Unlikable Women Theme Week – Page 2

‘Young Adult’s Mavis Gary Is “Crazy” Unlikable

Mavis is truly transgressive. Not only is her plan against most people’s moral code, it shows no solidarity for the sisterhood and no respect for the institutions women are most conditioned to aspire to: marriage and motherhood. Mavis alienates feminists and traditionalists alike. Not that she cares–she only wants to appeal to men. And she has done so, seemingly effortlessly, for a long time.

This guest post by Diane Shipley appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

When the 2011 film Young Adult opens, things aren’t looking good for 37-year-old Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron). She’s divorced, her long-running gig ghost-writing the cheesy YA series Waverley Prep is coming to an end, and she spends her days asleep in front of the TV and her nights drinking herself into oblivion. So, naturally, when her high school boyfriend Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) includes her on a mass birth announcement email, she heads back to small town Mercury from Minneapolis in a misguided attempt to win him back.

Now her marriage is over and her future employment looks uncertain, she isn’t facing up to her problems – she’s exacerbating them. She’s been using everything from alcohol to junk food to sex to try to feel better, but nothing’s worked. Her reasoning is that the time she felt best was in high school with Buddy, so trying to relive those days is the only logical solution.

When women in movies are unlikable, it’s usually in specific, gender-coded ways. The only acceptable imperfections for the female lead in a romantic comedy are clumsiness and occasionally, bossiness (as long as she gets her comeuppance). Women who are unabashedly lusty are either killed off (Fatal Attraction) or tolerated so long as they make fun of their looks and sexuality (Rebel Wilson in Pitch Perfect, Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids). When they’re trying to steal someone else’s husband, usually they’re superficial and two-dimensional, like Sarah Jessica Parker in The First Wives’ Club. A male character, meanwhile, can be shlubby, make fun of his friends, ignore his family, and still be the hero of the story.

Young Adult gives us a woman as immature as any Judd Apatow avatar, who is unapologetic about being outspoken, and refuses to be coy about either the fact that she’s beautiful or that she’s intent on getting Buddy back. She’s refreshingly and entirely unconcerned with being nice. She says things like, “Babies are boring,” and “I like your décor… is it shabby chic?” When her former classmate Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt) refers to the assault that left him with a bent penis, neurological damage, and difficulty walking, she enthuses, “Oh, you’re hate crime guy!” And after Buddy tells her they can’t be together because he’s married, her sincere response is, “I know, we can beat this thing together.”

“What do you mean, 'grow up'?” — “What do you mean, ‘grow up’?”

Roxane Gay mentioned Young Adult in an insightful essay on unlikable characters, saying, “Some reviews go so far as to suggest that Mavis is mentally ill because there’s nothing more reliable than armchair diagnosis by disapproving critics… The simplest explanation, of Mavis as human, will not suffice.” She’s right to imply that we shouldn’t pathologize women for being complicated or unkind. Yet it’s not that much of a leap to conclude that Mavis is mentally ill.

She not only telegraphs this, she tells us. We see her pulling out her hair when she’s alone, lining it up in strands. Later, at her parents’ house, when she moves a hand to the back of her head, her dad says, “You’re not still pulling it out, are you?” signaling that this is a chronic issue. During an impromptu drinking session with Matt, she blurts out, “I have depression.” But the moment that’s key to understanding Mavis’s state of mind is when Buddy’s wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser) explains that she teaches the “special needs” children she works with about emotions using a chart to illustrate the facial expressions that accompany each one. Mavis stares at it blankly before asking, “What about neutral? What if you don’t feel anything?”

Roger Ebert’s otherwise excellent review of the film said that if Mavis weren’t an alcoholic, she “would simply be insane.” The Guardian called her “ever so slightly bonkers.” And while YA author Maureen Johnson recognised that Mavis has serious mental health problems, she also went on to say that she’s “insane.” She isn’t, because that isn’t a thing: “insanity” is a legal defence, not a diagnosis. When someone wants to belittle a woman, they often call her “crazy,” say she’s “nuts” or “insane.” Whether the person in question is mentally ill or not, this helps stigmatise mental illness, drawing an artificial line between “them” and “us,” as if mental health isn’t a spectrum. As if millions of people don’t experience mental health problems all the time. For many of us, it’s something that makes a character more relatable, not less.

Yes, Mavis is either in deep denial or experiencing delusions about how her ex feels about her, and she needs to take responsibility for her appalling behavior. Plus, as she acknowledges twice, she’s showing all the signs of alcoholism. But she’s also survived on her own for years without a real support system, living in a major city and succeeding in a competitive field, as shallow as her writing might be. She’s even retained a girlfriend from high school. Considering how hard depression makes it to just get out of bed, she’s a fucking champion.

It’s plausible that depression is the reason for much of Mavis’ conduct, including her drinking. But it’s hard to tease out how much of her temperament is due to mental illness, and how much is her core personality. From what we hear about her time in high school (including that she called Matt “theatre fag”), she’s always been lacking in empathy, but maybe her mean girl act was a protective mechanism. We don’t know, and the fact that writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman don’t spell this out is a gift. Mavis being cruel and self-centred makes Young Adult more complex than many portrayals of mental illness. Too often, it’s either the basis for a “psycho” horror movie or an “inspiring” story where someone turns out to be sweet, charming, and boring as soon as they’re medicated.

A lot of the reviews I’ve seen suggest that Mavis has no character arc, that she isn’t changed by the events of the movie. But she is. When she has sex with Matt, she’s in a stick-on bra and tights, her hair limp, dress stained, and make-up smeared. It’s a stark contrast to the start of the film, where she gets dolled up to go to bed with a man she’s never met before. The next morning, she offers the coffee pot to Matt’s sister Sandra before pouring herself a cup. She even admits to Sandra that she’s not as successful as she’s making out, that she doesn’t know how to be happy. It seems like she might be about to make some major changes, but then Sandra blows smoke up her ass, enables her, and says she doesn’t need to change a thing.

Mavis accepts this, agreeing that she’s probably OK after all. But she still goes back to her hotel room, shows her dog some affection for the first time in the film, and throws Buddy’s old sweatshirt into the trash. More significantly, as she finally finishes the last Waverley Prep in a diner on the way home, she has her lead character waving goodbye to high school and never looking back.

Things aren’t wrapped up neatly, it’s true; we don’t know if Mavis will actually seek psychological help, if she’ll go to AA, or if she’ll just slump back onto her sofa and carry on falling asleep to the dulcet tones of early-2000s reality shows for the next 20 years. Here’s a movie that acknowledges that change is hard and often infinitesimal; that credits us with the intelligence to draw our own conclusions about the lead character’s fate. Personally, I hope that 57-year-old Mavis is sober, I hope she has a luscious head of hair, and I hope she’s found a job that fulfills her. She might not ever be a “people person,” and she’ll certainly never be perfect. But she’ll at least always be interesting.

Diane Shipley is a journalist, feminist, and fan of photos of miniature dachshunds. Find her on Twitter @dianeshipley, on Tumblr, or in the UK, where she lives, for some reason.

Ruthless, Pragmatic Feminism in ‘House of Cards’

Claire is a horrible human being for many, many reasons–but her abortions aren’t included in those reasons. The show makes that clear.

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Season 2 spoilers ahead! Season 3 will be released on Netflix on Feb. 27, 2015.

Novelist Elmore Leonard said, “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” I think about that often when looking for or critiquing the dearth of feminist film and television. We often wring our hands over the Bechdel Test and the lack of “Strong Female Characters.”

Ideal feminist media would be like Leonard’s ideal writing–films and shows that don’t feel like they’re trying to be feminist. They just are. Complex women and women’s stories that aren’t just pieces of the whole, but are woven in seamlessly throughout the narrative–that’s what I want.

House of Cards delivers.

After Season 1 debuted on Netflix to critical and popular acclaim, Amanda Rodriguez and I both wrote about House of Cards and the wonderfully complex female characters (see: “The Complex, Unlikable Women of House of Cards” and “Claire Underwood: The Queen Bee in House of Cards“). The simultaneously awful and wonderful female characters whose stories were essential to the action in every single episode. Nothing ever felt forced, and the fact that these women were both sympathetic and loathsome was an absolute delight for those of us feminist viewers who are tired of “strong female characters” who pay lip service to some kind of surface-level inequality.

House of Cards’s feminism is remarkable, because it feels wholly unremarkable.

Season 2 debuted on Feb. 14, 2014, and although Netflix doesn’t reveal exact numbers, Variety reports that the viewership in the first few hours “soared,” with many subscribers watching multiple episodes at once.

And since the only Olympic-style sport we are interested in in our home is the long-form binge watch, we were finished with season 2 by Saturday night. Within the first two episodes, I was fairly certain this was the most feminist TV drama I’ve seen–because what we want (complexity, equality, and representation) is woven in seamlessly. House of Cards is not primarily about a man. It’s not primarily about a woman. It’s about people.

In the promo materials for season 1, we saw Frank Underwood sitting alone in Lincoln’s monument. Ostensibly, he’s the show’s protagonist. And in season 1, I suppose it did often feel that way.

However, the season 2 poster features Frank again sitting in Lincoln’s seat, but Claire is sitting on top of it also. From the first shot of season 2–Frank and Claire running together–we know that Frank isn’t really our sole protagonist at all anymore.

The first two episodes tie up many loose ends from season 1, and introduce new ones for season 2. In the first episode, Claire picks up her appointment with the fertility doctor not, as we learn, to become pregnant herself, but to find out more about the drug that Gillian is on so she can threaten to withhold her insurance from her, thus getting what she wants from Gillian. “I’m willing to let your child wither and die within you,” Claire says to Gillian. Frank pushes Zoe Barnes into the path of an ongoing train, and she is killed. Frank, who has taken his place as vice president, courts Jackie Sharp to be the House Majority Whip. Why? Her military record of having to order strikes and kill people (including women and children) shows Frank that she is a bastion of ruthless pragmatism, which is how he and Claire move forward; and with this, season 2 begins.

In the following episodes, Claire faces her rapist (who assaulted her in college, and now Frank must give him an award for his military service), and honestly tells Frank how she wants to “smash things” and how much she wants to talk about it. These scenes were excellent because she didn’t let Frank be the vengeful husband. She stopped him, and then kept her power by talking about the assault. It wasn’t presented as if her sexuality was Frank’s to protect; the experience was hers. She wants to let her husband in, but she doesn’t want him to avenge her honor. That’s her job.

When she goes on national television and admits to having an abortion, she says that it was to end the pregnancy that resulted from the sexual assault. She named her attacker, and a young woman called in to the show, saying that he had assaulted her as well. This kicks off a season-long story line about a military sexual assault bill that pits women against women and shows the politics of justice as being just that: politics.

Claire bares all–in her own way–on national television.

But here’s the rub: Claire had three abortions, not one, and none were from the rape. She is matter-of-fact with her doctor and press secretary that she had three abortions, and we learn that one was during the campaign with Frank, and two were when she was a teenager. One could see these story lines as using infertility, rape, and abortion as plot points.

And you know what? It’s fantastic. I love that these typically silent or exploited topics get so much air time in House of Cards, and that Claire is more human for having gone through so much, yet she uses it all for political and personal gain. (A recent study showed that when female characters consider or have an abortion in film or TV, they are disproportionally killed or at least punished.)

When done properly, I applaud these female-specific plot points. These events are plot points in women’s lives, and they should be used well on screen. House of Cards does just that.

Historically, men have wars and external, political struggles to define and provide fodder for their journeys (both fictional and non). We see this represented with Frank’s visit to the Confederate re-enactors and his war miniatures. Women’s struggles and choices–infertility, sexual assault, and abortion–are widespread and underrepresented. To have Claire live through and use these experiences is refreshing and brilliant (and appropriately villainous).

The season goes on to show the fallout that Claire receives from admitting to having an abortion (even though she publicly says she had one after a rape), including an attempted bomb attack by a man whose wife had had an abortion, and the angry, vitriolic protesters outside her home. (She tells Megan, the young sexual assault victim at one point, “They’re loud, but I think we need to be louder.”) What a great message.

Claire is a horrible human being for many, many reasons–but her abortions aren’t included in those reasons. The show makes that clear.

Jackie–Frank’s replacement and sometimes-ally sometimes-adversary–is a force. She, in her relationship with Remy, is the one who initially isn’t interested at all in a relationship. She gets tattooed to help deal with the pain of the deaths she was responsible for in the military. She’s powerful and political, and we see her as both the enemy and ally throughout the season.

Jackie, adding on to her poppy tattoo (symbolic in its remembrance of bloodshed in war, and therapeutic in its pain).

In addition to the complex shaping of women’s stories and the characters themselves, the way the show handles masculinity and sexuality seems revolutionary.

In season 1, it’s evident when Frank goes back to his alma mater that he had had a sexual relationship with a close male friend. There wasn’t much hoopla about this, it just was what it was. In season 2, Claire, Frank, and their bodyguard, Edward Meechum, have a threesome. The next day, Frank says to Meechum as he gets in the car, “It’s a beautiful day.” And that’s all there is to it. Meanwhile, Rachel has developed a relationship with Lisa, and it’s portrayed as a loving partnership (although the camera does linger on their sex scene while it artfully pans away from the aforementioned threesome).

There’s no moral focus or panic about people’s sexuality. It just–is what it is. No fanfare. And the fact that we get to see women having orgasms (in season 2, an especially steamy scene between Jackie and Remy) is a pleasant detour from the norm as well.

In what continues to be one of my favorite articles regarding feminist media, “I hate Strong Female Characters,” Sophia McDougall says,

“Nowadays the princesses all know kung fu, and yet they’re still the same princesses. They’re still love interests, still the one girl in a team of five boys, and they’re all kind of the same. They march on screen, punch someone to show how they don’t take no shit, throw around a couple of one-liners or forcibly kiss someone because getting consent is for wimps, and then with ladylike discretion they back out of the narrative’s way.”

The women of House of Cards are not “Strong Female Characters.” They are well-written characters with a great deal of power, which they wield alongside the men. They are integral parts of the narrative. When female complexity and power is written into the narrative, everything else–including passing the Bechdel Test–effortlessly falls into place.

This is ruthless pragmatism: feminist style, and it is excellent. In a sea of male anti-heroes on TV, it’s time that women share the stage. House of Cards shows its hand, and it’s a royal flush, with the queen right next to the king.

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

The Complex, Unlikable Women of ‘House of Cards’

These women are complex, if not likable, and that’s a good thing.

Daddy Issues, Menopause and Female Power — Daddy Issues, Menopause, and Female Power

This repost by Leigh Kolb appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

This article covers Season 1. See here for commentary on Season 2.

Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is the vengeful House Majority Whip who lusts after power and is ambitious and unscrupulous in his attempts to get what he wants.

In fact, most of the characters fit that description.

We know that the anti-hero is in. Many of the protagonists in critically acclaimed dramas (Walter White, Nucky Thompson, Jax Teller, Dexter Morgan, Don Draper, the list goes on…) are not traditionally heroic and make decisions that are illegal and “immoral.”

Frank Underwood is a twenty-first century Iago, building his empire on a tenuous pile of cards. He looks at the camera and includes the audience in his thought process (much like Kenneth Branagh’s Iago in Othello). The Macbeth references also are clear, as Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara) scrubs a stain out of her carpet or as Claire Underwood (Robin Wright) is consistently associated with water.

Just as Frank conjures a centuries-old tradition of villainous pseudo-heroism, the women of House of Cards also represent the kind of ruthless ambition that we find so compelling in characters.

And as “The Women on House of Cards Are Just as Evil as the Men” points out:

“The show would be way less interesting if only the male characters were running around town sleeping with people they shouldn’t be sleeping with and bribing people they shouldn’t be bribing while their female partners and peers waited patiently at home.”

Zoe is a scrappy reporter when we first meet her, and she quickly transforms herself into a front-page journalist because she gets the right source.

In bed.

She draws him in with a photo, goes to his house in a push-up bra and a low-cut shirt, and gets tips of all kinds. In the first episode, the most powerful women have broken into power via cleavage, marriage and tokenism (the new White House Chief of Staff Linda Vasquez, who Frank helped promote because of her ethnicity and gender). It didn’t look so good at first, but like any good story, the characters unfold as the series goes on, revealing that Claire is ambitious at all costs, Zoe holds the cards in her relationship with Frank, and the women, at the end, are instrumental in upending and beginning to unravel Frank’s plans.

For Zoe, she is both empowered and disempowered by men who treat her like she is their child. When she shoots to stardom (via Frank) at The Washington Herald, Tom, her editor, is dismissive of her work and yet knows he needs to promote her and reward her because Margaret (his boss) wants her star-power, since Tom’s beloved hard-news print outlet is barely staying in business.

When Zoe and Tom get into a fight after she turns down the White House Correspondent gig, he accuses her of being arrogant.

Zoe: “You think when a woman asks to be respected she’s being arrogant?”
Tom: “Are you accusing me of sexism? No TV for a month.”

He’s limiting her TV appearances as punishment, but of course it sounds like he’s talking to a child and taking television away as a punishment. The line between father and boss is blurred.

Zoe’s understanding of respect is obviously convoluted as Frank constantly asks her about her parents, and her father, and if they know she lives like she does (in a shabby, dirty apartment). “Are you cared for,” he asks. “Do you have a man, who cares for you? An older man?”

When Frank visits Zoe on Father’s Day, he encourages her to call her father. While she’s still on the phone, she starts undressing him, he undresses her and goes down on her in the most graphic sex scene in the season. She’s breathless while she’s on the phone, and hangs up only after promising her father “I’m going to try and come, OK?” The line between father and lover is blurred.

Later in the season, Zoe establishes herself in a new lucrative job at Slugline, a woman-owned new media company where the reporters have free reign to post what and when they want and are not “tied to a desk.” Janine joins her after leaving The Washington Herald. Janine was her enemy at the Herald, and represents a somewhat older, jaded version of Zoe. When the two begin to work together, they make great strides. Zoe finishes her relationship with Frank and works with Janine to do real, legitimate reporting (which is quickly unraveling Frank’s web of lies). Zoe is poised to be the most successful and have the most journalistic integrity by letting go of the older men in her life (who represent a patriarchal power structure) and working with women and peer collaborators.

Meanwhile, Claire, who matches her husband in power and ambition, changes her company and re-evaluates her own life as the season progresses. She lays off half of the staff and her clean water nonprofit, including Evelyn, her office manager (after having her fire everyone). Evelyn desperately points out to Claire that she is in her late 50s, and she would have no job prospects. Claire doesn’t bend.

Shortly after, Claire goes to a coffee shop where an older woman is working the register, and can’t figure out how to ring her up. A young woman comes and shows her, as Claire looks at them, certainly thinking of Evelyn and her own possibilities.

She courts Gillian, a young, beautiful woman who has had individual success in clean water initiatives. Gillian resists the corporate atmosphere, and Claire says,

“I know what it is to be capable, beautiful and ambitious… I want to enable you, to clear the way for you.”

Gillian accepts.

And Claire starts getting hot flashes. “This is new to me,” she tells a female dinner party guest who sees her standing in front of the open refrigerator. Her coming menopause serves as a reminder that she is getting ready to enter a new phase of womanhood, which she doesn’t seem ready for.

Gillian, meanwhile, announces her pregnancy and Claire seems uncomfortable. Even though she tells Adam (her once and sometimes lover) when he asks why she and Frank didn’t have kids, “We just didn’t–it wasn’t some big conversation. I thought about it once or twice, but I don’t feel like there’s some void. We’re perfectly happy without.”

But by the end of the season, she’s visiting a doctor and having a consultation about her fertility. She doesn’t tell Frank, but the window of opportunity for her to have a baby isn’t closed yet.

Gillian goes against Claire’s orders, and Claire suggests she take some time off after Gillian snaps, “I threaten you, don’t I?” Gillian hires a lawyer and claims Claire fired her for being pregnant, trapping Claire in a potential legal battle that she cannot win. The youthful ambition she wanted to guide and empower didn’t want either.

No one is good (nor should they be, or the show wouldn’t work so well). Janine tells Zoe she “used to suck, screw and jerk anything that moved just to get a story.” And while she’s a working journalist, she obviously didn’t fuck her way to the top (nor did Zoe). They are on their way to the top, but it’s only because they’re working together.

Claire and Frank are in a surprisingly power-balanced relationship, and it only truly suffers when he puts his goals over hers. Claire elicits sympathy, disgust, anger and fear from the audience (sometimes all in one episode).

These women are complex, if not likable, and that’s a good thing. Zoe and Janine are close to the truth about Frank, Claire’s career and fertility hang in the balance and at any moment, the house of cards they’ve all helped build may come tumbling down.

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

Top 10 Villainesses Who Deserve Their Own Movies

While villainesses often work at cross-purposes with our heroes and heroines, we love to hate these women. They’re always morally complicated with dark pasts and often powerful and assertive women with an indomitable streak of independence.

This repost by Amanda Rodriguez appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

As a follow-up to my post on the Top 10 Superheroines Who Deserve Their Own Movies, I thought it important to not neglect the bad girls of the superhero universe. I mean, we don’t want to piss those ladies off and invoke their wrath, do we? While villainesses often work at cross-purposes with our heroes and heroines, we love to hate these women. They’re always morally complicated with dark pasts and often powerful and assertive women with an indomitable streak of independence. With the recent growing success of Disney’s retelling of their classic Sleeping Beauty, the film Maleficent shows us that we all (especially young women) are hungry for tales from the other side of the coin. We want to understand these complex women, and we want them to have the agency to cast off the mantle of “villainess” and to tell their own stories from their own perspectives.

1. Mystique

Throughout the X-Men film franchise, the blue-skinned, golden-eyed shapeshifting mutant, Mystique, has gained incredible popularity. Despite the fact that she tends to be naked in many of her film appearances, Mystique is a feared and respected opponent. She is dogged in the pursuit of her goals, intelligent and knows how to expertly use her body, whether taking on the personae of important political figures, displaying her excellent markmanship with firearms or kicking ass with her own unique brand of martial arts. As the mother of Nightcrawler and the adoptive mother of Rogue, Mystique has deep connections across enemy lines. X-Men: First Class even explores the stigma surrounding her true appearance and the isolation and shame that shapes her as she matures into adulthood. The groundwork has already been laid to further develop this fascinating woman.

2. Harley Quinn

Often overshadowing her sometime “boss” and boyfriend The Joker, Harley Quinn captured the attention of viewers in the Batman: Animated Series, so much so that she was integrated into the DC Batman comic canon and even had her own title for a while. She’s also notable for her fast friendship with other infamous super villainesses, Poison Ivy and Catwoman. Often capricious and unstable, Harley always looks out for herself and always makes her own decisions, regardless of how illogical they may seem. Most interestingly, she possesses a stark vulnerability that we rarely see in villains. A dark and playful character with strong ties to other women would be a welcome addition to the big screen.

3. Ursa

Ursa appears in the film Superman II wherein she is a fellow Krypontian who’s escaped from the perpetual prison of the Phantom Zone with two other comrades. As a Kryptonian, she has all the same powers and weaknesses of Superman (superhuman strength, flight, x-ray vision, freezing breath, invulnerability and an aversion to kryptonite). Ursa revels in these powers and delights in using extreme force. Ursa’s history and storyline are a bit convoluted, some versions depicting her as a misunderstood revolutionary fighting to save Krypton from its inevitable destruction, while others link her origins to the man-hating, murderous comic character Faora. Combining the two plotlines would give a movie about her a rich backstory and a fascinating descent into darkness in the tradition of Chronicle.

4. Sniper Wolf

“I watched the stupidity of mankind through the scope of my rifle.” – Sniper Wolf

Sniper Wolf from Metal Gear Solid is one of the most infamous and beloved villainesses in gaming history. A deadly and dedicated sniper assassin, Sniper Wolf is ruthless, methodical and patient when she stalks her prey, namely Solid Snake, the video game’s hero. Not only that, but she has a deep connection to a pack of huskies/wolves that she rescues, which aid her on the snowy battlefield when she faces off with Snake in what was ranked one of gaming’s best boss fights. In fact, Sniper Wolf has made the cut onto a lot of “best of” lists, and her death has been called “one of gaming’s most poignant scenes.” Her exquisite craft with a rifle is only one of the reasons that she’s so admired. Her childhood history as an Iraqi Kurdish survivor of a chemical attack that killed her family and thousands of others only to be brainwashed by the Iraqi and then U.S. governments is nothing short of tragic. Many players regretted having to kill her in order to advance in the game. She is a lost woman with the potential for greatness who was manipulated and corrupted by self-serving military forces. Sniper Wolf is a complex woman of color whose screenplay could detail an important piece of history with the persecution of Kurds in Iraq, show super cool weapons and stealth skills while critiquing the military industrial complex and give a woman a voice and power within both the male-dominated arenas of spy movies and the military.

5. Scarlet Witch

One of the most powerful mutants in X-Men lore, Scarlet Witch

Scarlet Witch, the twin sister of Quicksilver and daughter of Magneto, is one of the most powerful mutants in the X-Men and Avengers universe. With power over probability and an ability to cast spells, Scarlet Witch is alternately a valuable member of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants as well as the Avengers. She can also manipulate chaos magic and, at times, control the very fabric of reality, such that she can “rewrite her entire universe.” Um, badass. She’s also one of the most interesting characters in the X-Men and Avengers canon because she’s so deeply conflicted about what she believes and who she should trust. Eventually coming around to fight on the side of good, Scarlet Witch has a true heroine’s journey, in which she has a dark destiny that she overcomes, makes choices for which she must later seek redemption, finds her true path as a leader among other warriors, and she even becomes a mother and wife in the process. Despite her extensive comic book history (first appearing in 1964) and the fact that she’s such a strong mutant with such a compelling tale of the journey from dark to light, Scarlet Witch has only been a supporting character in video games, TV shows, and in movies (most recently set to appear in the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron). That’s just plain dumb.

6. Ursula

Ursula, the sea witch from Disney’s The Little Mermaid, is so amazing. Part woman, part octopus, she has incredible magical powers that she uses for her own amusement and gains. With her sultry, husky voice and sensuous curves, she was a Disney villainess unlike any Disney had shown us before. What I find most compelling about Ursula is that her magic can change the shape and form of anyone, and she chooses to maintain her full-figured form. Though she is a villainess, this fat positive message of a magnetic, formidable woman who loves her body (and seriously rocks the musical number “Poor Unfortunate Souls” like nobody’s business) is unique to Disney and unique to general representations of women in Hollywood.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLSnNSqs_CQ”]

Now that Disney has made Maleficent, they better find a place for this octo-woman sea witch, and they better keep her gloriously fat, or they’ll be sorry.

7. Evil-Lyn

Evil-Lyn was the only regularly appearing villainess on the 80’s cartoon series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Unlike its blissfully female-centric spin-off, She-Ra: Princess of Power, He-Man was pretty much a sausage-fest. Much in the way that Teela and the Sorceress were the only women representing the forces of good, Evil-Lyn was the lone lady working for the evil Skeletor. As his second-in-command, she proved herself to be devious and intelligent with a gift for dark sorcery that often rivaled that of the seemingly much more powerful Skeletor and Sorceress. There appears to be no official documentation of this, but as a child, I read Evil-Lyn as Asian (probably because of her facial features and the over-the-top yellow skin tone Filmation gave her). I love the idea of Evil-Lyn being a lone woman of color among a gang of ne’er-do-wells who holds her own while always plotting to overthrow her leader and take power for herself. (Plus, she has the best evil laugh ever.) I have no illusions that she’ll ever get her own movie (despite Meg Foster’s mega-sexy supporting performance as the cunning Evil-Lyn in the Masters of the Universe film). However, I always wanted her to have more screen time, and I always wanted to know more about her, unlike her male evil minion counterparts.

8. Knockout and Scandal

Knockout & Scandal are bad girls in love — Knockout and Scandal are bad girls in love

Scandal Savage and Knockout are villainess lovers who appear together in both comic series Birds of Prey and Secret Six. As members of the super-villain group Secret Six, the two fight side-by-side only looking out for each other and, sometimes, their teammates. Very tough and nearly invulnerable due to the blood from her immortal father, Vandal Savage, Scandal is an intelligent woman of color who’s deadly with her Wolverine-like “lamentation blades”. Her lover Knockout is a statuesque ex-Female Fury with superhuman strength and a knack for not dying and, if that fails, being resurrected. I love that Scandal and Knockout are queer villainesses who are loyal to each other and even further push the heteronormative boundaries by embarking on a polygamous marriage with a third woman. I generally despise romance movies, but I would absolutely go see an action romance with Scandal and Knockout as the leads!

9. Lady Death

Lady Death overcomes her status as eye candy

Lady Death has evolved over the years. Beginning her journey as a one-dimensional evil goddess intent on destroying the world, her history then shifted so that she was an accidental and reluctant servant of Hell who eventually overthrows Lucifer and herself becomes the mistress of Hell. Her latest incarnation shows her as a reluctant servant of The Labyrinth (instead of the darker notion of Hell) with powerfully innate magic that grows as she adventures, rescuing people and saving the world, until she’s a bonafide heroine. An iconic figure with her pale (mostly bare) skin and white hair, Lady Death has had her own animated movie, but I’m imagining instead a goth, Conan-esque live action film starring Lady Death that focuses on her quest through the dark depths of greed, corruption and revenge until she finds peace and redemption.

10. Asajj Ventress

Last, but not least, we have Asajj Ventress from the Star Wars universe, and the thought of her getting her own feature film honestly excites me more than any of the others. I first saw Ventress in Genndy Tartakovsky’s 2003 TV series Star Wars: Clone Wars, and she was was mag-fucking-nificent. A Dark Jedi striving for Sith status, Ventress is a graceful death-dealer wielding double lightsabers. Supplemental materials like comic books, novels and the newer TV series provide more history for this bald, formidable villainess. It turns out that she’s of the same race as Darth Maul with natural inclinations towards the Force. Enslaved at a young age, she escaped with the help of a Jedi Knight and began her training with him. She was a powerful force for good in the world until he was murdered, and in her bitterness, she turned to the Dark Side. Her powers are significant in that she can cloak herself in the Force like a mist and animate an army of the dead (wowzas!). Confession: I even have a Ventress action figure. The world doesn’t need another shitty Star Wars movie with a poorly executed Anakin Skywalker; the world needs a movie about Asajj Ventress in all her elegantly brutal glory.

Please bring Asajj Ventress to life on the big screen!

Peeling back the layers of these reviled women of pop culture is an important step in relaxing the binary that our culture forces women into. Showing a more nuanced and empathetic version of these women would prove that all women don’t have to be good or evil, dark or light, right or wrong, virgin or whore. Why do we love villainesses? Because heroines can be so bloody boring with their clear moral compasses, their righteousness and the fact that they always win. When compared to their heroine counterparts, villainesses have more freedom to defy. In fact, villainesses are more likely to defy expectations and gender roles, to be queer and to be women of color. In some ways, villainesses are more like us than heroines because they’re fallible, they’ve suffered injustices and they’re often selfish. In other ways, villainesses are something of an inspiration to women because they’re strong, confident, intelligent, dismissive of the judgements of others and, most importantly, they know how to get what they want and need.

Recommended Reading:

Top 10 Superheroines Who Deserve Their Own Movies
Top 10 Superheroes Who Are Better As Superheroines
Top 10 Superheroine Movies That Need a Reboot
The Many Faces of Catwoman
Dude Bros and X-Men: Days of Future Past
She-Ra: Kinda, Sorta Accidentally Feministy
Women in Science Fiction Week: Princess Leia: Feminist Icon or Sexist Trope?
The Very Few Women of Star Wars: Queen Amidala and Princess Leia
Wonder Women and Why We Need Superheroines
Monsters and Morality in Maleficent

Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Political Humor and Humanity in HBO’s ‘VEEP’

She’s a toxic political figure, a creator of monumental gaffes and inappropriate situations who doesn’t even have the excuse of good intentions. Her intentions are always self-serving and she treats her staff atrociously, often assigning them the blame for her mistakes.

This repost by Rachel Redfern appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Foul-mouthed and frazzled, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (eternally known as Elaine from Seinfeld), stars as United States Vice-President, Selina Meyer, in the Emmy Award-winning HBO political satire, VEEP. The show focuses on Dreyfus’ character, a woman who wants power, but resides in a fairly weak place, politically, having to hide in the shadows of the president and worry about her approval ratings.

There are two Hollywood versions of Washington, D.C.–one where the president is Morgan Freeman and he’s strong, but compassionate, and you feel good about being an American. The other version is something out of a John Grisham novel in which the city is one giant 60 Minutes expose of cynicism and conspiracy (the latter version just makes you sad to be alive). VEEP is the second, minus the conspiracy and snipers and with the addition of obsessive BlackBerry use.

Since the show never features the president, VEEP is free to focus on the more trivial aspects of federal politics, like the clean jobs bill Selina tries to put together, only to have the president close it down and give her obesity instead (not that obesity isn’t a big issue, it just offers a few more humorous situations than Guantanamo Bay). VEEP is interesting though, not because the characters surrounding her are ridiculous, but because Selina, the main character, is ridiculous and unlikable herself. She’s a toxic political figure, a creator of monumental gaffes and inappropriate situations who doesn’t even have the excuse of good intentions. Her intentions are always self-serving and she treats her staff atrociously, often assigning them the blame for her mistakes.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer in HBO’s VEEP

Selina’s staff isn’t any bundle of joy either; they’re just as unethical and self-serving as she is. Amy (Anne Chlumsky) is her competent, yet also incompetent chief of staff; Gary (Tony Hale of Arrested Development), is her faithful personal aide who is so loyal he takes a sneeze in the face to save her from being sick, and even breaks up with her boyfriend for her (in a sidenote, this is the second role that has featured him as a mildly obsessed man with an insane devotion to an older woman, a role that is played out as being emasculating and undignified); Sue (Sufe Bradshaw), is her sassy secretary; Mike (Matt Walsh) as the over-the-hill fading director of communications; Dan (Reid Scott) who is politically savvy, but also a social climber of epic proportions; and of course, the weird presidential liaison, Jonah (Timothy Simons), who tries to sleep with Amy.

Selina and her female staff are just as foul-mouthed and unpleasant as their male counterparts, a fact I actually really like about the show. Instead of giving the women a rosy, fictional gloss, they’re painted more as unique players in the political process, rather than just a token show about “Women in Politics.” In that vein, the show does portray the still highly sexualized role of female leaders, which is disturbing, but unfortunately very realistic. Examples of sexual harassment are fairly common on the show, like when Sue is the recipient of some pretty blatant comments from a congressman, which she just shrugs off; the death of a famously lecherous senator is mocked as everyone raves about him publicly, but in private, all the women sarcastically share their stories of his disgusting behavior. It’s sad to think that this situation is probably very common; male political figures lauded as leaders, when in reality they’re abusive perverts. For me though, the most astute and frustrating example of this came when Amy, Selina’s chief of staff, has to negotiate with two congressmen from Arizona; their immediate disdain for her and the patronizing, “sweetheart” she receives when she sits down is so realistic and problematic I wanted her to smack them. And yet, like so many powerful and intelligent women, she just had to take the condescension or risk sounding like an “over-emotional bitch.” This portrayal of randy behavior from the male senators strikes a contrast to the depth of scrutiny that the women on the show receive about their sex life. When Selina has a pregnancy scare, the media goes crazy and many of her interviews after address that very personal topic, rather than larger, national issues.

Humorously though, her cynical staff decide to turn it into a sympathy moment and try publish a story about in a woman’s magazine. It’s one of many instances when Selina’s stance as the loving, but absent mother plays a role in her political success; It’s only when Selina cries on camera about missing her daughter that her approval rating increases. Comedy shines again as the greater revelator of cultural inequality as Selina’s motherhood is constantly called into question (as is her femininity when she’s given the nickname, “Viagra inhibitor”). As is always the case, a male leader’s relationship with his children is less important than his hairline, but a female leader must always appear guilty and remorseful about her position, she must always regret the fact that her ambition has taken her out of the home or risk being perceived as cold-hearted or worse, un-maternal.

In the end, Selina (and even most of her staff) are undeniably unlikable people. Very little (if any) time of the sitcom is spent showing political figures as doing anything to improve the lives of their constituents; rather their days are filled with scheming and backbiting. Despite the fact that the characters aren’t people you would ever want to meet, the show does highlight the selfish and elitist world of the Unites States’ highest political people, and it’s a nice change to have that shown with a female lead.

Aside from the very astute commentary that the show makes about gender and politics, one of it’s greatest strengths is in the area of the gaffe. Oh the political gaffe: Romney and his 47 percent, Akin and his “women have a way to shut that whole thing down,” Vice-President Joe Biden about half the time. While all we see is the unbelievably stupid thing that a public figure has just said on national television, VEEP does an excellent job of leading up to Selina’s gaffes. They give us the background story and the same information that Selina is given so that when the gaffe does occur it’s incredibly funny, but also a bit understandable. It’s an element of the show that serves as a great reminder of the humanity of our politicians; while yes they say stupid things sometimes, we probably would too if we were in their shoes. I mean, I say stupid stuff all the time, I’m just lucky enough that there aren’t any TV cameras around when I say it. At the end of the day, politicians are just people with better hair.

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and its intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

Stephanie McMahon Helmsley: The Real Power in the Realm

She’s proven herself to be as diabolical as she is brilliant, manipulating wrestlers against one another and circumventing any and all rules to reach the ends of her choosing. She’s pit wrestlers in matches with their jobs on the line, or the jobs of their spouses (in the case of a short-lived feud with ‘Total Divas’ darling Brie Bella), added heinous stipulations to matches, or just flat-out fired anyone who disagreed with her.

This guest post by Robert Aldrich appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Stephanie McMahon Helmsley is the most powerful person in the WWE.

A fourth-generation wrestling promoter, Stephanie McMahon is the current Chief Brand Officer of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and one-half of the power couple (with her husband Triple H) that make up the heart of the Authority, the on-screen powers-that-be which attempt to steer the company down the path that is “best for business.” And while her father, Vince McMahon, may have more family/corporate power, or the rarely mentioned Board of Directors might have more business power, all control in the WWE flows from one of these two places and the person who commands the most of both forms of power is none other than Stephanie.

Not quite following? Don’t feel left out. The world of professional wrestling is confusing, and the monolithic WWE – the world’s largest and most successful wrestling promotion – it’s even more confusing. The story of the WWE is that of a giant, on-going tournament to determine and crown the best performers in the wrestling/sports entertainment business. The reality is that it’s a colorful pageant of athleticism and grandiose drama, of brutality and silliness, of action that is as fake as it is real.

To understand pro-wrestling, you really have to understand the concept of “kayfabe” (rhymes with “hey babe”). Kayfabe is the fictional reality in which the WWE (and all pro-wrestling) takes place. It’s a world where all matters are solved in the squared circle, where a person’s value is determined by the championship belt they wear, and where a contract signed under duress is a perfectly legal and binding affair. It’s a world that utilizes the most cutting-edge of technology (except the instant replay for referee to review), and also settles matters in the most barbaric and ancient manner there is (action).

Everybody knows kayfabe is “fake,” but then, you know the ballet is fake too, right? Live theater and television? They’re fake. Wrestling is just as fake…except for maybe the action, because while the punches may be pulled, the slams may be practiced, and the action is choreographed, there really isn’t any way to fake jumping off a ladder onto another person in front of a live audience of hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands. Wrestling may be different from theater and television because we buy into the larger-than-life personas, the over-the-type melodrama a little more fully than other forms of entertainment. Perhaps the best description was writer-poet Gabriel Ricard describing kayfabe as “self-aware suspension of disbelief”; you know it’s fake and yet you knowingly and willingly buy into it for the fun of.

Back to Stephanie McMahon Helmsley. In the 1970s and 1980s, Vince McMahon cobbled together the WWE by systematically buying out rival promoters. Vince’s daughter, Stephanie, got involved in the stories in the late 1990s. Initially, she was a victim of kidnapping by the malevolent forces of evil threatening to take over the WWE, known as the Ministry. After a subsequent rescue, she turned into the object of affection for two rival wrestlers (one of which would become her future husband, Triple H). She got married, then divorced. She competed in the WWE Women’s Division for a brief period (and even held the Women’s Championship) before she turned up again a few years later as a corporate figure and remarried (the WWE has an on-again/off-again relationship with narrative consistency).

At the turn of the millennium, Stephanie brokered a deal to usurp her father’s power by buying a rival wrestling company (Extreme Championship Wrestling, or ECW) and having those wrestlers “invade” the WWE, leading to a long series of matches and feuds over control and ownership of the WWE. While Stephanie did not prevail, this established her to be just as cutthroat as her father and perhaps even more resourceful.

Stephanie disappeared from the story’s eye for a little while, only to return as the general manager (a sort of catch-all boss) of the WWE’s late-week Smackdown, and then later for their flagship show, Monday Night Raw. As the boss, she would either be a voice of reason and ambitious sanity, or a draconian witch who would punish any that got in her way. She would continue in this role for a long time, then disappear for a bit, only to return most recently where she confronted fan-favorite Daniel Bryan about his ineligibility to compete for the title. It’s at about this point that the Authority storyline (currently going) would begin, with the Authority overtly taking control of competition. Stephanie, along with her husband Triple H, would try to guide the active roster of wrestlers towards their preferred ideals, by hand-selecting the champions rather than letting the fans decide, or letting the matches play out. She’s proven herself to be as diabolical as she is brilliant, manipulating wrestlers against one another and circumventing any and all rules to reach the ends of her choosing. She’s pit wrestlers in matches with their jobs on the line, or the jobs of their spouses (in the case of a short-lived feud with Total Divas darling Brie Bella), added heinous stipulations to matches, or just flat-out fired anyone who disagreed with her.

This is, of course, Stephanie McMahon Helmsley. Stephanie McMahon Levesque is quite a different woman.

Who is Stephanie McMahon Levesque? Well, she’s the real-world woman who plays Stephanie McMahon Helmsley in the WWE. She is the real daughter of Vince McMahon and she is a real fourth-generation wrestling promoter. And she is the real Chief Brand Officer for the WWE, responsible for promoting and growing the WWE’s brand through every avenue, be it reading challenges at local schools to embracing the first-ever content-specific streaming service (the WWE Channel). And she is really is married to Paul Levesque (the wrestler who goes by Triple H, or Hunter Hearst Helmsley)

The difference is that Stephanie McMahon Levesque is a decorated business woman, named four times by Cable magazine “One of the Most Powerful Women in Cable TV.” She is an Eisenhower fellow, chairperson for the Connecticut Special Olympics, and even has her own workout DVD. She also has three daughters with Paul Levesque.

Stephanie McMahon Levesque’s career has been a little more traditional than her on-screen persona. A communications degree from Boston University (along with probably at least a little nepotism) enabled her to work for the WWE as an accounts executive. She would work primarily behind the scenes and in the corporate office, until 2002 when she would make the switch to working on the creative side of the WWE, working as a writer and then head writer to develop the talent and storylines that would play out before audiences and before the cameras.

In 2007, she became the Executive Vice-President of Creative, which allowed her to spearhead multiple initiatives, not the least of which was the WWE app, which helped to pave the way to the WWE Channel. In 2013, she was promoted to Chief Brand Officer, making her more or less the face of the company’s business side.

So, Stephanie McMahon Levesque isn’t quite as dynamic as Stephanie McMahon Helmsley. But then, few actors are ever as dynamic as those they play on TV or on stage. In reality, Stephanie McMahon Levesque is the public face for a multi-million dollar, International Corporation. Within the kayfabe of the story, Stephanie McMahon Helmsley is not only this but also heiress to the entire kingdom, both family-wise and corporately. She is a woman who rules with intelligence and conviction, as well as brutal sincerity. When she speaks, the mightiest of men falls silent, listen, and then do as she says. Or they challenge her at their own peril.

Hail to the queen.

Robert V Aldrich is a novelist and speaker based out of North Carolina. His most recent book, Rhest for the Wicked, is now available, and he publishes a blog and serials at his website, TeachTheSky.com. You can follow him there, or on Twitter @rvaldrich.

Suzanne Stone: Frankenstein of Fame

The would-be news anchor is not only an extraordinarily unlikable–though entertaining–protagonist; she also embodies certain pathological tendencies in the American cultural psyche.

Poster for To Die For — Poster for *To Die For*

Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Spoilers galore.

You’ve got to give it to Nicole Kidman. For an archetype of Hollywood movie stardom, she has–for many years now–been quite unafraid of taking on edgy, unsympathetic roles. Her impressive turn in Gus Van Sant’s mockumentary black comedy, To Die For (1995), could, arguably, be considered Kidman’s first truly risky part. In it, she plays a murderously self-interested, fame-obsessed small-town TV personality with the perfectly fitting name of Suzanne Stone. “You’re not anybody in America unless you’re on TV,” Suzanne sermonizes at the start. “On TV is where we learn about who we really are. Because what’s the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody’s watching? And if people are watching, it makes you a better person.” The would-be news anchor is not only an extraordinarily unlikable–though entertaining–protagonist; she also embodies certain pathological tendencies in the American cultural psyche.

Surfaces seduce and deceive in Van Sant’s satire on American ambition. Suzanne is a vision of beauty and purity for her future husband, Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon), when he first encounters her, and the crimes she commits take place in an ordinary, pretty town in New Hampshire called Little Hope. It’s love at first sight when the laddish, none-too-bright Larry catches her eye while playing with his band at his father’s restaurant. Janice, Larry’s savvy, ice-skating sister (Illeana Douglas), immediately sees through Suzanne but he ignores the ice-maiden cracks and commits to the “the golden girl of my dreams.” The young man surprises everyone by ditching his drums and rock star ambitions for marriage and home-buying. Janice acerbically observes, “he went from Van Halen to Jimmy Vale overnight.” Larry is not only taken by Suzanne’s beauty; he’s also in awe of her go-getting personality. “She’s going places. She’s got goals,” he tells his father, Joe (Dan Hedaya). Larry, by the by, comes from a fiercely loving, old-fashioned Italian-American family; Suzanne’s parents are portraits of smug, airy WASPness.

Suzanne soon gets a job at the local cable TV station as a weather presenter. Her co-workers baptise her “Gangbusters” and she becomes a workaholic member of their tiny outfit. Fancying herself as a future Barbara Walters, she understands that she must start somewhere. Tensions, however, surface on the first anniversary of her marriage. Larry wants a child and more time together but this doesn’t figure in his wife’s plans. She explains to her puzzled mother-in-law, Angela (Maria Tucci), that a baby would prevent her from covering a revolution–or royal wedding. Feeling trapped by his expectations of her, Suzanne determines to bump Larry off. But she does not do the dirty deed herself. She befriends a trio of daft teenagers, subjects of a documentary she’s working on, to set it up and do her bidding. The ultimate plan, of course, is to pin the murder on them. They comprise vulgar Russell (Casey Affleck), impressionable, insecure Lydia (Alison Folland) and sensitive Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix), who seems permanently stoned. Both Lydia and Jimmy adore Suzanne. She sexually targets Jimmy, all the while him telling tales of marital abuse, and promises Lydia that she will employ her as her secretary when she becomes famous. The besotted Jimmy soon becomes the designated shooter.

But things don’t go to plan for Suzanne when the three luckless teenagers are arrested. Lydia chooses to cooperate with the police, and wears a tape to record a confession by Suzanne but she is acquitted as the authorities took the entrapment route. When Suzanne publicly suggests Larry’s murder was drug-related–her husband, she says, was a coke addict–his family finally crack, and take matters into their own hands. Suzanne just can’t help herself when she is lured to a remote location by the promise of telling and selling her story. Lydia does not see jail and becomes a kind of celebrity but the boys get life.

There are other targets of Van Sant’s satire in To Die For. Suzanne’s family are characterized as unthinking, self-regarding snobs. Her father Earl (Kurtword Smith) thinks his daughter, a junior college graduate with a degree in electronic journalism, is too good for high school Larry. There is even an unsympathetic side to the loving Italian-American in-laws. Apart from arranging a hit on her at the end (!), it’s clear that they want Suzanne to conform to their traditional ideals of womanhood. Even Larry’s cool sister encourages him to “knock her up.” We only really empathize with the teenagers, particularly Jimmy and Lydia. They backgrounds are troubled, and both come from unprivileged homes, but Suzanne mercilessly exploits them. In fact, she not only violates Jimmy’s youth; she also destroys his future. It’s disquieting subject matter. Scripted by Buck Henry, To Die For is actually based on Joyce Maynard’s 1992 book of the same name, a novel inspired by the similar, real-life 1990 Pamela Smart case. Telling the dark, outlandish tabloid tale in blackly amusing faux-documentary style, however, Van Sant maintains a markedly satirical tone. The uniformly pitch-perfect performances serve his vision. Phoenix, incidentally, is superb as the tragic-comic teenager.

Suzanne Stone is a mediagenic monster in pastels. She’s both a perverse creature and a nightmarishly pure ideological product. Entirely indoctrinated by televisual ideals, she’s a kind of Frankenstein of fame. In a more general sense, she is also a wickedly amusing portrait of American ambition, a workaholic who will do anything to get ahead. Suzanne Stone is, what’s more, a thoroughly unoriginal person. Her ideas are pilfered from others as well as, of course, television. To Die For not only sends up the hollowness of fame; it also attacks the manufactured personality. Suzanne believes that the human mind can be fashioned and cultivated by self-motivation books, and, again, television.

There is also that charming personality. The world revolves around Suzanne and she’s entirely indifferent to the feelings of others. A psychopath really. This is amusingly demonstrated at her husband’s funeral when she stands by his grave and slams on “All By Myself” on a tape-recorder. There’s a socio-economic aspect to all of this too. Suzanne Stone is entitled and knows it. She’s, indeed, an extreme product of white, bourgeois privilege. She warns Lydia when threatened with exposure, “I’m a professional person, for Christ’s sake. I come from a good home. Who do you think a jury would believe?”

An obsession with looks is also integral to her ideological make-up. Some of her comments are quite memorable–such as her suggestion that Gorbachev’s political career would have been more successful if he had had his birthmark removed. To Die For targets television and tabloid culture’s role in stimulating and nourishing human narcissism. The movie takes place, of course, in the pre-internet era–TV’s one of many communication platforms now–but the fundamental message about human vanity endures. As everyone reading this knows, social media has proved to be an extremely indulgent parent of self-love.

To Die For does not solely savage celebrity culture; it also takes aim at culturally constructed American femininity. Suzanne Stone has been entirely radicalised by televisual ideals of cosmetic beauty. Although naturally beautiful, she is paranoid about her own appearance and shamelessly advises the attractive Janice to get plastic surgery. Physical descriptions of Suzanne point to a distinct lack of humanity. Janice calls her an unfeeling doll, Lydia considers her a “goddess” while Jimmy is in awe of how clean she is. Suzanne Stone is not a sensual woman. Her very sexuality, it is suggested, is inauthentic. Sex seems to be primarily an exhibitionist or strategic move bound up with the manipulation of others.

Ultimately, Suzanne Stone is not only a uniquely unlikeable protagonist. Representative of much that is wrong with her place and time- the self-interest, addiction to fame, lookism and classism–she is a skillfully drawn object of satire. Kidman cleverly captures her insane single-mindedness and narcissism. With her purple eyeshadow, short skirts, and little dog Walter–named, of course, after Walter Cronkite–her Suzanne Stone deserves a place in cinematic history’s gallery of dazzling grotesques.

King Vidor’s ‘Stella Dallas’ and the Utter Gracelessness of Grace

These repeated conflicts make for a number of scenes in the film that, as Basinger has also asserted, are painful to watch. Our emotions are in conflict: Stella’s aims are noble, her execution hopelessly flawed. It’s hard to like her when she’s so inept, impossible not to sympathize because her purpose is so noble.

This guest post by Rebecca Willoughby appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Melodrama is a film genre that can get a bad reputation: overblown emotions, sweeping musical scores, a lot of “drama.” In its heyday in the 1950s, these films were primarily marketed to women, and (perhaps disparagingly) known as “weepies.” But melodrama is also an island in old Hollywood—an island full of complex, flawed women, the kinds of characters viewers can simultaneously love and hate, dynamic creatures who inspire and who are also cringe-worthy.

For me, one of the best examples of this is King Vidor’s Stella Dallas (1937). IMDb gives this one-line summary of the film: “A low class woman is willing to do whatever it takes to give her daughter a socially promising future.” Film scholar Jeanine Basinger, author of A Woman’s View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930-1960, takes a more sympathetic tone, calling Stella Dallas a “portrait of a poor girl who marries out of her class,” and notes that film icon Barbara Stanwyck’s performance as Stella is one of “great depth.” I would tend to agree with Basinger, but I must point out that the audience’s relationship to the eponymous woman is a complicated one.

Rather than an elegant, wealthy, and charismatic, Stella is a shameless social climber with no real “taste.” She comes from a ramshackle, cracker-box house and a factory-worker family, where Father and Brother both work at the local mill. Her only obvious female role model is her sallow-faced mother, who seems at once endlessly, admirably sacrificing and a woman who has had the life completely sucked out of her. Stella resists being anything like her mother. She puts little effort into making her brother’s lunch every day, and is instead invested in her looks, her clothes, and her culture (this last illustrated superficially by her enactment of reading a book—India’s Love Lyrics— as mill workers pass by her house). Eventually, Stella identifies down-on-his-luck former millionaire Stephen Dallas (John Boles) as her romantic conquest, and does everything in her power to land him for a husband who will take her away from her humble origins.

But class differences run deep. Though Stephen falls for Stella, perhaps because of her innocence and earthiness, she is unambiguous about wanting to make herself “better,” a cloudy idea she has that includes knowing the “right” people, going to the “real” places, as well as learning how to “talk like” those aforementioned people. The film makes it clear that Stella and Stephen are mismatched from the start—after their wedding and the subsequent birth of their daughter, Laurel, Stella can’t wait to get back to the River Club, and dance the night away with some high-class friends. Starting at this point, Omar Kiam’s costumes do their best to visually identify Stella as a gaudy parody of all things well-bred—she appears in all manner of spangle and print, usually together, and Barbara Stanwyck’s padded physique seems to be literally bursting at the seams of each ensemble. She is excess personified. Embarrassed by her flashiness and uncouth behavior, Stephen recoils from the relationship, finally taking a promotion that keeps him in New York City. Stella welcomes the separation, and yet one of the consequences of this move seems to be that Stella transfers her desire for upward mobility onto Laurel.

So why don’t we like her? What’s wrong with a mother wanting her daughter to have all of the best? Part of what makes Stella unlikeable is her effect on Laurel (played as a young woman by Anne Shirley). On the occasion of Laurel’s 16th birthday (for which Stella has made her daughter a beautiful, appropriate dress—why can’t she apply this savvy to her own clothes??) Stella takes a train to the city to obtain fancy party favors and table settings. She makes this trip in the company of good-hearted but loud, brash Ed Munn (Alan Hale, Sr.), who has lost some of his own formerly respectable class status through gambling disasters; as one country club attendee says, “He’s involved in horse racing.” He’s also clearly infatuated with Stella, though she rebuffs his affections and says, “I don’t think there’s a man living could get me going anymore.” Instead, she intones, all her energy is bound up in raising Laurel—both in the traditional sense of her upbringing, and in “raising” her social status above Stella’s.

Munn and Stella’s antics on the train are then observed by Laurel’s upright teacher and the mother of another girl invited to Laurel’s birthday party. Both of whom immediately pass judgment on the household, and by extension, Laurel, because of Stella’s behavior. The result is that no one attends Laurel’s party, which ends up being just the first in a series of unfortunate events, documented by Basinger in her writing on Stella Dallas, that occur when Stella’s class clashes with the class of those she strives to emulate. These repeated conflicts make for a number of scenes in the film that, as Basinger has also asserted, are painful to watch. Our emotions are in conflict: Stella’s aims are noble, her execution hopelessly flawed. It’s hard to like her when she’s so inept, impossible not to sympathize because her purpose is so noble. Class culture is indicted when viewers are asked to identify with Laurel, even when Laurel herself isn’t on screen—we understand the gap between the young woman’s intrinsic conservatism (which is deployed as a marker of upper-class behavior) and Stella’s inescapable and tragic inability to embody this value. This gap has a profound effect on how Laurel is perceived by the rest of the world, further inciting our sympathy for both women. Stella also articulates her own selfishness in several of these scenes, desiring to dance, shop, and be seen among these “right” people, before she realizes the she is not a blessing for Laurel, but a curse.

There’s a turning point in Stella Dallas that may or may not redeem Stella in the eyes of the audience. After Laurel has narrowly avoided an awkward scene with her mother in an ice-cream parlor, the two take a sleeper back to their home. As each of them pretends to sleep, they overhear other passengers talking about Stella’s larger-than-life appearance at the country club they’ve just left. The gossipy biddies agree that Laurel’s boyfriend will never continue their relationship when he’s made aware of Laurel’s lineage, and Stella slowly becomes aware that she’s a detriment to everything she has ever wanted for Laurel.

For the rest of the film, Stella forgets about her own desires and moves heaven and Earth to get Laurel away from her. This is simultaneously the best thing she could do to achieve her goal of propelling Laurel into the upper-class, and depicted as tremendously cruel for Laurel herself—another reason that, even in her glory as a “sacrificial mother,” there can exist a complicated seed of dislike for Stella. Though she eventually succeeds, it’s at the cost of sabotaging her relationship with Laurel forever, and never seeing her again. In the final scenes, we understand Stella’s plan has been both successful and monumentally hurtful for her daughter, who continues to love her mother in spite of Stella’s rough rejection of Laurel and disappearance from her life.

It’s only in the final scene of the film that we are given the green light on Stella, when we’re finally allowed to wholeheartedly admire her for what she’s done. Stella stands outside a fancy private club where Laurel is about to wed her sweetheart, gathered with other urchin-like onlookers, gawking at the beautiful couple just inside a large picture window. She begs a policeman to remain as he shoos these others away; “I just want to see her face when she kisses him,” she pleads. As the vows are solemnized, Stella’s eyes fill with tears, and she performs a signature act that has punctuated Stanwyck’s performance throughout the film—at moments when she is most conflicted, uncomfortable, and troubled, she reaches for her mouth, worrying her fingers, chipping at her front teeth with a fingernail. Here, she twists a handkerchief with her teeth as she looks on, her now much sleeker-looking physique still bursting, this time with pride. We want to applaud and weep at the same time—Stella’s sacrifice is so terrible, its goals so lofty. Finally, we can like her. But only after relinquishing nearly everything that gave her purpose.

Audiences are hard on women like Stella Dallas. Culture’s ideas of motherly perfection, class values, and models of “acceptable” behavior force them into molds they were not meant to fit in. If anything, Stella Dallas points out the most exacting of those ideals in us, the viewer, and criticizes our potential dislike of Stella. The film’s saving grace is that it allows us, and Stella herself, to leave the film not broken, but stronger for the fight.

Rebecca Willoughby holds a Ph.D. in English and Film Studies from Lehigh University. She writes most frequently on horror films and melodrama, and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

‘Summer’: Portrait of a Recognizable Human

When the family sits down to eat, a platter full of pork chops is placed in the center of the table just as Delphine announces she is a vegetarian. As the others interrogate her (a tedious line of questions familiar to many vegetarians) and one of the men even offers her a plate full of rose petals to feast on, she tries to walk the tightrope many women do–in all sorts of conversations–of not wanting to be seen as a “bother,” but still trying to stick up for her own beliefs.

Written by Ren Jender as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

“Difficult” women in movies, as in life, are often more a matter of nomenclature than behavior. A male lead in a film can show up drunk at his wife’s workplace, humiliate her and punch her boss, and the director/writer will posit that he had his reasons. But a woman character who doesn’t want to fuck the male lead, or even indulge his crush on her, we are supposed to read as “difficult.” Women in film are so often ornamental plot devices that when one acts in a way that distinguishes her, as Rebecca West said in her famous quote about feminism, from a doormat, we’re a little shocked. Looking to differentiate her from the ever-patient, doe-eyed, “wise” horde of “supportive” girlfriends, wives and mothers we’re used to seeing onscreen we use “difficult” or “unlikable” when what we mean is “recognizably human.”

Just because I can discern this pattern doesn’t mean I’m immune to it. When I signed up to post about “unlikable women” I thought of Eric Rohmer’s 1986 film Summer (also known as The Green Ray) and its main character Delphine (played by Marie Rivière, who with Rohmer, co-wrote the great script), a single 30-ish woman who can’t seem to find any peace of mind in the month-long summer vacation that is part of French life. But as I rewatched the film (a favorite that I last saw four and a half years ago) I realized, during my previous viewings, I was wrong to think of Delphine as a hopeless pain in the ass who gets in her own way. Although she complains about things that don’t bother others (at one point she says about a sunny outdoor meeting spot that the light there “hurts my eyes”) and she shuts down her friend Manuella’s (María Luisa García) suggestion to stay with Manuella’s grandmother in Spain, we can see the two have a playful relationship. As they talk about meeting men, Manuella pats the calves of the nude statue next to them and says, “This one should be right up your alley. He’s very handsome.”

When Delphine lets her guard down, as with her own family (at least some of whom are, in real life, related to Rivière–part of the dialogue in this and other group scenes seems to be mixing nonfiction into the narrative), especially the older members and children, we see she is solicitous and, as she later defensively describes herself “sweet.” But in another scene when her “friend” (Rohmer regular Béatrice Romand) badgers her about being single and lonely–and blames her reluctance to go on vacation alone, adding “I tell you, that’s how you meet people”–Delphine dissolves into tears. She laments to the one friend who comes to comfort her that she doesn’t want to go on vacation by herself or go camping in cold, rainy Ireland with her family. She, reasonably, wants a warm, seaside vacation and a real bed to sleep in. This friend then invites Delphine to her own family’s place in Cherbourg.

Although it’s by the sea, Cherbourg (the setting of the classic Jacques Demy musical starring a very young Catherine Deneuve) isn’t a traditional vacation spot. It’s a military port (the two women meet a man who is a sailor, in town for just one night) with weather that the characters’ sweaters tell us is chilly, even in July. The worst part is that Delphine’s blonde friend is happily ensconced in a couple, as are all the other adults in the household, so Delphine goes from being the third wheel to being the fifth or the seventh. She does find some refuge when she spends time with the children there, but even then one older girl asks her if she has a boyfriend and, as she did earlier, Delphine pretends she and her ex are still together.

When her friend and boyfriend are leaving to return to Paris, Delphine, whom we have seen crying alone on outdoor, solitary walks, begs to go back with them. She then tries a mountain getaway (where at least the guy who gives her the cabin keys seems happy to see her) but doesn’t even last a whole day there. Back in Paris, by chance she runs into a friend at a café who, when she announces she got married, Delphine asks, “Again?”

The friend says, “This time it’s serious,” and tells Delphine she now has a 17-month-old son, but also that hers is no happily-ever-after scenario (the implied conclusion whenever anyone talks about Delphine meeting someone). She offers Delphine her brother-in-law’s apartment in Biarritz, a popular resort, which she grabs.

Finally Delphine is in the vacation spot she wants, but the apartment is cramped and outside space is tight, both on the beach and in the water. Although Delphine, with her lanky body, looks like she could have come from a vacation catalog as she trots through the water in a tiny, iridescent bikini (briefly taking off the more modest, dark, one-piece she usually wears over it) she’s still lonely, seeing couples everywhere as she explores alone, at one point eavesdropping on the conversation a group of old friends on an outdoor bench have about the book The Green Ray.

One day on the beach she meets blonde, chatty topless Lena (Carita) from Sweden, the polar opposite of Delphine. Lena loves to go on vacation on her own and tells Delphine she is better off without a fiancé since hers is always jealous when she looks at other men. Lena spends a lot of time pointing out good-looking guys to Delphine and arranges for a double date. Delphine flees the scene even though the man she’s fixed up with seems reasonably attractive and nice as he confesses his own loneliness (though like more than one of the French “straight” guys in this film, his manner and outfit, to US eyes, seem like those of a gay man).

At the train station Delphine meets a man (Vincent Gauthier), a cabinet-maker, also on vacation, and she impulsively changes her route for him. As with the sister with all the suitors in The Makioka Sisters we immediately see why Delphine goes with this guy and has rejected all the others. As they sit in a café she explains to him what, we realize as she speaks, we’ve seen throughout the film, that she can’t play the games with men that Lena plays (she told the double-date guys she was from Spain) or the games she tells us she played back in Paris, having sex with men then the next day going back to being strangers. She and her date watch the sunset, and once again she cries, hoping against hope that she will finally see the sign that she’s found the person, in her own time, in her own way, who is right for her–not the ones others think that she should pursue. The final shot reassures us that after the hoops we make ourselves and others and even the universe jump through as we try to find what we need, we might, in spite of ourselves, attain it.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1aar4IDUvU” iv_load_policy=”3″]

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

Bad Girls and (Not-So)-Guilty Pleasures in ‘The Bling Ring’

This guest post by Amy Woolsey appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

“Empty.” “Wispy.” “Disposable.” These are the kinds of adjectives used to describe The Bling Ring, Sofia Coppola’s cinematic rendering of the real-life Los Angeles robbery spree perpetrated by a clique of celebrity-obsessed teenagers, when it came out in June 2013. Although a smattering of dissent could be heard from various circles, general consensus seemed to maintain that the film was like its protagonists: pretty to look at, without much to say. A couple critics went so far as to ask why Coppola bothered to make it at all, and many others (including Marcia Herring, whose review was posted on Bitch Flicks) made explicit or oblique references to the director’s famously upper-class background, intimating that it impeded her ability to effectively critique her subjects.

In all fairness, it’s easy to see how people would get this impression. With its glittering veneer, ubiquitous (if unavoidable) product placement, and energetic, dance-ready soundtrack, The Bling Ring practically shrieks “pop confection,” a catchy trifle obsessed with imagery and texture perhaps at the expense of substance. It spends more time reveling in obscenely expensive shoes, purses and jewelry than developing the characters. As anyone who endured the heated Wolf of Wall Street debates that waged throughout the 2013-14 awards season can attest, the line between satirizing something and glorifying it is flimsy at best. Lacking an alternate viewpoint to lend perspective to or openly comment on the characters’ behavior, we’re left on our own to decipher what, if any, meaning can be found beneath the surface gloss.

At the same time, I can’t help but detect a disconcertingly gendered undercurrent in much of the criticism. Especially flagrant are the recurring accusations of nepotism that have been leveled at Coppola, daughter of legendary Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, since her acting days. There’s nothing wrong with interrogating privilege; seeing as people don’t create art in a vacuum, it’s always important to be cognizant of biases and circumstances that might inform filmmakers’ perspectives. The problem is that the targets of complaints concerning class and pedigree are primarily, if not exclusively, women. As IndieWire’s Sam Adams said, even after helming five films and receiving a Best Director Oscar nomination, a feat achieved by only three other women, Coppola is still treated “like an upstart, a spoiled little girl who owes her career to her father” and cannot possibly have any worthwhile insight to contribute to society. By contrast, Jason Reitman (son of Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman), Tony Gilroy (son of award-winning writer and director Frank D. Gilroy), and Nick Cassavetes (son of independent film pioneer John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowland) apparently didn’t benefit from their family histories at all.

It’s true that, by devoting her career to scrutinizing the lives and angst of those immersed in wealth, from Bill Murray’s jaded actor in Lost in Translation to Kirsten Dunst’s Marie Antoinette, Coppola draws increased attention to her own wealth. Yet instead of undermining her credibility, her insider status should make her uniquely qualified to comment on the culture and lifestyle of the rich and famous. With The Bling Ring, for example, she follows the brash teenage thieves with the curious yet matter-of-fact eye of a documentarian, neither in awe of nor disgusted by them. She takes for granted that these people and their world exists – the afternoons spent lounging on the beach, the evenings drinking in nightclubs and doing drugs at parties, the inattentive or absent parents, the educational methods based on self-help books – and, as a result, so do we. Only once are we explicitly made aware of the distance between our reality and the one inhabited by the characters, the sheer strangeness of the events unfolding onscreen. In the film’s most memorable sequence, we’re treated to a voyeuristic, unbroken wide shot of a glass house while the titular ring scurries inside, plundering it. It’s a tantalizing reminder that we don’t belong here; we can gawk at the red carpet all we want, but the gala itself is off-limits.

Coppola’s refusal to condemn, explain or apologize for her characters makes for a rather opaque experience. To state the obvious, these are not likable individuals. They exhibit no visible remorse for their crimes, seemingly oblivious to the concept of personal boundaries, and think about little besides fashion and D-list celebrities. Even Marc (Israel Broussard), who is new to the group and expresses alarm when Rebecca (Katie Chang) breaks into Paris Hilton’s home for the first time, protests less out of a sense of morality than a fear of being caught. The youths are excruciatingly vacuous and narcissistic, think-piece millennials on Adderall. Why should we care about what they do or what happens to them? How does Coppola want us to see them – as brats, sociopaths, rebels, misguided kids, or what?

Perhaps a better question is, why are we so repulsed by them in the first place? Robbing celebrities is hardly the worst transgression imaginable, and this isn’t the first movie to center on unruly rich people. Take the aforementioned Wolf of Wall Street, which chronicles the criminal activities and general depravity of Wall Street stockbroker Jordan Belfort. Like The Bling Ring, it rests on the assumption that all people are, to some extent, seduced by the allure of wealth (as Marc says, “I think we just wanted to be part of the lifestyle. The lifestyle that everybody kind of wants”) and strives to implicate the audience in the protagonist’s wrongdoing, suggesting that he’s the product of a larger culture that tolerates or outright encourages such behavior. Both films use repetition to make statements about capitalist excess, bombarding viewers with images of decadence and materialism arguably to the point of overkill. If it conveys the same basic message in half the screen-time (and with a far more consistent tone), why didn’t The Bling Ring have close to the same impact as The Wolf of Wall Street? Yes, Martin Scorsese’s darkly comic epic had its share of detractors, but it still got five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, which I’m pretty sure qualifies as success.

Let’s face it: people are much more willing to stomach, examine and identify with men who behave badly than women, particularly when they’re affluent and white. The Bling Ring is a rare film that 1) revolves around women 2) who are not admirable or sympathetic and 3) doesn’t treat their misdeeds as either harmless fun or feminist defiance. No wonder so many critics are at a loss for how to interpret it. ReelView.com’s James Berardinelli sums it up:

Spending time with these loathsome, self-absorbed individuals, none of whom has a single endearing characteristic, is an ordeal.

Fine, if you don’t enjoy something, you don’t enjoy it. But what, exactly, are Jordan Belfort’s endearing characteristics? That he looks like Leonardo DiCaprio? Hollywood loves to churn out male scumbags, from Belfort to Patrick Bateman from American Psycho and Lou Bloom from 2013’s Nightcrawler (whose sleek/sleazy vision of contemporary Los Angeles and satirical takedown of American entitlement echoes that in The Bling Ring). While it’s agreed that these characters aren’t good people, their desires and values are always recognized as legitimate, albeit twisted. Even the most vocal members of the anti-Wolf of Wall Street camp acknowledged that Scorsese was trying to say something about greed and power and deserved to be taken seriously. On the other hand, The Bling Ring is dismissed as glamorous fluff and its heroines as spoiled, delusional air-heads, I suppose because they fixate on clothes instead of cocaine and sex. Women who covet money and things are frivolous, whereas men who covet money and things are ambitious.

Yep, men don’t care about how they look at all. — Yep, men don’t care about how they look *at all*.

The key to The Bling Ring ultimately lies in its music. At first glance, the medley of hip-hop, pop, and electronic tunes that Coppola and composer Brian Reitzell have compiled seems to merely complement the flamboyant visuals and shallow characters. Yet they also point to an acute sense of cynicism. It’s impossible to miss the glaring hypocrisy of Rebecca, Marc, and Chloe rocking out to M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” while aimlessly driving around in a luxury car. They may view themselves as renegades, defying the System by stealing from the uber-rich and giving to themselves, doing whatever they want with zero regard for the consequences, but the fact is that they are the System; they do whatever they want because they can get away with it, and they can get away with it because no one cares. It would be a stretch to say Coppola sympathizes with them (she doesn’t hesitate to poke fun at her characters’ cluelessness, particularly with Emma Watson inhabiting a role that lampoons her real-life persona), but she understands the underlying sadness of their situation. They are, after all, teenagers with nothing and no one to rebel against. They’re not distrustful of authority so much as indifferent to its very existence, so alienated from the rest of the world that they genuinely believe they own it.

Recommended reading: The Narcissistic Postfeminist Millennial Supergirls of ‘The Bling Ring’ and ‘Spring Breakers’ by Judy Berman at Flavorwire; The Bling Ring by Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly; Rob Jobs “Now You See Me” and “The Bling Ring.” by David Denby at The New Yorker

Amy Woolsey is a writer living in northern Virginia. She plans to graduate from George Mason University with an English degree this year and spends most of her free time consuming, discussing and generally obsessing over pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr, and she keeps a personal blog that is updated irregularly. This is her first time contributing to Bitch Flicks.

Anne Boleyn: Queen Bee of ‘The Tudors’

Anne Boleyn was considered by many contemporaries to be the very living, breathing definition of an unlikable woman. And perhaps “unlikable” is too soft a term here – at points in the 16th century, following her execution on trumped up charges of adultery and treason, Anne was so widely reviled that very few of her own words, actions, or even accurate portraits remain today, thanks to Henry’s redoubtable efforts to wipe her off the record completely.

This guest post by Emma Kat Richardson appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

“Write me letters and poems. Ravish me with your words. Seduce me.”

These words, spoken by Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII, are an arrow dipped in love potion, shot through the king’s heart – a direct command from the courtly lady he might worship and serve. From then on, Henry will stop at nothing to have her; and the consequences of this maddening obsession will go on to tear England nearly asunder with the initiation of the Reformation. That’s… quite a bit of exposition for a mere poetry request. How, exactly, did this ordinary woman of average background and breeding manage to ensnare one of the most powerful men in Christendom? With as much information as is publicly available on these grand historical events, it’s hard to say with certainty what Anne really did to pull off such an unprecedented feat. What we can say for sure is that these words never make an appearance in any textbook or scholarly treatise on the discarded queens of England’s eccentric eighth King Henry; rather, they are a snippet of sensationalistic dialogue accorded to Anne as portrayed in Showtime’s epic, sexed up costume drama, The Tudors.

But first, before we dive into the realm of heaving bosoms and salacious, soapy one-liners, a little historical background: as the second wife of England’s first Renaissance king, Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn was considered by many contemporaries to be the very living, breathing definition of an unlikable woman. And perhaps “unlikable” is too soft a term here – at points in the 16th century, following her execution on trumped up charges of adultery and treason, Anne was so widely reviled that very few of her own words, actions, or even accurate portraits remain today, thanks to Henry’s redoubtable efforts to wipe her off the record completely. Her unpopularity with the public stemmed mostly from the fact that Henry had moved heaven and earth (almost literally, since he all but kicked the national religion of Catholicism out of England just to have her) to divorce his first wife and marry Anne in her place. That first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had been a Spanish princess whose marriage of almost two decades to Henry had produced one daughter but no living sons to inherit the crown. With the royal succession dangerously in jeopardy, Henry began casting about for a way out of his marriage, and “Mistress Boleyn,” as she was then known, was more than ready to provide not only the ends but the means to Henry’s little marital dilemma as well. A committed reformer, Anne was a vocal advocate for reforming the abuses of the clergy and papacy, and even today is widely regarded as being responsible for England’s violent split with Rome and the “old faith.”

So, clearly, she was a little bit controversial. The whole home-wrecking aspect didn’t do much to bolster Anne’s personal approval ratings, either. But, especially as she’s played by Natalie Dormer on The Tudors, it’s impossible to deny that there’s just something about Annie. She’s easy to hate, in patches, but one who manages to be both polarizing and magnetic; indeed, Dormer’s Anne is a quick-witted, razor sharp intellectual with enough sex appeal drive a wedge not only between Henry and his wife, but Henry and his mistress, Anne’s own sister Mary.

If you can believe it, this chalice isn’t filled with blood and the tears of children.

Many recent portrayals of Anne depict her as utterly ruthless and oozing with ambition – the appallingly bad screen 2008 adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s novel The Other Boleyn Girl springs immediately to mind. But Dormer’s Anne is more coy and calculating than toxic and reckless. In early episodes of the series, while Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ Abecrombie-ized Henry is flitting from one court lady’s bed to another, it is difficult to know Anne’s thoughts as her family arranges for her own physical entrapment of the king. Dormer plays Anne as cool and aloof – so much so that the show nearly refrains from giving Anne a perspective at all in the nascent days of her courtship with Henry. Whether Anne is fending off his sexual advances for strategy, as her scenes with her family patriarchs suggest, or if she has legitimate concerns about her maidenly reputation is anyone’s guess; however, once it becomes clear that Henry has his hose in a bunch at the prospect of bedding Anne, the proverbial gloves come off, and, eventually, so do Anne’s gowns.

Not that Dormer’s Anne is without her moments of pure malice, of course. As supreme seductress of the king, Anne, riding high on ego and self-confidence, boldly spars with the queen, her rival. “I care nothing for Catherine,” she declares haughtily in the first season’s finale. “I would rather see her hanged than acknowledge her as my mistress.” On another occasion, Anne viciously tears in to Henry after she discovers that Catherine is still sewing his shirts; a truly intimate betrayal in 16th century terms. And, in the face of so much antipathy toward her presence, she even changes her public motto to, roughly translated, “this is how it’s going to be; let them grumble”!

“Henry, you keep leaving the lid to the chamber pot up. I thought we talked about this.”

But really, what lies beyond Dormer’s ability to fill Anne with fire is her careful attention to the qualities that render Anne sympathetic, too. During the show’s first season, Dormer reportedly fought with Showtime’s producers to transform Anne into more of a reformist intellectual and less of an overheated sexpot. As she told Susan Bordo in The Creation of Anne Boleyn, Bordo’s probe into the continued cultural relevance of Anne: “Men still have trouble recognizing that a woman can be complex, can have ambition, good looks, sexuality, erudition, and common sense. A woman can have all those facets, and yet men, in literature and in drama, seem to need to simplify women, to polarize us as either the whore or the angel. That sensibility is prevalent, even to this day. I have a lot of respect for Michael [Hirst, creator of The Tudors], as a writer and a human being, but I think that he has that tendency. I don’t think he does it consciously. I think it’s something innate that just happens and he doesn’t realize it.” By the show’s second season, Dormer’s Anne had made the leap from elaborately dressed cock-tease to a fully formed, charismatic and courageous individual. Her execution in the season two finale saw an 83 percent spike in viewership over the first season’s finale episode, and once Dormer left the show, ratings dropped drastically.

Just as with the real Anne Boleyn, who once ruled over the kingdom of England and its monarch’s fickle heartstrings, Dormer’s Boleyn may have an unlikeable surface, but she’s so much more than a mere strumpet with a couple of decent lines. Right down to her alluring smile as she reads from the holy Scripture aloud in English, Dormer has created an Anne for all seasons: the very embodiment of just how complex and riveting she must have been during her all-too short life.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6-ThCEeTJU”]

Emma Kat Richardson is a Detroit native and freelance writer living in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in xoJane.com, Bitch, Alternative Press, LaughSpin.com, Real Detroit Weekly, 944, and Bust.com. She’s enough of a comedy nerd and cat lady to have named her Maine Coon Michael Ian Cat. Follow her on twitter: @emmakat.

Patterns in Poor Parenting: ‘The Babadook’ and ‘Mommy’

This guest post by Deirdre Crimmins appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

Last year, two completely different films presented two very similar mothers. Though the lead characters from The Babadook and Mommy do not look alike, their parenting styles, and subsequently their sons, are uncanny. This representation of poor parenting by ill-equipped mothers deserves a closer look.

The Babadook is getting showered with praise as one of the best horror films in decades. It is the story of a widow raising an overactive, imaginative son. Samuel is a well-meaning 7-year-old who misbehaves more than not. He throws tantrums. He builds contraptions like backpack-mounted catapults. He has frequent meltdowns. Samuel is not an easy child and mother Amelia is at the end of her rope when a strange book appears on his bookshelf. The story in the book is that of Mr. Babadook, a modern and all too familiar boogeyman. From here the film dives into Amelia’s coping with this monster and her eventual possession by the Babadook.

Mommy is not a horror film at all, though it does have a few moments that are shocking. The film follows Diana, Die, as she tries to deal with her delinquent son, Steve. Fifteen-year-old Steve has just gotten kicked out of the boarding school for problem children and Die must choose between surrendering him to the government or taking him back to her home. She chooses the latter and tries her best to parent Steve as much as he will tolerate. To say that both Steve and Die have unusual boundaries between appropriate and inappropriate is a criminal understatement, as neither of them seems capable of acting like an adult. Even with such rich characters, curiously the most interesting character in the film turns out to be their neighbor, Kyla. For the purposes of this article I won’t have time to explore her further, but it should be mentioned that there is much more subtext in the film that merely the mother-son relationship.

Before diving into the similarities between Die and Amelia, and Mommy and The Babadook, first I will point out one major discrepancy: the two women look completely different. This is not to say that the actresses have different physical attributes, but instead the conscious costuming of each woman is a polar opposite of the other. Die is a flamboyant dresser who styles herself much younger than she is. Everything she wears is tight, embellished, low-cut, and over accessorized. Her hair has chunky highlights that have grown out. Amelia dresses very simply. When she is not in her plain nurse’s uniform she is wearing either a modest sleeping gown (much of the film takes place over night) or an equally unadorned house dress. She wears no real jewelry, and her hair is always pulled back into a bun. Based on costuming alone Die and Amelia would appear to have nothing in common. But as we begin to look at their histories and character flaws, we see that Mommy and The Babadook in fact have a lot in common.

One of the most obvious correlations between the films is that that neither film is American. The Babadook has seen great success in the US, but it is an Australian production. Mommy is Canadian and is in Quebecoise with English subtitles. This is not to say that Hollywood is not capable of portraying poor mothering on screen, but it is interesting that the most striking examples of bad mothers have not come from America. We often see the evil stepmother in fairy tales, but these women are not responsible for raising the children. Also, in fairy tales these children are shown as good children who have overcome their lack of a caring mother. Here we are looking at children that are kind of jerks, perhaps due to the fact that their mothers are not good parents.

The fact that both Amelia and Die are raising sons is also of note. Casually I have heard films about sons and mothers described as horror films and films about mothers and daughters described as melodramas. Psycho and Friday The 13^th certainly support the theory; however Carrie and Mommy Dearest swiftly disprove it. Not a solid approach to examining films, but it does bring into question the unique relationship between mothers and sons. Amelia never truly understands Samuel’s obsession with building projectile devices. She supports his creativity as much as she can, but cannot relate to his mechanical talents or even his interest in war and destruction. Die herself has issues relating to Steve. She walks in on him masturbating and brushes it off with a laugh though he is clearly humiliated. Her lack of understanding how valued privacy is, especially for teenagers, is disturbing to the audience and frustrating for Steve.

To further the gender politics of their households and their similarities, both Die and Amelia are widows. Amelia’s husband was killed while she was pregnant with Samuel, a fact that he brings up to complete strangers which makes them quite uncomfortable. Die’s husband died many years earlier, however her predicament is more heartbreaking in that Steve remembers his father. He romanticizes their life together when his father was alive. What is clear about both Die and Amelia is that neither has ever moved on or accepted the deaths. Amelia is still in mourning for her husband and allows her inability to mature to impact her relationship with Samuel and everyone around her. Die is also still in love with her husband and has not moved on romantically, but she has accepted her loss as a part of her life. She is not as paralyzed emotionally as Amelia, but she is still in desperate need of therapy to deal with the loss.

Outside of their family dynamics both mothers rely on caring female neighbors to help them with their problem sons. I briefly mentioned Die’s secretive neighbor Kyla, and symmetrically Amelia also receives help from her neighbor Mrs. Roach. These women are not very good mothers, but they are both good at recognizing that they need help with their sons. Kyla helps Steve pass his exams for his GED, and Mrs. Roach takes Samuel to give Amelia a desperately needed break. These women are not capable of handling their sons on their own.

This is not to say that Amelia and Die are not sympathetic characters. Both want to do the best for their sons, but neither can handle the stress and actual responsibility of disciplining them. I do not mean for this to seem like an attack on Die and Amelia’s parenting skills, but rather a way to look at the sudden appearance of women in film who are not good at parenting. Too often women are shown as having an innate ability to be amazing mothers with little training or support from others. Rather, Mommy and The Babadook show that women are capable of being bad parents. Their maternal instinct is not strong, and their lack of connection to their sons has in turn created sons with disciplinary and behavioral issues. Women on film are frequently shown in terms of extremes: they are either sluts or saints. There is rarely a gray area for representations of women. By showing women who want to do well, but do not have the skills to parent well, it is a step in the right direction for showing women who are imperfect but fully formed characters. Neither Die nor Amelia fit into the mold of the typical mother we see in films, and the developing variety in portrayals of women is quite welcome.

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and is a staff writer for http://www.allthingshorror.com/. You can find her on Twitter at @dedecrim.