sonequa Martin Green’s late addition to the main credits three season into her stint, compared to Michael Cudlitz’s and Lennie James’ nearly immediate additions).

Tara first appears in the Season Four episode “Live Bait”— which, much to my dismay, was not a standalone episode about a dive-y post-apocalyptic leather bar, but, rather, was a clunky mid-season re-introduction of everyone’s favorite sociopath, The Governor. Fairly pointless things happen throughout the episode’s vignette — he calls himself “Brian,” he gently carries a sickly man, he seems to have a disassociative break from his murderous self, and he develops paternal feelings for a little girl (essentially tacitly promising her a grisly death to continue his pretty dismal parenting record). But aside from “Brian” grumbling around and somehow seducing everyone (how, though? Really? Even Merle had more charisma…) there’s this spunky woman who greets us, pistol at the ready, who hastens to inform “Brian” that she is a star member of the Atlanta police force and has sufficient ammunition to kill “Brian” every day for the next ten years (which, may have not been a terrible idea for a TWD spinoff). This gal with all the chutzpah, of course, is Tara Chambers, significant for being all at once beautifully awkward, savagely protective — she is the watchdog of her niece (the aforementioned little girl, Megan), her father (the aforementioned sickly man), and her utterly milquetoast sister, Lilly — endearingly aggressive yet naïve (she poignantly calls the walkers “monsters,” and shoots them repeatedly, unaware of the “get the brain” rule), and, most importantly, she is profoundly, blissfully queer. Even if, in the final ten minutes of the episode, we weren’t graced with the subtle, all-too-familiar tale exchanged between Tara and Lilly about a camping trip, ‘shrooms, and a confession from a female love interest had a boyfriend, Tara would be the most marvelously encoded queer character to feature in The Walking Dead. Tara swears (at least, by AMC standards) effusively, she is some peculiar admixture of savage, quirky and mournful. She has a belligerent insistence that literally every significant event (including, in her premiere episode, “Brian’s” swift action to put-down her deceased father) must be concluded or heralded with a fist-bump. Actor Alana Masterson efficaciously embodies a character who not only proudly and openly personifies timidly-badass queer femininity, but makes each scene Tara is in meaningful, rather than getting lost in the shuffle of often interchangeable TWD secondary characters (or the, “Are You There God, It’s Me Beth/Bob/Rosita” syndrome that tends to be virulent in the series).

Certainly, there are many praises and vexations to profess when dissecting Tara’s trajectory and character arch, the praise portion of which I would certainly make as rich and embellished as possible because aside from the gorgeous enigma that is Carol, Tara is arguably one of my most beloved characters, living or (un)dead. There’s the really lovely (and it is enraging that character development of queer folk is met with gratefulness) stretch throughout the haphazard, at times brilliant, chaos of seasons four and five, in which Tara develops when she could have been marginalized or left behind. She has some of the most harrowing and compelling storylines. Her entire remaining family suffers the direst walkers’ fate; she realizes the monstrous sociopathy of “Brian’s” vengeance (yelling at her soon-to-perish, then-girlfriend “he chopped a guy’s head off…WITH A SWORD”); upon managing to be one of the two survivors in the husk of the prison, she accompanies, aids and bonds with Glenn; she manages to forge a place in the group and with Rick despite her origins, and develops a quirky little family unit with Rosita, Eugene and Rosita (and later, poor, poor Noah). Not only does her character’s spark never diminish, she is consistently given stellar dialogue, both punchy and sympathetic (her rapport with Eugene is often a highlight), and she rocks some of the most fantastically gay flannel cut-offs that inspire me to greatness.

What is most crucial about Tara, and Alana Masterson’s consistently wonderful portrayal, that really consecrates her deserved spot in the television tradition of marvelously queer Taras, is the space her queerness inhabits and the implicit, resounding body positivity that is manifest in her season six relationship with the affably tragic Denise Cloyd. One of the vexations of Tara’s narrative, and of the show in general, is the virtual nonexistence of queer intimacy and sexuality, particularly given the bevvy of coital exchanges between Maggie and Glenn, and the scantily clad entanglements of Rick and Lori, Rick and Michonne, and even Abraham and Rosita. Tara’s intimacy with her partners is diluted and nearly G-rated, though it is given more attention than her queer peer Aaron and his beau Eric (who, much to my surprise, is still alive — I rewatched the series and thought, “This is surely the episode where Eric dies of a broken ankle or succumbs to scurvy,” but, nope. Still kicking). To address the egregiously dissatisfying matter of disproportionately shown queer sexuality, or the consequent deeming of even queer kisses as “controversial,” would be a really vitriolic and speculative piece all its own.

Rather, what is worth discussing, what I felt so impressed upon to discuss is the way in which Tara’s body exists – she is never exoticized or eroticized, Tara is both beautiful and uniquely, ceaselessly quirky. Her queerness is neither othered nor, arguably more infuriating, forcibly normalized (there is no asinine moment of, “Well, I mean, it’s totally cool that you’re a lesbian.”). Importantly, Tara’s body is allowed to exist in its own right — it is not commodified, positioned, or stylized in a way to be the sexy sapphic chick or the archetypal granola-y/exaggeratedly butch/desexualized lesbian. She is an organic woman with no caricatures clinging to her presentation of self.

This is no more evident and worth celebrating than in the unexpected relationship between Tara and Denise that begins in the season six episode “Now” and flourishes throughout the entirety of the season. Their fire is kindled, so to speak, in the devastating wake of the Wolves attack in “JSS,” and is established on a foundation of moral support (Tara inspires Denise to trust in her medical prowess as she is thrust into the role of Alexandria’s sole doctor), protection and genuine care for one another (Denise asking Daryl to fetch soda for Tara because she talks about it in her sleep is particularly lovely) and just general, unique adorableness. The two even share a winking, encoded, dialogue exchange after Denise initiates the relationship by kissing Tara on the steps, and Denise, presumably referring to, you know, the zombies and all states, “It’s the end of the world,” to which Tara coolly retorts, “No… it’s not.” Amidst all that effulgent splendor and healthiness of a relationship ensconced in decay and turmoil, the most pleasantly surprising element of Tara and Denise (who really need a portmanteau name… Tanise? Rase? Dera? I’ll think of something) is the profound body positivity they embody together and as a couple. Both Tara and Denise — played by the outrageously talented Merritt Wever, who if you are not aware of, you need to familiarize yourself with immediately — are women who may be categorized in certain body types, but to do so would be a blunder. They are beautiful, complex women whose beauty is iridescent in their auras and their fluidity with, attraction to and reliance upon one another. Moreover, they are not hyper-sexualized nor isolated in a realm of frumpy, sexless lesbian portrayal. It is a queer relationship, and a depiction of two women, that thrives on the essence of just being – that is to say that their love and their selves resonate and matter for their own beauty and their own actions; not some essentialized, picked apart, or commodified representation.

That is really at the heart of the matter in why Denise’s savage death in the final episodes of season 6 is so brutal. It’s not simply that it painfully falls into the abhorrent Bury Your Gays trope — Denise gets killed in an attempt to find both soda (for Tara) and inner-strength to be able to tell Tara she loves her (which she resolves to do) — it is that her death signifies the violent and agonizing (not hyperbolic, I’m very attached to these characters) end to a queer relationship that wasn’t steeped in unrealistic or unnecessary stereotyping. Tara and Denise were relatable, despite their outlandishly gloomy environment, and as a couple they embodied a wholly body positive, wholly natural union, albeit forged in the midst of guts and splatter.

The ever-enchanting Merritt Wever, in an interview following the shockwaves of Denise’s vicious arrow-through-the-eye demise (a demise, importantly, intended for Übermensch white dude Abraham in the comics), echoed the heteronormative, unintended privilege of not comprehending the loss of such a character to a queer audience. Beyond her remarks, that there was a sincere failure, in all likelihood, to acknowledge that Denise’s death would be seen as a blight on queer televisual representation, there is a certain melancholy in mourning a relationship that was characterized by body positivity and queer elevation. As a woman who came of age and came to terms with queerness in cooperation with my obsession with television and film, the plethora of queer bodies and queer relationships I watched that fixated on distortedly immaculate physicalities — or, conversely, mocked or marginalized bodies — and reveled in some sensationalized type of sexuality so warped my perception, that to have a relationship like Tara and Denise’s was such a glorious prize. Moreover, in a time where femininity is so ensnared in the constant rhetoric surrounding the sizing of women’s bodies, and fixating on labels and valorizing or castigating a language of weight and body image that completely reduces feminine identity, to have two strong and two queer women feature prominently in a way that refuses to submit to those standards and dialogues is such a boon in so many regards.

Lamenting Denise’s death is certainly deserved, though it should not completely occlude the impact Tara as a character had and will continue to have (once her never-ending supplies run ends after Alana Masterson’s IRL pregnancy). Tara, in her own right, is a formidable character, and as a testament to her character’s appeal and magnificence, she has existed and championed in a series whose literary counterpart she did not even exist in (or so I’m told, because I’m the worst kind of TWD nerd who abstains from the comics). Her flawless presence and uncompromising, uncommodified self and queerness is only the decadent icing on an already pretty phenomenal, fist-bumping cake. Moreover, Tara is one of the few characters that has actually catalyzed me to pine to be fictitious — after all, she’ll probably need a shoulder to cry on after returning to the Negan-sowed chaos in the upcoming season.

Eva Phillips is constantly surprised at how remarkably Southern she in fact is as she adjusts to social and climate life in The Steel City. Additionally, Eva thoroughly enjoys completing her Master’s Degree in English, though really wishes that more of her grades could be based on how well she researches Making a Murderer conspiracy theories whilst pile-driving salt-and-vinegar chips. You can follow her on Instagram at @menzingers2.

Violent Women: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Violent Women Theme Week here.

The Violent Vagina: The Real Horror Behind the Teeth by Belle Artiquez

It’s a conundrum, one that Dawn faces head (or vagina) on. She is forced to confront these opposing views, and her body reacts the only way it knows how, it bites the penis of society, it castrates the men that want to turn her into something she doesn’t want to be: a sexual young woman.

Salt: A Refreshing Genderless Lens by Cameron Airen

Violent films with a female at their center tend to be viewed differently than violent films with a male lead. When a woman is in this role, it’s controversial. When a man is in the same type of role, it’s a part of who he is as a human being. We’ve become numb to the violence that men engage in onscreen. As a result, we don’t criticize it like we do when a woman is engaging in it.

Shieldmaidens: The Power and Pleasure of Women’s Violence on Vikings by Lisa Bolekaja

In Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in the Movies, Neal King and Martha McCaughey assert that “cultural standards still equate womanhood with kindness and nonviolence, manhood with strength and aggression.” Under the Victorian cult of true womanhood, womanly virtue was supposed to encompass piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Thank goodness writer/producer Michael Hirst ignored those virtues by creating two dynamic women warriors with his historical drama Vikings.

Emotional Violence, Kink, and The Duke of Burgundy by Rushaa Louise Hamid

In much of feminist literature from the past, kink is seen an act driven by patriarchy, with submissive women reproducing their oppressions in the bedroom and capitulating to gendered norms of women as silent and subservient. Even nowadays as the tide gradually changes, there is still a large amount of ire reserved for those who practice BDSM.

Violence and Morality in The 100 by Esther Nassaris

This act of mercy killing is the first of many moments when Clarke is forced to be violent for the good of others. It not only prompts an important change within herself – she loses her idealistic ways – but it prompts a change in the group dynamics. After this moment, Clarke begins to pull away from the co-leadership she and Bellamy had operated in and moves toward becoming the sole leader of the delinquents.

The Rising “Tough” Women in AMC’s The Walking Dead Season Five by Brooke Bennett

This season seems to present a large change in representational issues by including complex characters of color that we actually know something about and care for, presenting the couple of Aaron and Eric from the Alexandria community and self-pronounced lesbian Tara, and doing away with the innate equation of vagina equals do the laundry while the men go kill all the zombies.

Nine Pretty Great Lesbian Vampire Movies by Sara Century

Almost unfailingly exploitative in its portrayal of queer women, this specific sub-genre of film stands alone in a few ways, not the least of which being that the vampires, while murderous and ultimately doomed, are powerful, lonely women, often living their lives outside of society’s rules.

The Real Mother Russia: Modernising Murder and Betrayal in The Americans by Dan Jordan

The ideological battle between the FBI and KGB is thus a gendered one, as the national characters of Uncle Sam and Mother Russia are pitted against each other on a more even world stage.

Monster: A Telling of the Real Life Consequences for Violent Women by Danika Kimball

Throughout her life, Wuornos experienced horrific instances of gendered abuse, which eventually lead to a violent outlash at her unfair circumstances. Monster vividly documents the life of a woman whose experiences under a dominant patriarchal culture racked with abuse, poverty, and desperation led to a life of crime, imprisonment, and eventually death.

Stoker–Family Secrets, Frozen Bodies, and Female Orgasms by Julie Mills

Her uncle’s imposing presence has awakened in her at the same time a lust for bloodshed and an intense sexual desire, and she promptly begins to experiment and seek out means with which to satisfy both.

Sons of Anarchy: Female Violence, Feminist Care by Leigh Kolb

At the end of season 6, Gemma violently clashes the spheres of power. She’s in the kitchen. She’s using an iron, and a carving fork. Using tools of the feminine sphere, she brutally murders Tara, because she fears that Tara is about to take control and dismantle the club—the life, the style of mothering and living—that she brought home with her so many years ago.

What’s in a Name: Anxiety About Violent Women in Monster, Teeth, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Colleen Clemens

The first college course I ever developed focuses on women and violence. Stemming from my interest in women who enact violence on and off the page, I wanted to ask students to think about our perceptions of women as “naturally” peaceful.

Hard Candy: The Razor Blade Hidden in an Apple-Cheeked Confection by Emma Kat Richardson

Hogtying and drugging Jeff is only the tip of Hayley’s sadistic iceberg: over the course of the next several hours, she subjects him to a series of tortures more at home in Guantanamo Bay than a sleepy suburban neighborhood, including spraying his screaming mouth with chemicals, temporarily suffocating him with cellophane, and attacking him with a taser in the shower.

High Tension: Rethinking Female Sexuality and Subjectivity Through Violence by Laura Minor

Rather than pander to the male gaze, Aja decides to reject these scopophilic pleasures in favour of championing female subjectivity, but he also chooses to reject heteronormativity by having the lesbian desires of Marie drive the plot of the film. Interestingly, it is these desires and subjective experiences that both initiate the use of violence and intensify the representation of violence throughout.

“It is not fitting for her to be so manly and terrifying”: Catharsis and Female Chaos in Pasolini’s Medea by Brigit McCone

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 film Medea was created in the aftermath of Italian fascism, another masculine cult of personal self-sacrifice in the interests of the state. Utilizing the operatic charisma of the legendary Maria Callas in a non-singing role, he harnesses the pitiless woman as an agent of chaos, rebelling against the dictates of the masculine state that urges her husband to discard her, in favor of a politically advantageous match.

Domestic Terrorism: Feminized Violence in Misery by Tessa Racked

Annie is a human being, dangerous not because of an evil supernatural force, but rather a severe and untreated mental illness. Although Annie is not given an official diagnosis in the film or the novel, an interview with a forensic psychologist on the special edition DVD characterizes her as displaying symptoms of several different conditions, including borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Girlhood: Observed But Not Seen by Ren Jender

Girlhood starts on a peak note: a slow-motion scene of what looks like Black men playing American tackle football on a field at night, wearing helmets, shoulder pads and mouth guards, so we don’t realize–until we notice the players’ breasts under their uniforms–that they are all girls.

Patty Jenkins’ Monster: Shouldering the Double Burden of Masculinity and Femininity by Katherine Parker-Hay

In this narrative we see masculinity float free from any ties to the male body, femininity float free from any easy connection to frailness – we see them meet in the one body of this working class woman to excruciating effect.

Feminist Fangs: The Activist Symbolism of Violent Vampire Women by Melissa-Kelly Franklin

The acts of violence by the female protagonists are terrifying, swift, and socially subversive. They target misogynistic representatives of the patriarchal society that oppresses and silences women, taking them out one by one.

Slashing Gender Assumptions: The Female Killer, Unmasked by Kate Blair

To a certain extent, the reveal of woman as killer in both films comes across as a “gotcha” moment. After an hour or so of being scared out of your wits, it’s both surprising and puzzling to see a woman emerge as the killer. In the real world, most documented violent crimes are committed by men, but in a film, where anything can happen, there’s no reason to make this assumption.

“Did I Step on Your Moment?” The Seductive and Psychological Violence of Female Superheroes by Mary Iannone

This style of fighting codes our female superheroes as half menacing and half attractive – we are meant to be afraid of them, but also enticed by them. Their violence is inextricably linked to their sexuality.

Nobody Puts Susan Cooper in the Basement: Melissa McCarthy and Skillful, Competent Violence in Film by Laura Power

As McCarthy tousles with her own nemesis in the kitchen fight, Feig uses slow motion to let us savor the violence and bird’s eye shots to let us see the controlled swings of Cooper’s arms and legs as she fights. The violence is not slapstick. The violence is not played for laughs. The violence is just flat-out cinematically terrific.

“She Called Them Anti-Seed”: How the Women of Mad Max: Fury Road Divorce Violence from Strength by Cate Young

In Mad Max: Fury Road the “strong female characters” are notable specifically for their aversion to violence. The film portrays its women as emotionally strong people who engage in violence only in self-defense, and only against the system that oppresses them.

Sugar, Spice, and Things Not Nice: Violent Girlhood in Violet & Daisy by Caroline Madden

The character of Daisy personifies the film’s juxtaposition of violence and girlhood. Daisy loves cute animals and doesn’t understand Violet’s dirty jokes. The twist is even that she has not really killed anyone, thus remaining innocent of all crimes. The opening scene displays the most daring oppositional iconography — the young girls dress as nuns, the ultimate image of pure goodness, while having a shoot ‘em up with a gang.

Children: The Great Qualifier of Female Violence by Katherine Fusciardi

True, the rape revenge trope has been put at bay, but there is still a gender issue behind the remaining motivation. It focuses around the assumption of maternity being the all-encompassing passion. Until female characters can be violent for reasons that have nothing to do with their womanhood, there still isn’t complete equality in media.

How Spring Breakers Ungenders the Erotic and Transformative Power of Violence by Emma Houxbois

The girls, driven by desperation to escape their mundane lives to take part in Spring Break, scheme a robbery of the local chicken shack to raise the necessary funds to get there. To psyche themselves up for the crime, they exhort each other to pretend it’s a video game, to detach themselves and dehumanize their victims in a hurried pep talk to the same end as the grueling boot camp scenes sequences in Full Metal Jacket.

Mad Max: Fury Road: Violence Helps Our Heroines Have a Lovely Day by Sophie Hall

Furiosa, stabbed and wounded yet still persistent, takes down the main villain Immortan Joe. “Remember me?” Furiosa growls just before ripping his breathing apparatus–and half of his face–clean off. That quip may seem like your average cool one-liner, but for me it is so much more than that. It’s Furiosa, our female protagonist, who takes out the bad guy. Not Max. Not Nux, or any other male character. Her.

Puberty and the Creation of a Monster: Ginger Snaps by Kelly Piercy

Ginger, despite morphing into a werewolf, becomes our protagonist killer in a very human way, and the complexity of her journey is a cinematic rarity. A large part of its appeal is the addictive excitement-and-relief cocktail that comes with seeing your experiences reflected on screen–to see menstruation from a menstruating perspective. Who wouldn’t see want to see the violence of their PMS daydreams being played out?

When Violence Is Excusable: Regina Mills and the Twisted Morality of Once Upon a Time by Emma Thomas

In the past, Regina’s path to control is lined with dark magic. Dark magic is fueled by her anger, and the two intersect endlessly until it is hard to tell whether Regina is controlling the anger, or the anger is controlling her. What is definitive is that the more her power grows the more violent she becomes. With the only person who offered her a loving future dead, there is no one to rein her in.

Timorous Killers: The Breach of Shyness in Polanski’s Repulsion by Johanna Mackin

The eye we see in the film’s opening credits belongs to Carol and encapsulates her relationship to the internal and external worlds. To outside observers, Carol’s large, doe-like eyes are a signifier of her feminine allure, but, as is made palpable to the viewer, they also house her intense fear and constitute a deceptive barrier against the malignant traumas that disturb her internal world.

Death of the (Male) Author: Feminist Violence in Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar by Sarah Smyth

How significant it is, then, that Ramsay changes the ending from the novel where Morvern discovers she’s pregnant to instead give her a narrative of hopeful escape and adventure. Through the economic, cultural and narrative capitals gained from the violence enacted on the male author both inside and outside of the text, the female protagonist is offered a radical feminist alternative. Rather than by trapped by her class position, socio-economic position, job possibilities or pregnancy, Morvern is, instead, offered freedom, autonomy, and authority.

TV and Classic Literature: Is The 100 like Lord of the Flies? by Rowan Ellis

On the contrary, Octavia moves away from the explicit sexuality of her role in the pilot, and although her initial training is linked to Lincoln, she gravitates toward a warrior’s life to gain the respect of Indra. Although some critics have seen this as a drastic change in her characterisation, looking back at her first scene in the pilot, where she is held back by Bellamy while trying to attack the others for repeating rumours about her, it feels more like a development.

The Killer in/and the Girl: Alexandre Aja’s High Tension by Rebecca Willoughby

In High Tension, we have le tueur—the Killer—in place of the Monster, who in Shelley’s novel can be read as Victor Frankenstein’s doppelganger, that most famous of psychological devices used to illustrate the violence with which the repressed returns, doing all of the things the typical, well-socialized individual could never dream of doing. But where Victor utilizes the Monster to reject society’s expectations of him (including a traditional, heterosexual union with his adopted sister, Elizabeth), High Tension’s Marie creates le tueur because her desires do not fit within the normative world of the film.

From Ginger Snaps to Jennifer’s Body: The Contamination of Violent Women by Julia Patt

Thematically, Jennifer’s Body mirrors Ginger Snaps in many respects: the disruption of suburban or small town life, the intersection between female sexuality and violence, the close relationship between two teen girls at the films’ centers, and—perhaps most strikingly—the contagious nature of violence in women.

Children: The Great Qualifier of Female Violence

This guest post by Katherine Fusciardi appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies are often used in the discussion on the Rape Revenge genre of films. However, Kill Bill is actually one of the movies that falls under that genre, but doesn’t actually have much to do with rape revenge. Kill Bill’s “The Bride” character is an example of when other reasons for revenge are presented, when a woman is allowed to be violent for reasons other than seeking vengeance for a sexual assault. Aside from avenging her dead fiancé, the bride also seeks vengeance for the death of her child. Through further examination of well-liked violent female characters in popular media a pattern appears. Violent women can be loved as characters, as long as their reason for violence is sound in the mind of the viewer. Rape revenge is one of those acceptable reasons, another is the violent loss of a child.

As stated in Tammy Oler’s “The Brave Ones,”

“Kill Bill Vols. 1 and 2 and The Brave One are notable not just because they are among the most commercially successful films about revenge ever made, but also because they don’t use rape as their starting point” (Oler 34).

Beatrix Kiddo, “the bride,” makes it very clear that she is after revenge for her fiancé and child. When she confronts Vernita Green she claims she will not attack while Vernita is near her own child, but makes it clear she will still kill Vernita.

“No, to get even, even-Steven… I would have to kill you… go up to Nikki’s room, kill her… then wait for your husband, the good Dr. Bell, to come home and kill him. That would be even, Vernita. That’d be about square” (Kill Bill).

Beatrix goes back on this promise when Vernita attacks, resulting in Vernita’s daughter witnessing the whole incident. Given that this is the first fight the viewer sees Beatrix in, it shapes her character. Beatrix’s response to the situation shows how cold she can be expected to be. She tells the little girl,

“It was not my intention to do this in front of you. For that I’m sorry. But you can take my word for it, your mother had it coming. When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I’ll be waiting” (Kill Bill).

With that amount of motivation behind Beatrix’s revenge, the rationale for her violence should be covered. However, even Oler’s article admitted that despite the different reasons for revenge presented, there is still a sexualizing to that female character, such as the rape seen in the first Kill Bill movie, in which Beatrix wakes up from her coma to find that she has been raped repeatedly in her sleep. Tammy Oler questioned whether that was necessary or not:

“Is it because it heightens the sense of victimization or because we believe that rape, real or otherwise, is the only believable crime that prompts women to such anger and violence?” (Oler 34)

A proper response to that question can be found by delving into other popular violent female characters, such as Carol and Michonne from the hit AMC television series The Walking Dead. In the beginning of the series the viewers are introduced to Carol Peletier, a housewife trying to survive the zombie apocalypse with her abusive husband and their daughter Sophia. When the abusive husband dies in season one there is the expectation that Carol will be able to develop more as a character without her husband around to push her back down. However, that development doesn’t happen. It isn’t until her daughter dies in season two that the viewer sees any change in Carol’s character.

At the beginning of season two, Sophia, Carol’s daughter, goes missing after a “walker” (zombie) attack. Sophia is not confirmed dead until she is found as a walker at the end of season two, episode seven: “Pretty Much Dead Already.” In episode eight, “Nebraska” Carol says,

“That’s not my little girl. It’s some other… thing. My Sophia was lost in the woods. All this time, I thought. But she didn’t go hungry. She didn’t cry herself to sleep. She didn’t try to find her way back. Sophia died a long time ago” (The Walking Dead S2EP8)

when asked to attend her child’s funeral. This attitude is the first indication of the transformation Carol will undergo.

In season four of The Walking Dead Carol is asked to take two girls, Lizzie and Mika, under her protection by their dying father. As part of their education the girls are required to learn the proper way to kill walkers and are instructed to never call Carol “Mom.” When asked by Lizzie why Carol’s daughter wasn’t there anymore Carol responds “She didn’t have a mean bone in her body” (The Walking Dead S4EP14) and insists that the girls learn a lesson from that, which is to do whatever it takes to survive; kill walkers and kill people. Killing people is something Carol had recently come to terms with, killing two influenza infected members of their group to protect the rest.

When it becomes apparent Lizzie has become mentally disturbed, and refuses to kill walkers because she believes they are good, Carol labels Lizzie as weak and begins grooming Mika, the younger sister, to be the tougher survivor. However, in that same episode, Lizzie murders her little sister in order to turn her into a walker. Once Carol realizes Lizzie will never be able to live among people again, Carol shoots Lizzie and never speaks about either girl ever again.

Though out the series the viewers are also introduced to a new character, Michonne. Michonne is a katana wielding woman that instantly became a show favorite. When Michonne was introduced into the series in season three she was accompanied by two jawless, armless walkers kept chained to her person. Later in the season she reveals that the two walkers were her boyfriend and his friend. Her boyfriend was also the father of her child, which died after the apocalypse began. She blamed those two men, whom she found undead along with the child in their camp, for the death of her son. When telling the story of her son’s death, Michonne describes going on a supply run and returning to her camp only to find her son dead and both men bitten. “They were high when it happened,” she said, “And they were bit. I could have stopped it, could of killed them, but I let them turn” (The Walking Dead, S4EP16). To punish them, and herself, even after death she mutilated their walker bodies so they would no longer be a threat and kept them chained to her at all times. This was her way of ensuring that neither of the men would find rest. “It was insane. It was sick. It felt like what I deserved” (S4EP16).

The popularity of these characters shows that the masses can accept the motivation of violent women for more than rape revenge. So, why is rape revenge is still considered the go-to reason for female violence? In a paper written and presented by Ruby Tapia at the Visual Culture Gathering, the issues of race and feminism as they relate to Kill Bill are discussed. The paper uses quotes from Quentin Tarantino to explain his motivation. As stated earlier, the rape scene in Kill Bill changes the motivation of the character and introduces rape-revenge as a fall back reasoning for Beatrix’s violence. To Tarantino it was his way of addressing issues he saw n society:

“Once I got this idea in my mind, I couldn’t get it out. It would be a lot easier if I didn’t go down that road, but then that would be cowardice to me. Because there have been reports about, you know, comatose patients being raped” (Ruby Tapia, Quentin Tarantino 33).

The conversation continues with Tarantino describing an obsession with the idea, and described it as the spice that would get viewers addicted to his film. To which Tapia had to say, “Thus, buried so deep inside the filmic narrative as Tarantino might suggest, is the rape fantasy turned real” (34).

Taken straight from Tarantino, we can see that the rape scene was never meant to be a factor into Beatrix’s motivation. It was simply thrown in out of Tarantino’s whim, as both a nod to feminism and a lure for his movie. With that in mind, it means the rape scene has zero meaning to the plot. Rape revenge has nothing to do with Kill Bill, outside of that one scene.

Rape revenge ceases to the only viable motivation for violent women when these three popular characters are analyzed. Beatrix Kiddo was not seeking revenge for her rape, she was seeking revenge for her fiancé and child. From The Walking Dead, neither Carol nor Michonne was raped. They became violent following the violent losses of their children. The reasoning behind the violent acts committed by these women does bring to mind a different issue. True, the rape revenge trope has been put at bay, but there is still a gender issue behind the remaining motivation. It focuses around the assumption of maternity being the all-encompassing passion. Until female characters can be violent for reasons that have nothing to do with their womanhood, there still isn’t complete equality in media.

Works Cited

Oler, Tammy. “The Brave Ones.” Bitch Magazine: Feminist Response to Pop Culture Winter, 2009, 30-34. Print.

Kill Bill Vol. 1. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Perf. Uma Thurman, David Carradine. Miramax Films, 2003 DVD.

Tapia, Ruby. “Volumes of Transnational Vengeance: Fixing Race and Feminism on the Way to Kill Bill.” Visual Arts Research Vol. 32. No 2 (2006): 32-37. Print.

“Nebraska.” The Walking Dead Season Two. Exec. Producer Frank Durabont. Perf. Mellissa McBride. AMC, 2011. DVD.

“A.” The Walking Dead Season Four. Exec. Producer Frank Durabont. Perf. Danai Gurira. AMC, 2013. DVD.

Katherine Fusciardi is a senior in the English program at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. Katherine created the student organization known as SCAR (Student Campaign Against Rape) and is currently using her position as president to increase awareness, action, and support on her campus.

The Rising “Tough” Women in AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ Season Five

Our core group of survivors in The Walking Dead season five

This guest post by Brooke Bennett appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

The Walking Dead has long been plagued with criticism in relation to its portrayals of gender roles (for example, see both of Megan Kearns’s posts and Rebecca Cohen’s). in addition to relegating characters of color to the background at best, killing them to further the plot surround the white characters at worst. Further, queer characters have been completely absent within the show’s first four seasons, though some have suggested that the relationship between Andrea and Michonne during season three can be read as implicitly queer. That being said, season five is very different. In summary, season five finds our group of survivors escaping from the cannibalistic community of Terminus (thanks to Carol), attempting to survive on the road, then finally coming across the community of Alexandria, which seems to be extremely well off (and not full of cannibals thankfully). This season seems to present a large change in representational issues by including complex characters of color that we actually know something about and care for, presenting the couple of Aaron and Eric from the Alexandria community and self-pronounced lesbian Tara, and doing away with the innate equation of vagina equals do the laundry while the men go kill all the zombies. All of these areas of increasingly representation are extremely important in any examination of the show, but this post will dive deeper into the specific portrayal of the “tough” women of season five.

Michonne and Carol as “tough women” in The Walking Dead season five

Carol and Michonne are definitely some of the most intriguing (and my favorite) characters during season five of The Walking Dead. First off, thinking about Carol during season one to how she has completely changed over the last five years of the show is striking. In the beginning, she was in an abusive relationship with soon-dead husband Ed. Upon his death, as Megan Kearns points out, she becomes reliant on Daryl as the group searches for her daughter, Sophia, in the second season. The third season, once again, shows Carol (and some of the other women, especially Beth) as relegated to doing all the boring domestic chores and taking care of Rick’s new daughter Judith after Lori dies in season three. Season four presents a more active role for Carol, but season five is the most crucial to her character development. In season five, Carol constructs a persona of herself for the Alexandria community, acting like she is some innocent, helpless upper-class suburban housewife. She even tells Deanna, the leader of Alexandria, that she “really didn’t have much to offer” to Rick’s group, which is obviously not true because she’s the reason they all escaped Terminus without becoming someone’s dinner.

Carol and femininity as masquerade

One of my absolute favorite scenes of season five is when Daryl is sitting on the porch of one of the fancy houses while Carol walks outside all made-up in her housewife outfit. Daryl scoffs and tells her, “You look ridiculous.” To us this is hilarious because we agree with Daryl; we know she is not this housewife type character any longer. Carol intelligently masquerades as this feminine role in order to make those in Alexandria purposely underestimate her. In essence, this dynamic also seems to point out how gender is something we do – it’s a performative activity that we have to continuously work at because it’s a socially constructed idea. Carol performs this weak embodiment of women in order to be able to sneak around the community and do as she wishes. At one point Carol even remarks to Rick, “You know what’s great about this place? I get to be invisible again.” Carol challenges the innateness of gender by not only being a extremely strong, capable female survivor, but also by masquerading as the opposite find of woman she has become now.

On the other hand, Michonne has evolved greatly as a character as well. When she was introduced in season three, Michonne was largely unresponsive to other people and seemed very confrontational. Problematically, Michonne is used as an object of trade in relation to Rick and the Governor – the Governor claims he will leave Rick and his group alone if he gives him Michonne, which Rick actually tells Merle (of all the characters, of course the most overtly racist character is chosen) to go through with this. As the show continues into season four, Michonne emerges with actual dialogue (about time) and, once again, demonstrates how she is arguably the toughest character of the entire group. We finally learn more about her backstory – she apparently has lost a child due to the zombie apocalypse which is, significantly, similar to Carol as well (I’ll return to this connection in a bit). Michonne consistently tries to convince Rick that they need to find a new community or start their own; they cannot survive by living on the road anymore. This obviously rational thinking is invoked continuously in season five, and is in stark comparison to Rick’s questionable, impulsive choices throughout season five.

Sword-wielding badass, Michonne

One of Michonne’s most crucial scenes in season five surrounds an episode later on, when the group is in Alexandria. Significantly, Deanna (the leader of Alexandria) gives both Michonne and Rick the job of constable – they are responsible for enforcing order. Obviously, Rick has always had this role both in the post-apocalypse and in his professional career choice as a cop before the apocalypse. On the other hand, Michonne being given this role provides an alternative mode of leadership, one which looks increasingly more appealing as Rick seems to be losing his ability to lead responsibly and effectively. After Carol tells Rick that she knows Pete is abusing Jessie (a married couple within Alexandria), and likely their young child Sam, Rick immediately wants to kill Pete, no questions asked. This is certainly motivated by the obvious attraction Rick has to Jessie; he’s reacting to his feelings for her and need to save the damsel in distress, hoping to make her his own. Rick and Pete end up in a physical fight that pours out into the street, with a large part of Alexandria coming to watch and attempt to break it up, which is ultimately done by Deanna. Rick, who seems to be very distraught and hysterical, yells back at Deanna and the other residents, faces bloodied, that they are not going to survive if they don’t change the way they do things.

Hysterical Rick after beating up Pete

This is probably good advice, but Rick somehow thinks that this is an excuse to go against what the society’s leader, Deanna, has told him to do (not kill Pete). Either way, Rick goes on a rant yet again about how they are all doomed and he isn’t just going to sit by and watch this community fall apart, but, in mid-sentence, Michonne comes in and hits Rick over the head, knocking him unconscious, and ending the episode. Unlike Rick, Michonne knows what he says to be true but doesn’t go about changing the group via violence and rash decision-making. Michonne is, by far, the better leader of the two. In her constable uniform, she knocks Rick out, powerfully making the connection between her embodiment of moral law enforcement that is completely in opposition with Rick’s way of doing things.

Michonne after knocking out Rick

Overall, Carol and Michonne provide the most compelling roles of “tough” women within season five of The Walking Dead. As I mentioned earlier, both women had experienced the loss of a child because of the zombie apocalypse, which deserves further analysis as it complicates their role of powerful women characters within the show. Over the show, both Carol and Michonne are presented as being a sort of maternal figure for other children. For Carol this is seen in her relationship with Lizzie and Micah, whereas Michonne is presented this way with Carl when she helps him get the family picture so that Judith will know what Lori looks like.

Michonne as maternal figure for Carl

Carol as maternal figure for Lizzie and Micah

Interestingly, tough women being shown as maternal figures is a common theme in female-centered action narratives. For example, in Kill Bill, The Bride is a brutal, unstoppable character as she takes revenge upon those who tried to kill her. Yet, in Kill Bill: Vol. 2 she finds out that her child is alive, thus reasserting her role as mother. This can be read as reminding The Bride that she can be as tough as she wants, but at the end of the day she is still biologically female and her duties should/need to revolve around the realm of domesticity. Since Carol and Michonne are presented as maternal figures within The Walking Dead, this can complicate a reading of their toughness as being completely empowering since we are reminded of their biological femaleness. Yet, Carol’s gender performance in season five would seem to argue that gender is more socially constructed than anything. In the end, the action heroines of The Walking Dead, like other “tough” heroine narratives in film and television, cannot be taken as completely, 100 percent empowering just because the women are able to take care of themselves and display how they can totally kick some ass.

Sasha and Rosita during season five of The Walking Dead

Any discussion of strong women in season five would be mistaken not to mention Rosita and Sasha. Unfortunately, these two characters are underexplored (along with Tara, as well) at this point, though they are portrayed as being strong like Michonne and Carol are. Sasha, as Rick even comments when the group reaches Alexandria, is the best shooter, leading her to get the job of being on watch and shooting zombies from a sniper tower. Rosita originally was shown being completely oversexualized when we first met her. She worn tiny shorts and a tiny top, showing off her body, and also consistently had pig tails. For the action heroine, this fetishistic presentation is super common – think Lara Croft in Tomb Raider or Alice and Jill in the Resident Evil franchise.

Oversexualized Rosita in The Walking Dead

Oversexualized Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) in Tomb Raider

Thankfully, when the group gets to Alexandria this trope is reversed, and Rosita finally wears dons a reasonable clothing choice for the zombie apocalypse and no longer wears girlish ponytails. Other than serving a minimal role is Abraham’s sidekick, Rosita doesn’t seem to do anything else within the show. On the other hand, Sasha is a somewhat more developed character, especially in her relationship with her brother, Tyreese, and in her romantic relationship with Bob, who both die within season five – Sasha gets a pretty emotionally tough hand during the fifth season. Like Michonne, Sasha also makes some more rational and intelligent, in comparison to Rick, comments to the group. When at the welcoming dinner party, some residents ask Sasha what her favorite meal is because it would just be awful if they cooked her something else. She responds, “that is what you worry about?!” in utter shock as to the hierarchy of their priorities. Of course, Sasha is much more realistic and doesn’t buy into this cookie-cutter “fake” community of Alexandria, with its $800,000 homes (as Deanna mentions to Rick) and no longer existent lifestyle it symbolizes.

Overall, I hope Rosita and Sasha will continue to be explored an developed as season six (which just premiered Sunday, October 11 this year) progresses, alongside Tara who is also a very underutilized character within The Walking Dead. Additionally, it will be interesting to see who becomes the authoritative power in Alexandria, as the return of Morgan in the season five finale further complicates Rick’s role as authoritative leader, or the “Ricktatorship” as some critics have put it. Either way, I’m excited to see where the development of these awesome, ass-kicking tough women goes in the episodes to come.

Brooke Bennett is an undergraduate student and honors candidate majoring in English at the University of Arkansas. Her academic work revolves around horror in film and television, with an emphasis on feminist media studies, especially looking into The Walking Dead. When not in school, Brooke binge watches horror movies on Netflix and hopes to be a popular culture critic and academic in the future.

‘Fear the Walking Dead’: Melvin Was My Ride

I mean, if I want to see an obscenely wealthy, morally repugnant real estate magnate battling mindless zombies, I’ll just watch the Republican presidential debates again.

The first season of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead is over, and it wasn’t everything we’d hoped. Not that our hopes were that high. After all, as I noted last week, after a strong pilot episode, it took The Walking Dead until well into its fifth to become the type of compelling, frightening, and morally complex work we’d hoped for from the beginning. And we’re still not 100 percent convinced we’re there yet. The gore helped tide us over. We are horror fans after all. But the weak characterizations, sometimes plodding storytelling, and the show’s embarrassing representation of women and non-white characters severely dampened our enthusiasm.

Fear started out with an advantage in the casting of Kim Dickens, who doesn’t know how to play a boring character. She gave us a way into the new series, and Madison was immediately a stronger presence than any of the women on The Walking Dead, at least up until Michonne’s (Danai Gurira) arrival. The writing on the new show hasn’t been impressive, in terms of plot, dialogue, or characterization, but the cast, overall, has been strong (again, Frank Dillane’s slightly over-the-top performance as junkie Nick has grown on me) and Dickens is the backbone of that cast.

There are several prominent Latino characters on the show, which you’d think would be standard for any show set in 21st century Los Angeles, and while some of them are problematic, they’re not presented as stereotypes. The three most prominent Black characters on the show died hasty deaths, and the introduction of the mysterious, manipulative Strand (Colman Domingo) was intriguing at first, but this week we learned that he seems to be a shady real estate broker, which is much less interesting than anything I might have speculated about his background. I mean, if I want to see an obscenely wealthy, morally repugnant real estate magnate battling mindless zombies, I’ll just watch the Republican presidential debates again.

The episode begins with a few nice shots of a full moon over a rapidly disintegrating Los Angeles, and then we’re at that arena full of zombies that Daniel (Ruben Blades) found out about from National Guardsman Adams (Shawn Hatosy) last week. You remember, by having his daughter Ofelia (Mercedes Mason) lure him to their house, tying him up in the basement, and torturing him. That act and its consequences hang over the season finale like a toxic cloud.

Anyway, Madison, Travis (Cliff Curtis), Daniel, the mildly traumatized Ofelia and those pretty but annoying teens, Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) and Alicia (Alycia Debnam Carey) are leaving town before… well, before something bad happens. (It’s not really clear what the military’s plan is for greater Los Angeles. Adams seemed to be saying that they’d all be wiped out to prevent the spread of the zombie infection, which, in this paranoid anti-government fantasy, makes a kind of sense, but on this episode we see Dr. Exner [Sandrine Holt] arranging for a helicopter to carry the wounded to safety. Why would they take a bunch of critically injured folks away and wipe out everyone else? It doesn’t pay to think too much with this show.)

Before they can head east, they need to get into the medical compound, and rescue Nick and Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez) and Griselda, who has already died from her injuries, but they don’t know that.

After getting the information he needs, Daniel is ready to murder Adams, but Travis intercedes, pointing out that Adams can still help them find their loved ones at the compound. Madison, apparently now okay with torture and murder, tells Travis he has to take Adams in his truck. With the others driving off, Adams convinces Travis to let him go, because otherwise Daniel will definitely kill him. Seems reasonable.

The gang then drives to a parking garage I guess Adams told them about, where for some reason they leave Chris and Alicia with the cars and head into the compound. This show is like a primer on bad parenting. I’m sure Chris and Alicia will be fine, right? What could go wrong?

Because the place is still heavily guarded, Daniel has a plan. An illogical plan that will put his own loved ones in harm’s way and cause the deaths of many innocent people, but still a plan. I just wished the show had shown Daniel setting things in motion instead of having it be this funny reveal, where he tells the soldiers guarding the compound, who threaten to shoot him as he approaches, “You should save your ammunition,” and then casually nods his head toward the zombies coming around the bend. Yes, Daniel has freed the zombies from the arena — thousands of them — and somehow this groaning, shuffling mass of undead has gotten to within a few hundred feet of the compound without anyone noticing it. Let me just state it again: Daniel freed thousands of flesh-eating zombies from the arena and led them to the medical compound. You know, the one he thinks his wife is inside. The one where the National Guard are holding hundreds of innocent people, including Nick. Again, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, a lot, it turns out. Daniel’s zombie pals successfully distract the soldiers, but, their job done, they continue to advance on the compound. Eventually, they break through the fences. Because the compound’s been breached, Dr. Exter finds out that the evac has been put on hold. She orders her staff (including Liza) to run while she “takes care of” the wounded. With chaos ensuing, Strand uses the key he stole to get out, taking Nick with him. As the place is overrun with zombies, Strand refuses to help the other prisoners trying to get out of their cages, and Nick just goes along. Later, Madison and Travis pass through the same corridor, and decide to free who they can. Hooray, humanity!

Strand has plans to meet up with that Guardsman he gave his watch and cufflinks to, Melvin (Toby Levins). Melvin is still alive when they find him, but he’s badly injured. Worse yet, his legs are being eaten by a zombie. Strand must really treasure those cufflinks, because he goes over and takes them back. Melvin’s legs must be super-delicious, because the zombie doesn’t even look up from his meal.

Eventually, Madison, Travis, Nick, Strand, Daniel, Ofelia, and Liza come together and, after a few close calls, make their way out of the facility. Thankfully, Travis has finally stopped trying to reason with the undead.

While all that was happening, Chris and Alicia were hiding in the car in the parking garage. Some guardsmen found them and demanded their SUV, but not before making us worry that maybe they’d sexually assault Alicia. The show cuts away from this heated confrontation in the parking garage, and when the rest of the characters arrive, Nick and Alicia are nowhere to be found. This gratuitous creepiness concludes with Nick and Alicia bursting into the parking garage exclaiming that they’re alright. They were just hiding in a stairwell or something! What a relief.

But, you know, just when it looks like a happy ending, despite all the death and destruction their rescue operation caused, up pops Adams! It’s not clear why he’d bother sticking around to get revenge on Daniel, but there he is, in the parking garage, pointing his gun at Daniel, before he gets even more irrational and decides to shoot Ofelia instead. And then Travis jumps on him and beats him to a pulp.

Now, from the show’s perspective, it’s clear that Ofelia getting shot is Travis’s fault, for being a big ol’ softy and letting Adams go, as opposed to maybe being Daniel’s fault, for using his daughter as bait to lure Adams in so Daniel could bound, gag, torture, and — if everything had gone according to plan — murder him. Shame on you, Travis! You’re still living in the old world!

Now that everyone’s together, and Ofelia’s okay — just a flesh wound — they all follow Strand to his place, a luxurious gated mansion on the Pacific coast, which he has stocked with supplies. Like Daniel, though I guess for different reasons, Strand is alarmingly well-prepared for the zombie apocalypse. It’s almost like they wanted it to happen. Strand tells Nick they’re not staying, though. “The only way to survive in a mad world,” Strand says, “is to embrace the madness.” But really, they’re just going to get on his fancy yacht and sail away.

Before our “heroes” sail into the sunset, Madison follows Liza out onto the beach, where Liza reveals that during all the chaos escaping the compound, she got herself a zombie bite. She wants Madison to put a bullet in her head, just like Madison asked Liza to, back when they saw what happened to her neighbor Susan. “Come on,” Liza goads her, “You never liked me that much.” What a trouper. I don’t know why these folks don’t get further from the house, or find a quieter way to kill one another, but Travis follows Madison out to the beach, and decides to take matters into his own hands, shooting Liza in the head, which of course brings the kids running. Guns are loud! Then Madison and Travis sit on the beach and cry as the tide comes in, shedding tears over not just Liza, but their lost innocence, and perhaps, I’d like to think, their contractual obligation to appear in 15 more episodes of Fear the Walking Dead next summer. It’s true what they say. You can’t save everyone.

Recommended Reading

Fear the Walking Dead Pilot: Can It Be More?

Fear the Walking Dead: The Black Guys Die First

Fear the Walking Dead: Liberals Try to Stop Zombies with Words!

Fear the Walking Dead: I’m From the Government, and I’m Here to Help

Fear the Walking Dead: It’s Torture!

‘Fear the Walking Dead’: It’s Torture!

There’s only one more episode left this season, and the ratings are dropping, maybe because people like their zombie shows about bad parents to have more zombies in them, and less teen angst. Season Two is going to be 15 episodes, so they’ll have to come up with a lot more story, or take another six scripts and stretch them out the way the parent show does.

There was some hope last week that AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead might actually be getting interesting, that perhaps we’d written it off too quickly as a crass and shoddy cash-grab capitalizing on the astounding success of the original show. But then it took The Walking Dead itself four full seasons before it turned into a compelling drama. We should have known better. This week’s episode, “Cobalt” (once meant to be the title of the series), was possibly the weakest yet, and exacerbated the show’s representation issues, introducing another morally repugnant Black character (the flashy, beguiling Strand, played by Colman Domingo, who played Ralph Abernathy in Selma) and revealing that its most prominent Latino character is actually a psychopath.

On top of that, the only undead we got a good look at was some slacker donut shop zombie who apparently still felt enough residual sense of responsibility that she didn’t want to leave the store.

It starts in a holding pen at that mysterious medical facility, where they apparently put potential troublemakers like Nick (Frank Dillane, disappointingly subdued this week), Strand, and poor Doug Thompson (John Stewart), the muscle car nut who had the breakdown last week. After goading Doug into freaking out, so that he’s carted away, Strand sets his sights on Nick. Sadly, he doesn’t try to drive Nick crazy. He apparently senses that Nick has ninja skills or perhaps zombie-imitating talents that will come in handy, so he bribes a guard to prevent Nick from being carted off. Strand’s appearance is brief, but he manages to surpass both creepily cheerful Lt. Moyers (Jamie McShane) and quietly psychopathic Daniel Salazar (Ruben Blades) as the most interesting character on the show.

Back in town, Ofelia (Mercedes Mason) is raising a ruckus, throwing bottles at the chainlink fence that separates her from the National Guard, demanding to see Griselda (Patricia Reyes Spindola), who was dragged out of their temporary home for “medical treatment.” Eventually, her guardsman beau Adams (Shawn Hatosy) shows up, and convinces Ofelia to let him take her home.

This turns out to be part of Daniel’s bizarre plan, and the next time we see Adams, Madison (Kim Dickens) finds him tied up and gagged in the basement, with Daniel preparing to torture him. See, it turns out that Daniel was not an innocent kid back in El Salvador, but a torturer for the government. Sure, he was young, and sure, he claims they forced him to do it, but seriously? Are we still supposed to root for this guy? Even though he slips right back into torturer mode at the first sign of trouble? Daniel tells Ofelia some cockamamie story about trading Adams for Griselda and Nick, but really Daniel just wants information. And he gets it! Who says torture doesn’t work? Weak-kneed liberals, that’s who! It turns out “Cobalt” just means that the military is going to evacuate the L.A. basin the next morning, “humanely terminating” everyone left in the medical facility. Or in all of L.A. It’s not clear. Still, nothing that drastic seemed imminent, so it’s a good thing Daniel still remembered some things about torturing people, right?

Madison happens upon all this while she’s looking for her teenage daughter, Alicia (Alycia Debnam Carey), who has run off to get into mischief again. Of course, Madison promptly forgets she has a daughter once she gets involved in Daniel’s nutty plans. Alicia recruits Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie), Travis’s (Cliff Curtis) equally forgotten son, on a little day trip to the wealthy part of town, where she tries on a sexy evening gown (the closest Carey’s gonna get to Emmy’s red carpet, I’m afraid) and the two of them smash up the place because nothing matters anymore and now they are rebels without a cause. You would think they could at least make trashing a rich people home look fun, but it all seems kinda pro forma.

Travis has the most exciting adventure, convincing Moyers, who has a rather capricious attitude toward his protective duties, to take Travis to the medical facility, with a couple of key pitstops. First, Moyers tries to goad Travis into blowing away the aforementioned donut shop zombie with a high-powered sniper rifle. Travis declines. What a wimp, this guy. Though I have to say it was pretty gutsy of him to even approach the military after essentially witnessing them gunning down civilians at the end of the last episode. What was the point of that scene if Travis didn’t learn anything from it? In any case, next up, the squad Travis is riding with gets called to help out a SWAT team pinned down at the local library. That turns into a clusterfuck, all off-screen, Moyers vanishes, and some other guardsmen bring Travis home. Sorta anticlimactic.

Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez) is at the medical facility, helping out Dr. Exner (Sandrine Holt), patching up wounds and such, and hey, while you’re at it, would you mind shooting Griselda in the head with this captive bolt pistol (normally used to put down cattle) after Griselda suddenly dies of septic shock from her ankle injury. Liza gives lip service to caring about what happened to Nick, but mostly seems like an adaptable sort. She doesn’t really flinch at the notion that this is how things work nowadays. She’s apparently a good little soldier, just like Daniel was, back in El Salvador, all those years ago.

Recommended Reading

“Fear the Walking Dead Pilot: Can It Be More?”

“Fear the Walking Dead: The Black Guys Die First”

“Fear the Walking Dead: Liberals Try to Stop Zombies with Words!”

“Fear the Walking Dead: I’m From the Government, and I’m Here to Help”

‘Fear the Walking Dead’: I’m From the Government, and I’m Here to Help

As with the writers on ‘The Walking Dead,’ these writers haven’t yet proven they have any idea how to write strong roles for women. But if they ever figure it out, they’ve got the right actor for the job.

Well, this was unexpected. Despite its occasional heavy-handedness and several key moments where characters did things that no one in their situation would ever actually do, the fourth episode of AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead was actually the best yet. And they didn’t even need a zombie attack! Or for Alicia (Alycia Debnam Carey) to do anything worth mentioning!

They haven’t added any Black characters since the purge of the first two episodes, but the Latino characters on the show are a relatively rich and varied lot, with Ruben Blades’ Salvadoran barber Daniel being given some of the show’s best dialogue. Toward the end of the episode, as he was preparing to go to a military field hospital with his wife Griselda (Patricia Reyes Spindola, who mostly just gets to groan in pain and suffer nobly), he talks to Madison (Kim Dickens), whom he clearly recognizes as the household’s most astute and proactive observer of the encroaching zombie apocalypse, about the Salvadoran government’s massacre of some people from his village, and about how his father said the perpetrators were not evil, but committed evil acts out of fear. I got a chill when he told Madison that his father was a fool “to think there was a difference.” Daniel is a strong enough character to make the show’s over-the-top anti-government paranoia seem downright rational.

The engaging performances of Blades, Dickens, and — I have to admit he’s growing on me — wild-eyed Frank Dillane as Madison’s heroin-addicted ninja son Nick go a long way toward selling the silliness of the plotting. There was also a pretty strong opening with Madison’s beau Travis (Cliff Curtis) jogging around the now militarized, fenced-in, and seemingly safe neighborhood to the strains of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” and then Travis’ son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie), from his perch on Madison’s roof, sees a flash of light from a building outside the fenced in area, from the area that was supposedly cleared of all residents by the military. It looks like someone’s using a mirror to signal the folks within the perimeter, perhaps for help. Or perhaps it’s a warning.

In any case, Chris shows Travis his video of the mysterious flash, and Travis, who firmly believes that their problems will soon be over now that the government/military has stepped in, shrugs it off. Travis has ingratiated himself to the local military commander, Moyers (Jamie McShane), by helping out when a frightened neighbor locks himself in the bathroom. He eventually tells Moyers about what Chris saw, but Moyers is using the neighborhood’s streets as his personal driving range (this is what I meant by heavy handed) and blithely assures Travis that the area’s been cleared.

Meanwhile, Ofelia (Mercedes Mason), Daniel and Griselda’s daughter, has struck up a romance with a guardsman played by Shawn Hatosy. There’s the suggestion that she’s using him in an effort to get medicine for her mother, which would not be wise in this scenario, as these military types clearly have too much power over the locals’ lives.

Chris eventually shows Madison the video, and she clearly takes it more seriously, because she responds by sneaking up to the fence, cutting a hole in it and slipping through, presumably so she can go find whoever is signalling and clear up what that’s about. I might have tried a pair of binoculars first, but anyway, using her training as a high school guidance counselor, she eludes the soldiers with relative ease.

On the other side, she finds a bunch of people shot dead in the street, and they don’t appear to have been “sick” (i.e. zombies) so her suspicion about the military’s methods grows.

Meanwhile, Nick was supposed to be kicking heroin, but he has another idea. He sneaks into the house next door, where Travis’ ex-wife Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez) has been using her nursing training to administer morphine to an elderly man with a heart condition. Even though Madison complains at one point about how much time she has to spend watching Nick, and even though the elderly guy’s wife lives with him and presumably keeps a pretty close eye on him, Nick somehow gets into their house undetected, and manages to unhook the guy’s IV and use it himself, while resting comfortably under his bed. It’s a shame he’s not using his superpowers for good.

When Madison gets back from her adventures beyond the fence, she catches Nick looking for the old man’s drugs, and slaps him around. Under these circumstances, who can blame her?

Liza is helping folks with their medical needs all throughout the neighborhood, and draws the attention of Dr. Exner (Sandrine Holt of House of Cards), the pretty face of the government/military carting away your loved ones in the dead of night. Liza tells Exner about Nick’s drug problem, and later regrets it when the guardsmen come to pick up Griselda that night, and instead of letting Daniel go with her, as Exner told him they would, they take Nick against his will.

Early on in the episode, Madison makes an odd complaint to Travis about all the cooking and cleaning and, ahem, watching Nick she has to do, and wonders not why Travis isn’t helping — he has importantly manly town duties — but why Liza isn’t. Well, clearly it’s because she’s going around the neighborhood helping those with medical needs, but maybe she’s keeping that a secret for some reason. At the end of the episode, when Nick is taken away, Liza takes the mendacious Dr. Exner up on her offer to go to the medical facility and help out, in part, it seems, to look out for Nick, but Madison still tells Travis as Griselda, Nick, and Liza are carted away, “This is Liza’s fault.” It’s not that there aren’t people who would see the zombie apocalypse as a conflict between them and their significant others’ ex, but Madison seems too smart, brave (foolhardy, even) and clear-headed for that. This kind of trumped-up domestic drama seems a bit silly in this context, and Madison is not a silly character. As with the writers on The Walking Dead, these writers haven’t yet proven they have any idea how to write strong roles for women. But if they ever figure it out, they’ve got the right actor for the job.

The show ends with another effective, chilling moment, as that night Travis sits on the roof in Chris’ old perch, and watches as several flashes erupt in the house where Chris saw the mirror signal earlier. This time, the lights appear to be muzzle flashes, and the look on Travis’ face suggests that he recognizes his own culpability in what’s transpiring, as he told Moyers about the house. Hopefully, this means Trav will be pulling his head out of his ass soon. It would make for a better show.

Recommended Reading

“Fear the Walking Dead Pilot: Can It Be More?”

“Fear the Walking Dead: The Black Guys Die First”

“Fear the Walking Dead: Liberals Try to Stop Zombies with Words!”

‘Fear the Walking Dead’: The Black Guys Die First

There’s a conservative bent to much horror, but this conflation of real-life police brutality and genuine tragedy with the killing of zombies crosses a line.

The second episode of Fear the Walking Dead was an improvement, in some ways. It seemed to move a little faster, and there were some genuinely strong moments amid the show’s touted “blended” family. (Yes, Kim Dickens is a substantial talent.) But it was also one of the most reactionary pieces of entertainment I’ve seen in years.

The episode picks up right where the pilot left off. Nick (Frank Dillane), Travis (Cliff Curtis), and Madison (Dickens) are fleeing the scene of Calvin’s (Keith Powers) death and re-awakening. They race home, stopping along the way to pick up Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey). While Nick deals with withdrawal (and I have to assume that there is hours of footage of the exuberantly over-the-top Dillane, wailing and rolling his eyes back in his head, that was left on the cutting room floor), Travis drives off to find his son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) (great, another annoyingly petulant teen!) and ex-wife Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez).

Madison eventually decides that she needs to leave, too. She heads to the school to find some confiscated meds to help Nick through his crisis. There, she runs into young, middle-aged-looking Tobias (Lincoln A. Castellanos), who dispenses more wisdom about the weird apocalypse that’s just started. What exactly is Tobias doing at the school? Well, he came to get his knife back. Yes, he went out during the zombie apocalypse to retrieve the common steak knife that Madison had confiscated from him the previous day. That must be one special steak knife. Maybe he just hates doing the dishes? He also decides to loot a shopping cart full of food from the school cafeteria, with Madison’s help.

As they’re leaving, they run into Madison’s boss, Art Costa (Scott Lawrence), the principal. Art apparently likes to spend his off days roaming around the school jingling his keys and, I dunno, investigating stuff, so yeah, he seems to have been bitten and turned into a zombie. Even though Madison’s had some experience with Black zombies, and there’s blood all over Art’s shirt, she decides to approach him and offer aid. Luckily, Tobias has that steak knife. When that fails, Madison leaps to the rescue and bashes Art’s head in with a fire extinguisher. Congratulations, Madison. You’re the first character on this new show to figure out how to kill a zombie.

After saving Tobias’ life, Madison brings him home and they wish each other luck. At this point, Gidget, my viewing companion, lamented, “All that and he didn’t even get his food.” I realized she was right and indeed, Tobias had neglected to bring all his purloined food home with him. “Who can think of eating after that?” I imagined him saying to Madison as they grimly left the school. But he might regret that decision in a week or two. Hey, at least he got that steak knife back!

Alicia, who’s mostly avoided the horror so far, wants to leave the house to check on her “sick” boyfriend, Matt (Maestro Harrell), but Nick manages to stop her by having a seizure and vomiting everywhere. “Not now!” Alicia exhorts him, but really when is a good time?

Meanwhile, Travis goes to Liza’s and eventually they figure out that Chris is at that big, unplanned protest on TV, and they go to get him. In the chaos that ensues, they find themselves caught between riot police and looters, and convince a barber, Daniel Salazar (Ruben Blades) and his family to let them hide out in his shop. We can tell Daniel is a man of high character because he insists upon finishing a customer’s haircut before closing his shop due to the end of the world happening outside.

For some reason, Travis doesn’t feel the need to explain to anyone what’s actually going on, with the dead coming back to life and everything. He’s just kind of a private guy, I’m thinking.

There’s a surprisingly effective moment at the end of the episode, when Alicia sees their neighbor across the street attacking some people, and starts to go outside to help, and Madison steps in front of the door and won’t let her leave. It’s a reasonable response, based on everything Madison’s seen, but it’s also a chilling indication of how quickly one can start to lose one’s humanity in a life-threatening crisis.

Anyway, what did I mean by “reactionary”?

Most blatantly, it’s a cliche these days that the Black characters are killed off first in horror movies and TV shows. There are Tumblrs about it and everything. The trope has been ridiculed in more than one horror film, but the creators of Fear the Walking Dead, in what seems almost a willful avoidance of political correctness, have just been killing off one Black man after another. First, in the opening moments of episode one, it was a nameless dude getting his face eaten in the church, then there’s Alicia’s boyfriend Matt, who vanishes, and then, of course, there’s Calvin, the evil murderous drug dealer wild-eyed Nick kills, multiple times, in self-defense. I thought it was unfortunate that the show’s creators made these choices, but based on how badly the original series dealt with non-white and women characters, especially early on, I wasn’t really surprised.

Episode two, though, doubles down on the trope to an extent that did kind of surprise me. First, we learn that Matt has indeed been bitten by a zombie, and is not long for this world. He nobly insists that Alicia leave him to die. The next character we see transformed is Art:

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7hdK9UW8Qc”]

So that’s three Black speaking roles, and every one of the characters is a zombie in the first two episodes. That’s almost impressive in its obliviousness, assuming there isn’t some more conscious decision being made about the type of show this is. Even the homeless dude zombie gunned down by the cops offscreen (the incident that provokes the spontaneous protest) turns out to be a Black man.

Here’s an interview with the show’s co-creator and showrunner, Dave Erickson, where he essentially says that they wanted a diverse cast, and that they didn’t know who was going to die when they cast those roles. When The Hollywood Reporter is challenging you about decisions like this, you have to know you’ve done something wrong, right?

Beyond that, I found a couple of things disturbing. While Travis is on his way to see Liza, they speak on the phone. He makes it clear that he has to see Chris immediately. She launches into a tirade about abusing his visitation rights. The thing is, Travis doesn’t make a real effort to explain the situation, and under normal circumstances, she’s absolutely within her rights to demand that he limit his visits to when they’ve been scheduled, but my sense is that we’re not supposed to look at it that way. We’re supposed to see Liza as shrewish, controlling, and short-sighted. The brief scene made me wonder if the writer had gone through some sort of bitter custody battle with his ex, and I’m not prone to that type of personal speculation.

We see Chris arrive at the scene of a police shooting. Eyewitnesses are saying that the police shot an unarmed homeless man. Chris videotapes the aftermath of the shooting, and is told by the cops to turn his camera off. It’s not particularly clear why they insist on not being filmed, when the violence is already over. In any case, the mob gets increasingly upset, and again, under normal circumstances, their outrage would be perfectly understandable. They DON’T KNOW there’s a zombie apocalypse. But the show presents their actions as reckless and stupid, and then some punk rock girl zombie gets shot in the eye by a policewoman, and the riot cops show up, and all hell breaks loose. There’s a conservative bent to much horror, but this conflation of real-life police brutality and genuine tragedy with the killing of zombies crosses a line. There are nefarious reasons for the militarization of police departments across the country, and for police shootings of innocents, rooted in racism. The coming zombie apocalypse doesn’t have anything to do with it.

Key moments like this make it harder for me to enjoy the show as fun Sunday night entertainment. I imagine they’ll make it difficult for some viewers to engage the series at all. Nevertheless, I’ll be back next week with another recap.

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“Fear the Walking Dead Pilot: Can It Be More?”

‘Fear the Walking Dead’ Pilot: Can It Be More?

This is more than just a “companion series” to ‘The Walking Dead’; it’s a second chance.

Fear the Walking Dead would be an idiotic title for a series if the original The Walking Dead didn’t exist. It’s even more idiotic because The Walking Dead does exist, and the people who created Fear the Walking Dead were so uncertain of our cognitive abilities that they thought they had to put the whole title of the old show in the title of the new show, or we might miss the connection. Plus, fear them as opposed to what? What else were we going to do about the walking dead?

The ad campaign, while seemingly more thoughtful than that title, is a bit too subtle — coy, even — in seeming to suggest that this new show might be kind of like Where’s Waldo with zombies. Hey, there he is in the background of those kids playing basketball! There he is down that dark hallway! My favorite is the “Footprints in the Sand” one. “Why, when I needed you most, was there only one set of footprints?” “That’s when zombie Jesus was carrying you!”

This is more than just a “companion series” (for some reason, “prequel” and “spin-off” are considered incorrect) to The Walking Dead; it’s a second chance. It’s a chance to take our beloved zombie genre in an all-new direction, correct past mistakes, and right past wrongs. They hired some very good actors for this show, most prominently Kim Dickens (Deadwood, Treme), who probably wouldn’t play a character as poorly conceived as Lori Grimes or Andrea Harrison. Or at least, I’d hope not.

What I’m getting at is, Fear the Walking Dead offered an opportunity for the creators to address the criticism of the first couple of seasons of the original series, which, if subsequent seasons are any indication, the creative people behind TWD were sensitive to, even if they didn’t quite know how to address them.

Casting Dickens certainly opened up an opportunity to feature a strong, complex woman character on the show, and setting it in Los Angeles presented an opportunity to feature Black and Latino characters more prominently and realistically than the unfortunate T-Dog. So far, though, there are no major Latino characters (Ruben Blades will make his series debut next episode), and the two most prominent Black characters on the show are either dead or missing and presumed dead by the end of the pilot.

So far, this “companion series” is mostly about the kids. Are they going after the CW audience? It might be worthwhile if they had anything compelling to say about what young people’s lives are like in 2015. So far, that’s not the case. Carl and his stupid hat are bad enough. Do we really need a Zombie Diaries or a 9021-Dead?

Dickens is fine as Madison, a high school guidance counselor who’s just moved in with her boyfriend, English teacher Travis (Cliff Curtis). There’s that horrible cliche early on, where Travis is fixing the leaky sink on his own, while Madison wants to call the plumber. We get it, “Travis is a fixer,” co-creator Dave Erickson tells us in this interview, but you might have found a more original way to spell that out for us than a routine that felt a little tired by the time they did something like it on The Honeymooners.

They both work at the school, though not much of interest happens there. There are a lot of kids and teachers out sick, but that doesn’t really jibe with where the contagion is at this point in the show. Are those people zombies already? Do they just have some idea something bad is going on so they’re staying home? Are they running for the hills? Then why do most of the locals seem so oblivious? There’s only one kid, Tobias (Lincoln A. Castellanos), who looks like he’s 35, but actually seems to have a clue. He brings a knife to school, and when Madison catches him with it, they have a chat in her office, after she covers for him with the school security guards. When pressed, Tobias expresses impossible certainty that the world, as we know it, is coming to an end. It’s like he’s already been watching The Walking Dead for five seasons. What is this kid seeing that we, the viewers, don’t see?

Anyway, solid as Dickens and Curtis are, the focus is more on Madison’s son Nick (British actor Frank Dillane), a junkie, and her daughter, Alicia (Australian actor Alycia Debnam-Carey), the kind of television-style genius/rebel who skips class frequently, and never has much intelligent to say, but is somehow accepted into UC Berkeley. Of course, Alicia has a terrible attitude toward her mom and presumed stepdad-to-be, but that’s mostly just surface teen petulance. Over the course of the episode, we see her genuine concern for her family, including her troubled older brother. Alicia has a sweet, artistic boyfriend, Matt (Maestro Harrell) who happens to be Black, so we hope you didn’t grow attached.

Nick is more problematic. Like Debnam-Carey, Dillane is a good-looking kid, kind of like the love child of Johnny Depp and James Franco, but as Nick is supposed to be a junkie living on the streets of Los Angeles, his well-scrubbed attractiveness strains credulity. Dillane overplays Nick’s dishevelment to the point of slapstick comedy, so he’s admittedly kind of fun to watch. There’s probably some tragic backstory to explain that limp, but what could explain Nick’s frequent agape looks of terror and confusion. Drugs are bad, kids, I guess.

Drugs are bad and drug dens are dangerous places, but when the hospitalized Nick tells Travis that he might have been hallucinating, but that he saw a dead junkie woman eating someone at an artfully abandoned church that doubles as a shooting gallery, Travis decides to investigate, on his own, in the middle of the night. Now, I am the type of horror movie watcher that gets annoyed at viewers who complain that the person onscreen is stupid to go outside in the middle of the night to see what that strange noise was. When you hear a strange noise outside your house in the middle of the night, you go see what it is, unless you know you are in a horror movie. Usually, the characters don’t know. Travis’ decision to traipse around a known drug den, a decrepit shithole where murder and cannibalism have allegedly taken place earlier that day, seems a bit beyond the realm of normal human behavior. That’s more post-apocalyptic behavior than pre-apocalyptic-something-kind-of-strange-seems-to-be-going-on behavior.

There are a few effective sequences, but even the real scares, as with that first zombie-chomping scene in the church, are sloppily edited and drawn-out, and the false-alarm jump-scares are waaay overplayed, as when Madison slowly walks up to the hunched over principal at school and ominous music plays (he’s just eavesdropping on his teachers to evaluate them(?)) or, worse yet, when Travis explores the church and finds, behind a door, a screaming, gibbering, terrified junkie. It’s meant to be a shock and then a relief but it’s so overblown in every aspect (other than Curtis’ performance) that it just comes off as comical.

Calvin (Keith Powers) is an interesting case. When Madison and Travis go looking for Nick, who’s escaped from the hospital after fleeing a zombie and running into traffic, they find the chipper Calvin at his parents’ house, and he does this Eddie Haskell thing where he convincingly acts like a stand-up guy who doesn’t hang with Nick much since Nick went bad. Some time later, Nick meets Calvin at a diner, where the man has been transformed into a taciturn thug, quick to decide to murder his childhood buddy Nick because Nick might have told his mom that Calvin is a drug dealer, even though Madison gave no indication that she had any idea what Calvin did for a living. Cal is a hard man, but somehow Nick, a skinny, strung-out junkie in the midst of withdrawal, manages to overpower him when Nick sees that gun that that a badass like Calvin probably should have known to keep hidden until he was ready to use it. Anyway, it’s horrifyingly unsurprising that the first major character to be killed on the show is Black. So much for progress from the original series.

It’s pretty obvious that thematically, Nick’s half-dead. That zombie-like shuffle and his demented wide-eyed looks suggest that he is very close to turning. The actual zombies on the first episode are a fellow addict, an accident victim who goes “bath salts” crazy and is shot dead by the cops, and, eventually, Calvin. It makes sense that the show would depict this contagion spreading among working and lower-class people — the discarded, the ignored, the voiceless of East Los Angeles — while the rest of the city is quick to demonize and slow to take action. That’s not what the show depicts, though. Instead, it settles for a facile metaphor, likening drug addiction and drug culture to a kind of voluntary zombie-ism. “Drugs” seems a simplistic and inapt target, and it’s certainly an inauspicious start to a series about the eventual breakdown of society.

The show’s not all bad. It has Dickens, for one thing, and she makes us care about Madison. Dillane is ridiculous, but actually genuinely fun to watch. The idea of giving us time to get to know these characters while the horror gradually ramps up could be a good one, if anyone writing this show was good at writing characters and dialogue. I still think it has the potential to surpass the first couple of seasons of The Walking Dead.

Dystopia Within ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion’

What helps ‘Evangelion’ continue to grow its popularity is not the focus on religious or sci-fi elements, but its commitment to showcasing the fragility of humanity through its flawed and destructive characters tasked with saving the world and themselves. And how does the franchise show this? By literally placing the future of what’s left of the world in the hand of dysfunctional and emotionally fragile children.

This guest post by CG appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.

Dystopian landscapes have begun to grow in popularity with audiences, particularly in film and literature. Franchises like The Hunger Games and The Walking Dead have given audiences this love affair with settings that include abandoned cities, constant threats of death, and the occasional love triangle in an attempt at normalcy. But what these popularized franchises have done is cloud our definition of what dystopian media can do. In fact, there has been dystopian media done before that called for us to embrace and examine how humanity is represented in these otherwise bleak landscapes.

With this, I call to you the brilliance of the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Neon Genesis Evangelion refers to a franchise created by Hideaki Anno and Gainax Studios, going on to include a 25-episode anime, six films (including three reboots), and a 13-volume manga series. The franchise itself is incredibly popular, launching back in the 1990s and maintaining a steady fanbase ever since. What helps Evangelion continue to grow its popularity is not the focus on religious or sci-fi elements, but its commitment to showcasing the fragility of humanity through its flawed and destructive characters tasked with saving the world and themselves. And how does the franchise show this? By literally placing the future of what’s left of the world in the hand of dysfunctional and emotionally fragile children.

The story of Evangelion focuses on three 14-year-old pilots that control giant robots called Evangelion Units, as they battle monsters called Angels that threaten to destroy (what’s left of) the world. These Angels have already destroyed half of the world – the oceans have turned red, half of the world’s population has been killed. Some of the characters live with the consequences of the Second Impact – one character, Misato Katsuragi, tries to live with her guilt of directly surviving the Second Impact while her father does not.

The pilots of the Eva Units serve as the main characters of the franchise, and remain the gatekeepers to the internal conflict of the internal conflict of the franchise. The main character is Shinji Ikari – abandoned by his father who later asks him to pilot one of the Eva Units, Shinji revels in the feelings of guilt and unraveling that comes with feeling horribly inadequate to everyone around him. One of the episodes of the original anime is called “Hedgehog’s Dilemma,” focusing on a psychological condition that makes for Shinji’s insecurity to hinder him from getting close to others, for fear of further rejection. For Shinji, he reclaims some of that validation in the form of piloting the Eva. Like the other pilots, the Eva Units give him identity beyond his own limitations. Although, as we soon learn, it is not enough to allow them to completely escape.

The second pilot is Asuka Langley-Sohryu, a hotheaded and brash girl who clings to her title as an Eva pilot as a badge of honor. To Asuka, she revels in being needed and having purpose. But her overconfidence shadows a deeper hurt of fierce inadequacy. When her title as an Eva pilot is no longer enough to shield her from facing her fear of being useless, it quickly manifests into putting Asuka in further danger. In this unforgiving future, where the survival of humanity rests on the sounders of three teenagers, Asuka’s mental unraveling to be more dangerous that we would expect.

The final pilot is Rei Ayanami, a girl who is seen as emotionless and stoic. She follows orders without thought or individuality, and she has a strange connection to the Eva Units themselves, as well as to Shinji’s deceased mother, Yui. Rei is interesting in that she must learn to reclaim her individuality and importance as a person. She struggles to find meaning with being expendable.

The psychological stability of the pilots, as well as the adults that are supposed to be directing and guiding them, become paramount to the development and plot of Evangelion. It’s not simply the bleak landscape that draws out the despair in the characters; it is the drive of destruction that lingers on the tongue of everyone around. Shinji, Asuka, and Rei are left to salvage humanity out of the hopelessness that surrounds them.. and it makes for oddly addicting media.

Though the franchise explores other themes of faith, relationships, and tragedy – at its core, Neon Genesis Evangelion gives us a tale of searching for meaning and embracing the strength of flawed humanity, even when the situation is bleak.

CG is a writer, blogger, and fangirl from New Jersey. Most of her online writing can be found on her site (blackgirlinmedia.com).