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Documentary Preview: Women in the Dirt

Directed and produced by Carolann Stoney.
Okay, this documentary just looks cool.
Women in the Dirt is a new film that showcases seven landscape architects in California: Cheryl Barton, Andrea Cochran, Isabelle Greene, Mia Lehrer, Lauren Melendrez, Pamela Palmer, and Katherine Spitz. 
From the Web site: “Through conversations with the landscape architects in their offices, or in the stunning spaces they’ve designed, the film explores each woman’s personal aesthetics and approach to their discipline. Women in the Dirt shows how these ‘masters of the obvious’ create the sublime.”
An excerpt from a review by Lydia Schrufer:
Women in the Dirt reveals landscape architecture’s unique status as a modern profession founded by both men and women. This history is graciously deepened by vignettes of seven contemporary women landscape architects. Director Carolann Stoney has selected top landscape architects whose contributions to American landscapes will now receive their due. ‘Just as anyone can enjoy histories of women artists, Women in the Dirt is gendered in its subject, but not its audience,’ observes Katie Kingery-Page, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at Kansas State University.

The above is only one of many testimonials to which I wholeheartedly add my own; kudos to Carolann Stoney for an aesthetically challenging, thought-provoking, beautiful film.

Urban Gardens featured the film on their site back in January:

Women, the film demonstrates, are influencing the profession of landscape architecture more today than ever before. Though each of the landscape architects featured has a unique body of work, ‘their concerns overlap in the realm of sustainability and enduring design.’

By shaping our lives, transforming our cities, and nourishing the environment, landscape architecture, as the film shows, is more than the ‘simple arrangement of plants and flowers for corporate spaces and the gardens of rich people.’

The press photos on the site are breathtaking–definitely check them out. While the film appears to be screening in theaters, you can also purchase the DVD here.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Rom-Coms Don’t Suck

This cross-post from Amanda Krauss previously appeared at Risatrix.
Romantic comedies have existed for literally thousands of years; the same historical genre, comoedia, is also responsible for today’s sitcoms.
But romantic comedies, especially, have suffered a great deal in the last few decades. These supposed “chick” flicks (male-authored for millennia, and still mostly male-created) get ridiculously low scores on MetaCritic and Rotten Tomatoes. Meanwhile, most “guy” comedies (e.g. an Apatow joint) or action flicks get decent scores, seemingly without even trying.
This is pure and simple sexism. You sure as hell can’t defend action flicks on aesthetic grounds. And any reviewer who accuses a rom-com of being predictable should have their license revoked — of course it’s predictable. So was that action flick, by the way. Oh, didn’t you see it coming that the hero dude was going to save the world? I did.
Unless you’re watching Memento, you just have to accept that most genres are predictable. It’s about execution, not form, but with screwball comedies and rom-coms there’s a general critical consensus that it’s OK to bash them for being exactly what they are (i.e. a set genre with predictable rules). That really pisses me off. Okay, Mr./Mrs. Critic, maybe you’d rather go see a revival of Metropolis at your local arthouse. But right now you’re being paid to review this movie, so don’t be a whiny beyotch about it.
And “guy” comedies (e.g. Knocked Up, Superbad, I Love You, Man) are exactly the same, predictable genre. I’ll even grant you that they’re technically funnier, mostly because the quantity and transgressiveness of the jokes is greater. There’s a complicated set of reasons for this, involving gender, comedy, and socialization. But suffice to say that gendering rom-coms as “chick” entertainment is a relatively recent phenomena and that we’re all socialized to think women are less funny, so I’d really appreciate it if critics would take a little step back when they did their sexist stuff.
Anyway. The generic point of comoedia is integration, no matter how many jokes are made in the middle. That’s why they’re predictable, and that’s, in fact, why they’re comedies.
So can we please stop all the whining about it?
Amanda Krauss is a former professor and current writer/speaker/humor theorist. From 2005-2010 she taught courses on gender, culture, and the history of comedy at Vanderbilt University, and in 2010 was invited to present a course entitled “Humor, Ancient to Modern” at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. While she is focusing on her current blog (Worst Professor Ever, which satirically chronicles issues of education and lifelong learning) some of her theoretical archives can be found at risatrix.com.

Tropes vs. Women Spotlight

Anita Sarkeesian of the Web site Feminist Frequency, a site that analyzes pop culture from a feminist perspective, recently completed her fabulous, six-part video series on Tropes vs. Women. She explains that, “A trope is a common pattern in a story or a recognizable attribute in a character that conveys information to the audience. A trope becomes a cliche when it’s overused. Sadly, some of these tropes often perpetuate offensive stereotypes.”

I highly recommend watching each of these six videos. Sarkeesian possesses a strong ability to analyze often complicated issues regarding gender roles and the representations of women in film and television, and she breaks things down into more easily understandable ideas. The run time of each video is between five and ten minutes, with many television and movie clips incorporated as examples for the particular trope she’s highlighting. They helped me! Go watch them!

Definition: “The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a cute, bubbly, young (usually white) woman who has recently entered the life of our brooding hero to teach him how to loosen up and enjoy life. While that might sound all well and good for the man, this trope leaves women as simply there to support the star on his journey of self discovery with no real life of her own.”
Example: “You might remember Zooey Deschanel in 500 Days of Summer, the non-committing love interest of the film’s star, Tom Hansen, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The story follows Tom on his journey of falling in and out of love with Summer Finn. They have the classic Manic Pixie Dream Girl scene where they are frolicking around in the world, and the Manic Pixie teaches the uptight star how to embrace his inner child.” [accompanied by film clip]
Definition: “Women in Refrigerators is a trope identified by comic book fan (and now comic book writer) Gail Simone because she was sick of seeing “superheroines who have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator.”
Example: “While the Women in Refrigerators trope originated in the comic book genre, it can be applied across other pop culture mediums, such as video games, TV shows, and movies. For example, Libby and Shannon on Lost were murdered specifically to push the story arc of two male characters. Or how about all of these women from Heroes who were depicted as losing or being unable to control their powers.”
Definition: “The Smurfette Principle was named two decades ago by Katha Pollitt, when she noticed that there were a disproportionate amount of male characters in programming aimed at young people. Even in adult programming, when women do appear in the primary cast of a television show or movie, they are usually alone in a group of men. Sadly, this trope has made its way into the 21st century.”
Example: “Down in the 100-acre woods, we follow the adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Rabbit, Piglet, Eeyore, Owl, and Tiger–all dudes of course; in fact, there’s only one female character, Kanga, who shows up occasionally as the mother of little Roo. Even Jim Hensen didn’t seem too keen on the women; alongside Kermit, Gonzo, and Fozzie the Bear, Miss Piggy was the only female muppet. We can even see The Smurfette Principal outside of programming aimed at young people. So, for example, you have George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy, where Princess Leia is the only principle female character in the entire galactic empire.”

Definition: “The Evil Demon Seductress is a supernatural creature–usually a demon, alien, robot, vampire, etc.–who is most often disguised as a sexy human female. She uses her sexuality and sexual wiles to manipulate, seduce, kill, and often eat, poor, hapless men by luring them into her evil web.”
Example: “In Star Trek: First Contact, we have the Borg Queen trying to seduce Data. Keanu Reeves is taken advantage of by the Brides of Dracula. And then some years later, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Giles meets these three sisters. In the science fiction show, Farscape, there’s the villain, Grayza, with her enchanting body sweat. There are the evil mermaids in Pirates of the Caribbean 4. And Mystique in X-Men often fulfills this trope.”

Definition: “The Mystical Pregnancy is a trope writers use to create drama and terror by invading, violating, and exploiting women’s reproductive capabilities. Often these female characters have their ovaries harvested by aliens or serve as human incubators for demon spawn. Sometimes, they are carrying the Messiah, and other times Satan himself.”
Example: “Remember back in the mid-90s on the X-Files when FBI Agent Dana Scully found herself abducted and forcibly impregnated, which, of course, later culminated in a hybrid human-alien child? More recently, on the second season of Battlestar Galactica, Starbuck had her ovaries harvested by the cyclons in an attempt to create human-cyclon embryos. Then we have Gwen Cooper, co-star of the Doctor Who spinoff, Torchwood, who is bitten by an alien one night, and the next morning she wakes up to find herself extremely pregnant with the alien’s spawn.”

Definition: “In television and movies, The Straw Feminist works by deliberately creating an exaggerated caricature of a feminist, which writers then fill with a bunch of oversimplifications, misrepresentations, and stereotypes to try to make it easy to discredit or delegitimize feminism. The goal is to make feminists and our movements look completely ridiculous, over the top, and unnecessary.”
Example: “The Straw Feminist trope is taken to a whole new level in adult animation shows such as South Park or Family Guy. In the episode, “I Am Peter, Hear Me Roar,” the Family Guy writers took a stab at feminist attorney Gloria Allred. Allred is known for taking on high-profile cases defending women who have been assaulted or harassed. In this attack, the Family Guy writers created a character coincidentally named Gloria Ironbox, who brainwashes Peter into thinking he is a woman after he’s accused of sexual assault. The emasculation and feminization of Peter–and his sudden transformation into a feminist–is played for laughs.”

This six-part video series also appeared at Bitch Magazine, and the comment threads–both at Bitch and at Feminist Frequency–always offer excellent discussions of the videos.

Ripley’s Rebuke: ‘Whitney’ versus Whitney

Even the promo shots for Whitney attempt retro, but come off as regressive.

After the season premiere of Parks and Recreation (Knope 2012!) and The Office last Thursday night, I left the TV on and caught the series premiere of Whitney, the new sitcom created by and starring comic Whitney Cummings.
I was first taken aback by the retro format of Whitney: it had a laugh track. To be more accurate, the show is taped in front of a live studio audience, but the frequency and monotonous tone of the laughter reminded me of nothing but a LAUGH sign flashing in front of the audience, and everyone there dutifully following the director’s cue.
What was far worse than the studio audience laugh track was the actual content of the show. Before I start sounding like a hater–a comedy created by and starring a woman is progress, right?!–let me say that I do sincerely hope the show gets better. Much, much better, and quick, or else I fear it may be canceled. Which may or may not be a good thing.
Warning: there are spoilers here if you haven’t seen the pilot yet, but I’m not going to ruin anything good, I promise.
Here’s the basic premise of the pilot: Whitney and her long-term boyfriend live together, and we see that familiarity in their relationship (she shaves her upper lip in front of him) has put a damper on their sex life. She tries “Spicing Things Up” (the title of the episode) with a little role playing. She finds a naughty nurse costume and, when the intended ravaging doesn’t take place, spends the rest of the episode still wearing the costume. Some other things happen, physical comedy, conversations between women in which other women are bashed, blah blah blah.
The show is a run of cliches. The episode kicks off with a wedding. The romance is gone between Whitney and her man, and it’s up to her to excite him (lest he run out and get it somewhere else, which is immediately presented as an option for him). A black woman appears as an emergency room nurse and is deemed “scary” by the star. A racist mother is played for laughs and deemed “eccentric.” There’s a joke about online stalking. And blackface.
The race fail cannot be ignored and is, unfortunately, par for the course on network television. Whitney is another show focusing on privileged white people, with a minority character or two thrown in for ‘flavor,’ but not featuring a person of color as a major character. The repetition of this scenario in show after show reminds us that institutional racism is far from a thing of the past.
There’s a lot more I could say on the previous point, but I want to focus on the contradictions of a show created by and starring a woman that participates in misogyny and sexism. Romance fades in relationships and people try to bring it back, and there’s ample room for comedy in that scenario. What bothers me most about the pilot of Whitney is that she wears the nurse costume for the entire second half of the episode, after taking her boyfriend to the hospital (I won’t tell you why he goes–it was the only thing that made me laugh). Was it to keep men watching the show? “Oh, we’ll trick MEN into watching by keeping the star in a humiliating skimpy costume! Brilliant! Hahahaha!” Was is supposed to be funny, showing us how silly and hapless Whitney is? It wasn’t funny, it was distracting. All I kept thinking was how I’d at least throw some sweatpants on before leaving the house. 
This self-objectification (assuming Cummings has creative power in her show and chose to wear the costume) is nothing but enlightened sexism and does not, as the episode would likely have us believe, show that we’re post-feminist. Self-objectification is still objectification. Even if Whitney took the lead in going out to find a costume for role-playing, her body is on display–even if it’s part of a joke–for viewers to consume.
But here’s the kicker. The content of the pilot directly comes from Cummings’ standup–except it reverses her comedy. Here’s a clip of her bit on role playing, and how ridiculous it is for women to wear costumes to please men (warning: not safe for work):



Here, Cummings makes fun of the concept of role playing, whereas her character in the show willingly participates in it. I wonder if this reversal  is supposed to show us how clueless the character Whitney is, how unenlightened she is, how willing to demean herself. This kind reading (giving the show the benefit of the doubt, hoping that it’s not THAT blatantly misogynist) doesn’t do the show any favors, either. Sure, take a cliche as the premise–but turn it on its head. Make us want to watch. Do something different.

I can’t say I have high hopes for the show to improve. Visit the show’s official website, and you’re greeted with a large picture of Cummings, with an open-mouthed smile, and if you click to another page, you’re greeted with more open-mouthed pictures. You can watch the full pilot here,  if you’re interested in seeing a scantily-clad skinny white woman be objectified/objectify herself while failing to be funny. 

Isn’t it time to move beyond this type of depiction of women? It’s not funny, and I won’t watch again.



I Don’t Know How She Does It: Most Misogynistic Film Reviews Ever

 
I Don’t Know How She Does It, starring Sarah Jessica Parker
I have no doubt that the recently released romantic comedy I Don’t Know How She Does It, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, reeks of the same sexist and misogynistic tropes that exist in most romantic comedies. However, the film probably at least attempts to make a complicated argument regarding how women with high-powered careers and a family struggle to balance both of them, especially in a society that still doesn’t offer pay equity, doesn’t insist on equal sharing of responsibilities in the domestic sphere (as evidenced by every study ever), and doesn’t fully embrace nontraditional roles in child-rearing (e.g. stay-at-home dads). Some reviewers even argue that this particular kind of film doesn’t matter anymore; we’re so far past this; it’s such an 80s issue. Because we’re so postfeminist, right? Um, wrong. The fact is, women in the workforce still, in 2011, contend with these issues. We’re asked to sacrifice our family for our career … or our career for our family … in a way that men have never been asked to do or, more importantly perhaps, have never been labeled Worst Father Ever for doing so.

I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t comment on how successfully or unsuccessfully it tackles these issues, or whether it ultimately validates the dominant ideology that women shouldn’t sacrifice family for career, or whether it works to move past its showcasing of upper-class privilege in an economic climate that certainly makes the career/family balancing act an important issue for all women. Unfortunately, I can, however, comment on how successfully or unsuccessfully film reviewers have discussed the film. Just reading the brief snippets of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes pissed me off. (You’ve been warned.) But two reviews in particular—Stephen Holden’s in the New York Times and David Cox’s in the Guardian—sent me over the fucking edge.

Holden begins his review by talking about Sarah Jessica Parker’s plague of “post-Carrie Parkeritis” and describes it as a curse “in which a star finds herself condemned to eke out the last drops of freshness from the role … that made her world famous eons ago.” He then goes on to compare Sarah Jessica Parker’s Sex and the City problem with Julia Roberts’ Pretty Woman problem, which he dubs “The Roberts Syndrome.” This is seriously problematic. Julia Roberts, since her role in Pretty Woman twenty years ago, has won an Oscar, has been nominated for several Oscars, has won several Golden Globes, has been nominated for two Critics’ Choice Awards (and won the Best Actress category), has been nominated for an Emmy and an Independent Spirit Award, has won about a million People’s Choice Awards, and is generally considered one of the most popular and talented actresses on the planet.

You don’t get to compare Julia Roberts’ entire career to Sarah Jessica Parker’s entire career just because they’re both women who became famous for playing a character the audience connected with. If we’re being honest about identifying a problem “in which a star [is] condemned to eke out the last drops of freshness from the role … [made] famous eons ago,” a more apt comparison might involve, oh, say … any successful male action star who keeps making the same action movies over and over and over and will only, forever, in his entire career, continue to make the same incessant action movies. Comparing one famous film star who has a vagina with another famous film star who has a vagina doesn’t make the comparison fucking true.

But it gets worse. Holden employs the most sexist language I’ve ever read in a New York Times film review. I’ll just pull some quotes, for starters, with the offending passages in bold:

“Although the movie is chock-full of smart one-liners, and Ms. Parker’s maniacally giddy Kate wages a full-scale charm offensive, the movie inadvertently makes Kate’s supposedly golden life look like a living hell.”

***
“The jittery momentum of the movie, directed by Douglas McGrath (“Emma,” “Infamous”), mirrors Kate’s frazzled state all too well.”

***
“But more often than not, Ms. Parker’s straining to be funny comes across as desperation to please.”

***
“Mr. Kinnear’s Richard is a near-cipher who reacts to Kate’s hysteria with mild exasperation, only raising his voice once (and not very loud).”

***
“A calm, enlightened, impossibly courtly, unattached widower who tolerates Kate’s every quirk and begins to fall in love with her, he is the polar opposite of a driven financial kingpin like Richard Fuld, the final former chief executive of Lehman Brothers.”

***
“The movie’s one unalloyed delight is Olivia Munn’s portrayal of Kate’s poker-faced assistant, Momo, a spiritual first cousin of Anna Kendrick’s Natalie Keener in “Up in the Air,” but icier and more robotic. Beneath Momo’s composure lurks a terror that leaks out when she learns she is pregnant.”

***
“Carrie Bradshaw flirted her way into mass consciousness in the late ’90s, when Ms. Parker was in her early 30s, and well before Sept. 11, two wars and a major recession dampened American exuberance. If Kate’s hyperkinetic cheer and shrill self-absorption are Carrie trademarks, 13 years after “Sex and the City” first appeared on television, their appeal has all but evaporated.”

Maniacally giddy. Full-scale charm offensive. Frazzled state. Desperation to please. Kate’s hysteria. Kate’s every quirk. A terror that leaks out when she learns she is pregnant. Icier and more robotic. Flirted her way into mass consciousness. Hyperkinetic cheer and shrill self-absorption. Straining to be funny. (Nice channeling of the douchebag Hitchens here.) Holden’s review employs sexist language—words and phrases traditionally used to define and identify the behavior of women—and unapologetically does so. Hysteria? Quirky? Frazzled? Shrill? No. Some people will inevitably argue (or silently think) that this isn’t a big deal. Make no mistake—these supposed “little” issues provide a fucking breeding ground for the “bigger,” more important issues women face daily. That’s just how it works.

It’s no secret that I lost a significant amount of respect for the New York Times when its botched coverage of a sexual assault did nothing more than condone rape and rape culture. In this case, Holden’s review perpetuates sexism and sexist attitudes in a much more subtle but no less significant way. I expect more than this from a supposedly progressive media organization such as the New York Times. (Sort of.) I also expect more from the fucking Guardian. What the hell, David Cox? If Holden’s sexism was subtle … Cox’s sexism is a full-frontal attack on women in the workforce:

“The family and the job keep making annoying demands, all of which she pluckily tries to meet.”

***
“He’s [Kate’s husband] trying to pursue a career of his own, but when junior falls down the stairs it’s Dad who has to take him to hospital, since Mom’s away on business yet again.”

***
“Hubby comes to appreciate that he’s got to do more of the housework. This surely is the way things ought to be … 

It’s not only Kate who thinks so. Highly advantaged women often seem to assume they’re entitled to total fulfilment both at work and at home … If they don’t get it, they’ve been robbed.”

***
“Ambitious mums can try to turn their partners into house-husbands, but it would be only fair to tell them what they’re in for. Instead of expecting childless colleagues to cover for them, they could admit that mumps and nativity plays will come first, and accept the consequences, however unwelcome.” 

***
“It’s like this, Kate. If you want to have it all, it’s your job to work out how to do it. If you can’t, give something up. But don’t expect the rest of us to underwrite your bliss.”

Wow. Instead of analyzing this completely misogynistic, mean-spirited, and resentment-filled mess of a film “review,” I’ll do something that will blow your fucking mind. Pretend you’re browsing the internet. You’re interested in a new film that’s come out about how difficult it is for men to juggle both their families and their careers. (Don’t laugh.) You stumble upon a review in the Guardian. It looks something like this:

“The family and the job keep making annoying demands, all of which he pluckily tries to meet.”

***
“She’s [his wife] trying to pursue a career of her own, but when junior falls down the stairs it’s Mom who has to take him to hospital, since Dad’s away on business yet again.”

***
“Wifey comes to appreciate that she’s got to do more of the housework. This surely is the way things ought to be … 

It’s not only her husband who thinks so. Highly advantaged men often seem to assume they’re entitled to total fulfilment both at work and at home … If they don’t get it, they’ve been robbed.”

***
“Ambitious dads can try to turn their partners into house-wives, but it would be only fair to tell them what they’re in for. Instead of expecting childless colleagues to cover for them, they could admit that mumps and nativity plays will come first, and accept the consequences, however unwelcome.” 

***
“It’s like this, Man. If you want to have it all, it’s your job to work out how to do it. If you can’t, give something up. But don’t expect the rest of us to underwrite your bliss.”

This version of the “review” is funny, ridiculous, difficult to follow (not to mention imagine), and sad. It illustrates the fact that men don’t have to “assume they’re entitled to total fulfillment both at work and at home” because our society says they’re entitled to it. Ambitious dads don’t have to “try to turn their partners into house-[wives]” because our society still says in 2011 that it’s preferable for women—not men—to stay home with the children. Men in the workforce aren’t “expecting childless colleagues to cover for them” because our society doesn’t expect men to carry the brunt of childcare responsibilities—that’s still women’s work. If men “want to have it all” it’s not “[their] job to work out how to do it” because our society has already worked out how to do it, often at the expense of women’s happiness and individual autonomy. (Side note: I find it nothing less than cruel and unusual that these expectations of women still exist, yet access to birth control, reproductive healthcare, and abortion is becoming increasingly elusive.)

The language of these two film reviews says much more about the reviewers and their misogyny—regardless of whether they intended to come across as sexist—than it does about the actual film. I find it troubling that a movie attempting to explore an issue that women still struggle with (even if it ends up reinforcing rather than critiquing the problem) gets so much coverage, not of the success or failure of its subject matter, but of the pluckiness, giddiness, flirtatiousness, hysteria, and general over-reaching of its main woman character. As if that weren’t enough, and we needed a healthy dose of objectification thrown in for good measure, the free newspaper Metro made sure they had it covered.

Thanks Holden, Cox, and Metro! Truly great work here indeed.

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: Milk

 
I Need a Hero: Gus Van Sant’s Milk (2008)

“My name is Harvey Milk, and I’m here to recruit you,” yells a nearly unrecognizable Sean Penn in a pivotal scene in Gus Van Sant’s biopic Milk (2008). Wearing a tight red and white shirt and form-fitting slacks highlighting a noticeable bulge, Penn unnervingly inhabits the body of a man who was never handsome, never pretty, but who exuded an eye-twinkling sexiness which led numbers of attractive young men into his bed. It’s a transformation that is not merely surface, not merely costume and hairstyle and what appears to be a slight prosthesis on the nose: like Nicole Kidman’s portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours, this is a full-bodied immersion in a character. Penn, always something of a chameleon in recent years, loses all traces of his own physicality, and portrays Harvey Milk with a buoyancy, a loose-limbed lightness that I’ve never seen in him before. The process seems to have liberated him as an actor—he’s behaving with an unbridled exuberance. His co-star, James Franco, reported that after their first kissing scene, Penn called up ex-wife Madonna and said, “I’ve just kissed my first man,” to which Madonna replied, “Honey, I’m so proud of you.” So are we.
In a recent piece on the Criterion Collection edition of the Oscar-winning 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (directed by Rob Epstein, later to direct The Celluloid Closet and Paragraph 175), photographer Daniel Nicoletta calls the documentary “Harvey Milk 101.” It would be fair to call Van Sant’s Milk “Harvey Milk 102”—the two films, viewed in order, represent a progression in the course sequence, but they’re primers, neither qualifying you for an advanced degree in the subject. For that, one must turn to the late Randy Shilts’s book The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk (1983), which, to my mind, remains the definitive work on the man’s life and legacy. The Epstein documentary is primarily concerned with Milk’s political career; the Van Sant biopic fills in many of the biographical holes in the documentary and concentrates more on Milk’s personal life and relationships. My suggestion is that viewers watch both films—Times first, Milk second—and, if they yearn for more, to then turn to the Shilts book.
Milk begins with archival footage of police raids on gay bars in the 1950s and 60s, and is followed by Milk in 1977 reading his will into a tape recorder: he was convinced that he would soon be assassinated, a prediction that would shortly come true. Flash back to 1970, and Milk’s meeting with Scott Smith (Franco) in a New York subway, and the beginning of an on-again, off-again romance that would last the rest of Milk’s life. Dissatisfied with his grinding corporate-America job in New York, Milk moves with Smith to San Francisco in search of liberation and meaning. He opens a camera shop, becomes an exceedingly groovy bohemian, and ultimately becomes involved with gay rights and local politics, culminating in his election as a city supervisor—the first openly gay elected official in the United States. He is helped along the way by Smith and a band of friends and lovers who operate out of his camera store: Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch), Jack Lira (Diego Luna), Anne Kronenberg (Alison Pill), and Dick Pabich (Joseph Cross). Once elected, he finds a staunch ally in Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) and a nemesis in Supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin). White, after a series of public humiliations, assassinates Milk and Moscone in City Hall (Dianne Feinstein’s famous announcement of the event appears in the film), and later pleads insanity by using the notorious “Twinkie defense.”
More than a mere summary of events, Milk seeks to illuminate some of the depths of Milk’s character, which are left mostly untouched by The Times of Harvey Milk. And Penn’s performance is a marvel. But I’m left at the end of the film still not entirely knowing what made this man tick. I’m slightly in awe of him, I’m humbled by his passion, I’m drawn to his politics, I’m certainly attracted to him and can easily see myself getting talked into bed by him without much effort, but I still feel separate from him, as though his core has not been exposed. Perhaps this is more than a biopic can do, but my sense is that this is the film’s goal, and on that count it doesn’t quite deliver. The fault is neither Penn’s nor Van Sant’s nor the script’s—my guess is that capturing someone as mercurial as Harvey Milk on film is an impossibility.
Lest this sound as though I didn’t enjoy the film, let me hasten to add that Milk brilliantly recreates a period when gay sex was fun and free and easy and the specter of AIDS was a few years in the future. The cast looks resplendent in its period costumes; it’s alarming that clothes I once wore as a child now constitute “period attire.” And, apart from Penn, the cast is uniformly superb, as we might expect from Van Sant, who, after all, delivered amazing performances from the non-acting teens in 2003’s Elephant. James Franco demonstrates the fearlessness that led him shortly thereafter to take on the role of poet Allen Ginsberg in Howl, and proves why he’s one of his generation’s most interesting actors; his Scott Smith is sweet, sexy, charming, and loyal. Josh Brolin has the incredibly tough job of making Dan White a human being rather than the boogeyman of the piece. He looks uncannily like the real man, and he manages to imbue White with enough pathos that I was unable to hate him, or not entirely. Victor Garber is reliable as always as Moscone, and Diego Luna and Joseph Cross (the little boy from Northern Lights, with Diane Keaton) excel as bits of eye candy on the fringes of Milk’s world. Emile Hirsch has the gravitas to play the great Cleve Jones, whose activism continues to inspire today, and Alison Pill holds her own as the sole woman in this sea of gay men.
What struck me most about Milk at the time of its release was its celebration of the writer. The trailer proudly announced “Written by Dustin Lance Black” in huge blue letters, and the very fetching Mr. Black won a well-deserved Oscar for his efforts. His Academy Award speech, in which he pleaded for the acceptance of young gay men like himself, is already legendary, and in interviews with magazines like The Advocate, he chronicled his difficulties in getting the script written and his exhaustive research. Perhaps the best thing about his script is that it doesn’t venerate its subject: it would have been all too easy to turn Harvey Milk into a saintly angel in America, but he is instead presented by turns as charming and irritating, pleasant and cantankerous, open-minded and bull-headed. And despite the opening which announces his death, the film doesn’t belabor this inevitable trajectory: the focus of both the film and the characters is on the moment, or on a rosy future. Again, the film’s only flaw, to my mind, is that Milk still seems at arm’s length from me, and I craved a more intimate relationship with him. But perhaps this is the point.
I’m bothered by one last thing, completely apart from the film itself. In his bravura acceptance speech for Best Actor at the Oscars, Sean Penn drolly called the audience “You Commie, homo-loving sons of guns.” Perhaps, but we’re still dealing here with a film with a gay hero who dies. Is it significant that two other actors to have won Best Actor Oscars for playing gay men—William Hurt in Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) and Tom Hanks in Philadelphia (1993)—were killed off by gunfire and AIDS? As producer Jan Oxenberg remarks in Rob Epstein’s The Celluloid Closet, it remains to be seen whether or not Hollywood will embrace—and indeed, deem worthy of an Oscar—a gay character who lives.
Drew Patrick Shannon received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Cincinnati, and currently teaches 19th and 20th century British literature at the College of Mount St. Joseph. He is at work on a novel and on a non-fiction book examining the diary of Virginia Woolf. He contributed a review of the 1986 film, Working Girls, to Bitch Flicks, which appeared in a previous version on his blog, atleswoolf. 

Emmy Week 2011: Why Steely Homicide Detective Sarah Linden Is So Refreshing

Mireille Enos as Sarah Linden in The Killing
Guest post by Megan Kearns.
Who killed Rosie Larsen? This is the pivotal question that motivates The Killing. While a murder mystery, the true catalyst of the show resides in the nuanced characters, particularly steely homicide detective Sarah Linden.
Often I lament the gender inequity in films and TV shows, bemoaning their flagrant displays of sexism. Many gendered problems could be solved if movies and series employed more female writers, directors or producers.  Too often, when you have a staff of all white males, that’s what you see on-screen: all white male characters.  That’s what’s so exhilarating about The Killing. Not only does the show boast a predominantly female crew, numerous female characters exist individual and distinct from one another. We see the plot told from a female perspective.
Based on the Danish TV series Forbrydelsen (The Crime), the gritty series premieres with Linden, played superbly by Emmy-nominated Mireille Enos, jogging in the woods. It’s her last day in the Seattle police department as she’s moving with her son, Jack, to marry her fiancé in California. But she gets pulled back in to her work in homicide by the murder of teenager Rosie Larsen.
Unlike many other crime shows, the plot continually shifts from the murder investigation to Detective Linden’s home life to how Rosie’s family handles their grief to a local mayoral campaign. Through the unfolding case, we see how grief affects each of the characters differently. Raising themes of misogyny, racism and xenophobia, the show uniquely focuses on how a tragedy affects a family and ultimately how those ripples affect a community.
Linden’s stoic and quiet reserve yields a driven detective. She pensively surveys crime scenes, taking it all in, absorbing every detail. When questioning witnesses, she isn’t typically brash or bold, preferring a subtle approach. When her partner Stephen Holder (Joel Kinnaman) brags about finding the potential crime scene “the cage,” Linden warns him, “Assumptions are your enemy.” Holder acts impulsively, while Linden remains cool and clear-headed. Yet we learn she possesses a tendency to compulsively obsess over cases, letting them consume and unhinge her life, even to the point of jeopardizing custody of her son. 
While I revere clever dialogue in a film or TV show, an adept actor reveals a character’s inner thoughts and emotions through their body language and facial expressions; never having to utter a word. Enos does this superbly, a testament to her acting abilities. She revealed in an AMC interview that her character’s silence is what she enjoys most:

It’s kind of my favorite part of this role — how much of this story is told just through Sarah thinking and letting the audience sit with her in her thoughts.

Seeing the case unfold from Linden’s perspective is a welcome change. When asked if there’s a difference stylistically in the shows that are run by women, Emmy-nominated Veena Sud, executive producer, writer and showrunner of The Killing, said: 

The female leads are very human and very real and very flawed, yet are good cops. Maybe that’s the difference: women are interested in creating real female leads.

I’m thrilled to see a fully formed, realistic female role. The role isn’t groundbreaking, following in the footsteps of the stellar Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect, The Closer, Saving Grace, Cold Case, Rizzoli & Isles, Cagney & Lacey. All of these shows’ characters face difficulties: sexism, hostile work environments, alcoholism, strained personal relationships due to their demanding careers. But Linden is unique in that she’s a single mother. 

Throughout the series, we witness Linden struggling to juggle her consuming career with her role as a mom. In one scene, Linden has to leave a crime scene to fetch Jack from school after he’s kicked out for smoking. In another scene, Linden looks crushed when Jack complains that she cares more about the murdered victims than him. In another episode, she talks about how she yearns for him to be happy again, hoping the remedy lies in a “better life” in California. We alternately see her disciplining and guiding him, all with a rough tenderness. 
In the fantastic episode, “The Missing,” we see Linden’s insecurities about how her troubled childhood might affect her parenting abilities when her son goes missing. Actor Enos drew on her own experiences as a mother to enhance her character’s role, particularly her character’s empathy for Mitch Larsen, Rosie’s grief-stricken mother, played by the perpetually badass Michelle Forbes, in a devastating performance.
Single mothers are common in TV shows: Gilmore Girls, Murphy Brown, Sex and the City, New Adventures of Old Christine. While many laud the sacrifices single mothers make, they simultaneously face criticism in our society. Asshats Bill O’Reilly and Mike Huckabee condemned celebs Jennifer Anniston, for saying women don’t need a man to be a parent (damn right they don’t), and Natalie Portman, for getting pregnant out of wedlock (oh gasp, the horror!). Several months ago, two single African-American moms were arrested for sending their children to school districts they didn’t live in to have a better education. 
Many single mothers are blamed at best, vilified at worst. So it’s refreshing to watch a TV show, particularly a crime drama, where the lead character is an accomplished single mom striving to keep her son out of trouble all while maintaining her demanding career.   
Linden’s unyielding dedication to her job strains her romantic relationship as well. Initially, her fiancé Rick doesn’t make her choose between her job and their relationship. Exasperated, he waits for her to wrap up the case as she’s supposed to have already joined him in California. SPOILER!! -> As their relationship begins to crumble, Rick eventually returns to California without her after Linden chooses to stay in Seattle. <-END SPOILER!! It kind of pissed me off because men never seem forced to make this choice. It’s always the woman expected to follow a man, uprooting her life. 
For those of us who lament the lack of female actors, writers and directors and stories told from women’s perspectives, here’s a show containing all those traits. Many reviewers spewed vitriol after the season 1 finale, outraged that we didn’t find out who killed Rosie Larsen. But they’re missing the whole point. Yes, it’s a whodunit. But that’s not the crux of the show; it’s merely the vehicle in which to reveal the characters’ compelling stories. The Killing depicts subtle portrayals of real, flawed women (and men), haunted by their past pain. While interesting male characters exist, the show doesn’t merely revolve around them. Rather it orbits a determined and resolute woman, unrelenting in her pursuit of justice. 
Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World, where she writes about gender in pop culture, sexism in the media, reproductive justice and living vegan. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston with her diva cat and more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime. 

Megan contributed reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed, !Women Art Revolution, The Kids Are All Right (for our 2011 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), The Reader (for our 2009 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), and Game of Thrones (for our Emmy Week 2011). She was the first writer featured as a Monthly Guest Contributor. 

Emmy Week 2011: Tami Taylor, My Hero

Connie Britton as “Tami Taylor” in Friday Night Lights
If there is one woman in Dillon who stands head and shoulders above them all, it’s Tami Taylor. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem too hard to do. Mothers in Dillon have not been the most successful characters; they were either drunk/druggies (Mama Collette, Vince’s mother, Becky’s mother), absent (Jess’ mother, Mama Riggins, Matt Saracen’s mother), or one-dimensional (abuse victim, religious nut, etc). Is it any wonder, then, that Tami Taylor becomes the go-to woman for many of the “lost children” of Dillon?
But let’s take a step back. Even if she is a three-dimensional beacon in a sea of sub-par parenting, she is not without her faults…I just can’t think of any right now. She yelled at Julie a few times, right? And there was that one time she humiliated her daughter by showing up at the pool, pregnant to the point of bursting…Did she pressure Julie to consider a university far, far away from their home in Texas, just because Tami had gone there?
What we get to see in Tami that we don’t get to see in other “mother” characters (except maybe Mindy Riggins) is the conflict that she feels when deciding on the best course of parenting action. And this conflict is rarely ever expressed in words; instead, it is played out on Tami’s face, which can go from anger, to disappointment, to sympathy and love in the course of one short scene. Tami, from the outside, might seem like the perfect mother, making the job look easy, but Connie Britton conveys to us the difficulty her character faces in her decisions as a parent.
This final season, Tami was put through the ringer. She found out her daughter had been sleeping with her TA (the wordless confrontation between the two of them alone should win her the Emmy). She was confronted with the reality of working at an under-funded, under-privileged high school (sometimes that Southern Charm can only go so far), almost moved to Florida because of a college coaching gig for her husband, and, most importantly, she was confronted with a true and possibly devastating conflict in her marriage. At the same time Eric Taylor was contemplating coaching the united Dillon football team, Tami was offered a job as Dean of Admissions at a fictional college in Philadelphia.
The tension between husband and wife is oftentimes unbearable during the last few episodes of the season. When Tami spits at Eric, “I’m going to say to you what you haven’t had the grace to say to me:
congratulations, Eric” and takes her boots and storms off, my heart was breaking. Here is a woman who for 18 years gave up pieces of herself in the name of their marriage, their family, and her husband’s coaching career. The sacrifices that seemed so effortless throughout our time watching the show finally burst through.
Tami seemed to have limited herself. But, when a new opportunity, an unimagined opportunity presents itself, she allows herself to dream. Eric’s unwillingness to even entertain the dream is all the more insulting because of Tami’s willingness to up and move to Florida if Eric decided to take the college coaching job. When the tables are turned, Eric cannot extend to his wife the same level of respect.
At least not at first. By the end of Eric’s own trials, he sees that, on one hand, he owes it to his wife, and on the other, he loves his wife so much that he ultimately wants to do what will make her happy. It takes their daughter getting engaged–and telling her parents that they are her model–for him to realize that he would never want his daughter to give up her dreams, nor sacrifice as much for her future husband as Tami sacrificed for him (or, at least, that’s how I’d like to read it; maybe it was just all about telling Dillon to F-off). Either way, Tami is seen confidently walking across her new campus, cheerily throwing out her trademark “y’all” to those in the City of Brotherly Love.

Lee Skallerup Bessette has a PhD in Comparative Literature and currently teaches writing in Kentucky. She also blogs at College Ready Writing and the University of Venus. She has two kids, and TV and movies are just about the only thing she has time for outside of her work and family. She also contributed a piece for Mad Men Week at Bitch Flicks called, “Things They Haven’t Seen: Women and Class in Mad Men”  and a review of Friday Night Lights for Emmy Week 2011.

Emmy Week 2011: Liz Lemon: The "Every Woman" of Prime Time

Tina Fey as “Liz Lemon” in 30 Rock
Liz Lemon, the protagonist created and portrayed by Tina Fey on NBC’s 30 Rock, is one of television’s most recognizable and loved characters for her outlandish antics and so-real-it-hurts single-line commentaries on women and society.

On the surface, Liz charms the audience with her awkward girl-next-door looks, geeky-smart plastic-framed glasses that she apparently doesn’t need to improve her vision, inappropriate behavior in the workplace and her penchant for drawing the unlucky hand in love. Yet getting to know Liz on a deeper level inspires a sense that this is a woman who, while filled with self-loathing and assorted neuroses, has a heart for people and justice and a knack for making the ridiculous hilarious.

Not surprisingly, Fey has once again been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her work this year on 30 Rock. Fey has received the nomination each of the five seasons 30 Rock has aired, winning the Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy once in 2008.

What is most endearing about Liz is that she is less “Murphy Brown” and more “Lucille Ball.” Liz is perfectly imperfect and knows this. She continually apologizes for her shortcomings as a human being. She doesn’t have anything figured out and struggles to get through the day knowing that she doesn’t “have it all” and that she probably never will. Had the character of Liz been a strong, successful career woman in the male-dominated business of television, she would have been less able to connect with the audience. Surely Liz has risen through the ranks to be head writer at a successful sketch comedy show, yet her incompetence at work along with her vocal dissatisfaction with her loveless personal life, and even her lack of financial savvy by leaving $12,000 in her checking account rather than investing, make her easier to like and relate to. Even as we see her stretching toward the top, there’s no mistaking the fact that Liz will never break through the shatterproof Plexiglas ceiling.

Online media is filled with Web sites and articles on both Tina Fey and Liz Lemon attempting to analyze where one leaves off and the other begins to determine how much of Liz is really Fey. Frankly, if the character of Liz was too closely based on Fey, we may have stopped tuning in the first season.

What Fey was able to do was take the physical and mental quirks of her own and then add to that an excessive dose of dysfunctional human qualities that make Liz such a train wreck and, thus, a joy to watch. The weekly deconstruction of her psyche takes viewers on yet another downward spiral that ultimately makes viewers feel good about themselves. Sure, we may not subscribe to an organized religion, but are we as bad as Liz who claims she believes whatever Oprah tells her to believe? Maybe we won’t admit to feeling the same way, but most of us do know women who place Oprah on an altar and do-read-buy whatever Oprah says is a must. Additionally, we may not yell at incompetent people we encounter each day as Liz would, but our connection with her is strengthened because we want to berate them and call them jerks, but social boundaries keep us in check. With Liz, we can enjoy the fantasy of venting out loud without the societal consequences.

In any discussion of Liz Lemon, the question of feminism arises. In the pilot episode, Jack Donaghy quickly and accurately characterizes Liz as a third-wave feminist. One thing Jack is, and that is a master at marketing and knowing markets. He can size up people instantly. Jack’s insights into Liz are better than her own. Through Jack, the parts of Liz that she couldn’t put into words are brought to life. Remember “porn for women”? Jack realized from his encounters with Liz that women want someone to listen to them, and he quickly developed an entire cable selection of hunky men who, for a price, would listen and talk to women on their TV screens for as long as they desired. Liz purchased immediately.

Frankly, any woman today qualifies as a third-wave feminist because that is the underlying tenet of the concept: there are as many definitions of feminism as there are women. No longer is feminism defined as one cohesive line of thinking. During the so-called first wave, women were united in the fight for voting rights. The second-wave feminists were determined to see civil rights and social rights uniformly recognized for all people regardless of gender. Without a uniform cause and agenda today, this third wave of feminism lacks any agreed upon definition or boundaries of thought which is exactly the point: there is no one “woman’s point-of-view.”

Yet how does Liz live out this idea of third-wave feminism? How was this so obvious to Jack?

Feminism defined by Liz is contradictory in that she is a strong career woman and that she is a complete person outside of having a man to validate her existence. Yet Liz has a strong desire to be in a relationship, and she is irrationally angry with women who have husbands or children. Her job as head of TGS with Tracy Jordan (formerly called The Girlie Show) is certainly testament to her abilities in a male-dominated industry, yet her staff of men and her boss, Jack, causes her to continually apologize for being tough or demanding.

Liz’s self-image is played out in her wardrobe, which is androgynous at best. In one episode, Jack comments that she is dressing as if she shops at Kmart. Clothing choices tell a great deal about how a woman feels about herself. For Liz, she has been stripped of all femininity and sees herself as trying to fit in with the masculine world in which she works and socializes, in spite of being mistaken for a Lesbian.

Liz Lemon is entertaining because in most regards, she’s worse off than we are. She may have a better job than most of us, but her staff ridicules her, and her boss is continually undermining her efforts to be a strong leader. Liz barely gets respect from her closest female friend Jenna, but even she is too wrapped up in her own neuroses to give much time to Liz’s problems. Compared to Liz, all of us are better off than she is. In every respect of her life, Liz comes up short: her wardrobe is wrong for her career, she’s single and hates it, and her friendships are sub par with the exception of Jack, who knows her best. While he most likely wouldn’t donate a kidney to Liz even if she desperately needed it, we get the impression he would make arrangements for her to have the best dialysis money could buy, and he would probably keep her company during treatments. Many of us would consider ourselves fortunate to have a friend like Jack.

Liz is the modern-day “every woman” who realizes her flaws, hates herself for them, yet owns her misery and wears it daily like a pair of comfortable Kmart sweatpants. No one loves Liz Lemon for being perfect. What makes Liz draw in an audience is her dysfunction in every aspect of her life. How she reacts to her life is always unexpected yet entirely appreciated.

Lisa Mathews is a relocated Los Angeles native and former newspaper reporter currently pursuing a graduate degree in political science. 

Emmy Week 2011: Friday Night Lights: Deep in the Heart of Texas

Cast of Friday Night Lights
Each woman in Friday Night Lights, like each man in the show, is defined by their relationship to football. Or rather, the town tries to define them by their relationship to the featured football team (either the Dillon Panthers during the first seasons or the East Dillon Lions during the last two). What is and remains fascinating to me is how in the face of this identity pressure, the women are often more successful in redefining themselves than the men.

(I’d have included pictures, but I defy you to find a picture of any of these women on the Internet that doesn’t put them in some sort of come-hither pose that exposes a whole lot of skin. Sigh. These ladies deserve better.)

One of my favorite characters over the final two seasons of Friday Night Lights is Jess Merriweather. She is the eldest daughter of a former football player-turned-restaurant owner, older sister and surrogate mother to two younger brothers, and football lover. When we first meet her, she is a cheerleader for the new East Dillon Lions (and that image of her remains during the final season’s opening credits); one could wonder why we never saw her as a Dillon Panther cheerleader, but it becomes clear that she probably would never have fit in with the Lyla Garrity-types at the old high school.

No, it becomes clear that Jess is only a cheerleader because it is the only legitimate way for her, a girl, to be close to the game she adores. We see her coaching her younger brother, watching the games not in order to find a potential mate but to dissect plays and increase her football IQ. She is a smart, driven young Black woman, trapped between her love of football and the very gendered expectations of the town. When she is given the opportunity to “coach” star quarterback/boyfriend Vince over the summer, she finds her outlet. Unfortunately, once school and the season start up again, she is relegated to the demeaning role of “rally girl.”

The rally girl is a problematic, but all too realistic, role for Jess. She views herself as Vince’s equal, not his servant. The typical role of the rally girl is to do whatever she can to “motivate” the football players to play at their best on Fridays. In fact, the rally girls wear their respective player’s jersey, essentially owned by the player. It also should be noted that the girls get no say in who their player is; the girls randomly pull jerseys out of a box, and the player can barter and trade girls if the price is right (in one case, it’s a prized pig – do with that what you will). For most of the girls, it is an honor to be a rally girl, to be associated with the “star” football players. But that is not what Jess wants anymore from football; residual fame and greatness is no longer enough.

Jess, instead, becomes the equipment manager for the team. She gets a respectable uniform (versus the scantily-clad cheerleaders), access to the locker room, the coach, the sidelines, and the game. Her job is far from glamorous; she cleans jock straps, washes towels, works to prevent staph infections. Of course, this role strains her relationship with Vince; Vince tries to protect her from the ribbing the team subjects her to, while Jess wants to prove she can hold her own, on her own. In fact, it is Coach Taylor, and not the players, who has the most difficulty accepting Jess in her new role.

Jess fights for the respect of the players and Coach Taylor, working hard to be the best equipment manager/future coach she can be. She presents Coach Taylor with a profile of a female high school football coach to prove to him that it can be done. He tries to scare her by laying out her odds for success. Jess’ confidence never wavers, and Coach Taylor, champion of lost causes (see Vince, as well as Tim Riggins and Matt Saracen), is won over. We last see Jess as an equipment manager at her new school in Dallas.

Jess is just one example of the type of strong, well-developed female characters Friday Night Lights has created. The final two seasons also allowed us to get to know Mindy Riggins: older sister to former cast member Tyra Collette, stripper, mother, and wife to Billy Riggins (who was a former Panther star). In the early seasons, Mindy was simply an excuse for Tyra (and the rest of the cast) to visit The Landing Strip, Dillon’s local strip club. Mindy and their pill-popping, boozy mother Angela, were representative of everything Tyra wished to escape. Tyra did, in fact, successfully make it out, attending UT Austin. But what about those who are left behind in the small town of limited possibilities?

Mindy follows what might be seen as a stereotypical small-town girl path: she gets pregnant and gets married. Both she and Billy struggle with paying their bills and finding meaningful employment. But in what could easily have become a caricature of “white trash” existence (drinking, fighting, divorce, abuse) becomes a very real picture of two people trying to make it work in tough economic times. Mindy also steps up and takes Becky under her wing, a girl in whom she sees much of herself. Mindy also has a boozy mother, an absent father, and is left on her own to navigate through life (but more on her in a moment). When Mindy witnesses Becky being abused by her father and step-mother, she steps in (forcing Billy to do the same) and defends Becky. This is an incredible act from someone who, up until this point, saw Becky as competition rather than a sister. Mindy was perhaps the first person who ever stood up for Becky, acting as the advocate she herself probably never had.

This relationship, of course, is not without its problems; Mindy takes Becky and her son to The Landing Strip and even allows Becky to waitress at the club. Stripping (and as an extension, the strippers themselves) are neither glorified nor vilified by the show. In a town where economic opportunities are limited regardless of gender, these women make money the best way they can, using their bodies to pay the rent. There is nothing glamorous or liberating about their jobs, besides the “easy money” that can be made. But that money isn’t as easy as Becky thinks it is. We see Mindy furiously working out in order to get her body back into shape for the job, and even then, she is relegated to the humiliating “lunch shift.” But the women are also treated with dignity, at least within their group. They are far from being victims or victimized; initially, the show seemed to be saying that Mindy was a stripper because she didn’t have a father and her mother was lacking. But during the last two seasons, the strippers move from being symbols of failure to symbols of survival.

Mindy finds a community with the women of The Landing Strip, and a support system that she never had before, finding a place where she can be honest about her past abortion and how it is still impacting her relationships. The ladies from the strip club also take Becky to participate in one of her pageants; when one of the judges criticizes Becky’s choice of “supporters,” Becky clearly chooses her new family over her dreams of winning pageants. I’ll admit that I bawled like a baby during the final episode when Mindy and Becky say goodbye to each other when Becky moves out to live with her mom again. Family, in this show, is who sticks with us through the hard times.

Which brings us to the issue of the abortion. Becky gets pregnant during the fourth season (by a football player, no less), and she does, indeed, go through with having an abortion (some would argue at her mother’s insistence). Initially, the abortion more immediately impacts another character, Tami Taylor, who was at that time vice-principal at Dillon High School (Becky goes to East Dillon). Tami was brought in to counsel Becky when she had no one else to turn to. But while Becky seems to have come through the abortion okay, we learn in the fifth season that she still carries some unresolved feelings about the boy who got her pregnant.

This portrayal of a young girl feeling trapped by a bad situation is handled, to my mind, sensitively and realistically. Becky is not left unaffected by the procedure, nor does she seem permanently and disastrously scarred. Those around her (her mother, the mother of the baby’s father, the community) seem more upset and emotionally reactionary than Becky herself. It also seems that the extreme reactions of those around her affect her more than the abortion itself; it is again only when she confides in the strippers that she gets the level-headed and unconditional support she needs to move past the event. Abortion, it would seem, is not the issue; the hysteria surrounding it is.

These are just three of the complex women of Friday Night Lights. I’ve focused on the final two seasons, as this is the season that is up for an Emmy. One could look at the evolution of Lyla, Julie, Tyra, and other early-season characters, as well as the myriad of “minor” characters who have populated the edges of the show (Maura the rally girl, Epyk the problem child, Vince’s mother, and Devin the lesbian spring to mind). Each one deserves her own essay, devoted to all the ways the show did (and didn’t) do the characters justice.

Lee Skallerup Bessette has a PhD in Comparative Literature and currently teaches writing in Kentucky. She also blogs at College Ready Writing and the University of Venus. She has two kids, and TV and movies are just about the only thing she has time for outside of her work and family. She also contributed a piece for Mad Men Week at Bitch Flicks called, “Things They Haven’t Seen: Women and Class in Mad Men.”



Emmy Week 2011: Jane Krakowski and the Dedicated Ignorance of Jenna Maroney

“I’m prepared to do a nipple slip if you need it.” –Jenna Maroney, played by Jane Krakowski

Female comedic duos never go out of style. First, there was Lucy and Ethel, followed by Mary and Rhoda, then Roseanne and Jackie. What makes these comedy pairings so successful is that no matter how different each woman is from the other, they somehow balance each other out. It also does not hurt that both women are given equally funny moments, and usually leave the men with the dialogue that follows the riotous laughter. There is no grandstanding, no upstaging or pissing contest. It’s not about who’s the funniest, but who’s going to crack up the other. Simply put, a woman can be funny, but women can be hilarious.
That’s what I love about 30 Rock. Sure, it’s Tina Fey’s baby: she created the series and has written a majority of episodes while also starring as the show’s protagonist. But what makes her funny is the company she keeps. Tina’s straight-woman, self-conscious, prudish Liz Lemon is the complete opposite of the outrageous Tracy Jordan or confident Jack Donaghy. But it’s her interaction with Jane Krakowski’s Jenna Maroney that is most comedic. Of course, they’re both women, but what works is their chaos/order dynamic: While Liz maintains the order of TGS (the fictional sketch-comedy show-within-the-show), Jenna brings the chaos and gets freaky with it in a public bathroom stall.

For the third year in a row, Krakowski has been nominated for an Emmy as Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series and is totally deserving of such recognition. She’s funny, and she holds her own with Fey without hogging all the laughs, as both women are equally comical. Fey’s Liz Lemon is the frumpy, repressed, writer of TGS, the faux comedy show that is supposedly taped at 30 Rockefeller Center, while Krakowski’s Jenna is a narcissistic, delusional lead actress on the show. The reason Liz is constantly attempting to hold everything together is due in part to Jenna’s hare-brained schemes. Of course, Tracy Morgan’s Tracy Jordan puts an equal strain on Liz’s patience—his shenanigans often involve the outrageousness and ridiculousness of celebrity lifestyles (extravagant purchases, questionable infidelities, hazardous health concerns, etc), whereas Jenna’s usually revolve around an actor’s internal conflicts (sharing screen time with new cast members, relationship issues with family and lovers, holding together what C-list stardom she has left). Tracy Jordan is the star of TGS, but Jenna is the fading has-been. She is a character who gets both laughter and pity, sometimes at the same time.

30 Rock has some of the best one-liners of contemporary comedy, and Jenna Maroney has had her fair share:
“Everyone shout out words that describe my beauty.”
“I can play dead. I watched my whole church group get eaten by a bear.”
“We’re actors. If we didn’t exist, how would people know who to vote for?”
“Look at our biological clocks: You’re going baby crazy, and I keep getting turned on by car accidents.”
“I’ll do it! But only for the attention.”
If you have never watched an episode of 30 Rock (and judging by the show’s low ratings, it’s more than likely), these quotes give you an idea as to what kind of character Jenna is: she’s vain, she’s unintelligible, she makes one bad choice after the other and, like most actors, is constantly begging for attention. She gives her profession a bad name, yet in all honesty her character sheds light on the conceited persona of any actor, male or female. As a character created by a woman (Tina Fey), Jenna is the embodiment of the challenges faced by actresses as they age. Jenna is relentlessly trying to maintain her youth and beauty through the quack-products of overseas companies that have adverse after-effects and is always at odds with Cerie, the young, twenty-something assistant with a slender figure. 30 Rock doesn’t shy away from the fact that Hollywood is not favorable to “women of a certain age,” and there is an on-going joke about how old Jenna really is, for fear she will be defined by her number and not by her talent. Jenna will do (and probably has done) anything in order to maintain her youth and celebrity, even if that means sleeping with Mickey Rourke (another ongoing joke). No matter how far Jenna must go to keep her career alive, she seems to always land on her feet, in a blissful state of naiveté that jibes with her ambition to perform—be it acting, dancing, or singing at inappropriate times. Hell, she even tried getting the Tony Awards to add the category of “living theatrically in real life” because she knew she’d be a shoe-in for the honor. In this way, Jenna is not just a comedic character, she’s also a one-woman commentary on both sexism and ageism in Hollywood.

Whether or not Jane Krakowski wins at this year’s Emmy Awards remains uncertain; she could be out-voted by another Jane (that is, Jane Lynch who plays Sue Sylvester on Glee) or by sentimental favorite and TV legend Betty White (from Hot in Cleveland). Regardless of the outcome, Krakowski has crafted a character both memorable and three-dimensional—even on “cam-urr-rah!”—but most importantly, funny. Tina Fey will always be recognized as today’s funniest female, but without Krakowski on 30 Rock, Liz Lemon would have nowhere to “go to there.” As a supporting character, Jenna Maroney has earned her own spotlight—even if she had to pay an NBC page to shine it on her 24/7.

Kyle Sanders is a graduate student in the English Department at Western Kentucky University. He contributes to the online Bowling Green publication, SKYe Magazine. Under the pseudonym of Mike TeeVee, he writes about television, film, and other aspects of pop culture he finds “water-cooler” worthy. 

Emmy Week 2011: Mags Bennett: As Wholesome As Apple Pie

Mags Bennett, played by Margo Martindale

After watching the first couple episodes of Justified with me, my good friend asked the question that I ask myself, “Why do you like this show?” See, she knows me and my general dislike of the Western aesthetic: all wide shots and swagger. Add in that it is “inspired” by an Elmore Leonard story, inhabited by his brand of players—full of quirky and amusing dialogue, sure, but too often stuck in caricature—and I should hate this show. But I don’t. This show allows what so few shows do: a full sense of place and the people who inhabit that place. Justified gives us Harlan County, Kentucky in the way that The Wire gave us Baltimore: unflinching, unsentimental, and unapologetic.

That said, it is a male-centric show, depicting a male-centric world. In the first season, our main character, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant, also nominated for an Emmy), spends his time fighting, shooting, justifying his fighting and shooting to his boss, and protecting and bedding pretty blonds. He also spends an entire episode getting back his cowboy hat. The criminal family he battles is Bo Crowder and his boys, and much is made of the complicated power dynamics between men, particularly fathers and sons. One might get weary from all the testosterone (as the one female marshal acknowledges in an early episode).

But in season two, the show gives us Mags Bennett, head of the Bennett clan, a matriarch wielding absolute power (and a ball-peen hammer) over her territory. She sets herself apart from both the women and the men in the show and their prescribed gender roles, inhabiting both enforcer and nurturer, often at the same time. Margo Martindale, a well-lauded stage actor, too often is relegated to the screen margin, playing the supporting roles of gruff nurse (Mercy), sassy neighbor (The Riches) or kindly old friend (Dexter). Martindale admits in a recent interview that a role like “Mags Bennett comes along maybe just once in a lifetime.” But roles like this—multi-faceted, problematic, and compelling—are what we need to see more of on television.

I don’t know what episode was submitted for the Emmy voters (there are plenty to choose from), but let me make my pitch for the first episode. It doesn’t have the flash of her stirring, but duplicitous, speech to the coal mining company trying to buy the town away from the people, or the shock value of her smashing one son’s hand to bits while blaming the other for her actions, or even the tragedy of the final episode. But it does provide the roundest view of the character, an incredible feat for an initial introduction.

In “The Moonshine War,” the audience is first introduced to Mags Bennett and her family’s marijuana empire. We learn of the family feud between the Bennetts and the Givenses, and we see her deal with the widower McCready, who has been stealing small amounts of their stash. We also see Mags’ gentle approach to McCready’s daughter Loretta, who is accosted and abducted by a man working for the Bennetts.

Apple Pie: the symbol of American domesticity, of homegrown goodness, warm and comforting. Mags makes “apple pie” that the entire county admires, but this apple pie is more than it appears to be. It is a symbol of Mags herself. It appears in three distinct scenes, each giving us a glimpse into the complexity of Mags.

Sharing a Slice of History

When she offers it to Raylan, the audience sees it as a peace offering, a moment of communion between two feuding families. As the two recount their shared history, Raylan’s deference to her in the scene is a stark contrast to his interactions with the Crowders. With the Crowders, when Raylan acted with restraint, it was clear that it was out of fear, out of the knowledge that he didn’t hold the power in a given situation. But that didn’t stop him from spouting snarky one-liners. With Mags, Raylan acts not just of out pragmatism, but out of respect. Even as he takes her measure, he addresses her, not as Mags, but as Mrs. Bennett, and is, frankly, polite; it smacks of the Southern gentility that surfaces whenever he interacts with a woman. His gracious acceptance of her apple pie signals to the audience that Mags is a crime-lord of a different sort. When she pulls out the jar, we see her apple pie for what it is: a home-brewed moonshine, and a tasty one at that. But like Mags’ weed, a moonshine named “apple pie” seems innocuous, not the meth or oxycotin that the Crowders dealt.

Pie as Retribution

The apple pie moonshine makes its second appearance in her sit down with McCready (Chris Mulkey), after he has been shot by her boys for stealing and Loretta has made it home safely from her abduction. Again, the moonshine appears to be a communion of sorts, a way for Mags and McCready to admit their sins, ask for each other’s forgiveness, and return to the status quo. And Mags’ speech follows that path, asking after Loretta. She forgives McCready for his stealing, and insists that her son apologize for shooting him and forcing his foot into a trap. Sure, she continues to draw information out of McCready about what he has told the police and what risk he might still pose, but she does so as a benevolent leader. As McCready says all the right things, we watch as both McCready and Mags try to assess the situation and determine what will happen next. Unlike the scene with Raylan, there is no subtle jockeying for power; it is clear that Mags is in control. And it is through her apple pie that she exerts her control. Having poisoned McCready’s glass, she calmly explains to him that his real crime was going outside the family by calling the cops about Loretta’s abductor. She is both terrifying and comforting as she grips his hand as he dies, talking him through the pain and pledging to raise Loretta as her own. She is not a benevolent leader, and her apple pie can longer be seen as innocuous. From this scene on, every time she reaches for a mason jar to pour someone a drink, we question her motives.

Too Young for Pie

Mags and Loretta McCready (the fabulous Kaitlyn Dever) also share a drink in opening scenes of the next episode, and coming on the heels of the apple pie murder, perhaps the audience is supposed to assume that Loretta is a goner too. But, ultimately we know Mags will not kill the girl. Not because she is too kindly or motherly to do so (the season gives us plenty of evidence that Mags can be just as ruthless to her kin as she is to outsiders), but because she longs for something she gave up when she took over the family business. Mags lives in the world of men, and to survive in that world she does what so many strong female characters do—she becomes masculine. Such figures maintain control through fear and violence, they wield weapons and talk of war, and they protect their own at the expense of others. Mags sees Loretta as a possibility for a different way. Having lost her feminine side so long ago, she mistakenly equates femininity with innocence, and struggles to keep Loretta away from the ugly truths.

The audience gets the first glimpse of Mags in this light in “The Moonshine War,” after Loretta comes to see her to atone for her father’s theft. Mags shows real concern for the girl and promises to protect her from the pervert who has accosted her. But she seems even more worried with how Loretta is managing at home, asking her about her father’s ability to take care of her. Mags is upset that Loretta felt that she needed to take control of the household, to grow up before she should have to. As she hands Loretta a handful of candy, she makes it clear that Loretta should relinquish that kind of responsibility to Mags.

In the next episode, the two share a similar, though more emotionally loaded, moment. She pours Loretta a glass of apple cider, explaining that she is a few years away from being able to have Mags’ apple pie. In part this reads as a warning; Loretta might one day need killing. But mostly, this sentiment is Mags shielding the girl from the poison of her world. As Mags fiddles with Loretta’s jewelry and strokes her hair, she lies to Loretta about her father and confesses her desire to have a daughter instead of being stuck with “just those damn boys.” This scene is replayed later in the season as Mags helps Loretta get dressed up for a picnic, explaining to her that there is nothing wrong in looking pretty and that her [Mags’] time for that is long past. It is in her scenes with Loretta that we most clearly see the regret Mags has for what she has had to become, and what she has had to give up to do so.

Molly Brayman studied poetry at the University of Alabama, and teaches composition at the University of Cincinnati. She watches more television than is good for most people, but rationalizes it by presenting regularly at the National Popular Culture Association Conference.