Women & Gender in Cult Films & B-Movies – Page 2

‘Birth of the Living Dead’: Women and Gender in Cult Films and B-Movies

Birth of the Living Dead is Rob Kuhns’ documentary of the making of George Romero’s 1968 cult horror genre game-changer Night of the Living Dead. Bitch Flicks writers Max Thornton and Amanda Rodriguez discuss both the documentary (BOTLD) and the original film itself (NOTLD).

A Conversation Between Max Thornton & Amanda Rodriguez

Birth of the Living Dead is Rob Kuhns’ documentary of the making of George Romero’s 1968 cult horror genre game-changer Night of the Living Dead.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TowiviD3xgE”]

Bitch Flicks writers Max Thornton and Amanda Rodriguez discuss both the documentary (BOTLD) and the original film itself (NOTLD):

MT: I spent my teens as an ardent fan of all things zombie (and I have a lot of theories about what this says about my relationship to embodiment as a trans person, but that’s another discussion). I went on a zombie walk in London for the 40th anniversary of NOTLD in 2008. I skipped a college class to go meet George Romero when he was doing a signing for the Creepshow re-release. My first academic publication is a chapter on zombies (and queerness, and Jesus, because those are my other favorite things). My cred as a Romero fan is well established, and I’m guessing yours is, too. Do you think someone who’s less of a zombie nut — or perhaps even someone who hasn’t seen NOTLD — could enjoy Birth of the Living Dead?

AR: I am a huge horror and zombie fan, but I didn’t start out life that way. I saw NOTLD when I was 4. I can empathize with Ebert’s observations of the younger children who didn’t have the resources to protect themselves from the fear and dread engendered by the film. I refused to watch NOTLD again until I’d graduated college because it was so formative and so terrifying. Perhaps in large part because of NOTLD, I have always been fascinated with what frightens us and why. The deep psychology of fear and what that fear represents within a larger cultural context have been the subjects of much of my critical analysis and fiction writing. I love the idea that horror, in particular the zombie, is a physical manifestation of our societal fears.

Karen cannibalizes her father, illustrating society's fear of the brutality of youth. — Karen cannibalizes her father, illustrating society’s fear of the brutality of youth.

That said, I’ve only properly seen NOTLD once, so I think the documentary can be interesting to people who aren’t as entrenched in zombie culture; although who isn’t these days, considering they’re such a popular horror subgenre? I found Romero’s continued enthusiasm for the film all these years later to be quite endearing. Film nerds and aspiring indie filmmakers could find value in this documentary. People interested in history, particularly the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war could benefit from seeing this documentary, as it and NOTLD deal with those huge cultural landmarks from a different angle than we’re used to seeing. I also really appreciated the way the documentary casts NOTLD as a meta-narrative of the actual making of the film: the DIY approach and guerrilla tactics the crew used despite the huge filmmaking machine that is Hollywood. The process of making the film becomes its own protest against the Hollywood status quo, the insistence on professional actors, the elitism of art and entertainment. In a way, this is exactly the function of zombies; to disrupt the normalcy and complacency of institutions.

MT: Is this documentary perhaps a little too much of a hagiography? Does it give Romero too much credit for inventing the zombie as we know it, provide too little contextualization of the Haitian origins of the zombi, and thus perhaps whitewash the racism, colonialism, and cultural appropriation inherent in our cultural enthusiasm for the zombie?

Haitian Zombi in 'I Walked with the Dead' — Haitian Zombi in ‘I Walked with the Dead’

AR: Though I thought Romero was a sweet man, and as a fan, I couldn’t help but gobble up his nostalgic reminiscences, the documentary underscored for me the importance of the concept of the death of the author and the fallacy of the notion of authorial intent. It is clear that Romero had no idea what he was making. This film is considered a cult classic and of cinematic significance in spite of him. He makes it clear that he didn’t intend to comment on race by casting a black protagonist, and I doubt he had any idea he was critiquing the Vietnam war or truly upsetting the horror genre in a profound way. I think the film does all those things in a compelling way, which is why it withstands the test of time and is infinitely imitable. Without divesting him of his agency completely, the documentary shows that film experts and filmmakers today understand the important work he created more than Romero himself does.

You’re right that the documentary seems to gloss over the true origins of the zombi, which does divorce it from its racially-charged roots. However, I always thought the movies that predate NOTLD featuring Haitian zombis were painfully racist. Romero zombies are different from the Haitian zombi and speak to our culture in a different way…probably because the Romero zombie is versatile and can morph into any of our greatest fears. It would have made sense, though, to have the documentary further explore the origins of the zombi. Since BOTLD is so racially aware, I would have enjoyed seeing it tackle the implications of colonialism and appropriation. Do you think Romero’s so-called reinvention of the zombi is ultimately racist? Does his malleable notion of zombies only address first-world fears and insecurities?

MT: I think this is something that deserves more interrogation than it tends to receive — consider the fact that he always cites I Am Legend as a huge influence, and not the Haitian voodoo roots or even the massively racist earlier zombie films like White Zombie — but then NOTLD doesn’t actually use the term “zombie.” As well as getting more credit than he deserves, perhaps Romero gets more flak than he deserves when we criticize his appropriation of the zombi, because, as you point out, he doesn’t necessarily know quite what he was doing. (I would note that some people are attempting to balance out the deification of Romero as inventor of the modern zombie: the editors of my zombie chapter, for example, were very insistent on giving Romero’s co-writer Russo equal credit.)

I really enjoyed the film’s emphasis on the social context of the late sixties and how that shaped much of the imagery and message of NOTLD: race riots, Nam, anger, disillusionment with the hippie movement’s failure to elicit major structural change. Are we currently in a comparable period of crisis and distrust in institutions, reflected in the renewed zombie boom of the past decade? And yet is the profound social consciousness of NOTLD largely missing from zombie stories today? For example, I rage-quit The Walking Dead at the end of Season One because it seemed to me so profoundly the white men’s story, with the female characters and characters of color remaining firmly secondary to the almighty White Man. I think maybe I find this particularly disappointing in zombie stories because I want more out of a genre rooted in a movie that was so far ahead of its time in its attitude toward race.

'Night of the Living Dead' hero Ben played by Duane Jones — ‘Night of the Living Dead’ hero Ben played by Duane Jones

AR: I think zombies will always appeal to us because our society is a house of cards. Zombies remind us of a life without the comforts of technology, safety, and structure. The more complicated and reliant we become on institutions and corporations, the more relevant dystopian fantasies like zombies become because we are one global crisis away from that house of cards collapsing on us, leaving us weak, reeling, and unable to fend for ourselves.

I think zombie movies are being made left and right because they’re a hot item, but a zombie movie isn’t truly great unless the zombies are a compelling metaphor. The last zombie movie I remember adoring was 28 Days Later because it explored the terrifying fear of pandemics, the brutality of the military, and the rage that exists inside us, constantly questioning whether or not human nature is really as pure and good as we’re led to believe. Though Naomie Harris’ Selena was its secondary protagonist and her characterization falters at the end, she is a majorly badass, smart Black woman who kicks some serious keister with a machete. (However, I didn’t love the sequel 28 Weeks Later because I thought that was some misogynistic bullshit.)

Selena Machete — Selena slays first and asks questions…not at all.

I, too, have been struggling with the TV show version of The Walking Dead. I even wrote a Bitch Flicks article comparing the superior graphic novel series to the show. You’re totally right; the show is reactionary, racist, and sexist. It’s not doing much new or interesting with its post-apocalyptic material, which has vast potential to make meaningful commentary about what day-to-day life looks like when you’ve stripped our society away. There are questions ripe for the asking, such as: What do morals look like? How do you raise children? Can we work together against a common enemy (as touched on in the BOTLD), or are we inherently self-motivated?

What do you think the zombie trope “means”? Why do you think it’s still got such a stranglehold on us after over four decades?

Are zombies then not really a horror subgenre but a dystopian subgenre? Maybe the words “zombie” and “apocalypse” always go together. Can you think of any zombie film examples where the threat of utter human and societal annihilation were not issues?

MT: I wonder — and this is highly speculative, and clearly born out of my perspective as a theologian with seminarian friends who worry a lot about the decline of mainline Christianity in the US — if the zombie’s place as a monster of the 20th and 21st century is intertwined with secularism. Is it a manifestation of a certain cultural anxiety related to the “rise of the nones” — that is, a cathartic expression of a fear of being swallowed up by materialism (in both the philosophical and the economic senses of the term)? As mindless masses of rotting flesh whose only drives are the basest physical urges, zombies represent the logical extreme of pure materialism, and I suspect it’s not a coincidence that our cultural psyche is obsessed with them in a time when global capitalism is engulfing everything while traditional channels for religious/spiritual sensibilities are on the decline — among the young westerners who are the primary audience for zombie culture, at least.

Zombies gravitate to the mall in 'Dawn of the Dead', consumers even in death. — Zombies gravitate to the mall in ‘Dawn of the Dead’, capitalist consumers even in death.

It’s an odd and frustrating paradox that zombie stories are always these grand-scale, global apocalypses, and yet they always focus on your straight-white-male protagonists. This piece does a grand job of addressing this issue. I’d take World War Z as an example of the paradox: the book actually does take on the geopolitics of the zombie apocalypse on a truly global scale, whereas the film is a by-the-numbers Hollywood disaster flick where the global disaster is mere backdrop to the story of whiterocis dude hero and his perfect(ly passive) white family. I think that’s perhaps symptomatic of the increasing polarization of mainstream and independent content in our age of digital distribution, and I suspect that mainstream pop culture zombie tales are only going to get more anodyne and more unthinkingly supportive of the heteropatriarchal status quo, while we’ll have to look to non-traditional channels of production and distribution for interesting stories. I haven’t yet watched Ze, Zombie, a queer zombie film, but I’m deeply intrigued — not least, I admit, because the top update on the website is currently an apology for the film’s excessive whiteness…we’ve a long way still to go, it seems.

For all its social consciousness, though, does NOTLD (and BOTLD – only one of the talking heads is a woman; African-American men are interviewed, but African-American women are not) fall into the trap of so many progressive social movements, both in the sixties (e.g. black power) and still today (e.g. movement atheism): failure to properly include, address, and account for women? Do you know of any actually feminist zombie films (I can’t think of any)? Why is this such a cultural lacuna? Other movie monsters have been reinterpreted in explicitly feminist ways: vampires (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), werewolves (Ginger Snaps) — doesn’t the zombie have feminist potential as a movie monster?

In 'Ginger Snaps', werewolf Ginger revels in her new power. — In ‘Ginger Snaps’, werewolf Ginger revels in her new power.

AR: I’m totally with you on your critique of World War Z the film vs. the book. We’re like E.T. and Elliott here because I wrote a Bitch Flicks review critiquing the film: its narrative choices that narrowed the scope of the book until it was unrecognizable, the way it cast Gerry as a messianic figure, and its under-development of its potentially fierce female characters, rendering them as nothing more than symbols to reflect back upon Gerry’s manly manliness.

I’ve always thought that NOTLD wasn’t feminist when I consider all the female characters in the movie. I wish someone would have commented on the flat female NOTLD depictions in the documentary, but I guess the movie wouldn’t come out looking so well…the documentary does kind of lionize NOTLD.

They were coming to get you, and they got you, Barbara.

I think Jennifer’s Body could maybe be categorized as a female zombie flick, but it’s debatable whether or not its feminist. Return of the Living Dead 3 was kind of a big deal because the protagonist was a woman and a zombie, and she became a sexual icon for teenage boys everywhere. I think part of the problem with associating zombies and women is that zombies aren’t usually sexy, and it seems like a requirement that women and sexuality are linked in cinema whether it’s in a feminist or a non-feminist way. So, I’d say that the lack of feminist zombie films speaks to a larger issue, in which our culture insists on associating women and sexuality.

Mindy Clarke stars as a sexay zombie in 'Return of the Living Dead 3' — Sexay zombie in ‘Return of the Living Dead 3’

There’s no real reason, however, why a woman can’t be the zombie killing heroine, though it happens so infrequently. We’ve got shitty examples like the Resident Evil series, but I think there’s a lot of potential to critique the patriarchy in a film that sets up a lone woman (or a small group of women) working against the never-ending onslaught, the plague of patriarchy. Wow, now I’m stoked to see that movie! Think it’ll ever get made?

Romero identifies as “Spanish” as per his Sharks vs. Jets anecdote in BOTLD, but he’s of Cuban & Lithuanian descent. He’s never represented as a director of color (I bet his last name, as he mentions, is often mistaken for Italian), and I wonder if that has an effect on the distribution and reception of his films? Would horror films directed by a POC known to have an underlying social and political commentary be shunned by the mainstream or turned into an even more exclusive niche (i.e. something like “politically-charged cult horror films by people of color”…ugh)? I also wonder if that’s why he’s well-known for casting characters of color in his films without sort of thinking about it: because he views race differently than, say, his white director counterparts?

Romero contextualizes his sense of race using 'West Side Story' — Romero contextualizes his sense of his race using ‘West Side Story’

MT: Your point about Romero and race is really interesting, and I hadn’t considered that before. The idea that he’s a POC who’s never read that way does go a long way to explain the use of race in his films. The history and theory of the “passing” POC is too often elided or overlooked in a lot of critical race discussions, and perhaps this element nuances the question of misappropriation of zombi above? It definitely merits more analysis!

And I think Romero’s engagement with both race and gender does get more explicit in his later films, notably Day of the Dead (clearly a heavy influence on 28 Days Later) and the very underrated Land of the Dead. It’s not an accident that Land‘s Big Daddy, the first zombie to develop a sense of consciousness, is African-American, and Land‘s whole narrative of class warfare is extremely relevant. (Now I kind of want to have future discussions about each of Dawn, Day, and Land of the Dead, looking at the evolution of Romero’s social consciousness over the years and films!)

AR: I’m in complete agreement about Romero’s evolution as a socially and politically conscious director in his later films. Dawn of the Dead‘s critique of consumerism is probably the reason that I insist upon socially relevant zombie interpretations. I also find it fascinating and a bit depressing that the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake was lazy in that it eschewed the critical commentary inherent in a mall-based zombie flick, proving once again that we’re not necessarily getting better or more self-aware as a people. Romero’s Diary of the Dead I also thought was an interesting engagement on the notions of the viral connection of online media and the viral nature of information, despite its ultimate disappointment as a film. Although Land of the Dead wasn’t as commercially successful nor as engaging as some of Romero’s other films, I, too, was impressed by its class critique and some of its underlying racial commentary. However, I think the Black man emerging from the water with his new sense of self-awareness is a problematic depiction, putting Africans and African Americans on a slower time line for evolution than white people, claiming (perhaps unintentionally) that their consciousness is nascent, which is a disturbing paternalistic attitude.

Zombie leader, Big Daddy, emerging from the water.

This is one of my long-held issues with the horror, sci-fi, and fantasy genres. In order to tell these socially and politically charged stories, they embody the Other in monster flesh: think the apartheid conversation in District 9 with the grotesque alien bug people or Oz, the werewolf, along with Angel, the vampire, in Buffy and even more so in the Angel series or the way all the Star Trek series are rife with the creation of Othered alien species to elucidate the plight of an oppressed people (not to mention the racism inherent in the vicious warrior Klingons as stand-ins for Black people or the antisemitism of the greedy, urbane Ferengi as stand-ins for Jewish people). While the metaphor comes across, it often dehumanizes and further Others those it is attempting to bolster.

I could talk about this stuff for days and days! Count me in for future convos on the rest of the Romero zombie films! I’m planning to watch his Survival of the Dead, the last of Romero’s zombie series, for a Halloween-y treat since I’ve shockingly never seen it before.

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Thanks for joining us for this conversation between Max Thornton and Amanda Rodriguez on ‘Birth of the Living Dead’ and ‘Night of the Living Dead’. Keep an eye out for Max’s upcoming interview with Esther Cassidy, producer of ‘Birth of the Living Dead’.

The Blood of ‘Carrie’

Most feminist criticism of Stephen King’s Carrie has focused on the male fear of powerful women that the author said inspired the film, with the anti-Carrie camp finding her death at the end to signify the defeat of the “monstrous feminine” and therefore a triumph of sexism. But Stephen King’s honesty about what inspired his 1973 book notwithstanding, Carrie is as much an articulation of a feminist nightmare as it is of a patriarchal one, with neither party coming out on top.

This guest post by Holly Derr previously appeared at Ms. Magazine and is cross-posted with permission as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

Carrie is largely about how women find their own channels of power, but also what men fear about women and women’s sexuality. Writing the book in 1973 and only three years out of college, I was fully aware of what Women’s Liberation implied for me and others of my sex. Carrie is woman feeling her powers for the first time and, like Samson, pulling down the temple on everyone in sight at the end of the book. —Stephen King, Danse Macabre

Most feminist criticism of Stephen King’s Carrie has focused on the male fear of powerful women that the author said inspired the film, with the anti-Carrie camp finding her death at the end to signify the defeat of the “monstrous feminine” and therefore a triumph of sexism. But Stephen King’s honesty about what inspired his 1973 book notwithstanding, Carrie is as much an articulation of a feminist nightmare as it is of a patriarchal one, with neither party coming out on top.

The rise of Second Wave feminism in the ’70s posed serious threats to the patriarchal order–as well it should have. But even for those who think change is not only necessary but good, change can be pretty scary. This, with a hat tip to the universality of being bullied, is one of the reasons Carrie scares everyone.

Carrie (Chloe Grace Moretz) and Margaret White (Julianne Moore)

While men in the ’70s felt threatened by the unprecedented numbers of women standing up for themselves and attempting such radical social changes as being recognized as equal under the law, women themselves must have felt some anxiety that the obstacles to fully realizing themselves might be too big to conquer. The story therefore resonates with men in terms of the fear of (metaphorical) castration prompted by changing gender roles, and with women in terms of the fear that no matter how powerful we become, social forces are still so aligned against us that fighting back might destroy not just the patriarchy but ourselves.

Feminism was not the only thing on the rise in the ’70s: so was Christian fundamentalism. In 1976, the year that the original movie debuted, 34 percent of Protestant Americans told the Gallup Poll that they had had born-again experiences, leading George Gallup himself to declare 1976 the Year of the Evangelical. In fact evangelism, then as now–when 41 percent of Americans report being born again–was one of feminism’s more formidable foes, one of those very social forces that would rather destroy women than see them powerful.

The triggering event of Carrie–the infamous shower scene–is a product of the meeting of these two forces. Because of a fundamentalist Christian worldview in which menstruation is not simply a biological process but rather evidence of Eve’s original sin being visited upon her daughters, Carrie‘s mother does nothing to prepare her for getting her period. When she starts bleeding at school, Carrie naturally panics, and as a result faces the scorn of her peers–who laugh at her for not knowing what’s happening–and the scorn of her mother, who believes that “After the blood the boys come. Like sniffing dogs, grinning and slobbering, trying to find out where that smell is.”

I can’t believe I’m about to go all Freudian here, but for the male viewer the shock of seeing unexpected blood between one’s legs clearly represents a fear of castration–a literal embodiment of King’s anxieties about feminism. From the woman’s perspective, the menstrual blood obviously signifies Carrie’s maturation–coming into her power–which has been marred by fundamentalism.

The new Carrie and the old Carrie (Sissy Spacek)

Without making the new remake of the movie any more violent, director Kimberly Peirce emphasizes the imagery of this inciting event by adding waaaaay more blood to her Carrie. When Carrie gets her period in the shower, there’s more blood than in Brian De Palma’s film. When Carrie gets some of that blood on her gym teacher, which happens in both films, Peirce adds more of it, and the camera lingers on it longer and returns to it more often.

When Carrie’s mother locks her in the closet, Peirce has the crucifix bleed–something that doesn’t happen in the first movie. The blood of the crucifix connects Carrie’s first period to the suffering of Christ, deepening the relationship between debased femininity and religion.

Then, when Carrie gets pig blood dumped on her head at the prom, there’s not just more of it in the second film: Pierce shows the blood landing on her in slow motion three times. This final deluge of blood echoes a scene that Pierce added to the beginning of the movie, in which Carrie’s mother endures the bloody birth of her daughter. Carrie, then, is essentially born again at the prom, and the devastation she wreaks can be read as a result not of her feminine power but of the corruption of it by religion.

Peirce told Women and Hollywood that her goal was to make Carrie as sympathetic as possible. She removes the male gaze aspect of the original shower scene, in which many of the girls are naked and the long, slow shots of Carrie’s body are rather pornified. She makes sympathy for Carrie’s primary nemesis at school pretty much impossible by changing her from an angry girl in an abusive relationship to a sociopath without a conscience. In the new film, Carrie even has the strength to challenge her mother’s theology. Her prom date is more likeable and Peirce uses his death–something De Palma doesn’t reveal until the end–as further motivation for Carrie’s rampage.

None of this changes the fact that Carrie dies at the end, but it does foreground the idea that the message doesn’t have to be that powerful women are indeed dangerous. It can be that fundamentalism is dangerous to women.

If you’re a feminist, I say go see Carrie. Watching her be destroyed–but not without taking out a lot of the patriarchy with her–and then, as a viewer, emerging again into the sunlight unscathed, allows feminists to process some of our deepest fears about what we’re up against. Then we can get on with making the world a place where religious beliefs don’t corrupt our sexuality, where women don’t have to destroy themselves to be powerful and where women’s equality doesn’t trigger men’s fear of their own doom.

Holly L. Derr is a feminist media critic who writes about theater, film, television, video games and comics. Follow her @hld6oddblend and on her tumblr, Feminist Fandom. For more of the Feminist Guide to Horror Movies, check out Parts One, Two, Three, and Four.

‘Withnail and I’ and the Danger of the Feminine Man

Withnail and I promo — *Withnail and I* promo

This guest post by Barrett Vann appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

In the film Withnail and I, there are a grand total of four women, only two of whom have any lines, and even then, only a handful. That considered, the film is actually quite interesting from a gender standpoint. Its two protagonists, Withnail, and “I” (named in the script as Marwood), are out of work actors in 1969, strung out and skint broke. Within the world of the film, which deals largely with people who are “outside” mainstream society in one way or another, the stereotypically feminine serves as a marker for the other, and in some cases, the deviant.

Both the two protagonists are marked as feminine in various ways. Withnail is effete and dandyish; Marwood is given to sensitivity and introspection. Both have hair which, while not hippyish by any measure, is nonetheless longer than standard; Marwood’s a tumble of Pre-Raphaelite curls, whilst Withnail’s is viciously slicked back. At one point, Withnail sneers that he’s been turned down from a job because his hair is too long. Their drug dealer, Danny, has hair to his shoulders, and in one scene, expounds on the virtues of long hair, saying, “I don’t advise a haircut, man. …Hairs are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos, and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.”* Even though this is clearly drugged-up nonsense, it’s a moment of great symbolic significance at the end of the film, when we see that Marwood has shorn his curls in favour of a 1914 cut.

In a scene early on in the film, Withnail throws up over Marwood’s boots after drinking anti-freeze, and to get rid of the smell, Marwood scrubs them with essence of petunia. Later on, down their local boozer, a huge drunk calls Marwood a “perfumed ponce” as he’s on his way to the lavatory. Now, paranoia is one of Marwood’s consistent character traits, but it’s interesting that his reaction to this is a very near cousin to the way a woman might react to similar harassment. He doesn’t snap back, or get annoyed or defensive at the implication; instead, he tries not to react visibly, whilst internally he panics, very aware of the potentially sexual danger the man might present.

As he stands in the toilet cubicle, he notices graffiti on the wall reading I FUCK ARSES, and his voiceover-ed internal monologue seizes on it immediately. “I fuck arses? Who fucks arses? Maybe he fucks arses. Maybe he’s written this in some moment of drunken sincerity. I’m in considerable danger; I must get out of here at once.” Similarly, later in the film, in the face of Uncle Monty’s uncomfortable advances, he adopts a tactic recognisable to probably any woman. Smiling compulsive, nervous smiles, he tries desperately to deflect Monty with politeness and changes of topic.

Marwood is therefore not only perceived by others to have feminine qualities, he reacts to that perception in what is not a stereotypically masculine fashion. When he thinks about the drunk, it is to cast him as comparatively more masculine than himself; “I don’t consciously offend big men like this. This one has a definite imbalance of hormone in him. Get any more masculine than him and you’d have to live up a tree.” Even the phrasing, “I don’t consciously offend big men like this,” implies that this is something that happens even when he doesn’t have essence of petunia all over his boots.

Another heavily feminised male character is Withnail’s Uncle Monty, whose cottage in the Lake District Withnail and Marwood go to stay at. Monty is instantly recognisable as a caricature of the faded old theatre queen; he lives alone with his cat and his memories, his manner of speech is elaborate and affected. He giggles and simpers and emotes at the slightest provocation. He also ticks all the boxes of the predatory homosexual. In his first scene, he remarks with relish that “There is a certain je ne sais quoi – oh, so very special – about a firm… young… carrot,” to the obvious discomfort of Marwood, and later in the film, once he’s joined Withnail and Marwood at Crow Crag, sexually harasses and assaults Marwood.

It is interesting to note that prior to the scene of the attempted rape, though his behaviour is marked as feminine in appearance, Monty seems to be nothing but a thoroughly average English gentleman. When he comes to Marwood’s room, however, he’s dressed in a silk dressing gown and velvet slippers, and wearing makeup. Not garish makeup either–delicately applied rouge, a little bit of eyeshadow, a smudge of lip colour. The contrast between his appearance and his behaviour in this scene is striking, whilst visually coded as very feminine, Monty is aggressively sexual, physically looming over Marwood, backing him into a corner and growling that “I mean to have you, even if it must be burglary!” This is not to say, of course, that feminine people cannot be sexually aggressive and dangerous, but that societal standards have designated this kind of behaviour as the extreme of masculine.

Consistently, then, femininity in men is dangerous. It may be actively dangerous, as in Uncle Monty, who assaults Marwood whilst in near-drag, or passively dangerous, in that it makes the feminine man a target for harassment, as in the lout at the pub who calls Marwood a perfumed ponce. Ultimately, it is dangerous because it marks the other, and to be other is to be in danger. When Marwood cuts his hair, it is because he’s landed a leading role in a play and is leaving Withnail’s kind of life for the safety of employment, of making a living in a socially-sanctioned fashion.

Do I think this portrayal of femininity in men as dangerous is intentional? No, I don’t. Withnail and I is in a lot of ways a love letter to a certain period in Bruce Robinson’s life, and to his friend Viv, off whom Withnail is based. A cynical, twisted sort of love letter, certainly, but one that feels to me sad, and fond, and which looks with affection at those who are marked as other within it. It’s still very interesting, though, to look at this pattern and what it says about our society, where femininity is simultaneously vulnerable and sexually dangerous, and to be feminine is automatically to be outside the norm.

*All quotes used in this article are from the screenplay, rather than the film itself, and so may differ in places from the dialogue as it is in the movie.

Barrett Vann has just graduated from the University of Minnesota with degrees in English and Linguistics. An unabashed geek, she’s into cosplay, literary analysis, high fantasy, and queer theory. Now that she’s left school, she hopes to find a real job so in a few years she can tackle grad school for playwrighting or screenwriting, and become one of those starving artist types.

Maude and The Dude: Feminism and Masculinity in The Big Lebowski (1998)

Populated by mostly male characters, The Big Lebowski is, to some extent, a tale of male friendship. Nevertheless, the cult comedy should never be interpreted and celebrated as exclusively a guy’s film. The Big Lebowski offers an amusing, subversive portrait of masculinity and features an excellent comic performance by one of the most gifted actresses working today. What’s more, it suggests that the future is matriarchal.

Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

Stuffed with unique characters and superb comic performances, The Big Lebowski is an insanely enjoyable crime caper about mistaken identity, fake kidnapping and fraud. Set in LA in the early 90s, its cast of characters includes zealous bowlers, avant-garde artists and Malibu pornographers. Perfectly played by Jeff Bridges, the hero is Jeff Lebowski, an ageing hippie and contemporary slacker who prefers to be called “The Dude.” Referencing The Big Sleep and the screwball comedy, The Big Lebowski has scenes of surreal visual wit and a wonderfully funny script. The movie was, bizarrely enough, neither a great commercial or critical success when it was released in 1998. Nonetheless, affection for it has grown and the pot-smoking, White Russian-drinking Dude has become a beloved icon of contemporary American cinema. There are now academic conferences and festivals dedicated to The Big Lebowski as well as a faith. Yes, Dudeism is truly a cult.

I will not go into the mad plot in detail but the central premise of the tale is that the Dude is mistaken for a pompous, paraplegic, elderly tycoon (David Huddleston) who shares his name. I am more interested in the brothers’ comic characterizations of the two Mr. Lebowskis, the older man’s adult daughter, Maude, and his young ‘trophy wife’, Bunny. I will draw particular attention to their portraits of the Dude and the tycoon’s daughter. As with the men, the women of the film could not be more different. Maude (Julianne Moore) is a somewhat snooty feminist artist who has decided to have a child and Bunny (Tara Reid) is a nymphomaniac with links to the porn industry. I will not only look at the Coens’ representation of women in the comedy but will also examine their ideas about masculinity. Let us first consider the Dude.

Feminist artist Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore)

We first see the Dude wandering through a supermarket late at night, being contemptuously eyed by the sales clerk. When he finally goes to the counter, the Dude casts a look at George Bush Senior giving a statement on the store’s television. This is around the time of the first US-Iraq War and the President is issuing a warning: “This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.” As not a few Lebowski scholars have rightly noted, the movie’s hero does not conform to capitalist and militarist models of American masculinity. We do not really know how he does it but the Dude survives quite happily outside the world of work. A man without ambition is still considered atypical or odd in society. He is, to a considerable extent, a subversive being. The Dude’s laid-back, pleasure-loving ways are both amusing and appealing to both male and female viewers. It is no accident that we first see the Dude in a supermarket. His relaxed lifestyle, modest apartment and endearingly scruffy appearance all give the finger to the consumerist ethos. The Dude is also a pacifist with a radical past. He claims that he was an author of the original Port Huron statement as well as one of the Seattle Seven. The dominant placing in his home of the iconic photo of Nixon bowling is also a tongue in cheek expression of his anti-establishment politics. The Dude’s personality and progressive values are at odds with the military-industrial complex. Frankly, I think the film’s great cult appeal in both the US and around the world is due, in considerable part, to his peace-loving personality and progressive principles. The Dude appears to be the antithesis of macho American militarism. The cowboy narrator (Sam Elliot) who begins and finishes the tale may be a charming, dreamy character but he is intended as a send-up of a mythic figure of American masculinity. The characterization of the Dude’s buddy Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) as a ham-fisted, egotistical, Vietnam-obsessed nut also serves as a parody of American power. The old-fashioned, obsolete storyteller introduces us to a different kind of man.

The Dude also displays pretty feminist leanings in his recognition of society’s commodification of the female body. A desiring heterosexual man, he openly flirts with Bunny and happily beds Maude. Pornography, however, does not seem to play a significant part of his single sex life. “Mr. Treehorn treats objects like women,” the Dude cries at one point about a certain Malibu-based pornographer named Jackie Treehorn. His upside down observation points to a certain progressive awareness. When Maude shows him a clip of Logjammin’, a film directed by Treehorn and starring her stepmother, his response is droll and sardonic. In the film, a cable man appears at the apartment of two young women. Bunny is semi-dressed and her roommate is topless. Maude notes how “ludicrous” the story is and the Dude responds with a somewhat unexpected sharpness.

Maude: Lord. You can imagine where it goes from here.

Dude: He fixes the cable?

When the Dude encounters Treehorn himself, he is impressed by the man’s pad but not his ambitions. He is not convinced by the director’s promises of technological advancements in the industry and sees through his artistic pretensions. The following snippet amusingly illustrates his skepticism:

Jackie Treehorn: I deal in publishing, entertainment, political advocacy.

The Dude: Which one’s Logjammin’?

“Real-life” incidents and hallucinatory sequences indicate that the Dude manifests classic Freudian fears of castration but I suspect that it is the Dude’s mostly uncomplicated, easy masculinity–as well as laid-back ways and good nature–that make him an unsuspecting (initially at least) sperm donor for Maude.

The Dude’s first proper meeting with the feminist artist is at her loft. Maude’s eye-catching entrance is literally over the top. Passing directly over him, she sails through the air on ropes before spraying paint on the canvas below. When she descends and frees herself from the harness, we see that she performs her conceptual art in the nude. She dresses and approaches the Dude. With her geometric bob and green velvet robe, the pale, red-haired Maude has a markedly Bohemian look. In a composed though dramatic voice, she fires questions about sex at the Dude. “Does the female form make you uncomfortable, Mr Lebowski?” she asks. The Dude does not seem at all uncomfortable. Maude explains, “My art has been commended as being strongly vaginal which bothers some men. The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina.” The Dude remains unfazed. Maude seems to have a mid-Atlantic accent. Her crystal-clear enunciation of “vagina” is, in any case, quite special. The Dude is primarily interested in his missing carpet–watch the film!–but Maude continues to ask him if he likes sex. Before he has the chance to answer, she tells him, “The male myth about feminists is that we hate sex. It can be a natural, zesty enterprise…” She then defines satyriasis and nymphomania for him before informing him that Bunny suffers from the latter. What is comic is incongruous, of course, and the interplay between the two is both very funny and well-observed.

In their portrait of Maude, the Coens appear to paint the conceptual artist as pretentious. Their characterization parodies so-called self-regarding aesthetic styles and artsy affectations. In another scene set in her studio, Maude laughs eccentrically on the phone to Italy. Her male colleague in the room giggles along with her. Their laughter is shown to be smug and silly. It is a pointed critique but–as with all satirical portraits–the intention is to shame human–male and female–vanity. The target of the Coens’ satire here is, also, the narcissism of the affluent artist. What is potentially more problematic is their parody of a female, feminist artist. The references to self-referential portraits and nudity are intended to allude to feminist artistic traditions. However, the mocking is not nasty but knowing, and these references could also be meant to ironically refer to popular notions of feminism. Although crafty and patronizing, Maude is not a hateful, misogynistic projection. She is, rather, a richly singular, strong and amusing comic character. Moreover, her theatrical, over-the-top nature actually functions to upset such readings. Julianne Moore’s interpretation of Maude is both vivid and clever and should always be highlighted in pop culture discussions of the comedy.

The Dude and Maude have sex when she later appears without warning at his home. She opens her robe and simply says, “Love me, Jeffrey.” Cut to the Dude smoking a post-coital jay while Maude asks questions about his background and lifestyle. Her face remains impassive as he tells of his radical days and love of bowling but you can tell that she is not impressed. A brief hope that he may have had musical talents is swiftly extinguished when he tells her that he used to a roadie for Metallica. The Dude is initially unaware that Maude has chosen him as a sperm donor and is, quite naturally, taken back by her desire to have a child with him. Quite hilariously, she responds by scolding him for his superficiality: “Well yes, what did you think this was all about–fun and games? I want a child.” However, the Dude does not seem bothered by his purely reproductive role when Maude tells him: “Look Jeffrey, I don’t want a partner. In fact, I don’t want the partner to be someone that I have to see socially or have any interest in raising the child himself.” Maude’s unabashed self-interest and imperious air amuse the viewer. The Dude’s castration anxieties may ironically refer to his lack of sway over Maude and misogynist fears of castrating feminists but the Dude is fundamentally quite happy to provide for his feminist “lady friend” and do what she wants. In a celebrated hallucinatory sequence, a film within a film, Maude plays a commanding Valkyrie.

What is, of course, arguably more predictable and disappointing about The Big Lebowski is the small number of female characters. There is only one other female character of note in the comedy: Bunny Lebowski. Bunny is a Californian stereotype: a tanned, party-loving blonde. The Coens do, in a way, sabotage the stereotype through exaggeration: Bunny is not portrayed as a victim but as an outrageously self-assertive, promiscuous young woman. When the Dude first encounters her relaxing by the pool, she makes him the following offer: “I’ll suck your cock for a thousand dollars.” There is also, it is true, no female solidarity shown by the main female characters in the film. Maude does not like or approve of her stepmother. Although a feminist, she seems to have no problem calling a Bunny a slut. It is not surprising, however, that there is no love lost between them. Seemingly loyal to the memory of her late mother, Maude is, quite understandably, not overjoyed at her father’s marriage to a much younger “trophy wife.” As a feminist, she also cannot commend Bunny’s pornographic experiences.

There is, also, perhaps, a less progressive side to the Coens’ portrait of Maude. Is she not yet another female character in a Coen Brothers movie pregnant or craving a child? Think Fargo or Raising Arizona. What to make of this tendency? Is it pro-natalist or merely life-affirming? Does it reflect male awe of fertility and indicate an endorsement of matriarchy? What makes The Big Lebowski more subversive, however, than Raising Arizona is that the female character is a single mother who does not want a father for her child and has no need for a male provider. Maude is a fundamentally anti-patriarchal cult heroine. She should, therefore, be celebrated by feminist dudettes or dudes everywhere.

It is Maude who sheds light on the real state of the Big Lebowski’s wealth and power. She explains to the Dude that her father does not have money in his own right and that her mother was the wealthy one. We also learn that Lebowski’s role in the company is actually inconsequential. He helps oversee the charities and is given “a reasonable allowance” by Maude. The old man was, moreover, not a great professional success in the past. “We did let him run one of the companies briefly but he didn’t do very well at it,” his daughter explains. The Dude responds with initial wonder but Maude convinces him that this is the case: “I know how he likes to present himself. Father’s weakness is vanity, hence the slut.” Maude not only helps The Dude get a handle on the schemes surrounding him but she also punctures masculine vanity and shines a light on the pretensions of fathers. Personified by Maude’s father, patriarchy is shown to be fraudulent in the Big Lebowski. The dominant placing of Dude’s iconic poster of Nixon in his home, of course, serves as a knowing comment on fallen, deceitful fathers.

At the end of the movie, the cowboy narrator assures us, “I happen to know there’s a little Lebowski on the way.” The Coens’ zany Valentine to Californian eccentricity does not end in marriage or even cohabitation. This ending is amusingly intended as a satisfying resolution for both genders. It may not be romantic but both the hero and his “lady friend” get what they want: Maude is blessed with a little Lebowski and the Dude contentedly returns to his old life. The Big Lebowski simultaneously salutes the freedoms of unconventional men as well as female reproductive agency and power. Populated by mostly male characters, The Big Lebowski is, to some extent, a tale of male friendship. Nevertheless, the cult comedy should never be interpreted and celebrated as exclusively a guy’s film. The Big Lebowski offers an amusing, subversive portrait of masculinity and features an excellent comic performance by one of the most gifted actresses working today. What’s more, it suggests that the future is matriarchal.

‘Earth Girls Are Easy’ and Charming

This guest post by Libby White appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

I’ve loved Earth Girls Are Easy since I was a child. My mother and I would watch it together regularly, even though many of the sexual moments went beyond my comprehension at the time. Having become an adult in the 80s, my mother was a big fan of shows like In Living Color, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. And Earth Girls Are Easy can best be described as the love child of both.

Campy, with over-the-top 80s style, and catchy, but ridiculous, musical numbers, it was a box office flop that faded into obscurity for many years. But it prevailed and has recently reemerged (thanks to DVD and the Internet), and has become a fledgling cult classic.

Taking place in San Fernando Valley, California, the movie revolves around Valerie Gail (Geena Davis), a love-sick manicurist who is desperate to please her unfaithful fiancé, Ted. A classic Valley-girl and hopelessly devoted, Valerie is shocked when a spaceship carrying three aliens suddenly lands in her pool one morning. When she realizes the three creatures are harmless, she takes them to her salon to be made over by her friend Candy (Julie Brown). Sheared of their colorful fur, the two women are delighted to realize that underneath, the aliens appear like normal, even attractive, human men. They decide to take the aliens out on the town, and end up at a crowded club, where Zeebo and Wiploc (Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey), become hits with the club’s women. Mac (Jeff Goldblum), has his eyes set on Valerie, however, and the two share a quiet moment together on the roof.

When Valerie finally takes the men back home, Ted is there waiting, and demands that the three men leave his house. Valerie reminds Ted that he no longer is welcome due to his cheating, and the police come and take him away. In an attempt to console her, Mac follows Valerie to her bedroom, and the two end up making love.

The next morning, Mac, Wiploc, and Zeebo repair the spaceship, and Mac announces that they will be ready to leave shortly. Valerie is visibly crestfallen, but is interrupted by an apologetic phone call from Ted. Unbeknownst to Valerie, Mac overhears her trying to work things out with Ted. Meanwhile outside, Woody, a pool-boy, comes by and convinces Wiploc and Zeebo to go to the beach with him to pick up women, and the three get caught up in an accidental robbery, a police chase, and a forced trip to the hospital. Valerie and Mac team up to break them out, using the aliens’ otherworldly powers to fool Ted, the attending doctor, and escape.

When they arrive back at home, Mac, believing Valerie to still be in love with Ted, uses his powers to distract her while he and his comrades move onto the now-working spaceship. Valerie snaps out of it however, and admits to Mac that she has fallen in love with him, and jumps onto the ship to join him. Candy happens by just as they take off into the sunset, and Valerie waves goodbye.

The casting for Earth Girls Are Easy is one of its best attributes, and it feels as if each character is essential to the movie. Each actor brought with him or her a special spark to the film from his or her own personal styles; Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey being the comedy, Jeff Goldblum the smoldering seduction, Julie Brown the music, and Geena Davis, the charisma.

Geena Davis is a long-time advocate for the fair representation of women in media, and has been a feminist icon for decades. And while Earth Girls was filmed several years before her rise into activism, Valerie Gail is a good female character (despite such stereotypical flaws as occasional air-headedness and thinking marriage will fix all of a relationship’s problems). She is the voice of reason to Candy’s party-girl recklessness with the aliens, and is as loyal as they come to those she cares about. And the chemistry between Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum is palpable. Considering the two were married at the time of filming, it’s easy to believe that Valerie could meet and fall in love with Mac all within a day. Damon Wayans’ and Jim Carrey’s characters are adorably hilarious as well, stealing scene after scene with their constant troublemaking.

Julie Brown is truly at home as Candy, having both written and produced Earth Girls Are Easy based off of one of her original songs. She went on to make a stage show version of the film as well, clips of which can be found online. Several of Brown’s songs are included in the movie, either as major musical numbers or as background music. And while her “Valley Girl” characters are a defining part of her career, underneath the 80s slang, Brown is a triple-threat of talent. It is no question that without her, Earth Girls would have lost its fun spirit.

Being set in the Valley in the 80s, the film portrays much of the vapidness and consumerism popular at the time, with two of the film’s songs, “Brand New Girl,” and “’Cause I’m a Blonde,” focusing on changing or criticizing women’s appearances. “’Cause I’m a Blonde” is purposely satirical, however, and really serves more to make fun of the blonde “Valley Girl” stereotype than to support it. There is even a cameo from a long-forgotten social icon, Angelyne, which furthers the movie’s mocking of itself. Angelyne, while only briefly seen, was nominated for a Raspberry Award for her performance in Earth Girls, demonstrating the underlying level of petty hatred the public had for her and the lifestyle she represented. Still, Earth Girls itself almost tries to up-play the vapidness of its characters as a parody, as if trying to get the audience to laugh at the incredulousness of their behavior, while simultaneously rooting for them. More than 20 years later, I can only guess that the film originally provided a sense of escapism to the curious. A dose of supposed “Valley life” for those on the outside.

At times the movie can feel jarring; the most notable scene being when a conversation by the pool suddenly cuts to the musical number, “’Cause I’m a Blonde.” This was done to make up for several scenes that had been dropped from the final cut, and ends up leaving certain transitions into scenes overly noticeable.

Like every cult classic, Earth Girls Are Easy isn’t without its flaws. Luckily, its charm outweighs its imperfections. And while its high-energy goofiness may not be for everyone, it nevertheless has slowly been climbing the ranks of Cult Classics as it is rediscovered by old and new generations. If you ever need a shot of perky and fun energy, Earth Girls is the perfect film to deliver it.

Libby White is a self-proclaimed cinephile and Volunteer Firefighter who currently works as a Guard for Nissan’s headquarters in Tennessee.

Cult Truth: Why The Raunchy ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ is Hilariously Humanizing

When the movie begins we’re introduced to Brad, a hero (Barry Bostiwck) and Janet, a heroine (Susan Sarandon), two straight-laced representations of the all-American, white middle class Christian boy and girl who are suddenly thrown into a den of loose morals and provocative dancing. At all turns, we’re blatantly reminded of their status as a proxy for a nice boy and a good girl, and it’s reinforced with every cliché possible.

Written by Rachel Redfern

It doesn’t get more cult classic than the most cultish of all films, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In fact, I would assert that RHPS (Rocky Horror Picture Show to fans or the “Unconventional Conventionalists“) is the first great cult film.

While many cult films have fan websites and forums, and even conferences and gatherings, they probably haven’t been shown in a movie theater continuously since 1976 (making the RHPS the longest running theatrical release in history), and they most probably are not shows with audience participation. A true showing of RHPS has a script for audience members in response to certain phrases and cues from the film, and some showings even include props, such as toast, frankfurters, confetti, toilet paper, rice, a whistle, a flashlight, newspapers, water guns, and more.

If you haven’t seen the movie, here is the summary my mother gave to me when I first learned of the film in high school: Dr. Frank-N-Furter is a transvestite who really wants to get laid and creates himself a man with “blond hair and a tan.”

If you haven’t seen it, most of this review might seem like the crazed wanderings of a feminist mind, but only because the film is the crazed wanderings of some kind of mind. And while the Glee tribute episode was well done, it can never compare to the sheer raunch and random hilarity of the original.

The original had a young, unheard-of Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in one of the most amazing performances of all time; his full-bodied commitment (pun intended) to the part of a flamboyant drag queen is fantastic. I weep a little every time I watch it at the realization that Tim Curry looks better in a corset and garters than I do, and he is rockin’ it with a confidence that would make Lady Gaga jealous.

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/lwUjJXxoGy4″]

RHPS talks a lot about illusion vs. reality, time vs. space, meaning vs. nonsense, all while mockingly, and seriously, parodying the science fiction genre, having been intentionally set up as a parody of B-movies. But the film is also a gender-bending festival of sexual exploration embodying the sexual awakening of the 60s and later, the 70s, when the Western world was coming to grips with their new social mores: the film is an obvious exploration of the incorporation and aftermath of the feminist movement and sexual freedom.

Why is it that so much of our ideologies and idiosyncrasies are revealed in parody and satire? Richard O’Brien (Riff-Raff in the film), who wrote and composed The Rocky Horror Picture Show, has been an outspoken advocate for removing cultural norms of establishing gender in children, since he himself identifies as transgender.

the_rocky_horror_picture_show_2 — Brad and Janet before sex

For example, Janet faints and screams at the slightest noise and speaks in a breathy, sweet voice; she’s sexy, but also the girl next door. She’s obviously sexy because she doesn’t know she is, until she begins her own seduction of Rocky and sings out, “Touch me! I wanna be dirty!” in her very own musical number.

Brad is confident and protective, placing his arm around Janet and calming her, leading Frank-N-Furter to remark, ““How forceful you are Brad, such a perfect specimen of manhood,” and he is, of course, absolutely heterosexual until Frank-N-Furter crawls into his bed and the two have a happy, little romp, followed by a good smoke. By the end of the film, Brad’s staunch conservativism is belied by the women’s dressing gown he wears and the lyrics of his last song, “It’s beyond me/help me Mommy/I’ll be good you’ll see/take this dream away/What’s this, let’s see/Oh I feel sexy/What’s come over me?”

Juxtaposed, however, with the happy minion of dancers and their choreographed “Time Warp” dance moves (my dream party) is the intense violence of Eddie’s death, and then his subsequent cannibalism. Eddie’s death is a mercy killing according to Frank-N-Furter because while charming, his muscles weren’t very nice.

As much as I enjoy the film, it is legitimately disturbing in its overtones of rape (toward Janet and Rocky), cannibalism, and gruesome violence. But in the midst of all the destruction, Frank-N-Furter turns to the camera and quips, “It’s not easy having a good time. Even a smile makes my face ache,” biting his finger coyly. It’s such a brilliant, meta moment of recognition for power and privilege and the way that terrible things are acted out in service to his desires.

RHPS-LobbyCard1L — The ending: Lingerie and Confusion

The climax of the film is “The Floor Show,” a confessional performance for each of the characters, held in an empty theater, there revealing their lusts, desires and insecurities. As the performance culminates, and Frank-N-Furter strips off his makeup, vulnerable, and bows to an imaginary crowd, it becomes apparent that everything has been just one big, grand performance. Dr. Scott remarks that, “society must be protected” and Frank-N-Furter removed, and thus, the pretension must go on.

It’s actually a fabulous narrative to couch the ideas of sexuality in, since admittedly, much of sexuality, in terms of preferences, sexual performance, orientation, pornography, and gender roles, are performances of stereotypes and long-held expectations.

A Study in Contrasts: ‘The Hunger’

Perhaps for the movie’s purposes, that doesn’t matter: the story seems to be far more driven by the desire to create an artistic film, rather than an intellectually/ethically/scientifically engaging narrative. The scientific aspect for example—the part of the film I found personally most engaging, that it is possible to tamper with the natural life-cycle, halting the aging process in its tracks—is touched upon but it seems, at least to me, to be more of a plot device for bringing Sarah into Miriam’s life than an attempt to explore an ethically challenging issue. The biology behind Miriam’s present state and the fate of her lovers is similarly irrelevant.

John Blaylock in the opening scene, set to music by Bauhaus

This guest post by Amanda Civitello and Rebecca Bennett appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

The Hunger, the 1983 art-house vampire flick by director Tony Scott, is perhaps the definition of “cult film,” with its plot, characterization, soundtrack, and costuming skirting the line between camp and Art. It might not be an especially good movie, despite its all-star cast – Catherine Deneuve stars as the immortal vampire, Miriam; David Bowie plays her centuries-old lover John; Susan Sarandon stars as Sarah, a scientific researcher who becomes Miriam’s new love interest – but it’s frequently beautiful and grotesque, often at the same time. It is, after all, a lavish vampire movie whose vampires are educated, cultured, and well-traveled, but definitely not “vegetarian.” Miriam and John live in a luxurious New York City townhouse decorated with antiquities that serve as a kind of timeline of her existence; she, after all, is an ancient Egyptian. John is a far more recent development (the 18^th century) in her life, for the curse of Miriam’s existence is that those whom she turns enjoy an extraordinarily long lifespan, but are not immortal. Over the course of the film, we realize that John’s accelerated aging has put Miriam on the search for a new lover, so that she will not be alone when he finally expires. Dr. Sarah Roberts, a gerontologist, enters Miriam’s life at the perfect time. Ultimately, The Hunger succeeds as a work of visual art but fails on its narrative: rather than engage with the ethical issues raised by ancient vampires living and hunting in contemporary New York, it often refrains from exploring these complex tensions, privileging the visual over the story, making for a rich picture whose story falls flat. For those looking for a “classy” vampire movie for Halloween, this might be it – but be warned, art-house or not, The Hunger is incredibly bloody.

[RB]: The first thing that strikes me in watching the film is the interesting juxtaposition between the contemporary (1980s) and the classical. You see this in the soundtrack, of course, but also in the costuming and the set design. The Blaylock townhouse, for example, is filled with a seeming hodgepodge of antiquities and yet its inhabitants are thoroughly modern.

[AC]: I think it makes sense to approach the film this way, because it’s most successful as an audio-visual experience; it’s far less successful as a story. Let’s start with the music, because that’s something that almost overwhelms the film itself. The soundtrack is really beautiful in its blending of classical work (Ravel, Délibes, Allegri) with the original soundtrack by Howard Blake, and the occasional contemporary popular work.

[RB]: And this is most effective when there’s more than one kind of contrast. For example, the scene in which the aging John attempts to feed is backed by upbeat hiphop but set within a vintage-looking space, with archways and pillars. Alongside the presence of the beatbox and rollerblades, there’s this fairly antique vampire attempting to murder someone for sustenance. Tony Scott reinforces and even exploits our natural tendency to compare and contrast in the way the scenes are constructed.

[AC]: And there’s the contrast between Miriam and John’s cultured daytime existence and the primal, animalistic nature of their nighttime excursions. I think the soundtrack is used really effectively to that end. Consider the love scene between Miriam and Sarah – which is largely responsible for the film’s cult status. It begins with an impromptu concert in which Miriam plays Délibes’s “The Flower Duet,” from the opera Lakmé, and then, as they go to bed, changes to a vocal performance of the duet. It’s a beautifully romantic, soft love scene, set as it is against such a heady, operatic song. And then Miriam removes the cap from her ankh pendant, and suddenly there’s blood – and through it all, the soundtrack continues with the duet.

[RB]: This is also the case when John murders Alice, one of their music students. She’s playing a beautifully haunting piece of music which continues even as John slits her throat. There seems to be a persistent juxtaposition of the horrific and bloody against the beautiful, such as during the love scene between Sarah and Miriam. The movie’s costuming is similarly effective. As well as simply serving to emphasise just how divine Deneuve truly is, there’s something of a vintage feel to her clothing which reiterates what we already know about her character—that Miriam is a centuries old vampire. I think it’s worth comparing Miriam and Sarah to make this distinction. Sarah is consistently dressed in distinctly modern clothes—androgynous suits and cotton t-shirts. Miriam, on the other hand, though hardly decked out in the eighteenth century garb we see in the flashback to the beginning of Miriam and John’s time together, seems to be somewhat inspired by the elegance of the 1940s.

[AC]: The Hunger is one of those films in which Deneuve was exclusively dressed by Yves Saint Laurent (another is Indochine). Sarandon was not. There’s such a contrast in the design and aesthetics of their clothes; using YSL sets Deneuve apart from everyone else, who wear whatever the wardrobe department rustled up. Miriam’s distinctive look – a big part of what Sarandon’s character deems “European” – is in large part the YSL look. YSL is for the modern, classically elegant, powerful woman – and I think that’s basically Miriam’s character, in a nutshell. That’s important when you’ve got Miriam, dressed to the nines in YSL suits and veiled hats, prowling a nightclub for unsuspecting people to murder. Because she’s wearing clothes that are identifiably YSL – and that don’t exist as “costumes” – the film is able to reinforce that contrast between Miriam’s refinement and animalism while emphasizing her modernity. She might be a glam vampire, but she’s not an Elizabethan caricature.

Classical music — Miriam, John, and their young music student, Alice

[RB]: You learn something new every day! YSL or not, I do still think that Miriam’s costumes serve to emphasise the fact her “otherness” for lack of a better word, as well as the rather dangerous brand of elegance and sensuality which draws people like John and Sarah into her web.

[AC]: I think the film encapsulates that attraction really well, but is confusing on other points. I haven’t read the novel (or its subsequent sequels), but I think part of the reason why the story fails is because it doesn’t elaborate on the novel’s ideas about the nature of vampirism, which takes a sci-fi approach. In the novel, Miriam wasn’t ever human; she’s a different kind of species that resists aging and is very hard to kill. She learns that she can transfer some of her traits, like an extended lifespan, to a lover by sharing blood. This explains why her lovers can’t be turned completely, and why they hover as empty shells. The central premise of the film doesn’t really make sense without this justification. If you approach the film with more traditional vampire lore in mind, you’re searching for a reasonable explanation for why the lovers she turns don’t turn all the way – and moreover, you have to try to work out how Miriam managed to get the way she is. The novel’s reasoning makes far more sense.

Club dudes — The Manhattan nightclub John and Miriam frequent in order to hunt

[RB]: Perhaps for the movie’s purposes, that doesn’t matter: the story seems to be far more driven by the desire to create an artistic film, rather than an intellectually/ethically/scientifically engaging narrative. The scientific aspect for example—the part of the film I found personally most engaging, that it is possible to tamper with the natural life-cycle, halting the aging process in its tracks—is touched upon but it seems, at least to me, to be more of a plot device for bringing Sarah into Miriam’s life than an attempt to explore an ethically challenging issue. The biology behind Miriam’s present state and the fate of her lovers is similarly irrelevant.

[AC]: One thing that I really wish the film had actually addressed is the tension of Miriam’s existence. We know that the fact that she’s condemned a parade of lovers to a miserable half-life, locked away in steel coffins but still “conscious,” tortures her. She actively looks to science to extend John’s life by following Sarah’s research; when it becomes apparent that he has declined beyond all hope, she mourns. And yet, she still turns her attention to someone new. Why?

[RB]: I suppose as distraught as Miriam might be by the loss of John and her many other lovers, loneliness would be worse. She loves her companions, but it would be worse to exist alone rather than remain faithful to the memory of what they once were and mourn perpetually. Or perhaps it simply serves to drive the narrative forward!

[AC]: And what does that say about her as a character? On the one hand, while it isn’t anything new to see a female villain, Miriam has a conscience. It’s almost as if she can’t help herself.

[RB]: I think it’s significant that she’s motivated by that fear of loneliness. After all, her former lovers are all trapped in those steel coffins because she cannot bear to kill them and end their suffering. It’s incredibly selfish – as is her plan to turn Sarah – but incredibly sad as well.

Miriam mourning — Miriam in mourning for John

[AC]: I have to say, I really despise the ending (in which her former lovers extract their revenge on Miriam, helping Sarah to make Miriam like them), because it doesn’t make sense. In the DVD commentary, Sarandon says, “All the rules that we’d spent the entire film delineating, that Miriam lived forever and was indestructible, and all the people that she transformed [eventually] died, and that I killed myself rather than be an addict [were ignored]. Suddenly I was kind of living, she was kind of half dying… Nobody knew what was going on, and I thought that was a shame.” And I think she’s right. Beyond being implausible in a narrative sense, the ending basically rewrites everything we’ve come to know about Sarah. I think it would have been a more satisfying end to the film to have seen Miriam in London, alone at her piano or, alternatively, with a new lover. It would have been a far more powerful statement for Sarah to have killed herself, and for the final scenes to show Miriam facing the prospect of eternity alone.

Amanda Civitello and Rebecca Bennett are the two halves of a very happy couple who became close while collaborating on this review of Sleepy Hollow, which probably makes them the first Bitch Flicks couple. Together they founded and edit Iris | New Fiction, a new, nonprofit literary magazine of fiction, poetry, and visual art for LGBTQ+ teens and their allies. Catch up with Amanda at her site and twitter, and say hi to Rebecca on twitter.

‘Night of the Living Dead’: Early Reception and Gender Performances

In terms of gender representations, both men and women are shown as the worst possible version of themselves. Barbra swings back and forth from being near catatonic and unable to communicate, to wild and hysterical. Ben even slaps her at one point to get her to snap out of her state. She is weak and unable to deal with the emotions of seeing her brother attacked. Barbra would have already been killed and reanimated were it not for the über masculine Ben to save her from the perils that lie outside.

This guest post by Deirdre Crimmins appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

George Romero’s 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead is a film that needs to be put into its proper context to truly appreciate it. With this week’s focus on cult films, which are defined by their reception rather than standing alone as artists’ endeavors, it makes sense to first look at the film’s early history of release before diving into its mainly problematic gender representations.

Night of the Living Dead was a micro budgeted independent film, made by a group of filmmakers who had most of their filming experiences with advertising. Romero had a life-long love of horror films (shooting one as a child on Super 8 led to a mishap that ended with him getting sent to boarding school), and he knew horror had potential for great profits. After all, the ghouls (the modern zombie was essentially invented in this film, but Romero only referred to his reanimated dead as “ghouls” because the term zombie referred specifically to Haitian voodoo victims) in his film required very little makeup and were a cheap monster to create.

The film famously had two major setbacks early on. First, Romero decided last minute to change the film’s title from Night of the Flesh Eaters. Unfortunately, the copyright declaration on the original title card was not reinstated on the new one, and Night of the Living Dead has been in public domain ever since its initial release. The second setback was a scathing review by Roger Ebert. He had gone to see the film when it was playing as a matinée. In the pre-multiplex era the earlier screening times were typically reserved for young children, and Night of the Living Dead was mistakenly programmed to be shown to a very young crowd. Ebert lamented:

The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying.

After this review, other critics began discussing how to handle ultra-violence in film. The expected suggestions of censorship, and comparisons to pornography were thrown around as the film suffered at the box office. It wasn’t until Night of the Living Dead gained popularity in European film festivals that critics began to see the film as something truly groundbreaking.

It is tough to see the film today as you would have 45 years ago, but the film itself really was something special. To compare it to a contemporary horror film is one way to highlight its distinctiveness. Rosemary’s Baby was released in 1968 as well, and is an equally worshipped horror classic. That film, however, is in color, had recognizable actors starring in it, was beautifully scored, and was clearly a big budget production. With this comparison, Night of the Living Dead was essentially the Blair Witch of its time. It was set in a farm house and actually filmed at a farm house rather than an ersatz farm house in a studio lot somewhere in Hollywood. The camera work is imperfect, and the sound is not polished. The performances are raw and from unknown actors. The ending of the film is frequently compared to Vietnam War footage, and that is exactly the frame of reference that audiences at the time were bringing to the film. It felt more real than anything else they could see in the theater, and the effect is brutal.

The film is at its core an outbreak film. Some sort of other worldly satellite debris is causing the dead in to come back to life and to feast upon the living. This is very unfortunate for Barbra (Judith O’Dea) and her brother Johnny (Russell Streiner), as they are on their way to a cemetery to lay a wreath. Very quickly they are attacked, Johnny is killed, and Barbra is left to hysterically seek shelter. She finds a farmhouse which is presumptively safer than the outside, but she is not alone. Ben (Duane Jones) is a determined, organized, and armed man, who is on the house’s first floor. In the basement a young couple, Tom and Judy (Keith Wayne and Judith Ridley) hide from the ghouls along with the Cooper family (Marilyn Eastman, Karl Hardman, and Kyra Schon). As soon as Harry Cooper emerges from the basement, he and Ben fight about the best way to get out of the house and travel to one of the safe zones that the emergency broadcasters keep urging survivors to evacuate to.

Despite Barbra’s shortcomings, she is not the most negative character in Night of the Living Dead. Both Ben and Harry’s overly masculine performances are what ultimately lead to the group’s downfall. They are completely unwilling to compromise or even band together to save all of their lives. Instead they bicker and insult one another, looking like a pair of Galapagos albatrosses in the middle of mating dance. It is their pig-headed defiance, which means that they each resort to death before compromising their gender performances. Had either one of them been more intent in survival over ego, they all may have survived.

None of the characters in Night of the Living Dead are the sort of folks that you would want to grab a cup of coffee with. Though this was long before the introduction of the slasher sub-genre, Romero was on to something with maintaining characters that you don’t mind seeing killed. No one in the audience was mourning Harry or Barbra when each of them was eaten by the undead. Ben’s death is tragic, but more due to the timing of it than his good nature. In the end the most interesting characters are the ones that are encircling the house, waiting to feast. And isn’t that a wonderful prediction of the zombie film as we know it today?

Deirdre Crimmins lives in Boston with her husband and a non-spooky black cat. She wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romero and is a staff writer for http://www.allthingshorroronline.net/.

Luc Besson: Hero of the Feminist Antihero?

For the uninitiated, Nikita was the often too realistic story of a drug-addicted young woman who finds herself in jail after a robbery gone horribly wrong. Most filmmakers would have ended there, a cautionary tale of the woman led down the wrong path who ends up punished for her sins. But Besson took the story further; this broken young woman gets turned into an assassin that is used by her government to kill. The killing takes its toll on her, but she values her life and freedom over the other option provided her: death. She meets a guy, falls in love, and at the end of the day Nikita turned out to not be the same story I was used to.

This guest post by Shay Revolver appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

From moment I laid eyes on the first frame of ET I have loved movies. I will watch anything on celluloid , breathe it in , just so that I can examine and explore every bit of awesomeness exuding from the screen. Good or bad, every film has something to offer. It’s kind of guaranteed, unless of course you’re a woman; then it sometimes can become a crap shoot. Having been born a woman, a minority woman at that, the chance of watching a film and identifying with the main character is slim to none. Sometimes that can be off putting, and I have learned to manage as best I could without taking myself out of the experience. Being a true lover of the art, I’ve learned to be forgiving and try to find the spot of light in the midst of the gender polarizing mess. I tend to go for complexity in art and for a very long time, I watched a parade of less than complex women be carted out in front of me on screen with a sole purpose of filling a very specific and stereotypical role. As a woman, most filmmakers will portray us as a prize to be won, an undeveloped side character, the quirky friend of the queen bee or the bitch. Growing up it was a jarring contrast to my real life where the women I was surrounded by were some of the strongest women I knew. I was raised a feminist. I was taught that my frilly dresses and love of pink were just as valid as my love of playing pool, video games, and climbing trees. I was raised to believe that everything was gender neutral, but that was never what I saw on screen. By the time I was close to hitting puberty, I had all but given up on the fantasy of seeing a strong, complex, multifaceted woman (of any race) on screen.

Most of the time when I get into this debate or lament the lack of strong female characters in media, fellow feminists speak of Joss Whedon. Despite my love-hate relationship with his work, I can see valid points in hailing him as the male champion of the strong female in the gender wars of visual media. But, what if the reigning white knight of strong female characters Joss Whedon isn’t femme powered enough for you? Where does a film loving gal like me go to find true complexity? Enter the often forgotten genius of Luc Besson. I have loved his work since a twelve year old Shay got her first glimpse of video that her big sister showed her. I fell in love with La Femme Nikita, the visuals, the style, the story and the lead. Besson doesn’t get as much credit as he should for his work. Not only does he create some of the easiest to relate to yet stunningly complex female anti-heroes to grace the silver screen, but he creates a world where women almost always end up happier and okay just being alone. Sure, there is a love interest, but he’s always a subplot or distraction on the female hero’s way to her end goal. Besson always has his female lead start from a place of weakness; they’ve had a hard, almost violent life experience, and after having gone through all manner of–often male inflicted–hell, they prevail. They soldier through the trauma. They don’t stay victims or acquiesce to the men in their life trying to save them. They do something that rarely happens on film; they think for and save themselves.

Anne Parilla as Nikita — Anne Parillaud as Nikita in *La Femme Nikita*

For the uninitiated, Nikita was the often too realistic story of a drug-addicted young woman who finds herself in jail after a robbery gone horribly wrong. Most filmmakers would have ended there, a cautionary tale of the woman led down the wrong path who ends up punished for her sins. But Besson took the story further; this broken young woman gets turned into an assassin that is used by her government to kill. The killing takes its toll on her, but she values her life and freedom over the other option provided her: death. She meets a guy, falls in love, and at the end of the day Nikita turned out to not be the same story I was used to. Besson takes the character from a scared, isolated, broken young woman and turns her into a slave to her own freedom. And then he does something that I hadn’t ever seen before. He lets her be her own hero. After an assassination gone wrong she sees her way out, a way to control her own destiny, and she does the unthinkable, she saves herself and escapes alone. She doesn’t end up with the guy, or stay as a puppet. She takes her evolution and goes off on her own to continue becoming the person that she wants to be. Watching her evolution and seeing all of the complexity that she possessed was an eye-opening journey, not just for the character, but for me as an artist.

Besson has spent his career showcasing strong women making their way through difficult situations, breaking down and then coming out the other end a little dirty, both literally and figuratively, with a delicate light shining on their sweat smeared faces. His world was filled with a range of all the complexities of human emotions and the evolution of women from girl to woman, finding a sweet spot of strength in between. His women were tough and strong because they needed to be. He showcased their beauty and didn’t feel the typical male filmmaker desire to make them man-hating, or imply that if only they had a man, their life would be so much better. In fact, most white knighting was turned on its head. There was no breaking of these women as punishment for their strength. Their strength and independence was shown as beautiful; it was a celebrated quality. It was what made them who they were and what got them out of the often dire end sequence that almost always had them being brutalized at the hands of one of their male antagonists. There was no cowering or apologies; in fact these women fought just as hard and just as strong as any man would. They were resilient and strong and, through Besson’s lens, these women were equals. True equals.

Natalie Portman as Mathilda in Leon: The Professional — Natalie Portman as Mathilda in *Leon: The Professional*

In his American follow up to Nikita, he gave us a young Natalie Portman as an actual broken little girl bent on revenge who joins forces with an older assassin who she wants to learn from. There seemed to be a step back in Leon: The Professional because despite all the brilliant acting from Portman, Oldman & Reno, the female character in this film was an actual child, and she needed to be protected. But, in true Besson form, he gave her a voice. She wasn’t just vocal; she was strong and defiant, and even in the face of being overrun, shouted at, and abused by men, she held her own. She stood her ground and didn’t get the usual punishment that any other filmmaker would have doled out. Even in the end when Danny Aiello’s character forces her to go to school, it doesn’t seem like patriarchy at all. Her revenge had been accomplished; she was all alone, and it seemed fitting to know at the end of it all, she was going to be alright. She was going to have a chance to become whatever she wanted to become.

I found myself excited again when Besson showed up with Colombiana, and I could tell from the trailer that he was back to his wonderful old tricks. This was a return to the Besson style that I could so easily relate to, and he even threw in a woman of color as the lead. Like all of his other female characters, he didn’t make her a stereotype or a caricature or a piece of scenery whose sole purpose was to provide visual entertainment as a prize for the male characters. In a way, Colombiana was what you imagine might have happened to Mathilde if Leon had made her wait longer to go after her family’s killers. She was complete and whole onto herself. Colombiana showed an actual evolution of its lead from a little girl who fearlessly escaped to a grown woman with her own agenda of vengeance as a means to find peace. Her passion and emotion, much like all of his female leads, gets her into trouble but, in true Besson form, she fights her way out. In the end, when her mission is complete and her journey is over, she lets go of her rage and moves on to a new life. She wasn’t a soulless killer and worthy of pain, she was human, a little girl who fed the beast inside of her until it had had its fill. She was real, complex and human and we could relate to her pain and growth.

Zoe Saldana as Cataleya in Colombiana — Zoe Saldana as Cataleya in *Colombiana*

A lot happened in between Nikita and Colombiana, but the messages stay the same. When Besson is directing you’re assured that there will be a woman in the lead and she will be complex, independent, strong and, with the exception of The Fifth Element, the love story would be a side story and not the main attraction. His resistance to making a romantic love story the core of the female antihero’s journey is one of the things I love about his work. When he does show us our lead’s romantic entanglements, he does show only a side story, a throwaway to the real star of the show, the woman and her journey. He makes the men part of her scenery, her manic pixie dream boys who show her how to lighten up and let go. An extra in the movie of her life whose sole purpose is to give her a glimpse at a life she could have when her journey is complete. He lets his female leads do exactly what any male director would allow their male lead to do without batting an eye. He doesn’t try to sugar coat the reality of the situation by showing them as permanent victims. He allows them to grow, evolve and be who they are, be it good, bad, or a work in progress. His camera loves strong women. Their strength is what makes them beautiful. It does not sexualize them or treat them as less than the men on screen. Through his lens we are all human and we are all equal. And, I can’t think of anything more feminist than that.

Shay Revolver is a vegan, feminist, cinephile, insomniac, recovering NYU student and former roller derby player currently working as a NY based microcinema filmmaker, web series creator and writer. She’s obsessed with most books , especially the Pop Culture and Philosophy series and loves movies & TV shows from low brow to high class. As long as the image is moving she’s all in and believes that everything is worth a watch. She still believes that movies make the best bedtime stories because books are a daytime activity to rev up your engine and once you flip that first page, you have to keep going until you finish it, and that is beautiful in its own right. She enjoys talking about the feminist perspective in comic book and gaming culture and the lack of gender equality in mainstream cinema and television productions. Twitter @socialslumber13.

Fairytale Prostitution in ‘Angel’

Angel, a 1984 cult film, attempts to be both a melodrama about a teen hooker forced to face her life choices (as the trailer proclaims it “A Very Special Motion Picture”) and a very 80s crime thriller where a tough-talking street kid teams up with a cop to catch a killer, but the resulting film is a mess of clashing tones that seems more campy than hard-hitting.

This guest post by Elizabeth Kiy appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

The prostitute is a common figure in the landscape of crime film–she’s a scared witness, a disposable victim or a condemned woman whose character is rarely fleshed out enough to reveal her as a person. In genres like melodrama and after-school specials, where she is a protagonist, the real-life horrors and anxiety of her work are made explicit and over shadow any possible upside.

Angel, a 1984 cult film, attempts to be both a melodrama about a teen hooker forced to face her life choices (as the trailer proclaims it “A Very Special Motion Picture”) and a very 80s crime thriller where a tough-talking street kid teams up with a cop to catch a killer, but the resulting film is a mess of clashing tones that seems more campy than hard-hitting.

This conflict is clear in the music video for the film’s theme song, “You’ve Got Something Sweet” by the Allies, which hilariously juxtaposes bright, sitcom-ready music with images of men slipping money down a teenage girl’s shirt, the main character, Molly (Donna Wilkes) discovering her friend’s beaten and bloody body, the serial killer ominously shaving his head, and Molly running terrified. And then, in the midst of the lead up to a crime story, there are images of Molly fixing her make-up and walking down the street laughing and smiling.

What’s even more surprising is how much fun Molly’s life looks.

A typical image evoking street prostitution, similar to those used in news reports

In a real world context, the story of the movie is tragic: Abandoned by her parents, Molly has been working as a teenage prostitute since she was twelve, and the adults in her life who make up her surrogate family fail to provide her with other options or suggest they disapprove. While there are characters like the detective and Molly’s guidance counselor who want to help her and a moral message about the desperation and abandonment that give young women no choice but to turn to prostitution seems intended, the film is unwilling to commit to an entirely negative portrayal of Molly’s life.

Instead, viewers are presented with an extended teenage fantasy of complete independence and sexual exploration with bits about murder thrown in. Molly has all the things teenage girls want; there is no one who can tell her what to do, she feels beautiful and in control of her life, and her only moments of awkwardness stem from feeling more mature than her classmates. She lives comfortably in her own apartment, goes to a private school and, at the film’s start, seems to have no worries about the really awful things that could happen in the course of her work. Rather than portraying the detective story of typical violence on the streets or hooker murders that get swept under the rug, this murder case seems instead to be a momentary intrusion into Angel’s fairytale life.

The sequence of Molly getting ready gives her a "glamor moment" familiar to most women — The sequence of Molly getting ready gives her a “glamor moment” familiar to most women

In one scene, soft music plays as Molly sits in front of the mirror, having a “glamor moment.” In a series of close-ups, she carefully puts on her make-up and fixes her hair, smiling excitedly at her reflection, transforming from school girl to sex worker.

While the viewer knows the film’s protagonist is a prostitute going in because of its promotional material, the opening scenes of Molly at school function as if the viewer doesn’t know.

In doing so, the film drives the viewer to compare the two distinct images and attempts to make the contrast between them jarring.

Molly is first introduced to viewers as an ordinary schoolgirl, as the film intends to contrast her two lives — Molly is introduced to viewers as an ordinary girl, as the film intends to contrast her two lives

A Madonna/Whore dichotomy is further suggested in the film’s posters, which read “High School Honor Student by Day, Hollywood Hooker by Night,” suggesting viewers will be shocked to discover they can be one and the same. (Streetwalkin’, a 1985 film has a similar tagline, “She dropped out of high school this morning. Tonight she’s a Times Square hooker.”)

Instead, Molly could be a girl getting ready for a date or a dance. In the end result, she does not appear transformed, just a more polished version of her everyday self. Because this glamor moment is so familiar to many women from their own lives, it instead draws viewer identification and brings positive associations.

Though on one hand, the sequence suggests teenage Molly’s transformation to adulthood, it could also be interpreted as a subtle indication that she is not as grown up as she feels she is. For me, this scene brings to mind young girls dressing up in their mothers’ clothes, projecting a grown-up image over a child body. As it is followed by scenes on city streets at night, it is also reminiscent of a girl going clubbing.

Dressed for work in lace socks and club-ready separates, Molly's transformation from schoolgirl to prostitute is far from extreme — Dressed for work in lace socks and club-ready separates, Molly’s transformation from schoolgirl to prostitute is far from extreme

In these scenes, Molly strolls confidently down the street, greeting people as she passes and sharing inside jokes and nicknames. When someone she passes condemns her for prostitution, she continues smiling, as if these outsiders will never understand her free and adventurous world. These scenes are portrayed as if she is going home, and to me, they recall walking though high school hallways and greeting friends.

On the street, Molly has put together a surrogate family for herself, populated by the types of characters teenage girls growing up in the suburbs dream of finding in the city, Diane Arbus photos shot through the lens of Lisa Frank.

Molly enjoys quality time with Mae (Dick Shawn) and Kit Carson (Rory Calhoun), members of her street family — Molly enjoys quality time with Mae (Dick Shawn) and Kit (Rory Calhoun), members of her street family

Her friends, a transvestite who acts as her surrogate mother, a cowboy movie actor/stuntman, and a butch landlady are presented as outsiders who banded together to support each other in a world that had rejected them. This is mostly implied, but is shown literally through the cowboy, once a star but now a has-been doing stunts for money on the street. Because of this, in parts the film has a certain heartwarming tone, constantly reminding the viewer Molly has a “family” who loves her, even as it descends deeper into a crime thriller. Though she has the independence to be in charge of her life, she does not have to shoulder the burden alone.

The films seem to suggest that by working and supporting herself, she has matured past her peers and doesn’t belong in their world. As such, one of Angel’s trailers repeats the line, “Angel, it’s her choice, her chance, her life,” glamorizing Molly’s independence and avoiding mention of the factors that made prostitution not a choice but a necessity for her.

By emphasizing Molly’s youth and innocence with the title Angel, the schoolgirl, already a figure of sexual fantasy for some, is cast here as an attainable object. The viewer is told that Molly is a hooker, but never sees her nude or actually having sex. Strangely, the high school cheerleaders she notices in the locker room, who are shown showering fully nude, are more sexualized than she is.

As such, the scene where Molly casually informs the detective that she’s slept with hundreds of men is difficult to believe based on how chastely she has been portrayed. To this end, the film portrays her as a child, joking with her friends and taking breaks from work to go get ice creams and do her homework in hotel lobbies.

Molly takes a break from work to finish her homework and keep up her honor student status

In school, Molly dresses childishly, with pigtails and matching pastels, perhaps to emphasize the contrast. While other prostitutes are dressed in skimpy lingerie or are topless, Molly’s hooker wear is not dissimilar from what a teenage girl would wear to a club.

Conversely, Molly’s independence could be seen as coming from the sacrifice of her innocence or virginity. She is allowed to inhabit dark, dangerous places her classmates will never see as she has entered into an illegal activity and with it, a criminal underworld. As a criminal in this respect, she is given qualities usually reserved for male characters, such as toughness, inclusion in masculine spaces and the ability to use a gun. She also displays enviable bravery as in calling the police, she risks arrest, exposure, or a foster home.

Lieutenant Andrews warns Molly about the killer and her high-risk lifestyle

Homicide detective Lieutenant Andrews, who would be the lead in any other crime drama, functions in relation to Molly and is presented as a secondary character. Viewers don’t see his life outside the case, and the film follows Molly’s story rather than his investigation. Though he is the adult and authority figure, she has power over him, both in his inability to actively save her and his reliance on her to find the killer. The film’s tonal clashes are also apparent in the image of Molly, a young girl in a dress and heels wielding a gun that nearly knocks her over when she fires it, which is presented for comedic effect. Rather than giving Molly the power to cooly seek vengeance for her friends, the suggested unnaturalness of this image through her girlish dress, small size and her friends’ attempts to stop her, further compounds her innocent image instead of tarnishing it.

It is interesting to note that the film does not suggest prostitution on a whole is safe and wonderful, but that for Molly it usually is. She’s the exception, who is able to maintain her status as an “Angel” and with it the suggestion of purity, while other women around her are scantily clad and brutalized. In this fashion, the film suggests, she is young enough to be redeemed and live a different life, but older women in more desperate circumstances are long past helping and thus, must be concerned with things like violence, rape, STDs and unwanted pregnancy that are outside of Molly’s orbit. As mentioned before, the crime story of the movie, an (albeit exaggerated) norm for these other women, is presented as an unusual episode in her otherwise happy life. Still, Molly is always able to protect herself and in incidences where she is threatened by the killer and when two of her classmates try to rape her, she takes control of the situation and forces them to leave her alone.

Molly has a rare moment of anxiety and fear late at night

This viewpoint, that the bad things could happen to anyone else, but would never happen to oneself, appears to me to be a very immature, adolescent idea. Likewise, there are many teenage girls who glamorize prostitution as being wanted, or getting paid to be beautiful and enjoy expensive dinners, presents and sex, ignoring the circumstances that drive desperate women to prostitution or the danger and discomfort that even women who choose to be sex workers must take measures against.

However, the film ends abruptly and without any real closure, giving the viewer no sense of what will happen to Molly now with all the changes in her life. It is unknown whether she will go back to her life of fairytale prostitution, go into foster care or find some other solution (in the sequel, Avenging Angel, Molly is off the streets and attending college). Ultimately, I believe this abrupt ending contributes to the film’s fantasy image of prostitution. The viewers don’t have to see Molly live with the consequences, both of picking up the gun intending to kill the villain and of prostitution itself, so it can remain an escapist fantasy. Not a trauma, but another adventure she has bravely overcome.

Elizabeth Kiy has a degree in journalism with a minor in film from Carleton University. She lives in Toronto, Ontario and is currently working on a novel.

‘Slumber Party Massacre’: Deconstructing the Male Gaze

Slumber Party Massacre came up while I was searching for female directors in the exploitation genre. Although it came off as yet another sensationalistic and gory 80s slasher, it stuck out, mainly due to its ridiculous title or the fact that most of the characters were female. Upon viewing it, what shocked me was not so much the gore and violence, but I was surprised by the clever humor, the funny characters, and most of all the incredibly veiled feminist satire.

The women of Slumber Party Massacre in the locker room — The women of *Slumber Party Massacre* in the locker room

This guest post by Emanuela Betti appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

Slumber Party Massacre came up while I was searching for female directors in the exploitation genre. Although it came off as yet another sensationalistic and gory 80s slasher, it stuck out, mainly due to its ridiculous title or the fact that most of the characters were female. Upon viewing it, what shocked me was not so much the gore and violence, but I was surprised by the clever humor, the funny characters, and most of all the incredibly veiled feminist satire.

The movie was written to be a mock parody of exploitation movies, as well as a satire of masculinity in the slasher genre. However, the movie was marketed as a straight slasher movie, which ended up causing a lot of mixed opinions: while reading through reviews, some critics brushed off the movie as a boring slasher with gratuitous T&A, while others actually caught the humor and satire, and revered its feminist perspective. Slumber Party Massacre is actually a very feminist movie, and it’s a biting satire of the male gaze that exists in cinema. Through its witty and clever humor, the movie deconstructs the prevailing sexism and masculinity in the slasher genre, offering one of the most entertaining feminist exploitation movies ever made.

Slumber Party Massacre is very women-centric: both in the characters and the women behind the scenes. The film was directed by Amy Holden Jones, one of the few female directors to delve into the exploitation genre, and written by feminist Rita Mae Brown. This fact alone should make you want to pay attention to the small details, which in this movie are actually not that small but thrown right into your face.

The story revolves around Trish, a young high school girl who throws a slumber party at her house, and Valerie, Trish’s neighbor, who doesn’t attend the party and spends a boring evening at home. As you can already guess, the girls at the slumber party are eventually harassed by a silent killer. The movie begins in a typical suburban neighborhood, and we are introduced to Trish’s bedroom. Trish is the stereotypical image of innocence and femininity: her bedroom is full of plush toys and fluffy pinkness. We then move to a school setting in which we are introduced to Valerie, who is somewhat of an outsider to the popular group of girls led by Trish, but is an essential character in the story.

She doesn't see the dead body — She doesn’t see the dead body

One of the first scenes that made me raise an eyebrow was the shower scene: after gym class, the girls are in the school showers, where we see a lot of T&A, and not even in a clever or artistic way. That scene confused me—I couldn’t understand why a movie directed and written by women would objectify the female body in such a demeaning way. Maybe, at the end of the day, the director just wanted to make a buck? And didn’t really care? I later realized that nudity (and objectification) is actually a very important element in the story, along with sexual innuendos. An example is the killer’s weapon of choice, a 12-inch drill which he sometimes holds in suggestive places (like his crotch, as a phallic metaphor). Also, there are countless instances in which boys from Trish’s high school, or the killer himself, are staring, spying, or quietly watching the girls. I realized that the gratuitous nudity was not so much for the gratuity, but to directly point out how this group of girls is the target of a voyeuristic threat, and are purposely being objectified through these male character’s gazes to show that they are in fact the victims of the killer’s drill, but also of the male gaze. There is a scene that says it all, in which the kids walk past a dumpster where the body of one of the victims is lying in the trash, unnoticed. The movie is about what we see and what we don’t see, or more specifically, knowingly watching and unknowingly being watched. This is the basis for the concept of the male gaze in cinema, which is finding pleasure in looking at a person as an object, who becomes the unwilling or unknowing victim of the gaze.

What makes this movie such a clever satire is the twist placed on the male gaze, which we see in Valerie. The objectification of Trish and her friends is emphasized by the contrast with Valerie and her younger sister Courtney (probably the most interesting female character in the whole movie) who are actually the ones doing the objectifying. During the evening, Courtney pulls out an issue of Playgirl from under her sister’s bed, and later on, both girls casually look at full-page spreads of naked men. Trish and Valerie are opposites, not only in their personality and social life, but also in their role with the gaze. Throughout the movie, we never see Valerie naked, and there’s a good reason why; while Trish is the passive victim of the gaze, Valerie is the bearer of the gaze, she enjoys looking at pictures of naked men and is immune to the killer’s gaze. Valerie is the true heroine of the movie, and she saves the day by finding an equally phallic weapon (a machete) and “chopping off” the killer’s drill, basically castrating him metaphorically.

If there were are any doubts on whether Slumber Party Massacre is an intelligent feminist satire or just a regular slasher, all questions are answered when finally, after the killer goes on a bloody rampage without speaking a single word, he finally utters some of the most horrifying lines: “All of you are very pretty… I love you,” and “you know you want it, you’ll love it.” Those seem like the words of a rapist, and although the killer didn’t rape any of the girls, he did violate them: just like a rapist victimizes a woman by violating her body, the male gaze, which roams rampant in Hollywood cinema, violates women on the screen by turning them into objects.

Along with sharp satire and sharp commentary, Slumber Party Massacre is full of clever humor. There’s the scene where Valerie is relaxing at home, watching an old slasher movie while she’s a character in one herself (and the events on TV seem to sync up with what’s happening next door). Then there’s Courtney grabbing a drink from the fridge without noticing a dead body inside, or one of Trish’s friends eating a slice of pizza over the delivery boy’s dead body. Amy Holden Jones and Rita Mae Brown do a wonderful job at providing entertainment and humor, alongside a refreshing and sharp feminist viewpoint. If there’s any movie that made me respect cheesy exploitation movies, it’s this wonderfully cheesy slumber party slasher full of pizza, nudie magazines, and girls chopping off metaphorical penises.

Emanuela Betti is a part-time writer, occasional astrologer, neurotic pessimist by day and ball-breaking feminist by night. She miraculously graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing, and writes about music and movies on her blog.

Call for Writers: Women & Gender in Cult Films & B-Movies

For this theme week at Bitch Flicks, we want to read about your favorite Cult Classics and B-Movies. These are usually our most popular theme weeks—people love any iteration of the horror genre, especially with a little comedy thrown in—so I won’t spend time defining Cult Films and B-Movies. You know what they are. Instead, I’ll leave you with lists of some of the most popular Cult Films and B-Movies, according to all those other lists out there.

My mom tells this story sometimes about how I—when I was five years old—snuck out of my bedroom in the middle of the night because I heard Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” playing on the TV. I remember my simultaneous fascination with and terror of that video, with its dancing zombies and decrepit dead people digging their way out of graves. My mother remembers me crouched down in the corner where she saw me through a reflection in the mirror, scaring the shit out of her while she wrapped Christmas presents and watched Michael Jackson change into a werewolf. For me, that “Thriller” video, performed and parodied in prisons, on film—in 13 Going on 30 (led by Jennifer Garner)—and by me and my younger siblings, remains one of my all-time favorite Cult Classic moments in popular culture.

That said, we want to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to review. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece in the text of an e-mail, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. The final due date for these submissions is Friday, October 25th by Midnight.

Your Not-At-All-Definitive-List of Cult Films and B-Movies

The Big Lebowski
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Evil Dead
Quadrophenia
The Toxic Avenger
Fight Club
Withnail & I
It Came from Outer Space
This Is Spinal Tap
Freaks
Them!
Harold and Maude
Pink Flamingos
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
The Room
Office Space
Eight Legged Freaks
The Warriors
Dazed and Confused
The Class of Nuke ‘Em High
Rushmore
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
C.H.U.D.
Badlands
Night of the Living Dead
Zombie Strippers
Yellow Submarine
Night of the Comet
Sleuth
Repo Man
Wet Hot American Summer
Eraserhead
Heathers
The Stuff
The Harder They Come
Bladerunner
Dr. Giggles
Clerks
Barbarella
A Clockwork Orange
The House on Sorority Row