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Women of Color in Film and TV: Thoughts on ‘The Mindy Project’ and Other Screen Depictions of Indian Women

The Mindy Project

Guest post written by Martyna Przybysz.

I was born and bred in Poland, a country that has for years struggled to embrace foreign cultures, and despite its growing tolerance and diversity across all aspects of society, including mainstream media, you wouldn’t quite describe it as multicultural. Having gotten the film bug at a young age, and having a film buff for a father, I have been exposed to the World and European cinemas early. Yet the topic of cultural diversity never as much as brushed upon the surface of mine and my peers’ discussions on film. Yes, there was Almodovar, and… there was Almodovar. It wasn’t until I have moved to the UK, back in 2005 that the term “ethnic minority” was first made known to me. Few years on, and I started flirting with the idea of joining the media industry. And this is when I realised that – despite an ever-present and rather obvious diversity of women in the world as such, as well as the labor market – the lack of women of varied ethnic backgrounds in the media, be it on screen or behind it, was striking. The Asian women being one of the under-represented groups.

Gurinder Chadha’s It’s a Wonderful Afterlife

The first year of my film studies was also the time of assimilation into a multiracial society, and the time when I was introduced to the insightful work of Gurinder Chadha, a British director of Indian-Kenyan origin. Chadha is known for her work depicting the lives of Indians, and more specifically, Indian women residing in the UK. Her films – such as my absolute favourite Bhaji on the Beach, and widely recognized Bend it Like Beckham – have not only focused on young South Asian women and the dilemmas they faced, confronted with what is expected of them by their community, but most importantly, they explored the topic of female bonding and intergenerational ties.

The women of Monsoon Wedding, directed by Mira Nair

The above topics were also being discussed in parallel by Indian director Mira Nair. There was the exploration of the implications that being in an interracial relationship in the ’90s America comes with, in Mississippi Masala, as well as that of secrets and conflict in a multigenerational Indian family in Monsoon Wedding. Nair and Chadha offered me a unique opportunity to explore their amazing and colorful culture, that I have otherwise wouldn’t be able to get to know so closely. But what I most liked about the work of these two women of South Asian origin, was the very first thing I appreciate in female-directed films in general: the fact that they focus on female characters and do not shy away from exposing and exploring their flaws.

Fast forward to 2012 and along came Mindy Lahiri. Or rather Vera Chokalingam, known to all by her stage name, Mindy Kaling. I know that Mindy was widely recognized way before The Mindy Project from The Office and I know that its devotees will want to assail me for this, but… I haven’t seen a single episode! But judging by her excellent writing and acting in her auteur project – I am sure that she was flawless.

Truth be told, I only discovered Kaling last year, upon my first trip to the U.S. in Autumn 2012. Hoping for an easy plane read, I bought her book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and other concerns) and I was not disappointed. Mindy’s writing is light, funny, and with just the right amount of self-deprecation. And so is her show.

#themindyproject

Having gotten to know Mindy ‘the creator’, Mindy ‘the product of thus creation’ didn’t come as a surprise to me. She’s quirky, a bit ditzy, could easily pass as innocent, and definitely as naïve, and she is not particularly self-critical (take the latest episode’s taxi cab commercial featuring Dr Lahiri dressed in a dog’s costume and conversing with a puppet named Erica, the same commercial that gets her the highest ‘P’ rating, meaning ‘pity rating’).

“I just need to ride out this minor humiliation until I find my Kanye.”

Most of all of – Mindy is an extremely likable character. Despite her naivety, she is a smart and ambitious woman, finding fulfillment in her career, and yes, despite occasional bumps here and there in relation to men, she does value herself, which is a very powerful message on its own.

“It’s so weird being my own role model.”

Mindy’s career is not a topic yet discussed in depth – much of the in-work plot evolves around her competing with the two male doctors at her practice, or more recently, two male midwives from a rival practice – but her love life can be summarised in one phrase, that goes something like “the endless pursuit of romance.” As the show progresses, we discover that this is not all that Mindy is about. She values friendships, and yes, to our awe, she does value her patients in a completely selfless way (take episode 15 “Mindy’s Minute” as an example of her good-doctor attitude).

A majority of feminist statements made in the show have nothing to do with race. Similarly to Hannah from Girls, she is a full-figured lady, unobnoxiously proud of it (she wears dresses that accentuate her figure but rarely reveals her cleavage), and very much aware of it. She refers to herself in a belittling manner on a number of occasions, such as in episode one when she answers her phone on a date saying, “Do you know how difficult it is for a chubby 31-year-old woman to go on a legit date with a guy who majored in economics at Duke?.” So, there is a healthy dose of self-awareness. Or is there? I forever struggle with the concept of weight and bodily image of women on screen – the general consensus, according to the media, is that thin equals beautiful. Therefore it is always so ‘refreshing’ and ‘bold’ to see a ‘bigger’ female character on screen. I simply find those statements annoying. I dream of a day when any woman on screen will be considered beautiful for her individual qualities and features, rather than being seen and described as ‘something’ in comparison to ‘something else’.

Going back to the Indian culture – as already established, Mindy approaches everything with self-deprecating humour, like in the latest episode, when offered an opportunity to present medical news in her new pitiful persona (see: paragraph six), she fatastises of this being the beginning of her celebrity doctor dream coming true, and says to her co-workers “can you guys believe it… me, the child of immigrants…”. I mean, you gotta laugh. There is, however, a thin line between mocking one’s own culture and playing on the well-known stereotypes like Kaling, and overdoing it, like in New Girl, where Schmidt’s obsession for Cece’s ethnicity goes beyond tasteful at times. Mindy’s ethnicity does not really matter to her or the viewer, unless it is convenient for her to play with it in a stereotypical way (like when she makes authoritative statements about how Black guys love Indian women), which in my opinion, she does with a comedic grace.

Nonetheless, the former show touches upon such issues as arranged marriage and the compromises that Asian women must make in order to remain in good graces of their family. With Mindy, on the other hand, we never really learn much about her family, or what was expected of her, but the sole fact that she is a doctor, and expects her brother to become an educated professional himself, brings us back to the “child of immigrants” syndrome. Maybe because she is already so Westernised there is nothing to really rebel against, and the cultural aspect falls to the background. Nothing that Mindy does bends the rules quite as much as what Jesminder did in Bend it Like Beckham, but then, the times have changed.

Mindy Kaling as Mindy Lahiri

Mindy Kaling is the creator of The Mindy Project, as well as the main writer on the show. There is no question that she’s witty, talented, utterly adorable, and challenges, however subtly, some most common cultural stereotypes ingrained in the audiences’ minds by the media. It is not a show for everyone, for sure. But it is an entertaining show, that can find its audience amongst both, men and women.

Let’s face it, we love quirky and goofy characters. Deep down we all hope we are more adorable than pitiful when we find ourselves in embarrassing situations. Does it matter then what colour/ethinicty/gender the characters are? And if we say that it doesn’t, why aren’t there more female Indian protagonists like Mindy Lahiri on the big and small screen? And how is this astounding imbalance a reflection of the melting pot that our society is today? That is beyond me. And so the debate continues.

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Martyna is a Pole living in London, UK. She works in media and the arts. A sucker for portrait photography and a salted caramel cheesecake. This is her blog: http://martynaprzybysz.tumblr.com.

Women of Color in Film and TV: ‘Sparkle’: Same Song, Fine Tuned

The three sisters of ‘Sparkle’ (2012)

Guest post written by Candice Frederick, originally published at Reel Talk. Cross-posted with permission.

Not every filmmaker understands the point of a remake. Sure, it’s fun to revisit an old classic to gain a new audience, and squeeze out any remaining dollars from the film that there is to be had. But the whole other objective of a remake, the more important aspect, is to enhance the film and modernize it so that it fits in with today’s culture and evolved world. And if you can make it even better than its original, well, that’s a bonus.

Director Salim Akil’s Sparkle, the remake of the 1976 film of the same name, did just that. Revisiting the Motown era (specifically during the ’50s and ’60s) isn’t a new concept in film, but something we don’t see often enough when depicting that era is well carved out female stories. Of course, there were plenty of women in music who dominated the charts, but we rarely get to see them take on the dominant role in their personal lives. At least, not so a we should have.

In Sparkle, we have three very different sisters, Tammy aka “Sister” (Carmen Ejogo), Sparkle (Jordin Sparks), and Dolores aka “D” (Tika Sumpter), who each have a dream. D wants to go to medical school. Sister, the oldest sibling, wants to get the hell out of their strict mom’s (Whitney Houston) house, once and for all. And Sparkle, the youngest and most timid of the three, wants a chance–a chance to become a famous singer and songwriter. With encouragement from her dashing admirer, Stix (Derek Luke), Sparkle enlists her two older sisters in their own singing group so that they can each finally see their dreams come true.

Salim Akil’s Sparkle revisits the Motown era

But right at the height of a promising career, life throws them some curve balls. Sister, always looking for the next quick and easy (and lucrative) opportunity, meets and falls hard for the “coon” comedian extraordinaire Satin (Mike Epps). She quickly gets entangled in his lies, deceit and utter immoralities and spirals downwards, taking her sisters’ singing group down with her. That is, until Sparkle finds the voice she’d kept hidden for so long, which will carry her to the next phase of her life and shine like she always dreamed she would.

Sparks as Sparkle in ‘Sparkle.’ Clear?

Admittedly, Sparkle‘s storyline is the one cliched and predictable element carried over from the original movie. Sparks gives a fine performance but, like Irene Cara before her, doesn’t have much to work with and her real-life singing voice provides the most memorable scenes in her performance. What’s not so expected in this re-imagining is the heightened point of view of the other characters in the story. Emma, the girls’ mom, isn’t just a wise older woman with little dialogue but who dutifully captures the parental element of the story, as she is in the original film. Emma is now a very present mother in the story, someone who rules her house with a sharp but loving tongue, and one who is quick to recite passages from Scripture to remind her daughters of who’s really in control. Emma is also a “cautionary” character, as she herself alludes to but is careful not to define in the movie (as delivered in an eerily familiar and poignant performance by the late Houston). She is heavily nuanced and delicately penned by screenwriters Mara Brock Akil (TV’s Girlfriends and The Game) and Harry Rosenman (Father of the Bride, The Family Man).

The late Whitney Houston as mother Emma

Also fine tuned for a razor-sharp performance is the role of Sister. She was always the most complicated character of the bunch, formerly played by the eternally underrated actress Lonette McKee (in one of her best roles). While Ejogo’s portrayal almost mirrors that of McKee’s (which is high praise), Sister doesn’t come across as similarly damaged as she did in the previous movie. She settles on a rather mature consequence for decisions she’s made, which in turn allows her character to linger just a bit longer here, and leave a lasting impression on the audience.

Sister, played by Carmen Ejogo

Another unforgettable character portrayal is that of D played by Sumpter. If you’ve seen the original film, you might not even remember much of anything substantial about this third sister, except that she was her mother’s mute pride and joy. She was the one with the bright future whose feelings about the whole music thing is, as she further explains in this movie, are that she can “really take or leave it.” This remake does a better job at explaining a lot more behind her actions–i.e. why she’s more fearless than her other sisters in a lot of ways (she really has nothing here to lose) and why she won’t sacrifice everything for someone else’s dream. Sumpter, with help from the screenplay, gives D a backbone, a steel tongue to deliver the film’s wittiest and most entertaining dialogue that will cut through even the most dramatic scenes. Sparkle might have been the character in search of a voice, but it is D whose voice had become magnified and clearer.

D, played by Tika Sumpter

Epps also gives a surprisingly good performance here as well. And he’s got a lot to work with. Satin isn’t just the fleeting bad guy who comes to terrorize the Sister and her Sisters trio. He’s definitely not a guy you root for, but there is more to his story here. He has much more purpose. Epps sheds his comedic image to possibly play the role of his career, but uses some of that comedian swagger in a way that complements Satin’s own demons. Meanwhile, the other fellas in the cast, Luke and Omari Hardwick (who plays Levi, Sister’s jilted ex) contribute good–however serviceable–portrayals in an overwhelmingly female-driven movie.

Thirty-six years after the original release of Sparkle, women are still searching for a sizable number of distinctive and identifiable lead roles on the big screen. This film gives each actress a real arch, a meaty snack to chew on as they flex core acting muscles. It proves that there are still wonderful roles for women–of any color–to make their own and of which one day can look back on and be proud.

While the original film is rightfully regarded as a classic, this year’s Sparkle appropriately adds that exclamation point the first film lacked, and fleshes out each character’s story so that they seem real, like people you may know. Even though it’s essentially a period film, this remake clearly has that new millennium edge we so desperately need to more of.

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Candice Frederick is a former Essence magazine editor and an NABJ award-winning journalist. She is also a Contributing Film Writer for The Urban Daily, co-host of “Cinema in Noir” and the film blogger for Reel Talk. Follow her on Twitter.

Women of Color in Film and TV: Shirley, Donna, and Lana: African-American Women in Thursday Night Sitcoms

Written by Max Thornton.

Thursday night is the best TV night for comedy fans. Even now that 30 Rock has departed this mortal coil (goodnight, sweet show; may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest), there is still a lot to enjoy about Thursday nights. For me, it’s the trifecta of Community, Parks and Recreation, and Archer.

(Remember 2009, the year all three of those shows debuted? Ugh, what happened to you, TV – you used to be awesome.)

I love Community, Parks and Recreation, and Archer. They are my three favorite shows on the air at the moment. Coincidentally, each of them has an African-American woman among the main ensemble, and it makes for an illuminating comparison to look at the respective treatment of Shirley Bennett, Donna Meagle, and Lana Kane.

Community: Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown)

Not gonna lie, I adore that pun.

The central conceit of Community is that seven unlikely friends are drawn together as a study group at a community college. The intent to explore diversity is built into the concept. Unfortunately, the actualization is not always as laudable as the ambition.

Shirley has tended to get short shrift in terms of character development. A lot of the time it kind of feels as though the writers don’t quite know what to do with her. It’s not necessarily because she’s one of the older characters – they never seem to run out of things for Chevy Chase to do as crusty old white dude Pierce. It’s not necessarily because she’s a woman of color – Troy and Abed are the show’s most beloved characters, and neither of them is white. I think it’s an intersectional thing. Shirley is an African-American woman, a committed Christian, and a middle-aged mom, and possibly none of these are things a writers’ room for a hip young pop-culture-savvy show is entirely comfortable with.

There has been some recognition on the show’s part that Shirley was a little underdeveloped in the early episodes, and seasons two and three made a conscious effort to give her more depth. We learned that she has a history of alcoholism, that she kicks ass at foosball, that her Miss Piggy voice is actually her bedroom voice. She had a very ill-advised hookup and a paternity scare while getting back together with ex-husband Malcolm-Jamal Warner. She has toned down the evangelical fervor of her faith to accommodate the diverse religious traditions (or lack thereof) among her friends.

Shirley is still often the show’s most problematic character and the one that is left most adrift in its various plots. At this stage, though, she is well-rounded enough that she actually feels like a real character. It just took a little longer than it did for everyone else on the show.

Parks and Recreation: Donna Meagle (Retta)

My main complaint about Donna is that she is too often in the background. She was technically only a recurring character in the first two seasons of Parks and Rec, only getting promoted to a regular in the third season.

Donna rarely if ever has storylines focused on her, which is a shame because she’s kind of awesome. She’s one of Pawnee’s most competent employees, tending to just get things done when the rest of the Parks Department is goofing around, but she also has a healthy sex life (both partnered and solo: in one episode she was shown casually reading Fifty Shades of Grey at work), a friendship with Aziz Ansari’s character Tom, and a brilliant made-up holiday called Treat Yo Self.

Although Donna is more of a background player than Shirley, she feels fully developed on much less screentime. It certainly helps that Retta is not the only woman of color in the Parks and Rec cast: Rashida Jones and Aubrey Plaza are both ~~perfect~~on the show, and if any character is a little undercooked it’s Jones’s Ann Perkins (and her ennui is finally being addressed in-text).

Ann and April: NOT friends.

One question I do have for the Parks and Rec writers, though: With such a fantastic, positive, nuanced portrayal of a larger woman on your show, why do you keep making so many fat jokes about the citizens of Pawnee?

Archer: Lana Kane (Aisha Tyler)

Archer is a show of an entirely different tenor than the NBC sitcoms. An animated dark comedy on FX, it’s considerably less popular and considerably edgier than either Community or Parks. As always, edginess in comedy is a double-edged sword. When it works, it’s absolutely brilliant (and perfectly attuned to my personal sense of humor); when it doesn’t, it’s just painful.

For the most part, Archer walks the line very well. If you’re unfamiliar with the conceit, creator Adam Reed’s description “James Bond meets Arrested Development” is not a bad one. Lana Kane is one of the top spies at ISIS, an espionage agency centered on the dysfunctional relationship between suave, self-centered, reckless Sterling Archer and his mother Malory, the agency’s head. At its best, the show functions largely as a workplace comedy with cool gadgets and some magnificently weird characters.

Lana is indisputably the most sane person at ISIS, in a Dave-Nelson-in-NewsRadio kind of way, and she also has to cope with being a woman of color in a pretty unforgiving milieu. Archer does a pretty good job of portraying other characters’ prejudice against her in a way that skewers the discriminators, not the discriminatee. Just look at the most recent episode, when Lana challenges Malory for refusing to send her on a mission to Turkmenistan.

Lana: “Because I’m black, or because I’m a woman?”

Malory: “Pick one! I mean, look, I don’t want to sound racist, but–”

Lana: “But you’re gonna power through it.”

Malory proceeds to explain how sexist and xenophobic Turkmenistan is, and how she just had to send only white men – who are meanwhile cocking up the mission with considerable panache. It’s a nifty but non-preachy way to demonstrate the myopia of racist thinking.

I love my Thursday night shows, and I’m glad they include rich roles for women of color. None of them is perfect, though, and it’s a sad truth that they are all created and helmed by white men. Putting women of color in your shows is great, but as long as the creators, showrunners, and executives are overwhelmingly white men, there is still a helluva lot of progress yet to be made.

Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

Women of Color in Film and TV: Mammy, Sapphire, or Jezebel, Olivia Pope is Not: A Review of ‘Scandal’

Scandal, created by Shonda Rimes and starring Kerry Washington

Guest post written by Atima Omara-Alwala.

Like every other woman of color who enjoys film and probably many film and TV critics alike, I waited with baited breath to see what the debut of Scandal, the first major network television show in nearly 40 years with an African American woman in the lead would bring. Even with a number of film awards that many black actresses have received in recent years, there has always been the criticism, and justified, that they are stereotypical limiting roles. With Shonda Rimes as creator of Scandal (the godmother of Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice), whose work pioneered color-blind casting and complex characters regardless of race, I had exceptional high hopes this show would be different. Shonda didn’t disappoint.

Many writers and film critics have written about the three usual archetypes that black women have fit into in popular culture representation. And it is through this prism Scandal is viewed. The Jezebel, who is very sexually promiscuous; the Mammy, who is the tireless devoted mother like figure regardless of all the wrong you did; and the Sapphire, a head-whipping, finger-snapping, anger-filled black woman. These stereotypes permeate all aspects of the American black women experience.

In Scandal, the actress Kerry Washington (from Save the Last Dance, The Last King of Scotland, and Django Unchained) plays Olivia Pope. Olivia Pope is based loosely on the life of Judy Smith, a real Washington operative who is a former member of the George H. W. Bush White House and a well-known crisis manager in DC circles. Like Judy, Olivia works with her team of lawyers, former CIA operatives, and political operatives to fix the problems and very real scandals of her very prominent clients.

Olivia Pope is tough but not in a stereotypical overbearing black woman portrayal like Sapphire. She is tough with necessity. She works in Washington DC and is in the thick of national politics and crisis managing. As someone who actually has worked as a woman of color in politics, I know for a fact no shrinking violets need apply to a world where required skills to success are extreme confidence, intelligence, and very quick thinking, and in Scandal, apparently very fast talking. Among Olivia’s clients are Congressmen, candidates for public office, corporate executives, a renowned pastor, a President, and a former Presidential candidate.

Olivia is not a tireless devoted Mammy because to fix other people’s problems and scandals, Olivia takes a NICE check to clean up your mess. (Evidence: A townhouse in Washington DC and a designer wardrobe to die for, ladies!!) Olivia truly is the lady boss. Her team is fiercely loyal to her as she takes care of them and they do the best for her because she is the best at what she does. It’s established within the first couple of episodes how good she is at what she does. The White House, which she left, calls her back often, and people come to her because her gut, as she infamously says, “is never wrong.” While many of us have seen this in our personal and professional lives (eg. Judy Smith), Olivia Pope is something rarely seen in black women representation on screen and is LONG overdue.

Being a Shonda Rimes created character, Olivia is like all of Shonda Rimes’ female characters: while tough and brilliant, Olivia is a flawed and complicated women. Kerry Washington is a great actress with a broad range who can pull this off well. In one second Olivia is talking tough and intimidating even world officials and next she is sensitive woman with a trembling lip in the next.

But even though Olivia is the great fixer of other people’s problems and scandals, she hides and really can’t fix her own major one: Olivia has a long running affair with the President of the United States, Fitzgerald “Fitz” Grant III (Tony Goldwyn), from when she worked his campaign, who is also white.

Herein lies the debate on Scandal: Is Olivia a Jezebel dressed up in 21st century political correctness? Instead of being a hooker on the stroll, slave mistress, or black girl in heat, she has her own job and career but still got to be all up on someone else’s man, especially a white man? The black blogosphere and Twittersphere debate and differ in opinion. Some say yes: 45-year veteran in advertising Tom Burrell, who has worked to promote positive portrayals of black people in media, calls Oliva Pope “a “hot-to-trot” sexually aggressive trope as old as the institution of slavery itself in the character” (damn!). Some brought up, by extension, the inevitable comparison to a Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemings drama pretty darn quickly (of course) and some go as far as to guilt other black women (specifically) viewers for watching the show, in one popular meme (seriously?). Others defiantly say no, Olivia Pope is NOT a Jezebel. For my part, I tend to agree with the naysayers.

Olivia Pope is a groundbreaking black female character on television, period. She is a self-reliant, highly accomplished most sought-after professional. But she also made the mistake (something which she very much realizes) of falling in love with a white married man, who also happens to be, oh, the leader of the free world. The show is sharp in that it doesn’t make Olivia blind to her circumstance as any black woman in her shoes wouldn’t be. You find out in Season 2 that not only does she leave the White House to start her own firm but to get herself away from the President and let him focus to be the President he needed. Even in a fit of frustration she says of her relationship with Fitz to him, “I’m feeling a little Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson about all this.” Later Fitz confronts Olivia and tells her that the comment was “below the belt.” Because, he said: “You’re playing the race card on the fact that I’m in love with you.” He then proceeds to soliloquize his love so intensely for Olivia, that she (and even I) were a bit worried for his mental state.

Olivia is no Jezebel, because she takes control of her destiny being tied to Fitz and leaves it to chart her own path. Olivia is no Jezebel because the show has progressed long enough for her to have built a relationship with another man, a highly accomplished black man at that, while she still unquestionably loves Fitz she actually attempts to move on with her life, unlike him. No, she’s not perfect, but raise your hands in the air and wave them like you just don’t care if YOU are. As a black woman I realize we want to see ourselves escape the stereotypes because we’ve been held down by these images so much that we inevitably hold ourselves up to perfection to escape it. But this is also damagingly unrealistic for the black woman to do that not only to our mental health but perception from others. Frankly, the more of our stories are out there, the more we’ll reach parity in representation in film and television.

If I have any criticism on Scandal, it’s who IS Olivia, before Fitz, before the White House, and how she came to do what she does. We have a better snapshot, if not complete, on most characters, and knowing Shonda likes to take her time unfolding a character, I am looking forward to what that brings.

All in all, I think Shonda Rimes has done an outstanding job breaking barriers and it looks like she has struck a chord with African American audiences, according to the latest New York Times article. According to Nielsen, Scandal is the highest rated scripted drama among African-Americans, with 10.1 percent of black households, or an average of 1.8 million viewers, tuning in during the first half of the second season. Real life crisis manager Judy Smith live tweets during the show as do other prominent black political operatives and commentators, namely Donna Brazile and Roland Martin. Among the group aged 18 to 34, the show typically ranks first in its 10 p.m. Thursday time slot, which means success to the industry. It’s fast moving, jaw dropping, how-in-the-hell-did-I-not-guess-that cliff hangers that Shonda Rimes is so good at, combined with great actors, projects nothing but continued success for Scandal.

And I will be there every Thursday to watch.

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Atima Omara-Alwala is a political strategist and activist of 10 years who has served as staff on 8 federal and local political campaigns and other progressive causes. Atima’s work has had a particular focus on women’s political empowerment & leadership, reproductive justice, health care, communities of color and how gender and race is reflected in pop culture. Her writings on the topics have also been featured at Ms. Magazine, Women’s Enews, and RH Reality Check.

2013 Oscar Week: Academy Documentaries: People’s Stories, Men’s Voices

Guest post written by Jo Custer.

The lifecycle of documentaries aspiring to global visibility begins each year at Sundance mid-January and ends in December when Oscar nomination voting begins. Of the five nominated this year, four premiered quietly at Robert Redford’s House of Docs, while The Gatekeepers — a series of interviews with former heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s NSA and CIA in one — slipped into the running even more quietly via Telluride, after its Jerusalem debut.

Film writers often tout the launching success of the year’s first Academy qualifying festival and can even present bias which may be attributable to the competition structure, as the Wall Street Journal did when it printed that Kirby Dick’s expose on the treatment of military rape victims, The Invisible War, would be one to watch but overlooked How to Survive a Plague, David France’s long, slow grip on the fight to normalize healthcare for AIDS victims. Both nominees were in the U.S. documentary competition. Only one of the WSJ‘s picks for Sundance-projected success came from the world cinema documentary competition, and it wasn’t Searching for Sugarman, Malik Bendjelloul’s bizarre tale of a Detroit singer/songwriter who recorded two flop albums and then quietly became a demi-god in apartheid-era South Africa. Nor was it 5 Broken Cameras, in which Guy Davidi chronicles Palestinian Emad Burnat’s inability to keep a camera operational in the suffocating presence of the Israeli Army.

Without conflating the already hard to separate issues of press-generated success vs. Oscar-generated success, this year’s most monetarily rewarding mark of honor has drawn five films. That’s five films from a pool that increases yearly at a hard-to-measure growth rate. When Sundance first created the House of Docs in 1999, theatrical releases of non-fiction films represented less than two percent of all releases, according to figures collected from Box Office Mojo. Since 2001 non-fiction theatrical releases have grown, sometimes doubling or tripling in a year until in 2011 documentaries comprised 18% of all films released.

Coinciding with the growing interesting in non-narrative film, there has been a noticeable uptick in women documentarians as well. Dozens can be found in lists of 2012 docs to watch that didn’t make the Oscar list, including Amy Berg (West of Memphis), Alison Klayman (Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry), Katie Dellamaggiore (Brooklyn Castle), Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles), Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (Detropia, Jesus Camp), Susan Froemke (ESCAPE FIRE: The Fight to Rescue American Health Care), and Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush (Finding North). U.S. women represented fifty percent of documentarians at Sundance last year while international women documentarians were outnumbered eleven to four.

Disregarding for a moment whatever else the relationship between these numbers might suggest, two things continue to happen. First, despite the rise in the number of docs which garner theatrical releases, their box office revenues remain low, short-term. Second, the one body with the power to make a filmmaker’s career in the short term — the Academy — continues to play it safe in its selection of documentaries to bring into the limelight. What makes this year’s lineup incredibly hard to argue against isn’t the documentaries themselves, but rather what they represent: a carefully balanced melange of social justice issues, most of which effect women, but all of which were brought about by the storytelling devices of men.

The Invisible War

The most salient of these to American audiences, Kirby Dick, took on the U.S. military in The Invisible War, in defense of thousands of rape victims across all branches who are silenced far more often than their offenders are brought to justice. Dick began his David vs. Goliath track record with This Film Is Not Yet Rated, taking on the MPAA with an honesty that everyone but the ratings body itself cared about. According to the action kicker just before the credits, Defense Secretary Leon Pannetta disallowed commanding officers to govern processing for rape victims two days after seeing the film, which notes that officers aren’t just getting away with rape but learning how to maneuver the justice system before returning to civilian life with no record of being a sex offender. Hard-hitting and hard to watch, the film seems to have done part of its job. Perhaps more importantly to the Academy, it is the token women’s film this year. Not all victims of military rape are female, of course, but this was the year of the War On Women. Apparently, Kirby Dick’s take on that will serve as our commemoration.

How to Survive a Plague

Perhaps less salient — if only because memories are short — David France’s long-suffering piecing together of how gay men and lesbians banded together under a retired chemist and housewife to learn about AIDS and how to fight it rings truer to its subjects’ voices. Opening in “Year 6 of the Epidemic” in Greenwich Village, the epicenter of the plague, it tells the story the networks kept from the news each night of Reagan’s presidency. There were no drugs to treat the disease. People were being turned away. It was nearly one hundred percent fatal. People who were dying anyway laid down in the streets to protest and be arrested and went the opposite way of the closet eventually — away from the black market and into the realm of FDA tested, prescribable drugs. Archival footage from dozens of sources make this authentic look at what it means to be an activist layered but also fatiguing, as though France wants the viewer to feel the malaise of too many years of dying and not nearly enough justifying. Just as notable, the camera never gets too close to the women. It’s a men’s story, in the end.

Searching for Sugarman

Another absorbing and visceral man’s story is Searching for Sugarman, which surprises and delights in its juxtaposition of two very different climes — Detroit in 1968 – 1971 and South Africa at the height of apartheid. The “Sugarman” of interest is none other than Rodriguez, whose career never really got out of the studio in North America. But his first album made its way to South Africa and got copied and redistributed and bought in such demand that he became, according to figures in the film, bigger than Elvis or The Rolling Stones. His music inspired a censorship sick society to rally behind music and a movement that eventually won. Filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul left Sweden to globe-trot and stumbled across the Rodriguez story while in South Africa. Considering how uplifting the storytelling is, he chose well.

5 Broken Cameras

In 5 Broken Cameras, Guy Davidi remains the silent silent director while Emad Burnat tells the story of his life in Palestine since the Israelis began encroaching actively upon his community and house and life. Showing footage from each of Emad’s cameras interstitially but linearly, it attempts to avoid the macrocosm argument of whose land it is by focusing on the microcosm but never quite makes it. The Israeli Army demonstrates its displeasure with Palestine time and time again, tearing up olive trees and soil for no other reason than its being there. Its most effective moment comes in a little seen glimpse of Islamic married life, in which Emad’s wife, beyond tired of her husband’s preoccupation with the distance the lens gives him, yells at him to turn off the camera while she performs domestic duties, but he does not. He can’t, not even when he is placed under house arrest. He films himself doing nothing because filming is what he does. Very heavy on the imagery of Emad’s son, it is another man’s story — set on the most unstable ground in the world, and still often seen as the center of it.

The Gatekeepers

Almost as if to be fair to the uprooters of innocent olive trees, the Academy also nominated Dror Moreh’s The Gatekeepers, which I did not get a chance to see thanks to a limited release and a tight grip on screeners. It features interviews with six former heads (all men) of Shin Bet, the “unseen shield” of Israel — a far more authoritarian point of view than Emad’s.

It seems more than safe to say that the Academy may have been influenced politically to seek a balance in representing both sides of an ongoing conflict. But safety was ever the problem with this year’s documentary lineup: A “women’s issue” delivered by a well-respected man during the War on Women; a pleaser for the LGBTIQ community who showed up a little less strong in this year’s Presidential election, but still showed; a token non-issue entertainment piece that also happens to shine in its unusualness; and two pieces from the Middle East. Under Academy auspices, docs play like little more than complementary copy.

In case you were wondering, Sugarman has my bet for best doc of the year. As does women’s continuation to make social justice documentaries for almost no monetary return, but rather making names for themselves that will last. Hopefully it will rub off in the darker places, too.

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Jo Custer is a New Orleans writer/director/producer, theatre director, blogger and sometimes a journo. She has just finished auditions for her next short film, Sonuvabitch, gearing up to shoot this May and will also be directing The Four of Us for the stage this spring. You can follow her sojourns as a filmmaker/cab driver here: http://jocuster.wordpress.com/

2013 Oscar Week: Searching for Sugar Man Makes Race Invisible

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Rodriguez, the central figure of documentary Searching for Sugar Man

Searching for Sugar Man, considered the front-runner for Best Documentary Feature at the 85th Academy Awards this weekend, shares the unlikely story of Sixto Rodriguez, an obscure failed musician in the United States who became an icon on the other side of the planet in South Africa. Rodriguez is a figure of mystery to his fans, and urban legends bloom about his having committed suicide on stage. A group of fans seek out the truth in the 1990s, and find Rodriguez is alive, still living in poverty in Detroit, completely unaware that to a generation of South Africans, he’s a rock god.

It’s a fascinating stranger-than-fiction story that is heartwarming and inspiring: perfect subject matter for a documentary. And Searching for Sugar Man is undeniably well-crafted, building suspense and mystery in the first half of the film on the hunt for Rodriguez, yielding to a very satisfying emotional catharsis in the second half of the film, where we meet Rodriguez and his daughters and see his triumphant arrival in the land that adores him. The stand-in music videos for Rodriguez’s songs that pepper the film are gorgeous to look at and the songs themselves are a revelation. Searching for Sugar Man is an excellent film that has a huge problem: the invisibility of race.

Searching for Sugar Man is about white South Africans. This is not in of itself a problem. White South Africans have stories that deserve to be told. [I am a white American living in South Africa and I think you should hear me out, for example.] But race is an intrinsic part of any South African story, especially any apartheid-era South African story. And Searching for Sugar Man is barely interested in race. It presents white South Africans as synonymous with South Africans, which is an exceptionally outrageous instance of white cultural hegemony given this country’s very recent history of extreme racial oppression.

Stephen “Sugar” Segerman, one of the South African Rodriguez fans integral to solving the mystery of the musician’s fate, does qualify Rodriguez’s South African fans as the “white, liberal, middle-class,” but it’s a quick aside in one of many descriptions of Rodriguez’s South African ubiquity. We see how the white conservatives in the apartheid government responded to Rodriguez (by censoring his records and banning airplay). But at no point in Searching for Sugar Man do we hear from a black or coloured South African on Rodriguez (with the very small exception of a news broadcaster in archival footage). I wanted to know if Rodriguez’s influence made it outside the white bubble in apartheid-era South Africa, but Searching for Sugar Man wasn’t interested in telling me. Documentaries should not leave glaring questions unanswered.

Another South African blogger had the same curiosity, and asked a black friend about his memories of Rodriguez:

He replied that he had known of the artist, but only because he used to work in broadcasting. This short and interesting answer was essentially all I asked for; a black South African commenting on the fact that Rodriguez was virtually unknown or seemed to not have played a vital role in the lives of black South Africans. Not to prove that Rodriguez did not matter, but to acknowledge that though Rodriguez fan base was mainly white, it does not mean that black South Africans have nothing to contribute with in this particular and fascinating aspect of South Africa during apartheid. A story about Rodriguez would be incomplete without the mentioning of apartheid, and a story that talks about apartheid without including a black South African experience feels incomplete to me.

Searching for Sugar Man‘s treatment of apartheid is also limited to the white middle-class perspective. Rodriguez’s anti-establishment lyrics are said to have ignited political awakening in the white Afrikaner youth in South Africa. The white male Rodriguez fans elaborate: one saying Rodriguez’s song “The Establishment Blues” taught them the very concept of being “anti-establishment”, planting the idea that “it’s OK to protest against our society; to be angry against your society.”

Segerman adds, “Because we lived in a society where every means was used to prevent apartheid from coming to and end, this album somehow had in it lyrics that almost set us free, as oppressed peoples. Any revolution needs an anthem, and in South Africa, Cold Fact was the album that gave people permission to free their minds and to start thinking differently.”

South Africans protesting apartheid in the Soweto uprising of 1976.

While there is no doubt that the apartheid government was oppressive to all South Africans, I bristle at hearing a white man refer to himself and his Afrikaner friends as “oppressed peoples” in a film that doesn’t provide the context of how apartheid shaped the lives of people of color in South Africa. The anti-apartheid movement we see in Searching for Sugar Man is one of privileged white youth rebelling against the censorship and control of their ultra-conservative government; when the fight against apartheid was a life-and-death struggle for basic human rights and freedom for millions of black and coloured South Africans.

Searching for Sugar Man‘s narrow white perspective on apartheid-era South Africa is all the more troubling because Sixto Rodriguez is himself a person of color (Mexican and Native American) living in extreme poverty in Detroit. Clarence Avant, an African American record producer who worked with Rodriguez, is the first and only person in the documentary to suggest that Rodriguez’s race may have contributed to his commercial failure in the United States. Rodriguez does not appear to be concerned with material wealth, having given away most of the money he’s earned touring after his rediscovery in the late 1990s (Since the release of this documentary, Rodriguez has embarked on a world tour). But when one compares the urban blight Rodriguez sang about on his albums to the circumstances of many South Africans two decades after the end of apartheid, the omission of their story in this documentary is even more appalling.

I’m delighted that Searching for Sugar Man has helped expose Rodriguez’s fine music to a wider audience (including myself); and as a resident of South Africa it is nice to see this country have a worldwide cultural moment. I just wish that the documentary that achieved all this was more fully and honestly representative of South Africa and its history.

2013 Oscar Week: Matriarchal Impositions of Beauty in ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’

Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron star in Snow White and the Huntsman

Guest post written by Carleen Tibbetts.

Despite the various twists on the classic fairy tale, there is a definite constant in Snow White: women are their own worse enemies. The storyline is essentially the same: jealous, vain stepmother wants to oust stepdaughter who will one day surpass her in physical attractiveness. Stepmother fails. Stepdaughter’s kindness, beauty, and naivete prevail as she triumphs over her would-be destructor. Rupert Sanders’s Snow White and the Huntsman, however, is a different animal. Yes, at the heart (pun intended) of the story are still the female archetypes of beauty, female rivalry and jealousy, whether or not “true” love will make a woman complete, etc. Sanders’s version also explores, though not fully enough, the fragile nature of mother-daughter relationships. True, her mother wishes Snow White into existence based upon her own ideals of beauty, but it is also the child’s tenderness that moves her. When Snow White is still small, before her mother passes away, her mother places her hand over the girl’s chest and tells her she possesses a “rare beauty” there. When the “evil” queen was a young girl, her mother placed a spell, a curse, really, on her that her beauty would be her protector, her bargaining tool, and also her undoing.

Both Snow White and her “evil” stepmother were taught to view their worth in terms of beauty. For Snow White, it was her compassion, her sweetness, and her soul. For the “evil” queen, it was how far she could get by on her looks. The ways in which both Snow White and Ravenna’s “beauty” are reflected their mother’s eyes lays the groundwork for their respective indifference to or obsession with their own attractiveness.

The “evil” Queen is this adaptation is still a shape-shifting sorceress, however she doesn’t transform into a sweet octogenarian to play to Snow White’s compassion to give her the poison apple. This queen tries to stave off the aging process at all costs, appears to Snow White under the guise of true love, preying on her lonely heart in order to rip it from her chest. Prince Charming in this instance is no prince. He’s a widowed brute drowning his grief in beer and bar brawls. Female assertion of power is so central here that the Huntsman needs no name. He could be any man. He’s disposable yet indispensable in this fairy tale revenge fantasy.

Charlize Theron as Queen Ravenna

Charlize Theron’s Queen Ravenna comes to power by preying on a benevolent king’s nature and masquerading as a prisoner of war. The first time we see Ravenna (a flaxen-haired, sanguine, statuesque counterpart to Snow White), she is shackled, bound in a cart, covered in gold dust and fur. The king wants to save her, and does so by making her his victory prize. To the victor go the spoils. He wastes no time and marries her that day. On the wedding night, Ravenna decides she’s not down to consummate this thing. Her language quickly changes from addressing him as her “lord,” acquiescing to his kisses, to telling him that he and his gender are vile, shallow creatures. As the king tries to make love to her, Ravenna, a former trophy wife several times over, says, “Men use women. They ruin us. When they are finished with us, they toss us to the dogs like scraps.” Using her powers, she paralyzes the king in the middle of his attempt at seduction, completely emasculating him, and then murders him without hesitation.

Queen Ravenna

Literally overnight, sacks her own kingdom. She immediately has young Snow White locked in a tower and begins to consult the infamous mirror on the wall. In this version of the story, the mirror is truly stand-apart. It’s a giant gold circle that offers Ravenna a wavering, distorted reflection. She demands to be left alone with the mirror and her insecurities. As she asks it the timeless question about her fairness, liquid gold pours out of the mirror and morphs into a humanoid form (Very T-1000) as it assures her she is the most gorgeous woman around. Ravenna’s beauty even bewitches her (albino with a Page Boy haircut) henchman brother. Ravenna rejuvenates herself by literally inhaling life force from young women she keeps on hand. Whenever a wrinkle starts to manifest, she sucks their purity and innocence from them. Medieval Botox.

Ravenna spends her days this way, depleting girls of their youth, taking milk baths, sporting amazing headwear, snacking on small animals and picking through their flesh with her talon jewelry (ala Pamela Love) while her brother looks on in adoration, etc. Inevitably, the day comes when the mirror tells Ravenna that Snow White has already one-upped her in the fairest department. The spell her mother placed on her as a child haunts her: “By fairest blood it is done, and by fairest blood it will be undone.” Ravenna sends brother dearest to help with Snow White’s de-hearting.

Kirsten Stewart as Snow White on a white horse

We get our first glimpse of Kristen Stewart as the grown Snow White in her locked cell getting snatches of sunlight through the window, playing with crudely fashioned toy dolls, and sharing “conversation” with small birds that flit by. She manages to escape via the sewage system into the sea and washes up on a beach where she is led to a clichéd white horse. The horse takes her as far as The Dark Forest, where, for some inexplicable reason, Ravenna’s powers do not work. The horse doesn’t survive, however, and Snow White wanders the forest distraught and disoriented.

Enter Chris Hemsworth as the (definitely alcoholic, possibly Scottish) Huntsman the Queen recruits to fetch Snow White and instead becomes her protector/guide/love interest. The awkward sexual tension between Stewart and Helmsworth manifests in scenes such as his cutting off the muddy tails of her dress, under which she’s already wearing pants. Although he tells her not to flatter herself and aside from the fact that the gesture is completely sexually loaded, it also frees her from some gender-specific dead weight (literally and figuratively). Stewart’s various garment changes somewhat reflect her character’s rather quick transformation from bewildered girl-woman to a self-actualized adult, which, for the most part, occurs in the company of her “protector” menfolk.

Snow White’s “protector” menfolk

After meeting the dwarves who explain to the Huntsman that she is indeed a princess who gives off the essence of “life itself,” Snow White’s childhood friend, William, enters the rotation. Upon learning she’s alive and on-the-run, he volunteers to help hunt her down, then turncoats and joins up with her and the other eight men at her service. A William-Huntsman-Snow White love triangle follows. Snow White and her boyfriends have wandered into a corner of the kingdom where Ravenna can get to them. Ravenna shape-shifts and appears to Snow White as William, her supposed true love, a love that Ravenna tells her will betray her as she tricks her with, yes, a poison apple. The Huntsman and William attempt to kill Ravenna, but she breaks apart into hundreds of ravens (hence, the name Ravenna) that fly back to the castle.

The Queen and her raven nature

What follows is an exquisite scene, possibly the best in the film, where Charlize Theron emerges from a gooey mass of black sludge, half-dead birds flopping around, feathers everywhere, as she returns to her human form, wrinkled, crawling toward her beloved mirror. Unable to get Snow White’s heart, Ravenna must up her human injectible count, so when we see her next, she’s glaring into the golden mirror as dozens of spent dead girls lie at her feet.

Meanwhile, Snow White seems to have kicked it. William tries to revive her with a kiss. Nada. Her body is brought to her loyal subjects so they can mourn their loss. Dressed in a white, almost bridal gown, barefoot, and laid out on a concrete slab, the Huntsman finds her the most beautiful when she is at her most vulnerable (read: female) state in the entire film. In his grief/sexual arousal, the Huntsman cries to that Snow White she reminds him of his dead wife in strength and spirit (ironically). Tears of “true” “love!” The spell is broken! There’s nothing a mostly-dead girl loves more than a man telling her she reminds him of his fully-dead wife! Apologies, William.

Fierce Snow White

Gone is the meek Snow White. She emerges from her death stupor fierce and ready for a good smiting. She rallies her male subjects to join her, screaming, “I will be your weapon!” Next, we see Stewart doing her best Joan of Arc with her hair braided, tied back off her face, atop a white horse. She’s transformed. She’s ready to settle the score with the Queen, yet the Huntsman’s flirtatious remark, “So you’re back from the dead and instigating the masses? You look very fetching in mail,” undercuts her, for lack of a better word, makeover. This flattery has no effect on her. Or, if it is supposed to, we can’t really tell with that one facial expression Stewart so expertly emotes. Should she want to look fetching? What does that say about male gender norms if the Huntsman isn’t threatened but aroused by Snow White’s cross-dressing or her newly-acquired “uppity” nature?

Snow White assumes the throne

As aforementioned, yes, this is a revenge fantasy and it is about to get epically Elektra. What does it mean when one woman storms another woman’s castle? Snow White is leaping through fire in slow motion, taking life after life as her braided ponytail whips through the flames. Strange womb re-entry images come to mind as Snow White penetrates the castle and makes her way its utmost interior where Ravenna awaits her, all hopped up the teenage girl life essence she’s been sucking down. She throws Snow White around the throne room with superhuman strength, until, in what is one of the most anti-climatic scenes, Snow White manages to pierce Ravenna’s heart. Fairest blood spilled for fairest blood. She withers instantly and dies. Snow White in her battle gear is reflected in Ravenna’s golden mirror, truly the fairest of them all. Coronation. Roll credits.

Snow White and the Huntsman is a nominee for Best Costume Design, thanks to the brilliant Colleen Atwood (think almost any Tim Burton film), who has been nominated nine times in the past and won three. Atwood’s breathtaking designs evoke a cold alchemy, a fusion of Norse and Celtic metalwork. Her crow costume, her talon jewelry—Charlize Theron she could not embody the raven in Ravenna without Atwood’s creations.

One does not think “Oscar” without thinking “Charlize Theron.” The woman is undoubtedly a force, having won Best Actress for her portrayal of Aileen Wuornos in 2003’s Monster, in which she looked anything but gorgeous. Theron’s stature and intensity make her Queen Ravenna the most fascinating, complex, twisted, neurotic, tortured, and beguiled “evil” queen to date (Although, Sigourney Weaver’s queen in a 1997 adaptation comes fairly close).

Sadly, whether or not this film is Oscar-worthy, part of its hype is due to Sanders-Stewart . Rupert Sanders, a 41-year-old married man when his first major motion picture debuted, allegedly engaged in some dalliance with Kristen Stewart, some nineteen years his junior. Whether or not anything occurred during filming, photos were taken of the two being friendly beyond the prescribed working relationship. No matter the circumstance, the “other” woman is always to blame. K-Stew, you temptress! Rupert Sanders’s wife is beautiful! They have children! The fact that he cast his wife in the role of Snow White’s mother adds another unsettling layer to the scandal. Sanders’s king paid the ultimate price for his lust, and although Stewart and Pattison are going strong, Sanders himself may not find work easy to come by as talks for further Snow White installments remain open.

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Carleen Tibbetts lives in San Francisco. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Word Riot, Metazen, Monkeybicycle, Coconut Poetry, and other journals.

2013 Oscar Week: ‘Flight’s Unintentional Pro-Woman Message

Written by Lady T.

Denzel Washington in Flight

Flight, directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by John Gatins, has a fascinating lead performance by Denzel Washington and an absolutely harrowing plane crash scene that will make you never want to fly again. It also has a poorly-conceived romance subplot with a character who is not so much a real woman as a distracting trope of a woman inserted to show a different side to the protagonist. No one who is looking for a Bechdel-passing thriller will want to pick up Flight, as there is gratuitous female nudity and few of the female characters are well-developed, to no fault of the capable actresses.

Yet despite the presence of exploitative nudity and poorly written female characters, I found one surprising, perhaps unintentional, feminist message in Flight, in the story involving Katerina Marquez, the female character with the least amount of development and screentime.

Flight opens with the morning after of a sexual encounter between pilot Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington) and flight attendant Katerina Marquez (Nadine Velazquez). (There is female nudity but no male nudity, because of course there is, and the lingering shots on her body are pure male fantasy/objectification.) Based on their brief conversation, we learn that Whip and Katerina seem to like each other well enough, but the sex was definitely on physical attraction and no real emotional connection. We also learn that they drank – a lot – the night before the flight.

Later in the day, the passengers board the flight, Katerina helps them to their seats, and Whip mixes several mini-bottles of vodka into his drink, making it clear that he has a serious problem with alcohol and thinks nothing of how his behavior might affect the safety of the passengers.

When the plane starts to fall apart, though, Whip is an absolute master at the helm, remaining calm and controlled and guiding the plane to safety. Katerina, meanwhile, notices a child passenger who has fallen out of his seat when the plane turned upside down. She unbuckles her own seat belt, crawls to the other side of the plane, and puts the child back in his chair, strapping him back in.

Nadine Velazquez as Katerine Marquez and Tamara Tunie as Margaret Thomason in Flight

This is the moment where I decided that I liked Flight, even if it is a very flawed film from both an artistic and feminist perspective, because the script recognizes that human beings are complex, not completely good or completely evil. Whip and Katerina both drank before the flight (and Whip during, which is even worse), but they’re still both capable of acts of great heroism.

During more turbulence, Katerina falls, breaks her neck, and dies. (A review at Bitch magazine decries this dramatic choice as an example of the “woman who has sex in a horror movie dies first” cliche, which I feel entirely misses the point and is downright insulting to a character who died in the line of duty, saving a kid’s life.) Whip survives, though with many serious injuries.

The rest of the film is focused on Whip’s journey as the controversy surrounding the plane crash is hyped in the media, and he goes under investigation. We learn that Whip’s pilot skills are indeed magnificent, and that he saved 96 out of the 102 passengers on board. At the same time, the script and Washington never let him off the hook for his terrible behavior. As the story unfolds, Whip grows increasingly arrogant, reckless, addicted, and dangerous, repeating over and over again that “they gave him a broken plane,” as though this absolves him from drinking/snorting cocaine while flying.

Whip addressing the press outside his ex-wife’s house

Whip finally attends his National Transportation Safety Board hearing (while drunk and on cocaine), where the lead investigator Ellen Block (played by Melissa Leo) reveals that the cause of the plane crash was a damaged jackscrew in the elevator assembly. The crash is in no way Whip’s fault. Sitting in the hearing, even while drunk and pretending not to be, Whip feels as though he’s in the clear.

Then Block drops an unexpected bomb on his head: the empty vodka bottles were found on the plane. Only the flight crew had access to the alcohol on board, and Katerina Marquez’s toxicology report tested positive for alcohol. She asks Whip if he thinks Katerina drank the vodka.

My stomach twisted in nausea when Block asked this question, because I knew exactly what would happen if Whip let Katerina take the fall for the vodka bottles. The media would go into a frenzy. The story about the broken plane would turn into the story of the drunk slut of a flight attendant whose reckless behavior almost ruined the reputation of a decent man who saved the lives of ninety people. Katerina’s rescue of the child on the plane would go largely unnoticed. The media would tarnish her name, all too eager to sink their claws into another story about a fallen woman.

It would be all too easy for Whip to lie. He’s lied already to everyone around him, including himself. The rest of his career rides on this lie. Katerina’s career won’t be ruined if he lies; she’s already dead. There is nothing to stop him from lying — except his conscience.

Whip right before (eventually) doing the right thing

For whatever reason, Whip can’t lie. When confronted with Katerina’s face, he can’t continue with his charade. After struggling with himself and muttering “God help me” under his breath, he says, “No, Katerina did not drink the vodka…because I drank the vodka.” The consequences are swift: his reputation is ruined, his career is over, and he has to serve time in jail, but his conscience is a little clearer now.

Whip refusing to blame Katerina is not a heroic act on his part; it’s simply Whip taking long-overdue responsibility for his actions. But living in a world that blames women for their own rape and abuse, a world that shames women for stepping outside of their prescribed roles, that punishes mistakes any mistakes women make, that finds excuses for famous athletes who rape women and kill their girlfriends, I felt gratified to see a male character refuse to tarnish a woman’s name, even at personal cost to himself.

Katerina is not a character we get to know very well. She only exists in the plot to serve as a parallel to Whip, and she’s naked for no real reason at the beginning of the film. All the same, I appreciated that the male lead acknowledges Katerina’s humanity and her worth as a person. He acknowledges that she doesn’t deserve to have her reputation dragged through the mud. Even though her character is killed early in the film, she is not treated as disposable, because women do not deserve to be treated as disposable. I’m uncertain that this message was intentional on the part of the team who created Flight, but I’m grateful for it all the same.

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Lady T is a writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com.

2013 Oscar Week: 5 Female-Directed Films That Deserved Oscar Nominations

This article originally appeared on Thought Catalog. You can follow Thought Catalog on Twitter here.

In what’s become something of an unfortunate tradition, James Worsdale applauds the work of five female-directed films who the Academy failed to recognize in its allotment of Best Director nominations, opting to, yet again, bestow the honor to five dudes.

Bigelow and her Oscar

This post is the Groundhog Day of blog posts. This post is a post that I didn’t expect to have to write while watching Seth MacFarlane and Emma Stone announce this year’s crop of directors to receive Oscar nominations. This post is a post that I was nearly CERTAIN I wouldn’t have to write for a third year in a row. But, alas, the nominations for the 85th Academy Awards were announced and not a lady to be found in the director’s category.

This is not due to a dearth of films released in 2012 with female directors, there were plenty of those, though obviously still not as many as male-directed films, but an uptick from 2011. It’s also not due to a lack of quality of the films directed by women, as several female directors received multiple accolades by venerable bodies. What is it due to, then?

Sasha Stone, of Awards Daily, in her “Female Trouble: Why Powerful Women Threaten Hollywood” piece from last month says:

Let’s face it, powerful women just freak everybody the fuck out. Everywhere in general, but especially in Hollywood… Sure, no one ever wants to kick up a fuss about anything. Everyone would prefer we stay in our corners and continue to talk about Anne Hathaway’s cooch and Kate and Will’s baby… the last thing we want to talk about is a systemic breakdown in our glitzy annual pageant, as pathways for female filmmakers are blocked at every turn.

To which I have little more to add other than, “HERE HERE!” And with that, here are five female-directed films released in 2012 that deserved Oscar nominations:

Zero Dark Thirty, Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Perhaps the most egregious of omissions, or at least the one that’s garnering the strongest reactions, Bigelow’s absence from the big list, in spite of having been nominated for a Golden Globe, a DGA Award, a BAFTA award, among others, not to mention being the only woman to ever win an Oscar for Best Director, was a shocker. The question of whether the politics of her film were her demise remains, or maybe the Academy opted out of her as a choice because of this year’s presence of the reassuring and uplifting over the darkly complex. But with a nomination in Best Picture, Best Editing, Best Screenplay and a Best Actress nod to boot, you have to wonder why.

Middle of Nowhere, Directed by Ava DuVernay

The complicated characters in DuVernay’s film reflect the confusion and compromise that comes from teetering between two planes, two worlds. These characters are real and DuVernay’s writing gives these gifted actors room to breathe within their roles without the constrictions of stereotype and instead with the liberty of nuance. DuVernay was the first black woman to take home the Best Director honor at Sundance with this film and many thought that the film had legs to make it to the greater award circuit. Though with the positions DuVernay has articulated in the past, she understands and takes pride in this film being a truly independent project and the structural limitations in narratives about people of color being received in those circles.

The Queen of Versailles, Directed by Lauren Greenfield

A documentary that centers around billionaire couple David and Jaqueline Siegel and their family as the crashing of the financial markets leaves them broke and living in an excessively opulent mansion inspired by Versailles sounds sympathetic and relatable right? Well Greenfield’s documentary takes a reprehensible family and actualizes them as real people while still being able to represent them as symbols of the thoughtless decadence of American life. By the film’s end, you don’t like these people, you hate them, in fact, but you recognize them, worry for them, and worry for us.

Take This Waltz, Directed by Sarah Polley

A love triangle with an apprehensive and restless heroine who destroys herself by defining herself through her relationships with men, Polley’s premise may seem hackneyed but it plays out poetically and ends up elating you in blissful confusion. Similarly to Middle of Nowhere, it deals with issues of liminality through a relatable yet distinctive tale. It also really pays homage to the legacy of Leonard Cohen and gives a picturesque view of Montreal. Polley has an Oscar nom already for her writing of Away From Her and her innovative documentary, Stories We Tell, recently shown at Venice, has been getting a lot of great buzz as well.

Your Sister’s Sister, Directed by Lynn Shelton

Shelton is one of the pioneers of the Mumblecore genre, a label many of the directors associated with it, including Judd Apatow, Mark & Jay Duplass, don’t necessarily embrace or, more accurately, don’t necessarily pay attention to. The style is very naturalistic and low-budget. Shelton takes this aesthetic and tells outlandish tales through it in a way that is both hilarious and credible. In this film, Jack, who has fallen into a depression following the death of his brother, takes his friend Iris’s offer to stay in her family’s cabin in the country. Upon his arrival, Iris’s sister Hannah, a lesbian, is also unexpectedly present and nursing a depression herself. A drunken hookup between Jack and Hannah sparks a catharsis of sorts for the three of them, forcing them to confront latent and suppressed emotions. Shelton’s funny and original script in conjunction with her unique style of working with actors makes for a film grounded in verisimilitude but not lacking in entertainment value.

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James Worsdale is a local government employee who lives in Durham, NC. He is a regular contributor on women and film to Canonball.

2013 Oscar Week: Acting Up: A Review of ‘How to Survive a Plague’

Guest post written by Diana Suber.

At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, I was a child and only vaguely aware of the crisis as hundreds of people, mostly young gay men at that time, were dying from an unknown virus with no cure in sight. As a teen in the late eighties and early nineties, I do remember seeing the “Silence = Death” posters, t-shirts, and buttons with the iconic pink triangle, but I realize now that I did not know the full scope of what it all meant. So I was intrigued to watch the documentary How to Survive a Plague directed by journalist David France. Nominated this year for an Oscar in the Best Documentary Feature category, How to Survive a Plague chronicles the organization ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and its offshoot TAG (Treatment Action Group) from 1987 to 1996 and these organizations’ dedicated efforts to pressure the United States government and other authorities to prioritize HIV/AIDS research and treatment and to approach the epidemic as a healthcare emergency and not merely an isolated scourge among homosexual men.

“Silence = Death”

The principal setting of the film is Greenwich Village, New York, considered to be “ground zero” of the HIV/AIDS activist movement, where activists meet to organize, having been motivated to stop their friends, family members, lovers, and themselves from dying. The film is rich in archival footage of ACT UP and TAG meetings, protests against the federal and local government and various agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and interviews with ACT UP and TAG activists at the forefront of the movement, including Peter Staley, Mark Harrington, and David Barr, just to name a few. Many of the activists featured in the film are white gay men; yet almost all of them attributed the long-term success of the movement to Dr. Iris Long, a straight woman and chemist, who gave the activists a crash course in drug testing protocols and working through the FDA/NIH bureaucracy. Other women activists featured in the film include Garance Franke-Ruta, Ann Northrop, and Dr. Ellen Cooper.

Director David France, who was a journalist at the time these events were unfolding, has said that his goal as a journalist and then as a filmmaker was to bear witness. Consequently, the film is a very detailed account of the power of grassroots activism. Not only did these activists–gay and straight, young and old, male and female, healthy and dying–use protest in the streets as a means of garnering attention to what activist and playwright Larry Kramer described as a plague that was killing hundreds of thousands, but they educated themselves and became experts on medical research, experts at navigating the bureaucracy of drug testing and drug approval protocols, experts on creating policies for the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients, experts at wrangling the media, and experts at placing pressure on key decision-makers in the FDA and NIH. The activists also partnered with and prodded drug companies to find and manufacture drugs to treat the disease. In fact, ACT UP and TAG’s open dialogue with scientists at pharmaceutical companies like Merck & Co. ultimately lead to the discovery of the combinations of protease inhibitors which have stopped HIV/AIDS from being a death sentence.

Although the movement was very successful, it was not without its drawbacks. Activists interviewed stated great disappointment when drugs for which they had advocated for and invested much time and resources did not ultimately work on the virus or its symptoms. Many activists did not survive to see the fruits of their labor realized. Indeed, a very poignant part of the film is when activists march to the White House, occupied at that time by President George H. W. Bush, and dump the ashes of their loved-ones on the lawn while yelling “Shame!” The documentary also explores some of the internal politics and strife that occurred within ACT-UP over the years as personalities clashed over the direction and focus of the movement. This strife led to a segment of ACT-UP leadership breaking off and forming TAG. Fortunately, neither organization allowed politics to derail their existence or the ultimate goal.

To his credit, France tempers the emotional frustration and urgency that permeates the film with moments of humor. One of my favorite scenes was footage of TAG activists placing a giant condom over the home of the late Senator Jesse Helms. And as I watched other archival footage of protesters with signs saying “Healthcare is a Right” scrolling across the screen, I was struck by how much the echoes of the past tend to reverberate in the present. The activists featured in this film — through their tireless work, their courage, and their deafening lack of silence — saved millions of lives. (The film states that more than 6 million lives have been saved since 1996 when the three-drug combination of protease inhibitors was identified as a viable treatment). But the fight is not over because there is still no cure for HIV/AIDS, the virus is still spreading worldwide especially among communities of color, and millions of people cannot afford and/or have no access to the life-prolonging drugs that are now available. And so the greatest take-away from How to Survive a Plague is the knowledge that silence is still not an option.

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Diana Suber is a movie-loving lawyer who lives in Atlanta. She writes movie reviews and other thoughts on film at her blog http://www.atlflickchick.com/.

2013 Oscar Week: ‘Brave’ and the Legacy of Female Prepubescent Power Fantasies

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.

I liked Disney Pixar’s Brave well enough. It’s pretty enough. It’s a story about a mother and daughter, and there was no romance, both of which are nice; though, as I’ll show, neither are as uncommon as they might initially appear. I didn’t find the feminist qualities of this movie to be particularly impressive. Brave is actually situated within a somewhat prolific trope of female prepubescent power fantasy tales. Within this trope, young girls are allowed and even encouraged to be strong, assertive, creative, and heroes of their own stories. I call them “feminism lite” because these characters are only afforded this power because they are girl children who are unthreatening in their prepubescent, pre-sexualized state.

Let’s consider a few examples.

First, we’ve got Matilda, a film based on the eponymous novel by Roald Dahl. This story is about a genius six-year-old girl who realizes she has telekinetic powers. Matilda is brave and kind to those who deserve it and punishes authority figures who take advantage of their positions of power. This story, similar to Brave, is about the budding (surrogate) mother/daughter relationship between Matilda and her kindergarten teacher, Miss Honey. They find idyllic happiness at the end of the film when they adopt each other to form their own little family.

“I can feel the strongness. I feel like I can move almost anything in the world.” – Matilda

Then there’s Harriet the Spy, based on the book by Louise Fitzhugh, about an inquisitive, imaginative girl who learns the power of her voice and how her words affect others. Another potent mother/daughter bond is featured between Harriet and her nanny, Golly.

“You’re an individual, and that makes people nervous. And it’s gonna keep making people nervous for the rest of your life.” – Golly

We can’t forget Pippi Longstocking, based on the book series by Astrid Lindgren. Pippi is independent and adventurous with a slew of fantastical stories. She also has incredible physical strength, exotic pets, and teaches her friends Tommy and Annika that just because the trio are children, doesn’t mean experiences and desires should be denied them.

“I’m Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Longstocking, daughter of Captain Efraim Longstocking, Pippi for short.” – Pippi

There’s also Whale Rider based on the book by Witi Ihimaera. Pai is a determined young girl who wants to become the chief of her Māori tribe, but that is forbidden because she’s a girl. With wisdom and vision, Pai strives to unite and lead her people into the future. She is dedicated, stubborn and perseveres, showing she has the uncanny spiritual ability to speak with (and ride) whales.

“My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs…I know that our people will keep going forward, all together, with all of our strength.” – Pai

One of my personal favorites is Pan’s Labyrinth (or El Labertino del Fauno meaning “The Labyrinth of the Faun” in Spanish). Interestingly, Pan’s Labyrinth is the first on our list that wasn’t based on a book, as it was written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. The film takes place in post Civil War Spain with young Ofelia as our heroine. She is forced to live with her fascist captain stepfather who hunts down rebels while her mother languishes in a difficult pregnancy. Totally isolated, Ofelia retreats into a dark fantasy world replete with fairies, fauns, and child-eating monsters. In this world (that may or may not truly exist), she is a long-lost immortal underworld princess trying to make her way home. Throughout the tale, Ofelia forms a strong connection with Merecedes, a kitchen maid who is not only secretly a rebel spy, but is brave and crazy badass. Ofelia is intelligent, defiant, loyal, and ultimately self-sacrificing.

“Hello. I am Princess Moanna, and I am not afraid of you.” – Ofelia

All of these stories validate young female agency because all these girls are prepubescent. They are too young and too physically underdeveloped to be objectified or vilified for their sexuality. There are tales that continue to advocate for the empowerment of their slightly older heroines despite their budding sexuality. These are pseudo coming-of-age films. I say “pseudo” here because the main characters don’t actually become sexual beings.

A great contemporary example of a pseudo coming-of-age tale is the action-thriller Hanna, starring the talented Saoirse Ronan as a 14-year-old CIA experiment with enhanced DNA to make her the optimal weapon. She is trained in arctic isolation and is therefore unsocialized and unschooled in the ways of the world. Most of the film centers around her mission to kill Cate Blanchett’s evil CIA agent character, Marissa. However, there is an interlude when Hanna befriends brash young Sophie who is eager to grow up. The two sneak out and go dancing, and a boy kisses Hanna. Our young heroine is at first intrigued and even enraptured by the experience, but she ends up knocking the boy to the ground and nearly breaking his neck. Later, there is also sexual tension between Hanna and Sophie as the two lie next to each other in a tent, falling asleep, but nothing comes of it. These are examples of Hanna’s awakening sexuality, which the film insinuates may ultimately be terrifying in its power and lack of boundaries. Hanna, though, is still young and chooses her father and his indoctrination over her own self-discovery.

“Kissing requires a total of thirty-four facial muscles.” – Hanna

Not to forget Jim Hanson’s classic Labyrinth starring Jennifer Connelly as Sarah, a teenager who is enthralled by the fantasy of the Labyrinth along with its alluring goblin king, Jereth (aka David Bowie in an impressive Tina Turner mullet wig). Sarah withdraws from her family, yearning for adventure and romance while hating her obligation to babysit her “screaming baby” brother, Toby, so she calls on the goblin king to take the boy away. She then spends the rest of the movie trying to get the toddler back. Jareth attempts to seduce her into forgetting the child and being his goblin queen, which is what Sarah initially wanted, but, in the end, she chooses her family and fantastical goblin friends over love, romance, and her sexuality. When she says to her goblin friends, “I need you; I need you all,” she is affirming that she’s not ready for adulthood and wants to remain a child a bit longer. Her intact innocence is what allows her to be uncomplicatedly triumphant, to assert her equality with and independence from Jareth.

“For my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great. You have no power over me!” – Sarah

To be empowered, all the aforementioned heroines must remain perpetually young, fixed forever in their prepubescent state within the reels of their films. Once our heroines become sexual teens, their power is overwhelmingly defined by their sexuality, and/or their worth is determined by their body’s objectification. In fact, many of these tales are no longer fantasies, but horror movies (or movies that have horror qualities) that demonize female sexual awakenings.

I don’t even want to disgrace the hallowed web pages of Bitch Flicks with an obvious account of the worthless Twilight series that equates female sexuality with death and advocates teen pregnancy over reproductive rights. However, Bella is a prime example of a young woman whose own self-value is dependent on how the male characters view her. She is the apex of a noxious love triangle, and her desirability defines her, creating the entire basis of the poorly acted, poorly produced saga.

“It’s like diamonds…you’re beautiful.” – Bella re: Edward’s sparkly skin. Gag, Puke, Retch

Ginger Snaps clearly fits the mold of the vilification of budding female sexuality. Ginger gets her period for the first time and is therefore attacked by a werewolf. The attack has rape connotations, implying that Ginger wouldn’t have been as enticing to the wolf if she weren’t yet sexual, especially since her mousy sister Brigitte is spared. Ginger goes through a series of changes, becoming sexually aggressive and promiscuous. When she has unprotected sex with a boy, turning him into a werewolf, this further underscores the connection between Ginger’s monstrous lycanthropy and her unchecked sexuality. There’s also a great deal of sexual tension between Ginger and her sister, Brigitte, suggesting that her sexuality is boundless and therefore frightening.

“I get this ache…and I, I thought it was for sex, but it’s to tear everything to fucking pieces.” – Ginger

Lastly, we have the pseudo-feminist film Teeth about a young girl who grows teeth on her vagina (vagina dentata style). Our teenage heroine, Dawn, is in one of those Christian abstinence/purity clubs, and everything is fine until she becomes attracted to and makes out with a boy. The film punishes her for her newfound sexuality and mocks her abstinence vow by having the boy rape her. Dawn’s vagina then bites off his penis. Over the course of the movie, Dawn is essentially sexually assaulted four times. Four times. She is degraded from the beginning of the film to the very end. Her supposedly empowerful teeth-laden vagina is a dubious gift, considering she generally must be raped in order to use it. Instead of focusing on the power of her sexuality and the awesome choice she has of whether or not to wield it, the film victimizes her at every corner, undercutting her potential strength and sexual agency.

“The way [the ring] wraps around your finger, that’s to remind you to keep your gift wrapped until the day you trade it in for that other ring. That gold ring.” – Dawn

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. There may be exceptions, but my brain has a fairly to moderately comprehensive catalog of films, especially those starring strong female characters. Scanning…scanning…file not found. If I, who actively seek out films that use integrity in their depictions of kickass women, can’t think of many, how is the casual viewer to find them? How is the teenage girl coming into her sexuality while facing negativity and recriminations supposed to see herself portrayed in a light that gives her the opportunity to be nuanced, to be smart and brave, to be independent or to be a leader?

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Race and the Academy: Black Characters, Stories, and the Danger of Django

“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” – W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

Written by Leigh Kolb

When I first wrote about Django Unchained, I focused on the power of Django’s story, and how Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) and Quentin Tarantino give Django the “white access” he needs to get into Candyland and into movie theaters.

I was excited and hopeful about what the film could symbolize on a grand scale, that a revenge-fantasy that shows the horrors of slavery and has a Black protagonist who overtakes his oppressors was a box office hit and was set to receive numerous award nominations.

My excitement was short-lived. Jamie Foxx (Django) and Samuel L. Jackson (Stephen) were shut out of acting categories for both the Golden Globes and Academy Awards.

While their co-stars are completely deserving of recognition for incredible acting (Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio were nominated for Golden Globes and Waltz for an Academy Award–Waltz won both), Foxx’s lack of nominations is symptomatic of a larger Hollywood problem–not only whose stories audiences see, but also whose stories get awards.

When Tarantino understandably felt uncomfortable with the thought of filming scenes of a slave auction and brutality against slaves, he struggled with not wanting to film those scenes in the American south. He sought advice from Sidney Poitier (the first African American to win a Best Actor Oscar). His response:

“‘Sidney basically told me to man up,’ Tarantino says. ‘He said, ‘Quentin, for whatever reason, you’ve been inspired to make this film. You can’t be afraid of your own movie. You must treat them like actors, not property. If you do that, you’ll be fine.'”

Overall, Tarantino was fine. His Black actors, however, were not recognized for their performances (this was reminiscent of his 1997 film Jackie Brown, which received Golden Globe nods for Samuel L. Jackson and the title character, Pam Grier, but only received an acting Academy Award nomination for white co-star Robert Forster).

In an Oscar year that feature films that deal with race (The New York Times recently published an excellent article examining race and the roles of Black men in this year’s Oscar contenders), the acting awards nominations are startlingly white (Denzel Washington and Quvenzhané Wallis being the exceptions).

I want to focus mostly on the Black actors and actresses who have won Academy Awards, the plots of the films they were in (synopses from imdb.com) and their character descriptions. I know that this topic is complex and demands analysis far beyond this, but a brief reflection shows a pattern.

[Warning: spoilers ahead!]

Lilies of the Field (1963, Sidney Poitier, Best Actor): An unemployed construction worker (Homer Smith) heading out west stops at a remote farm in the desert to get water when his car overheats. The farm is being worked by a group of East European Catholic nuns, headed by the strict mother superior (Mother Maria), who believes that Homer has been sent by God to build a much needed church in the desert.

– Homer Smith: handyman who provides unpaid labor to a group of nuns

Training Day (2001, Denzel Washington, Best Actor): On his first day on the job as a narcotics officer, a rookie cop works with a rogue detective who isn’t what he appears.

– Alonzo Harris: crooked narcotics officer, killed at the end

Monster’s Ball (2001, Halle Berry, Best Actress): After a family tragedy, a racist prison guard reexamines his attitudes while falling in love with the African-American wife of the last prisoner he executed.

– Leticia Musgrove: struggling single mother, incarcerated husband, object of lust for racist cop

Ray (2004, Jamie Foxx, Best Actor): The life and career of the legendary popular music pianist, Ray Charles.

– Ray Charles: blind man overcomes odds, becomes music legend

The Last King of Scotland (2006, Forest Whitaker, Best Actor): Based on the events of the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s regime as seen by his personal physician during the 1970s.

– Idi Amin: Ugandan president, evil, hundreds of thousands died under his regime

Flight (2012, Denzel Washington, Best Actor – pending): An airline pilot saves a flight from crashing, but an investigation into the malfunctions reveals something troubling.
– William “Whip” Whitaker: alcoholic, drug-addict pilot, ends up incarcerated

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012, Quvenzhané Wallis, Best Actress – pending): Faced with both her hot-tempered father’s fading health and melting ice-caps that flood her ramshackle bayou community and unleash ancient aurochs, six-year-old Hushpuppy must learn the ways of courage and love.

– Hushpuppy: precocious five-year-old girl living in poverty with a dying, abusive father

An Officer and a Gentleman (1982, Louis Gossett, Jr., Best Supporting Actor): A young man must complete his work at a Navy Flight school to become an aviator, with the help of a tough gunnery sergeant and his new girlfriend.

– Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley: rigid drill instructor, trains protagonist

Gone With the Wind (1939, Hattie McDaniel, Best Supporting Actress): American classic in which a manipulative woman and a roguish man carry on a turbulent love affair in the American south during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

– Mammy: “outspoken handmaid”

Glory (1989, Denzel Washington, Best Supporting Actor): Robert Gould Shaw leads the US Civil War’s first all-Black volunteer company, fighting prejudices of both his own Union army and the Confederates.

– Pvt. Trip: escaped slave, dies fighting

Ghost (1990, Whoopi Goldberg, Best Supporting Actress): After being killed during a botched mugging, a man’s love for his partner enables him to remain on earth as a ghost.

– Oda Mae Brown: con artist/psychic, “confidence trickster”

Jerry Maguire (1996, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Best Supporting Actor): When a sports agent has a moral epiphany and is fired for expressing it, he decides to put his new philosophy to the test as an independent with the only athlete who stays with him.

– Rod Tidwell: football player

Million Dollar Baby (2004, Morgan Freeman, Best Supporting Actor): A determined woman works with a hardened boxing trainer to become a professional.

– Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris: narrator, retired boxer, employee at gym

Dreamgirls (2006, Jennifer Hudson, Best Supporting Actress): Based on the Broadway musical, a trio of Black female soul singers cross over to the pop charts in the early 1960s.

– Effie White: lead singer of the Dreamettes until she gets forced out of the group, becomes an “impoverished welfare mother”

Precious (2009, Mo’Nique, Best Supporting Actress): In New York City’s Harlem circa 1987, an overweight, abused, illiterate teen who is pregnant with her second child is invited to enroll in an alternative school in hopes that her life can head in a new direction.

– Mary Lee Johnston: unemployed, abusive (sexually, physically and emotionally), scams government for more welfare

The Help (2011, Octavia Spencer, Best Supporting Actress): An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African-American maids’ point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis.

– Minny Jackson: outspoken, difficult maid; good cook

Of the four Black men who have won Best Actor Oscars, two are in powerful positions of authority and are evil (they serve as foils to their noble white co-stars), one provides free labor (let that sink in), and the other is a musician. The Black Best Supporting Actor winners quite literally support white protagonists.

The Black female actresses’ winning roles are even more troubling. None of them really has independent agency, except for maybe Hushpuppy–who is a child (she’s also not expected to win). Otherwise the list is full of maids, single mothers on welfare, and one trickster con artist. It felt horrible to even type that.

These characters are comfortable and safe to white audiences. If the character seems unsafe to white audiences, he or she is punished. Last year, the LA Times released a study that Oscar voters were 94 percent white and 77 percent male. Certainly this affects the Academy’s choices.

Now let’s look at the plot synopsis for Django Unchained.

Django Unchained: With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.

– Django Freeman: trained, violent bounty hunter, whips and kills white people, burns down a plantation

One of these things is not like the others.

Django Unchained ends with a triumphant Black couple who have gained their revenge, freedom, and love. Think about how vastly different that ending is than those that are provided to Black characters in the films above. Many white couples and individuals end those films successfully, with complex story arcs that show their agency and growth.

When W.E.B. Du Bois discusses the “double consciousness” of seeing oneself “through the eyes of others,” he could very well be talking about modern-day Hollywood. He saw the world looking at African Americans with “amused contempt and pity,” and it’s hard to look at that list of Academy Award winners and not come to that same conclusion.

Meanwhile, Lincoln has been nominated in three out of the four major acting categories (all white actors). This is a film about abolishing slavery from a totally white and white-washed perspective (the omission of Frederick Douglass is unbelievable).

Whose stories get told? Whose stories get accolades?

It’s pretty clear. The Academy (94 percent white and 77 percent male) values stories that reflect their privileged consciousness and reinforce the Black double-consciousness that Du Bois was attempting to push through over 100 years ago.

Those chains, it seems, remain unbroken.

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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.