Tag: Women and Gender in Musicals

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: Bros Before Hoes, or How Kidnapping Makes for Great Dance Numbers: on ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’

This is a guest review by Jessica Freeman-Slade. 
When Bitch Flicks first put out the call for a review of the movie musical landscape, this was the first movie that came to mind. It has all the elements of a great movie musical: the hummable ditties of Kiss Me, Kate, the buoyant dance sequences of West Side Story, and the Technicolor treatment of the great Pioneer experience of Oklahoma! But when you add blatant misogyny, barn-raisings and male bravado, and taking women by force as the ultimate romantic gesture, you get Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The 1954 movie, directed by Stanley Donen (Singin’ in the Rain) with music by Saul Chaplin and Gene de Paul and lyrics by Johnny Mercer, with choreography from the great Michael Kidd, is often overlooked when considering the movie musical genre. There are, admittedly, many musicals that enjoy examining the battle of the sexes, and most old-school romantic comedies start with a Dude™ and a Chick™ squabbling over their differences. But very few of those ever let the man be so backwards that he equates courtship and conquering, or has a woman responsible for civilizing and subduing men’s worst impulses. It’s like Lysistrata and The Hangover got together and held a barn dance–a big, beautiful Crayola-colored extravaganza.

In 1821, Oregon Territory, Adam Pontipee (the impossibly rugged Howard Keel) is looking to fetch himself a wife—not for the purposes of high-falutin’ romance, family, and lifelong happiness, no. “I’d like best a widow woman that ain’t afraid to work,” he says, at the general store, where he’d just as quickly pick up a mate as he would 25 pounds of chewing tobacco. “There’s seven of us men, me and my six brothers. Place is like a pigsty, and the food tastes worse….” Adam is out for marriage in the purest economical sense: in this new territory, there are ten men for every woman, and so Adam’s priority is availability, not compatibility.

 

“Bless Yo’ Beautiful Hide,” he booms, and it’s not until he sees Millie (Jane Powell, strong of axe and soft of heart) that he knows he can go out and buy with gusto. She makes great stew, so that’s half the battle, and she is used to tending men in a boarding house, so he considers her the perfect bride.

He offers marriage, she accepts (as she’s fallen for him on first sight), and off they go in his wagon back to his cabin in the mountains, where she meets his six red-bearded, bullish brothers. Millie bristles at caring for her brother-in-laws without some control, and so she withholds a hot breakfast and newly washed clothes until they promise to shave and settle down like gentleman. It seems that what this house has longed for is not an extra hand in the washroom, but a gentle and firm guide to proper etiquette.

What Millie discovers, as she gets to know these boys, is that they long to go out and snatch up girls of their own—which they do, in spectacular fashion, at the town’s barn raising. The brothers Pontipee, all in primary colors, demonstrate through dazzling choreography how dashing and desirable they can be, and sweep the girls off their feet. Just watch how leapfrogging, arm wrestling, log-rolling, and balletic machismo pays off. (This is the most spectacular sequence of the movie, and it’s impossible to watch without a slaphappy grin. Jacques d’Amboise and a very young Russ Tamblyn steal the show as Ephraim and Gideon, defying gravity with every move.)

But of course, the boys get into a fistfight with the girls’ other suitors, and soon they’re back on the farm, suffering through the early days of a long winter. It’s lovely to see these men pining, something so rarely explored outside of the musical theater realm, while maintaining their rugged outdoorsmen personas. (This is, of course, expressed through the delicate art of ax ballet.)
The enlivening force of Seven Brides is male longing, and it makes for great theater. The Pontipee brothers have lived hard, but falling in love is what softens and civilizes them. But all that civilization is for nothing when Adam, modern man that he is, devises a brilliant scheme, pulled straight out of Millie’s copy of Plutarch’s Lives. Why not do like the Romans did with the Sabine women?
And then comes the merriest song about rape ever.
The brothers are shaken out of their depression by the chance to reassert their manhood, and off they go to town, snatching up their girls from backyards and front porches and carrying them off, squealing and crying. An avalanche falls as they are passing through the mountains, preventing the angry families and boyfriends from reaching the Pontipees. Millie, horrified to discover what the boys have done, reasserts her right over the house (the one territory that has become completely hers to control) and sends the boys to the barn for the entire winter, taking the girls inside and keeping them under close watch.

This ends up being a bit of a tease, since the girls get their own dance (about marriage, natch), and Millie discovers she’s pregnant. And though the girls start warming up to the brothers (peeking through windows, running around in their skivvies), the snow that blocks the pass never melts.

Once it does, we get lovely sequences of the girls and boys frolicking together with baby farm animals (no, this movie is not subtle), and Adam stays holed up in his hunting cabin, resentful of Millie’s banishment. But once he learns he has a baby—and at that, a baby girl—Adam breaks down and returns home to be the man he’s supposed to be. Though their families come to retrieve them, and the brothers are ready to set them free, the girls refuse to leave, claiming the newborn as their own. For better or for worse, we get a group marriage of a finale, and a whole bunch of color-coordinated couples once more.
So what do we make of such a strangely backwards story of frontier courtship? For one, that men, without the guiding impulses of a good woman, will behave like savages. Whether they demonstrate that savagery at the breakfast table or at a barn-raising, it’s clear that the Pontipee brothers have impulse control issues, and they just can’t help themselves. Their needs—for food, for dominance, for love—trump almost everything reasonable and refined, and they have been taught, as pioneers of this new and uncharted territory, to take when they can. Though Adam is charming and sexy as hell—seriously, George Clooney and Howard Keel could have a smirk-off—he treats Millie like a servant at best, and property at worst. “It wouldn’t hurt you to learn some manners, too.” she remarks at the barn-raising. “What for?” he counters. “I already got me a wife.”

You can argue that Millie should’ve seen this unfair exchange coming when Adam first walked into her boarding house—and she had no real incentive to get married. Gainfully employed, resourceful, well-liked and respected by her community (especially by the women), Millie could’ve easily stayed on her own in this new country. But she, too, is softened by love, and so she is the one that understands the brothers’ plight, not Adam. You can fault the captured girls a little less than Millie, at least initially—but they too get their attic ballet-in-bloomers about the dream of summer weddings. We are expected, no matter if our house or barn needs tending, to wish for a pairing-off, and the frontier certainly looks less terrifying if you are facing it alone.

But ultimately this is a movie that asks where male compassion comes from—and the last few scenes seem to conclude that it’s when sexual politics are made personal. Holding his newborn baby girl in his arms for the first time, Adam says, “I got to thinking up at the cabin, about the baby. How I’d feel if someone came creeping in and carried her off. I’d string him up the nearest tree. I’d shoot him down as I would a thieving fox.” It’s when Adam has to think about another man out there, treating his daughter like she was property just waiting to be taken, to stir him to a nobler state of mind. Just imagine if a Seven Brides scenario applied to every zealot or backwards politician who questioned a woman’s right to her own body and state of security, if all their wives and girlfriends were subjected to sexual scrutiny. We’ve be living in a very different universe—and this ain’t even Oregon territory.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers can certainly leave you feeling ambivalent, and possibly wondering whether this lovely closing marriage sequence is a symptom of Stockholm syndrome. But what it mostly offers—spectacular dance sequences, memorable songs, and an interesting take on what it means to be “civilized” by love—makes for a rollicking good musical, and an underappreciated classic.
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Jessica Freeman-Slade is a writer who has written reviews for The Rumpus, The Millions, The TK Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Specter Magazine, among others. She works at Random House as a cookbook editor, and lives in Morningside Heights.
    

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: The Reception of Corpse Bride

This review by Myrna Waldron previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on September 13, 2012. 

Corpse Bride Poster (Source: Wikipedia.org)
Corpse Bride is that odd film that is both original and derivative at the same time. Based on a Yiddish folk tale, it is a stop-motion animated film directed by bizarre auteur Tim Burton, and featuring his three favourite people: Johnny Depp plays Victor, Helena Bonham Carter plays Emily, and Danny Elfman writes the score and the musical sequences. (The film also features other Burton mainstays such as Christopher Lee and Michael Gough.) Burton also worked with Laika Entertainment, which is a studio that would later release Coraline and ParaNorman. (Apparently they are unable to make films that are not horror-comedies.) Although it is stylistically similar to The Nightmare Before Christmas (to the point where the theatrical trailer used music from “What’s This?), Burton was NOT the director of that film – he only wrote the original poem that inspired the film, and had a producer credit. Henry Selick was the director for both Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline.

Corpse Bride is generally a charming film, with some interesting themes centered around acceptance of death, arranged marriage, and the differences of women. The score and musical sequences are catchy, and the stop-motion animation is top-notch. I often found myself thinking, “How did they DO that?” I was particularly pleasantly surprised at how well the women were developed in the story. This is something I think Tim Burton does fairly well, at least judging from the films I’ve seen of his based on original stories – the women in his films are generally proactive, multi-dimensional and serve an important role in his films. He may have started to become a parody of himself in his later years, but he is one of the few mainstream directors whose personal style makes an indelible impression on the film.

Emily, looking uncharacteristically spooky. (Source: TimBurtonCollective.com)
One aspect of the story that I want to discuss is its treatment of arranged marriage. We know that the film takes place in a European village in the Victorian era – everyone speaks with British accents (which, as we all know, is just movie shorthand for “European” and not necessarily “English”). Because the film is based on a Yiddish folk tale, I’m going to assume it takes place in Eastern Europe. Western aversion to arranged marriage is a fairly recent development, as it was a normal occurrence (especially for rich families) at least up to the beginning of the 20th Century. One can also look at the story of Fiddler on the Roof to see how important arranged marriage was to Jewish culture.
One of the first conflicts of the story is centred around Victor van Dort’s shyness and nervousness about his impending arranged marriage to the sweet but sheltered Victoria Everglot. The Van Dorts are nouveau riche social climbers, the Everglots are penniless aristocrats. It is quickly established that although their marriage would be arranged, Victor and Victoria genuinely like each other and their marriage is likely to be a happy one. This contrasts with the Everglots’ own arranged marriage – they bluntly tell Victoria that marriage is a partnership, and that they don’t like each other at all. Whether this is because they are badly matched or because they are very unpleasant people (the latter being more likely) remains to be seen. This also contrasts with Victoria’s forced marriage to Lord Barkis Bittern, who is a gold digger bragging to the Everglots about his riches. Although she is distraught by it, Victoria is forced to marry Barkis because her family is destitute. It is heavily implied that Lord Barkis planned to murder and rob Victoria just as he had done to Emily.

Victor and Emily about to (re)marry. (Source: Digitalrendezvous.net)
A further contrast to the arranged marriages are the marriages (or intended ones, anyway) made for love. Emily’s backstory reveals that she fell in love with a poor stranger, but was banned from marrying him by her wealthy (and probably snobbish) father. She makes plans to elope with the stranger, who instead robs and murders her, leaving her for dead in the forest where Victor unwittingly discovers her. Another marriage for love, though more in the agape sense than the eros, happens after Victor and Emily learn that their marriage is invalid since death has already parted them, Victor makes the incredibly loving choice to sacrifice his life so that he can make Emily happy. He is heartbroken at the time since he thinks he has lost Victoria forever, but it is a tremendous sacrifice on his part for someone he has only known for a few days. Emily halts the marriage after realizing that she cannot take the dreams away from someone else after having her dreams of love and marriage taken from her.
It is convoluted, but it is easy to interpret that the moral perspective of the film is that arranged marriage is acceptable, and love within an arranged marriage even better, but impulsively marrying for love is dangerous. However, Victoria’s two marriages and the contrast therein present a very feminist message of agency. Although distraught, Victoria is going along with the marriage to save her family. It turns out to be a sham marriage to a murderous gold digger, so Victoria’s fortuitous and quick widowing allows her to make her own choice. She may have chosen the man she was going to marry anyway, but it’s obvious that Victor truly cares about her AND will help her family (whether or not they deserve it).

Another aspect of the story I wish to discuss is the characterizations of Emily, the Corpse Bride, and Victoria, the very prim and proper Living Bride. Although there is a subtle “Betty and Veronica” dichotomy, neither is expressly presented as the “ideal” match for Victor in the love triangle. The only reason Emily does not end up with Victor is simply because she is dead – not because she is conniving, nasty, or not as attractive as Victoria. Oddly enough, it’s implied that Emily was more attractive, as she’s surprisingly cute for a corpse. She’s also got…rather defined curves for someone so otherwise decayed. When she becomes jealous of Victoria, there is a legitimate reason for her to feel this way – she points out that she is married to Victor. And notably, her anger is mostly directed at Victor, not at Victoria, which is important since the woman tends to get the blame in love triangle/cheating situations, regardless of which partner is the one who does the cheating. When Emily’s friends try to cheer her up by pointing out her presumably superior traits, she is not swayed by this – her heartbreak is not that Victor loves another, it is that as a dead woman she can never truly win his heart. However, it is implied near the end that Victor is the true love of both women. In the “Remains of the Day” sequence, it is said that Emily was waiting for her true love to come set her free. Victor’s intended sacrifice, and Emily’s realization that she can’t take away the dreams of marriage and love from Victoria after having her own dreams taken, are the catalysts that allow Emily to be set free and “move on,” so to speak.

Victoria looks at Victor after catching Emily’s bouquet. (Source: Drafthouse.com)
There is also a strong contrast in the upbringing of the women. Victoria has a severely strict mother, with the most stereotypically draconian morality of the Victorian era. She has been banned from playing the piano, as music is “too passionate” and “improper” for a young lady – a curious contradiction to social norms, as young women in the 18th and 19th centuries were expected to know how to play piano, sing, and otherwise entertain their guests. She is also dressed in a severe black gown, and forced to wear a corset tied so tightly that her mother expects her to speak while gasping. Emily, on the other hand, is wearing a rather anachronistic wedding gown, with ample cleavage and a long slit up the thigh. (Though the slit in the skirt of the dress may have just been damage from the murder/decay) She also plays piano enthusiastically, dances, and sings. She’s wholly passionate, a true capital R Romantic. Both came from rich families, but it is obvious that Emily was raised with far more love and freedom than Victoria was. It is a miracle, then, that Victoria did not turn out like her sour and nasty parents – she is shy, but sweet and strong-willed. Notably, neither woman is afraid to stand up to those who hurt them (and Emily gets the rare opportunity to confront her own murderer).

The film is fairly feminist for a horror-comedy, but it’s not perfect. There are at least two fat jokes in the story – a mean-spirited form of discrimination that needs to just end already. I was particularly annoyed that Mrs. Van Dort is portrayed as not being aware just how fat she is. Let’s set the record straight – if someone’s fat, they KNOW, thank you. There are also no people of colour in the cast at all. I suppose this is partly justified in that it takes place in Victorian Eastern Europe, and the aesthetic of the living village is severe whites, blacks, and greys, but there’s no reason there couldn’t have been minorities in the underworld village. The closest thing we get to POC representation is a skeletal parody of Ray Charles during the “Remains of the Day” sequence. I suppose Bonejangles, Danny Elfman’s showcase character, could have been black. It’s not really easy to tell when someone’s a skeleton, of course.

Emily talks with Victor’s skeletal dog, Scraps. (Source: Allmoviephoto.com)
I do recommend Corpse Bride to fans of stop-motion animation, supernatural horror, fairy tales and British-style comedy. It’s yet another Tim Burton film where he does more of the same, but it’s far more watchable than Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Alice In Wonderland. The music is great, the performances are great, the humour is great. I also really like the message that death is nothing to be afraid of, that we all face it someday and the best we can do is to live our lives the best way we can. Fans of Corpse Bride should also check out Tim Burton’s early film Vincent, Henry Selick’s films like The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline and Monkeybone, and Laika’s films like Coraline and ParaNorman. I hope to see more films about a love triangle where both women are portrayed positively, and appear to genuinely care about each other. It’s about time that Hollywood realized that women are not split into two distinct types, nor are they always likely to blame one another for a love triangle.
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Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.
  

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: The Lion King: Just Good, or Feminist Good?

This review by FeministDisney previously appeared at Bitch Flicks as part of our series on Animated Children’s Films.
Nala to Simba: “Pinned you again.”
Overall FeministDisney Rating: **, 2/4 stars  (see below for specific categories that feed into this)
The Lion King is an interesting movie to pick apart. I think when it comes to anthropomorphized casts, it’s almost more difficult, at first, to examine it critically in terms of how it portrays humans. After all, when you think “Feminism” + “Disney,” who thinks to critique The Lion King? I didn’t, at first.
But truth be told: there is much to critique here.

I should say first, let’s throw the whole “But this is how lions act” argument out the window. Lions are not actually “kings” of all animals; they do not actually get along with prey when they’re feeling like singing a song, or learn to eat bugs from them; when (male) lions become subadults, they have to leave their pride, and no, they can never come back. Etc., etc., etc.

So none of this “Disney just portrayed it that way because it’s that way in real life” ish.  This isn’t the National Geographic Channel.

One big, happy family?
So anyhow. It’s very noticeable in this movie that male characters take the center stage, and female characters take a backseat to the action. Simba, Mufasa, Scar, Rafiki, Zazu, Timon, Pumbaa (these are all characters that take up a significant amount of screen time) versus … Nala. Sarabi was there but existed as little more than a supportive nurturing background character who took a backsteat to Simba’s relationship with his father. The male story and the male perspective clearly dominate. As a simple Bechdel test or more in-depth examination will tell us, this is not a single occurrence but rather a troubling reflection of movie character diversity in general.

When it comes to Nala, her role has always frustrated me a lot. Ignoring that it might not work with the plot already in place, it was quite disappointing that Nala did not take over partially or fully in Simba’s absence. She is always shown, especially early on in the film, to be Simba’s equal, and she is perhaps even more intelligent, or at least a more naturally sound leader throughout the film, while Simba tends to be comparatively a bit more immature and in need of multiple characters propelling him into responsible/rightful action. This isn’t a critique of Simba’s likeability or abilities, but merely to say that in all aspects, Nala would have made at least a decent fill-in.  

Simba and the more cunning Nala
Another feminist critique of this movie (on Nala):
She comes up with better ideas then he does. She is the one who starts Simba thinking about his past and his future. Yet, despite the fact that she left the pride lands to find help, she also does not challenge Scar’s right to rule. She does little more than Sarabi to work toward getting a better life for herself and the other lionesses, only leaving the pride lands to seek help (read: a different male lion). Only when Simba returns to the lionesses stand up to Scar. This is because a new male has been found to lead them. The lionesses are very much kept in the shadow of the male lions.
Neither Sarabi nor Nala challenge the male lion’s leadership even though there is no clear reason for why they should allow him to run and ruin their entire kingdom, other than that he is male. Not even when they are starving do they speak up and act for themselves and for their people. Simba has to do it for them.

I think this is really one of the main and most problematic aspects of the film: it basically boils down to the fact that an entire group of strong female characters are unable to confront a single male oppressor; to do so, they need to be led by a dominant male. It almost sucks more that Nala is such a strong, independent, intelligent, savvy female character and still ends up constrained by this plot device. It doesn’t say a lot of positive things about the role of women or about the importance of female characters in this film.

Scar: Simba’s evil gay uncle?
When it comes to androgyny and non-binary characters in this film, it is worth noting that they all “happen” to be the evil characters: the 3 hyenas and Scar. Scar is clearly a male lion, but as has been noted previously and in many blog posts apart from mine, he is portrayed as basically the “gay evil uncle” owing to his effeminate gestures/speech/appearance that are stereotypically known to be gay markers. Shenzi is presumably female but is never actually referred to as one in the movie–it is something we can only assume from the general tone of the voice. All the hyenas look very similar/are difficult to distinguish other than by voice inflection (it isn’t bad to have androgynous characters: it’s bad that they’re always cast as villains in childrens’ movies).
The characters are animals, but their voices show racist stereotypes. Even though The Lion King takes place in Africa, two white American actors are used for the voice of Simba, the hero. However, the hyenas who are bad characters in the film, speak non-standard English and are played by actors like Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin. The villain, Scar, suggests homosexuality.

While I do agree with some of the observations, many readers have pointed out that the cast is pretty diverse and both good and evil characters have “black” and “white” voices so neither one is necessarily villainized. I don’t think it’s accidental though that Simba/Mufasa/everyone are very bright and light colored, while the Hyenas and Scar are a lot darker. While this has been a traditional coding for good/evil in film, I think it’s pretty obvious for children watching who the good and bad guy is, rendering this device unnecessary. But since it’s still there in the movie it could, rather than being a helpful cue, actually helping to instill subconscious notions of morality relating to the color of your skin.   
Many critics saw a racial subtext to the villainous outsiders, noting that the racialized voices of the hyenas hewed to hackneyed stereotypes of African American and Hispanic threats to nice kids from the suburbs who stray too far from home.

Racialized hyenas?
Don’t get me wrong here: I loved The Lion King when it came out in 1994. I was 5 years old and I wanted that movie on VHS sooo badly that I created this “moving train” of paper characters to show my mom in hopes that she would realize that we had to have it since I loved it enough to create a paper train (so started my life of unnecessarily complicated scheming!). We got it as a gift when my brother was born, and I had a Zazu stuffed toy that I carried everywhere like a doll for a year or two.

So yeah, it’s a great film, but that doesn’t make it a great feminist film.

Promotion/Equal Voice given to women: *
Representation of Women present (are they more than typecasts of female stereotypes etc): ***
Racism/Classism: **
LGBTQ representation: *~ (1.5)
Gender Binary adherence: *~

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FeministDisney runs a tumblr blog of the same name that seeks to deconstruct and examine Disney through a feminist lens.  FD is a Disney fan, which is why she finds it necessary to discuss how Disney narratives can be both groundbreaking and problematic.  She identifies as a feminist, an artist and a cat lover.

 

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: Mulan: The Twinkie Defense

This review by Karina Wilson previously appeared at Bitch Flicks as part of our series on Animated Children’s Films.
Much has been written about Mulan since its release in 1998, largely because the intentions of the film-makers are so obvious, and so crass.  If you buy into the movie’s ethos, you’ll believe that Mulan is a truly border-crossing story, bringing the best of classic Chinese culture to a global audience with – gasp! – a female action hero at its center.  You can quit the revolution now, kids, ‘cos Disney says that post-colonialism and post-feminism are here to stay.

If you watch the actual movie, as I did, as a European expat teaching in a Hong Kong international school and grappling with cross-cultural questions on a daily basis (you try teaching A Bridge To Terabithia to a class of city-dwelling Chinese boys) — not so much. Mulan has always been a problematic text for me because it tries so hard to be culturally sensitive and gender-aware that it positively creaks, and those creaks can be heard by the least-savvy member of the target audience.  Its sins are not the sins of historical omission of, say, Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, but are all the more egregious because they come from a place of awareness.  Mulan is an attempt to fix something that was perceived to be, if not wrong, unbalanced.  This clumsy attempt to wedge The Ballad of Mulan into the rigid, alien form of a Disney narrative (which, among other things, demands musical numbers, a comic sidekick and a Prince Charming to come home with at the end) doesn’t fix anything, and only serves to remind us what is broken about our global culture.  The road to hell is, as ever, paved with good intentions, particularly when it heads from the West to the East.

Back in the mid-1990s, Disney had a very specific agenda when it came to China.  They wanted to get back into the regime’s good books after the PR disaster that was Kundun.  They wanted to replicate the success of 1994’s The Lion King in the region.  And they wanted to soften up the government and local politicians when it came to breaking ground on Hong Kong Disneyland, and paving the way for the Shanghai park.  What better way to win friends and influence people than by honoring a popular Chinese legend in the form of a Disney film?

So, ever mindful of the accusations of racial insensitivity that had been tossed at Aladdin and Pocahontas, and anxious to get it right this time, Disney sent key artists on the movie to China, for a three-week tour of Chinese history and culture.  Three weeks! You can totally “do China” in three weeks.  This was enough to give them all the visual reference points they needed, and the whistle-stop, touristic nature of their impressions is very much in evidence on the screen.  Every Chinese guided tour cliché is tossed into the scenery hotchpotch, from limestone mountains to the Great Wall to the Forbidden City.  This isn’t so bad – other Disney movies are set in a vague Mittel-Europe of mountains, forests and lakes – but the loving attention paid to trotting out the visual truisms of courtyard complexes, brush calligraphy, cherry blossoms et al is just window-dressing.  Mulan does look like China, but only if you’re leafing through your holiday photos back in your Florida office.

It’s a shame the screenwriters weren’t sent on the same tour.  Mulan is peppered with crass jokes about Chinese food orders (because that’s what Americans can relate to about Chinese culture, right?), disrespectful references to ancestor worship, superficial homage to Buddhist practice and some kung-fu styling, of the Carradine kind.  Given that Wu Xia is a rich, diverse, centuries old storytelling tradition, it also seems a shame that the writers didn’t draw more deeply on those perspectives.  Instead, they send Mulan on a tired, Western Hero’s Journey, plugging her variables into the 12-step formula tried and tested by countless Hollywood protagonists.  She doesn’t ever think like a Chinese woman.  She’s never more American than when her rebellious individualism (bombing the mountaintop) wins the day – her filial obedience was only ever lip service paid as a convenience in Act One.  Even in Han Dynasty China, it seems, it’s best to follow the American Way.

There’s nothing particularly Chinese about Mulan herself, who is so brutally meant to be not-Disney Princess and not-Caucasian it hurts to look at her for long.   Poor little Other.  She’s shown wearing Japanese make up, and has a facial structure more suggestive of Vietnamese than Chinese (Disney really was embracing post-colonialism). For half the movie, she also has to be not-female.  The lack of detail on a 2-D Disney face meant the animators had to design her as able to switch between genders via her hair – and something subtle going on with her eyebrows.  The resulting face evokes, more than anything, a pre-op kathoey who hasn’t yet taken advantage of Thailand’s booming plastic surgery clinics in order to make zer gender-reassignment complete.

Oh, Mulan.  She’s meant to be non-offensive, and she ends up being not-anything.  Despite claims to the contrary, she’s not a feminist hero.  She has to dress as a boy to achieve selfhood, and refuses political influence in order to return to the domestic constraints of her father and husband-to-be.  The movie itself doesn’t even pass the Bechdel test, if you consider that the only topic the other female characters discuss is Mulan’s marriageability – a hypothetical relationship with a man.  The final defeat of the antagonist is achieved by the male Mushu riding on a phallic firecracker, as Mulan flails helplessly at his feet.  Positive female role model? Case closed.

Nonetheless, Mulan did brisk business worldwide – apart from in China.  It perhaps had most impact on second or third-gen Asian-Americans, who could relate to the over-simplified view of China, and feel a connection with this stereotypical version of “their” culture, lacking many other reference points.  For Asian-Americans across the board, not just Chinese-Americans, Mulan’s brown, angular features represented something vaguely familiar, which made a delightful change.  For Chinese-Chinese, Mulan was a thoughtless Western blunder.  For Asian-Americans, particularly little girls, Mulan was a rare screen representation of aspects of their selves.  Mulan drove the story, at the center of almost every scene, instead of pushed to the periphery as a “typical Asian” shopkeeper, geek, or whore.  They could even purchase Mulan merch – although it’s still impossible to buy a doll, a t-shirt or a pin showing Mulan in warrior mode, she’s always got her hair down, and is wearing her hanfu frock.  For a generation of Twinkies, Asian on the outside, American on the inside, Mulan was significant, a role model in the Disney pantheon of princesses.  It didn’t matter that she was a bit low-rent (no castle, not really a princess), and she hadn’t snagged a proposal by the end of the movie (that happily ever after is a ‘maybe’), she allowed Asian-American girls, many of them adopted, to hold their heads high.  And for that alone, you have to love her.

Mulan wouldn’t seem like such a frustrating, failed attempt to push gender and cultural boundaries if it had been followed up by other stories of empowered female warrior heroes.  A Disney version of Joan of Arc or Boudicca could have been a blast.  Unfortunately, since 1998, it’s been pretty much princess as usual.  On the bright side, Disney achieved some of their other goals with Mulan.  Hong Kong Disneyland (itself the subject of accusations of crass cultural insensitivity) has been doing brisk business since 2005, thanks to a US$2.9billion investment by Hong Kong taxpayers (of which I was one).  The majority of tourists are from mainland China.  They come to marvel at Western icons like Mickey, and an all-American Main Street that’s a replica of the one in Anaheim.  Thanks to the ubiquitous presence of Mulan images, they stick around.  It feels a tiny bit more like they might have a stake in the happiest place on earth.

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Karina Wilson currently lives in Los Angeles and works as a writer and story consultant. She reviews movies for Planet Fury, writes about horror literature at LitReactor and horror films at Horror Film History. Her teaching site, Mediaknowall, has guided media studies students for more than a decade.

 

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: The Funny Face Always Gets the Big Number: on ‘Funny Girl’

This is a guest review by Jessica Freeman-Slade.

I imagine that at least once a day somewhere in America, some little Jewish girl (or girls with big noses, close-set eyes, skinny legs, and less than model looks) has a benevolent mother, sister, or aunt who pops in a DVD and tells her to sit down. She squirms a bit, but her mom says “Just trust me.” And then up on the screen pops a wildly unself-conscious, funny, brazenly self-confident woman with a voice to stop traffic. Even though she’s seen Glee and watched Lea Michele emote her way through many of these songs, nothing compares to this other creature, the one and only Barbra Streisand, in her debut film, the incomparable Funny Girl.

The 1968 movie is legendary, almost impossible to remake due to Streisand’s unforgettable turn (recreating her role from the 1964 stage musical), and with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Bob Merrill. It’s based on the true story of 1920s entertainer Fanny Brice, one of the major attractions in the golden age of Florenz Ziegfeld’s Follies. Fanny knows she’s a star, but is constantly told that her unconventional looks will keep her off the stage (or as her neighbor puts it, “If a girl’s incidentals/are no bigger than two lentils/then to me it doesn’t spell success.”) But Fanny stands out, because she’s hilariously funny and has a golden voice, and so fame, like anyone who watches the movie, finds her irresistible. What the movie has at its core, is a message about female self-confidence, about self-reliance, about how the world reacts to strong women, and how, ultimately it’s all about chutzpah. Which Fanny (and Streisand) has in spades.

Streisand had only appeared in one Broadway show before then, a small but memorable part in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, and she was far from the only candidate to play Fanny. When Jule Styne consulted Steven Sondheim about the development of the show, Sondheim had major qualms about potentially casting a marquee star like Mary Martin. “I don’t want to do the life of Fanny Brice with Mary Martin. She’s not Jewish,” he said. “You need someone ethnic for the part.” And Streisand was ethnic, especially when put up against a bevy of chorus girls that looked like they’d stepped straight out of Beach Blanket Bingo. The other contenders before her included Anne Bancroft, Martin, and Carol Burnett, but Streisand took the ugly duckling premise and turned it on its head every time she sang. (Fanny’s first line to a skeptical producer says it all: “Suppose all you ever had for breakfast was onion rolls. Then one day, in walks… a bagel! You’d say, ‘Ugh, what’s that?’ Until you tried it! That’s my problem—I’m a bagel on a plate full of onion rolls.”) And she stood out among the other Broadway stars at the time, in the same way Fanny did in her day.

Of course, therein you meet the first problem with Funny Girl—that to buy it, you have to believe that Barbara Streisand is ugly.

Yes, I know. You have to believe that this girl…


…is considered unattractive, uncastable, and undesirable.

The real Brice had big gummy features–a clown’s face. And though Streisand looks gorgeous in every shot, even in Fanny’s pre-fame days (check out those amazing nails), she doesn’t lose her undeniably ethnic look. She stands out, especially when surrounded by all the Aryan thin-nosed beauties of the Ziegfeld follies. And so the premise of Funny Girl, of almost every joke, rests on whether you believe that Fanny, despite her face, earns every drop of success because of her extraordinary talent. Each joke has the same structure: someone throws a derogatory comment Fanny’s way. Fanny volleys, with wit and acid and intelligence. The movie provides a model to every girl out there (no matter how attractive she is) about how to deal with a world that doubts you because of your appearance, because of your difference. When everyone’s a critic, especially in the entertainment industry, and you know you’re something special, they will have to accept you as you are, and fall in love with you for what you bring to the performance. Just watch Fanny’s first performance for a theater, and how she bends the audience to her will:

By the time she’s backstage, she’s won over the crowd…and within it, her future love interest, the dazzlingly handsome Nicky Arnstein (Omar Sharif.)

Then the joke changes—how could a guy as perfect and beautiful as Arnstein fall for a gummy-faced girl like Fanny? Because he knows what the rest of the world doesn’t—that she has a spark, she stands out, and that’s a sign she’s going to be a star. But the movie, as it traces Fanny’s rise to stardom, constantly returns to the presumably unassailable fact that she can’t hold Nick, or anything, in place simply by being female and beautiful. And so the movie becomes a commentary on what an unconventional woman does to keep herself successful in a world that doesn’t immediately recognize her talent.

Fanny, blessedly, has little time for people who insist she behave conventionally. Even when she lands the dream job, as a featured player among the glittering chorines of Ziegfeld’s follies, she balks at behaving like any other starlet. When Ziegfeld (Walter Pidgeon) puts her in the star spot in the closing number, she says, “I can’t Fanny: I can’t sing words like: “I am the beautiful reflection of my love’s affection.” I mean… Well, it’s embarrassing… If I come out opening night…telling the audience how beautiful I am, I’ll be back at [my first job] before the curtain comes down.” When he refuses to do so, Fanny concedes, but finds her own special twist for the number:

And of course it pays off—Fanny becomes a huge star, but it doesn’t change the kinds of jokes thrown our way. When Nick finally attempts to seduce her, every line of his advance is played for laughs. Pitting Nick’s debonair style against Fanny’s neurotic dodging is meant to underline just how unlikely this pairing is…and to make the viewer as skeptical as Fanny.

 Even when Fanny hooks Nick, and even after she gets to sing a ditty about how great it is to be “Sadie, Sadie,” married lady, the story continues to treat Fanny as a liability. When Nick finally starts showing his shortcomings as a card shark, he is too insecure and prideful to ask Fanny to bail him out. He is thrown into prison, and Fanny gets the news just as she’s heading out of the theater for the night. “You still love him, Miss Brice?” the reporters shout. “The name’s Arnstein,” she replies defiantly. This is a woman who refuses to let her critics define her—even if it means putting the joke on her.

What ultimately carries Fanny, and Funny Girl, as one of the greatest musical comedies ever (and makes Fanny one of the best characters, male or female, ever written for Broadway) is that her weapon is always her strength, her self-reliance, that aforementioned chutzpah. Fanny truly believes that she can do or accomplish anything, including saving her own doomed marriage, if someone just gives her the chance. When she and Nick decide to separate after his release from prison, she is utterly heartbroken. But even in that moment, she pulls herself up and delivers a superb performance, looking more beautiful and elegant than ever. And that’s where the message of Funny Girl really sings out: NOTHING is as radiant as self-confidence.

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Jessica Freeman-Slade is a writer who has written reviews for The Rumpus, The Millions, The TK Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Specter Magazine, among others. She works at Random House as a cookbook editor, and lives in Morningside Heights.

  

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: ‘Rock of Ages’ Warms Your 80s-Loving Little Heart With a Cheesy Two-Hour Music Video

This review by Candice Frederick previously appeared at Reel Talk and is cross-posted with permission.
 
Continuing Hollywood’s long and steady trip down memory lane comes the nostalgia-soaked adaptation of the smash hit Broadway show, Rock of Ages.

And at this leg of the expedition, we arrive at the year 1987. In the era of big dreams and bigger hair, director/choreographer Adam Shankman (of So You Think You Can Dance fame) introduces us to two young star-crossed lovers Drew (Diego Boneta) and Sherrie (Julianne Hough), struggling bartenders at The Bourbon Room from Anytown U.S.A. who hope to make it big on the Hollywood stage one day. But first, they’ve got a series of karaoke mash-ups to get through.

With carefully choreographed and meticulously lip synced song and dance numbers in the streets, at the bar, on a bus, and anywhere they can grab a hairbrush and pretend it’s a mic, the two declare their love for each other and rock and roll by performing monster ballads from the greatest hair bands, including Journey, White Snake and Night Ranger.

While they’re off singing for their supper, strapped Bourbon Room bar owner Dennis Dupree (a long-tressed Alec Baldwin) is desperately trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents, while downing his sorrows in a bottle of scotch. To make matters worse, goody goody First Lady of Tinseltown, Patricia Whitmore (Catherine Zeta-Jones), is threatening to shut the fledgling bar down for good, citing “sacrilegious” acts like lewd dancing, alcohol-guzzling and loud music. Dennis’ hand man, Lonny (snugly played by Russell Brand), tries to lighten the mood by offering witty quips in his perpetual drunken stupor, which actually does work a few times. This is all done in a few more awesomely contrived power ballads that will effectively make you want to belt out a few tunes along with them, of course.

In the midst of Dennis’ woes, and after a few more musical mash-ups chronicling the story of our two lovers, Tom Cruise shakes things up when he enters the scene as rock god Stacee Jaxx in full-on rock star garb: guyliner, mullet, stank attitude, booze breath, and cradling a scantily-clad groupie. That’s around the time when things are kicked into high gear.

With one show-stopping performance of the classic Def Leppard song “Pour Some Sugar On Me,” Cruise grabs the reigns of the movie and never lets it go. He, along with the equally transformed Malin Akerman (who plays smitten rock journalist Constance Sack), steals the show with a bitchin’ rock romance made in heaven.

But, with the exception of Cruise and Akerman, the acting overall left much to be desired. Hough’s impossibly wide-eyed Sherrie is annoyingly charming, but annoying nonetheless. However, that’s soothed a bit when she shares scenes with Boneta, who is remarkably charismatic onscreen. He brings the right amount of chutzpah and balls to play a rock prince who could share a stage with the larger than life Jaxx.

R&B singer Mary J. Blige brings some legitimacy to the film as strip club owner Justice Charlier, performing hits like Pat Benatar’s “Shadows of the Night” with ease, but with the spoken line delivery of someone who’s still trying to find her footing as an actress. Meanwhile, Zeta-Jones is still reminding people that what she really wants to do is sing. Her performance in the movie is puzzling not because it good (it’s decent), but you just don’t imagine her in this kind of role.

Not like you picture someone like, say, Brand in a role as a coked out sidekick. You really never know where Lonny ends and where Brand begins … but his scenes with the almost unrecognizable Baldwin are certainly memorable, if anything.

Probably the most perfect casting is that of Paul Giamatti, who plays Jaxx’s slimy manager Paul Gill. Giamatti’s weasly voice alone may prohibit him from playing any other type of character than one who always has an agenda, and it ain’t ever yours.

Even though its finest moments all boil down to well-intentioned, high energy karaoke numbers, and its script (co-written by Justin Theroux) left more cheese in the recipe than what was called for, Rock of Ages is still great fun. Really, it’s like a longer, louder version of Glee or American Idol, but with actors who can’t sing rather than singers who can’t act. Plus, it rocks you like a hurricane.

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Candice Frederick is an NABJ award-winning journalist and film blogger for Reel Talk. She’s also written for Essence Magazine and The Urban Daily. Follow her on twitter.