Victoria Edel – Bitch Flicks

This guest post written by Victoria Edel appears as part of our theme week on Game of Thrones.

There’s a girl. She’s an outsider, derided for her looks. Girl meets a handsome, golden boy. Girl hates boy. Boy hates girl. Girl and boy are thrown together by a situation outside their control. Girl and boy begin to slowly like each other, their bickering boarding on flirtation. Their new bond is tested, they tell each other their secrets, and they help one another. Just as they balance starts to shift, girl and boy no longer have to be together. A mean, beautiful woman mocks the girl for loving the boy. The two are separated, perhaps to never be together again.

That’s three-quarters of the plot of many romantic comedies. The girl might be nerdy, or wear glasses, or dress badly, or whatever Hollywood has decided is supposedly unattractive that year. The boy might be popular or have a fancy job or be a successful athlete.

It’s also three-quarters of the plot of Brienne and Jaime’s storyline on Game of Thrones. She’s a tall, stereotypically masculine woman who longs to be a knight, and he’s the most handsome and — probably — the most reviled man in Westeros.

Many Game of Thrones fans would claim that the show’s appeal is “realism” — anyone can die, good guys and bad guys are almost indistinguishable, nothing is guaranteed. But those viewers have confused realism with pessimism. Sadness is no more “realistic” than happiness, defeat no more honest than victory. (Of course, what “realism” even means in the context of dragons and magic in a fictionalized world could be its own think piece.) Game of Thrones gets too gloomy for me sometimes. It doesn’t feel real to me — it feels endlessly contrived.

But in that web of gloom, there’s this beautiful shining light: Brienne and Jaime. And while rom-coms are not often praised for their realism, to me, this couple is the most grounded, sensible thing about the show.

Brienne of Tarth is tasked with delivering Jaime Lannister to King’s Landing, ordered by Catelyn Stark to trade him for her daughters. After they get kidnapped by a roving band who cut off Jaime’s hand and threaten Brienne with sexual violence, they start to come together. And they share some gorgeous romantic moments, namely his confession about why he killed the Mad King and when they escaped the bear pit. Their love is apparent, if never uttered aloud.

When they finally reach King’s Landing, you can see the sadness on their faces as they realize what this means, that here they cannot be together. And Cersei drives this home when she mocks Brienne for loving Jaime. In a teen movie, she’d be a cheerleader. In a rom-com she’d work for a fashion magazine.

And so Jaime sends Brienne off to try to finish her mission, to protect the Stark girls, giving her a new suit of armor and a new sword. Like any good couple in Act Three of their story, they don’t say “I love you,” but you can see it in their eyes.

The most recent season contained not a single Jaime and Brienne interaction, which might explain my decreased interest in Westeros. But I remain hopeful that this unlikely pair will reunite before the series ends, even if they don’t get to ride off into the happily ever after I want them to have.

In many movies and television shows, supposedly “ugly” women are still stunningly beautiful, their flaws just small quirks. Think of teen movies with makeovers that amount to removing a pair of glasses and getting a blow out. But Brienne actually represents a different standard of beauty, one that would not be appreciated in her fictional world and is rarely appreciated in ours. So when this handsome, flawed, but (arguably) good, man loves this flawed but wonderful woman, it means something different.

I see myself in Brienne. We’re domineering, strong women (though she would clearly win in a fight) who aren’t traditionally beautiful, who beautiful, handsome men usually overlook. There are no fat women who get to be main characters in Game of Thrones, so Brienne is the character I’m left to identify with.

It sounds bizarre to say the romantic storyline I relate the most on television right now takes place on a show with dragons and magic and endless war and mysterious ice monsters and the woman is a super-tall warrior and the man is an incest-y blonde with one hand — and yet.

Perhaps this says more about the rest of television than it does Game of Thrones. On shows with traditional romance, everyone is stunningly gorgeous. And on shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or You’re The Worst or The Mindy Project, where they’re deconstructing romance from the inside, everyone is still beautiful. Fat women are set apart from these love stories, almost completely absent from TV. And having Brienne is not the same as having a fat woman, but it’s the closest I’ve got.

In a way, Jaime and Brienne’s story is also deconstructing and analyzing the rom-com genre, since it places the tropes in an absurd environment. Jaime is this very despicable person for a long time, until his relationship with Brienne begins to change him (and even then, his actions in King’s Landing are not without reproach, though that’s a can of worms for another time). But maybe that reveals the truth of rom-coms that is often lost in silliness — people can make each other better, they do change, and they do love each other in spite of the odds.

If this really were a rom-com, they’d get married and live in a shack somewhere winter never comes. But this is Game of Thrones, so they’ll probably accidentally kill each other or something. But I just want to see them kiss. Even if they both die immediately after. I just want a weird-looking lady to be loved and kissed by a very handsome man. We get the reverse of this all the time. And if Game of Thrones did this, maybe it would, for a moment, live up to its claim of “realism,” of being daring and different.

Victoria Edel is a writer, funny person, and loud-mouthed fat lady. Follow her on Twitter @victoriaedel and retweet your two favorite jokes. She really needs the ego boost.

This guest post by Victoria Edel appears as part of our theme week on Movie Soundtracks.

“This is a story of boy meets girl.”

It’s the first line of (500) Days of Summer and also the first line spoken on the soundtrack. Both, then, begin with a summation of our two characters. There’s Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the hopeless romantic who doesn’t understand the point of The Graduate, and Summer (Zooey Deschanel), who doesn’t believe in love. By beginning the soundtrack with this summary of the movie’s central conflict, (500) Days of Summer posits that the soundtrack is just as much of a storytelling tool as the movie is.

And it is.

(500) Days of Summer is a profoundly misunderstood film. I’ve spoken to many people who claimed Summer was the villain, or, perhaps even worse, just a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Even Joseph Gordon-Levitt has had to explain that Tom is selfish, not a romantic role model, as some misguided people have interpreted him .

Like the narrator says during Track 1, this is a story of boy meets girl, but this is not a love story. Instead, it’s a story about obsession, about idealizing other people, and about having the strength to rebuild after your worldview is shattered. Its message would be impossible without the soundtrack, which places us in Tom’s obsessive mind, music conveying the depth of his feeling. And then, it helps us understand his recovery.

The movie lulls us in with the sweet sounds of Regina Spektor’s “Us,” a song about a monumental love. Accompanied by photos and videos of Tom and Summer growing up, it’s dreamy and romantic, just like Tom when he meets Summer.

A quick plot summary to refresh your memory: Tom meets Summer. Tom wants to date Summer. Summer explicitly does not want a relationship. Tom and Summer embark on something more than friendship, but less than a relationship. Tom thinks he loves Summer. Tom insists that this is, in fact, a relationship. Summer calls the whole thing off. Tom is angry, until he realizes he was wrong.

Music is essential to the audience’s understanding of Tom’s feelings for Summer. The duo originally bond over their mutual love of The Smiths. Cue “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”: “And if a ten-ton truck killed the both of us / to die by your side / well the pleasure and the privilege is mine.” That’s an intense feeling to have about anyone, let alone someone you just met. The song is about longing, about abandoning everything you have to.

The movie only works because while Tom is in the over-the-moon, in love stage, the audience is brought there with him. And the music is essential to creating this loving feeling. As they spend time together, we hear Carla Bruni’s “Quelqu’un M’a Dit,” so breathy and romantic and French, and “Sweet Disposition” by Temper Trap, excited and airy.

Then, after Tom and Summer finally have sex, he leaves his apartment and participates in an impromptu dance number to Hall & Oates’s “You Make My Dreams Come True,” complete with friendly strangers who join in and some animated birds. But this isn’t Tom celebrating getting laid. The lyrics give us his feelings: “You make my dreams come true.” Summer, he’s decided, is the culmination of the girl he’s always dreamed of, the true love he’s always wanted. With just music and dance, (500) Days of Summer tells us everything we need to know about Tom’s quick, rash, all-encompassing feelings.

When he describes how Summer makes him feel, he says every time he thinks of her he hears “She’s Like The Wind,” in his head. The Patrick Swayze song was recorded for Dirty Dancing, and used when Baby and Johnny part ways for what they think is forever. It’s a sad song to remember when you think of someone you love, but it does inform the way Tom sees his story. It’s romantic and dramatic, as classic as Baby and Johnny’s.

Until it’s not.

We hear the song one more time in a moment that mimics the first, after Tom’s illusion is shattered. Instead of listing what he loves about Summer, Tom lists the things he hates about her, concluding with “It’s Like The Wind,” and yelling, “I hate this song!” The romantic illusions are finally cracked. This isn’t the movie he thought this was.

Thankfully, things are brighter by the end. Tom realizes that he tried to use Summer to mask his unhappiness, instead of changing his life. He finally dedicates himself to architecture — his original love — and we experience it in montage, accompanied by Wolfmother’s “Vagabond.” The lyrics: “Take away this lonely man. / Soon he will be gone.” The song is loud and sprawling and rhythmic, in sharp contrast to the romantic, soft songs from earlier in the film. Tom’s finally started to change.

This isn’t to say that Tom at the movie’s end doesn’t love the Smiths or believe in love; in fact, quite the opposite. Instead, he’s realized what a horrible thing it is to idealize another person, to project your hopes and dreams onto them without getting to know them. If we don’t know much about Summer by the film’s end, it’s because Tom didn’t learn that much about her either. He saw her as much as he wanted to, ignoring everything that didn’t fit into the picture.

And in the end he learns from his mistakes.

This is not a love story. It’s better than that.

Victoria Edel lives in Brooklyn, NY, but not the trendy part. The sitcoms is her one true love, so she’s currently watching every episode of 30 Rock and blogging about it here. Follow her on Twitter @victoriaedel.

Tag: Victoria Edel

When Brienne Met Jaime: The Rom-Com Hiding in ‘Game of Thrones’

Take Away This Lonely Man: ‘(500) Days of Summer’ and Musical Storytelling