Whoopi Goldberg – Bitch Flicks

Captain Uhura Snub: The Politics of Ava DuVernay’s Oscar

It is appropriate, when celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., to recall Dr. King’s words to Nichelle Nichols, as she considered quitting ‘Star Trek’ in frustration at the limitations of her role: “You can’t leave!… For the first time on television, we are being seen as we should be seen every day. As intelligent, quality, beautiful people … who can go into space.” Dr. King’s words show that he clearly understood the value of a token image, as a symbol, a precedent and a possibility model for future progress.

Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

After seeing Selma, I’ve finally stopped yelling “Ava DuVernay was robbed! Robbed, I tell you!” long enough to jot down some thoughts. Let’s be clear: Ava DuVernay was robbed because her work on Selma turns familiar history into a gripping story, humanizes Martin Luther King Jr. while honoring his legacy, and captures the sweep of history without sacrificing the resonance of individual lives. It was inspirational history, the kind the Oscars typically reward, executed with supreme skill. Though her representation of L.B.J. was criticized, DuVernay’s characterization accurately reflected his wider shift from obstructing to supporting civil rights, while taking artistic liberties with the timeline of that shift. If Ron Howard could win Best Director for the blatantly inaccurate A Beautiful Mind, DuVernay was obviously due a nomination for Selma. Minimum.

It is because DuVernay’s work was brilliant, beyond her race and gender, that we must ask why a Black woman was snubbed. Did 12 Years A Slave‘s triumph at the 2014 Oscars influence the snubbing of Selma‘s director and actors? Recall Kathryn Bigelow’s win for Best Director in 2010. The moment Barbra Streisand stepped out to present the award, it was clear Bigelow’s name would be called. Though Bigelow’s acceptance speech never referenced being the first woman to win, Streisand’s presence shrieked, “It was time we gave it to a woman,” even as the hypermasculine Hurt Locker hardly challenged the Academy’s preference for male stories. Or recall 2001, when Denzel Washington and Halle Berry made their historic wins at the same ceremony as Sidney Poitier’s lifetime achievement award, a synchronicity that shrieked “It was time we gave it to Black performers,” threatening to overshadow Washington and Berry’s individual excellence. The Academy is not exactly subtle in framing minority wins as token gestures. If Bigelow resisted the symbolism of her win, Berry embraced it, using her speech to honor Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox, and Oprah Winfrey. Tokenism is uncomfortable, but it’s still visibility. Tokens are symbols, precedents and possibility models (as Laverne Cox might put it). If we read Oscars partly as tokens, the question arises: was Ava DuVernay snubbed because, as a Black woman, the Oscars of Steve McQueen and Kathryn Bigelow collectively represented her category?

The African American feminist Ana Julia Cooper wrote “Women versus the Indian” in 1891, criticizing white suffragettes who viewed women as a separate category, in competition with racial minorities for their rights (see also Sojourner Truth’s “Ar’nt I a Woman?”). Those who mentally isolate categories of oppression seek to maximize mainstream approval in their choice of spokesperson: the straight man of color for racial justice; the white, cis woman for feminism; the white, straight-acting gay man for LGBT causes. Each individual choice of “representative” collectively upholds the overall superiority of the straight, white male perspective (add wealthy, educated, able-bodied etc.). Because this pattern channels subversive impulses into a collective reinforcement of dominant ideology, dominant culture rewards it. One symptom is the repeated use of white women and Black men to collectively represent Black women – “the Captain Uhura snub.”

Not pictured: Captains Sisko and Janeway

It is appropriate, when celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., to recall Dr. King’s words to Nichelle Nichols, as she considered quitting Star Trek in frustration at the limitations of her role: “You can’t leave!… For the first time on television, we are being seen as we should be seen every day. As intelligent, quality, beautiful people … who can go into space.” Dr. King’s words show that he clearly understood the value of a token image, as a symbol, a precedent and a possibility model for future progress.

Nichelle Nichols’ Lieutenant Nyota Uhura should be an icon to every woman who is underemployed and unappreciated at work. Her mouth said, “Klingons on line one, Captain,” but her eyes said, “I should be running this place.” Within the limitations of her role, representing both token Black lieutenant and token woman, and thereby freeing a seat for another white guy, Nichols took every opportunity to demonstrate Uhura’s intelligence, charisma, courage and sex appeal. When allowed to banter with Spock, in scenes that inspired their romantic relationship in JJ Abrams’ reboot, Uhura revealed herself to be Spock’s respected intellectual equal, with the skills to man the helm, navigation and science station if needed. In combat with Mirror!Sulu, she revealed potential as an action heroine, anticipating Pam Grier (whose groundbreaking stardom in blaxploitation inspired a trend of white action heroines, instead of mainstream opportunities for Pam Grier). Uhura was cool under pressure and commanding. Though the original Star Trek‘s “Turnabout Intruder” episode claimed that women were not emotionally capable of captaincy, Uhura disproved that claim on the animated (and female-authored) “The Lorelei Signal.”

In time, society progressed and its vision of the future evolved. Dr. King’s dream of television normalizing inspirational Black leadership came true for the Trekverse, when Captain Ben Sisko of Deep Space Nine took command, combining professional skill with hands-on fathering. The aspirations of feminists paid off when Kate Mulgrew’s swashbuckling Janeway helmed Voyager. But while evolution in Star Trek‘s racial and feminist politics produced a few token promotions of Uhura’s rank, it left her marginalized supporting role unchanged. Zoe Saldana’s Uhura occupies roughly the same position in Star Trek reboots as Nichelle Nichols did on the original show. Black women can be judges, police chiefs, or politicians on our screens, at statistically disproportionate rates, but only in tokenist supporting roles that serve to discredit the reality of discrimination. When the time comes for diversity among aspirational heroes, those heroes become white women and Black men. That, in a nutshell, is the Captain Uhura snub, the intersectional finger trap of representation politics. Nichols herself aged regally and with no diminishing of spirit in the later Star Trek films, but Sisko and Janeway substitute for the unique icon that Nichols’ Captain Uhura could have been, not only as a Black woman but as a woman who paid her dues in limited and sexualized roles before showing what she was capable of. Voyager drew a sharp line between the asexual (or rather, not overtly sexualized) competence of Janeway and the spandex-clad sex-bot Seven of Nine. Captain Uhura would have straddled that line, challenging the assumed incompatibility of being a sexual object with being an aspirational hero.

Not pictured: Captain Marvel and Black Panther

Ororo Munroe, a.k.a. Storm, is an icon. As a member of the X-Men, she fights for the rights of the mutant minority, against those who fear what they cannot understand. As an ally (and sometime wife) of Black Panther, she defends the sovereignty of Wakanda against colonial forces. Oh, and she also flies, bends the elements to her will and shoots lightning. 20th Century Fox owns the rights to X-Men, so Marvel Studios cannot be directly blamed for scheduling Captain Marvel and Black Panther to headline instead of Ororo (though they can easily be blamed for taking a decade to produce diverse superhero films). But upcoming plans to film starring vehicles for Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel have put female superheroes on the agenda. Why hasn’t this prompted 20th Century Fox to greenlight a solo outing for Wind-rider Storm, despite the rich source material of Greg Pak’s popular solo comics and the fact that the woman shoots lightning? Storm’s role in Bryan Singer’s X-Men franchise screamed “Lieutenant Uhura,” providing visible diversity while being constantly marginalized by the plot. Pak has the last word: “Storm’s the embodiment of fierce, raw power – and deep abiding empathy. She’s the most powerful woman in the Marvel Universe — incredibly exciting and elemental — even dangerous.” Movie, please.

Not pictured: Richard Pryor and Joan Rivers

In an earlier post, I discussed evidence for regarding Loretta Mary Aiken, better known as Moms Mabley, as the pioneer of modern stand-up comedy. Evolving from vaudeville monologues, Jackie Mabley was nicknamed “Moms” because of her nurturing attitude to other performers. Her tackling of taboo topics such as race, gender, sexual double standards, poverty, and substance abuse, defined the truth-telling role we associate with the art of stand-up today. Moms herself said that everyone stole from her apart from Redd Foxx, and she was older than Redd, too.

In particular, Richard Pryor and Joan Rivers, many decades younger than Mabley, both recognized her as a major influence. In pop culture, Pryor is often hailed as the “Godfather of Comedy.” The tendency of Black comedians to recognize Pryor as the most significant pioneer of Black comedy comes at the expense of Pryor’s own acknowledged debt to Mabley, as does the tendency of feminists to cite Joan Rivers as the groundbreaking pioneer of female stand-up. Moms is often totally omitted from lists of top stand-ups, despite her claim to being the original. These choices of “representative” diminish the unique contribution of Moms Mabley, and the visibility of Black women as innovators of world culture.

Not pictured: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton

As we prepare for Barack Obama to step down from the U.S. presidency, all indicators point to the next Democratic nominee being a white woman, with Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren as the frontrunners. When we celebrate womankind finally getting their shot at global leadership (Angela Merkel aside), let us take a moment to remember the candidacy of Shirley Chisholm (not to mention that Ana Julia Cooper should clearly have been running the country in the 1890s).

A founding member of the 1971 National Women’s Political Caucus, as well as the first Black congresswoman, Chisholm actively mentored an all-female staff, took political stands in favor of reproductive rights and against the Vietnam war, and fought against social exclusion on the basis of class, race and gender. Her political philosophy may be summarized by her 1972 presidential campaign slogan: “Unbought and Unbossed.” She was the first woman to win delegates for a major party nomination and the first Black candidate to run on a major party ticket. Chisholm’s voting record shows exceptional integrity and political courage, matched by the intelligence and determination to rise from a background of poverty and intersectional discriminations. Chisholm was an exemplary candidate. The fact that her career trajectory – breaking boundaries for both women and Black candidates before being snubbed for leadership – mirrors a fictional Star Trek character, hints at the power of the collective imagination to shape reality.

Change will come. After establishing her reputation with Grey’s Anatomy, which introduced a dynamic, multiracial cast behind the commercial appeal of white protagonists, Meredith Grey and Dr. McDreamy, Shonda Rhimes has created compelling, multi-faceted Black heroines (or antiheroines) who dominate Scandal and How To Get Away With Murder. Whoopi Goldberg has directed a documentary on Moms Mabley, while Shola Lynch directed one about Shirley Chisholm’s presidential bid. Last year, directors Amma Asante and Gina Prince-Bythewood offered Gugu Mbatha-Raw starring roles as fully realized protagonists. But these are all examples of Black women directors, fighting alone for better screen representations. Yes, Ava DuVernay has demonstrated talent and ambition with Selma that cannot be destroyed by a mere Oscar snub. Yes, she will probably continue to make great films until her achievements are officially recognized (am I the only one rooting for a biopic of Queen Nzinga starring Lupita Nyong’o?). But it’s high time that the “progressive” mainstream, from the Academy to Star Trek to white feminist commentators, started opening doors without waiting for them to be beaten down.

"Open a hailing frequency, Mr. Kirk" — “Open a hailing frequency, Mr. Kirk”

Brigit McCone reckons Ranavalona of Madagascar should be the next epic Shonda Rhimes antiheroine. She writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and shouting at the television on Oscar night.

The Fantasy of Mammy, the Truth of Patsey

However, I want to challenge that particular narrative: that nothing has changed. If we juxtapose McDaniel’s Mammy alongside Nyong’o’s Patsey, we might realize that, apart from being slaves, their characters are nothing alike. Indeed, from a historical and cinematic context, something significant has changed. Mammy is the mask that pro-slavery apologists used to erase the existence of the Patseys in slavery. It is remarkable that it took 75 years to remove that mask from depictions of cinematic slavery.

This guest post by Janell Hobson previously appeared at the Ms. Blog and is cross-posted with permission.

It was not lost on some that, 75 years after Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, the beautiful, poised, and talented Lupita Nyong’o would become the sixth black woman to win that same Oscar—and for playing the same type of role, a slave.

If we count Halle Berry’s Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role, that brings the full count of African American women Oscar winners to seven. And when we look at the types of portrayals that won these awards—McDaniel as “Mammy,” Whoopi Goldberg as a con-artist spiritual adviser, Halle Berry as an oversexed and imbalanced grieving widow and mother, Jennifer Hudson as a sassy yet rejected lover singing with much attitude, Monique as a deranged abusive welfare mother, Octavia Spencer as a sassy yet abused maid, and now Lupita Nyong’o as a raped, whipped and victimized slave—it’s very easy to imagine that our subservience as black women (or even our hysteria as women in general; just look at the roles that white actresses often win for) is what is recognizable and later celebrated. In short, such recognition might convince us that nothing has changed.

However, I want to challenge that particular narrative: that nothing has changed. If we juxtapose McDaniel’s Mammy alongside Nyong’o’s Patsey, we might realize that, apart from being slaves, their characters are nothing alike. Indeed, from a historical and cinematic context, something significant has changed. Mammy is the mask that pro-slavery apologists used to erase the existence of the Patseys in slavery. It is remarkable that it took 75 years to remove that mask from depictions of cinematic slavery.

There are other changes that we cannot overlook: The fact that McDaniel was forced to sit in the back row the night of the Oscars ceremony, segregated from the rest of her white cast members in the movie Gone with the Wind, contrasts with Nyong’o sitting up front with all the other A-list stars. There is also the fact that McDaniel and other black actors in the Negro Actors Guild fought to remove the n-word from the script of Gone with the Wind, as well as other offensive scenes of racial degradation (shoe-shining her master’s shoes on her knees, or having Butterfly McQueen’s Prissy eating watermelon or being slapped onscreen by Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara). I sometimes wonder: Had the Negro Actors Guild not intervened and those elements remained in the film, would we be able to celebrate this classic without embarrassment? Thanks to the efforts of McDaniel, she infused a long-standing stereotype of Mammy with some complicated humor, and she also helped make Gone with the Wind respectable for later generations.

Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel in Gone with the Wind — Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel in *Gone with the Wind*

But this is 2014, and we no longer play to respectability politics. The Civil Rights generation exposed the harsh realities of slavery’s history, with its legacy of racism and white supremacy, through our own felt experiences; the hip-hop generation embraced and poked holes in the n-word with a vengeance; and the millennial generation rightly condemns the nostalgic lies that movies like Birth of a Nation and Gone with the Wind have fostered about slavery. Those lies are hard to erase, since the big, expansive movie screen, with its elaborate montage in Birth and dreamy technicolor in Wind, solidified these myths. Against these grand narratives, the marginal and enslaved black woman’s story is often silenced.

It took a no-holds-barred black filmmaker like Steve McQueen to not only face the harshness of slavery—as told in Solomon Northup’s 1853 narrative, 12 Years a Slave—but to paint its cruelty in sharp colors, to sparingly use sound to build up dread or emotional release and especially to cast a dark-skinned actress such as Nyong’o who could interject sexuality and emotional depth to a character who might otherwise have been reduced to symbolic black woman victimhood. Instead, she emerged as the emotional center in one of the few slave movies that fully humanizes the slave story.

Lupita Nyong'o in 12 Years a Slave — Lupita Nyong’o in *12 Years a Slave*

Which is why the journey from Mammy to Patsey is a historic big deal. The image of Mammy was deliberately designed by pro-slavery advocates to deny the existence of slave rapes. Her dark skin (now celebrated thanks to Nyong’o’s natural beauty) was loudly negated as an aesthetic ideal. Her big and shapeless body created in the white imagination an image of safety, in which racial mixing did not occur except in the realm of loyal servitude and fierce protectionism. Moreover, her unfeminine, aggressive style made it difficult to view her as victimized by the slave system (imagine how Mammy would look in a scene with Michael Fassbender’s terrifying Edwin Epps).

Mammy was literally the visual opposition to Scarlett O’Hara, someone confined to slavery and sidekick status to the white heroine. Contrast such a pairing with Patsey and Mistress Epps (portrayed icily by Sarah Paulson), two women confined to the same man while one is given the privilege of her class position as wife and the power of whiteness to subjugate Patsey to cruelty and violence—an added insult to the injury of sexual violence that Patsey must endure from her master.

12 Years a Slave removes the masks from Gone with the Wind, and we recognize this through the very different depictions of Mammy and Patsey. As we bask in the afterglow of Lupita Nyong’o’s win—the climax to a whirlwind awards season in which we witnessed Nyongo’s transformation “up from slavery” to red-carpet fashion icon and role model for darker-skinned women everywhere—her Oscar acceptance speech said it best:

“It does not escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else’s, and so I salute the spirit of Patsey.”

How can we, like Nyong’o, salute the spirit of Patsey? It only took 75 years for us to even catch a glimpse into the truth of her life. I would call that cinematic progress, and it’s merely the tip of the iceberg of painful history that technicolor tried to distort and which we can now watch with a bit more realism.

Janell Hobson is an associate professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York. She is the author of Body as Evidence: Mediating Race, Globalizing Gender (SUNY Press, 2012) and Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture (Routledge, 2005), and a frequent contributor to Ms.

‘Moms Mabley’ and The Hard Work of Show Business

People who don’t work in the arts don’t realize how much work goes into it. Writers write hundreds of pages before any reader (who isn’t a blood relative) loves their work. Musicians practice for countless hours and write a lot of shitty songs before they compose a tune that makes someone want to sing along. Moms Mabley, the Black, queer woman comedian born in 1894 in the Jim Crow south, ran away at age 14 to become a performer and spent much of the next 66 years onstage, performing and polishing her own comedy routines. Her long experience may be why her work, nearly 40 years after her death, still elicits laughs.

Whoopi Goldberg Presents Moms Mabley (original title, Moms Mabley: I Got Somethin’ to Tell You) shown on HBO and also as part of the Athena Film Festival, is a remembrance of Mabley, who died in 1975 (at the age of 81). Moms (“Jackie” was the original first name she chose to perform under) was popular, at one time making $10,000 a week (in mid-20th century dollars) on the chitlin’ circuit and for years putting on five shows a day(!) at The Apollo in Harlem (she and the other performers would have their barbecues in The Apollo’s courtyard between sets). During the 60s and early 70s she released 18 comedy albums (albums were the equivalent of cable television specials for comedians in those days). Unlike Redd Foxx, another African American comedian who experienced some of the same strictures of segregation-era America (and who also put out a lot of popular comedy albums), Mabley never got her own late-in-life television show, so her name if largely forgotten–undoubtedly the reason Whoopi Goldberg’s name became part of the film’s title.

The project seems to be a labor of love for Goldberg, who, before writing and performing in her own one-woman show (the vehicle which first brought her to prominence in the 80s) performed a one-woman show as Mabley, working from Mabley’s own material. Goldberg directed the documentary as well as narrating it. This film is only the second directing credit in Goldberg’s long career and her inexperience shows. Goldberg tells us early on that we don’t know much about Mabley’s early life, but Mabley’s Wikipedia entry contains more coherent information than is in this disjointed documentary.

The reason to see the film is not for the interviews with bleary-eyed Famous People Who Saw Mabley Perform Live or even the interviews with comedians (including Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, Joan Rivers and Kathy Griffin) whose work she influenced, but to see Mabley’s work itself. She always played an old woman onstage, even when she was young, with the costume of a brightly patterned housedress, equally colorful, Gilligan-style bucket hat and kneesocks, ugly, big, flat shoes (almost like a clown’s) and for the crowning touch she removed her dentures, so as Eddie Murphy states she “was like someone in your family.” She (like other Black performers) wasn’t allowed to appear on television in variety, awards or talk shows until the 60s and 70s–when she had become old in real life, but was still a vital performer. The film also plays routines from her albums, delivered by a Flash-animated Moms.

For those who think queer identity began at Stonewall, or was for white people only, we see old black and white photos of Mabley in the men’s clothing she wore offstage. A dancer who shared a dressing room with Mabley at the old Apollo confirms that Mabley surrounded herself with young women, unlike her onstage persona who often talked about her preference for “young men.” The dancer says that in those days she didn’t think of Mabley as “gay” or “lesbian” but as “Mr. Moms.”

We see clips of Mabley on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and on Merv Griffin: she seems like she would be a better–and funnier–guest than most of the people we see on talk show couches today. As the documentary points out, performers who came from a vaudeville background (as Mabley did) had to know how to dance and sing as well as be funny. We see her in a ridiculously campy Playboy television special with centerfold models and their sideburned dates in formal wear, stiffly swaying to the music as she sings (in her usual onstage costume) a sincere version of “Abraham, Martin and John” (as is pointed out in the film, she actually knew two of the dead men she was singing about). That cover of the song originally sung by Dion became a top 40 hit making her the oldest person (she was then in her 70s) to be on the charts.

We also see clips from her last movie Amazing Grace (she had made her debut in 1933, in The Emperor Jones which starred Paul Robeson), but the film does not seem like the best use for her talents. This documentary made me wish she had done a concert film to preserve her work, the way Richard Pryor (who also counted her as one of his influences) was able to preserve his own routines.

Still we can laugh at the audio of her performances even as the animated Moms, like the white comics’ impressions of her in interviews, sometimes skates dangerously close to stereotype. What may be most remarkable about Mabley’s career is: even as she was playing a loudly dressed, toothless character, her work never descended into self-hatred, though for much of her career, women comedians, like Phyllis Diller, made themselves the butt of every joke, and racist images of Black people were what was “popular” in comedy. In the 50s before Mabley was allowed on television–even though she had an established career by then–Amos and Andy was a huge hit. Her influence also stretches beyond those who name her as one. As she said herself, “Every comedian has stolen from me except for Jack Benny. He was an original. The same for Redd Foxx. He’s a born comedian.”

We see a clip of her toward the end of her life at The Grammys co-presenting with a very young Kris Kristofferson and she seems just what that moribund show could use right now. Breaking up the inane cue-card patter, she takes out her teeth (on camera) and she and Kristofferson give each other a loud kiss on the lips.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4maAWskn1A” autohide=”0″]

___________________________________________________

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

Disabilities Week: Crazy Bitches Versus Indulgent Little Girls: The Binary of Mad Women in ‘Girl, Interrupted’

Movie poster for Girl, Interrupted

This is a guest review by Sarah Domet.

At first glance, Girl, Interrupted appears to be Hollywood’s version of feminist nirvana. It’s a veritable oasis in an industry where only 23% of speaking roles belong to women, an industry that tends to only depict women as supporting characters for the ever-important leading men. This 1999 film adaptation of Susanna Kaysen’s memoir of the same title features a strong core cast of women, some of whom went on to bigger stardom in the aftermath of the commercial success of the film.

Set to the backdrop of the late 1960s, Girl, Interrupted chronicles a fictionalized Susanna’s (Winona Ryder) year-long stint in the woman’s ward at Claymore, a private mental institution, after her attempted suicide and subsequent “break” with reality. Susanna is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a diagnosis she reluctantly accepts and from which she eventually “recovers.” Throughout the year, Susanna comes face-to-face with the “real” crazies in the form of sociopathic Lisa (Angelia Jolie), pathologically lying Georgina (Clea DuVall), schizophrenic Polly (Elizabeth Moss), and cocktail-of-issues Daisy (Brittany Murphy) who grapples with eating disorders, OCD, and a history of sexual abuse. The film suggests, sometimes overtly, that Susanna, by comparison to her ward-mates, isn’t doing so badly. In fact, Nurse Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg), in one of the most emotionally resonant scenes of the film, declares Susanna is “not crazy” but instead “a lazy, self-indulgent little girl who is driving herself crazy.” At this point, viewers are likely nodding their heads. Certainly, we’ve all met that girl. Or maybe we are that girl.

Winona Ryder as Susanna Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted

Thankfully, Girl, Interrupted decidedly positions itself as not a love story. In fact, all of Susanna’s romantic interests are purely sexual, involving little emotion, a ”symptom” that gets her labeled as a borderline in the first place. Instead, Girl, Interrupted explores a young woman’s coming of age as she struggles in an uncertain world, meditates upon what it really means to be “mentally ill,” and, ultimately, discovers her sense of self. The equation is simple: the almost all-female cast + a story of female self-discovery = a feminist victory in a male-dominated Hollywood, right?

Well, yes and no.

At its core, Girl, Interrupted strives to be a feminist film. However, I find the film’s representations of “mad women” problematic, particularly the ways in which mental illness becomes so closely linked with eroticized otherness. And here is where the film’s deep ambivalence comes into play: it attempts to dispel the myth of what it means to be a mentally ill woman, while at the same time reinforcing cultural stereotypes that portray mentally ill women as hypersexual, dangerous, amoral, or inherently unfeminine. In the end, Girl, Interrupted posits mental illness as a choice from which one, like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, can always return.

As Susanna checks into Claymore, she catches a glimpse of her doctor’s case notes that indicate her “promiscuous” tendencies as one symptom of her ailment. Yes, she had an affair with a married man, and, yes, she slept with the brother of one of her classmates; she loves neither of these men. At one point Susanna notes, “What kind of sex isn’t casual?” Certainly, her disavowal of love as a necessary component of sex is a feminist gesture. In the free-loving 60s, that sweeping diagnosis—promiscuity—encompassed nearly every rally, march, or peace protest in America, or at least modern-day viewers might suspect from the comfort of our viewing couches.

The women of Girl, Interrupted

Yet, her “promiscuity” continues, even at Claymore where Susanna engages in a physical relationship with a doting orderly. When challenged on this point by her therapist, Susanna becomes indignant, and rightly so. She argues, “How many guys would a girl have to sleep with to be considered promiscuous? Three, four, ten? How many girls would a guy have to sleep with? Fifteen? Forty? A hundred and nine?” Feminists across America high five each other.

At several junctures, such as this one, Girl, Interrupted positions itself firmly as a feminist film, shattering assumptions that there exists one “proper” behavior for women. We sympathize with Susanna and with her plight against The Man, against a gendered, cultural understanding of what is and is not appropriate sexual behavior for a young woman. In many ways, her “illness” manifests itself in the typical American teenage coming-of-age way. Susanna asks herself questions we all have asked, at one time or another: Where do I fit in? Who am I? What do I value?

Throughout the film, Susanna’s character works to unravel stereotypes about what it means to be a woman with a mental illness: she’s beautiful; she’s smart; she’s never threatening. She’s much like any other young woman as we watch her negotiate friendships, write in her journal, sneak out at night with her friends, smoke cigarettes, and, generally, protest authority. In most ways, she’s an ordinary girl, just like you might find on the “outside.” The viewer begins to question if Susanna even really needs to be at Claymore in the first place.

Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) and Nurse Valerie (Whoopi Goldberg)

Yet, if Girl, Interrupted creates a binary with Susanna on one side, dismantling preconceived notions about mental illness and female sexuality, on the other side lies Lisa, who reinforces cultural narratives about “crazy bitches.” Let’s face it: Lisa is the real villain of the movie, a sociopath with no real moral compass, a young woman who is manipulative and unnervingly magnetic all at once. The moment she enters the film, returning from one of her many attempted escapes, we’re to understand that she’s a threat. She pins Susanna in the corner of her room shouting at her, demanding to know where her friend Jamie had gone, until she is physically restrained.

However, like many “crazy bitches” of cinema (Nina Sayers in Black Swan, Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction) she exudes sexuality and charisma, deepened only by her sense of danger. As Susanna and Lisa spend time together, their growing friendship feels more like a courtship. Susanna herself can’t help but be drawn in by those pouty lips, her playfulness, her rabble rousing and bravado. At one point, as Susanna and Lisa are on the lam from Claymore, the two share a kiss. The moment is innocent enough, but the implications become clear. Lisa represents the eroticized other, the taboo, the forbidden, dark and amoral mad woman.

Angelina Jolie in her Oscar-winning role as Lisa in Girl, Interrupted

This stereotype becomes clearer a few moments later, in a pivotal scene of the film, when Lisa and Susanna crash at the apartment of Daisy, who has been newly released from Claymore. Susanna sits mute as Lisa taunts Daisy, exposing her deepest vulnerabilities. Lisa points out the cuts on Daisy’s arm, accuses Daisy of enjoying the sexual abuses of her father: “Everyone knows your father fucks you, what they don’t know is that you like it.” Lisa speaks the unspeakable, and Susanna watches doe-eyed, stunned at Lisa’s capacity for cruelty. The next morning, upon witnessing Daisy’s limp and lifeless body—she hanged herself—Lisa calls her an idiot, then picks her pocket for cash. Lisa, Susanna finally learns, has no capacity for emotion, no nurturing feelings at all. If anything makes her less than human—less than woman—it is this fact.

This scene in the movie, arguably the most important one, pits Lisa and Susanna against each other. But it also pits “good” against “evil,” and “feminine” against “unfeminine,” which is tied up in representations of mental illness. Susanna is faced with a choice: continue life with Lisa, a life that will certainly lead to chaos and casual sex and countercultural adventures, or return to Claymore to truly invest in her recovery. It’s a choice.

Brittany Murphy as Daisy in Girl, Interrupted

But is mental illness always a choice? And if so, between what and what?

Here’s a statistic: nearly 1 in 5 Americans suffers from mental illness of some sort, and a majority of these cases are women. This alarming number becomes even more important when recognizing that the film industry plays an important role in shaping public or cultural perception. In light of this, I wonder how detrimental a film such as Girl, Interrupted might be when questioning the legitimacy of mental illness and perpetuating stereotypes of those who suffer from these invisible diseases. Susanna’s renewed commitment to get better situates itself as a choice, and not necessarily one between health and illness or between one treatment and another. Instead, Susanna’s choice is oddly contingent upon morality, what’s right and wrong. Will she choose to return to Claymore? Or will she tread the darker path, represented by the villainous Lisa?

Which brings us back to Nurse Valerie’s diagnoses that Susanna is “not crazy” but, instead, “a lazy, self-indulgent little girl who is driving herself crazy.” The idea that Susanna is not really sick—that her invisible illness is a complete manifestation of her imagination or her culture—may be true. But it may be equally true that she, and young girls like her, are not just lazy and self-indulgent. That no amount of “trying harder” or “choosing to be well” necessarily helps, without the proper intervention. The movie wants to suggest that, yes, Susanna is a little confused, uncertain, depressed, even, but at least she doesn’t burn her face, or hide chicken bones under her bed, or require the padded room for her outbursts. At least she’s not crazy-crazy. Not like “them.” Girl, Interrupted paints a world where mental illness is not an invisible illness. Invisibility means conformity means health, and only when one adapts more culturally-sanctioned “moral” or “feminine” behavior will she be considered well again.

Susanna (Winona Ryder) and Lisa (Angelina Jolie) share a kiss

I wonder, too, why films depicting men with mental illness rarely cast their subjects in the same light. Films like A Beautiful Mind, or One Flew Over the Cuckcoo’s Nest, for example, present their flawed heroes as just that: heroes. Sure, these flawed fellows need treatment, but they are brilliant, misunderstood, complicated men. They are sympathetic precisely because of their mental states, not despite them. Viewers are never lead to question the sexuality, morality, or masculinity of these leading men. Moreover, films such as these don’t portray mental illness as a choice or a course of action, but as a circumstance. Hollywood afflicts male protagonists with insanity as a cross to bear, which makes them all the more heroic.

Susanna’s heroism, however, comes distinctly from her choice to overcome her diagnosis. To be fair, in real life, choice does play a legitimate aspect in the treatment of diseases. One can choose to be in treatment, or not to be. However, Susanna doesn’t simply learn to live with her personality disorder, she defeats it entirely. Toward the end of the film, the TV in Claymore’s living room flashes a scene from The Wizard of Oz as Glenda the Good Witch says, “You’ve always had the power to go back home.” Here, the film’s message reveals itself clearly: the power of recovery has always been with Susanna.

Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder in Girl, Interrupted

Susanna’s declared “recovered” by her doctors and ultimately joins the ranks of the “outside” world where she now belongs. It’s fitting that her penultimate scene at Claymore shows her applying make-up to look more suitably feminine. Her final act at Claymore is to polish the nails of a now drugged and restrained Lisa. “I’m not really dead,” Lisa says—and so the movie leaves us with a glimmer of hope that she, too, can choose to go home. If only all women could be cured of mental illnesses by clicking their heels together three times, painting on some Cotton Candy No. 7—and believing.

Viewers should be happy for Susanna, and I think most root for her. I know I do. But even as she’s being driven away from Claymore in the final scene, I wonder if she, herself, downplays the magnitude of the year she’s just spent under professional care. Perhaps she’s doing this because in the “outside” world, it’s still not okay to talk about such things or to admit to a mental illness without suffering stigmatization, or sideway glances, or nervous, sympathetic looks.

Lisa (Angelina Jolie) confronts Susanna (Winona Ryder) on her first day at Claymore

She notes, “Being crazy isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me, amplified.” That’s a nice thought. Mental illness is a reality for many, a part of their very composition, what makes many individuals unique, or creative, or sensitive. But the problem in the film—just like the problem in our real world, our post-Adam Lanza world—is that we must find ways to have conversations about mental illness, and not just within the confines of hospitals or therapy rooms. In real life. In the “outside” world. Susanna calls herself a “girl, interrupted,” and not a girl with a history of mental illness. What might the need for this euphemism say about the world that she’s rejoining? If 20% of Americans suffer from mental illness, a majority of these women, this issue is not just a cultural problem, but a feminist one.

Sarah Domet is the author of 90 Days to Your Novel. She writes fiction and nonfiction and currently teaches at Georgia Southern University.

Travel Films Week: ‘How Stella Got Her Groove Back’

How Stella Got Her Groove Back film poster.

Written by Janyce Denise Glasper

How Stella Got Her Groove Back is based on Terry McMillan’s bestselling novel of the same name and stars two wonderful actresses as best friends–Academy Award nominated Angela Bassett playing strong, determined Stella and Academy Award winning Whoopi Goldberg as hilarious, sassy Delilah. Actor Taye Diggs is Winston, Stella’s Jamaican “groove.”

Hard-working, single mother Stella is devoted to work and parenthood, but just four minutes into the film, her two sisters claim to know what’s best for her.

“You need a husband and your son needs a father,” blasts Angela, Stella’s married and pregnant sister.

“Had him, got rid of him, so glad I did,” Stella retorts.

While family is obsessed with this absurd logic that men are the Holy Grail to women, it’s fun spirited Delilah that demands Stella and she take a nice little getaway to scenic Jamaica together–Stella’s own original idea.

Delilah (Whoopi Goldberg) and Stella (Angela Bassett) checking out the Jamaican view.

“You haven’t been anywhere since I was a natural blonde!” Delilah screams over the phone. One cannot help but applaud Goldberg’s humorous quips of persuasion, especially seeing as she and Bassett have great chemistry as female comrades. It’s an addictive pleasure to see African American women engaged in these quintessential friendships onscreen and no grand schemes of bitterness, jealousy, and hatred so typically written.

Amongst beautiful, luscious, tropical settings where the twosome have their adventure, Stella meets the much younger Winston and the two engage in a steamy affair.

But during all the drama, Delilah is undergoing a private health crisis and Stella learns of it very late.

Delilah and Stella’s hospital scenes are terms of bittersweet endearment and still make eyes water, for this sisterhood bond is perhaps remarkably closer than the biological glue between Stella and her two siblings. When Stella lays beside Delilah in the white bed and they sing in raspy voices laced with sorrow, both of their hearts are visibly breaking onscreen. Cancer has torn them asunder, ripped the cords of one of the film’s most genuine core relationships and has ultimately broken Stella.

She lost her best friend.

Winston (Taye Diggs) is supposedly Stella’s (Angela Bassett) “groove.”

The ending came with a typical Hollywood bow–tied much too neatly.

“Not every woman needs a man in her life,” Stella had pretty much uttered in the film’s beginning.

But finality proved her to be incorrect.

She clung and frequently apologized to Winston–a childish man that felt threatened by her success and leeched onto her strength. Their vast age difference proved to be a demolition factor; always leaving when times were too rough, insipid, weak-minded Winston was everything opposite of Stella’s majestic character.

It was better suited that Winston return to Jamaica alone while Stella focused on goals for her bright future as an independent and savvy businesswoman. Director’s camera focused on their awkward looks and wet eyes in that last, crushing love scene reeking of desperate closure and unspoken understanding–a solid presentation that the “groove” dwindled.

For Stella to be at the airport and saying “yes” to Winston’s marriage proposal seemed an unbelievable notion.

Stella (Angela Bassett) should have kept Winston as a vacation fling.

Winston should have stayed primarily a Jamaican rendezvous.

Yes. It is always a joyful occasion to see African American romances onscreen (it’s incredibly rare to feature an all African American cast in this genre–unless it’s Tyler Perry related grrrrr!) and not have courtships be the overplayed “thin line between love and hate” stereotype, but Stella’s relationship with Winston wasn’t exactly great as it progressed to turbulent fights and public screaming matches.

By the film’s cheesy end, I only wished for Delilah’s ghost to visit Stella and continue their friendship in a spiritual manner as Stella embarked on her personal quest. Perhaps even treating herself to more splendid travels and finding other pursuits called “fun” that don’t involve young men.

Winston isn’t worth being the pot of gold at the end of Stella’s rainbow, much less her “groove.”

2011 NAACP Image Awards

The 42nd annual NAACP Image Awards

The NAACP Image Awards, honoring people of color in television, recording, literature, motion picture, and writing & directing, took place last weekend. We (and so many others) have decried the consistent whiteness and maleness in Hollywood, both of which were displayed in this year’s Academy Awards.

The Image Awards, on the other hand, are a “multi-cultural awards show from an African-American perspective.” An explanation of the award’s history and necessity emphasizes the importance of images we see and ideas that are reinforced by the media:

Ideas and images create the belief systems that control our individual and societal actions. When it comes to forming ideas, reinforcing stereotypes, establishing norms and shaping our thinking nothing affects us more than the images and concepts delivered into our lives on a daily basis by television, motion picture, recordings and literature. Accordingly, there is ample cause for concern about what does or does not happen in these mediums when there is little or no diversity in either opportunities or the decision making process.

For a complete list of nominees and winners in all categories, visit the official site. Here is a selection of categories in film.

Outstanding Motion Picture:
For Colored Girls – winner
Just Wright
The Book of Eli
The Kids Are All Right
Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too?

It’s noteworthy that only one of these received an Oscar nomination in the Best Picture category–which now features ten films. It’s also worth noting that two of the five are directed by women (Sanaa Hamri for Just Wright and Lisa Cholodenko for The Kids Are All Right), while two of the ten Oscar nominees were directed by women. Finally, I can’t help but mention that this site has reviewed exactly one of them (Kids). Why? One reason must be our own failing–not paying enough attention to films by and about people of color. That’s on us. Another reason is that the culture at large still isn’t paying enough attention to films by and about people of color. Films about women are typically marginalized to the category of “women’s films,” and thus not considered “mainstream” enough to attract wide (read: white male) audiences. Similarly, films about the lives and experiences of people of color are often reduced to “black films,” and not given the cultural and critical attention they deserve. Are these all outstanding films, deserving of mass critical attention? I don’t know–and the not-knowing is a problem. But they’re certainly deserving of an examination of gender politics…which is what we do. Here is the rest of the list, uninterrupted.

Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture:
Halle Berry for Frankie & Alice – winner
Janet Jackson for Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too?
Kerry Washington for Night Catches Us (check out Arielle Loren’s guest post)
Queen Latifah for Just Wright
Zoe Saldana for The Losers

Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture:
Anika Noni Rose for For Colored Girls
Kimberly Elise for For Colored Girls – winner
Phylicia Rashad for For Colored Girls
Whoopi Goldberg for For Colored Girls
Jill Scott for Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too?

Outstanding Independent Motion Picture:
Conviction
Frankie & Alice – winner
La Mission
Mother and Child
Night Catches Us

Outstanding Directing in a Motion Picture (Theatrical or Television):
Geoffrey Sax for Frankie & Alice
George Tillman, Jr. for Faster
Tanya Hamilton for Night Catches Us
The Hughes Brothers for The Book of Eli
Tyler Perry for For Colored Girls – winner

Be sure to check out all the nominees and winners. Which nominated films have you seen? What do you think of the winners? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Oscar Acceptance Speeches, 1991

Leading up to the 2011 Oscars, we’ll showcase the past twenty years of Oscar Acceptance Speeches by Best Actress winners and Best Supporting Actress winners. (Note: In most cases, you’ll have to click through to YouTube in order to watch the speeches, as embedding has been disabled at the request of copyright owners.)

Best Actress Nominees: 1991

Kathy Bates, Misery
Anjelica Huston, The Grifters
Julia Roberts, Pretty Woman
Meryl Streep, Postcards from the Edge
Joanne Woodward, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge

Best Supporting Actress Nominees: 1991

Annette Bening, The Grifters
Lorraine Bracco, GoodFellas
Whoopi Goldberg, Ghost
Diane Ladd, Wild at Heart
Mary McDonnell, Dances With Wolves

**********

Kathy Bates wins Best Actress for her performance in Misery.

**********

Whoopi Goldberg wins Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Ghost.