Tag: True Grit

Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists Theme Week here.

Almost 20 years later, we need more of what My So-Called Life gave us a taste of. We need teenage girl protagonists to be sexual, not sexy. We need honest portrayals of what it is to be a teenager–not only for teenagers who need to see themselves in faithful mirrors, but also for adults who are still trying to figure themselves out.

Are You There, Hollywood? It’s Me, the Average Girl by Carrie Gambino

The expectations for girls in film and television are incredibly mixed. It is naïve to say that girls nowadays are just expected to be a sexy sidekick or afterthought. With more strong female roles popping up in bigger budget films such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, there is the expectation that girls should also be intelligent and incredibly clever (while also being visually pleasing)… There isn’t really a place for the all-around average girl. The first two examples of strong female protagonists that I could think of are in fantasy franchises. Are real female characters really that difficult to come up with? Real female characters are often created with good intentions but tend not to work on a larger scale.

Six Lessons Lisa Simpson Taught Me by Lady T

…Lisa takes a stand against the sexism spouting from the mouth of the new talking Malibu Stacy doll. Frustrated with the doll’s collection of sexist catchphrases that include “Let’s bake some cookies for the boys,” “Thinking too much gives you wrinkles,” and “My name’s Stacy, but you can call me *wolf whistle*,” Lisa collaborates with the creator of Malibu Stacy to create their own talking doll, Lisa Lionheart. When Malibu Stacy outsells Lisa Lionheart, our creator feels temporarily dejected, until she hears her own voice speaking behind her: “Trust in yourself and you can achieve anything.” She turns to see a girl her age hold a Lisa Lionheart doll in her hand and smile.
Delightful Tina. Shy, painfully weird, butt-obsessed, quietly dorky, intensely daydreamy Tina. Tina is a little bit like all of us (and–cough–a lot like some of us) at that most graceless, transitional, intrinsically unhappy stage of life that is early adolescence. She is also a wonderfully rich and well-developed character, both in her interactions with her family and in her own right, and she’s arguably the emotional core of the whole show.

It’s common wisdom that maintaining relationships requires constant work, but there’s often an assumption (in TV, movies, and real life) that this only applies to romantic relationships. Platonic relationships are rarely the focus of a story, and when a storyline deals with issues in these relationships, they’re often easily dealt with, and the friendship goes back to being simple. Exceptions to this are problems that are caused by romantic relationships. Veronica Mars is an exception to this; for its first two seasons, it depicts many platonic relationships, and explores the many issues involved in navigating them (some of these problems are related to romance, but many are not, showing platonic relationships have their own complexities, separate from romance).

My Sister’s Keeper is a story about growing up, identify, family, death, and life (how can we truly tell any story about life when death isn’t the costar?), but its uniqueness is that it is told primarily through two young girls.

So, these are the important things in Sixteen Candles: Samantha’s family forgets her birthday; she’s in love with a hot senior who’s dating Caroline (the most popular girl in school); and there’s a big ol’ geek (Farmer Ted) from Sam’s daily bus rides who won’t stop stalking her. Oh, and Long Duk Dong exists [insert racist gong sound here]. Seriously, every time Long Duk Dong appears on screen, a fucking GONG GOES OFF on the soundtrack. I suppose that lines up quite nicely with the scene where he falls out of a tree yelling, “BONSAI.”

Since the entire movie is like a machine gun firing of RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY parts, the only way I know how to effectively talk about it is to look at the very problematic screenplay. So, fasten your seatbelts and heed your trigger warnings.

The 80s were quite possibly a nightmare.

 

My main issue with the film is that it is speckled with meaningless platitudes and clichés about girl empowerment when the film simply isn’t empowering. The women in the film are portrayed as oversexualized, helpless, damaged goods. Though there are metaphors at work that symbolize abuse or objectification of women, nowhere does the film stress an injustice or seek to dismantle its source. It is just like any other formulaic action movie complete with boobs, guns, and explosions, but it has a shiny, artificial veneer of girl empowerment. The false veneer is the aspect of the film that truly infuriates me, along with the side of artsy pretentious bullshit.

On Milk-Bones, Toothed Vaginas, and Adolescence: Teeth As Cautionary Tale by Colleen Clemens

Early in the film, Dawn is a nymph-like virgin committed to “saving herself” until marriage. She is the poster child for the “good” girl: a loving daughter who obeys the doctrines of the church and spends her time spreading the gospel of virginity. Everything Dawn knows about the world and herself changes when her falsely pious boyfriend Tobey takes her to a far off swimming hole and tries to rape her. A confused and terrified Dawn reacts by screaming and then—much to everyone’s surprise—cutting off his penis to interrupt the rape. Little does Dawn know that her lessons about Darwin in her biology classes are taking hold in her own body.

The Horror of Female Sexual Awakening: Black Swan by Rebecca Willoughby

What disappointed me most, I think, was that Black Swan could easily have been a progressive film with a positive, young woman-centered journey out of repression at its center. It could have recouped that gender-centric childhood ballerina dream of so many little girls into a message about determination, hard work, personal strength, and emotional growth. Instead, Darren Aronofsy has produced an Oscar-winning horror film. That’s right: I said HORROR. While that might seem like a stretch, it seems clear to me that the horror I refer to is the possibility of changing an age-old story. The horror of Black Swan is the absolutely terrifying idea that a young woman might make it through the difficult process of maturation, develop a healthy, multi-faceted sexuality, and be successful at her chosen career at the same time.

While most teen movies revolve around coming-of-age stories, gang movies reveal the extreme side to adolescence—the misfit, criminal, and violent side. Gang movies are rather simple, either focusing on episodes of gang debauchery, or revolving around rivalry and jealousy. Usually the viewpoint is that of the ring leader, or the “new girl,” who is initiated into the gang but is still an outsider. Yet, among the plethora of girl gang movies, every decade has produced stories involving specific issues and specific types of teenage girls.

Kiki’s Delivery Service carefully constructs a world where a girl’s agency is expected, accepted and supported, while Disney movies typically present a girl’s agency as unusual, forbidden, and denied. The difference between these two messages is that Kiki’s world anticipates and encourages her independence, while the women of Disney are typically punished for this.

For example, in The Little Mermaid Ariel wants to “live out of these waters,” but her father forbids her exploration of the human world and punishes this dream. Sea witch Ursula exploits Ariel’s desire to discover another world beyond her own as well. This is hardly an isolated incident.

The Book Thief: Stealing Hearts and Minds by Natalie Wilson

Liesel, unlike so many young heroines, resists romance—from her friend Rudy’s early problematic insistence and then throughout the remainder of the movie. Instead of being positioned in relationship to romantic partners, she has three male best friends—Rudy, Max and Hans (Papa)—as well as two females of great importance to her life, Rosa (Mama) and Ilsa Hermann (the mayor’s wife who, transgressively, supplyies Liesel with books). As for Liesel, like her futuristic counterpart, Katniss Everdeen, she is a life-saving heroine and inspirational rebel.

Terri sets out to explore the luxury of male privilege disguised as a young man. Just One of the Guys smacked us straight in the face with the unspoken universal knowledge that sexism was real, it existed and the film gave us tangible proof. Terri decides to use her parents’ trip out of town to switch things around for herself by getting another shot at the newspaper internship with another article, an expose of sorts. She switches high schools and uses her brain, and as much as she can, is herself.

Troop Beverly Hills: What A Thrill by Phaydra Babinchock

Initially the girls of Troop Beverly Hills are portrayed as clueless and privileged, but they are allowed to grow and transform themselves over the course of the movie. The film writers don’t do it unrealistically by turning them into tomboys overnight or at all. The girls retain their femininity, which they are made fun of for by the Red Feathers, throughout the film.
Immortality is not what makes a world better. Hope, friendship, and love do, and love is not limited by sex, gender, ethnicity, or race. Women like Homura and Kyoko can fall in love with other women like Madoka and Sayaka respectively. We have the responsibility to stand up with people like them. This series is part of the reason I try to do that and more. I hope that many others to do the same.
Is Wanda a girl/teenage female protagonist? Technically she is not “young” as she is 1,000 years old and seemingly immortal, but she is new to Earth so that makes her young in some sense. Also, why would the Souls even have genders that mirror that of humans or have genders at all? The Souls look like beams of light and they probably aren’t even a carbon based species and yet somehow Wanda is a female? So. Frustrating. Nonetheless she is controlling a person’s body who identifies as a teenage girl and is thus somewhat restricted to her occupied body’s feelings, emotions, and categorizations.

Ten questions between filmmaker Morgan Faust and 13-year-old actress Rachel Resheff.

Morgan: The truth is when I was growing up in the 1980s, the child actresses were often given pretty syrupy roles (with the exception of Journey of Natty Gann and Labyrinth). It was the boys who got to have the cool movies–Goonies, Stand by Me, even The NeverEnding Story and E.T., which did have girls, but the boys were the heroes. That is why I write the movies I do–adventures films for girls–because that’s what I wanted to do when I was a kid, go on adventures, be the hero. I still do want that. I mean, who doesn’t?

The Hunger Games, saturated as it is with political meaning (the author admits her inspiration for the trilogy came from flipping channels between reality TV and war footage), is a welcome change from another recent popular YA series, Twilight. As a further bonus, it has disproven the claim that series with female protagonists can’t have massive cross-gender appeal. With the unstoppable Katniss Everdeen at the helm (played in the films by the jaw-droppingly talented Jennifer Lawrence), perhaps the series will be the start of a new trend: politically themed narratives with rebellious female protagonists who have their sights set on revolution more than love, on cultural change more than the latest sparkling hottie.

The CW: Expectations vs. Reality by Nicole Elwell

The CW is a rarity among the many networks of cable television. Its target demographic is women aged 18-34, and as a result has a majority of its original programming centered on the lives of young women. On paper, this sounds like a noteworthy achievement to be celebrated. However, the CW produces content devoid of any sense of the reality of its young audience, and as a result actually harms its most devoted viewers. The CW creates an unattainable archetype for what a teenager should look like and fails to maturely handle issues of murder and rape.

Defending Dawn Summers: From One Kid Sister to Another by Robin Hitchcock

OK, sure, my big sister didn’t have superpowers, and as far as I know she did not save the world even one time, much less “a lot.” But from my perspective as her bratty little sister, I felt like I could never escape her long and intimidating shadow. I could never be as smart as her, as special as her; I couldn’t hope to collect even a fraction the awards and accolades she racked up through high school. And she didn’t even properly counteract her super smarts with social awkwardness: she always had a tight group of friends and the romantic affections of cute boys. She was the pride and joy of my family, and I always felt like an also-ran. Trust me: this makes it very hard to not be at least a little bratty and whiny.

Why Alex Russo Is My Favorite Fictional Female Wizard by Katherine Filaseta

The protagonist of Wizards is a girl who acts like girls really act: she has boyfriends and broken hearts, but isn’t overly boy-crazy or dependent on them; she’s curious and smart enough to ask questions when other people are telling her not to; and throughout the series she faces a lot of the struggles women really do face throughout their lives.

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

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

True Grit: Ambiguous Feminism by Andé Morgan

Mattie wears dark, loose, practical clothing. She climbs trees and carries weapons. She shows utter disdain for male privilege or La Boeuf’s pervy allusions to sexual contact. She has no interest in the older men for romance or protection. She is only concerned with their usefulness to her task, and she uses her will and her reasoning rather than seduction to convince them. Steinfeld’s Mattie emanates competence and confidence.
Not since Megan Follows played Anne of Green Gables in the 1985 adaptation of the novel with the same title have girls had a young protagonist on screen who fights against social conventions that are designed to limit her because of her age and gender. Mattie’s similarity to Anne doesn’t end at their indignation and fearlessness, they both also share a love of long braids, both can be found wearing ill-fitting clothes, both of their stories are set in a similar time period, and finally, both girls are orphans.

Granted, Ashitaka (voiced by Billy Crudup) is an important character. Even so, it is a bit disconcerting when the IMDb blurb about this movie only mentions him, and almost none of the female characters who are equally, if not more, important to the story. Princess Mononoke (voiced by Claire Danes) is the title character, but is only mentioned toward the end of the blurb. This movie is so much more than yet another “save the princess” quest!

In Pretty In Pink, Andi is a self-sufficient, seemingly self-aware teenage girl who lives in a little cottage with her single father. Andi isn’t the type of girl who goes gaga for cocky, linen suit-wearing Steff (James Spader). She’s too busy at home sewing and stitching together her latest wardrobe creations. To her fellow girl students, she’s just a classless, lanky redhead who shouldn’t dare be caught dead at a “richie” party. So, she spends her time at TRAX, a record shop she works at, and a nightclub that showcases hip new wave bands like Ringwald’s real-life fave, The Rave-Ups. Her best friends Duckie (Jon Cryer) and Iona (Annie Potts) admire and envy Andi.
What is clear is that Campion is interested in the strategies women use to survive in patriarchy. But she is not only interested in the fate of women. She is also interested in how girl-children negotiate their way in a male-dominated world. It is through Ada’s daughter as well as Ada herself that Campion explores the feminine condition in the 19th century. Her rich, multi-layered characterization of Flora is, in fact, one of the most remarkable features of The Piano. She is as interesting and compelling as the adult characters and, arguably, the most convincing. The little girl also has huge symbolic and dramatic importance. This is, of course, unusual in cinema. There are relatively few films where a girl plays such a significant, pivotal role.

Temporary Tomboys: Coming of Age in My Girl and Now and Then by Elizabeth Kiy

However, the tomboy was a prominent figure in two well-loved films of the period aimed at young girls, though both presented her as a transitional stage in development. My Girl (1991), is the story of precocious 11-year-old Vada Sultenfuss (Anna Chlumsky) who grew up in a funeral parlor and is obsessed with death, while in Now and Then (1995) four childhood friends reunite as adults and remember (in flashbacks) the summer they were 12.

Basically, Brave isn’t really that brave of a film. It’s traipsing through a well-established trope that, though positive, is stagnant. Don’t get me wrong; I love all the prepubescent female power fantasy tales I’ve listed, and I’m grateful that they exist and that I could grow up with many of them. However, we can’t pretend that Brave is pushing any boundaries. It sends the message that little girls can be powerful as long as they remain little girls. The dearth of representations of postpubescent heroines who are not objectified, whose sexuality does not rule their interactions, and who are the heroes of their own stories is appalling.

‘True Grit’: The Formidable Fortitude of Tweens

Not since Megan Follows played Anne of Green Gables in the 1985 adaptation of the novel with the same title have girls had a young protagonist on screen who fights against social conventions that are designed to limit her because of her age and gender. Mattie’s similarity to Anne doesn’t end at their indignation and fearlessness, they both also share a love of long braids, both can be found wearing ill-fitting clothes, both of their stories are set in a similar time period, and finally, both girls are orphans.

This cross-post by Vicky Moufawad-Paul appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Every once in a while a role comes along for a young woman who is at that tough age–that age that makes her adult-like, but before she’s realized the limiting effects of the male gaze. She is smart enough to know what is right and young enough to not know that the world doesn’t work according to right and wrong. She speaks truth to power, and expects power to accede to what would be justice. She sees what is incongruous and expects that if she shows it to others, they will correct their ways. If they don’t correct their ways, she is old enough, and in her own power enough to be able to resist their attempts to make her follow their ways. She is interested in freedom and is often called willful, clever, argumentative. It is a window that, for most women, opens as puberty hits and then shuts as puberty ends. For many women, the social relations of feudalism and capitalism make us bend and transform under patriarchal control.

Mattie Ross in True Grit, played by a 14 year old Hailee Steinfeld, looks unimpressed and determined
Mattie Ross in True Grit, played by a 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld, looks unimpressed and determined.

 

Independence, Over-Sized Clothes, and Olden Times

I recently saw True Grit, and although I don’t usually enjoy Coen brothers films, I did enjoy this film. Let me get it out of the way: I don’t connect with most of the Coen brothers’ films and I was flabbergast when a few men in my Film Studies classes during my master’s programme listed Barton Fink as one of their top ten films of all time. At the risk of sounding essentialist, in my mind the Coen brothers make “guy” films–films that guys love, but women rarely rave about. Enter: True Grit. Or, more accurately, enter the star of the film, Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old girl played by a feisty 14-year-old mixed-race Hailee Steinfeld.

Not since Megan Follows played Anne of Green Gables in the 1985 adaptation of the novel with the same title have girls had a young protagonist on screen who fights against social conventions that are designed to limit her because of her age and gender. Mattie’s similarity to Anne doesn’t end at their indignation and fearlessness, they both also share a love of long braids, both can be found wearing ill-fitting clothes, both of their stories are set in a similar time period, and finally, both girls are orphans.

Orphans used to wear over sized clothes, braid and hats
Orphans were shown wearing over-sized clothes, braid, and hats.

 

Orphans also liked to carry things. This is why we find similarities in adaptations of novels set at the turn of the 20th century
Orphans also were shown as liking to carry things. This is why we find similarities in adaptations of novels set at the turn of the 20th century.

 

Although Mattie’s mom is still around, her father has recently been murdered, and thus she has to fend for herself in situations that her father ordinarily would. Instead she is settling her father’s business affairs and searching for his killer. A whip-smart character scene shows Mattie negotiating the selling and buying of her father’s property with an adult male horse dealer. She uses fast-talking, stubbornness, sharp instincts, and the occasional appeal to getting a lawyer involved to keep her from getting taken advantage of, and in fact, gets what she wants.

Mattie shows that she can cross a river on horseback, climb trees, cut a dead hanging man down, and most importantly, keep her mouth shut when appropriate. She’s the sidekick who runs the show. Even when her interests don’t dovetail with those she has hired, she re-convinces them that their interests do coincide.

The Braid Connection: Intersecting Race, Gender, and Age

Cowboy films, as a genre, are not only male-dominated, but they also have troubling relationships to Aboriginal peoples. Critiques of the implicit and explicit issues with representation of First Peoples by Hollywood has been amply put forward elsewhere, notably by film critic Jesse Wente. I wonder what the Coen brothers were thinking when they included two scenes with Aboriginal people in them. The first seems to be a critique of racism: an Aboriginal man is hanged without being allowed to say his last words, unlike the white men being hanged beside him. I applaud this implicit critique of the differential treatment of criminals of different racial backgrounds.

The second depiction of frontier relations with Aboriginal people is a scene about halfway into the film, when the character Rooster, played by Jeff Bridges, kicks two First Nations youth. This unmotivated violence could have been another critique of racial violence (simply by making it visible), if it were not for unfortunate editing choices. Rooster is climbing the porch stairs of a house he wants to enter. There are two First Nations boys sitting on the edge of the porch of the house. Out of nowhere, Rooster kicks one of the boys and he falls off the porch onto the ground. The camera focuses on the facial reaction of the other boy who is still sitting. He laughs. Seconds later the boy who laughed meets the same fate. In the theater when I watched the film, the first reaction shot established the tone for the audience reaction to the action when it was repeated. The senseless abuse of native children by an old white man got the biggest laugh of the film. And it’s worth noting that this is one of the only laughs in a film that is mostly stern and quick.

I also have to express disappointment in the choices made around the casting and direction of the adult Mattie. I would have hoped that the young fearless girl would grow up to be someone who could have been played by Michelle Rodriguez.

It's like looking in a mirror: Michelle Rodriguez and Hailee Steinfeld looking quite similar at the end of a gun
It’s like looking in a mirror: Michelle Rodriguez and Hailee Steinfeld looking quite similar at the end of a gun.

 

Elizabeth Marvel, who was cast to play the adult Mattie, embodies a conventionally strong womanliness, that is more like the unhappy stern and uptight spinster, Marilla Cuthbert, who adopts Anne in Anne of Green Gables.

Unmarried women get stern in a male dominated genre. Characters Marilla Cuthbert and the adult Mattie Ross
Unmarried women get stern in a male-dominated genre. Characters Marilla Cuthbert and the adult Mattie Ross.

 

As I’ve mentioned, I usually have a “ho-hum” attitude toward Coen brothers films and toward cowboy genre films. But True Grit is saved by a fierce tween. Maybe the Coen brothers should cast Willow Smith in their next film? Based on how a tween rocked their script, I’d love to see them give ten-year-old Willow a chance to whip her hair on the silver screen.

10 year old Willow Smith in the "Whip My Hair" video. Eat your heart out Jackson Pollack
Ten-year-old Willow Smith in the “Whip My Hair” video. Eat your heart out Jackson Pollack.

 

Willow already wears braids, so she’s half way there. I’d ask the Coen brothers to give Anne of Green Gables a watch first, though. Come on, even in 1985 they let a girl have a little roll in the hay with her bosom friend.

Young women enjoying each other's company. Are Anne and Diana just bosoms? Or is the roll in the hay a vital part of their youthful strength?
Young women enjoying each other’s company.
Are Anne and Diana just bosoms? Or is the roll in the hay a vital part of their youthful strength?

 

Vicky Moufawad-Paul is a curator, artist, film programmer, and the artistic director at A Space Gallery in Toronto. She earned a Masters of Fine Arts from York University, where she conducted research on the visual culture of Palestine. She was previously the founding executive director of the Toronto Arab Film Festival, and has worked at the Toronto International Film Festival Group. She was a member of the Visual and Media Arts Committee at the Toronto Arts Council, a founding member of the Advisory Board of the Palestine Film Festival, and a member of the Board of Directors at Trinity Square Video. Her writing has been published by Fuse Magazine, E-Fagia, the Arab American National Museum, and the Journal of Peace Research. She was also a contributor to the anthology Decentre: concerning artist-run culture/a propos de centres d’artistes (YYZ Books, 2008). Moufawad-Paul’s video art has been exhibited nationally and internationally.

 

‘True Grit’: Ambiguous Feminism

Mattie wears dark, loose, practical clothing. She climbs trees and carries weapons. She shows utter disdain for male privilege or La Boeuf’s pervy allusions to sexual contact. She has no interest in the older men for romance or protection. She is only concerned with their usefulness to her task, and she uses her will and her reasoning rather than seduction to convince them. Steinfeld’s Mattie emanates competence and confidence.

Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross
Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross

 

This cross-post by Andé Morgan previously appeared at her blog No Accommodation and appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Enter the Wayback Machine in your mind and go back to 2011. This was an era with only one Smurfs and only two Hangovers. More original fare like Rango and Super 8 was somewhat overshadowed by superhero movies, which were HUGE, and the sequelmatic masterpieces that were Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. That’s OK, originality is overrated. For example, my favorite wide release of late 2010-early 2011 was True Grit. Based on the 1968 serial novel by Charles Portis, True Grit the movie had been done by The Duke in 1969. And by done I mean it did well; it was a financial and critical success and gave John Wayne his only Oscar. Nevermind that the script was less than faithful to the source material, or that Mammon possessed Paramount to spawn a horrific sequel, Rooster Cogburn.

Let me get my bias out front: I am a fan of the Coen Brothers, but I don’t always drink the Kool-Aid (am I the only person who thought Fargo and No Country for Old Men were just OK?). However, I loved True Grit. I don’t think it is hyperbole to call it a masterpiece. It represents an increasingly rare combination of excellent screenwriting, gripping cinematography, high production value, and masterful acting in a wide release film. Its story of vengeance is timeless, but the setting is as uniquely American as apple pie, Duck Dynasty, and gun violence.

To summarize: in the American Old West (Oklahoma and Arkansas were part of the Old West in 1877), Mattie Ross (played by Hailee Steinfeld in the 2010 film) loses her father when he is murdered by his hired hand Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). She enlists the help of U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) and Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Matt Damon) to bring the fugitive Chaney to justice. Because she is an adolescent female, no one takes her seriously until the strength of her persistence wins out. Vengeance is hers in the end, but not without cost.

All of the incarnations of True Grit are popular fodder for analysis from a feminist perspective not only because it is well-known and well-respected as an “American” story, but also because it is an unusual story. It features a young, female protagonist with a single-minded focus on violent vengeance. Any analysis would be remiss to ignore that a) the serial was written in 1968, and Portis would undoubtedly be aware of the second-wave feminist movement and b) the 2010 film was written, directed, and produced by the Coen Brothers, who know how to do subtle development of nuanced characters and big-picture themes. The original 1969 film is less profitable for analysis. In their hurry to cash in on the popularity of the novel and John Wayne, the studio focused on the Rooster character. Mattie (referred to as a “tomboy” by promotional materials of the time) exists as a novelty and a variation on the damsel in distress.

While the 2010 film does pass the Bechdel Test on the slightest of technicalities, no one is going to confuse it with Melancholia. The plot of True Grit is an interesting variation of the Women in Fridges meme because the roles are a reversal of the usual young female victim and older male protagonist structure. In this way Mattie is much more of a Dark Knight than a Marvelous fighting fuck toy. The overarching patriarchal heterosexist concern is obvious: neither children nor women are allowed to crave bloody vengeance. Vengeance is a privilege reserved for good-but-violent men whose women-property are raped or destroyed.

Mattie wears dark, loose, practical clothing. She climbs trees and carries weapons. She shows utter disdain for male privilege or La Boeuf’s pervy allusions to sexual contact. She has no interest in the older men for romance or protection. She is only concerned with their usefulness to her task, and she uses her will and her reasoning rather than seduction to convince them. Steinfeld’s Mattie emanates competence and confidence.

While many in the blogosphere were quick to use Mattie’s stoicism, blood lust, and independence as examples of why True Grit should be considered a feminist movie, others, such as Anita Sarkeesian at Feminist Frequency, have remarked that those same attributes argue against that designation. Rather, the adoption of these characteristics by a female protagonist constitutes an enshrinement of male privilege and traditional action-movie-masculine vales rather than an assertion of feminist values. By contrast, a feminist True Grit would emphasize cooperation, empathy, and non-violent conflict resolution. Without delving into the deeper arguments raised by this argument (e.g., what exactly are feminist values and are they necessarily exclusive of all traditionally masculine values), I can say that my initial reaction was to agree with Sarkeesian. Too often we see action movies that “counterbalance” a “masculine” (and usually secondary) female character by either putting her in a skin-tight suit, giving her a fatal personality flaw, or by implying that she is worthy of death for her perceived masculinity (I’m looking at you, Kick-Ass 2).

Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn
Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn

 

However, after some reflection I tend to agree more with Amanda Marcotte’s argument that True Grit should not be analyzed in the same way as more typical westerns or action movies. The subtleties in the source material and in the Coen Brothers’ delivery lend themselves to deeper interpretation. True Grit comments on many things: the unfair treatment of Native Americans (the hanging scene); the corruption of justice in our legal system (the courtroom scene); and the fact that there is often very little space between the “bad” and the “good” in this world (Chaney’s dialogue with Mattie at the creek and mine; Ned’s dialogue with Rooster).

As Marcotte points out, to understand the commentary on the development of Mattie as a young woman, we must look to the ending. Marcotte notes the shared symbology of Rooster’s missing eye and (adult) Mattie’s missing arm. By engaging in violence and by accepting the traditionally masculine values of vengeance, both Mattie and Rooster literally and figuratively lost part of themselves. As viewers, we are left to wonder: did Mattie’s consumption by vengeance as a young woman rob her of spiritual wholeness in adulthood? Does the adult Mattie feel that she was wrong to pursue vengeance? I do disagree with Marcotte’s assertion that True Grit is a feminist movie because the bleakness of the ending serves as an ultimate repudiation of traditional action-movie-masculine values. Instead, I see the ending as commentary on the infectious, long-lasting, and ultimately detrimental nature of violence as a human trait. Consequently, I conclude that while Mattie Ross may be considered a feminist character (loosely) True Grit is neither a feminist movie nor a movie that reinforces the patriarchal heterosexist narrative. It is a human condition movie, and one worth watching.

As for Hallie Steinfeld, she’s been getting work, and recently played Petra Arkanin in the film adaption of Ender’s Game. I’d like to see it, but damn you Orson Scott Card!

 

Andé Morgan’s perspective stems from a life spent always on the boundary: white and black, rich and poor, masculine and feminine. She takes shelter under the transgender umbrella.

 

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: True Grit

True Grit (2010)

This is a guest review from Cynthia Arrieu-King

The Coen Brothers have triumphed in recognizing that their particular wifty and broad take on American violence could better the classic Western film True Grit. The original 1969 version drew from the campy Western novel True Grit by Charles Portis, and had a play-time, hokey quality. On initial comparison, the Coens made a shot for shot remake. Lucky for us, they don’t skimp on corpses, pith and the comic relief that witless people who think they are witty and witty people used to being considered witless both provide. Jarmusch could have made a mystical emotional version of this film à la Dead Man. But that is not the point of this film. The point is un-sentimentality and a little bizarre humor in the face of ruthless, emotionless terrain, a terrain the Coens know well.

I cannot talk about the feminist angle of the film without major spoilers, but suffice it to say, I could not believe what I was seeing in the main character of Hailee Steinfeld’s Mattie Ross. First, a brief discussion of the men and the scenery: it’s hard to say who was not stealing the scene from whom, man or woman or child, the length of this movie.

Jeff Bridges has taken his knack for laconic, comic outrage (The Big Lebowski) and muffled it down. His face has obliged us with a certain amount of real age. Towards the film’s end we understand that his emotion or caring will always be submerged in deference to what must be done, duty carried out with bodily instinct. Somehow Bridges never quite makes you consider whether or not Cogburn is a good or bad man. He is perpetually moving forward and comes to terms with what is and what is not possible without showing the sweat of a single emotional calorie. But you can sense that emotion is happening somewhere within, far within. There are plenty of John Wayne fanatics who post web comments on the Duke’s superiority to any possible actor in the role of Rooster Cogburn. This is nostalgia.

Matt Damon, the other main male character in this film, does his fake-nosed straight-man in shades of ridiculous pride and earnestness (as seen in The Oceans movies, Inside Job). He sees the law and is seized by it in a way Bridges’ Cogburn never is, and proves how thinking within the law will never get the job done. I mean, something pretty bad happens to his tongue; this never gets him to stop nattering on with supposed reasonableness. If everyone in this movie is a variation on the idea of true grit in a nation of True Grit, his Texas Ranger LaBoeuf might have a few grains less than the others and can live with his own humiliations.

The West looks more Zen, bosky, and alien through Roger Deakins’ cinematography; when things go wrong they are comic in an impromptu, a limitless space.

There is a dentist who pretty much steals the movie for at least 4 minutes, but I won’t spoil that for you.

Now for the main character of the story: Mattie Ross, also the narrator.

When watching the sloppily lethal Rooster Cogburn and the persistent young narrator of this movie interact, one can sense a power dynamic both odd and pleasing. I felt as if an old favorite doll had been put up at the dining room table with a real plate finally—Mattie Ross as Cogburn’s—as he calls her—“baby sister”.

Fine. I don’t know yet how to adequately express my astonishment that not only is the main character of this movie a 14 year-old girl, she is not a 14 year-old girl who gets swept aside, despite the men trying to sweep her aside—and actually dumping her off in the middle of nowhere with some gnarly thugs—for most of the movie. Her resolve is not plucky, it is near maniacal. They can’t get rid of her because she is irrationally rational. My jaw hung open a few times. This of course doesn’t necessarily confirm a feminist message about girl-child power, because she is not exactly a woman, she is a child entertaining in her single-mindedness. The story mostly emphasizes that if you want to be gritty, don’t get side-tracked in the vagaries of your emotion; have forethought and a long-range plan and wield a lawsuit adamantly until you are a nuisance that can’t be ignored. Steinfeld too never shows the processing of her emotions; the comebacks come as if her brain is mostly Intel Inside Core i5. The little black stable-boy in this movie has a conversation with Mattie as she retrieves a horse that ends with something like, “I can’t tell my boss what you said because he told me never to utter your name again.”

This spectacle of bullheaded feminine autocracy disguised as reason isn’t quite human and doesn’t necessarily do the male gender any favors either. The film’s minor men get to be idiots and the most reasonable and faintly kind ones get shot or maimed extra. To get ahead as a man, don’t think, don’t be kind; your best bet is to be emotionless too.

Okay, really, SPOILER ALERT. This girl wants to kill the man who killed her father. There is only an opening shot on this father’s dead body being snowed on. There is no narrative ramp-up besides this. And holy cow if she does not KILL, all by herself, messily, with purpose, her father’s killer—Tom Chaney. You think for a second someone else will do it. You think for a second Rooster will come back and save her. You are not totally wrong, but he really does leave her alone with this killer who turns out to be the most human of them all; remorseless and real. You might even think it’s a Coen movie, something god-awful is about to happen to her. I don’t know if it’s the shock this delivers to the viewer that a girl could grab the brass ring in this way, or relief that finally a girl gets to carry out the climactic plot point of a movie, but she does it. I didn’t even let myself think the Coens would allow this, which says more about my forgetting that one of them is married to Frances McDormand. Then Mattie falls into a giant hole and gets her girlish shrieks out that way. Well, she’s not a fucking Marine now, is she.

Is it a feminist movie? I think that it satisfies on many levels: the main character is a woman/girl, she wants revenge, to exercise her will, and she does it. She gets a little help, and some protection and some shot-up cornbread for her fifty dollars (which she actually never has to pay to Rooster). Though we have no narrative slip on which to fit our emotional understanding of her motivations, we go along with it. (To handicap myself as a reviewer: I have lost my father, I wanted to kill someone, I was a Daddy’s girl; as far as illustrating motivation goes, I’m like; what is there to explain?) But standing back, I can see that this sentimental premise was really nothing to have feared and the Coen Brothers didn’t have room or make room to deliver one of their painful montages or confrontations that sucks the emotion out of a wound and spits it in the viewer’s face as an explanation for Mattie’s drive.

So what to make of Mattie and Rooster’s relationship? Are they brother/sister, since he refers to her as baby sister? Are they weirdly, latently romantically linked? Are they father/daughter or uncle/niece? The movie gifts the weirdness of their dynamic and never allows it to settle into anything other than what it is. By the time Mattie (spoiler alert) dunks her water bucket erroneously into the creek and sees Tom Chaney for the first time, there isn’t much Rooster can do but ride away at the behest of her captors. And so he is neither a father, because what father would leave his child be? And he is not a brother, for the same reasons. He is not a friend. It is the coolness of his relationship to his own feelings that permits him both to enable her revenge and protect her with soldier-like strategy. Money never changes hands: perhaps it is only possible to be a woman who owns her revenge if she is actually only a child and if one steps out of capitalism’s systems.

In fact, this lack of sentimentality in the girl and the man allows them to be mirrors and strangely see themselves in each other. Their only credibility with each other: overarching determination. As Cogburn says when Mattie rides across the river on her horse—though this is obviously bullheaded and wreckless–he says, “She reminds me of me” and this is the first time he bothers to heed her. They work as a team because Mattie provides the reasonableness and Cogburn provides the instinct.

In the end it is the thrilling climax of the movie, the death of Tom Chaney, that pulls the biggest feminist punch, for I never saw it coming. This says more about viewer expectation and all westerns about revenge, and all those portraying high-pitched know-it-all girls in campy movies of any era. I think I might have had tears of happiness. Because the movie extends the reach of true violence and decision to a girl, it offers us a vision of grit as all-permeating to the people who truly have it: they can’t be otherwise.

Luck is another story.

The movie as much as it confounds ideas about what a cinematic-girl can be and can do, is also a story about luck. One can imagine that Cogburn gets Mattie through her final trial by determination, but given the nature of their story’s last legs, I’d say this tenacity had little to do with decision and more to do with uncontrollable factors. Mattie never marries. And sad to say, the movie seems to decide that a woman’s triumph is informed by her ability to control her emotion, and be invulnerable, and dumb luck falling helps.

The closing vignettes of Mattie as an adult feel like they’re there because the backstory of her father got lopped off. We are spared seeing Cogburn again, and spared seeing her marry and diminish some poor husband or herself. Cogburn is eventually buried next to her not as a lover, and not, as it might make sense to assume, as part of the family. He was someone as reliable and tough as herself, the one person who could match her and deserve a place next to her. This was a different, ongoing brand of love only expressed through action. In other words, perseverance.

 

 

Cynthia Arrieu-King is an assistant professor of creative writing at Stockton College. Her book People are Tiny in Paintings of China was just released from Octopus Books. Her late father loved John Wayne and her family has boxes of John Wayne videos that nobody watches but that no one can throw away.