Whip It – Bitch Flicks

Ellen Page Is Like the Coolest Actress We Know, and She Doesn’t Even Have to Try

This guest post by Angelina Rodriguez appears as part of our theme week on The Great Actresses.

Ellen Page already had an acting career in Canada when she came to the states to make her debut in Hard Candy. The young, bright actress kicked off her career in America with a controversial role that many found to be extremely unsettling. Teenage honor student Hayley decides to take justice into her own hands when a local girl goes missing. She uses her wit to overpower the voyeuristic pedophile character played by Patrick Wilson. Page sports a red hoody as if to conjure images of Little Red Riding Hood but, she is somewhat of a wolf in Red’s clothing. She is not to be underestimated.

Hard Candy movie poster — *Hard Candy* movie poster

Hayley is intelligent, confident, and sure of herself in a way that I had never seen before in a character her age. It was extremely empowering to watch the film as a 12-year-old girl with my nose in a book and 90s girl punk blasting in my ears.

Page delivers a layered performance as she commands vulnerability and even turns it into a strength. Her acting skill is obvious as she carries the film with her co-star Wilson. The majority of the scenes are dialogue-rich and only contain the two actors and a single house as the set. Both characters are complex, relatable, and completely human. This movie is unique, in that it does not do the work for you; it really makes you think. Hard Candy drove audiences to play out their own scenarios and call their own ideas about morality and nature vs. nurture into question. It was a daring role selection for the young Page.

Page’s character Hayley declares with tears and determination in her eyes, “I am every little girl you ever watched, touched, hurt, screwed, killed.” This role was for survivors, for women, for those that have simply had enough. Although violent justice isn’t something that all survivors necessarily wish for, the film brought attention to the subject of rape culture during a time when its existence was completely ignored. The dialogue confronts victim-blaming and addresses that law enforcement, along with society as whole, don’t do their part to stop terrible things from happening or seeking justice when they do.

The film is multifaceted, but it is definitely a comforting story for every girl in need of a good revenge fantasy.

Ellen Page had a smaller part as Kitty Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand. Although her part is small, Kitty Pryde uses her ability to phase through walls to assist the team of mutants. She is a badass when she faces off against The Juggernaut, a much larger enemy, and manages to be a hero. Hopefully we will be able to see more development in the Kitty Pryde character in X-Men: Days of Future Past, set to be released in summer 2014.

Her biggest role and somewhat of a fame catalyst was Juno MacGuff in Juno. This heartfelt comedy follows a quick-witted high schooler through an unplanned pregnancy. This adult issue is handled well by Juno as she tries to continue to be a teen. She takes the disapproval of her classmates in stride with clever, sarcastic humor. Her parents are accepting and nurturing and help her through the process. Although character Juno makesthe choice to go through with the pregnancy and give the child up for adoption, some people were upset about the message in the film, claiming that it was pro-life. Page responded publicly to these concerns when she told The Guardian, “I am a feminist and I am totally pro-choice, but what’s funny is when you say that people assume that you are pro-abortion. I don’t love abortion but I want women to be able to choose and I don’t want white dudes in an office being able to make laws on things like this. I mean what are we going to do – go back to clothes hangers?” Page’s skills in Juno earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Her performance runs the gamut of emotions from side-stitch humorous to deeply moving.

The next underrated film Page starred in was Whip It; she plays Bliss Cavendar. Whip It is a story about a girl from a small town trying to find her niche and navigating the murky, adolescent waters of self discovery, early romance, friendship, and parental approval. Her mother wants her to devote her time to beauty pageants, and Bliss wants to find herself and hang out with rough, tough roller derby girls.

This film shows women being aggressive, competitive, and joining together over the love of the game and in the spirit of sisterhood.

Roller derby is a sport that allows women an outlet to express their athleticism, excludes men, and takes all kinds. Women of all shapes can find a home in the pack. Not only can any body type find a place, but any body type can be an asset. I’m glad the film was made and that it brought derby into the public eye, but it’s unfortunate that there was little diversity shown in the cast. Whip It is definitely a fun, inspirational girl power flick.

Later, Page played the role of Ariadne in Inception alongside star Leonardo DiCaprio. Page plays the intellectually driven, adventurous architect who is necessary to complete the team that illegally searches the sleeping consciousness in order to obtain information.

Recently Page delivered an incredible speech at a Human Rights Campaign about her struggle as a closeted gay person and her hopes for a better future. Although I do not fully support Human Rights Campaign for many reasons, mostly their lack of dedication to the queer community as a whole, Page gave an important speech worth listening to.

She made me proud of my generation and very sure that she is one of the great actresses of my time. Page said in her speech, “I’m here today because I am gay and because maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility.”

Page explained that she has a sense of responsibility that compels her to be honest and ethical as a person and a public figure. This same integrity will help her to continue her dedication to playing strong, interesting, dimensional characters that speak to young women. She sets her standards high with her roles and looks for stories with uniqueness, depth, and a message. Ellen Page earned her spot as a Great Actress by demonstrating a commitment to progressive roles and speaking well about the issues within her films and the issues that women face. She is an excellent role model and icon as well as a self-declared feminist.

Angelina Rodriguez studies Sociology at Fairmont State University. In her free time she thinks about things and pets puppies.

Are You There, Hollywood? It’s Me, the Average Girl

The expectations for girls in film and television are incredibly mixed. It is naïve to say that girls nowadays are just expected to be a sexy sidekick or afterthought. With more strong female roles popping up in bigger budget films such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, there is the expectation that girls should also be intelligent and incredibly clever (while also being visually pleasing). I love Harry Potter and The Hunger Games for giving women these intense and interesting character traits. However, I remember thinking after I saw/read the series, “Wow, I’m not nearly as clever as Hermione and could never be as brave as Katniss.” There isn’t really a place for the all-around average girl. The first two examples of strong female protagonists that I could think of are in fantasy franchises. Are real female characters really that difficult to come up with? Real female characters are often created with good intentions but tend not to work on a larger scale.

This guest post by Carrie Gambino appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

The expectations for girls in film and television are incredibly mixed. It is naïve to say that girls nowadays are just expected to be a sexy sidekick or afterthought. With more strong female roles popping up in bigger budget films such as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, there is the expectation that girls should also be intelligent and incredibly clever (while also being visually pleasing). I love Harry Potter and The Hunger Games for giving women these intense and interesting character traits. However, I remember thinking after I saw/read the series, “Wow, I’m not nearly as clever as Hermione and could never be as brave as Katniss.” There isn’t really a place for the all-around average girl. The first two examples of strong female protagonists that I could think of are in fantasy franchises. Are real female characters really that difficult to come up with? Real female characters are often created with good intentions but tend not to work on a larger scale.

The underrated movie from 2009, Whip It, had a real-life storyline, but it wasn’t widely complimented for its feminist take-back, only for its poor performance at the box office. The plot surrounds Ellen Page’s high school-aged character who is bored with her small-town life in Texas and wants to branch out. She takes up roller derby against her parents’ wishes, meets a guy blahblahblah …

Except [spoiler alert] she finds out the guy is an asshole and ditches him after he comes crawling back to her. More on this later.

Believable story lines with unique female characters aren’t known to sell at the box office, as shown by Whip It. It had all the makings for a feel-good movie–maybe not an Oscar winner, more like People’s Choice or a sleeper SAG award winner.

For the time being, the most relatable she-roes are on television. 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation show flawed, funny women in professional roles surrounded by a cast of misfits. Tina Fey, as described in her memoir, Bossy Pants, wanted the cast of 30 Rock to be a group of real-looking people, and not just young Hollywood copies. She mentioned that too many attractive people on a show is confusing. I can vouch for Fey on this theory (see: Pretty Little Liars and literally everything on the CW). Too many pretty people in one program loses the show’s integrity and the audience’s ability to relate. Remember the ABC Family original series, Wildfire? You shouldn’t but that’s beside the point. I couldn’t tell the characters apart in the commercials, much less the actual show. All I could gather was that there was a horse and a lot of pretty brunettes on a farm.

30 Rock’s Liz Lemon was in a constant struggle of balancing her personal life and work life. We can all identify with that. I cannot identify with the sitcom aspect of her life, as no one can, but if my life had writers, it would go a lot like Liz Lemon’s—not always passing the Bechdel test and wondering how I could get a guy at a bar to buy me mozzarella sticks instead of another drink.

Yes, 30 Rock and Parks and Recreation are not meant for younger audiences but they serve as worthy role models. Their characters serve as extensions of both Fey and Poehler as well. Amy Poehler is an advocate for young girls’ empowerment as shown by her website, Smart Girls at the Party.

Another expectation that television and movies thrusts upon women is that having a romantic relationship is something that should be a common experience for all girls at a young age. I cannot really even name a movie or television show that doesn’t end in a happy, romantic way for the female lead. Both Liz Lemon and Leslie Knope found love despite their independent natures. I agree that it is much more appealing for audiences to see the characters happy in the end, but does that always mean that a romantic counterpart has to represent that happiness? I can’t help but think that this notion has seeped its way into the life of girls of all ages. At my grandmother’s wake, a distant relative of mine who I had literally just met asked me if I had a boyfriend. That was the follow-up question to “where did you go to school?” Could she not think of anything and figured the only commonplace question for a girl my age was if I had a boyfriend? Oof.

I don’t advise that film do away with romantic storylines because it can be educational as well as entertaining when done correctly. But a balance of the female protagonist’s plot should be heavier than that of the love interest. Drew Barrymore’s Whip It had a healthy balance of female empowerment and romantic sub-plot that didn’t leave the audience dwelling on Landon Pigg’s surprising display of douchebaggery in the film.

Young female protagonists who find “love” within the film and are additionally attractive by mainstream media standards, are more of a hindrance to a young girl’s self-esteem. The inner-monologue of comparisons begins: “If she found a boyfriend by looking like that, I should try to look like her.” It subconsciously shows teens that because the girl was pretty, the romantic relationship aided in the result. I remember watching Pretty in Pink for the first time. I couldn’t believe that Molly Ringwald’s character still ended up with the snobby, rich guy who was ashamed of her a few scenes earlier. Had I been a character in this movie, let’s be honest, I’d be Ducky.

Of course, it must be noted that the lack of women of color in film and television is astonishing and must be changed. Scandal and The Mindy Project are great but shouldn’t be the only ones I can think of. (However, I was pleased when I saw Doc McStuffins while babysitting–it’s the cutest kids show about an African American girl who is a doctor for her toys.)

There are a lot of problematic themes on television and in movies that cause young girls to try to live up to impossible expectations. One can only hope that the next generation knows enough to take a step back and make decisions based on its own set of values. The tag-line for the Whip It is “Be Your Own Hero.” While it’s the moral of the movie, it should also be a message that we hope young girls are taking in.

Carrie Gambino is a recent Mercyhurst University graduate hailing from snowy Buffalo, New York. She spends her time keeping up with politics while living that #postgradlife.

I Love ‘Whip It!,’ But You Probably Shouldn’t: A Roller Derby Athlete Reflects

The cast of Whip It!

This review by Sarah Chamberlain originally appeared at her blog Sarah Chamberlain Does Things and is cross-posted with permission.

Whenever I meet a fellow skater, and they ask me how I got into roller derby, I get a little sheepish.

“I was in college and I saw Whip It!, and I decided I wanted to do that,” I say every time, hoping for a nonjudgmental reaction. Joining the sport post-Whip It! is not the coolest thing for a derby athlete to cop to. Unfortunately for me, my simple derby origin story is true. I walked into a movie theater expecting to see a frothy girl-power flick with my friend, and I did—but I also walked out figuring starter skates into my college budget. For at least the first year and a half of my derby career, until I was well past the point of knowing better, I’d watch Whip It! the night before every bout while I painted my nails in my team colors and sipped on a healthy, nonalcoholic beverage. And while I know that Whip It! Is not the best roller derby film out there, when I sat down a few nights ago to re-watch it for the first time in over a year, I cried at the same parts that always made me weepy. I love Whip It!, but I’m a sucker for it.

The cast of Whip It!

Whip It! Was Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut. Based on a young adult novel by Shauna Cross, the screenplay centers around a seventeen-year-old misfit named Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page), who spends a lot of time screwing up at the beauty pageants her mom (Marcia Gay Harding) makes her do, until she discovers roller derby while on a shopping trip to Austin. Without permission from her mom or her sports-loving dad, Bliss lies about her age, joins the 21+ league, and becomes star jammer Babe Ruthless. Problems arise when she starts dating an indie rocker she meets at a bout, when she clashes with a member of an opposing team, and when her parents find out about her secret double life. While the plot is heavy on teen and sports movie cliches, it’s also generously sprinkled with esoteric cultural references and cameos. Jimmy Fallon has a minor role as Hot Tub Johnny Rockets, a perpetually hungover announcer who just wants to get laid, and Andrew Wilson (the elusive third Wilson brother!) faces off against opposing coach Har Mar Superstar. Many of the extras, skaters, and non-speaking roles are respected real-life derby skaters, including one of my coaches, who plays the deaf Manson Sister #1—hi, Krissy!

It barely broke even at the box office and drew mixed reviews. Mainstream critics were on point about the film’s predictability; however, their reviews lose credibility when they make uneducated comments about derby aspects of the film. For example, one critic questioned Page’s casting in the lead role, saying she seemed too small to play roller derby. Never mind the fact that Bliss is a jammer, a position traditionally (though certainly not always) assigned to small, agile skaters. More interesting criticism came from within the roller derby community. If you ask a skater about Whip It!, she’ll probably complain about the “Play #3” scene, when Wilson’s character fields a strategy combining an elbow and a 180-degree turn. In real-life regulation play, this move is grounds for immediate ejection from a bout.

Not okay.

However, the biggest problem with Whip It! isn’t the punches and elbows—if you watch closely, you’ll notice that Barrymore’s Smashley Simpson is always ejected, anyway—it’s the erasure of certain people and philosophies that make roller derby unique among modern sports. No visibly queer characters are included in the film, which is unrealistic for a sport known for its LGBTQ superstars and being relatively trans-inclusive a few years before anyone had ever heard of Fallon Fox. The grown women who drive both the skating and business aspects of competitive roller derby are weirdly two-dimensional. A big reveal happens when Bliss learns that her team captain, Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), skips afterparties because she needs to be with her young son, and another occurs when league bully Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis) snarls that she’s earned her derby stardom at age thirty-six—but after that, the film lets those characters return to the background. A large part of the criticism Whip It! received from the roller derby community regarded the age of its protagonist. Roller derby is so transformative and special for women who find it in their 20s, 30s and 40s, the criticism goes. Why make teenage Bliss the heroine, when Maggie’s and Maven’s stories are much more compelling?

Juliette Lewis as Iron Maven in Whip It!

This is where I begin to get soft on Whip It! When I started playing roller derby at twenty-one (not quite a grown-ass woman, to be fair), I became a teenager again. My body changed and I was hungry all the time. I worried about what to wear to practice. My new passion worried my mom, and I had to be a little bit sneaky to keep everybody happy. I had to make choices about relationships and priorities that I’d never had to make before. And I could think of nothing but roller derby: after class, I’d sit in my room ogling gear, watching and re-watching league promo videos. In class, I’d doodle pictures of skates and myself wearing a jammer star on my helmet. I felt about roller derby the way I felt about my crushes in middle and high school. Maybe it’s easier to translate that giddy feeling to non-skaters if you just make the main character a typical teenage girl who is still figuring things out.

Don’t give up on film depictions of roller derby if you’re less sentimental than I am. There are better representations of derby in film, but you have to go looking for them. Brutal Beauty, a documentary which follows Portland’s Rose City Rollers through their 2010 home and travel seasons, is a great introduction to the sport and is available for streaming on Netflix.

Trailer for Brutal Beauty

An upcoming documentary that promises to take a different approach to the topic of derby is Erica Tremblay’s The Vagine Regime, which will profile the titular pan-derby LGBTQ all-star team.

Trailer for Vagine Regime

Finally, my current favorite roller derby film is Turner Van Ryn’s dialogue-free short film Skater 26, which follows San Francisco skater Chantilly Mace through the weekend leading up to a high-stakes home bout. It’s breathtaking to watch, and does an incredible job of quietly creating a detailed narrative out of what is still a niche subject. Best of all, it’s available in full on YouTube.

Skater 26 (full movie)

Personal reasons for loving Whip It! aside—I’ve sat in the penalty box on delicate technical fouls enough times to scoff at “Play #3”—I can detect the tense, rehearsed quality of a new skater in many of the actors’ jumps and sprints. Johnny Rockets’s announcing places a little too much emphasis on the fishnet stockings the players wear, a trope that still crops up in mainstream coverage of derby. The underwater sex scene is truly unnecessary–so unnecessary that I won’t link to it. I cringe when Page’s Bliss tells her mom to “stop shoving your psychotic idea of ’50s womanhood down my throat,” because who actually says that?

But right after that, she throws out her hands and says, “I am in love with this.” I believe you, Bliss. I just understand why a lot of us don’t. Fortunately, there are just enough film options out there for the derby-curious.

Sarah Chamberlain (twitter.com/SChamberlainLA) graduated from DePauw University with degrees in creative writing and flute performance. She lives in Los Angeles, where she works in a charter school and skates and coaches for the Angel City Derby Girls. Her work has been featured on The Billfold and LAist.com.

Whip It: Ripley’s Pick

*This guest post also appears at I Will Not Diet.

I finally saw Whip It this weekend, and I have to say that the movie did not disappoint. I had low expectations because some people we trust had told us they didn’t like the film. I always think it’s better to go into the theatre with low expectations than high ones anyway because it makes it easier to enjoy yourself if you’re not sitting there thinking something like, I thought this was going to be the greatest movie ever made, but this dialogue is awful!

Maybe the movie was a little bit silly and predictable (and possibly not an accurate depiction of roller derby life), but, like I said, since I had low expectations, I didn’t even notice.

Because to me it didn’t feel predictable as much as relatable, and it didn’t seem silly as much as youthful and fresh. And the story is stand-up-and-cheer inspiring: teenage Bliss (played with loads of empathy and huge Bambi eyes by Juno‘s Ellen Page) has no agency or direction in life (and nothing that really makes her happy) until she sees two roller derby teams in nearby Austin shove it out one fateful night. After trying out for one team, she develops into a derby prodigy named Babe Ruthless who has as much drive and discipline as an Olympic athlete. In this way, it’s a wonderful girl empowerment story that will join the ranks of films like Girlfight and Bend it Like Beckham before it.

But the reason I’m writing about the film is because I couldn’t help but notice that all of the actors looked so darned real, which I absolutely loved. They were all different shapes and sizes—Ellen Page’s Bliss was an adorable little french fry of a girl while her best friend Pash was a lovely roller coaster of valleys and curves. It was a much needed reprieve from the model thin blonde archetype we normally see on the big screen, especially in movies that are supposedly marketed towards women.

And the girls on the various roller derby teams were similarly diverse—sure, Drew Barrymore was in phenomenal shape, but some of the others—Kristin Wiig and Juliette Lewis included—looked their age and sported imperfect stomachs, thighs, and arms without an ounce of shame or self-consciousness. (It’s hard to be self-conscious, I suppose, when you’re skating around a roller rink wearing a short pleated skirt, a sleeveless, stomach-baring top, and fishnet stockings.)

But it wasn’t just their bodies that looked imperfect—it was also their hair (sometimes stringy or uninspired), their makeup (often greasy and overdone), and their skin (blemished on some occasions and wrinkled on others).

Of course, I credit the female director, Drew Barrymore, with keeping these women from looking artificial and plastic while still allowing them to look attractive and even hot. It makes perfect sense to me that it was Barrymore—an actress who’s gone through a variety of looks and dress sizes over the years—who felt comfortable letting these women look so true-to-life. In that way, the direction feels both emotionally and physically honest. And the movie is clearly better for it.

For when Babe Ruthless and her cohorts take to the rink, it’s incredibly easy for those of us sitting in the audience to cheer for them because they look a lot more like us than most of the women we see staring back at us from that giant movie screen—more authentic than artificial, more lifelike than fantasy, more likeable than distasteful.

So I applaud Barrymore and her talented crew of actresses for baring not only their wonderfully diverse bodies but also their middle-aged and appealingly flawed faces.

And I encourage all of you to support Barrymore—and all female directors by extension—by taking your daughters and nieces to see this film (either now while it’s still in the theatre or later on DVD). After all, if we don’t support women who give us what we want, we have only ourselves to blame.

Molly McCaffrey teaches English and creative writing at Western Kentucky University. Her blog, I Will Not Diet, chronicles her effort to lose weight without unhealthy dieting and encourages readers to reject the notion that curvy women are not attractive. She has been nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize, and her work has appeared in Vestal Review, Word Salad, Cairn, Gravity Hill, Antipodes, Quirk, XX Eccentric: Stories about the Eccentricities of Women, and Gilmore Girls and the Politics of Identity.