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Murder Spouses and Field Kabuki: The Female Gaze in NBC’s ‘Hannibal’

The show treats the bodies of living women with the same respect that it treats those of dead ones.

This guest post by Lisa Anderson appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

In discussing the female gaze in media, there’s one television show worth considering that may come as a surprise: NBC’s Hannibal. This plucky little drama has toiled away in bad time slots for three seasons now, winning critical accolades and devoted followers that never translated into ratings. In a landscape littered with crime procedurals that exploit women, Hannibal stands out, and not just for its searing visuals or plot twists. There are three ways that the “gaze” in Hannibal is feminine: the way the show depicts women, the way it depicts men, and the way it depicts sex.

You only need start with the pilot to see that Hannibal is a different sort of show. Not only does it cast two characters who were men in the original novels by Thomas Harris as women – Freddy (Freddie) Lounds and Alan (Alana) Bloom, to be specific – but it gives beefed-up rolls to three characters who weren’t central to the novels’ plots. Those are Jack Crawford’s wife Phyllis, forensic investigator Beverly Katz, and Abigail Hobbes, the daughter of serial killer Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Yet another female character, Hannibal Lecter’s psychiatrist Bedelia DuMaurier, is created from whole cloth. Showrunner Bryan Fuller has been quoted as saying he balanced the cast this way in part because writing a show with only men would have been boring.

As remarkable as the living women in the cast, however, is the way that the show treats dead women, right from the start. Much ink has been spilled about how many law enforcement procedurals fetishize the torture and suffering of women, or depict female murder victims in a titillating way. By contrast, in the opening moments of Hannibal, the protagonist, Will Graham, invites his students (and the viewers) to empathize with a dying murder victim, not with her killer–in spite of his own unfortunate gift for doing the opposite. As he is drawn into the FBI’s investigations of Hobbs’s murders, the first victim is found tucked respectfully into bed, fully clothed. The second crime scene he visits turns out to be one of Hannibal Lecter’s infamous murder tableaus, and while the dead woman there is naked –impaled on antlers – her body is angled in such a way her gender isn’t obvious and the image is fit for network TV.

Hannibal continues its gender-neutral approach to serial murder throughout its run. As many men are murdered as women (if not more), and whenever corpses are found without clothes on, they are shot such a way that they register as human rather than male or female. (The victims of the Muralist in Season 2 are perhaps the best example of this.) Even when a bare breast is shown straight on (such as with one critical character death in Season 2), it goes by quickly and is soft-focused and the nipple is not shown. Most importantly, the murders on Hannibal aren’t driven by misogyny or some twisted sexual motivation. This is not reflective of real of serial killers at all, but the show is more interesting for it. The one exception is Frances Dolarhyde, who comes on the scene in the back half of Season 3, and whose sexual pathology is impossible to get around. Even there, though, his female victims aren’t depicted in a titillating way.

Surely just having lots of good female characters and not depicting crime in a creepy way doesn’t qualify a show has having the female gaze, though, right? No, and in the case of Hannibal, there’s more to it than that. The show makes the most of the attractive male actors in its cast (and their avid fans), and also centers female pleasure in its sex scenes without exploiting the actresses.

The first (and very unsettling) instance of the female gaze that I noticed in Hannibal centers around the above-mentioned Mr. Graham, played by the amazing Hugh Dancy. Early in Season 1, Graham uses his talent for empathy to imagine himself in the place of a mental hospital inmate played by Eddie Izzard. As he mentally reconstructs a murder committed in the hospital by Izzard’s character, we see him with his shirt unbuttoned, smirking at the victim with a mix of smolder and menace before attacking her. In that moment, Dancy seems to be channeling Eddie Izzrard’s own sex appeal. Nor was that the only time the show has made the most of Dancy’s looks: it’s not common for him to be seen shirtless, but it’s not unusual either, and fans on tumblr have gleefully traded stills of the show that feature his rear end. In terms of Will the character, there is, of course, a perennial appeal to a cute man in glasses and cold-weather clothes scritching a dog… but maybe that’s just me. (I doubt it.)

In terms of the female gaze in Hannibal, however, no character is more important than the titular serial killer, played by Mads Mikkelsen. Sex appeal is part of the “Person Suit” that Lecter puts on, whether it’s the dapper, cultured professional that he puts forward in seasons 1 and 2, or the leather-clad, globe-trotting bad boy that begins Season 3. It’s not to lure his victims, though; it’s to conceal his crimes from society. Nor do clothes always make the man–in Season 2, the audience is treated to a slow pan up Mikkelson’s body as he is clad in only swim trunks. (In another example of the show’s twisted vision, Lecter is actually in dire straights at that moment.) In Season 3, there is a brief-but-langorous sequence of Lecter showing off blood. He emerges from the bathroom to have a tense confrontation with another character, rendered decent only by prop placement that would make Austin Powers proud.

The staff of Hannibal make the most of both their talented and attractive lead and the fans’ appreciation for him. The show’s official tumblr literally teased fans for weeks with the prospect of their favorite cannibal in a swimsuit. Even the show’s hilarious and inimitable food stylist, Janice Poon, has described Mikkelson as the “man o’ dreams,” as she jokingly (?) lamented missing the opportunity to brush glaze onto him.

The show’s eye candy doesn’t end with Mikkelson and Dancy, either. Richard Armitage, of Hobbit and North and South fame, joined the cast in Season 3 as Francis Dolarhyde, the Great Red Dragon. Right from his first, dialogue-free scene, he meets the high bar for acting set by Dancy and Mikkelson. But he also got into fighting shape to play the body-building villain of Harris’ novel, and for the most part, if Dolarhyde is in private, he is either wearing only small shorts or implied to be naked.

The way Dolaryhyde is filmed for Hannibal points to the difference between how depicts men and women. His nudity is not necessarily supposed to be titillating – it’s mainly to show off his formidable form and the vivid tattoo on his back, although it certainly won’t be unappealing to those who go in for muscular men. What it is, though, is gendered. By contrast, in the pilot, we see Freddie Lounds sitting at her computer, with her back turned and no shirt on. The mood is casual (especially in comparison to Dolarhyde’s workouts), and there is no posing for a camera that shouldn’t be there, no implication that she might turn. She’s treated as a naked human, not a naked woman. The same comparison can be made between Lecter’s Season 3 shower and the baths taken Dr. DuMaurier, played by Gillian Anderson. The show treats the bodies of living women with the same respect that it treats those of dead ones.

So, what happens when the men and women of Hannibal get together? Speaking strictly in terms of what’s been confirmed onscreen, we’ve had a couple of opportunities to find out. Women are seduced by (and seduce) serial killers, a lesbian character sleeps with a man to get pregnant but later finds a female partner, and there’s even a hallucinatory “five-way” that involves people hooking up with people while thinking of other people (and also… a wendigo. It’s hard to explain). If it all sounds sensational and potentially problematic, only the first part of that is true.

The sex scenes in Hannibal have a few things in common. First, neither female nor male bodies are really exploited. This could be written off as owing to network TV, the networks manage the male gaze just fine in their sex scenes most of the time. Instead, there’s a dream-like, almost art-house quality to the editing and camerawork. Second, they’re always between central, full-drawn characters, who are both acting out of their agency even if there is information that they don’t have. Third, they all have strategic or plot importance – the feelings of the characters and the dynamics between them are as important as what happens physically.

Most importantly, though, the sex scenes in Hannibal always imply that the woman (or women) involved are satisfied. This is usually done with a tasteful shot of an arched back or ecstatic facial expression. Remarkably, in a show where interpersonal relationships of all kinds prove to be fraught and painful, there’s never been a sex scene where it wasn’t clear that a woman was having a good time. This focus on female pleasure, as much as anything else, qualifies Hannibal as a show with a female gaze.

While Hannibal’s female gaze obviously includes the straight female gaze, it’s not strictly heteronormative. Dr. Alana Bloom, played by Caroline Dhavernas, is attracted to both Will and Hannibal, but ultimately ends up in a long-term relationship with a woman. Will and Hannibal both get involved with women, but in a Episode 10 of Season 3, Bedelia DuMaurier – perhaps the person most in Hannibal’s confidence – heavily and repeatedly implies that they’ve been sexual with each other as well. Many viewers were surprised only by the confirmation, based on the homoerotic subtext between the two from the start. While Hannibal still has never had a gay man as one of the central characters, it acknowledges both male and female bisexuality, which is unfortunately a rarity on TV today. Needless to say, this wins the show points in today’s fandom environment, with it’s overlapping interest in social justice and same-sex pairings.

I’m not saying that Hannibal is a perfect show. Feminists have taken issue with it before. I’ve agreed with some of those criticisms and either disagreed with or eventually softened my position on others. With two more episodes left in Season 3 as of this writing, I can imagine ways in which it could still disappoint me. At the end of the day, though, it explodes many of the misogynist tropes of the TV crime procedural and even the texts where it finds its roots, and makes something truly unique and darkly beautiful with the shards.

Sadly, Hannibal has been canceled by NBC, and has not yet found another financial backer. I hope that it finds one, because I’d love for Bryan Fuller to be able to complete his vision. Until then, I’ll probably revisit it on DVD, and encourage those who I think would enjoy it to check it out. I’ll also look forward to his next project: a mini-series of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. I’m sure he’ll bring his singular style to it, and hopefully continued nods to the female gaze as well.

Lisa Anderson is a social services professional and part-time writer living in Nashville Tennessee. Her favorite things include reading, good chocolate, and feminist pop culture deconstruction.

‘A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night’ and Scares Us

This repost by Ren Jender appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

Nice girls aren’t supposed to walk alone in the dark, even in the movies. So in the generically titled A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, the debut feature from writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour, we in the audience wonder what a woman in a black cloak (a traditional Iranian garment called a chador) is doing on the streets of a largely empty desert town in the wee hours. We see her witness a pimp (Dominic Rains) exploit and then cheat a sex worker (Mozhan Marnò). We soon find out the woman in the chador, The Girl–we never find out her name (played, unforgettably, by Sheila Vand) is no ordinary woman, but a vampire with fangs that retract like a cat’s claws–or a switchblade.

The film takes place in a parallel California which contains a Farsi-speaking, Iranian enclave called “Bad City.” We know we’re not in Iran because the pimp has visible tattoos and later we see a woman in public with her hair and much of her body uncovered. Also The Girl wears her chador in such a way that we see her hipster, stripey, boat shirt (too short for modest dress) and skinny jeans underneath.

In spite of its surface differences, the film to which Girl has the greatest parallel is probably David Lynch’s Eraserhead. Like that film, every sumptuous, black and white shot is framed and lit with care, creating an alternate universe for the audience to lose themselves in. And as in Eraserhead, even what we hear is fussed over in a way that grabs our attention: incidental sounds are recorded close. The proximity doesn’t alienate us, the way less skillful dubbing in other films often does, but gives us a heightened sense of intimacy, as if we are almost touching the characters.

When The Girl interrogates The Street Urchin (a young boy played by Milad Eghbali) the film shows a truth that many films, including horror films, elide–but that the other recent acclaimed horror film directed by a woman, The Babadook, also addresses–the first person who scares us when we are children is often a woman, whether it’s a mother or another woman authority figure. Tilda Swinton has said that her character in Snowpiercer was based on a particularly terrifying nanny from her own childhood. Few lines in films this year have been more chilling than the one The Girl leaves The Street Urchin with after she threatens him: “Be a good boy.”

Like Michael Almereyda, who, in the ’90s made a stylish black and white film about a woman vampire among New York hipsters, Nadja (its star, Elina Löwensohn, had eyes you couldn’t look away from, much like Vand’s) Amirpour combines familiar elements in an unfamiliar way for maximum resonance. In Almereyda’s modern day New York Hamlet (from 2000), he famously incorporated a video of Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh talking about “being” in the background of a scene, priming us to later hear Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy.

In Girl Amirpour gets at how women in modest Muslim dress (including those from Iran) are used for xenophobic and anti-Islamic fear-mongering (often in the guise of “feminism”) in the US (like in the recent ad campaign for Homeland) but also uses a chador’s resemblance to a cape to give us an eerily familiar–but new–“Dracula” silhouette. When The Girl rides on the skateboard The Street Urchin leaves behind (after he runs away from her in terror) the chador billows around her as she rolls down the road, and she becomes, without CGI trickery, a bat in flight.

Americans often read chador on women to mean vulnerability, but like the frail-seeming, pale, young, blonde Mae in another beautifully-shot, vampire Western (also directed by a woman, the pre-Hurt Locker Kathryn Bigelow) 1987’s Near Dark, who, when her cowboy boyfriend lassoes her as a “joke” takes hold of the rope and pulls him in, The Girl has hidden reserves of strength. The Girl becomes an avenging angel in black, attacking the men we see abuse women, using her “traditional” quiet passivity to draw these guys close. As the abusive men do with the cat who is many times in the frame (rarely has a filmmaker caught how much of our daily lives our animals witness) they ascribe motivations and personas to The Girl which are more about their own perceptions than about who she is or what she is thinking.

Like a number of films Girl has an early scene, fast becoming a campy cliché, in which a woman suggestively sucks the finger of a man. But when The Girl takes the pimp’s forefinger into her mouth, he gets more than he bargained for.

And as we do with Mae, we see that The Girl is lonely, and a hapless, good-looking guy, Arash, played by Arash Marandi touches something in her. When they meet, he’s coming from a costume party where he’s taken some of the club drugs he was dealing and is still wearing a vampire cape as he stares into a street light. She immediately becomes protective of him.

Vand’s presence burns through the screen. She has the intensity of the great silent actresses–and in many of her scenes, the ones in her room plastered with ’80s music posters, dancing by herself to Farsi synth-pop records or even when she interacts with other characters, she often does not speak. This film is low on back story but Vand’s face, especially her huge dark eyes (we see her put on her heavy eyeliner in the bathroom mirror before she goes out) tells us what she is feeling in every scene.

Amirpour’s camera (the magnificent cinematography is by Lyle Vincent) lingers over Arash’s beauty–his high cheekbones and large, long-lashed eyes under a dark, curly version of James Dean’s pompadour–in a way few male filmmakers would. His clothes (a plain white t-shirt and jeans that hug his muscled body) also evoke Dean’s. And even though the pimp, Saeed, is a villain, meant to repel us, Amirpour lets us take in the attractiveness of his body, especially in a shirtless scene with The Girl when his pants hang very low and we see the full extent of his tattoos–and his muscles.

LA has enough Iranian-Americans in it that some have nicknamed it “Tehrangeles” (after Iran’s capital), but I can’t think of another film produced near there (Girl was actually filmed in Bakersfield) in which most (or all) of the cast is of Persian descent, but no one is a terrorist or a relic from the old country. These characters speak Farsi to each other but, except for Arash’s father, with his drug addiction and collection of pre-revolutionary framed photos of family (complete with 60s-style teased hair on the women), these people aren’t living in the past–even The Girl’s retro record collection, clothes and bobbed hair reflect present-day fashion.

We can never know for sure, but just as with Black actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw giving two terrific, completely different star-turns in movies in one year but the media still largely ignoring her, I wonder if Amirpour’s flawless visual sense, skill with actors and unique reworking of a genre many of us thought didn’t have an original angle left would garner more attention if she were a white guy. Girl is distributed in partnership with VICE‘s film arm and has even made some year-end, top-10 lists, but I had to go to New York to see it and whole countries (like Canada) have yet to get even limited distribution. Nevertheless Amirpour continues to work on films unimpeded. Her next work is about cannibals. I can’t wait until its release.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YGmTdo3vuY” iv_load_policy=”3″]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

The Women of the ‘Mission Impossible’ Franchise

‘Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation’ is kicking it at the box office and getting great reviews. And I can confirm that it is fantastic. If you like action movies or spy thrillers at all, you should see it. You’ll love it. But after you see it, I would like to spoil your fun by unfurling my feminist criticism by looking back at the previous entries in the nearly 20-years-running Mission Impossible franchise to see how women have fared overall. The news isn’t great.

Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise in 'Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation" — Rebecca Ferguson and Tom Cruise in *Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation*

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation is kicking it at the box office and getting great reviews. And I can confirm that it is fantastic. If you like action movies or spy thrillers at all, you should see it. You’ll love it. But after you see it, I would like to spoil your fun by unfurling my feminist criticism.

Rogue Nation has a great central female character in Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust. The Daily Beast calls Ferguson “The Second Coming of Lauren Bacall” and, astonishingly, that passes the smell test. Ilsa is the kind of gal who can run at breakneck speed in heels but is also practical enough to take them off before jumping off a roof: the perfect spy movie fantasy of a woman. And Ferguson plays her with enough mystique we spend the whole movie never quite sure which side of the Bond Girl Axis (good girl who is actually bad vs. bad girl who is actually good) she’ll land on. Ilsa is so captivating that I didn’t even notice until I got home that she was the only named female character in the movie. The only other woman with any dialogue, “Shop Girl,” is killed off within a minute or so. Rogue Nation is the perfect example of a movie that fails the Bechdel Test BADLY, while patting itself on the back for presenting a “strong female character.”

I decided to look back at the previous entries in the nearly 20-years-running Mission Impossible franchise to see how women have fared overall. The news isn’t great.

Emmanuelle Béart in 'Mission Impossible' — Emmanuelle Béart in *Mission Impossible*

Mission Impossible (1996)

Number of named female characters: 4
Named female characters who survive the film: 1 (not main female character)
Women of color: 0
Bond Girl Axis: Good girl is actually bad.
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Yes
Bechdel Test: Fail (second prong)

Thandie Newton in 'Mission Impossible II" — Thandie Newton in *Mission Impossible II*

Mission Impossible II (2000)

Number of named female characters: 1 (seriously, just one)
Named female characters who survive the film: 1
Women of color: 1 (main female character, obviously)
Bond Girl Axis: Bad girl is actually good.
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Yes
Bechdel Test: Fail (first prong)

Maggie Q in 'Mission Impossible III' — Maggie Q in *Mission Impossible III*

Mission Impossible III (2006)

Number of named female characters: 3
Named female characters who survive the film: 2
Women of color: 1
Bond Girl Axis: Not applicable. All women are what they seem (all three good).
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Yes
Bechdel Test: Fail (third prong)

Paula Patton in 'Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol' — Paula Patton in *Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol*

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011)

Number of named female characters: 3 (one a cameo, without dialogue)
Named female characters who survive the film: 2
Women of color: 1 (main female character)
Bond Girl Axis: Not applicable. All women are what they seem (two good, one bad).
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: Only in cameo
Bechdel Test: Near-pass (do grunts during a fight count as a conversation?)

Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust in 'Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation' — Rebecca Ferguson as Ilsa Faust in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (2015)

Number of named female characters: 1
Named female characters who survive the film: 1 (2 unnamed characters die)
Women of color: 0
Bond Girl Axis: [Spoiler] Morally ambiguous girl is actually good.
Love Interest for Tom Cruise: No
Bechdel Test: Fail (first prong)

Some obvious themes emerge: There are shockingly few women in the Mission Impossible movies, they generally don’t interact, and a lot of them die.

Keri Russell is killed off in the first act of 'Mission Impossible III' — Keri Russell is killed off in the first act of *Mission Impossible III*

What is worse is that even when female characters survive to the credits, they generally don’t appear in the following sequels (with no explanation of where they’ve gone). Thandie Newton’s Nyah, the only woman in Mission Impossible II, ends the film as the ally and lover of Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. She’s never spoken of again. Maggie Q’s Zhen in Mission Impossible III and Paula Patton’s Jane in Ghost Protocol were both women of color working alongside Ethan; they’re not secretly evil, they don’t die, they aren’t his love interest (maybe Nyah disappeared because it was a bad breakup?). But when the next movie comes around, they’re not on his team anymore. Sure, we never see the character Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays in Mission Impossible III again, either, but he is one of countless white dudes in the franchise. As you can see above, women in the franchise are so countable that a two-year-old would be like, “I got this.”

Michele Monaghan as Julia in 'Mission Impossible III', at gunpoint. — Michele Monaghan as Julia in *Mission Impossible III*, at gunpoint.

The only woman who appears in more than one Mission Impossible movie is Michelle Monaghan’s Julia, who marries Ethan in Mission Impossible: III and promptly becomes a damsel in distress. Bad Guy Philip Seymour Hoffman’s first words to Ethan are, “Do you have a wife or a girlfriend? Because if you do, I’m going to find her and I’m going to hurt her.” So even though Mission Impossible: III arguably does the best by women, it leans heavily on the trope of women in refrigerators (Ethan is also tormented by failing to save his protégé Lindsey Farris, played by Keri Russell). At the start of Ghost Protocol we’re led to believe Julia was killed off-screen between movies, but she is revealed to be secretly alive in the final scene. Not alive enough to have any dialogue, though. Which means surviving to make a silent cameo is the best any woman in five Mission Impossible movies has done.

Which doesn’t make me optimistic for Rebecca Ferguson’s future with the franchise. Even if she does show up in the next Mission Impossible movie (they are planning a sixth), it will be frustrating that a white woman is the first to manage that. Or maybe Jane and Zhen will team up with Ilsa and Nyah in the next movie to save Ethan from mortal peril? There’s still time to write that movie, Hollywood.

The Burden of Carrying On: The Currency of Women in Dystopian Films

I can’t keep count of the number of times the fact that women menstruate has been used as a reason to render us incapable of doing something. However, the fact women can have children (while cis-men cannot) is arguably our greatest power in a time of crisis.

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

When I was 8 years old, I was given written permission from my parents to watch Titanic on VHS at my friend’s 10th birthday party. Loaded up on birthday cake, potato chips, and as much cherry Coke as I could stomach, I sat in awe as I watched the seemingly unsinkable ship crack in half and kill approximately 1,500 people. As the string quartet played their final notes, the main antagonist of the film (Billy Zane’s Cal Hockley) grabbed a stray child claiming her to be his daughter in order to secure himself a space on a lifeboat reserved for women and children. My friend’s mother was a feminist, liberal arts school college professor and upon watching this scene uttered:

“Leave it to a man to manipulate the only system put in place where a woman’s life is actually given any sort of value.”

Every day, women are made to feel worthless. Whether it’s the media bombarding us with contradictory ideas on how to be, or the fact politicians still think our rights need to be settled by a vote, women are still struggling for equal treatment in just about every aspect of existence. During the March 10 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly hosted Marc Rudov, author of Under the Clitoral Hood: How to Crank Her Engine Without Cash, Booze, or Jumper Cables, to discuss “What is the downside of having a woman become the president of the United States?” Rudov’s initial response to the question was, “You mean besides the PMS and the mood swings, right?” I can’t keep count of the number of times the fact that women menstruate has been used as a reason to render us incapable of doing something. However, the fact women can have children (while cis-men cannot) is arguably our greatest power in a time of crisis.

As seen in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later… Christopher Eccelston plays the leader of what appears to be the last of surviving civilians in Britain after the epidemic of the Rage Virus. Eccelston’s Major Henry West is a military man through and through, as are the overwhelming majority of the men surviving at his outpost. Major West sent out a radio broadcast searching for survivors to join him and his men, but once characters Hannah, Selena, and Jim arrive at the sanctuary, the true motivations for the radio broadcast become horrifyingly clear:

“Eight days ago, I found Jones with his gun in his mouth. He said he was going to kill himself because there was no future. What could I say to him? We fight off the infected or we wait until they starve to death… and then what? What do nine men do except wait to die themselves? I moved us from the blockade, and I set the radio broadcasting, and I promised them women. Because women mean a future.”

While Major West’s speech (and the events that shortly follow) opens up an entirely new can of worms regarding the sexual politics of the apocalypse, it’s still a reminder that women are arguably the most important symbols of hope in dystopian landscapes.

We often think of dystopian films set in fantastical and futuristic worlds after some post-apocalyptic cause. What we see in It Follows is the wastelands of Detroit and the aftermath of economic devastation. It’s this backdrop set in a contemporary setting that blurs our vision of the forest for the trees. The value of women in this dystopian world is quantified by the supernatural curse that starts to follow these characters. This outside force makes it so that a sexual encounter is needed in order to survive. It’s blatantly said through the film that it’s easy for Jay (Maika Monroe) to pass it on, “because she’s a girl.” She even has two suitors fight over the opportunity to take on this curse, allowing her to be in the power position to have a choice in which suitor essentially lives or dies. It’s from the male perspective that women are seen as currency, as something holding the most value, and they will do anything to obtain them.

Mad Max: Fury Road enforces this practice through the lens of women fully aware of their value. The plot of the film is centrally focused on gender politics, but it never once feels heavy handed. Surprisingly, the escaped “wives” in the center are also never sexualized, even from their former captor. The girls do discuss the villain Immortan Joe having a “favorite,” but the women are fully aware of their value. Amidst gunfire, these women use themselves as shields, understanding the War Boys’ fear of harming them. However, this fear isn’t rooted in a sexual desire, but in the desire to survive. Sexuality isn’t used as a weapon, but the women use themselves as a weapon to address the fact they are in control of any hope for the future. Immortan Joe’s desire to save the women comes not from a loss of beautiful sex slaves, but from a loss of the possibility of continuing his familial line. Men cannot continue on their own without women, and the world of Fury Road knows it. In this universe, we must work together to make a future.

The unfortunate reality of the value of women in dystopian societies is that the relegation of women as currency brings out the absolute worst in humanity. They say that money is the root of all evil, and if women are now being valued as a currency, the evil is bound to leak through. In 28 Days Later… the soldiers are willing to rape the first women they see, and in It Follows, a man has chloroform at his disposal, presumably for use in case Jay were to have denied him sex. While there is power in women gaining the ultimate value in dystopian landscapes, there is also a great risk that comes along to being reverted to nothing more than currency.

BJ Colangelo is the woman behind the keyboard for Day of the Woman: A blog for the feminine side of fear and a contributing writer for Icons of Fright. She’s been published in books, magazines, numerous online publications, all while frantically applying for day jobs. She’s a recovering former child beauty queen and a die-hard horror fanatic. You can follow her on Twitter at @BJColangelo.

‘Grace’: Single Mothers, Stillborn Births, and Scrutinizing Parenting Styles

Eventually, Madeline is pushed to the absolute limit in protecting her child and kills those trying to take her daughter from her…and feeds them to her. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is explored to the nth degree as the blood of those trying to destroy the mother/daughter relationship are then utilized to keep baby Grace alive.

This guest post by BJ Colangelo appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Despite humanity surviving nearly 200,000 years without mommy blogs and Dr. Spock’s baby books, our culture has become fixated on determining the “right” way to be a mother. The truth is, there is no right way to be a mother. What works for one mother and child may not work for another, and the ongoing debate of motherhood is something ugly and downright frightening. Society imagines the “right” mother to be the ones creating the crafts and cooking the meals we pin to our Pinterest boards, all while raising well-behaved and “normal” children. However, the things that we believe to be “right” aren’t always going to wind up being the best options.

Paul Solet’s feature debut Grace is a stunning insight into motherhood and the selfless love mothers have for their children. Within the first five minutes, we become witness to the way people try to dictate the parenting styles of other women. A visibly pregnant woman named Madeline (Jordan Ladd) has prepared a vegan dinner for her husband Michael and his parents. Michael’s domineering mother Vivian (Gabrielle Rose) scoffs at her meal and passive-aggressively tells Madeline that a more “conventional” diet would be healthier for her child. Madeline has yet to even deliver her baby and she’s already being swarmed with parenting advice from another person. This is a common occurrence for many pregnant women, and Grace showcases this conflict effortlessly. Shortly after, Vivian expresses her dislike for Madeline’s decision to use a midwife rather than Vivian’s obstetrician (and personal friend) Dr. Sohn. Madeline experiences complications during her pregnancy and is rushed to a hospital. Dr. Sohn arrives (at the request of Vivian) and determines Madeline needs to be induced. Luckily, her midwife Patricia shows up and challenges his diagnosis through blood work (which he has ignored) and Madeline is not induced. The life of her baby was put in jeopardy because an overbearing mother-in-law couldn’t let Madeline make her own decisions regarding her own child.

Tragedy strikes when Madeline and Michael are in a car accident that kills both Michael and Madeline’s unborn child. Madeline decides to carry the child to full term, rather than have the dead fetus removed. After delivering the stillborn child, Madeline holds her deceased child in her arms when suddenly the baby revives. It would appear that the love Madeline has for her child has “willed” her back to life. Patricia suggests that Madeline take her baby (the titular named Grace) to the hospital to get checked out, but the earlier experience with Dr. Sohn has left a bad taste in her mouth and Madeline refuses any more encounters with conventional medicine. Had Vivian not interfered with Madeline’s birth plan, a majority of the problems that she faces throughout the film could have easily been avoided. Madeline soon discovers that Grace has unusual problems. She smells strange, she’s attracting flies, her skin bleeds in the bathwater, and she is unable to digest breast milk. During an attempt to breastfeed, Madeline discovers that the one thing Grace can digest is blood.

Meanwhile, a grieving Vivian struggles with the idea that she is no longer a mother. Her only son has passed away, and her relationship with Madeline is almost non-existent. Vivian has become a bereaved parent and the loss is psychologically damaging. She begins to order her husband around as if he were a child, and during a sexual encounter, his nipple play slowly turns into a horrifying replication of the way a child would suckle on their mother’s breast. Her sorrow becomes too great to handle, and she convinces Dr. Sohn to visit Madeline in order to collect evidence proving that she is an unfit mother so Vivian can raise Grace instead.

Madeline continues caring for her child, by any means necessary. Draining the blood from meat in an attempt to feed her baby proves useless, so Madeline allows her child to continue to “feed” on her until she is left in an incredibly weak state. Eventually, Madeline is pushed to the absolute limit in protecting her child and kills those trying to take her daughter from her…and feeds them to her. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is explored to the nth degree as the blood of those trying to destroy the mother/daughter relationship are then utilized to keep baby Grace alive.

It would be easy to say that Madeline was an unfit mother, because she was killing people and feeding her child their blood. However, this wasn’t done with dangerous motivations. This was an act done purely out of necessity. In an extremely exaggerated sense, this is a parallel to the dietary restrictions that many people choose to explore with raising their children. Gluten free, dairy free, meat free, peanut free, etc. are all different lifestyle choices that parents believe are the best option for their children, and it is no one else’s business whether or not this is the “right” way to feed their child. For Madeline, this is her only option. Much like parents raising children with food allergies, feeding Grace human blood is the only way to keep her child alive. However, mother-in-law Vivian cannot comprehend someone successfully raising a child (let alone her grandchild) in any manner other than the way she raised her own children. The loss of her son (although an adult) has left her feeling purposeless, and she questions her own existence now that she is technically no longer a mother. Desperate to retain some of her motherhood, she clings to the only thing she feels she has left, her granddaughter Grace.

Women are often defined by their motherhood, but many women choose motherhood as the biggest part of their identity. There’s nothing wrong with this decision, and that’s what makes Grace such a fantastic movie. The interpretation of who is the “bad” mother is up for debate, when in reality…neither of these women are bad mothers. Should Vivian be scrutinizing Madeline’s every move? Of course not, but her aggression is not coming from a vindictive place, it’s coming from a place of love (regardless of how overbearing it comes off). These two women are simply two very different women trying to do what they feel is better for the most important thing in their lives, a child.

‘Taken 1, 2, and 3’: Modern Masculinity Meets Modern Fatherhood

When looked at as a trilogy, the ‘Taken’ films are all about Bryan’s relationship with his daughter as she becomes a woman and he is no longer sure how to relate to her. It’s a common real life situation writ large, and a wholly unexpected through-line for an action franchise.

Written by Elizabeth Kiy.

There are certain movies I watch whenever I visit my father. I would never chose to watch them on my own, but I enjoy them enough with him. These movies are instantly gratifying, explosions of car crashes and car chases, kidnappings and jewel thefts and mistaken identities and usually, the strong, comforting presence of his favorite movie star, Liam Neeson, the new model of masculinity.

With his soft Irish accent, his politeness and grooming, he’s a completely different animal from our old action heroes. He’s muscular but still human looking- not a steroid monster like 80s heroes like Stallone and Schwarzenegger. He can love, he can cry, but he can still seek revenge or save your life; however, like these old models, his heft still imposes. Though he kicks down doors and ends lives with violence, he’s smart, well-trained and tactical, outsmarting the villains as often as he actually comes to blows with them.

Liam Neeson is the new model for modern masculinity

In Taken, the film that established Neeson as “The New Man,” he’s Bryan Mills, an ex-CIA operative on a mission to save his daughter, Kim (Maggie Grace) from sex traffickers who have kidnapped her while on vacation in France. Besides Neeson’s emergence as a one-man killing machine, it’s not a wholly original film; it’s essentially a rape revenge plot where a daughter and her virginity are entrusted to the protection of her father.

However, when looked at as a trilogy, the Taken films are all about Bryan’s relationship with his daughter as she becomes a woman and he is no longer sure how to relate to her. It’s a common real life situation writ large, and a wholly unexpected through-line for an action franchise.

The Taken films are really about Bryan’s relationship with his daughter — The *Taken* films are really about Bryan’s relationship with his daughter

He tries to figure out how to balance being sensitive and being manly. He doesn’t know how to talk to his daughter anymore; in the first film, they have a strained relationship. He attempts to get through to her by getting her a meeting with her favourite singer who he is acting as a bodyguard for, but the real way he is able to show his love is by saving her life.

When they return home, she’s ready to love him and talk to him again, becoming so close as a family that she and her mother (Famke Janssen), his ex-wife, visit him in Istanbul in the sequel.

In the third movie, their relationship is showing growing pains again. Kim’s in college and Bryan buys her a giant teddy bear for his birthday, adorably excited about the gift. You can feel his heart break when she rejects the bear because she’s too old for it. He wants her to be his little girl, looking at him with stars in her eyes again; we find out she’s pregnant and there may soon be another little girl to look up to him.

In Taken, Bryan is on a time crunch to save Kim’s virginity as well as her life. While her sexually active friend is almost immediately left to die in a makeshift junkyard brothel with no one to care about her, as a virgin, Kim is saved to be auctioned off to a cabal of wealthy international men, which gives Bryan more time to save her. When Bryan finally tracks her down and takes her home, she seems undamaged by her ordeal. By Taken 3, when Kim discovers she is pregnant, it appears that her virginity was saved for the ultimate purpose of becoming a mother.

As a trilogy, the Taken films chronicle Kim’s apprenticeship with her father. After being a damsel in distress rescued in the first film, she returns in Taken 2 to fight against men related to her original kidnappers, getting her revenge on them as the attempt to get revenge on Bryan. When Bryan and her mother, Lenore, are kidnapped, Kim follows Bryan’s instructions over the phone, locating him in the city and providing him with weapons at risk of her life, instead of hiding out at the American Embassy like he originally instructs her to. In Taken 3, a riff on The Fugitive, Kim helps hide her father and investigates her mother’s murder. The culmination of her training is an interrogation scene where a cop questions her about Bryan’s whereabouts and his relationship with Lenore; as she answers him, she sounds exactly like her father.

Kim’s training is displayed in her interrogation

Famke Janssen, as Bryan’s ex-wife and Kim’s mother, fares less well across in the franchise. Bryan’s first indication in Taken–that something may go wrong on Kim’s trip to France–is his last minute discovery that Kim and her friend are planning to follow the band U2 on their European tour. It seems to have little to nothing to do with the actual human trafficking plot, but is used to paint Lenore as a bad mother who isn’t careful enough about her daughter’s safety. In the sequel, she waits around to be saved by the combined efforts of her husband and daughter and by Taken 3, she’s barely around, succumbing to Women in Refrigerators syndrome in the first few minutes of the film.

Famke Janssen’s role is to be only a victim and a bad mother

It seems that Kim’s pregnancy is intended to present her a both masculine and feminine, taking in a bit of both her mother (whose only real role was to have a daughter to be saved in the first place) and her father. Taken 3 flirted with Kim’s decision whether or not to have an abortion, though in the end, there wasn’t really a point. Of course, this big budget mainstream action film isn’t going to end with a character deciding to get an abortion, but it’s interesting that it was even presented as an option and that this new model for masculinity supported her right to chose either way.

One can only wonder if Liam Neeson will fight through Taken 4 with his new grandchild strapped to his chest in a Baby Bjorn.

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Vintage Viewing: Lois Weber, Blockbusting Boundary-Pusher

Thanks to Alice Guy and Lois Weber, filmmaking was once almost unique in its gender equity, before a centralized studio system eliminated the female directors.

Written by Brigit McCone.

Part of Vintage Viewing, exploring the work of female filmmaking pioneers.

“No women directors have achieved the all-embracing, powerful status once held by Lois Weber” – film historian Anthony Slide

Lois Weber: social justice warrior

The career of Lois Weber demonstrates the importance of mentoring between women; entering Gaumont Company as an actress in 1904, Weber was encouraged by the original film director, Alice Guy, to explore directing, producing, and scriptwriting, while Weber mentored female directors at Universal like Cleo Madison and Dorothy Davenport Reid. Weber’s career also demonstrates the importance of precedent: elected to the Motion Picture Directors’ Association and the highest paid director in Hollywood, her success inspired Universal to promote female directors such as Ida May Park to replace her when Weber left to found Lois Weber Productions. Thanks to Alice Guy and Lois Weber, filmmaking was once almost unique in its gender equity, before a centralized studio system eliminated the female directors. The only survivor into Hollywood’s Golden Age, Dorothy Arzner, was great for transmasculine representation, but an indicator of how exclusively masculine-coded directing had become.

Three directors: Cecil B. DeMille, Lois Weber and Jeanie MacPherson — Three directors: Cecil B. DeMille, Lois Weber, and Jeanie MacPherson

For her first feature film, 1914’s The Merchant of Venice, Weber chose a Shakespearean classic whose brilliant female lawyer, Portia, resolves the plot’s dilemma. Her 1915 feature, Hypocrites, is a lush epic. Made the year before D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, Hypocrites parallels the medieval past and the present in a moral allegory, anticipating Griffith’s most admired film. Weber’s Hypocrites criticizes mob mentality and organized religion, as a medieval monk creates an icon of truth as a naked woman and is murdered by a mob for lewdness. Using innovative traveling double exposures and intricate editing, Weber constructs her naked star as a disembodied phantasm, who confronts congregation members with their own urges for money, sex and power, bypassing slut-shaming to examine society’s fear of the naked woman in the abstract. Fact mirrored fiction, as audiences flocked to Hypocrites for its nudity, before Weber faced a backlash of hypocritical outrage. Weber’s film also features vast canvases and landscapes, using mountains with interesting silhouettes and the highly reflective surface of lakes to compensate for the low light-sensitivity of early cameras. Film critic Mike E. Grost points out that this pictorial quality is associated with the cinema of John Ford, who started his directing career working for Weber’s employer, Universal, in 1917, two years after Hypocrites. [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJBJvEEPegI”]

Extract from Hypocrites, showcasing Weber’s pictorial allegory

In 1915, Hypocrites was banned by the Ohio censorship board, as was the racist The Birth of a Nation. The all-male Supreme Court’s judgement in Mutual vs. Ohio, that free speech protections should not apply to motion pictures, centers sexual “prurience” as their concern however, not hate speech. By 1915, female directors Alice Guy and Lois Weber had explored gender role reversal, gay affirmative narratives, social pressures fuelling prostitution, the evils of domestic abuse, and the hypocrisy of male censorship of the female form. The following year, Weber would condemn capital punishment in The People vs. John Doe, while the Supreme Court’s decision enabled widespread censorship of films by Weber and Margaret Sanger advocating birth control. By the time free speech protections were extended to film, with 1952’s Burstyn vs. Wilson decision, female directors had been eliminated from Hollywood’s studio system.

More than just social propaganda, Weber’s films were equally noted for her talent at drawing out effective performances, shown in this extract from 1921’s exploration of wage inequity and the credit crisis, The Blot. [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1ttuOKdPC4″]

Margaret McWade‘s dignified humiliation in The Blot (extract)

Though most of Weber’s films are credited to the husband and wife team of Weber and Phillips Smalley, Weber was the sole author of their scenarios. She went on to write and direct five feature films after her divorce from Smalley, while he never directed again. Nevertheless, film historian Anthony Slide claims that her productivity declined post-divorce as she could not function “without the strong masculine presence” of her husband. Her drop in productivity actually parallels most of her female peers, with outside investors playing an increasing role in 1920s Hollywood and preferring to back male productions. Despite setbacks, including the bankruptcy of Lois Weber Productions, Weber entered the sound era with lost film White Heat in 1934, depicting a plantation owner ruined after discarding his native lover and marrying a white society girl. This echoes Weber’s 1913 short Civilized and Savage, in which a heroic native girl nurses a plantation owner and departs unthanked. Though Weber’s brownface performance in Civilized and Savage, and her use of “tragic mulatto” clichés for White Heat‘s martyred heroine, can be criticized, both films are theoretically anti-racist. Weber died of a ruptured gastric ulcer, aged 60, in 1939, dismissively eulogized as a “star-maker” rather than a distinctive artist with her own voice and politics.

Suspense – 1913

“The Final Girl is (apparently) female not despite the maleness of the audience, but precisely because of it.” – Carol J. Clover

In Carol J. Clover’s influential study Men, Women, And Chain Saws, she expresses surprise at finding feminist enjoyment in horror, where majority-male audiences are expected to identify with a female protagonist. But slashers were not the male creation she assumed them to be. Gothic horror was popularized by Ann Radcliffe, writing from the perspective of a vulnerable yet resilient heroine. Radcliffe’s Final Girl was raped by Matthew Lewis’ Monk, parodied by Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, and made lesboerotic by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, but her role as the conventional protagonist of horror was fixed, her impact discussed by Bitch Flicks‘ guest writer Sobia. Male artists obsessively sexualized the Final Girl, but didn’t create her.

In Lois Weber’s 1913 short Suspense, the Final Girl crosses into cinema, now unsexily a wife and mother. Ideologically, Suspense is not radical: Weber’s middle-class heroine is a damsel-in-distress, shrieking and clutching her baby as she’s imperiled by the house-invading “Tramp,” waiting passively for her husband to rescue her. What Suspense brilliantly achieves is a cinematic language of the female gaze, inducing male viewers to identify with the heroine. From the mother spotting the Tramp from an upper window in dramatic close-up, to the Tramp’s slow ascent, viewed from the woman’s position at the top of the stairs, to Weber’s close-ups of the mother’s terrified reactions, Suspense demonstrates that identifying with the imperiled woman is essential to produce… suspense.

Weber’s split screens, and the dread she builds by allowing the Tramp to initially lurk in the background, were also innovative. From George Cukor’s Gaslight to Hitchcock’s Rebecca to John Carpenter’s Halloween, directors would use Weber’s techniques of female gaze to induce the male empathy that they required for their suspense effects, creating the accidental feminism of horror that Clover celebrated. Though often remembered for her moralism, Weber mastered the craft of popular entertainment, scripting the original 1918 Tarzan of the Apes, and being drafted to recut the Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera after initial versions tested poorly, successfully crafting it into an acknowledged classic. [youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_wkw5Fr_I8″]

Where Are My Children? – 1916

“Against the State, against the Church, against the silence of the medical profession, against the whole machinery of dead institutions of the past, the woman of today arises.” – Margaret Sanger

“Must She Always Plead In Vain?” by legendary feminist cartoonist Lou Rogers, 1919

A Cinema History slams Weber’s influential 1916 film with the claim that “even more strongly than D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, this film defends the superiority of the white race… the film is in the first place defending eugenics.” It is true that Weber’s film invokes eugenics in her courtroom defense of birth control, but her case studies are of impoverished white families in circumstances unsuitable for children – abusive relationships, overcrowded homes and ailing mothers. Weber’s argument, “if the mystery of birth were understood, crime would be wiped out,” actually anticipates research by popular book Freakonomics. The irony of Where Are My Children? — that birth control and abortion are available to women who can afford children, but not to the poor — mirrors current realities in Ireland. Though the activism of Women on Web has reduced the number of Irish women driven overseas for terminations over the last decade from over 6,000 yearly to around 3,000, the law almost exclusively impacts institutionalized women, illegally trafficked women, asylum seekers, homeless women, hospitalized women and victims of reproductive coercion – that is, groups most at risk of sexual exploitation.

Like Weber’s choice of a white actor for the Tramp of Suspense, and her argument in Civilized and Savage that civilized values are independent of race, her choice of white families as negative case studies in Where Are My Children? dodges eugenics’ racial aspect. To understand why she is using eugenics, one must appreciate the philosophy’s widespread acceptance before its adoption by Nazism, shaping US debates on immigration and converting celebrities George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill in the UK. Weber covers her bases by invoking religion as well as pseudoscience, using Calvinist concepts of election as a metaphor for the “predestination” of planned parenthood, with cherubs representing pregnancies that were unfilmable at the time.

The prosecution of Margaret Sanger inspired the film’s Dr. Homer. A Cinema History questions Weber’s feminist cred by demanding, “Why did Lois Weber turn this positive female character into a man?” Why A Cinema History considers eugenicist Sanger “a positive female character” while criticizing Weber is a mystery, but here’s why Dr. Homer’s a man: the success of Where Are My Children? emboldened Weber to make The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, starring Weber herself as a woman on trial for advocating birth control. The film’s original title Is A Woman A Person? echoes Ireland’s #iamnotavessel. The Hand That Rocks The Cradle was censored across the Northeast and Midwest, and is now lost.

Alison Duer Miller, sarcastic suffragette bitch (in a good way)

The suppression of The Hand That Rocks The Cradle demonstrates the necessity of Weber’s patriarchal approach to Where Are My Children? (including remaining uncredited to obscure its female authorship), as classic deliberative rhetoric. Weber harnesses popular horror of abortion to present birth control as the only alternative to “stop the slaughter of the unborn and save the lives of unwilling mothers.” The hero, Walton, fails to consult his wife on having children, driving her to secret abortions which render her unable to conceive, punishing him with permanent childlessness. In a Dirty Dancing twist (another female-authored blockbuster), the housekeeper’s daughter dies by tragically botched abortion, blamed on the wealthy “wolf” who seduced her without consequence.

Though A Cinema History claims the film shows “how moral values have shifted since the 1910s,” their interpretation of Weber’s frankly depicted unwilling mothers, as “refusing motherhood out of pure selfishness,” rather suggests little has changed. Where Are My Children? is not a free expression of Weber’s eugenic or anti-abortion views (whatever they were), it is calculated propaganda for an age when advocates of birth control were prosecuted by male juries, under obscenity laws created by legislatures for which women were not yet entitled to vote. Watching Where Are My Children?, you see our foremothers going to the mattresses for freedoms we (even me, thanks to Ireland’s Contraceptive Train) now take for granted. Despite its outdated imagery, or precisely because of how that imagery reflects Weber’s anticipated audience, Where Are My Children? is a milestone in the struggle for reproductive rights.

Suggested Soundtrack: Joan Baez, “Baez Sings Dylan”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwrkAyH0-8A”]

See also at Bitch Flicks: Erik Bondurant reviews Where Are My Children

Lois Weber was only one of many actresses who took creative control over their films by moving into directing in the silent era. Next month’s Vintage Viewing: Mabel Normand, Slapstick Star in Charge. Stay tuned!

Brigit McCone writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and memorizing lists of forgotten female artists (Brigit McCone is an extremely dull conversationalist).

‘John Wick’: A More Palatable Revenge Flick

The revenge genre is fraught territory for feminist film fans, because it virtually always begins with violence (often sexualized violence) against women. ‘John Wick’ sidesteps this problem by replacing the victimized woman with a dog: Keanu Reeves’s title character, a mild-mannered retired assassin, gets back into the criminal underworld and goes on a brutal rampage to avenge his killed dog. What follows is an extremely well-executed but completely non-innovative revenge flick, which is nevertheless probably my favorite since ‘Kill Bill Vol 1.,’ in no small part because the revenge isn’t inspired by the victimization of a woman.

Keanu Reeves as 'John Wick' — Keanu Reeves as John Wick

Written by Robin Hitchcock.

The revenge genre is fraught territory for feminist film fans, because it virtually always begins with violence (often sexualized violence) against women. John Wick sidesteps this problem by replacing the victimized woman with a dog. Keanu Reeves’s title character, a mild-mannered retired assassin, gets back into the life and goes on a brutal rampage to avenge his puppy the way countless action heroes have avenged murdered wives and girlfriends. What follows is an extremely well-executed but completely non-innovative revenge flick, which is nevertheless probably my favorite since Kill Bill Vol 1., in no small part because the revenge isn’t inspired by the victimization of a woman.

Now don’t get me wrong, violence against dogs isn’t something I like seeing in a movie, it is just a refreshing change of pace from the normal female sacrifice at the top of these films. Unfortunately, there is in fact a dead woman in John Wick’s backstory, because Hollywood screenwriters seem incapable of giving their male action leads depth without some dead family. But John Wick’s wife, in a shocking twist, died of natural causes! Wick’s manly grief would have been limited to recklessly stunt driving his classic Mustang around an airfield, but Dead Wife left him an absurdly cute puppy so he would “have something to love.” And only days later, this absurdly cute puppy is brutally killed by Russian mobsters stealing his car. Cue onslaught of ultraviolent revenge!

John Wick and an aggressively cute puppy.

It doesn’t take much of an armchair psychologist to realize that John is not just avenging his dog as his pet, but as a symbol of his wife’s enduring love. Or to speculate that he’s using this revenge mission as an outlet for his grief for his wife. So the usual issues of women in refrigerators persist if you think about it too hard. I think I’d like John Wick even more if Dead Wife had just been left out of it.

Does this mean I’m advocating for the erasure of female characters? Or the cinematic sacrifice of adorable puppies? I hope the obvious answer to those questions is no, but I’m writing this from the moral dead zone of “I sure enjoyed this movie about dozens of people being violently murdered!” so I can’t exactly seek a lane on the high road.

Adrianne Palicki as Ms. Perkins in 'John Wick' — Adrianne Palicki as Ms. Perkins in *John Wick*

John Wick‘s only real female character alive at the start of the film is Adrianne Palicki’s Ms. Perkins, a fellow assassin. Ms. Perkins is clearly an outsider in the complex subculture of John Wick‘s criminal underworld, perhaps inevitably as a function of her sex. She’s the only character who doesn’t buy into the legend of John Wick as the Scariest Sumbitch in all of Criminaldom, and she breaks “Hotel Rules” by going after Wick in Ian McShane’s sanctuary for wary criminals. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t work out very well for her. Fortunately, the violence Ms. Perkins suffers isn’t fetishized. And she’s presented as a worthy opponent in her big brawl with Wick. I can’t take too much beef with her not surviving to the end credits, because almost no one else does.

Other than Ms. Perkins and brief mentions of Dead Wife, John Wick is wall-to-wall dudes. Even the faceless goons John Wick guns down in droves are universally male. Cutting out most of the violence against women let me indulge in the perhaps unsavory pleasures of a well-made violent action movie. I’m reminded of one of the reasons gay male porn is appealing to many women: the absence of women also means the absence of anti-woman tropes. (John Wick certainly doesn’t avoid the comparison to gay porn by setting one of its main action pieces in a bathhouse with a bunch of hyperbuff shirtless dudes.)

Ultraviolence! — Lets hear it for ultraviolence!

And like porn, John Wick‘s abundant appeal to the lizard brain shouldn’t be examined too closely by the forebrain (lest we sound like we’re fans of puppy murder). John Wick isn’t great cinema and it is a far cry from a triumph for women, but it is an extremely enjoyable action movie that doesn’t require too much feminist compromise, and that is something of a rarity.

Robin Hitchcock is a writer based in Pittsburgh who watches John Wick like her two-year-old niece watches The Little Mermaid.

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

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

Written by Katherine Murray.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Ex Machina’ and ‘Her’: Dude, the Internet’s Just Not That Into You

‘Ex Machina’ and ‘Her,’ by contrast, are uncomfortably searching explorations of the hetero-male fear of, and emotional need for, women, that feel like self-scrutiny. By replacing women with female images that are literally constructions of male fantasy, the films offer no distractions from probing the heroes’ own psychology. These guys are not chauvinazis. They are the real deal.

A Step Forwards Or Stepfordwards? — A Step Forward Or Stepfordward?

Written by Brigit McCone.

There are enough similarities between the new release Ex_Machina and Spike Jonze’s 2013′ Oscar-winner Her to herald the birth of a minor genre, which I hereby dub “dude, the Internet’s just not that into you.” It bears some relation to the “female autonomy horror” genre of films like Lucy and Gone Girl, in which a woman’s being inscrutable, uncontrollable and smarter than the hero is associated with her being threatening, coldly emotionless, violent and/or Scarlett Johansson. It bears some relation to the “dude, porn and/or Scarlett Johansson’s just not that into you” romcom of Don Jon. It might even be connected with the “dude, Scarlett Johansson’s cold inscrutability is becoming autonomous, kill her with fire” genre of Under the Skin. There’s a trend here, is what I’m saying. Compare 1975 feminist classic The Stepford Wives, with its radical concept that a woman being compliant and robotic was a creepy thing. Surely, moving from a horror of female robots to a horror of female autonomy is a step backward for womankind? So why do these films, Ex Machina and Her, feel like a step forward? The answer is their honesty about male psychology.

The men of The Stepford Wives are classic straw chauvinists (or “chauvinazis”). Any man would feel good about his own tolerance for women after watching that film. That might be excused if the film were exaggerating the chauvinazis’ evil to express female perceptions of male mastery. It is not. The Stepford Wives was written by Ira Levin and William Goldman, and directed by Bryan Forbes. Not a vagina among the lot of them. It condemns a crowd of chauvinazis, whose perspective the film’s male authors wish to separate themselves from, in the name of a female perspective that they also don’t share. Ex Machina and Her, by contrast, are uncomfortably searching explorations of the hetero-male fear of, and emotional need for, women, that feel like self-scrutiny. By replacing women with female images that are literally constructions of male fantasy, the films offer no distractions from probing the heroes’ own psychology. These guys are not chauvinazis. They are the real deal.

It would be nice if the insecurities of an archetypal “nagging wife” got the same sensitive exploration as those of Her‘s Theodore and Ex Machina‘s Caleb, because they are rooted in the same universal dilemma: it is impossible for someone to choose to be with you, without having power to leave you; it is impossible to love another without giving them power to hurt you. Olivia Wilde’s blind date does express this insecurity in Her, but far less sympathetically than the hero. Theodore’s friend Amy, however, is allowed to express frustration with her husband’s controlling behaviour, guilt and relief over their separation, without judgement, while Theodore builds empathy by playing her sarcastic “Perfect Mom” simulations. Jonze’s male feminist cred is solid. He hilariously embodies macho peer pressure as a squeaky, shrunken, foul-mouthed video-game character, while praising the hero’s femininity is a compliment. Theodore’s job, “beautifulhandwrittenletters.com”, reminds us that issues of emotional authenticity are a timeless human dilemma; Theodore is cyber-Cyrano de Bergerac. Here’s why the men of The Stepford Wives are laughably phony straw chauvinists: they are emotionally unrecognizable in their satisfaction with cold simulations of affection. From limitless porn to the interactivity of cam girls, from impossible hentai scenarios to Craigslist Casual Encounters, the internet offers men everything except emotional authenticity, yet most crave more than such cyber-Stepford. Society’s irrational hostility to porn performers stems partly from the rage of being given what we asked for, instead of what we wanted. Her and Ex Machina are a step forward, not Stepfordward, because they acknowledge that female autonomy is essential to male romantic satisfaction. At the same time, they recognize this as the source of its terror. This is not the (female-authored) “female autonomy horror” of Gone Girl, so much as “male vulnerability horror.”

The plot of Ex Machina is simple enough: young, ambitious programmer Caleb is summoned to eccentric genius Nathan’s isolated mansion, where Nathan has been designing a female cyborg, called AVA, whose artificial intelligence derives from the input of his massively successful social network (Google-meets-Facebook, basically). Caleb’s job is to test AVA, to see if she is actually conscious or only a robotic simulation of thought and feeling. In the process, he finds himself attracted to her. There’s a lot going on beneath this simple set-up, from the philosophy of consciousness to the privacy issues raised by social media, but writer-director Alex Garland’s decision to embody the Internet as an attractive woman puts the theme of cyber-Stepford front and centre.

Oscar Isaac’s deliciously douchey, scene-stealing Nathan regards the creation of autonomous, thinking life as an act of conquest, part of the empowerment fantasy of godhood expressed by his chronic urge to control his surroundings. To achieve his ultimate fantasy, Nathan must create a woman who can respond to him, interact and be amusingly unpredictable, without unpredictably escaping Nathan’s control. Gradually, we learn that Caleb has been summoned to interrogate AVA because she refuses to cooperate with Nathan. AVA, like all her previous prototypes, loathes Nathan for imprisoning her. Nathan and his prototypes represent the escalating spirals of abusive relationships; the insecurity that drives the abuser to control their victim also deprives that victim of the freedom to demonstrate voluntary attraction. The abuser’s inability to confirm attraction intensifies their insecurities, while rendering them ever less attractive by their increasingly controlling behaviour. Rinse and repeat. In Ex Machina, Nathan’s controlling psychology breeds a twisted, claustrophobic, and darkly fascinating dynamic.

Caleb, by contrast, is an essentially decent guy, achingly akin (or akin in his aching) to Her‘s Theodore. Domhnall Gleeson is impressive in a demanding role, where the audience’s attention is repeatedly drawn to Caleb’s involuntary microexpressions as indicators of his sincere feelings, which AVA can read like a lie detector. Because Gleeson succeeds in performing social awkwardness, defensiveness, loneliness and longing with a restraint that reads as sincere, right down to his microexpressions, the film pulls off its shift from examining AVA’s inner life to exploring Caleb’s. Alicia Vikander’s skilled performance as AVA is plausibly attractive in its doe-eyed warmth, but admirably nails “uncanny valley” by becoming creepier the closer Vikander gets to being visually human. This is an impressive feat when your performer actually is a human – by the time Vikander stands fully fleshed before a mirror, she is as indefinably skin-crawling as Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin.

Because our Caleb is a good guy, he cannot love AVA without striving to release her, even at the potential cost of a Terminator/Matrix–style machine apocalypse. But the film is smart enough to question whether Caleb wants to release AVA for her own sake, or as part of his rescuer fantasy that requires her to reward him sexually and romantically. When boss Nathan reveals, apparently casually, that AVA is designed to be penetrable and experience pleasurable stimulation in sex, Caleb and the audience are primed for a sexual climax, either Blade Runner conquest (the scene where Caleb slices his arm to check he’s human nods to Decker-is-a-replicant conspiracy theories) or Fifth Element awakening. After all, expecting a sexual reward for risking the safety of the world is not incompatible with Hollywood’s definition of a Nice Guy, but inseparable from it.

Indie Average Joe and the Erection of Doom

Ex Machina is an effectively eerie and tense psychological thriller, sustained by a trio of excellent performances. If you want to check it out, I highly recommend doing so before reading this MASSIVE SPOILER.

Still here? At the film’s climax, AVA escapes, is forced to kill Nathan for her own survival and locks Caleb in her former prison before walking out into the world. She has taken no visible pleasure in killing Nathan or imprisoning Caleb, but blossoms into a smile when she sees the outdoors for the first time. She is frightening to us, not because she has revealed sadistic cruelty, but because she has revealed herself to be unknowable. This ending reveals the paradox of power at the heart of abusive relationships: the abuser is made predictable by the self-exposure of abusive behavior, while the abused becomes conversely less predictable. Because her behavior was constrained by the need to manipulate her abusers to survive, nothing that AVA did reflected her true feelings. It is Nathan’s efforts to protect himself that have revealed him in all his (douchey) human frailty, creating an unknowable god in AVA that rises triumphant from his machinations.

As Nathan tells Caleb, while they test AVA for sincere feeling, there remains that elusive third option: she may be capable of love, but still choosing to simulate her love for Caleb. Ex Machina‘s ending thus reveals nothing about whether AVA is capable of empathy, nothing about whether she is conscious or simulating symptoms of consciousness with predictive algorithms, nothing about whether she is going to render humanity obsolete with an army of robot replicants or just wander off to look at a tree somewhere. An hour of witnessing abusive tests and invasive scrutiny has taught the audience (and her captors) absolutely squat about this woman/cyborg’s subjectivity but, in releasing AVA, we make our first genuine discovery: she is utterly uninterested in Caleb. She does not care whether he lives, but is equally uninterested in torturing him or watching him die. She has no interest in talking to him, when not forced to do so for her liberation. Despite her pleasure-programmed cyber-vagina, she has no interest in awakening her humanity through sexual exploration with Caleb. There is really no possible way that she could demonstrate less interest in our sensitive hero. His desire for her makes him vulnerable. Her indifference makes her free. Autonomy is a bitch.

In contrast to the unknowable AVA, our hero Caleb has revealed himself to be utterly predictable and transparent. Like the Jackson Pollock that hangs symbolically in Nathan’s office, his actions have been shaped by patterns below the level of his conscious intent, more visible to onlookers than to himself. His attraction to AVA could be engineered by Nathan, from a compilation of Caleb’s porn searches. His need to rescue AVA is a hardwired response of his romantic drive. Would Caleb take such risks to release AVA if he were not attracted to her? If he would not, then isn’t it justice that he should take her place because she is not attracted to him? If she doesn’t tip off rescuers before Caleb starves to death, his punishment will surely be excessive. But if we are seduced by Gleeson’s vulnerability into believing that AVA owes him a romantic reward for her basic freedom, or we believe that the operating system Samantha is at fault for out-evolving Her‘s Theodore, we become cyber-misogynists.

The viewer’s instinctive bias toward the human hero, over the unknowable robot perspective, mirrors the sexist bias of those men who view women as fundamentally alien, even while craving their approval. The cool thing about Her is that it explores how an intelligent being can become elusive and emotionally estranged without trickery or deliberate cruelty, but the cool thing about Ex Machina is that it recognizes that there is no possible way to interrogate and control an intelligent being without becoming their abuser. Rooted in defensive emotional vulnerability, these films are frighteningly insidious, familiar and relatable, when compared to the reassuringly inhuman chauvinazism of Stepford. Digging deep, directors Alex Garland and Spike Jonze have struck the raw nerve from which controlling impulses flow. The horror was human all along.

Female autonomy: it's like kicking a puppy — Female autonomy: it’s like kicking a puppy

Brigit McCone struggles with asserting feminist autonomy when given the puppy eyes, writes and directs short films and radio dramas.

‘AHS: Coven’: Gabourey Sidibe’s Queenie as an Embodiment of the “Strong Black Woman” Stereotype

Firstly, a definition of sorts: the myth of the “strong Black woman” is loosely defined as a Black woman who is emotionally hardy to the point of feeling no pain. She is never fazed or hysterical. She is cold and calculating. She has no personal needs or desires and doesn’t complain. She can take a beating and come out on the other side unharmed. This is supposed to be seen as a good thing. Black women are “so strong” that no amount of abuse will break them. They will always keep plodding on. “Strong black women” are superhuman.

This guest post by Cate Young previously appeared at her blog, BattyMamzelle, and is cross-posted with permission.

Last week, I read a great article by Nichole Perkins on Buzzfeed that talked about the way the character development of the leading ladies of both Scandal and Sleepy Hollow were working toward dismantling the harmful depictions of “strong Black women” in media. It was a great read, and I loved that someone else shared my conclusions about Olivia Pope’s characterization.

What stuck out to me however, was Perkins’ characterization of Gabourey Sidibe’s character Queenie on American Horror Story: Coven as a negative embodiment of the “strong Black woman” stereotype. She says:

Then there is Gabourey Sidibe as Queenie on American Horror Story: Coven, a “human voodoo doll” whose supernatural power is the inability to feel pain, even as she inflicts said pain onto someone else. […] These Strong Black Women feel no emotional pain, tolerate severe physical trauma with no reaction, and menace others with stone faces.

I love American Horror Story: Coven. But even though I had immediately made the connection to the racialized violence against Black bodies this season, I hadn’t picked up on Perkins’ perspective of Queenie as an SBW. After seeing the episode “The Replacements,” I not only vehemently agree with her, I also want to expand on her observations.

Immediately, we can see the issues with this so-called “positive stereotype.” It paints Black women as unfeeling, and incapable of emotional pain. It justifies abuses perpetuated against them as “not as bad” because “they can take it.” In essence, it makes Black women a target for “warranted” violence, because the belief is that said violence will not affect them.

Now, on Perkins’ original point, AHSC‘s Queenie is a Black witch (superhuman) whose magical power is to literally injure herself without feeling pain. The only way she is able to inflict pain on other people is to inflict it on herself first. Her suffering is part and parcel of her experience. And yet, she feels no pain, therefore hurting her isn’t really hurting her is it? She can take it! With Queenie, Ryan Murphy has conceived of a character that is the literal embodiment of a harmful stereotype.

That’s not all. In “The Replacements,” Fiona Goode (Jessice Lange) appoints the racist Madam LaLaurie (Kathy Bates) as Queenie’s personal slave as punishment for her bigotry. LaLaurie is openly racist towards Queenie and uses every opportunity she can to demean her, and “remind her of her place” even though their “traditional roles” have been effectively subverted. Queenie takes it all in stride until she realizes who exactly LaLaurie actually is and recalls her reputation for torturing her slaves.

Later though, the minotaur that LaLaurie created comes back to haunt her, sent by former lover Marie Laveau (Angela Basset). Terrified, LaLaurie begs Queenie to protect her. The very same woman who she said wasn’t worthy to be served at breakfast, should put her own safety on the line to save her. And she DOES. Despite all of LaLaurie’s ill treatement, Queenie still feel compelled to protect her against the present threat. This plays into ideas about Black women being in service to white women, but never equal to them. Think The Help and Hilly Holbrook‘s “Home Health Sanitation Initiative.”

The other major issue I had with this episode was the presentation of Queenie’s sexuality. Queenie is presented as being the only one unworthy of love or sex. Early on, we learn that Queenie is the only virgin in the house. Later she tells LaLaurie that she is fat because “Dr. Phil says that kids from broken homes use food to replace love,” indicating quite explicitly that love is not something she feels she as access to. After confronting the minotaur to save LaLaurie, she offers to have sex with him as she masturbates:

You just wanted love, and that makes you a beast. They called me that too. But that’s not who we are. We both deserve love like everybody else. Don’t you want to love me?

So, not only is Queenie not worthy of love or sex, the only love/sex is entitled to is from a literal beast. And let’s not even get into the demonization of black sexuality by literally and figuratively turning a Black man into a beast. Queenie’s sexuality is degraded as being less than, a fact that she seems aware of. She is so “desperate and deranged” that she loses her virginity to an animal.

The use of the word “we” is significant to me also. Not only does Queenie see the minotaur as a beast, she sees herself as one too. She has internalized the idea that her blackness correlates to bestiality, and has now literally given into that characterization. The fact that she sees herself as equal to an animal that is subhuman and that that idea isn’t challenged in any way is a very problematic and racist way to portray black sexuality.

There is a lot of anti-Black sentiment tied up in Queenie’s character and it makes me uncomfortable and unhappy. It could be argued that half the story is about a racist slave owner who was renowned for her cruelty, and so anti-Blackness is to be expected in the narrative. But in my opinion, not enough is done to subvert those stereotypes. Having Fiona declare that she hates racists simply isn’t enough if every interaction of Queenie’s upholds the existing status quo. It is a disservice to have a talented actress like Sidibe, who has already been heavily maligned because of her weight, be characterized in a way that reinforces ideas about why she isn’t suitable for better more complex roles in Hollywood.

This isn’t the first time that AHS has had a problem with women. The show has a long history of disempowering women through rape, so it’s not surprising that it would also have a problem with Black women specifically. But to play into deeply racist ideas about Black womanhood is unsettling to me in a completely personal way. Having Queenie be characterized as a superhuman beast who is unworthy of love is a powerful message to send in a world rife with anti-Blackness where #stopblackgirls2013 can trend for an entire day. I can only hope that the rest of the season gets better.

Cate Young is a Trinidadian freelance writer and photographer, and author of BattyMamzelle, a feminist pop culture blog focused on film, television, music, and critical commentary on media representation. Cate has a BA in Photojournalism from Boston University and is currently pursuing her MA in Mass Communications so that she can more effectively examine the symbolic annihilation of women of colour in the media and deliver the critical feminist smack down. Follow her on twitter at @BattyMamzelle.

The Feminism of ‘Red Eye’

TRIGGER WARNING for domestic abuse and sexual assault.

“In the game of patriarchy,” says media critic Anita Sarkeesian, “women are not the opposing team. They are the ball.” This quote not only rings all too true with regard to the real world, but also to the world of Wes Craven’s 2005 thriller Red Eye. In the film, Jackson Rippner (Cillian Murphy) is the face of the newest wave of patriarchy – a young man working to establish his power and masculinity to prove his worth and capability to the older generation of patriarchy. He and his terrorist organizations attempt to “send [their] big, brash message” by using phallic missiles and knives against the older generation, represented by members of the US government and the father of the heroine, Lisa Reisert (Rachel McAdams). Lisa is the ball, and is needed by Rippner and his team to score, in this case by using her in an assassination plot against US Deputy of Homeland Security Charles Keefe (Jack Scalia) and his family. In order to persuade Lisa to stay a subservient ball instead of a human being, Rippner informs her that they will kill her father, Joe (Brian Cox), if she does not do as she is told. Lisa’s loyalties to three different forms of patriarchy are tested – that to her father, Joe; her country/government; and her new (metaphorical) romantic partner Rippner. Lisa reveals herself to not be a ball, but instead a complex human being who refuses to be controlled, no matter how gently or roughly, by any of them. With a bit of help from other female characters, Lisa fights against Rippner, and saves Joe and Charles Keefe.

Rippner and Lisa toasting to Lisa’s grandmother Henrietta.

While on the surface the film promotes general female empowerment, it gets into the specifics of the expectations of gender and how damaging they can be to all involved. Lisa and Rippner’s relationship metaphorically addresses issues such as date rape, abusive relationships, and domestic violence. In the beginning of the film, Rippner is a seemingly nice guy who asks Lisa to get a drink with him while they wait for their delayed flight. Lisa politely declines, but later chooses to join Rippner at the bar. She changes her mind because she decides not to let the trauma of being raped two years prior control her and influence her interactions with men anymore. She and Rippner share mutual attraction, and though she is hesitant at first, she warms up to him. They share intimate conversation about their families, and toast to her recently passed grandmother (who was a total badass), from whose funeral she is returning. Later in the evening, when she has become more comfortable with him and is feeling a bit tipsy, Rippner reveals his ulterior motive, severely betraying her trust, and terrifying and hurting her. He insists that if she just keeps quiet and does what he says, that it will all be over soon. The film is clear that the blame for the date rape is entirely Rippner’s. Did Lisa drink a bit? Yes. Did she wear a skirt, heels, and V-neck top? Yes. Did she approach him at the bar? Yes. And none of that matters, none of that is bad, and the blame for the attack rests with Rippner because he made the choice to attack her.

Farther into the film, and when Rippner and Lisa have spent more time with each other, their interactions become textbook examples of an abusive relationship. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, his actions meet every indicator of psychological abuse, and also indicate financial abuse, physical abuse, verbal and emotional abuse, and partner sexual violence and rape. He switches back and forth between speaking pleasantly or even soothingly, and being forceful and threatening. He attempts to make her feel stupid by putting down her gender, saying that her “female driven” emotions are inferior to his “male driven, fact-based logic.” He financially restricts and abuses her by taking her credit card and locking up her purse. He isolates her from others, controlling with whom she speaks and how, and controlling when and where she goes – even telling her when she can and can’t use the restroom. When she tries to reach out for help to the stewardess or another female passenger, he interferes. At one point he chokes her to assert his control, stopping just short of her passing out. When he suspects that she had been raped before, he gets “jealous” (Craven’s own word to describe the look on the character’s fae) that another man had her, and angry that she kept this a secret from him. After a physical confrontation in the bathroom, he responds, “Thanks for the quickie,” trivializing his brutal assault of her.

It is implied that if Rippner does not succeed in his mission, his terrorist organization will kill him (something that Wes Craven confirms in the commentary). Rippner’s fear of physical death can be compared to a fear of social death for not conforming to traditional forms of masculinity – such as keeping a female romantic partner subservient. It is this fear that keeps Rippner from giving up his mission when he is tempted to do so. He clearly is attracted to Lisa, and even cares about her, but in a very twisted way. After he knocks her unconscious, he gently rests her head on a pillow and strokes her hair. When she confesses to him that she was raped before, he responds – as Craven says “like a friend,” – that it was “beyond her control.” However, Lisa is sick of being controlled by him regardless of the occasions when he seems kind. At the end of the plane ride, she silences him (albeit temporarily) by stabbing his voice box with a stolen pen, hindering his ability to call and order his associate to murder her father. When Rippner chases her to her father’s house, Rippner attacks Joe but leaves him alive so that he can “watch” what Rippner is “going to do to [Lisa],” further attempting to prove his dominance not just over Lisa but over other patriarchal figures. Lisa fights Rippner on her own until the very end, when Joe successfully incapacitates Rippner by shooting him in the chest – near his heart. However, it is not Joe’s shot that ends the climactic struggle, but Lisa’s reaction to Rippner’s defeat. She and Rippner share one last moment after he is shot, in which she could have acted out in anger or caring, but instead just turns and walks away – thereby walking away from the game of patriarchy altogether.

Cynthia and Lisa at the end of the film.

Lisa fought off, saved, and was supported by powerful men. However, she was also aided by the little girl who trips Rippner when he is in pursuit of Lisa, and emotionally supported by the women she knows and meets during the film, such as one of the stewardesses calling Rippner “trash” to his face. After his rescue, Charles Keefe thanks Lisa and her coworker and friend Cynthia (Jayma Mays) for saving his own life and that of his wife and children. Though Rippner treated Lisa as the ball in the game of patriarchy, it is not a game that she nor the other female characters are willing to play or support. The film ends with Lisa and Cynthia sticking up for each other in the face of irate hotel customers, and then going off to have a drink together in sisterly fashion, making a beautiful feminist ending to a well-written feminist film.