Tag: Violence

‘True Grit’: Ambiguous Feminism

Mattie wears dark, loose, practical clothing. She climbs trees and carries weapons. She shows utter disdain for male privilege or La Boeuf’s pervy allusions to sexual contact. She has no interest in the older men for romance or protection. She is only concerned with their usefulness to her task, and she uses her will and her reasoning rather than seduction to convince them. Steinfeld’s Mattie emanates competence and confidence.

Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross
Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross

 

This cross-post by Andé Morgan previously appeared at her blog No Accommodation and appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Enter the Wayback Machine in your mind and go back to 2011. This was an era with only one Smurfs and only two Hangovers. More original fare like Rango and Super 8 was somewhat overshadowed by superhero movies, which were HUGE, and the sequelmatic masterpieces that were Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. That’s OK, originality is overrated. For example, my favorite wide release of late 2010-early 2011 was True Grit. Based on the 1968 serial novel by Charles Portis, True Grit the movie had been done by The Duke in 1969. And by done I mean it did well; it was a financial and critical success and gave John Wayne his only Oscar. Nevermind that the script was less than faithful to the source material, or that Mammon possessed Paramount to spawn a horrific sequel, Rooster Cogburn.

Let me get my bias out front: I am a fan of the Coen Brothers, but I don’t always drink the Kool-Aid (am I the only person who thought Fargo and No Country for Old Men were just OK?). However, I loved True Grit. I don’t think it is hyperbole to call it a masterpiece. It represents an increasingly rare combination of excellent screenwriting, gripping cinematography, high production value, and masterful acting in a wide release film. Its story of vengeance is timeless, but the setting is as uniquely American as apple pie, Duck Dynasty, and gun violence.

To summarize: in the American Old West (Oklahoma and Arkansas were part of the Old West in 1877), Mattie Ross (played by Hailee Steinfeld in the 2010 film) loses her father when he is murdered by his hired hand Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). She enlists the help of U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) and Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Matt Damon) to bring the fugitive Chaney to justice. Because she is an adolescent female, no one takes her seriously until the strength of her persistence wins out. Vengeance is hers in the end, but not without cost.

All of the incarnations of True Grit are popular fodder for analysis from a feminist perspective not only because it is well-known and well-respected as an “American” story, but also because it is an unusual story. It features a young, female protagonist with a single-minded focus on violent vengeance. Any analysis would be remiss to ignore that a) the serial was written in 1968, and Portis would undoubtedly be aware of the second-wave feminist movement and b) the 2010 film was written, directed, and produced by the Coen Brothers, who know how to do subtle development of nuanced characters and big-picture themes. The original 1969 film is less profitable for analysis. In their hurry to cash in on the popularity of the novel and John Wayne, the studio focused on the Rooster character. Mattie (referred to as a “tomboy” by promotional materials of the time) exists as a novelty and a variation on the damsel in distress.

While the 2010 film does pass the Bechdel Test on the slightest of technicalities, no one is going to confuse it with Melancholia. The plot of True Grit is an interesting variation of the Women in Fridges meme because the roles are a reversal of the usual young female victim and older male protagonist structure. In this way Mattie is much more of a Dark Knight than a Marvelous fighting fuck toy. The overarching patriarchal heterosexist concern is obvious: neither children nor women are allowed to crave bloody vengeance. Vengeance is a privilege reserved for good-but-violent men whose women-property are raped or destroyed.

Mattie wears dark, loose, practical clothing. She climbs trees and carries weapons. She shows utter disdain for male privilege or La Boeuf’s pervy allusions to sexual contact. She has no interest in the older men for romance or protection. She is only concerned with their usefulness to her task, and she uses her will and her reasoning rather than seduction to convince them. Steinfeld’s Mattie emanates competence and confidence.

While many in the blogosphere were quick to use Mattie’s stoicism, blood lust, and independence as examples of why True Grit should be considered a feminist movie, others, such as Anita Sarkeesian at Feminist Frequency, have remarked that those same attributes argue against that designation. Rather, the adoption of these characteristics by a female protagonist constitutes an enshrinement of male privilege and traditional action-movie-masculine vales rather than an assertion of feminist values. By contrast, a feminist True Grit would emphasize cooperation, empathy, and non-violent conflict resolution. Without delving into the deeper arguments raised by this argument (e.g., what exactly are feminist values and are they necessarily exclusive of all traditionally masculine values), I can say that my initial reaction was to agree with Sarkeesian. Too often we see action movies that “counterbalance” a “masculine” (and usually secondary) female character by either putting her in a skin-tight suit, giving her a fatal personality flaw, or by implying that she is worthy of death for her perceived masculinity (I’m looking at you, Kick-Ass 2).

Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn
Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn

 

However, after some reflection I tend to agree more with Amanda Marcotte’s argument that True Grit should not be analyzed in the same way as more typical westerns or action movies. The subtleties in the source material and in the Coen Brothers’ delivery lend themselves to deeper interpretation. True Grit comments on many things: the unfair treatment of Native Americans (the hanging scene); the corruption of justice in our legal system (the courtroom scene); and the fact that there is often very little space between the “bad” and the “good” in this world (Chaney’s dialogue with Mattie at the creek and mine; Ned’s dialogue with Rooster).

As Marcotte points out, to understand the commentary on the development of Mattie as a young woman, we must look to the ending. Marcotte notes the shared symbology of Rooster’s missing eye and (adult) Mattie’s missing arm. By engaging in violence and by accepting the traditionally masculine values of vengeance, both Mattie and Rooster literally and figuratively lost part of themselves. As viewers, we are left to wonder: did Mattie’s consumption by vengeance as a young woman rob her of spiritual wholeness in adulthood? Does the adult Mattie feel that she was wrong to pursue vengeance? I do disagree with Marcotte’s assertion that True Grit is a feminist movie because the bleakness of the ending serves as an ultimate repudiation of traditional action-movie-masculine values. Instead, I see the ending as commentary on the infectious, long-lasting, and ultimately detrimental nature of violence as a human trait. Consequently, I conclude that while Mattie Ross may be considered a feminist character (loosely) True Grit is neither a feminist movie nor a movie that reinforces the patriarchal heterosexist narrative. It is a human condition movie, and one worth watching.

As for Hallie Steinfeld, she’s been getting work, and recently played Petra Arkanin in the film adaption of Ender’s Game. I’d like to see it, but damn you Orson Scott Card!

 

Andé Morgan’s perspective stems from a life spent always on the boundary: white and black, rich and poor, masculine and feminine. She takes shelter under the transgender umbrella.

 

‘Breaking Bad’: Postmodern Redemption and the Satisfying End of Desperate Masculinity

Because Jesse doesn’t fall into the same masculine megalomania that Walt does, he prevails. He suffers–god, does he suffer–but he is not sacrificed. He peels out of that Nazi compound in that old El Camino, tearing through the metal gates and sobbing and laughing his way away from his life as a prisoner of toxic masculinity–first Walt’s, then Jack and Todd’s.

Breaking Bad finale promo.



Written by Leigh Kolb

At the end of Breaking Bad, Walt slips away into death. Badfinger’s “Baby Blue” plays and the camera pulls up, as police are tentatively swarming his body. The lyrics mirror Walt’s love for his craft–for his “Baby Blue” that he has returned to–but the line, “Did you really think I’d do you wrong?” wasn’t from Walt’s point of view. Instead, Vince Gilligan was showing he’d fulfilled his promise to us, the viewers.
Ultimately, Gilligan did not do us wrong. Many critics were squirmy about how neat and tidy the end was, but it worked.

After “Ozymandias” aired, I was pleased and comfortable with my hatred for Walt. I was done. I would not be a “bad fan”–a “Todd.” In thinking about the father worship that surrounds Walt, I kept repeating, “Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”

And then “Granite State” happened. I was pulled back in to Walt’s desperate humanity, and the pity and aching sympathy that I thought I’d banished came flooding back.

Dammit, good writing!

I didn’t know what to expect from the series finale. I refused to read any grandiose predictions. I’d heard that Gilligan was telling interviewers that the ending was “satisfying,” and that’s all I needed. My only wish was that Jesse wouldn’t die, but I was wide open for anything else.

Walt sets out to undo some of what he’s done.

As uncomfortable as I was with my quiet, uncontrollable root-for-Walt urges after “Granite State,” the finale, “Felina,” let me reconcile my disgust and my sympathy. To the outside world, Walt’s final acts were cruel, manipulative, and dangerous. He’s ensured that Flynn will get the remaining money (which Flynn doesn’t want) by, as far as Gretchen and Elliot know, holding them hostage and threatening their lives. He admits to Skyler that he’s done everything for himself. He poisons Lydia. He kills the Nazis and dies in a meth lab (by his “Precious,” Gilligan said). Willa Paskin writes at Slate, “Imagine the news story: ‘Druglord Heinsenberg found in Neo-Nazi compound: Dozens dead, booby-trapped car found on premises.’ Walt would have loved that.”

We can see all of that, but we are also focused in on Walt’s point of view throughout (a brilliant analysis on NPR describes how point of view and camera angles have encouraged us to root for Walt). We know that those hitmen were Badger and Skinny Pete with laser pointers. We know Walt saved Jesse. We know he hadn’t been cooking that meth.

Because we can clearly see Walt’s evil and his shreds of good, we are able to reconcile our feelings for him and his death feels right. He is redeemed as much as he can be in this postmodern antihero’s tale. He does not die a hero, but he dies doing what he thought needed to be done. His family is safe. Jesse is safe. At the end, they are safe in spite of and because of Walt. He did what he could to redeem himself–even if that redemption consisted of picking up and rearranging the garbage that he’d created.
Jesse is chained against his will.
In the end, I got to feel all the feelings about Walt: contempt, pity, and some kind of complicated, undying fatherly love (listen, it doesn’t help that my own father is a retired biology teacher, basically has the same wardrobe as Walter White–especially that khaki jacket–and loves Marty Robbins). Walt-as-hero wouldn’t have worked. Walt-as-pure evil wouldn’t have worked (for me). The complexity of the last three episodes takes us through an arc of emotions about our protagonist that we must work through.
There was something for all viewers (except for, perhaps, the Todd fans, who were probably drunk and confused and mad at Skyler for some reason).
Skyler, hearing Walt’s final words to her.
On a larger scale, I loved the ending because of the ultimate messages the show conveyed about masculinity.
From the very beginning, Walt’s journey was one of desperation–to provide for his family, to heal, to be the best, to be the king, to be violent, to run an empire. Walt wanted to be a fucking man. And for a long time, he embodied what it means to be a man in our culture. He’s violent, ruthless, proud, and never satisfied. He’s domineering and authoritative (or tries to be) at work and at home.
As a foil to Walt’s desperate and festering masculinity, Jesse has always been drawn as a sensitive, emotional, and compassionate man. His conscience guides him, and he avoids violence. He loves. He cries. His last name is Pinkman.
When the band of Neo-Nazis watch Jesse’s confession DVD, Uncle Jack says, “Does this pussy cry through the whole thing?”
Which of these characters possesses strong, masculine traits?
Which of these characters possesses weak, feminine traits?
If you ask the Todd fans and Skyler-haters, it’s always been pretty clear: #TeamWalt.
True aficionados, however, will realize that we are supposed to criticize this binary, and that pushing and prodding “strength” and masculinity into a narrowly defined, violent box will lead to failure. It will lead to death–literally and figuratively. Relationships and lives are ruined because building an empire for himself made Walt feel “alive.”
Jesse, however, is introspective and emotional. He is careful and gentle, and this is illustrated in the flashback to him as a younger, softer teenager in shop class lovingly crafting a wood box (he’d sell it for weed instead of giving it to his mother, but it brings to mind again Jesse-as-a-Christ-figure imagery).
Because Jesse doesn’t fall into the same masculine megalomania that Walt does, he prevails. He suffers–god, does he suffer–but he is not sacrificed. He peels out of that Nazi compound in that old El Camino, tearing through the metal gates and sobbing and laughing his way away from his life as a prisoner of toxic masculinity–first Walt’s, then Jack and Todd’s.
Jesse kills his captor, and releases himself from bondage.
Walt loses. Jesse wins. And while they ultimately weren’t pitted against one another (so many fans expected a final showdown), they nodded to one another, an understanding gesture that ended their relationship. They both know Walt is dying–Jesse sees the red blood stain bleeding into the sky blue lining of Walt’s jacket–and that Jesse is living.
This is the way it is supposed to end.
And while Walt’s machine-gun trick is pretty bad-ass, it’s destructive. It’s fleeting. Power and violence is not the answer. Our cultural definition of masculinity may be fun to watch or aspire to, but it’s not real. It doesn’t–it shouldn’t–win.
He doesn’t shoot Walt when he sees his side has already been punctured by a bullet. See above, in re: Jesse-as-Christ-figure.
In Marty Robbins’s “El Paso,” the singer is in love with “Felina.” In Breaking Bad, Walt’s Felina (or FeLiNa) isn’t a woman. It’s not his wife; it’s not his children. It’s his power and his money, the empire that he built with blue meth. The line “A bullet may find me” foreshadows what will happen to Walt. He has, purposefully or not, killed himself. His own gun, his own ricocheted bullet, did find him. At the end, his desperate need for power, to be a man, killed him–and so many others in his path.
“I did it for me,” Walt tells Skyler. “I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really–I was alive.” As he dies, Walt emotionally touches the tank in the lab, leaving a bloody handprint as he falls.
I realized that this ending is exactly what I wanted. And sometimes it’s good to get what we want–especially when it involves excellent storytelling, complicated characters, and criticism of our worship of American masculinity.
Jesse is free–feeling all the feelings, just like we are.
 

 

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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. She hopes that before she retires, “Breaking Bad as Literature” is standard college fare.

An Audience on the Edge: ‘Sons of Anarchy,’ Morality and Masculinity

Sons of Anarchy
 
 
Written by Leigh Kolb

In 15th and early 16th century Europe, morality plays existed to entertain audiences, but also to teach them lessons. Classic morality plays used allegory to impart lessons about what it means to be good, and what it means to be evil. Typically, virtue always prevailed over vice.
Shakespeare no doubt was exposed to such plays in his early life, and reflections of this genre can be seen (in more complex forms) in some of his plays, including Hamlet. Showrunner Kurt Sutter has said Hamlet inspired Sons of Anarchy, which began its sixth season on Tuesday, Sept. 10.
At a recent press conference, Sutter acknowledged the shocking ending of the season premier, which follows a young boy who takes a KG-9 machine gun into a school and opens fire (the audience hears the shots and screams from inside the building).  Sutter said,

“It is truly the catalyst for the third act of our morality play. It sets everything in motion for this season that will ultimately lead to the end that then will bring us into the final season and what I see as the ultimate comeuppance of everything in terms of the series.”

Viewers were shocked at the scene, and a conservative parents group is calling for Congress to reconsider cable programming distribution methods because of, in part, this episode.
In an article at The Daily Beast, Jason Lynch (who has screened the first three episodes) asserts that the show has gone too far, and that this storyline is “damaging to the series and its characters.”
What is clear at the end of the first episode is that SAMCRO has some connection to the gun and to the child shooter. The child is the son of a woman who is dating Nero’s cousin, and we can assume that the gun used in the shooting came from the Sons, who run guns and produce pornography.
While this episode is horrifyingly violent and disturbing, it’s also this: brilliant.
If we think about Sutter’s influences–Hamlet and his reference to Sons of Anarchy being a “morality play”–something needs to happen this season. That something that needs to happen is that we need to start despising the club, and maybe even Jax (unless he is “reformed” into virtue, as the protagonist of a true morality play would be).
The child shooter–the juxtaposition of virtue (religion, order) and vice (guns, violence), and a case study in toxic masculinity.
At this point (in the action of this first episode), the men of SAMCRO are still operating in some sphere of justice and morality. This is highlighted in the opening women-in-refrigerators plot point when the men avenge the beating and rape of Lyla, who had gotten a job shooting porn that turned out to be violent torture porn.
These disgusting scenes highlight the relative “morality” of the Sons–they run porn and prostitution businesses, but there’s a line that can’t be crossed (women being tortured, raped, beaten or killed). This has been apparent from the beginning of the series. Even when the men were running drugs and guns, their treatment of women reinforced the idea that we are still supposed to be rooting for them.
And the women, of course, (thankfully) aren’t painted as innocent victims needing rescuing. The “Mothers” of Anarchy are forces to be reckoned with, too.
In prison, Tara refuses to see Jax and devolves into violence.
In Hamlet, we know Hamlet has turned when he starts treating Ophelia like shit. How a character treats women is often a litmus test for whether or not we are supposed to support that character. In 2013, the morality play is twisted and turned (the antihero is king, after all), but some archetypes still remain.
Something awful needed to happen on Sons of Anarchy–something so awful that we can’t reconcile our sympathy and support for the characters. While Lynch is disgusted with the turn, I think it’s perfect. Forcing us to turn against our heroes (who we should struggle to see as heroes, in reality) is powerful storytelling.
As this child wields a semi-automatic weapon and goes into his all-boys Catholic school and opens fire, Gemma is gifting Nero’s son with a toy gun (she had one of Nero’s prostitutes wrap it for her). Gemma’s gesture, which is a clear indoctrination of what masculinity means–guns, violence and sex–is made even more meaningful by the boy across town who, amidst violent and disturbing drawings he’s done and the self-harm cut marks on his arm, has gotten access to a man’s gun by his proximity to SAMCRO. What’s the difference between the play gun and the real gun? What’s the difference between fetish porn and torture porn? There are differences, but Sons of Anarchy is asking us to think harder about how different they really are.
Meanwhile, Jax is cheating on Tara and having sex with the madame of a brothel (Sutter notes that Jax is really looking for nurturing and maternal love). Another display of what we consider to be masculinity is cut between scenes of violence. Tara, in prison, is beating a woman for stealing her blanket.
Jax seeks “comfort” from Colette.
All of this is set to Leonard Cohen’s “Come Healing,” a gravelly spiritual that conjures images of Christ and redemption.
Lynch says that Sutter “crossed a line” when he had SAMCRO react in “a callous way” with “no remorse” in the next few episodes.
However, that’s exactly how the club should react. We need to reach a point where we are not rooting for and sympathizing with these men–this is the ugly, unhappy truth of loving a show with an antihero who keeps falling instead of being redeemed.
SAMCRO has always had its own code of justice and morality and we, as viewers, have more often than not sympathized with the men. However, if they see that they are complicit in the mass murder of children, and they do not respond properly–we must rethink our sympathy. We are going to turn against them, as we should.
At the beginning of the episode, Jax is reading aloud a letter he’s writing to his sons. “Examine yourselves as men,” he says, filling the page with cliches.
That’s what’s happening now. What it means to be a man–the overwhelming masculinity of sex and violence–is coming to a head. If Jax falls, which he appears to be doing, so does his brand of masculinity. Hopefully his sons will get that message.
Sutter’s “sons” are examining themselves as men as the series begins its descent. In ancient morality plays, virtue would win, and the sinner would typically be redeemed. In Hamlet, everyone dies in a pile of revenge and tragedy. It remains to be seen how Sutter will ultimately unwind this modern “morality play,” but we will know if we are supposed to stop caring about the Sons. There will be consequences–just as there should be.
We need to examine ourselves as viewers, and recognize when enough is enough–and when we reach that breaking point, we are pushed to the edge and forced to reconcile our obsession with vice and toxic masculinity. The ride into the last act of Sons of Anarchy isn’t going to be an easy one–if it was, then Sutter wouldn’t have gone far enough.
Like the Sons and their old ladies, the audience is going to have a difficult ride in the last act.
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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. She wrote a chapter about the feminine sphere and ethics of care in Sons of Anarchy and Philosophy: Brains Before Bullets.

‘The Quiet Girl’s Guide to Violence’: The Manic Pixie’s Perspective

Written by MaxThornton.
“I have made a resolution. … People should not be allowed to get away with things.”
The Quiet Girls’ Guide to Violence poster
Actually creating matter by naming it might be the prerogative of the gods, but there’s a certain generative power in naming even the most mundane things. When something is named, it gets a categorization, a way for us to conceptualize and talk about it as we couldn’t before.
This happened memorably in early 2007, when then-A.V. Club reviewer Nathan Rabin coined the phrase “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” for a pop-culture phenomenon we didn’t know we needed a name for. Since, then the MPDG has been discussed extensively (not least on this very site), parodied extensively, and – as Amanda noted a couple of weeks ago – pronounced dead. All of this discourse proves, if nothing else, that (1) the MPDG is definitely a trope, and (2) we sure do like to talk about her, even though she irritates the heck out of us.
If the protagonist of Rafael Antonio Ruiz’s short film The Quiet Girl’s Guide to Violence can be considered a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, then she’s certainly my favorite example of the trope.
Holly (Jennymarie Jemison) wears a hideous Christmas turtleneck, a cardigan, a bow-shaped barrette, and thick-rimmed glasses. She’s a librarian and a barista, two quintessentially MPDG occupations. She speaks without using contractions and expresses an awkward naivety in her interactions. In a different movie, she would be a perfect storm of quirk, but both the superb acting and the stylish direction make it quite clear from the get-go that we should not expect cloying indie-pop adorkableness.

Jemison plays Holly with a chilly, staring intensity whereby every frame of her face can be frozen to show only a soulful, sorrowful thoughtfulness, but in motion her seething desperation is palpable. Holly’s flashbacks to an incident of harassment are heralded by a rhythmic pounding noise, signaling that her titular quietness is certainly only surface-deep.

Jennymarie Jemison as Holly.
The plot follows Holly’s revenge on two men who were responsible for a deeply scarring incident of harassment in her youth. Chance encounters with the men at her two places of employment spur flashbacks to the boys’ misogyny and sexual harassment, compelling her to take violent action.
Arguably, the film functions as a powerful feminist response to the MPDG trope. It is, of course, characteristic of the MPDG that she have neither agency nor personality of her own, existing solely as a corollary to the male main character. Holly upends that completely: She is a woman whose quiet, unthreatening quirkiness has been molded by misogynistic male dominance of her world, but she explodes that dominance and the identity it is has forced upon her. In a nifty stylistic touch, Holly’s glasses have lenses only in the scenes where she perpetrates violence. She can only see clearly when meting out her brand of vigilante justice; in the daily grind of her life, she is trapped in a role as false as any hipster’s empty frames. “I am seeing the world again, for the first time in a long time,” she declares to her coworker, a performance artist heavily influenced by Karen Finley.
In fact, this same coworker offers a rather blistering commentary on MPDG/boy relations: “No, I don’t think he likes you. I think he has a morbid fascination with you because he’s a fucking idiot.” It’s harsh, and motivated by her jealousy of the guy’s interest in Holly, but it’s not an unfair assessment of the usual trajectory of such films (heck, Joseph Gordon-Levitt said as much about his character in 500 Days of Summer). Holly herself seems to realize this, stepping back from harming the other woman too much. In a patriarchal society, other women are not the enemy.
Holly with a bat
  
My sympathizing with Holly is not a matter of condoning her violence, but of understanding its roots. A frightened Jeff can hardly believe that Holly is still so profoundly affected by one incident from years before, but he is overlooking the context. What seems to him an isolated instance of an awkward kid lashing out at a girl because he doesn’t know how to tell her he likes her is, to anyone with experience of being read as female in our society, the beginning of a lifetime of harassment and threats and abuse, a collective welter of misogyny that tries to force women to exist only in relation to male subjectivity. Beating men’s heads in is probably not a helpful real-world response, but it’s a cathartic fiction, and it is certainly not an unfathomable reaction to the pressures of being a woman in a sexist world.
The Quiet Girl’s Guide to Violence presents female rage with a nuance and sympathy rarely if ever seen in mainstream media. Holly’s actions are unsettling precisely because they are so understandable. It’s a brutal lesson, but one we men really need to learn: Women – even cute quirky MPDG-type women – do not exist for us.
The Quiet Girl’s Guide to Violence premieres online tomorrow at Fangoria.com as part of their “Screamers” program. More info at http://www.quietgirlsguide.com/.
Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax.

‘Man of Steel’: Wonderful Women, Super Masculinity

Movie poster for Man of Steel
This guest post by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at the Ms. Magazine Blog and is cross-posted with permission.
Amy Adams is amazing as Lois Lane in Man of Steel. Her version of Lois is fearless, witty and wise. Diane Lane and Ayelet Zurer as the respective mothers of Superman are also amazing, as is the fact that both Superman’s Kryptonian mother, Lara Lor-Van (played by Zurer), and his human mother, Martha Kent (played by Lane), are displayed as equal partners with equal power and say to his two fathers. Further, not only are the heroic females strongly played and given substantial dialog, but so, too, is the lead female villain, Faora-Ul (Antje Trau), second-in-command to the Kryptonian General, given just as much screen time, dialogue, and power (if not more) than Zod, the Kryptonian super-villain played by Michael Shannon.
Michael Shannon as General Zod in Man of Steel

In general, Man of Steel, the latest film iteration of the Superman story, conveys that women are just as key to the Superman narrative as men. This is true from the opening moment, when the birth scene of baby Kal-El, who will grow up to be Superman/Clark Kent, focuses on his mother Lara. Then, the decision to send their child to earth is equally shared by Lara and Jor-El (the Kryptonian scientist played by Russell Crowe). Once the movie shifts to the young Clark’s life on earth, his human parents, Martha and Jonathan Kent (Lane and Kevin Costner), are again equally featured. Lane is particularly strong as Martha, saving Clark from the monsters in his own head in an early scene, and later supporting him as he struggles with what the revelation of his identity has wrought. Part of the consequence of this revelation is the destruction of her home—but the only thing she worries about salvaging is the photo albums, telling Superman not to worry about the house, that “it’s only stuff.”

All of this may seem relatively minor, but it is rare for superhero movies to feature females in important, non-sexualized, non-damsel-in-distress roles (as recent articles and Twitter buzz has focused on, particularly in relation to the fact there is still no Wonder Woman movie). It is rare to depict women as non-materialistic and wise, not to mention portraying mothers as being alive (especially in Disney films!), let alone being as important as fathers are. As such, I had planned to focus on the females in the film for my review.

Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, and Antje Traue in Man of Steel
Alas, after looking up the cast of the film on IMDB in order to write this review and coming across the image of the young boy who plays 9-year-old Clark Kent (Cooper Timberline) posing with arms bent on hips, a stern look on his face and a cape flowing out behind him—an image that smacks of muscular masculinity—I was consumed by the image of my own son, age three or thereabouts, running around the house endlessly in his Superman costume. This, coupled with two very young boys who sat in front of me at the screening, astride their mother’s lap, asking questions like “Why isn’t Superman flying?” and “Where is Superman’s cape?” got me thinking: How does the iconic image of Superman shape young boys’ concepts of masculinity? And, given that Superman is generally viewed as the ideal super-hero model for boys (less dark than Batman, less conflicted than Spiderman, more memorable and enduring than Iron Man, Aquaman and so on), what does this new movie deliver in terms of modeling “super masculinity”?
Cooper Timberline as a young Clark Kent in Man of Steel
On the one hand, there are many positives. The film questions hyper-masculinity, militarism and other power-over models, or the reliance on brawn over brains. It condemns the sexual objectification of women, macho bravado and the bullying aspects of male culture.

On the other, though it is critical of hyper-masculinity and the violence it engenders, the film’s extended action-and-explosion-packed ending undercuts this critique. At the level of content, the film offers a feminist-friendly version of Superman, but its visuals—especially the extended fight scenes between Superman and Zod (which dominate the last 45 minutes or so)—contradict this narrative. The content says “Women and men are equally important and violence/domination is bad for everyone” but the visuals say “Let’s blow shit up and watch dudes punch each other through buildings!!”

Still from Man of Steel
Back to the positives, the film not only condemns sexual objectification and harassment of women, or the ways in which traditional masculinity harms women, but also denounces men’s bullying of and violence toward one another—the ways in which traditional masculinity also harms men. Near the start of the film, when a man slaps a waitress’ butt, Clark, working as a busboy, intervenes, calling out the man for his inappropriate behavior. The man then goads Clark with a “what are you gonna do about it” attitude, dumping a beer over his head. The other men at the bar snigger in approval. Rather than resorting to violence, though, Clark walks away. Similarly, later in the film, in a flashback to when Clark was in middle school, a group of boys attack him, prodding him to fight back, but he refuses. Again, the males act in pack fashion, spurring one another to be violent and criticizing those who do not “live up” to the violent ethos of being a “real” man.

The central male characters who champion violence are also rebuked in the film, but none more so than Zod for his imperialistic, genocidal and militaristic goals. The film deserves props here for showing that women can not only be just as good as men, they can also be just as bad as them—exemplified by Zod’s second in a command, a woman. In so doing, it de-genders violence, showing that it is not inherently male but rather that the power-over mentality is the problem, not the gender of the person who buys into it. The weapon-happy stance of the military is also reproached, as when Colonel Nathan Hardy (Christopher Meloni) calls for his soldiers to shoot at Superman, or when General Swanwick (Harry Lennix) is rebuked for sic’ing a surveillance drone on Superman (a very timely rebuke indeed!)

Soldiers in Man of Steel
In contrast to these power- and weapon-happy males, the film offers various representations of a kinder, gentler, more positive masculinity via Jor-El and Jonathan Kent, Superman’s two fathers. Both of these figures encourage Clark/Superman to act with integrity and empathy. Framing him as “the bridge between two worlds,” these fathers insist that Clark/Superman can “embody the best of both worlds” and bring a message of hope that insists “every person can be a force for good.”

Here, the film circulates around the fear of difference in ways that nod to the narrative that arguably undergrids the original comic—a narrative that has been read as criticizing racism and, in particular, anti-Semitism. The author, much like Clark in various iterations of the story, was bullied as a kid, and the original comics were penned during the years preceding World War II and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. Thus it’s not a stretch to read Superman as a racialized underdog hero, an “alien” who is despised for his difference. His Kryptonian mother’s comment at the outset of the film underscore this reading. She worries that Kal (Clark’s Kryptonian name) will “be an outcast, a freak” on earth. His human parents share similar fears, encouraging him to hide his difference, to “pass” as human. But partway through the film, Kal/Clark sheds his closeted identity in order to save earth and its inhabitants.

Henry Cavill as Superman
In a pivotal scene, he confronts the military brass who have handcuffed him upon the discovery of his “alien-ness,” saying, “You’re scared of me because you can’t control me.” Here, a bevy of connotations arise—how violence is about control, how difference is controlled through violence so that those in power can maintain their power, how viewing difference as an alien threat leads to violence. But, as Superman insists, the inability to control him does not make him an enemy. (U.S. government and military leaders please take note: Just because we cannot control what other countries do, this does not make them our enemy.)

Here and elsewhere, this version of the Superman story questions the way in which power-over mentality, coupled with hyper-masculine bravado, will lead to planetary ruin. Metaphorically, the film questions the reliance on brawn (embodied by Zod and the military brass) over brains (embodied by Jor-el) and heart (embodied by Superman). Further, the Krypton/Earth binary can be seen as emblemmatic of traditional notions of male and female, with the powerful Krypton threatening to control and/or annihilate Earth. Instead of maintaining these dichotomies, the film suggests that both Kryptonians and humans, males and females, can be a “bridge” to a better world. The movie also takes pains to depict Lois and Superman as a team, rather than as a savior and his damsel in distress. This is particularly underscored near the end of the film when someone looks on at the pair after the near destruction of earth, and says “THEY saved us” not “He saved us” or “Superman saved us.”

Lois is depicted not only as a fearless, intrepid investigative journalist, but also adept at figuring out Kryptonian ships and carrying out plans of escape/survival. Near the end of the film, she tells Superman, “I know how to stop them” (Zod and company). As such, she is as much superhero as he, though she is human and he is super-human. To make her even more amazing, she is clearly cognizant of hyper-masculine posturing, as when she is waiting to be shown a Russian submarine the military thinks they have found and says to the brass, who are verbally trying to out-macho each other, “If we are done measuring dicks…can you show me what you found?”

Laurence Fischburne and Amy Adams in Man of Steel
On the less positive side, Superman, as the personification of “super masculinity,” is—as indicated by the reboot title—a hyper-muscular man of steel. His moniker suggests he is hard, unbreakable, impervious and made of muscle—notions that mesh well with the unattainable ideal of masculinity currently in circulation and which are embodied via his excessively built form. Though he uses his strength for good and resorts to violence only as a last resort, the overly-long excessive fight scene between he and General Zod contradicts the earlier narrative claims the movie makes regarding violence, militarism and power. If these things are bad (as the first three-quarters of the film suggests) why do we need to watch scene after scene of he and Zod punching each other, destroying buildings and displaying their uber-strength? Why was it necessary to destroy multiple buildings, cars, planes, semi-trucks, satellites and so on in a way that makes Spock’s overly-long fight scene with Khan in the recent Star Trek: Into Darkness seem short by comparison?

My sense is that those in charge of filming, editing and special effects were loathe to cut these visually arresting scenes. Which reminds me of some comments I heard walking out of the film: “I feel like I am on sensory overload,” “I feel like my senses have been assaulted,” and “After all those explosions, I think I lost some hearing.” As these comments suggest, these action scenes can in themselves be viewed as a form of assault on the audience—one that, admittedly, certain audiences crave—but one that nonetheless suggests that the way to be “super” (as a man or a film) is to be violent, to blow shit up, to be stronger than the other guy/gal.

Laurence Fishburne during some explosions in Man of Steel
As the fight scenes dragged on and on, the two young boys in front of me stopped squirming in their seats and stared at the explosive images on the screen—images that screamed the only way to “win” and be “super” is via violence and weaponry, or have a body that is itself a weapon. This is not the image I hold of my son running around in his Superman costume at age 3, nor of his smiling, dimpled face and curly-haired locks in his kindergarten picture (in which he’s wearing a Superman t-shirt). No, that boy liked the idea of flying, not killing. But with so many images that teach boys (and girls) that to be a “super-male” is to be one capable of violence, how can we expect our boys to soar in ways that promote messages of hope, inclusivity and an insistence “every person can be a force for good”?

I don’t have the answer. But I do know that my now-16-year-old-son, who attended the screening with me, had a key complaint about the film: “The fight scenes were way too excessive.” If a teenager raised in a culture that champions such scenes as “the stuff great blockbuster movies are made of” gets this, why the heck can’t Hollywood?

Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if …? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate.

Think There Aren’t Feminist Themes in ‘The Purge’? Think Again

Movie poster for The Purge
Spoiled by Stephanie Rogers.
Turns out, the best way to see the latest violent horror film is to watch it in a packed theater in Times Square. The audience laughed together, squealed together, shouted at the screen together, and collectively bonded over the most ridiculous features of the movie as well as the more progressive aspects.
As the credits rolled, a young Black woman sitting behind me stood up and yelled, “And the Black dude survives!” I mean, hadn’t we all been thinking it? We’re so used to filmmakers killing off characters of color, especially in horror films, that watching a Black dude walk into the sun at the end of a movie after saving a bunch of rich white people stood out as a fucking anomaly. The Purge is certainly problematic, but it surprised me to feel a sense of … hope at the end of it. Could this reversal of the white savior trope start a new trend in filmmaking? And did a film finally punish a Rich White Dude instead of celebrating his successes at the expense of others? And what would movies even be like if these became the new tenets of onscreen storytelling?
I like to do this thing sometimes where I show up at films with absolutely zero information about them. The Purge looked like a fun movie to try that with, and I’m glad I did it; if I’d known the premise of the movie in advance, I doubt I could’ve talked myself into paying 75 dollars to see it and spending 45 minutes slow-walking 3 blocks to the theater in the most crowded area of Manhattan. Luckily, the plot made itself clear within the first few minutes. 
Video footage of the annual Purge
It takes place in the future, nine years from now in the United States, which boasts a government known as The New Founders of America (NFA). The New Founders have instituted an annual day of murder and mayhem dubbed The Purge, allowing anyone to roam the streets freely in search of people to violate so that they might purge themselves of their lurking hate and rage. It lasts twelve hours and during that time no emergency services or police officers exist, making it a free-for-all. Not everyone is required to participate, but people are encouraged at least to indicate their support of The Purge by placing a vase of blue baptisias (baptism, get it?) on their front doorstep in a gesture of solidarity. While the family the film focuses on, The Sandins, appears not to necessarily enjoy The Purge or participate in the “festivities,” they support its existence, mainly because the institution of The Purge lowered the once-staggering unemployment rate to 1%, saving the economy and making the annual crime rate almost nonexistent. The main characters see it as a tolerable, necessary evil, and besides—they’re the richest people in their state-of-the-art secured neighborhood; what’s the worst that could happen to them? 
“Don’t forget to put the Baptisias on the porch, Honey!”
Well, they could help a Black dude avoid getting murdered by a bunch of creepy, self-proclaimed “highly-educated” white people in their twenties, who roam the gated suburbs carrying machine guns and machetes and wearing masks like they just wandered off the set of The Strangers. Your bad, Sandins, your bad. 
WTFWTFWTF
Let me take a step back.
The Sandins actually fucking suck for the most part, at least in the beginning. Ethan Hawke plays James Sandin, who works as a security developer and who clearly profits off the The Purge; the Sandins own the biggest house in their subdivision—a jealous woman neighbor sarcastically “jokes” that The Purge Survival Systems that James sold to everyone in the hood obviously paid for the new addition to the Sandins’ home—and James himself gloats during that night’s family dinner about his rise to the spot of Top Seller at his security firm. (Rich White Dudes profiting off the hardships of others … does that sound familiar to anyone?) Mary Sandin (Lena Headey) gives the impression she’s a homemaker; we see her cooking dinner and chiding her children (Zoey, a high schooler and Charlie, a younger teen) as she readies them for the pre-purge lockdown, and she leaves the house only to place the baptisias on the porch and speak with the neighbor who envies her family’s wealth. The Sandins seem truly clueless about the extreme jealousy all the less rich white people (minus the token, light-skinned woman of color) feel toward them, but the audience gets the message all over the place: Sandins, consider yourselves fucked. 
Uh-Oh
On the surface, The Purge aims to critique the sick shit going on in our country right now, albeit very problematically. Dan Gainor, VP of Business and Culture at the Media Research Institute called The Purge “an obvious attack on the Tea Party and Christians” and also argued that:
… the movie is a direct attack on the NRA, an organization filled with millions of law-abiding gun owners. The loony left’s reflexive hatred of the 2nd Amendment is founded in the concept that people who don’t break the law are somehow evil for exercising the Constitutional rights.
Okay, Dan Gainor.
The truth? No anti-Christian or even anti-gun message exists in The Purge, although the director, James Monaco, has said in interviews that the film does, in fact, allude to an indictment of gun culture. In reality, The Purge employs extreme gory violence that undercuts any potential critique of violence, and the gruesome knife scenes and weaponless face shattering against tables stick out way more than the gun stuff. At times, The Purge even seems to support gun ownership; the Sandins wouldn’t have survived those twelve hours without guns, and owning a gun for the protection of oneself and one’s domestic space is a much-touted NRA message. The anti-Christian thing, too, is a reach. The characters worship money for sure, and the film critiques that, but neither Christianity nor any religion ever come up.
Unfortunately, The Purge becomes muddled in its message about government; Big Government runs amok here—an old school conservative’s nightmare—and The New Founders essentially sanction the murder of the have-nots, the people on the lower rungs who can’t afford James Sandin’s security system to cordon themselves off from the annual purgers. If anything, it supports the old school conservative argument against Big Government, and a viewer could easily read it as a cautionary tale for a federal government that holds too much influence over its citizens. 
State-of-the-Art-Secured McMansion
On the other hand, neo-cons of 2013 seem to think they dislike Big Government while simultaneously inviting it into wombs all across America, so who the fuck even knows anymore. The point is, The Purge wants to yell from the rooftops, “How awful for the government to endorse the murder of its citizens!” but ultimately yells, “How awful for the government to endorse the murder of its citizens … but, wait, look how well it works when we rid the country of these homeless welfare seekers!” The Purge tries to have it both ways and fails to deliver any real cohesive message regarding guns, religion, or the role of government.
But I definitely heard the slam against the one-percenters loud and clear, and what a welcomed fucking change from the endless dumping of Hollywood Mancession films into the multiplex. The Purge imagines a science fiction-esque United States where the rich take over entirely and wage a violent war against the lower classes, even going so far as to pass a Constitutional Amendment (the 28th) to require its existence. (Most government officials naturally receive legal protection from harm during The Purge.) Simply put: this futuristic United States decides that murdering those most in need makes more sense than uniting together in support of them. In this way, the film does seem to offer a critique of the country’s current fringe groups (the Tea Party, most Republicans) by illustrating a worst-case scenario for a society that values capital over people—and fuck if it didn’t scare me a little. 
This is the scariest person I’ve ever seen on film
Because this is a film about class relations and capitalism, the less rich (white people) end up turning on the super rich (white people) during the night—another nod to the idea that unregulated capitalism leads only to societal destruction. The end of the film includes audio of newscasts that play over the credits, with broadcasters reporting that the high number of deaths made that year’s Purge the most successful ever. So, while the film might not necessarily conclude with any real epiphany by the United States and its citizens (yay for killing the homeless!), it allows the audience a glimpse into the lives of a few one-percenters who try to destroy one another, all because of money. Oh, and because Charlie Sandin (a not-yet-sociopathic teen) decides to help a Black dude. “And the Black dude survives!”
As a feminist movie critic, I adored these flips on conventional horror tropes, and several of them exist. 
Charlie uses his Robot Baby (omg) to help hide the Black dude from his parents
The White Savior: The Black dude, who seriously remains nameless, shows up in their neighborhood after the Sandins’ purge lockdown (where a hardcore security system barricades their entire home). Charlie Sandin hears gunfire in the streets and sees in the surveillance cameras the Black dude yelling for help, covering a bleeding wound. Charlie zooms in on the man’s terrified face and decides, “Duh, I need to help this guy.” So he unlocks the security system and yells for the shocked-as-hell Black dude to come inside, much to the dismay of his parents. At first, I thought, “This white savior trope again?!” but it didn’t last long. While Charlie helps the man, the older Sandins clearly want no part of it, especially after a group of asshole college kids (that I will forever refer to as “the highly-educated murderers”) threatens to break into their home if they refuse to release the Black dude back into the streets. See, “that homeless swine” belongs to them, and if they don’t get to kill him, they’re more than willing to kill the entire Sandin clan instead. So, duh, the parents torture the Black dude—in an effort to throw him back to the highly-educated murderers—while Zoey and Charlie freak the fuck out like, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING.” 
Charlie watches the Black dude on surveillance cameras
The Protective Patriarch: All of this occurs in the name of James Sandin protecting his perfect, white nuclear family. He simultaneously apologize-stabs the Black dude several times while saying, “I’m sorry. I need to protect my family.” Mary Sandin, though, gets her, “James, you’re no better than the people out there!” on—because women and children always play the role of Moral Compass when men go astray. That trope unfortunately remains intact for the rest of the film, culminating with Mary’s decision not to murder her new home invaders (the less-rich jealous neighbors, at this point; did we NOT know they were gunning for the Sandins, too?). At one point Mary says, “Too many people have died tonight, so we’re going to end this night in fucking peace.” Or something. Even the Black dude says to James, “You need to protect your family,” offering up himself to the highly-educated murderers, but James experiences a swift change of heart and refuses to sacrifice him. Thanks to the women and children.
And in a way, I liked that the women and children felt compelled to protect the Black dude and not throw him to the wolves/preppies; I didn’t read their desire to do so as an employment of the white savior trope because these highly-educated murderers aimed to roll in there and kill everybody regardless. So the Sandins weren’t saving the Black dude as much as they were making it only slightly more difficult for him to get murdered. “And the Black dude survives!” in the end. And saves (most of) the Sandins. And walks off into the sun. After looking at Mary Sandin and saying, “Good luck” all deadpan. Ha. 
Zoey secretly making out with the bro her dad hates
The Sexual Teenage Girl: Zoey Sandin interests me. Her character follows conventional horror film tropes from the get-go: she dates an older boy, much to the dismay of her disapproving dad because Daddy’s Little Girl. She sneaks around behind her family’s back, and her boyfriend even hides out in her room, staying put for the Sandins’ home lockdown. They make out on her bed while she wears a fucking schoolgirl outfit slash uniform; the scene screams INNOCENT VIRGIN about to HAVE SEX and then DIE because THIS IS A HORROR MOVIE. But. Her dad kills her boyfriend instead in a good ol’ Purge Family Shootout after her boyfriend pulls a gun on James out of nowhere (presumably to purge himself of the rage he feels for not being allowed to date Zoey), and James fires back in self defense. Zoey, a little devastated, runs off and hides for some reason, probably because THIS IS A HORROR MOVIE and groups never stick together.
Eventually, the highly-educated murderers breach the Sandin barricade, and we find Zoey hiding under her bed while—duh again—she sees one of them STOP beside her bed. THIS IS A HORROR MOVIE. While this happens, she overhears another murderer—who’s stroking a photo of Zoey—say, “Exquisite. Save her for me, won’t you?” I immediately thought, please don’t rape her please don’t rape her because THIS IS A HORROR MOVIE, and horror films dole out punishment to their sexually provocative heroines hardcore. But the true highlight of The Purge, for me at least, occurred when Zoey murdered the fuck out of the photo stroker, saving (most of) her family and flipping the Sexual Activity Is Punishable By Death convention on its ass. 
Zoey hides under her bed (THIS IS A HORROR MOVIE)
So, all in all, and as unwieldy as The Purge gets (not unlike this review), I couldn’t help but enjoy most of it. The Rich White Dude gets punished, and the minority characters (including women) survive. That shouldn’t be a progressive movie ending in 2013. It is.

Bitch Slapped: Female Violence in ‘Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters’

Written by: Rachel Redfern

Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

Watching the trailer for this year’s latest fairy tale redux, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters it, wasn’t a difficult thing to judge the film as a clichéd action movie with a bad plot and a ridiculous title: we were not wrong to do so. However, the large amount of female characters makes it at least an interesting movie to review. While the world of Hansel and Gretel does feature men, few of the main characters are and in an interesting twist for an action movie, female characters outnumber the male ones. The movie even passes the Bechdel test ironically.

So, here’s a quick breakdown of the film, which probably isn’t necessary except for the sake of a well-organized essay. Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) are siblings who are led out into the forest by their parents where they are promptly abandoned. Hansel and Gretel kill the evil witch who tries to eat Hansel and become famous witch hunters, until they end up in a town where multiple children have been taken by a trio of witches to be used for an evil ritual. Violence and one-liners ensue and Hansel and Gretel come to understand themselves and their own history better.

The film plays out like a video game: it’s violence graphic and exaggerated. Personally, I haven’t seen this many heads blown off of bodies since an ill-fated viewing of Rambo IV (2008). People are ripped to shreds, brutally beaten, squished to death, explode and any number of implausible and gory ways to die. 

Jeremy Renner taking part in an improbable action scene

But again, despite Hansel and his overwhelming hatred of witches (of which there seem to be only women—no evil warlocks in this franchise), the only other men featured are a simple mayor, an abusive sheriff (Peter Stormare), a pleasant troll and an overzealous fan of Hansel and Gretel’s work (Thomas Mann).

Gemma Arterton is the other side of the bad-ass Hansel and Gretel team, starring as an appropriately aggressive Gretel. I like a spunky heroine and while Hansel does have to save her towards the end of the movie, she does drive home the final killing blow, so overall I suppose there was great equality in their violent slaughter of the witches.

On to the point, I am not opposed to female villains: I support equal-opportunity in my evil masterminds and if you’re going to have a lot of classic male villains (Lex Luther in Superman, Scar from The Lion King, Batman’s Joker), there should also be some equally evil females running around (Ursula in The Little Mermaid, the Borg Queen from Star Trek, Poison Ivy for Batman).

However, in this respect Hansel and Gretel is over the top, just as it is in pretty much every other way. But it is interesting, the violence committed by these female villains and against them is jarring and explicit, however, the filmmakers obviously did everything that they could to distance the witches from being thought of as women. Physically every witch is monstrous, with scaly skin and pointed teeth, unrecognizable as women for the most part.

So not only do they not look like women, they don’t act like maternal loving women, again making it hard to identify with them and I suppose on some level, making it easier to stomach the horrific amount of beating they all seem to receive. There are dozens of evil female witches running around dragging children from their beds in order to sacrifice them for immortality and literally consume them. 

Famke Janssen as her monstrous self in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

There is one woman though who isn’t the same as the rest of the witches; Famke Janssen (X-Men) is a grand-witch and therefore able to change her appearance. She can appear as a normal human woman or can shift into her more natural, monstrous self. Interestingly enough, at one point of the movie she is, of course, being beaten up by Hansel and to try and stop him from strangling her she shifts into her beautiful human self and begins to beg Hansel for mercy. Hansel knows that she is still evil and that the beauty is just an act and so finishes her off. The moment is almost meta, as if the filmmaker was acknowledging the fact that had the women been human-looking, such gratuitously violent acts against them would have perhaps been unacceptable to audiences.

There are good witches in the film however, maternal loving women who are healers and sacrifice for their children, and are of course, physically beautiful. Though this doesn’t prevent them from getting the shit beat out of them either, just in a more socially acceptable way and one where there is swift retribution from one of the nice males in the film.

One thing that was interesting though, the film is based off the classic fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel in which Hansel and Gretel are abandoned in the forest because their evil stepmother doesn’t want to take care of them anymore. However, in this film version, Hansel and Gretel hate their mother (no stepmother) for abandoning them, only to realize later in the film that the only reason she abandoned them was to save them. It was a moment of explanation for a character who’s been demonized as a bad mother for years, but instead of playing into that, the film actually gave her a reason and a cause, humanizing her for once.

For the most part the whole film is a travesty of plot and character and feminism; it’s one redeeming feature being the amazing soundtrack, but I suppose that at the end of the day, the movie is at least honest since it never pretended to be anything other than what it was: a clichéd Hollywood action movie. 

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.

When Dumb Fun Turns Nasty: Sexual Violence in Stupid Movies

Written by Max Thornton.
[content note: explicit discussion of violence and rape]
Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle: “Violent media poisoning nation’s soul.”
Is it, though? To his credit, LaSalle recognizes that it’s pretty fatuous to blame movie violence for real-life violent crime, but that doesn’t stop him from calling for blanket R ratings for movies with “any violence at all.” I honestly don’t see how that will help. An R rating won’t stop anyone from seeing a film they’re determined to see (hi there, internet!), and it definitely won’t encourage critical thinking (the trouble is, you can’t legislate for that).
Also, you know, Adam Lanza – the motivation for LaSalle’s piece – was 20. He could have seen the most brutal NC-17 movie he wanted.
It’s an old complaint that MPAA ratings are seriously messed up, mired in disturbing double-standards around male and female sexuality, straight and queer sexuality, sex and violence. However, if you happen to believe that violent movies contribute to a “culture of violence,” age-based restrictions don’t accomplish a thing. Except perhaps to make under-seventeens desperate to see movies just because you say they can’t.
I really don’t think the problem with movie violence is that too many superhero flicks are rated PG-13. I don’t even think the problem is the existence of movie violence. I think the problem is the context and presentation of the violence. MPAA ratings, audiences, and filmmakers themselves overwhelmingly fail to distinguish between cartoonish violence and realistic violence, or between sex and sexual violence, and this is what I find truly alarming.
I have a shameful love of really stupid gory movies. I have a dumb but almost limitless enthusiasm for the subgenre lovingly dubbed “splatstick.” Evil Dead II. Peter Jackson’s Braindead. Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd. Appendages being severed in improbable ways, fountains of dyed corn syrup gushing forth, heads and eyeballs rolling all over the place… That stuff cracks me up, and has done ever since I was an eight-year-old at home with septicemia, watching videocassettes of Tom & Jerry and bringing my mother running with every yell of sympathy that quickly dissolved into peals of laughter.
And I respond just like Bart and Lisa Simpson.
 
Realistic movie violence disturbs me, of course, in films like City of God or Irreversible. These are movies intended to confront you with the utter awfulness of the events they depict, with no interest in minimizing or trivializing their horror. They’re hard to watch, and they should be.
Cartoon violence, on the other hand, is outlandish, clownishly over-the-top, and nothing like real life. A scene like the possessed hand scene in Evil Dead II or the zombie baby scene in Braindeadis funny in the way that a cartoon character slipping on a banana peel is funny. It’s an outlet for Schadenfreude in a really goofy setting.
It really, really bothers me when cartoon violence turns sexual.
When a tree rapes a woman in the original Evil Dead. When a tentacled zombie-slug-man rapes a woman in Slither. When a snowman serial killer rapes a woman with his carrot nose in Jack Frost(no, not that Jack Frost). Most recently, when zombie Nazis turn rapey in Nazis at the Center of the Earth.
Goddammit, it’s called Nazis at the Center of the Earth, not Rapists at the Center of the Earth.
 
I’m watching a movie called Nazis at the Center of the Earth because I want to laugh at a lousy special effect of Zombie Josef Mengele ripping a guy’s skin off in one elegant motion. That’s funny to me, because no one in real life gets their skin ripped off by Zombie Josef Mengele, and if they did it wouldn’t look like that. The sudden inclusion of sexual violence is just grim.
We’re all feminists here, so I don’t need to repeat the stats, but here they are again: 1 in 6 women. 1 in 33 men.
Comical beheadings with fountains of unrealistic blood are funny to me in the way that Laurel & Hardy dropping the piano again is funny. Sexual assault IS NOT FUNNY. Jack Frost (again, the killer-snowman one, not the family film or the bizarre Russo-Finnish fairytale that was on MST3K) is rated R for “violence and gore, language and some brief sexuality.” For “brief sexuality.” CALL IT WHAT IT IS, MPAA.
I get that plenty of people don’t find splatstick funny. That makes sense and is valid, and I can respect that opinion. What doesn’t make sense, isn’t valid, and does not merit my respect is thinking that sexual violence belongs in splatstick humor. Contra George Carlin, Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd is not funny to me. Cartoon sexual violence isn’t funny in the way cartoon splatstick can be, because of the whole rape culture thing. The difference is crystallized in the fact that the MPAA doesn’t call a nose-breaking punch “brief face-touching,” but it does call carrot-rape “brief sexuality.”
In the end, what crosses the movie-violence line depends largely on your personal taste. A really cheesy special effect of a sharktopus eating a person makes me laugh; others won’t find that funny. But I don’t think sexual violence is a matter of personal taste. When I sign up for some cheesy splatstick movie fun, I want cheesy splatstick fun, and that does NOT include sexual assault of any kind. What’s so hard to understand about that?

 

If you’re more of a words person, this might help.

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

 

The Tragedy of Masculinity in ‘Romeo + Juliet’

Written by Leigh Kolb.
The opening scene of Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet is an intense display of masculinity. While in the original text the Capulet and Montague men draw swords and taunt one another, Luhrmann’s rivals pull guns, rev car engines, smoke, shoot, and light fire to gasoline.
Luhrmann’s 1996 film takes Shakespeare’s text–he stays truer to the language than other modern adaptations–and places it in a decidedly modern world of gang violence, guns, and ecstasy.
It’s Baz Luhrmann. It’s over-the-top and gorgeous, and perfectly encapsulates the timeless themes of the tragic story. At 15, audiences see violent action, young love (lust) and parents who just don’t understand. Older audiences, however, see a tragedy borne out of patriarchy and a culture that expects and respects traditional masculine power.
Capulet and Montague, business moguls and patriarchal forces. Jesus looks on.
While Romeo’s Montague cousins are tied up fighting Capulets and taunting nuns, Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) is emoting on the beach over a recent breakup. His father references Romeo’s “tears augmenting the fresh morning dew,” and Romeo is seen smoking a cigarette, sweeping blond hair out of his eyes. Romeo doesn’t seem to be like his cousins, and even when they play pool together, he’s lamenting his lost love.
The feuding men.
When he meets Juliet (Claire Danes) at her family’s costume ball, they are equally smitten and she is forward with her feelings–“you kiss by the book,” she says, as they attempt to escape her meddling mother (who’s attempting to set her up with Paris, played for laughs by Paul Rudd). In discussions about marrying off Juliet, her father indicates to Paris that while mothers are made at her age, it usually doesn’t bode well for a good life. Her mother–who knows her less than her nurse–seems to want to push her into marriage because she had to marry young. Her bitterness and desire to push Juliet into an arranged marriage and young motherhood is portrayed as villainous.
Luhrmann’s take on the balcony scene isn’t for purists, but it’s great for feminists. Instead of Juliet being separated from him on her balcony, elevated literally and figuratively as Romeo struggles to hang on, Juliet walks down to the pool as Romeo waits for her, and the two deliver their lines in the pool–on equal footing, intertwined.
A nontraditional balcony scene places Romeo and Juliet closer together.
Juliet is continuously more mature than Romeo. While she falls for him as he does for her, she wants to know that he’s serious. Romeo stumbles, he’s clearly much more juvenile than Juliet is. They represent youth, yes, but also a departure from not only their fathers’ patriarchal social order and the gendered expectations placed upon them. Juliet’s world is protected and arranged for her; she’s expected to have a life like her mother’s (arranged and out of her control). Romeo’s effeminate nature goes against his father’s powerful corporate position and his cousins’ violent outbursts.
Romeo changes, however, when Tybalt (John Leguizamo) kills Mercutio (Harold Perrineau). Mercutio is frequently played flamboyantly–he doesn’t adhere to masculine norms and makes bawdy jokes at the expense of both Montagues and Capulets–and he represents a neutral party between the two families. Luhrmann’s Mercutio is played by a black man who convincingly cross-dresses for the costume party and attempts to bridge ground between the families. His death, then, is tragic to Romeo, but it’s also a sense of lost hope to the audience. Romeo gets behind the wheel of his car–he’s now part of this violent, masculine world–and chases after Tybalt. He maniacally shoots him as tears stream from his eyes.
When Romeo enters the violent, masculine sphere, the story changes completely and tragically.
He drops the gun, and the rain that has been approaching finally falls.
This crisis is what leads to the couple’s downfall–Romeo stepping into the patriarchal, violent world of senseless feuds pulls him away from the feminine that he’d so willingly embraced and embodied before.
As Juliet’s father drunkenly promises his daughter’s hand in marriage to Paris, he’s surrounded by guns and mounted hunting prizes on the wall behind him. As Romeo and Juliet sleep upstairs, she, too, is being pulled into the patriarchal order against her will.
When Juliet first refuses, her mother turns away from her and her father throws her to the ground, screaming, “I give you to my friend.” Juliet sobs, begging her mother to delay the marriage–but she refuses, and walks away.
Even those closest to her betray her desires–Father Laurence (Pete Postlethwaite) and her nurse (Miriam Margolyes) encourage her to marry Paris.
Juliet goes to Father Laurence and holds a gun first to her head, and then points it at Father Laurence to prove her determination to not marry Paris. Juliet takes control, even when all is working against her. Juliet refuses to bend to the will of the men (and world-weary women) around her.
Noteworthy in Luhrmann’s adaptation is his profuse use of religious symbolism, specifically Catholic iconography. This is another set of patriarchal rules they live under. The images in the film have meaning but not depth; they are as threatening as they might be comforting. Jesus looms over the city (he’s under repair when Tybalt lies dead in the fountain below him). Christianity is present in the city, in Juliet’s room and around Romeo and Juliet’s necks, but it doesn’t save them.
The modernization of key plot points–the certified letter that wasn’t delivered, the dealer that supplies Romeo with poison (fetched from the base of a Virgin Mary lamp), Captain Prince surveying the city in a helicopter–work remarkably well. And the soundtrack–oh, the soundtrack.
In the original text, there is a span of time between Romeo’s suicide and Juliet waking to see him lying dead. Luhrmann plays this scene much more dramatically–she wakes as he’s about to take the poison, and in his shock his hand bumps it into his mouth. They are both alive for a moment, and she kisses him while he’s dying. The lack of bystanders or spectators in this scene makes it more powerful–even a Shakespeare purist could attest to that fact.
The death scene is altered from the original text, and adds to the emotional impact.
Juliet shoots herself with no comment, and the camera pans up, looking at their dead bodies below while flashing back to moments of happiness.
Captain Prince screams “All are punished,” while their dead bodies are put into ambulances and the fathers look on bewildered.
In the original text, Friar Laurence gives a lengthy monologue, explaining all that had happened. Capulet and Montague shake hands and commit to peace.
In most Shakespearian tragedies, while there may be a pile of dead bodies at the end, there’s a sense of closure that things will be better in the future, or that the tragic tale will serve to teach others a lesson.
Not here.
There’s simply bewilderment, and the sense that the patriarchy, the violence, the incessant masculinity of Verona Beach has won, and everyone has lost because of it.
The story, then, isn’t about tragic young love. It’s about the tragedy of adhering to codes of behavior that are inherited and not freely chosen.
Luhrmann–by capturing a time and place that was at the same time specific and completely timeless–reminded a new generation of these messages that are as important and poignant today as they were in 1996, and as they were in 1595.
—–
 
Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri. 

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Megan‘s Picks:
Why ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Is the Best Film of the Year by Christopher Orr via The Atlantic
How Walt Disney’s Women Have Grown Up by Judith Welikala and Emily Dugan via The Independent
She Who Will Not Be Ignored by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood 

Queer Lead Sophia Swanson Makes MTV’s ‘Underemployed’ Worth Watching by Riese via Autostraddle

Bollywood Joins Public Outrage Against Brutal Gang-Rape in India by Nyay Bhushan via The Hollywood Reporter
BBC Outs Itself for Gay and Lesbian Stereotypes by Stuart Kemp via The Hollywood Reporter
5 Lessons for My Tween from Anne Hathaway by Joanne Bamberger via Babble
What have you been reading this week?? Tell us in the comments!

The Gender Situation in ‘Pulp Fiction’

Written by Leigh Kolb.To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Quentin Tarantino’s major directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994) were shown in theaters on Dec. 4 and 6, respectively, as special engagements.

While Reservoir Dogs solidified Tarantino’s spot in Hollywood, Pulp Fiction made him a star. It won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the Academy Award for Best Screenplay (it was nominated for Best Picture) and John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson and Uma Thurman were nominated for Academy Awards.
The film opens with a couple (Pumpkin/Ringo and Honey Bunny/Yolanda) eating at a diner. The two are discussing their next robbery attempt and realize robbing a restaurant would maximize their profits. The banter between the two shows that they are partners, and are in love.
As they enact their plan, they stand up with their guns. Pumpkin announces that this is a robbery, and Honey Bunny screams:

“Any of you fucking pricks move, and I’ll execute every motherfucking last one of ya!”

Honey Bunny/Yolanda, left, screams and threatens restaurant patrons as Pumpkin looks on.
The iconic sounds of “Miserlou,” by Dick Dale and His Del Tones begin, and the audience quickly realizes that unlike Reservoir Dogs, women will have a voice in Pulp Fiction.
Like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction examines masculinity–glorifying and critiquing it. Instead of conversations about women, however, women have integral roles in each of the intertwining narratives.
Vincent Vega & Marcellus Wallace’s Wife
 
When Vincent and Jules discuss the meaning of a foot rub, they are speaking about intimacy and what it means to touch a woman’s feet. The rumor is that their boss, Marcellus Wallace, had a man pushed off a building for rubbing his wife’s feet. They’re exploring something beyond a foot rub (although Tarantino himself does love feet). On some level, they’re exploring male/female interactions and levels of intimacy.
Vincent tells Jules that Marcellus asked him to take his wife Mia out, and it’s clear that this woman invokes intimidation in men. Vincent goes to Lance’s house (his drug dealer) to purchase some heroin. He self-medicates before going to pick up Mia. She’s left a note on the door to come in, and she watched Vincent enter the house on security camera footage and speaks to him over an intercom. She is god-like in this scene (and while it fits the narrative, we know that Uma Thurman is also a god/muse to Tarantino).
Mia self-medicates with cocaine, and the scene at Jack Rabbit Slim’s makes the audience feel high. Mia chooses the restaurant and made the reservation (she is in control), and the two engage in friendly banter. She was an actress, and tells him about her failed television series, Fox Force Five. Vincent confronts her about the foot rub rumor, and she denies it, pointing out that a husband protecting his wife is “one thing,” but that was ridiculous. She says:

“Truth is, nobody knows why Marsellus threw Tony out of that fourth-story window except Marsellus and Tony. When you little scamps get together, you’re worse than a sewing circle.”

Here, the men are gossiping and being “silly,” which are most often the stereotyped flaws of female characters.
The two dance in a twist competition–upon her insistance–and win the trophy. The dance itself is one in which no one really leads; they are partners.
Mia and Vincent dance as equals.
Back at the Wallace mansion, Mia finds the baggie of heroin in Vincent’s coat pocket, mistakes it for cocaine, and snorts a long line, immediately overdosing. She’s a modern-day damsel in distress, whose distress is really a simple mistake.
Vincent rushes her to Lance’s house, and Lance yells, “You fucked her up, you fix her!” But we know this isn’t the case. Again, the assumption is that the man is at fault, and the woman is helpless, but that isn’t how they end up here. Everyone bumbles around the apartment, trying to figure out the adrenaline shot (at one point Lance is in a cluttered room looking for a medical book, and the board game “Chauvinist Pigs” is perched atop a pile). No one in this scene is truly heroic or capable, which makes it feel realistic. Vincent successfully injects the adrenaline into Mia’s heart, and Vincent takes her back home. They, and we, sober up fast.
The Gold Watch
 
The story of the gold watch, passed down to Butch from his great-grandfather, to his grandfather, to his father and then to him, is essentially a story about the decline in traditional American manhood. By the time the watch got to Butch’s father in the Vietnam War, he was a POW and had to “hide it in his ass” for years so he could pass it down to his son. The shift in American war culture/patriotism between WWII and Vietnam was stark. The “Greatest Generation” of American men in the second world war gave birth to boys who would serve in Vietnam, a war that utilized a draft and was met with protest and hostility. By the time Butch becomes an adult man, he is fighting, yes, but for money and not his country. His war is internal, and devoid of the heroism from a few generations ago. (This crisis of a lack of clearly defined masculinity is the cornerstone of Gen X novels/films such as Fight Club, which explores at length this generation of young men with no great war.)
Captain Koons presents a young Butch with his father’s watch.
Butch’s desperation to have that gold watch with him, even eventually risking his life to do so, is indicative of his desperation to hold on to this generationally diluted manhood.
Butch doesn’t throw the fight that he’d fixed with Marcellus, and instead wins and accidentally kills his opponent. In the getaway cab ride, the female cab driver asks him what it’s like to kill a man, because it’s a subject she’s “very interested” in. She seems more interested than he does, in fact.
Esmerelda lights Butch’s cigarette.
When he’s back at the hotel room with his girlfriend Fabienne, the two share intimate moments and comedic dialogue. Fabienne seems silly and child-like, but Butch is sweet and respectful to her (although he erupts when he realizes she’s forgotten the watch, he quickly apologizes and says he was to blame). As she’s lying on the bed wishing for a pot belly, she says:

“I don’t give a damn what men find attractive. It’s unfortunate what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same.”

Fabienne and Butch.
She requests and receives “oral pleasure” from Butch, and in the hotel room scenes, the audience sees more of Butch’s body than Fabienne’s. Again, she seems naive and childish, but their relationship is equitable and for the most part, enjoyable to watch. Maybe Butch has a similar innocence, but it is well-guarded under his outward masculinity.
The next morning, when he flies into a rage about the watch, warfare and explosions blast on the television in their room, another reminder of the distance between Butch and that celebrated masculine pastime.
He goes off on a quest to retrieve the gold watch before they flee to Knoxville (since Marcellus will be trying to find him and kill him for not throwing the fight). He takes off in a Honda hatchback, and gets to his apartment. Vincent is already there, sent to kill him, but he’s on the toilet reading Modesty Blaise, who debuted as a female action hero in a comic strip, collection of stories/novel and films of the same name in the 1960s. (Tarantino is a Blaise fan, and certainly Kill Bill‘s The Bride shares many similarities with the female protagonist.)
Modesty Blaise, a 1960s crime series with a female protagonist.
Butch picks up Vincent’s gun and kills him as he steps out of the bathroom. When he escapes, he runs into Marcellus (women flock to the sides of Butch and Marcellus to help them), and the two end up in a depraved dungeon of a pawn shop with a racist owner. When Butch breaks free as Marcellus is being raped by security guard Zed, he can’t leave. He goes back down and kills the shop owner with a sword, and breaks Marcellus free (who then shoots Zed in the groin). There are obvious masculinity issues here, from the anal rape (my gosh what would Freud do with Butch’s narrative) to the phallic sword, Marcellus and Butch agree that they are even, and Butch will never utter a word about the rape.
Butch takes off on Zed’s motorcycle and arrives back to pick up Fabienne. Some kind of post-modern manhood has been achieved, and he’s free to go on–with the gold watch.
The Bonnie Situation
 
When Jules and Vincent are saddled with the problem of a dead man in their car, they turn to Jimmie and go to his house. He is adamant that they take care of their situation soon, because his wife Bonnie is about to come home. He says:

“Now don’t you fucking realize man that if Bonnie comes home and finds a dead body in her house, I’m gonna get divorced, all right. No marriage counselor, no trial separation. I’m gonna get fuckin’ divorced. Okay? And I don’t wanna get fuckin’ divorced. Now then, you know, I mean, I wanna help you but I don’t wanna lose my wife doin’ it, all right.”

This honest admission of a husband who doesn’t want to lose his wife is refreshing. She’s not a nag, she’s not a bitch, but she’s his wife and he wants to be married to her.
Marcellus calls Winston “The Wolf” Wolfe, who is the antithesis of Jimmie. The Wolf is partying with glamorous women at 9 a.m., clearly living like James Bond and speeds to Jimmie’s in a silver sports car. Jimmie is waiting for his wife to get home from work, brews fancy coffee and is hesitant to give The Wolf their best linens to clean up the mess. As a trade, The Wolf gives him a stack of bills to buy themselves a new bedroom set.
Jimmie’s “feminine” tendencies and The Wolf’s classic masculinity complement one another.
These two men–Jimmie and The Wolf–exist in opposite worlds and diametrically opposing masculinities. However, the two of them working together solves problems. This acceptance of and need for different shades of stereotypical masculinity and femininity reminds the audience that Tarantino is aware and critical of gender performance.
When they drop the cleaned-out car to Monster Joe’s Truck and Tow, Joe’s daughter Racquel comes to meet them. The Wolf says, “Someday, all this will be hers.” This is a nod to the next generation of gender roles–whether it be women running junk yards, crime rings or killing sprees, Tarantino’s women are not shut in dainty boxes.
Racquel, the heiress to Monster Joe’s Truck and Tow.
During the epilogue, we are again in the diner where Pumpkin and Honey Bunny/Yolanda are holding up the customers. Vincent and Jules are there (Vincent is in the bathroom during most of the scene), and Jules engages in a stand-off between the two while trying to talk Pumpkin out of doing what they’re doing. He allows them to collect the customers’ cash without hurting anyone. Yolanda becomes unhinged and pitiful in this scene, and a viewer may be dismayed at Tarantino’s decision to make the woman fall apart at this very moment, and that this shows her weakness. However, we must realize that many of the characters throughout the film have shown fallibility or been in positions of weakness (Vincent’s self-medication and debilitating nerves about Mia, Mia’s overdose, Marcellus’s sexual assault and Jimmie’s anxiety about his wife). This does not mean anything except that the characters are human.
Jules and Vincent have been scrubbed clean and left to look like “dorks,” somehow emasculated without their black suits.
Humans are not one-dimensional caricatures. They commit crimes, they overdose, they are racist, sexist and complex. As long as men and women alike are portrayed in all aspects of the human experience in a film and are reflections of reality (no matter how unpleasant that reality is), then authenticity can be achieved. Pulp Fiction, in all of its gore, turns a critical eye on masculinity and femininity and offers a more nuanced take on its male and female characters than films of similar genres. And as Tarantino’s later films went on to have female characters who take active and leading roles, The Wolf was right in pointing out that “all this” will someday be a woman’s, too.
—

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

Women’s Anger or Women’s Violence in ‘Sons of Anarchy’?

L-R: Tara (Maggie Siff) and Gemma (Katey Sagal) in Sons of Anarchy

In a recent interview, Mark ‘Boone’ Junior, the actor who plays Bobby in Sons of Anarchy, stated that one of the strengths of the show is that it has, “tapped into a lot of women’s anger.”

It’s an interesting point about a show that does have some very angry women, but more so than that, it has some very violent women. Several times a season there’s a pretty physical fight between a few of the women, and not a standard hair-pulling and a few slaps kind of fight either. Gemma “nails some tart from Nevada” with a skateboard, throws around a very peppy Ashley Tisdale, Gemma and Tara beat up Nero’s assistant Carla, Tara shoots up another girls car, punches her boss, and most recently decks Gemma.

While there is often a sexual fantasy aspect associated with most ‘girl fights,’ I would posit that there is very little sexualizing of the Sons of Anarchy women during these moments, rather these fights seem to mirror the more ‘outside of society’ feeling that the male fights have.

Women’s anger is often portrayed as very catty and manipulative, rarely as physical, so in that respect, Sons of Anarchy is unique. I wonder though, are the physical encounters between these women really expressions of anger, or more a demonstration of women’s own brand of violence? 

In order to access the interview, follow this link, scroll down to the section ‘Before the Anarchy’ and click on ‘Bobby.’