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Guest Writer Wednesday: African American Romantic Comedies: Colorism

This guest post by Renee Martin also appears at her blog Women’s Eye on Media.

I love a good romantic comedy, but I must admit I am especially partial to those that star Blacks. It is a rare thing to see a dominant Black presence in media, and romantic comedies happen to be the only genre that this consistently happens in. Unfortunately, these movies still fall into specific tropes that are a direct result of being produced in a White supremacist culture.

Many of the male stars like, Morris Chestnut and Taye Diggs are dark skinned Black men. In fact, you could reasonably argue that Morris Chestnut is the king of the African Romantic comedy. These dark skinned men are always described as fiiiine, hot, and a real catch. When it comes to colourism and Black men, it would be fair to say that it is not an issue in African American comedies, because the actors range from Morris Chestnut to the ever so lovely LL Cool J (and yes, I love him).

The same is not necessarily true when it comes to women. From Stacey Dash in VHI’s new series Single Ladies, to Paula Patton in 2011’s Jumping the Broom, to Sanaa Lathan in The Best Man, to Zoe Saldana in Guess Who, to Vivica Fox in Two Can Play That Game, and Queen Latifah in Just Wright, light skinned women have a tendency to dominate the genre. The darkest skinned women that you will find in the genre are Monique, who played the ghetto woman Two Can Play That Game, Kimberly Elise, who played Helen in Diary of a Mad Black Woman (the title says it all doesn’t it), and Gabrielle Union, who starred in Deliver Us From Eva.

What is perhaps most interesting, is that in Deliver Us From Eva, Union played the stereotypical angry Black woman who had been burned countless times. She was absolutely vicious to anyone that approached her, and her brother in laws absolutely detested her, that is until they paid LL. Cool J to date her, and suddenly she became soft, and loving. Here we go again with another Black woman being saved from her angry ways by the love of a good Black man. (Tyler Perry is somewhere dancing a little jig.) All the things that allowed her to support her sisters up to and including putting them through school, and saving money for the benefit of their family, were seen as negative character traits. When Union played opposite Vivica Fox in Two Can Play That Game, she played the role of Jezebel. That’s right, a dark Black woman out to steal away Morris Chestnut from the light skinned, smart, and in control Vivica Fox. Union was slut shamed throughout the movie, and yet when Vivica Fox chose to sleep with Chestnut in his office it was simply being freaky and keeping your man happy. Particularly telling, is that no reference was made to differentiate between the two women, except for the visually obvious difference in hue. Why one was necessarily deserving of being slut shamed, when she was essentially no different than the other, was left for the viewer to determine. Even in movies, the strong dark skinned Black woman can never get a break.

Colourism can be just as damaging to Black men as Dr. Michael Eric Dyson explained, when he examined the relationship between himself and his incarcerated dark skinned brother, yet in movies, the hue of Black men can range from LL. Cool J and Terrence Howard to Taye Diggs and Richard T Jones, without any real issue. In fact, the very range in hue of Black men suggests that Black men are all uniquely valuable and sexually attractive. This is why it is hard to comprehend why the same universal acceptance is not given to Black women.

In Jungle Fever, Wesley Snipes leaves his light skinned Black wife played by Lonette McKee, for an Italian woman. In a scene with McKee’s girlfriends, they discuss how the trend for a long time was for Black men to seek out light bright and damn near White women as partners, and how that changed as inter racial relationships became acceptable. You see, the White woman has always been held up as the epitome of beauty, and failing that, the WOC who was closest in appearance to Whiteness was then the chosen prize, thereby leaving dark skinned women completely out of the loop. A new documentary entitled Dark Skin being released this fall discusses this issue. If you doubt that this is an issue, a simple look at what L’Oreal Feria haircolor did to Beyonce, or what Elle Magazine did to Gabourey Sidibe is more than enough to settle this issue.

No woman of colour can ever be light skinned enough. What is particularly disgusting, is not only do these movies have all Black casts, in quite a few instances, they have Black directors to boot. What does it say about Black cinema, that we constantly reproduce our internalized racial hatred? Since we know that colorism is an issue for the entire community, why is it that, Black women are particularly targeted with erasure? Watching these movies really brought to mind the conversations in media about the lonely Black woman, who is destined to die a single woman. As much as African American romantic comedies constantly end with a Black woman and a Black men either in a committed relationship, or getting married, the near erasure of dark skinned women plays into the whole idea that unless you are light skinned you are not worthy of being loved. When we add in the fact that these movies are not aimed at White people, it seems to me that Blacks have come to find this idea acceptable, otherwise when given the opportunity to tell our stories, darker Black women would appear in this genre more regularly, rather than being restricted to films like The Color Purple and Precious.

Editors Note: This is an ongoing series. You can find part 1 here on class. Next week, we will be looking at the ubiquitous usage of the word nigger in these movies.

Renee Martin is a disabled mother of two, and a freelance writer who focuses on social justice. On her blog Womanist Musings she largely writes about social justice generally. She also is a contributor and co-creator of the blog Fangs for the Fantasy, where she writes critically using a social justice lens on the urban fantasy genre. Each week she also participates in the Fangs for the Fantasy podcast, where she discusses the latest in urban fantasy. At Women’s Eye on Media, where she is also a co-creator and shares editing and writing duties with fellow creator Holly Ord, she writes about social justice and the media. Her work has been published at The Guardian, Ms Blog and several small newspapers. She previously cross-posted her review of The Big C at Bitch Flicks.

Documentary Preview: Dark Girls

Dark Girls (2012)

Set to premiere this October at the International Black Film Festival in Nashville, Dark Girls is a documentary by D. Channsin Berry and Bill Duke that explores the prejudice against and the often-internalized feelings of self-hatred experienced by dark-skinned Black women in the United States.

The light-skinned bias is easily recognized in film and media, but rarely do we get to hear from women who experience this bias in their lives, workplaces, and relationships. I’m looking forward to watching this documentary, and hope it gets a wide release after its festival showings.

Writing for Clutch, Jamilah Lemieux says:

While many people would love to believe that color is no longer an issue, and that we are post-racial, post-color struck–post-anything that forces them to admit that all things are not even in this world, and that we have much work to do–the many subjects interviewed for the film sing a very different tune.

[…]

Though we know that not all darker sisters suffer great indignities or issues with self image, nor is life a crystal stair for those of us who are lighter, this film continues a long conversation that is still very important. So long as we have people amongst us who gladly uphold the damning “White is right” standard–assigning favor to people based upon their proximity to it, we can’t let this one go. This is something we can get past, this does not have to continue.

Watch the trailer and share your own experiences on the official film website:

Quote of the Day: ‘Movie-Made America’

Movie-Made America by Robert Sklar

I came across this interesting piece from Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies, in which author Robert Sklar talks about a fairy-tale aspect of acting (being “discovered”), the patriarchal foundation of casting, and the behind-the-scenes women of the 1910s and 1920s. I’ve added some links to the original text for further reading.

In the World War I era–an unsettled period when late-Victorian mores persisted side by side with an emerging image of a “new woman”–it could only have been disconcerting to respectable Americans to see photographs of determined young women in the ankle-length dresses, high-button shoes and broad-brimmed hats standing in long lines outside a Hollywood casting office. The American middle class had only just begun to regard movies as something other than immoral trash for working-class people; and suddenly their daughters were packing up and leaving home to seek their fortunes in the movies.

If they had to go, the least one could do was give them sound advice, most of it intended to be discouraging. A girl should plan to have enough money to survive for a year without additional income; authors of advice books and articles for the movie aspirant set the minimum figure at $2,000. She should have resources enough to be able to acquire her own wardrobe, since extras in those days had to supply their own outfits for scenes of contemporary life. She should consider what abilities she possessed and perhaps direct her ambitions to other interesting work in motion pictures.

Studios needed talented dress designers, set decorators, film cutters, all jobs that were open to women. In fact, the motion-pictures studios in the 1910s and 1920s gave more opportunities to women than most other industries, far more than they ever did again. Many of the leading scenario writers were women, among them Anita Loos, June Mathis, Frances Marion and Jeanie Macpherson. Lois Weber was a well-known director and independent producer, and Elinor Glyn, Dorothy Arzner and other women directed films during the 1920s. Women were occasionally found in executive positions in Hollywood producing companies. And if a woman possessed none of these talents, there were always jobs as secretaries, mail clerks, film processors, and in other modest but essential roles in the making of movies.

But what women wanted was to be actresses. They could see that other girls, many still in their teens, without acting experience, were making it. Why not they? But no one informed them that a fair share of the young girls with film contracts were “payoffs,” as Colleen Moore called them: players who were hired as a favor to influential people or to pay back a favor they had done the studio. Moore got her start because her uncle, a newspaper editor, gave D.W. Griffith help in getting his films approved by the Chicago censorship board, and Griffith repaid him with a contract for his niece. In Silent Star, Moore reports that Carmel Myers, Mildred Harris (a bride at sixteen to Charlie Chaplin) and Winifred Westover, who began acting as teen-agers, were all “payoffs” in similar ways.

YouTube Break: ARTHUR – The Agent of Change

We often lament the state of girls’ representation in animated films–an issue that the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media is working hard to improve. If you spend some time on the site and look at the stats, what most of us already know about children’s programming becomes undeniable–boys are the norm, girls the exception.

Brought to our attention by reader Alli (on Facebook), this clip from the PBS cartoon Arthur –called “The Agent of Change”–takes on gender in a smart and kid-friendly way. After sitting through a popular animated film (ahem, Cars) in the theatre, one character asks “Are there any kid movies with decent girl characters?”

Makes us wonder, too. The girls in this episode take matters into their own hands.

Watch the clip and share with the kids in your life.

YouTube Break: Jean Kilbourne’s "Killing Us Softly" Lecture

From her website:

Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D. is internationally recognized for her pioneering work on the image of women in advertising and her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. Her films, lectures, and television appearances have been seen by millions of people throughout the world. She was named by The New York Times Magazine as one of the three most popular speakers on college campuses. She is the author of the award-winning book Can’t Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel and co-author of So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids. The prize-winning films based on her lectures include Killing Us Softly, Spin the Bottle, and Slim Hopes.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Cardboard Cutouts Beware! A Review of Good Dick

Good Dick (2008)

A feminist romcom that fails to pass the Bechdel Test? How can that be? Good Dick (2008) suggests that it is not only possible, but that it can be done in a way that makes one wonder about the typical inanity of the genre. Why must the overwhelming majority of romcoms perpetuate a status quo that lionizes men while demeaning women? Why can’t we be presented with complicated characters who navigate the complexities of sex and love instead of cardboard cutouts who confirm dangerous conventions?

On the surface, Good Dick, which Marianna Palka wrote, directed and stars in, seems conventional, albeit quirky. A video store clerk (Jason Ritter) is attracted to a woman (Palka) who comes into his store to rent “bad ’80s girl-focused porn” (Cynthia Fuchs). The clerk looks up the woman’s address on the store’s computer and pays her a visit. Through cracks in her window blinds, he spies her masturbating to the video rental and decides to set up camp in a nearby parking lot, living in his car so he can pursue her affections in closer proximity. Eventually, the peeping Tom gains entrance into her apartment by lying about a dead relative. Despite our reservations about this character—as Fuchs writes, “In another movie the boy would be a serial killer”—he proves to be patient and persistent enough to gain the woman’s hard-earned trust and eventually win her heart.

I admit, the setup of the story sounds awful. In Palka’s Director’s Statement, she writes, “The story is almost like a knight slaying a dragon to save a damsel in distress.” Palka’s observation that the dragon is part of the woman does not reassure that this flick will rise above the regressive romcom fantasy fare of man-as-savior, woman-as-saved. The fact that there are no women in the supporting cast, let alone strong women, does not seem to help matters. Nor does a clichéd scene of an old man (Charles Durning) who visits the video store to deliver the moral of the story to the suitor and his coworker-compadres (in so many words, find love before it’s too late).

At this point, I might use a turn of phrase such as “In spite of these pitfalls, Good Dick succeeds…”. However, transitioning from a well-wrought counterargument misses my overall point that Good Dick succeeds because of these pitfalls, not in spite of them. The argument in the film lies firmly within the counterargument; it could be no other way. In other words, the only way for Palka’s debut film to overturn conventions is to court them with all the attendant dangers, much like the man in the film does with the woman who, it becomes more and more apparently clear, is struggling to overcome sexual abuse. The film succeeds because it romances romcom normativity to buck it in two vital ways.

First, the woman’s sexual abuse is not sensationalized. The film portrays its lingering effects with a subtle realism that would leave the Hallmark channel crowd squeamish, and rightfully so. The last thing a woman who has been sexually abused by her father needs is some paperback-Fabio-figure to waltz in the picture and show her how “it’s supposed to feel.” Palka hits the right note by including no sex in a film permeated by it. The cure for a “bad dick” is not a “good dick,” sexually speaking.

The title “Good Dick” is more ironic than literal. The man is a dick in the eyes of the woman because he will not leave her alone. He is dogged, pesky, slavish. He at once confirms and frustrates her beliefs about men (that they are all dicks all the time). He wants to have sex with her, but he seems capable of waiting forever for her consent. In short, he seems to be in love with her. But instead of love being treated as the goal and the lover as the prize, as is the case with most romcoms, love is perceived by the woman as abhorrent and the lover as a contemptible (“a dick”). The abuse she suffered at the hands of her father has corrupted her sense of love; love has been confused with abusive sex. The man represents “good dick” because he disentangles the notion of love from sex, thus opening up a space for her to discover (on her own terms and at her own pace) the possibility that good love and good sex can exist, and simultaneously at that. (The father (Tom Arnold) appears in one scene at the end. In this scene, we discover that he is not only sexually abusive but wealthy and financially supporting his daughter. In short, she is a victim not just of her “bad dick” father, but of patriarchy at large, another subtle touch in the film that opens up the scope of its social commentary).

Although made by a woman, the film strikes me as a romcom aimed at men as much as women—not in that sense of norming guys to carry the torch of patriarchy or apologizing for their man-child behavior. Rather, the film exposes men to how damaging these norms are to women while offering them an alternative form of masculinity. From Palka’s Director’s Statement again:

For the lead male role I wanted to see the lover archetype illustrated in a way that is all loving, all kind, all ways. I knew the guy had to be strong and thereby protective, but not in a stereotypical sense. Definitions of masculinity often tend to be deformed in our culture, forgetting the good fight and glorifying what I like to call, “The cardboard cutout man.” In Good Dick the man’s power has nothing to do with his physical strength, his appearance or his social status. He is masculine in a way that is genuine; this masculinity stems from his lack of chauvinism. His chivalry is his depth of kindness.

Good Dick reminds men to fight this good fight against the abusive power of cardboard masculinity. It challenges men to redefine masculine power in a way that is genuine, benevolent, and (dare I say?) loving. Although not a perfect film, Good Dick’s merits lie with warning men and women not to confuse our culture’s “deformed” definitions of masculinity with masculinity itself. “Man up” can mean something other than the masculinity peddled in Miller Lite commercials.

Kirk Boyle is an Assistant Professor of English who will be joining the University of North Carolina at Asheville’s Literature and Language Department in August. He previously contributed pieces on The Day the Earth Stood Still and Revolutionary Road to Bitch Flicks.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Resisting Motherhood in Grey’s Anatomy

This guest post by Marina DelVecchio also appears at Marinagraphy.

Lately, it seems that every single television show takes any kind of woman and turns her into a mother. She can be a Playboy vamp, a stripper, an affected teenager, or a surgeon, but at some point in her fictitious or reality TV role as a woman leading a happily single existence while having a lot of sex, she gets the urge to have a baby. Becoming a mother has become vogue—the “in thing.”

Kendra, former Playboy bunny who had sex with Hugh Heffner voluntarily (gagging here), is now settled down and pregnant. Pink (who I adore because she’s such a rebellious punk), is pregnant. The Kardashian sisters are each filing away their sexual escapades and viral sex tapes and preparing for babies.

On a more fictitious level, Kate Walsh’s character in Private Practice just gave up a relationship because she wants a baby and he doesn’t, since he’s already been there and done that. In House, Lisa Edelstein’s character, after years of service as head of the hospital—a powerhouse of a woman who has to dress sexy in every episode, adopted a baby because she could no longer wait for House or any other man to give her one.

And then there are three mothers presently blossoming at Grey’s Anatomy. Callie, (Sara Ramirez) is the eternal Madonna—a straight woman turned gay, who has been wanting her own baby for a long time and almost lost Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) because of it, since the pediatric surgeon never wanted kids for herself. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) is a new adoptive mom after many failed attempts at having her own baby—and the most realistic one to me, since she’s not sure how good she will be as a mom. And then of course, we have Christina Yang, played by the ever brilliant Sandra Oh, who finds herself pregnant for the second time. And for the second time, she wants to get an abortion.

And there’s nothing wrong with this—except that aside from Christina Yang’s character, there are few other representations of women. What about the women who don’t want to be mothers? Where are their voices? And why are the voices of mother-want-to-be’s so much louder? It seems that they are everywhere, telling all young women that eventually, they all need to settle down and have babies, especially before their biological clocks start humming, followed by the incessant whine of “what if you’re never a mother?”

I have been thinking about Christina Yang since a few weeks ago. I love her character. Aside from the fact that her writers fell off the track by making her have a nervous breakdown and dance on a bar drunk as a skunk, Sandra Oh’s character is brilliant and so different. She is a surgeon—a die hard, unrelenting, and un-self-sacrificing woman, who hates more than anything to lose herself in a man she loves. She even gave up her lover so that she could have a chance to operate and learn from the best in her field. She is single-minded, obtuse, and unapologetic—and I know she’s not just a figment of some writer’s imagination. There are women like her out there. Women who don’t want to have children or be mothers. Women who have no problems saying that they don’t even like kids. And it’s not because the child will interfere with her work or domesticate her. She is just not interested in having kids. Motherhood is not in her nature.

And there is nothing wrong with this. But the world makes us all feel like there is. There is something wrong with you if you’re a woman and don’t want to have any kids. You’re a cold bitch if you choose a career over family. You’re unnatural. Feminism of the seventies told us that we had choices, but the choices always included kids—women had to learn to have children, careers, and dinner at the table by five.

But what if you don’t want to have any? Hugh Heffner has sex with a lot of babies (they may as well be), but you don’t see the world crushing him with self-righteous diatribes because his Playboy mansion is not full of his children running around in their undies—and I am sure he has fathered many. But men are different, right? Rules don’t box them in. They get away with everything—including being in their 80′s and having sex with girls of 18. No gross factor there.

Women are controlled—subtly and and not so subtly. We have been conditioned to define ourselves via our biology. We have the children, therefore, we must have children. Commercials tell us our roles— our defining roles as women: mothers, care givers, cooks, cleaners, carpoolers, wives, volunteers, educators, and self-sacrificing do-gooders. Our neighborhoods define our place in society: mothers, care givers, cooks, cleaners, carpoolers, wives, volunteers, educators, and self-sacrificing do-gooders. Let’s add some negative ones here also, like nags, overweight hags, gossips and trophy wives. Now television shows—reality and non-reality—overwhelm us with maternal figures—no matter where they got their start from. Sex bunnies gone mom. Pop stars gone mom. Infertile women gone mom. High school drop-outs gone mom. And out of all of these, we only have one woman who resists motherhood: Christina Yang.

Where are all the others? Where are their voices? I want to see more representations of Yang’s character everywhere, because these women do exist. Although I got married and have two kids, I am the daughter of a woman who resisted conventional roles of women. I watched my mother growing up, keenly, as if I were observing a rare stone that never belonged to our region. She was as unique as they come. And even though she chose motherhood by adopting me—it was more for companionship than it was for a desire to show maternal affection—she had none—or at least she withheld it out of self-preservation. But I am reminded of her when I come face to screen with Christina Yang—and I wish young girls had more of her uniqueness with which to identify. I have learned so much from my mom—I learned that all women are different, and we can choose different paths in life than the ones we are told are especially pink-lined for us.

Just because women can have babies doesn’t always mean they should have them. We are not all made of the same cloth—we are not all designed to mother—even if biologically, we can.

Marina DelVecchio is a writer and a College Instructor. She has a BA in English Literature, an MS in English and Secondary Education and has completed thirty credits towards a Doctorate in Feminist Theory, Rhetoric and Composititon and 19th century Women Writers. Originally from New York, she began teaching on the High School level and then moved up to the College level in 2005. She presently teaches English Composition, Research, and Literature at a local Community College in North Carolina.

Guest Writer Wednesday: ‘X-Men First Class’: I Like it, but WTF?

X-Men First Class, 2011, Matthew Vaughn

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The X-Men franchise. I’ve been a fan of this ragtag team of mutants since the first movie was released (afterwards diving into the world of comics). The movies, along with their source material, have always been clear in their metaphorical status: These are not just mutants, these are everyone who is Different, Othered and Not Accepted by mainstream society. Previously, this analogy has certainly existed in the films, drawing specifically on Magneto’s history as a Jew in World War II, and on the idea of “coming out” as Bobby (Ice Man, played by Shawn Ashmore). Ian McKellen (Magneto) has discussed the connection between X-Men, race, and sexuality in reference to the first three X-Men films.

Certainly as a metaphor (and hardly that) for gay society, X-Men First Class succeeds. The movie is set up around the stories of Erik (Michael Fassbender) and Charles (James McAvoy), who we come to know later as Magneto and Professor X. Until they meet, about twenty minutes into the film, their stories are filled with loneliness and a sense of “am I the only one” — Charles’ despair is cut short by the arrival of Raven Darkholme/Mystique, whom I’ll discuss later at length. In the comics, Charles and Erik have a long history, a relationship of deep intimacy that spans decades. In X-Men First Class, this relationship is condensed into mere months, and when discussing the film, my (male) friend explained that “For two men to get that close, that fast, there’s probably gay sex happening.”

The movie doesn’t dispute this. In fact, we are treated to a scene of Erik and Charles in bed together, laden with semi-sexual dialogue. Their conversations are deep, meaningful, their gazes fierce and full of longing. Were it not for the plot of the film, and attention paid=”center”> to other characters, I would be certain that the first half of X-Men F=”center”>irst Class was setting up for explicit gay sex. And, really, there’s=”center”> nothing wrong with this. If X-Men First Class is deemed the first gay s=”center”>uperhero movie, then I’m more than proud to have seen it during o=”center”>pening weekend, in a packed theater, and having heard no disparaging=”center”> remarks to that nature. Of course, there is also a huge problem with t=”center”>he “bromance” — Erik and Charles (and villain Sebastian Shaw, also) e=”center”>ssentially deny the validity of their human or female associates in=”center”> order to form a delightful world order on their own. It should be n=”center”>oted that Erik, Charles, and Sebastian all read as male, caucasian,=”center”> and capable of “passing” for human.=”center”>

The plot of this film, firmly rooted in the continuity of the=”center”> previously made X-Men films despite problems, deals primarily with the C=”center”>uban Missile Crisis, US government’s acceptance (and non-acceptance)=”center”> of mutants, and an almost James Bond-esque effect of lingering Nazi=”center”> sentiment. The villains: The Hellfire Club. Consisting of Sebastian=”center”> Shaw (Kevin Bacon), Emma Frost (January Jones), and two henchmen:=”center”> Riptide and Azazel, the Club fronts as a high-class strip club and=”center”> doubles as a lair to promote nuclear war. Shaw believes that mutants=”center”> are, literally, Children of the Atom, and seeks to promote a nuclear=”center”> holocaust (yes, he was involved with the last Holocaust in this canon)=”center”> that will wipe out humanity, leaving only a pure mutant race behind.=”center”>

Who we come to know as the X-Men (Charles, Erik, Beast, Mystique,=”center”> Havok and Banshee) align themselves with the CIA, the institution=”center”> first seeking information on the Hellfire Club and later working=”center”> directly against the nuclear threat. The primary voices of the CIA are=”center”> Agent Moira McTaggert (played by Rose Byrne, in a significant change=”center”> from the character’s comic origins) and a benefactor played by Oliver=”center”> Platt. These two are Good Humans and Allies, working with the mutants=”center”> to integrate and fight for their cause, which just so happens to also=”center”> be the mutants’ cause: the CIA obviously want to avoid nuclear war,=”center”> Erik wants revenge on his “creator”, and Charles wants to keep public=”center”> perception of mutants in a positive light, something that won’t happen=”center”> if Shaw succeeds.=”center”>

And overall, the movie doesn’t disappoint. Despite it’s failings=”center”> (again, I’ll discuss this later), X-Men First Class is a truly fun=”center”> movie. Director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) puts the film together with=”center”> a genuinely nice balance of humor, tense action, and political=”center”> intrigue. As much as I am baffled by some of the choices the film=”center”> chooses to make, and angered by several others, I can’t wait to see=”center”>X-Men First Class again. Count this off to my fangirling of the=”center”> series, perhaps, but the rottentomatoes.com=”center”> rating seems to agree. =”center”>

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Magneto is skilled at making funny faces while using his powers.

The rest of this review deals with how X-Men First Class handles race and gender, and contains detailed spoilers for the film.

As I stated, the X-Men franchise is no stranger to identifying with marginalized groups, and this film takes that one step further, while ironically completely failing to support any marginalized groups, aside from perhaps, LGBTs. I would hesitate to discuss a movie in these terms, had it not already made it abundantly clear that it was dealing, not only with a fictional universe, but as an analogy for ours.

There are several Characters of Color in X-Men First Class, but don’t go into the film expecting positive portrayals. When I refer to a Character of Color, I mean that said character’s “home” form is not traditional caucasian.

First, we have Darwin (played by Edi Gathegi): a young recruit to Charles’ team, his power is to “adapt to survive” (growing gills when submerged, turning rock solid to deflect physical blows). He receives limited characterization, much like the other recruits, and his first (and final) major scene involves attempting to deceive Shaw, “rescue” another mutant who has decided to deflect, and get quickly killed in the process. During Shaw’s monologue to the teens about why they should join his side, he states that by Charles’ way of thinking, they would rather “be enslaved or rise up to rule”. On “slaves,” the camera cuts to and lingers on Darwin, a black male. Could this be seen as a point of view shot from Shaw? Perhaps, but there are no others like it in the film. Save to say that this is one of the cheapest methods of marginalizing a character that I’ve seen in a recent film.
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The X-Men wonder where they can find a new token black character.

There are characters of color among the background characters as well, throwaways like Angel, Riptide, and Azazel. These characters eitherhave no characterization (Riptide and Azazel) and work for the “bad guys” or, in Angel’s case, (to paraphrase) would rather have guys look at her in the strip club, than have guys look at her as a mutant. She defects to join the baddies as well.

Shaw’s, and eventually, Magento’s side certainly has validity. Not in the manner of wiping out an entire race to let the superior one flourish, but in the sense that mutants, and in this case, mutants who are already marginalized by their appearance, shouldn’t be forced to integrate into normal society, to forgo what makes them them. Mystique’s catch phrase, first bemoaning the fact that she is not, and later celebrating the idea of “Mutant and proud” echoes many movements in history, from Black Pride to Gay Pride. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) learns to wear her natural form and take pride in it.

Her journey to acceptance is central to the film. Growing up with Charles Xavier, Mystique learned to hate her natural blue form. She asks Charles, early in the film, if he would ever date her, looking like this [her blue form]. He gives her a line about being unable to think of her as anything other than his sister, but repeatedly reacts poorly to her use of blue form in public, unless, of course, it is to his ends. Raven ages slower than her adoptive “brother,” and as a result, Charles continually infantalizes her, keeps her drinking cola while he drinks at bars, informs her of her decisions and influences others. Her next love interest (and unfortunately intertwined in her seeking of acceptance) is Hank McCoy/Beast (Nicolas Hoult), who she sense an immediate bond with due to his deformed feet. Beast is geekily interested in the pretty girl, but doesn’t hide his motives. He wants her blood to create a formula that destroys the physical manifestations of their powers. Again, Mystique seeks his approval of her natural form, and Beast fumbles for an answer before settling on “You’re beautiful now,” gesturing to her clearly female, white caucasian, curvy body. She finally finds someone who appreciates her natural form in Magneto, however she gains it while reducing herself to a sexual object. Even while encouraging her to embrace her natural form, Erik compares Mystique to a tiger who needn’t be tamed.

The Mystique I know from canon (both movie and otherwise) doesn’t rely on others to decide whether or not she should be proud of her body. Granted, she has suffered for looking the way she does, but becomes stronger for it. In X-Men First Class, Mystique’s journey is so closely tied to male approval and attraction that it is hard to take her seriously, and certainly removes any feminist aspects to her character.

On the subject of Beast, there are always mutants who see their powers as more of an affliction than a blessing (Rogue in the original trilogy is the primary example). Beast views his gorilla-like feet as a hindrance to his otherwise immensely successful scientific and inventing career. Aside from tossing anything vaguely scientific on a self-proscribed disabled character, the film indulges in Beast’s point of view. He tries to cure himself of the physical affliction and is instead, in a thinly-veiled echo of Jekyll and Hyde, granted a full beastly form, complete with blue hair. Should Beast have embraced his disability instead of working against it? The film doesn’t deign to say. However, Magneto, with his band of physically different mutants, is quick to accept Beast’s new form. In most canon, where Beast continues to align at least loosely with Charles, he is relegated to background roles.

The film features a training montage (split-screens and everything!) that works to simultaneously progress the characters in their abilities, to give a bit of characterization, and to show case what a genuine asshole Charles Xavier is. His methods include accessing hidden memories to manipulate emotions, instructing young Banshee that the throat is “just a muscle” and can be trained (what does this say, then, to those who have muscles that cannot be trained?), and producing a seemingly endless supply of female mannequins for Havoc to annihilate while he learns to focus his explosive blasts. Along with his not-so subtle racism and casual outing of fellow mutants, Charles really is a winner.

Previous X-Men films have stayed clear of Charles’ dubious nature (aside from X-3, which I choose not to include in my canon by virtue of how bad it was) and, perhaps, for good reason. A leader with such obvious issues is difficult to get an audience to rally behind. While I appreciated that X-Men First Class did not shy away from the problematic nature of Charles Xavier, I wasn’t exactly keen on being made to watch him subtly marginalize his own people while building a team. Given that Charles ends the film in his iconic wheelchair, paralyzed, perhaps there is another layer to the discourse here, but I couldn’t find one.

In addition to proporting to align sensibilities with marginalized POC and failing, for a film that takes place in the 60s, I was expecting a Mad Men-esque deconstruction of gender relations, not an excuse to indulge in poor treatment of females. I was truly excited going in to this film, looking forward to how Emma Frost would do in her first prolonged big-screen portrayal. I was even excited when January Jones (Mad Men) was cast in the role: her layered portrayal of Betty is intense and powerful, two qualities any proper Emma Frost must have.

I was, to say the least, disappointed. Not only is the character written awkwardly, but Jones’ portrayal lacked any kind of depth. Emma Frost is used in the film as punch line, glorified butler, and sex object. With her powers — telepathy, shown to be strong enough to combat Xavier’s, and diamond form, protecting her physical form — there is no reason for Frost to do anything she doesn’t want to. She is essentially Sebastian Shaw’s busty lap dog, and getting nothing out of the arrangement. Where was the devious woman I’ve come to love?

My friend, Aimee LaPlant, who runs the fansite EmmaFrostFiles.com, shares this dismay. She presented her view in an interview with MSNBC sex columnist Bryan Alexander that Emma Frost was not “created to be a slut,” as purported by Christy Marx, at least not in what the term slut has come to mean. Emma Frost is a powerful role model for girls: using her sexuality and enjoying it, building her powers,and effectively manipulating and controlling others to her ends.

The Emma Frost in X-Men First Class is none of these things. In fact, the portrayal of Emma in this film follows Christy Marx’s thesis almost exactly. This Emma is created to be a slut. She is sent to Russia to aide in negotiations to set up nuclear bases by Shaw, and instead of using her powers to gain information or influence, Emma “mind fucks” the Soviet official — an action that could be seen metaphorically, could be used as a cover for gaining information telepathically, however the film does not suggest that anything is happening aside from January Jones wearing sexy lingerie and a grown man groping a manifestation.

A woman presented as sexual and powerful is nothing to bemoan. However, when a woman, such as Emma Frost and Mystique, is reduced to only her sexual aspects this is troubling, and a far too easy route for filmmakers to take. What are Emma’s motivations? We don’t know. Mystique’s back story has been re-written to ensure that she relies on the approval of others rather than acceptance that is self-motivated.

As for the other main female character, Agent Moira McTaggert, I am not sure where to begin. Rose Byrne shone in the role, far beyond how the character was written. In comics canon, McTaggert is a brilliant scientist who comes to Charles’ aid with her research. In this film, she has been rewritten: she is American and not Scottish, she is a CIA agent — a lone woman in her office, she is the one coming to Xavier for his aid. Despite shining for a glorious five minutes near the finale of the film, McTaggert essentially works as the human POV for the film. She needs to learn about mutants, so through her, we do as well. Moira is one of the only females in the film who is comfortable using her sexuality (“using some equipment the CIA didn’t give me”) and manages to not be defined by it. In an eye-roll-inducing detail, her battle gear consists of a suitable uniform paired with platform shoes.

Two ending scenes in the film sum up her character, and the role of females in the film. During the climactic battle, Moira tries to catch Charles’ attention. He yells “Moira, be quiet!” — the men have a job to do. Finally, at a government debriefing, McTaggert tries to explain the events of the past days through her foggy memories (kindly induced by Xavier). “Gentlemen,” a lead agent says, his tone mocking, “this is why the CIA is no place for a woman.”

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The 60s is no place for mutants.

Marcia Herring is a rollergirl receptionist from Southeast Missouri. She is still working on her graduate degree, but swears to have it done someday. She spends most of her time watching television and movies and wishes she could listen to music and read while doing so without going insane. She previously contributed a review of Degrassi: The Next Generation to Bitch Flicks.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Howl’s Moving Castle and Male Adaptations of Female Work

This piece by Emily Belanger is cross-posted from Not Another Wave.

The first time I saw Howl’s Moving Castle, five or six years ago, I was delighted. I’d seen Spirited Away, but other than that I’d never seen any Miyazaki films, and as far as Miyazaki films go, HMC is a tad more accessible to Western audiences. Plus, they dubbed the animation so well that a friend convinced me the film was not, in fact, a translation, but that it had originally been done in English.

Well, that wasn’t true. It’s definitely a dubbed film. But I was surprised, a month ago, when my older sister handed me a copy of the book Howl’s Moving Castle and recommended I read it. She said it was a little like The Princess Bride, in that the book was different from the movie but still delightful. And delightful it was – but I was surprised by the ways the story and characters changed when it was transferred from a Welsh novel written by a woman, to a Japanese film directed by a man. Miyazaki did a fantastic job with the film, and I still love it, but his adaptation places more focus on male characters and all but strips Sophie of her power. On the flip side, the film complicates age and evil witches in a really interesting way.

I want to make it clear up front that I don’t know enough about Japanese culture and Welsh culture to comment on how culture has impacted this transition. In fact, I haven’t even seen the movie undubbed. Accordingly, this review will compare a book that was published in English, to a version of the film that was released in English though Disney, and which was marketed to an American audience.

This romantic imagining of Howl says it all
(source: Dreamhuntress on flickr)

First of all, in the movie, Howl is the main event. He’s dashing and pretty, and he swoops into Sophie’s boring life to save her from the soldiers who are flirting with her. Yes, Sophie doesn’t really need saving from those men, and Howl in fact puts her into more danger when the Witch of the Waste sees him with her and decides to put a curse on her, but there’s still something heroic in the gesture. These heroics don’t show up so soon in the book – instead of scaring off unwanted suitors, Howl is the unwanted suitor. Sophie gets nervous when he tries to buy her a drink, so he chuckles, offers to escort her wherever she’s going, and backs off when she doesn’t want him to. And the Witch of the Waste doesn’t curse her because she’s seen with Howl – she curses her because of a misunderstanding and a mistaken identity. I can see why Miyazaki simplified the witch’s motivations here, mind you.

The Witch of the Waste is a complicated character in the book, in ways I won’t fully describe here, since I hope you’ll all read the book for yourselves. But I will say this: while the film complicates the idea of witches by turning the Witch of the Waste into a victim you can sympathize with, who is ultimately an ally, the book complicates the idea of witches in other ways by making Howl’s struggle into one where he’s trying to avoid becoming like the witch. She isn’t evil by virtue of being a powerful woman, (and every powerful woman in the movie is, in fact, evil – even the witch only turns good after losing her powers). She has turned evil over time because she made the same choice Howl made, and his only hope is to undo that choice before it hurts him like it hurt her.

And gaining power in the book doesn’t corrupt all female characters. While the movie carries a warning to all magical beings – all the other wizards and witches in the land are losing their humanity to war – the only witches we meet (Madam Suliman and The Witch of the Waste) use their power for evil, while the wizards we meet (Howl and his apprentice) use their magic to help people/ to hide. In the book, however, we meet several witches who are good, including Howl’s teacher, a woman who teaches magic to Sophie’s sister, and Sophie herself. Yeah, that’s right, Sophie herself has magical powers in the book. In fact, in the book Sophie is able to save Howl because of her magical powers, not because they’re in love – although they are.

And that last point transitions nicely into my last critique of the movie – the movie is more a love story, where the book is more a coming of age story. Accordingly, it follows traditional patterns of love stories in ways that downplay how powerful women are and play up how powerful men are, while also reinforcing the Beauty and the Beast myth that a virtuous woman can save a dark, brooding man from his animalistic nature. In the book, Sophie plays a huge role in defeating the evil force they fight toward the end. In the movie, it’s mostly Howl, and Sophie’s role pertains mostly to Howl’s heart, which, remember, she is moving through their emotional connection and not through her own power. To reiterate: in the movie, her power and influence are defined in relation to Howl, but in the book she has her own power.

Still, there’s a silver lining to all this: the movie and the book are both about a young woman who only finds herself after losing her youth. How feminawesome is that?? Also, the characters are interesting and fleshed out in both mediums, and the movie’s approach to war is interesting. And the animation and music – just incredible. So if you love the movie, I hope you keep on loving it. But take the time to read the book too so you can appreciate the powerful side to Sophie’s nature.

Emily Belanger currently lives in Utah, where she’s completing an MFA in creative writing. When she isn’t writing fiction or teaching, she co-edits Not Another Wave, a feminist blog with an inclusive angle, and writes for Go Girl Magazine, a travel magazine for and by women. She’s originally from rural New Hampshire and misses the humidity very much.

Degrassi, Teens, and Rape Apologism

This guest post by Marcia Herring previously appeared at Feministing.

A recent plot line in popular teen drama Degrassi: the Next Generation featured what was, for all rights and purposes, date rape. Instead of taking the standard track for the show, Degrassi ignored the issue and made the abusive actions of character Declan all right to thousands of teens watching.

If you are unfamiliar with Degrassi, you can watch the episodes in question (“Love Lockdown, Parts 1 and 2”) here.

Oh, Degrassi. What hath thou wrought?

Background: Tackling issues that many teen dramas often avoid, or get wrong, Degrassi wins awards for its cliched and intense portrayal of high school life. Early years of the Next Generation saw several plotlines getting censored on American television: an abortion, a lesbian relationship, drug usage and consequences, school violence. Now Canadian and American networks work closely together to ensure that the programming is top notch and groundbreaking, including, earlier this year, the first transgender young adult on television (which was, by the way, handled incredibly).

The range of success in portraying teen issues varies, but ever since the original incarnation of Degrassi Junior High in the 1980s, the show has been used as a teaching tool for social situations and family discussions. In the absence of after school specials about what the kids get into these days, it is shows like Degrassi that perhaps show youth positive options to problems they may face.

A History of Rape: Degrassi is no stranger to rape. In season two, bitchy cheerleader Paige was coerced by a guy she liked into an upstairs room at a party, immediately pushed past her comfort zone, and, while shouting “No,” held down and raped. As Feminist Music Geek notes, she used music to help overcome feelings of self-doubt and worthlessness to fight back, and testified against her rapist in court. Later, in season 6, uptight Christian Darcy decided to cut loose and go wild for a weekend: this backfired when her drink was roofied. When she woke up next to her boyfriend, she assumed they had engaged in consensual sex, which was, in itself, bad enough because Darcy had sworn to remain a virgin until marriage. Eventually, enough memory of the night came back (and Peter swore he had done nothing) that Darcy believed she had been raped. She got tested, had an STD, and began a downward spiral that involved a suicide attempt, and sexual advances toward a teacher who tried to help her. Both girls have slow healing processes, but they are shown to heal through extended plotlines, and the recurring issues that these involve (though Darcy is written out of the show so that Shenae Grimes could join the cast of 90210).

Demographics: Now. In addition to teaching life lessons, Degrassi has to drive an audience. The Degrassi audience is, for the purposes of this argument, comprised of 5 somewhat equal parts. Part one is loyal fans. These have seen every episode of every incarnation of the show, and will watch every week. They probably participate in some kind of fandom, whether it be following someone involved on Twitter or reading/writing fanfiction. Part two are new fans. These fluctuate with every generation or group of students that go through. These are the screaming fangirls who tune in when their favorite character has a plotline but doze off at other times. Part three are casual viewers, those who stay on the channel if they have nothing better to do and generally recognize the characters. Part four are parents of teens watching the show, and educators. They might watch with intent to monitor their childrens’ intake, or simply to partake in family time. They offer commentary on the action and are a sounding board for questions that viewers have, stirred up by the episode. They might even be fans themselves. Part five is a wild card: friend of a friend who has to watch the new episode at a sleepover. Boyfriend of a part one. Someone who marathons the show for a week, but then encounters a mean fan and drops the show.

An ideal Degrassi episode will have something for all of these audiences: fanservice (read: hot guys or the couple du jour) for the flighty new group, the structured and dramatic plot that older fans have come to expect, something to keep casual viewers coming back, and an educational value for parents and educators.

Thesis: The recent two-part episode “Love Lockdown” failed on a moral level, one from which I am not sure Degrassi can recover, no matter how many successful episodes follow.

Background: Holly J and Declan began dating in season 9 when he convinced her that he liked her take-charge, sometimes-bitchy attitude and was willing to go the extra mile to find out about her life. Their relationship was often physical, and focused on financial aspects as Declan’s family is very rich and Holly J’s family became quite poor. During their summer vacation (Holly J’s internship) to New York City, Holly J engaged in a rivalry over Declan with his sister, which resulted in Declan’s fluctuating behavior: at first angrily siding with his sister and then dramatically requesting forgiveness on a live television broadcast.

Later, in season 10, Holly J and Fiona (Declan’s sister) have a new friendship, one that is consistently troubled with issues of purchased affections. It is no wonder that this spreads into the relationship between Holly J and Declan: he has been living in New York, and believes that smooth-talking and a beautiful necklace will reassure his place in Holly J’s heart. They go on a break.

In Declan’s absense, Holly J and Sav engage in a casual relationship: flirty and physical. They always appear smiling and happy. Towards recent episodes this might even indicate deeper feelings than their original “only until graduation” pledge.

“Love Lockdown, Part 1”: In “Love Lockdown Part 1,” Declan returns. His goal is to convince Holly J to get back with him. From the moment he sees her with Sav, he does not register Sav as a threat, but as an obstacle to be brushed aside. He just needs to get some time alone with Holly J, and then she will see. For most of the evening, she sticks to Sav’s side (to Declan’s frustration, the episodes are told at his perspective) until Declan creates the perfect distraction: set up a sweet DJ booth for Sav the aspiring musician at a party. This gives Declan the in he has been wanting, where Holly J promptly turns him down. “I’m not going to do anything tonight/at this party”/”I have a boyfriend” are variations on Holly J’s replies to Declan’s pleading. He doesn’t get it.

Little sister to the rescue: Habitual drunk Fiona plays up her level of drunkenness for the sake of big brother’s love life, leaning heavily on her best friend and big brother. Holly J knows how to handle this situation and sends Sav home. Once Fiona is safely tucked in bed, Holly J and Declan are left alone, in the dark, on the sofa. A few words of concern about Fiona, and Declan’s agenda is back on the table. Holly J reiterates that she has a boyfriend, that she isn’t comfortable doing anything, that she doesn’t want to. Words that Declan ignores, kissing her shoulder, her neck. “We shouldn’t.” He kisses her cheek, turns her head, kisses her mouth, and she, reluctantly kisses back as the episode ends.

The reaction: Two definitive camps. Holly J was raped. No means no. And, If you think Holly J was raped you are stupid.

One fan’s reaction.

Most of the replies to this insisted that kissing and “spreading your legs” do in fact indicate consent.

Another fan’s reaction.

Victim blaming. Rape only exists under certain conditions. Holly J wasn’t raped because she didn’t really resist. Real victims suffer for years, they are beaten, drugged, and really abused. Holly J is fine.

“Love Lockdown, Part 2”: The description of the episode: “Holly J feels extremely conflicted about what happened with Declan at his party.” This episode too, though not as much as part 1, is framed in Declan’s narrative.

Holly J and Fiona:

“Last night, I didn’t want things to go as far as they did.”

“Like, as in sex? You and Declan have done that before.”

“No. Last night, I felt … pressured.”

Holly J and Declan:

“I didn’t want to. I told you that!”

“I thought that was because of Sav!”

“Does it matter why?”

Okay, so we’re on the right track, at least to recover from something atrocious. Right? And then, Holly J gets into Yale with Declan … and …

“I don’t know how I feel.”

“He thinks that you think he raped you.”

“I never said that.”

Holly J is backpedaling. Protecting herself from the pain she ends up feeling anyway. Rape is a stigma and a label that she obviously doesn’t want, so she denies it.

Part of the final scene, Holly J and Declan:

“I don’t… think you raped me.”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“Do you hate me?”

“I regret what happened.”

The reaction: A potentially facetious remark in tumblr RP, made to thedeclancoyne: “Congrats on not being a rapist.”

The results: Internalized rationalizations. If you were in a relationship once, there is always a chance to rekindle, even if you use coercion. If a guy is hot, you probably want it. If you dated a guy once, had sex willingly with him once, you probably want it again. If you say no, but then go along with it, you are saying yes. If you are smart and sassy under normal circumstances but don’t put those skills to use under duress, you obviously didn’t really feel threatened.

These statements fit in perfectly with contemporary culture’s view on rape, but not with what our youth should be learning. Take a look at a few of the graphics and campaigns.

Would it have been difficult for Degrassi to take a step back from the heart-throb Declan’s point of view for a moment, to truly examine the situation, to show viewers that Holly J was over-rationalizing, acting fearful and in denial, instead of staying in Declan’s view and getting a romanticized picture of potential future love? NO.

“Love Lockdown, Parts 1 and 2” is a plotline that asks viewers to side with Declan and apologize for his rape of Holly J. This is simply unacceptable. And then, what prompted me to finally finish up this meta, teennick used this as a valentine:

The lines he used—”back when he was with Jane” (quote @teennick) to initially hook up with her— while she was hesitant, and already dating Spinner. His tradition of claiming and power in relationships is long. And instead of punishing him, we get a Declan valentine.

As of the posting of this entry, Holly J’s plot has not been resolved or addressed.

Guest Writer Wednesday: The Hollywood Concept of Collateral Beauty

This guest post also appears at Djelloul Marbrook’s web site.

One of the reasons I like the television series Bones is that women are doing well there, something you can’t say of Game of Thrones, The Borgias or Camelot or the many other shows where women are de rigeur decoration.

I don’t know if it’s occurred to filmmakers, but they’re a lot like museum curators who keep the work of women artists in their basements and then claim women are well represented within their four walls.

Emily Deschanel

On the other hand, women are doing quite well on The Good Wife, where the estimable Julianna Margulies creates a memorable woman with a few spare brushstrokes. Her riveting understatement is ably complimented by two other remarkable women, Christine Baranski and Archie Panjabi.

And then there’s Mary McCormack as the eccentric and poignant witness protection agent in the series In Plain Sight. She’s so genuine you think you’ve met her.

All to the good, but on the more problematic side, in eleven major television series corpses are the real stars of eight of them. And in The Borgias and Game of Thrones women are reduced to barn animals, while they’re chic accessories in some of the CSI, Law and Order, and NCIS shows.

But cameras have minds of their own. They gravitate towards actresses like Cote de Pablo, who is also a recording artist, in the original NCIS series. She gets more out of her role by underacting than her showier colleagues, and the producers are often obliged to team her up with the equally understated Mark Harmon, the show’s magnetic star.

Julianna Margulies

It’s to the great credit of actresses like Stephanie March, Diane Neal, Marg Helgenberger, Emily Procter, Mariska Hargitay and quite a few others that their presence transcends the weak hands they’re dealt by directors, writers and producers. They illuminate their series in spite of the best intentions of the director to contain them. March, for instance, in episode after episode of Law and Order stood out from the ensemble because of her gravitas and aura of integrity. As for Helgenberger, the camera celebrates her no matter what hand the producers deal her. And who wouldn’t rather follow Procter into the jaws of hell than the show’s star, the one-note David Caruso? The same may be said for reserved Alana de la Garza, who first appeared in CSI: Miami, went on to Law and Order in New York and now plays in its spin-off, Law and Order: LA.

What many of these women have in common is a restraint we used to assign to laconic Western stars like Gary Cooper and James Stewart, a sense that while they have no wish, in spite of their beauty, to fill a room, it would be ill-advised to step on their toes. They are in many ways women of the century, liberated in spite of society’s hesitancy to license their liberation.

If you compare them to the women stars of the 50s, you’ll see that they’re more like Humphrey Bogart and John Garfield than Barbara Stanwyck and Ida Lupino. Their feminity has a touch of the divine, and I’m not talking about looks, I’m talking about empowerment. These actresses, like Lena Headey in Game of Thrones, should be leading armies, toppling empires, governing our destinies, not playing second fiddle to writers who evince a palpable inhospitality towards women.

Mary McCormack

If we truly wanted to be a great nation the filmmakers could lead the way. But first they must acknowledge that the Marlboro Man could be a boob, his looks being no warranty of anything but Big Tobacco’s preconceptions, Anglo-centrism and misogyny.

NCIS: Los Angeles strikes a blow in the right direction by casting the memorable Linda Hunt as director of operations, but the scriptwriters insist she parody herself like Caruso in CSI Miami.

More promising, much more promising, is Mary McCormack In Plain Sight role. Here the script writer lavishes good lines on her, obviously with the sanction of the director and producer, and she emerges as the character who’s got your back, the one who cuts the bullshit.

The dazzling Emily Deschanel as Temperance Brennan in Bones has the benefit of the concept of the show as well as a co-star, David Boreanaz, who steps aside graciously with much good humor. She also has an endearing cast of colleagues, not least Tamara Taylor, her smart and funny boss, and Michaela Conlin, Brennan’s quirky, in-your-face sidekick.

It’s strange that filmmakers freight good-looking male actors with their projections but continue to use women as floral design. Who, looking at Lena Headey, could even think of her in Game of Thrones as a one-dimensional meanie queen and incestuous lover of her brother, in this case the attractive Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who shone in the defunct and much lamented New Amsterdam series?

Unfortunately beauty in a male-dominated society lends itself to incidentality. I wonder if this would be so of males in a female-dominated society. My mother in her paintings created a world inhabited entirely by women. She simply banished men. At the same time she introduced a hint of androgyny. I suspect we may be heading as a species toward androgyny.

But in the meantime I think much evil in the world, including terrorism, is rooted in the hatred and fear of women. In The Borgias this emerges cruelly in the treatment of Holliday Grainger as Lucrezia by her boorish husband Giovanni Sforza. If she was indeed a poisoner, one can easily forgive her. One wishes him the best poisons in Italy.

The question that keeps bothering me as I consider these actresses and how they’re cast is simply this: Don’t the filmmakers see them, I mean really see them? I guess not. It’s reminiscent of the poet Randall Jarrell’s unforgettable poem, “A Sad Heart At The Supermarket,” in which a shopper wonders why the bag boy doesn’t really see her.

Didn’t they cast a chubby Richard Burton as the famously athletic Alexander the Great in 1956? Would they have cast a chubby woman as Olympias? And if they wouldn’t think of Dolph Lundgren or Jason Statham as wimps, why in hell would they think of Headey in that way? And who but an idiot would mess with Eva Green in Camelot? Grainger looks much less dangerous—indeed she looks angelic—but by episode three of The Borgias she has already shown her goon of a husband she is nobody’s chattel. His leg is broken and worse is undoubtedly in his future.

The problem seems to be that the camera all by itself, with little help from the cinematographer, sees what the filmmakers can’t see. Do Headey, Green and Helgenberger look like anybody’s sweetie pie? True, Boreanaz and Caruso don’t treat Deschanel and Procter like sweetie pies, but that’s only because they know the camera can’t wait to quit them in order to linger on the women, so there’s no use being churlish.

I don’t think filmmakers and museum curators live on my planet. The camera keeps offering forensic evidence that they keep dismissing like judges in a kangaroo court. They have lots of precedent, of course. History books have been doing it for millennia.

The filmmakers often treat beauty much as the army treats damage—they collateralize it. But you can fill the original CSI set in Vegas with corpses, with William Petersen, with Laurence Fishburne, and Matt Damon if you can get him, and Marg Helgenberger will still be the only one in the room. It’s not because of her beauty alone: it’s a presence, the projection of a high seriousness that it took far more action and gunplay for Gary Cooper to display in High Noon.

What I’m talking about is the feminine principle and how the film industry goes to great lengths to marginalize it in the same way that the church devotes itself to paternalizing religion. The film industry has taken over where the church left off, handing out a sop here and there, but insisting on women as decor. There have been exceptions, Milla Jovovich in science fiction action films and Maggie Q in Nikita most notably, but the overall picture is that of an industry striving for the appearance of gender equality but unable to embrace it. In a way, the film industry is struggling with what I posit as a root cause of terrorism, fear of women. Perhaps a society whose biggest industries are prisons and war has that much to fear from women.

Djelloul Marbrook blogs at www.djelloulmarbrook.com and is the author of two books of poetry (Far from Algiers, Kent State; Brushstrokes and Glances, Deerbrook Editions) and three novellas (Artemisia’s Wolf, Saraceno, and Alice Miller’s Room). A retired newspaper editor, he lives in New York with his wife Marilyn.

The Grass is Not Always Greener: On Body Image and Illness

Originally published at I Will Not Diet and reprinted at The Opinioness of the World. An alternate version appears at Shakesville.

People have often told me—throughout a lifetime of being underweight—how great I look.

I confidently wear a bikini.

I’m one of those people you might love to hate: I can eat anything, and as much of it as I want, without gaining weight.

People, especially girls and women, praise my thinness, exclaiming “How do you stay so skinny?!” or “You’re so lucky.”

Other people envy me—a person whose thinness is due to cystic fibrosis, who has had regular, extended hospital stays since childhood, and whose daily medical regimen no one would ever envy. But I have this bizarre cultural privilege: I am skinny. It hasn’t generally mattered to people why; thinness is seen as an always-positive attribute in our society.

In the summer of 2004, I weighed 92 pounds. I was very sick and doing everything in my power to put on weight. My doctor went so far as to prescribe an appetite stimulant, derived from cannabis, which was supposed to give me the legal munchies.

It may have helped me put on a pound or two, but that wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t just that I was too thin; I needed a lung transplant and had to weigh a minimum of 100 pounds before I would even be considered for the surgery. I was left with one option: a feeding tube for high-calorie protein shakes every night while I slept, in addition to a high-calorie diet every day. This was scary for me, not just in the way that a feeding tube (and serious illness) would be frightening for anyone, but because, in spite of the serious illness, I liked being so thin and was afraid of gaining too much weight.

I know now that these feelings had much more to do with control (and, specifically, the lack of it in my life at that time) than the actual numbers, and that they weren’t rational or healthy attitudes to hold.

As much as I knew intellectually that I was too thin, I never felt too thin.

When I finally got beyond my fear of “fattening up” (which is how countless doctors and nurses, clearly not sensitive to issues involving body image, jokingly referred to my need to gain weight) and faced the reality of my situation, I scheduled the procedure to place the feeding tube.

I did so with reticence and anxiety.

There would be anesthesia, there would be an incision through the wall of my abdomen, there would be a tube permanently sticking out, there would be pain while my stomach healed from the surgery. I would be hooked up to a nutrition pump, much like an IV pole, every night.

On the operating table, I was prepped for the procedure by a female nurse and a male doctor. When the nurse lifted the hospital gown above my abdomen, she exclaimed, “Look at that pretty flat stomach!”

I processed this statement for a moment. A medical professional had complimented me on my thinness, which was so extreme as to prevent me from having life-saving surgery, while prepping me for a procedure intended to help me gain weight.

To his credit, the doctor quickly snapped, “That’s the problem!” but her message couldn’t have been clearer.

We live in a culture that so values thinness, that values such extreme thinness, that I received a compliment about my body when I was on an operating table, when I was so ill and weighed so little that doctors feared I might not survive major surgery.

While this might’ve been a single extreme incident, I can’t say the same about a lifetime of these compliments, the envy of women, and the gaze of men directed at my ultra-thin (so thin because it was diseased) body.

I can forgive myself for enjoying these moments; I had a difficult life that inspired little envy, and I took the compliments and positive feelings about myself where I could find them.

When I received that comment on the operating table, though, I felt a tangled mess of emotions: I was happy to hear something—anything—uplifting during such a trying time, I was scared to lose that unscarred, flat stomach, and I was angry at the nurse for her inability to read the situation.

Later that same year I had a double-lung transplant and have since gained 25 pounds. I’m still thin, but curvier than before. I threw out the old bikinis. The regular “You’re so skinny!” compliments are gone, but I’ve come to see those comments, even when they were meant in kindness, as all part of our toxic culture.

Depictions of unhealthily thin women in film, television, and advertising constantly bombard us, distorting the way we see one another and how we define a “healthy” body. Extremely thin bodies are often seen as the epitome of health and beauty, when the fact is that healthy, beautiful women come in all shapes and sizes.

If we all didn’t have such a distorted view of the female form, women might have better relationships with their bodies, instead of hating them, resorting to cosmetic surgery for self-esteem issues, and having unrealistic expectations about how they should look.