Straight White Cis Girls: Babystep in the Right Direction, or Sop to Shut Us Up?

I love that we are having a cultural moment where bestselling books with hotly anticipated film adaptations center on tough, three-dimensional female protagonists, who have kickass, high-stakes fantasy adventures in worlds where gender equality is largely unremarkable. But one can’t help noticing a pattern.

hunger-games-and-divergent

Written by Max Thornton.


Last week the trailer for the film adaptation of Veronica Roth’s bestseller Divergent dropped. A charitable observer might describe this story as “post Hunger Games.” Dystopian future US? Check. Implausibly advanced technology combined with a sometimes oddly primitivist lifestyle? Check. Tribalism at the service of a sinister ruling elite? Check. Teens in mortal peril? Check. Love story firmly taking a backseat to violence, survival, politics, and intrigue? Check.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sutgWjz10sM” title=”Divergent<%2Fi>%20trailer”]

Divergent is an enjoyable enough book, if strongly derivative and prone to some of the notable weaknesses of its genre (is anyone else more than sick of first-person present tense?), and I’m sure the movie will be more or less competent. What really strikes me, though, is that it seems to be part of a mini boom of female-specfic heroines in young adult fiction. Bella Swan notwithstanding, YA seems to be the place to go for the quality woman-centered specfic I so long to see in mainstream media: Divergent, The Hunger Games, Graceling

I love these heroines. I love Katniss and Katsa and Fire and Bitterblue and Tris. I love that we are having a cultural moment where bestselling books with hotly anticipated film adaptations center on tough, three-dimensional female protagonists, who have kickass, high-stakes fantasy adventures in worlds where gender equality is largely unremarkable.

But one can’t help noticing a pattern: All of these heroines (as well as those of less highly acclaimed fantasy series) are straight. All cis. All white (regardless of book Katniss’ skin color, the whitewashing controversy has ensured that the primary public image of her is chalkwhite). All able-bodied. All young. All thin. Really, the only way in which they differ from the Harry-Frodo-Luke generic specfic hero is in being female.

the-hunger-games

graceling

And that’s great! I don’t want to minimize the importance of female protagonists in a cultural climate where the economic exploitation of women is directly mirrored in the entertainment industry’s erasure of women. As frustrating as it is in 2013, specfic heroines are still noteworthy.

I have to wonder, though, whether this is really a step in the right direction, or if it’s simply a tiny concession on the part of the kyriarchy to try to placate those of us who are demanding better representation of marginalized groups in our entertainment without making any real change.

This is, after all, how hegemony works. It’s a constant negotiation between dominant and resistant forces in society, and the dominant forces are never going to concede any ground if they can find any way to avoid it. Kyriarchy gives with one hand while taking away with the other — we may have some kickass female heroines in our YA specfic, but female speaking roles in blockbuster movies declined last year.

The upside of this negotiation process is that the kyriarchy never gets the last word. People whose voices are suppressed and silenced are always talking back, always reappropriating what the kyriarchy provides them with and remaking it for themselves, whether through queer headcanons or racebending recasting.

The downside is that we can never rest easy. Just because straight white pretty cis girls are beginning to be represented in specfic (or rather, in one specfic niche that is still derided in male-dominated geek culture), we can’t assume that this means the trend will continue in the right direction without some very real, tireless, and vocal work on the part of us consumers.

We have to keep demanding more and better representation. Yes, celebrate Katniss and Tris and Clary and Katsa; but never seem to be saying that this is enough. Cheer for our kickass young heroines, and in the same breath demand queer heroines, heroines of color, heroines with disabilities, trans* heroines, fat heroines, older heroines…

Good question

Good question.


Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to Twitter @RainicornMax.

In ‘Clue,’ the Real Mystery Is the Bechdel Test

On any dark and stormy night in the fall, it is a wonderful thing to curl up with a mug of mulled cider and watch Clue. The murder mystery based on the eponymous board game may have been a huge flop when it was released in 1985, but it has gained a passionate cult following in the last 28 years, probably due to its infinitely quotable dialogue and gleeful disregard for the pile of bodies amassed as the movie progresses – as well as being shown on cable about once every two hours.

Movie poster for Clue
Movie poster for Clue

 

This guest post by Erin K. O’Neill appears as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.

Six strangers gather in a New England mansion for a mysterious dinner party. It is revealed that their host is blackmailing them all, but then the tale darkens. First the host is murdered, and then the cook and the maid – and to make a long story short…

Too late!

On any dark and stormy night in the fall, it is a wonderful thing to curl up with a mug of mulled cider and watch Clue. The murder mystery based on the eponymous board game may have been a huge flop when it was released in 1985, but it has gained a passionate cult following in the last 28 years, probably due to its infinitely quotable dialogue and gleeful disregard for the pile of bodies amassed as the movie progresses – as well as being shown on cable about once every two hours.

Mrs. Peacock
Mrs. Peacock

 

I seriously love Clue. It’s my favorite board game and one of my favorite movies, and has been since one of my friends sat me down and made me watch it one Halloween a long time ago. It’s bawdy and brash and downright hilarious, especially if you have a taste for farcical whodunits.

But: Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

  • It has to have at least two named women in it,
  • who talk to each other,
  • about something besides a man.

 

In order to help you understand whether or not Clue passes the Bechdel Test, I shall need to take you through the criteria of the test, step by step.

1. Does the movie have two named women in it?

There are five women characters who have names in Clue.

  • Mrs. Peacock, the hysterical senator’s wife.
  • Mrs. White, the widow of a nuclear physicist.
  • Miss Scarlett, Madam of a Washington D.C. brothel.
  • Yvette, the maid and Miss Scarlett’s former employee.
  • Mrs. Ho, the cook. While being listed in the credits as “The Cook,” in one of the first scenes in the movie Wadsworth calls her by her name.

 

In fact, in the entire movie only one female character doesn’t have a name, and that’s the Singing Telegram Girl.

And so, Clue passes the first step in the Bechdel Test.

2. Do these women talk to each other?

Absolutely. Clue is an ensemble movie with a mile-a-minute dialogue – and more one-liners than I care to count. So, here are a few of my favorite exchanges:


Miss Scarlet: Maybe there is life after death.

Mrs. White: Life after death is as improbable as sex after marriage!


Mrs. White: Maybe he wasn’t dead.

Professor Plum: He was!

Mrs. White: We should’ve made sure.

Mrs. Peacock: How? By cutting his head off, I suppose.

Mrs. White: That was uncalled for!


Miss Scarlet: What was he like?

Mrs. White: He was always a rather stupidly optimistic man. I mean, I’m afraid it came as a great shock to him when he died, but, he was found dead at home. His head had been cut off, and so had his, uh… you *know.*

[Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, and Mr. Green cross legs]

Mrs. White: I had been out all evening at the movies.

Miss Scarlet: Do you miss him?

Mrs. White: Well, it’s a matter of life after death. Now that he’s dead, I have a life.


And so, Clue passes the second step in the Bechdel Test.

Miss Scarlett
Miss Scarlett

 

3. Do the women talk to each other about something besides a man?

The third leg of the Bechdel Test is often the one movies fail – while there are often women characters, how often do they not speak of men? And Clue has some integral issues with the plot and structure that would make it difficult to pass this leg of the test.

For one, the movie is an ensemble with a male butler at the center. Wadsworth, throughout the film, controls the action and guides the other players through the plot – he holds all the cards and asks all the questions. Furthermore, it’s a murder mystery where the first and most crucial victim, Mr. Boddy, is a man. Much of the dialogue, even if it’s about murder, is about a man.

And finally, Mrs. Peacock, Mrs. White and Miss Scarlett are all being blackmailed for actions that entirely have to do with men: Mrs. Peacock for accepting bribes for her husband’s senate vote; Mrs. White for allegedly killing her husband (and possibly at least one of her previous husbands too); and Miss Scarlett for running a house of ill repute that caters to men. This means that even when the women are discussing their histories and their motivations, the topic of conversation is men.

Flames-Side-Of-Face

In the dinner scene, Mrs. Peacock tries to start conversation by asking the other women about their husbands and asking the men about their careers. It’s a telling moment, which could perhaps be forgiven by the film’s setting in 1954, which reveals how narrow topics of conversation for women can be. Even in 1954, they could have discussed Abstract Expressionism, or thematically, the McCarthy hearings on the House Committee of Un-American Activities. After all, communism is just a red herring.

I’ve seen Clue, well, let’s just say a lot. And, I had to rewatch the film three times but also scour a copy of the shooting script to find any dialogue where two women talk about something besides a man. As far as I can tell, it happened twice:


Miss Scarlett: Would you like to see these Yvette? They might shock you.

Yvette: No, thank you. I am a lady.

Miss Scarlett: And how do you know what sort of pictures they are if you’re such a lady?


Mrs. Peacock: Uh, is there a little girl’s room in the hall?

Yvette: Oui oui, Madame.

[points]

Mrs. Peacock: No, I just want to powder my nose.


Yep. The second instance is a pun on peeing.

Yvette
Yvette

 

Are these two, three-line exchanges enough to pass the Bechdel Test? There appears to be much debate about this leg of the test. Some critics claim that in order to pass, the women must speak to each other for more than 60 seconds, or that there must be some depth to the conversations. Since the original comic makes no such distinction and states that the two women must simply talk to each other about non-men related topics, I would argue that their two bits of dialogue meet the criteria.

And so, Clue passes the third step in the Bechdel Test, by the skin of its teeth.

 


Erin K. O’Neill is an award-winning writer, photographer, and visual editor currently located in her hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan. A devotee of literature, photography, existentialism, and all things Australian, Erin also watches too much television on DVD and Netflix. Follow her on Twitter, @ekoneill.

 

Seed & Spark: A Balancing Act: A Year of Film

At the same time I’d been reading a lot of reports about how underrepresented women filmmakers are. I’d seen a lot of fabulous films directed by women, but I recognized that there were many more women-made films I had yet to see. I actually had NO IDEA how true that was until I launched into this process, but that insight sparked my idea to create a year of film watching that focused on films made in the past ten years, and gender balanced my viewing. So here’s the vision: over the course of a year I’d watch films directed by women and men in equal number. Every day I’d see at least one feature film and one short. I chose to put my attention on films from the past decade, so I could tune in to the powerful energies of film creation arising on the planet at this time.

olrlcover

This is a guest post by Barbara Ann O’Leary.

I’m having a great year in film viewing.  I attribute that in large part to my choice to take conscious charge of what I see. It’s a process, rocky at times, but it’s been an amazingly eye opening adventure.  I call it A Yearlong Film Viewing Balancing Act.

Yes, that’s a clunky name with a cryptic hashtag #yfvba, but I rather like it.  It’s a little strange and obsessive. I think I’m on to something.

I’m an enormous lover of film.  I watch a LOT of films, but I’d started questioning what my film viewing choices were based on.  Media hype?  Friends’ suggestions?  Whatever just happened to be showing at the local theater?  Pressure I put on myself to be able to say I’d seen all the so-called great films?

At the same time I’d been reading a lot of reports about how underrepresented women filmmakers are.  I’d seen a lot of fabulous films directed by women, but I recognized that there were many more women-made films I had yet to see.  I actually had NO IDEA how true that was until I launched into this process, but that insight sparked my idea to create a year of film watching that focused on films made in the past ten years, and gender balanced my viewing.  So here’s the vision: over the course of a year I’d watch films directed by women and men in equal number. Every day I’d see at least one feature film and one short.  I chose to put my attention on films from the past decade, so I could tune in to the powerful energies of film creation arising on the planet at this time.

Why not just dedicate myself to watching women-made films for a whole year?  That would be a great project too.  That might be what someone else needs to do, but for me it’s about inviting harmony. It’s about fostering balance in my own film-loving life, and it’s about recognizing that as an individual I have the power to impact the entire world of cinema through my film viewing choices.

What?  Change the entire world by film watching?!  Yes.  I really think so.

When I launched A Yearlong Film Viewing Balancing Act on May 4th, which was the day the idea struck me, I created a manifesto of sorts.  It started off like this:

“Today I begin a yearlong film viewing balancing act… where I dedicate myself to inviting authentic creative expression to flourish in the world in a balanced and harmonious way by bringing my attention to–and opening to receive–the creative motion picture outpourings of women and men filmmakers in equal measure.”

To me this was an act of power, a fierce awakening.  What we put our attention on grows in our own lives and in the world at large.  I’ve experienced that over and over again in my life.  When I ask myself what I want to see flourish in the world I get this crystal clear answer:  I want to live in a world where everyone’s authentic creative expression is honored, supported, and received fully.  Film is my favorite form of artistic expression, so it’s a natural place for me to bring my awareness.

Through A Yearlong Film Viewing Balancing Act I’m making an unshakable commitment to be awake to what films I’m experiencing.  I’m noticing and honoring who made them.  The film world responds to viewer demand–not instantaneously, but over time–and I’m doing my part to call forth balance.  Gender balance is not the only balance I value, but I’m inviting it to serve as a grounding force for balance in all other aspects of life.

Even if no one else is changed by this process, I know I will be.  I already am, and I’m only halfway through the 365 day process.  As I’ve been blogging, tweeting, Facebooking, and talking about the adventure with others, I am noticing that things are starting to shift in the wider world, so I’m gaining confidence that my actions are making a difference.  That’s delightful to me.

yfvba

Here are a few things that have already shifted in my life, because of this experience:

 

 

  • Starting out on this adventure I’d feared that to keep my theatrical film viewing even I would have to struggle, but although women-made films are underrepresented in theaters, I have been able to go out to see an even number of movies directed by women and men without difficulty.  Yes, it’s taken some focus and planning, but by combining multiplex, art house, and film festival viewings, I’ve been able to stay even.  As of today I have seen 23 man-made films, 24 woman-made films, and 4 films by mixed gender directing teams out at theaters.  Including films I’ve streamed, watched on disc or on TV, I’m up to 219 features. Men- and women-made films are running neck and neck.

 

  • It’s ridiculous to generalize about filmmakers by gender.  Each filmmaker is unique and expresses her or his own vision of self and world.  For instance, I’ve found both woman- and man-made films to be tender explorations of love and family. Jeff Nichols’ Mud, David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere, and Lake Bell’s In a World… come to mind.  And women-made films can be as harsh as any man’s.

 

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/Vatw1xlgZJM” title=”Ava%20DuVernay%27s%20Middle%20of%20Nowhere%20trailer”]

Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere trailer

 

[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/b_gGlYCMye4″ title=”David%20Lowery%27s%20Ain%27t%20Them%20Bodies%20Saints%20trailer”]

David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints trailer

 

  • I feel more centered and grounded when I’m saying YES to authentic creative expression that arises in a balanced way.

 

The journey is ongoing.  If you’d like to join me, I’d love your company.  Come find me at O’Leary’s Reel Life on Tumblr, Twitter, or Facebook , etc.  Tell me how your film viewing adventures are unfolding. And stay tuned for my new podcast–under development.


 

BA-shades

Barbara Ann O’Leary, Indiana University Cinema’s Outreach Specialist, loves to help people engage authentically. Recent projects include: Every Everything: The Music, Life & Times of Grant Hart (Executive Producer), Indy Film Festival (Screening Committee), Indiana Filmmakers Network Made in Bloomington Film Series (Programmer), Bloomington Screenwriting Community (Founder/Facilitator). A Film Explorer/Blogger, Barbara shares her adventures in film and reports on her initiative A Yearlong Film Viewing Balancing Act at O’Leary’s Reel Life: http://olearysreellife.tumblr.com/

 

Seed & Spark: ‘Gloria’: Dancing On Her Own

As we watch Gloria’s flailing, her triumphs, her mistakes, her fun, we can’t help but be reminded (and I was just by typing all those words) of another single lady on a smaller screen and a familiar part of the feminist zeitgeist: Girls’ Hannah Horvath. Only living in Santiago, Chile, all growed up. I’ve seen a couple of Gloria reviews mention Girls, but almost always in the context of the film’s sex scenes, the sort not traditionally shown, between bodies wider audiences (or producers) aren’t generally begging to see nude. But the character similarities don’t end there. Though they are generations and cultures apart, it continues with their flighty boyfriends, with their finding themselves alone in a dress on a beach without their belongings, with their ability to be irritating and down-to-earth simultaneously, and with their love of dancing.

This is a guest post by Amanda Trokan.

1
Gloria (Paulina Garcia)

 

2
Girls (Lena Dunham)

 

This is not a review of (the life-affirming! Berlin Festival prize-winning! Dare I say glorious?) Chilean comedy-drama Gloria.  No.  This is a call, nay an order, no, no a call (I’m an indecisive lady, right?) for women under 50 to go see a film that depicts a woman over 50 in such a way that you just might leave the theater as excited to get old (well, older, while we’re being polite) as I did.  Not despite its titular character’s spinsterhood, but surprisingly because of it.

Gloria is no kind grandma stepping in to take care of the family when the leading-lady daughter’s marriage falls apart, nor a lonely grandma dealing with an ailing husband, nor a stubborn grandma slowly getting ill herself, nor the sassy single grandma making one-liners about her granddaughter’s sex life from the periphery.  All that, one might expect from Hollywood.  The 58-year-old divorcee grandma in Gloria (played by the vibrant Paulina García) is the center of our story as she casually takes up dating again, but mostly just continues living.  And I mean really living.

I would like to say “living it up” here, but that phrase might suggest living lavish or fabulously.  And while I personally think her life falls under that definition—smoking weed, having sex, romantic weekending—I understand the subjective nature of my opinion on lifestyle choices.  (I tend to see the fun, or at least “interesting experience,” in waking up solo by the sea missing a shoe after a night of gambling—as Gloria does—rather than the shame in it.)  What I objectively mean is: she is existing no differently from a woman of any other age, with some age-specific issues (ex-spouses, children, gastroplasty) but mostly universal, adult ones.

In Gloria, we are swiftly pulled into Gloria’s day-to-day life as she flirts, drinks, dances, deals with the various characters in her apartment complex, gives her blessing to her pregnant daughter who’s moving abroad for love, and embarks upon a new relationship with Rodolfo (Sergio Hernández), who has a family of his own to manage.

As we watch Gloria’s flailing, her triumphs, her mistakes, her fun, we can’t help but be reminded (and I was just by typing all those words) of another single lady on a smaller screen and a familiar part of the feminist zeitgeist: Girls’ Hannah Horvath.  Only living in Santiago, Chile, all growed up.  I’ve seen a couple of Gloria reviews mention Girls, but almost always in the context of the film’s sex scenes, the sort not traditionally shown, between bodies wider audiences (or producers) aren’t generally begging to see nude.  But the character similarities don’t end there.  Though they are generations and cultures apart, it continues with their flighty boyfriends, with their finding themselves alone in a dress on a beach without their belongings, with their ability to be irritating and down-to-earth simultaneously, and with their love of dancing.

3

4

Don’t get me wrong, I am not implying direct influence here.  But if I must make the ubiquitous Girls connection in order for the female masses (ew?) to get out and experience this film and understand that getting older is going to be A-OK, that we don’t need to hurry up to find a partner and figure out who we are, that we don’t need Botox or lipo to get naked after 40, that we don’t need to fit into one of two categories, career woman or mom, and that we don’t need to fear being alone (and I don’t just mean single here, I mean physically alone)—well then the ends justify the means.

Here’s the thing, women over 50 should watch it, too.  In the same way that I enjoy watching Girls because it gives me that thank-heavens-I’m-not-dealing-with-that-nonsense anymore feeling, the 50-pluses might get a thrill out of Gloria’s life not being their own anymore, or on the flip side it might completely resonate.  Win, win!  Because while it may seem like some big secret of growing old has been revealed to us in Gloria (or at least to me, a 31-year-old)—namely that we actually will still have those young brains in those old bodies—women of a similar age as Gloria might feel satisfaction seeing themselves or people they know represented more accurately on screen.

You could garner exactly none of this from Gloria, and it’d still be a really good time.  But for me, it was refreshing to see a female-led film where the moral of the story isn’t the girlie best-friendships above all else, nor the incomparable bond with your mom, nor your unconditional devotion to your daughter, nor the knowing nod from your sister.  It is about learning to love dancing on your own.

[youtube_sc url=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/h9PrVESAYeA?rel=0″]

 


Amanda headshot

Amanda Trokan is a writer turned Seed&Spark Director of Content. Watcher of many   films, lover of some. Winner of 1993 West Road Elementary D.A.R.E. essay and two 2013 Oscar® pools; loser of hair thingies.  Follow @trokan on Twitter for insight into her likes/dislikes/whatever.

We Need A Different Game: ‘Tiger Lily Road’

From Aristophanes’ Lysistrata to contemporary men-are-from-Mars neurobabble, there has been a Western cultural tendency to view male-female relations in military terms, as a “battle of the sexes.” As a veteran of both teams, and even more so as a feminist who disputes gender essentialism, binarism, and cissexism, I find this framing deeply tiresome and hopelessly passé, and it’s hard to know what to with cultural products that revisit it.

“You can’t force him, Louise.”

“Why not? If it was you or me tied up in there, they wouldn’t hesitate. It’s why they join the army, so they can rape and pillage and–”

“He’s not in the army!”

“He’s in the army of men. And he’s a prisoner of war.”

From Aristophanes’ Lysistrata to contemporary men-are-from-Mars neurobabble, there has been a Western cultural tendency to view male-female relations in military terms, as a “battle of the sexes.” As a veteran of both teams, and even more so as a feminist who disputes gender essentialism, binarism, and cissexism, I find this framing deeply tiresome and hopelessly passé, and it’s hard to know what to with cultural products that revisit it.

If this is true, what am I? Benedict Arnold?
If this is true, what am I? Benedict Arnold?

This is why I absolutely cannot make up my mind about Michael Medeiros’ film Tiger Lily Road, which is so oddly pitched that I can’t decide how to read it. Medeiros has averred that “Dark comedy can illuminate aspects of the soul usually left in shadow in lighter treatments,” but I’m not entirely sure what aspects of the soul are being illuminated here, unless they’re ones that are hugely more cynical about human nature and gender relations than I am.

The IMDb plot outline runs thus: “Two small-town women accidentally capture a handsome young fugitive.” Blonde, gentle veterinarian Annie and vampish brunette Louise are both middle-aged, single, and disillusioned with romance. When douchey young criminal Ricky stumbles into their lives, they find themselves acting in unprecedented ways.

Both within the film and in the director’s statements, the allusion to Thelma and Louise is made explicit. From Tiger Lily Road‘s Facebook page:

This film, which could not exist without Callie Khouri’s ground-breaking screenplay, Thelma and Louise, asks the question: where are we now? Are we still frozen in mid-air as in Ridley Scott’s boldly edited ending? Or have we crash-landed in some new and twisted territory…

Still the best friendship
Still the best friendship

Thelma and Louise is certainly still depressingly relevant some twenty-odd years later: rape survivors still get scrutinized, mainstream films that pass the Bechdel test are still vanishingly rare, men are still inundated with violent power fantasies and women are not. The awesome thing about Thelma and Louise is its portrayal of the titular women’s friendship – as Sophie Standing wrote last year, “nothing is more important than their loyalty to each other, and they are empowered by their freedom and refusal of male domination.” I’m not fully convinced that the women of Tiger Lily Road even like each other. Certainly there’s far more onscreen evidence of bonding between Annie and Ricky than between Annie and Louise.

Not that Annie and Ricky’s relationship is healthy (the Misery allusion might have tipped you off). If this film is meant to be an empowerment fantasy, it’s a creepy and depressing one where women’s relationships with men are cast as either the mother, with blonde Annie’s 50 Shades of Grey emotional fixer-upper thing (“He’s damaged!”), or the whore, with dark-haired Louise raping Ricky using the physical means of Viagra. If it’s a cautionary tale exploring the perils of a “battle of the sexes” worldview, it’s certainly stylishly made, particularly one standout sequence near the end, but it’s very strange tonally.

The SYMBOLISM, do you see it
The SYMBOLISM, do you see it

But then, maybe the point is to unsettle us. Pop culture is full of male empowerment fantasies that are objectively creepy and depressing, but we’re so inured that we don’t take them seriously. Maybe the reason this one discomfits me is because I’m just not used to it. Or maybe because I know the writer-director is a man, and I’m not certain that his portrayal of gender relations is a helpful one.

In the end, even though he’s a nasty piece of work who manipulates Annie’s trust and naivety with film quotes, Ricky perhaps makes the film’s best point. Annie shows him a picture of a co-ed soccer team from their childhood and laments growing up and separating along gender lines: “We couldn’t be on the same team anymore.” Ricky replies, “Maybe you just need a different game.”

Amen to that.

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

Older Women Week: ‘Notes on a Scandal’: The Older Woman As Predator and Prey

This is a guest post by Elizabeth Kiy.

“I don’t know. It’s just the distance between life as you dream it and life as it is.” –Sheba Hart

Notes on a Scandal film poster

In Notes on a Scandal, a 2006 British psychological thriller, a web of lies and manipulations form around the relationship of two schoolteachers who live very different lives.

Told through her point of view, the film takes viewers into the mind of Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), an elderly woman whose sweet voice and grandmotherly appearance hide a cunning mind and sinister intentions. She lives alone with her cat and confides only in her journal, whose entries form the film’s narration.

Her loneliness is compounded by this narrative technique, as Barbara is often given no one to play off of and instead watches interactions from a distance, remaining an entirely closed off person with a rich internal life she only reveals in her private writing. For an older woman, whose age, unmarried status and perceived lack of attractiveness leave her virtually invisible and of no value to society, this narration allows her to express her resentment. But underneath her malice is the profound loneliness of a woman who seems to have never learned how to connect to people and to remain in their lives without manipulations.

Barbara only confides her real opinions in her journal

To a degree, her isolation is self imposed as Barbara sees the people around her, students and teachers alike, as uncultured, unwashed and unilaterally badly behaved. That she sees herself as above them is highlighted in an early sequence when she watches the children come into the school from an upper floor window. This is the scene where Barbara first sees Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett).

Sheba’s first appearance presents a sharp contrast. She floats, very blonde and pale in a sea of dark haired students in black uniforms and the viewer’s eye, aligned with Barbara’s, is easily drawn to her. While Barbara, a through disciplinarian in dowdy clothes, fits naturally into the school environment, Sheba is alien within it. It is suggested that she has no authority over the students because she still sees herself as a young person and wants to be their friend. The film also addresses the idea of class difference which further sets Sheba, with her upperclass background, apart from the working class pupils.

The details of Sheba’s life seem comfortable enough; she lives in a large, ornate house with her much older husband (Bill Nighy–who interestingly portrayed a love interest to Dench in Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) and her two children, a teenage daughter (Juno Temple) and a boy with Down syndrome, but none of it makes her happy. In a telling detail, a photograph of Sheba in her youth, dressed in a punk style, is shown in her studio.

Teenage Sheba was a Siouxsie & The Banshees fan

Like her pottery and the art in her shed, this photograph suggests a life unfulfilled, that she imagined a bigger, more bohemian life for herself. This was the time in her life when she felt most free and most herself, before she was married or had children, and it is this sense of fulfillment she tries to reclaim by ultimately entering into a relationship with one of her students.

Her relationship with 15-year-old Steven Connolly is particularly disturbing because actor Andrew Simpson certainly looks this age. At first, he satisfies her idealism, and helping him develop his potential as an artist makes her feel useful in a way she hasn’t felt in a long time. She tells Barbara it was he who began to pursue her, constantly following her and playing on her sympathy with sad stories about his family life. The first time she leaves her family to meet him, lying about where she is going, the camera briefly lingers on her son and husband, showing her last minute hesitation.

In viewing the situation as one where he pursued her and she was helpless in her desire (whether or not Sheba’s story to Barbara is reliable), she allows herself to feel young, desirable and like a teenager again, experiencing clandestine affairs. In this sense, her much older husband is recast as her father, which Connolly thinks he is when he sees him. Sheba’s relationship with her daughter, who is the same age as Connolly, is also changed as they both enter a similar world of teenage dating.

Teenage Steven Connolly pursues Sheba

In the end, it becomes clear Connolly can’t take the burden of this complicated relationship and the knowledge that she has a family and feels he has been used by her. In her efforts to reclaim her own carefree youth, she has been stealing his and forcing him to grow up. In one telling scene, Connolly looks through her records and is unfamiliar with the artists, highlighting their age gap. The wrongness of Sheba’s actions is brought home to her when Connolly, naked post-sex tries on her son’s hat. At the sight of him, she is repulsed and forces him to take it off.

Though both women struggle with loneliness and are unhappy with their lives, the different ways they deal with similar emotions cast them in degrees as predator and prey.

Alone and undervalued, Barbara rapidly develops an obsession with her younger colleague, which makes her feel more vital and connected to the world. She is fascinated with the exotic character that Sheba seems to be, someone so different from her. She is also jealous of Sheba, as in her narration she says that people like her only think they know what real loneliness is. With this in mind, when she discovers Sheba’s affair with Connolly, she uses it to blackmail her into being her friend.

Though society easily defines a woman like Sheba as a predator, and she is punished with a jail sentence at the film’s end, Barbara’s predatory nature is much subtler and hidden. She looks at Sheba’s life noting how around her family, she acts in a serving position, making dinner and tidying the dining room while the others sit and talk, that she alone has had to take care of the children. This allows Barbara to resent Sheba’s family as a burden placed on her that she’d be glad to be rid of.

Several characters mention Barbara’s old friend, Jennifer, who she doesn’t want to talk about, suggesting she has had these obsessives friendships before. They also suggest Barbara’s attraction to Sheba is actually repressed lesbian desire, unfortunately casting this desire as predatory by connecting it with Barbara’s manipulations. In one scene, the camera, showing her point of view, focuses on an extreme close-up of one of Sheba’s golden hairs falling. Like a lover, Barbara holds it delicately, as if it is precious to her and saves it in her diary.

The camera shows Barbara’s point of view as she gazes at Sheba with lust

In addition, during a moment of casual dancing during her first visit to the Harts, Barbara’s eyes scan up Sheba’s body, and her dancing is shown in slight slow motion, accentuating Barbara’s lustful gaze. This gaze challenges the societal view of an older woman as a sexless grandmother and presents her as someone with active sexual desires.

Sheba is also guilty of manipulating Barbara and dismissing her because of her age. Early on, when she first begins to confide in Barbara, she sees her as a good person to talk to because she assumes she does not have her own life or secrets. She assumes a woman like Barbara would be glad just to have a friend, and dismisses any idea that she could have sinister intentions running contrary to the older woman’s assumed place in society as the grandmother. With this assumption, she begins to prey on Barbara’s loneliness, continuing to see Connolly and buying Barbara gifts to silence her. The viewer begins to feel sympathy for Barbara here as her narration reveals that she lives in a fantasy world, believing she has a wonderful relationship with this loving friend who will take care for her in her old age.

Barbara dresses as a doting grandmother to visit the Harts

Similarly, Barbara shows her first genuine smile when she is first invited to Sheba’s family dinner. Because the film follows her through the minute details of getting ready; buying clothes and having her hair done, the invitation is inflated in importance. As the details momentarily consume the film, the preparations seem to become her whole life, revealing how small, unimportant and lonely it is. The insert shot of her in the mirror, nervously touching her hair stresses her concern about looking a certain way and fitting into the role expected of her.

She emerges wearing pearls and carrying flowers, the very picture of a sweet grandmother.

The film takes great care to show Barbara in an unflattering light, making the signs of her age, her thinning hair, neck fat and heavily wrinkled skin, appear (for lack of a better word) pathetic. It also suggests Barbara’s appearance mirrors her cold-hearted nature. This seems a bit hypocritical, as much of the film can be interpreted to suggest that the older woman should not be dismissed as having none of her own desires and secrets. By aligning the film with Barbara’s point of view and then including scenes, like the overhead shot of Barbara smoking in the bath with her sweaty older body on display, it is suggested not only that she is monstrous, but that she sees herself as monstrous.

Barbara’s “monstrous” older body on display in a purposefully unflattering shot
The older unmarried woman is often portrayed in media in a very cliched fashion, as treating her pet like a child, and this point in Barbara’s character is a bit heavy-handed. Her most vulnerable, “pathetic” moments occur around her cat, Portia, and its failing health. The one time she is explicit about her sexual attraction to Sheba, when the camera, showing her point of view, pans down to Sheba’s breasts, is after she finds out Portia is terminal. Angered Sheba doesn’t reciprocate, she reveals that she fully understands Sheba’s state of mind when she delivers the ultimate insult, telling her, “You’re not young.” When Portia is put down, Barbara is bewildered and irrational and tries to force Sheba into being with her. She goes to Sheba’s house and screams at her, attempting to pull her away from her family exactly when she is trying to reconnect with them.

To Barbara, this final betrayal marks the end of their friendship, as she buries not only her cat, but the silver frame Sheba had given her. Having become completely unhinged, Barbara now wants to possess Sheba and become the only thing in her life, as Sheba is in Barbara’s. With this goal, she reveals Sheba’s relationship with Connolly.
The overwhelming solitariness of Barbara’s life is contrasted with Sheba’s warm family evening, through crosscutting between them, counting down the last moments of Sheba’s happiness. When the affair is revealed, Sheba’s house is swarmed by the media, and her family rejects her. With no one else left, she has to call Barbara and rely on her friendship when she has nothing else.

Sheba, in her punk make-up, discovers the journal

Alone in Barbara’s apartment, Sheba tries to convince herself that she is still young and attractive, by applying punk make-up, finally visually becoming the teenage girl she had felt like.
As she sits, considering herself in the mirror, she discovers ripped pages from Barbara’s diary and, furious and scared, she begins to search for it. The film cuts between Barbara innocently shopping for their new life and Sheba discovering her obsessions and manipulations.
In the end, Sheba returns home to talk with her husband and rebuild her family, while Barbara sits with her new notebook, speculating on the life she could have lived with Sheba. Time passes and Barbara meets a new woman and begins her predatory advances all over again.

Barbara makes a new friend and the story begins again

Notes on a Scandal is an interesting film to look at through a lens of age, as it portrays elderly and middle-aged women being driven to manipulate each other and those around them by their fear of growing old and being (or feeling) alone. It is complicated in its depiction of lesbianism, its suggestion that a teenage boy is responsible for seducing his teacher, and its often cliched presentation of an elderly woman as a spinster worthy of pity.


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.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Wrinkle-Washed: Female Faces in Film Marketing by Lisa Wade at Sociological Images

Calming the Controversy: “After Tiller” Directors Lana Wilson and Martha Shane Discuss the Complexities of Late-Term Abortion by Christopher Campbell at RogerEbert.com

Infographic: Why Don’t Women Directors Win Emmys? by Imran Siddiquee at Miss Representation 

Where’s the Diversity? A Look at the Emmy Awards and TV by Jason Low at Lee and Low Books

‘Saturday Night Live’ Adds 6 New Cast Members Which Is Nice. But What’s Wrong w/ This Picture? by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act

Jess and Mindy–A Look at the Progression of Female Comedy Characters by Alyssa Rosenberg at Women and Hollywood

Stephen King Calls Out Stanley Kubrick for “Misogynistic” Shining Character by Jill Pantozzi at The Mary Sue

New Reality Show “Modern Dads” is Extremely Boring by Jill Moffett at Bitch Media

How to Crack the Film World’s Glass Ceiling by Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones

Forbes Announces Top Female Earners on Television by Melissa Silverstein and Karensa Cadenas at Women and Hollywood

BULL’S-EYE: Geena Davis Tells Hollywood Where To Stick Its Ageist, Sexist Representations Of Women at Upworthy, via Funny or Die

John Singleton Channels August Wilson – Pens Op-ed On White Directors Helming Black Films by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act

8 Ways to Make a Movie About a Female Superhero Happen by Charlie Jane Anders at io9

Once Upon a Time” Rewrites Fairy Tales–But Misses A Big Opportunity by Hannah Strom at Bitch 
Media

Sirens, Succubi and Slut-Shaming: Why Are Women ‘Evil’ Once They Have Sex? by Alex Henderson at feminspire

A Feminist Cook Portrayed in New Movie ‘Haute Cuisine’ by Anne Dulce at The Daily Meal

The 17 Faces Of The Future Of Feminism at Refinery29



What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

 


Women’s Films and Social Change by Maggie Hennefeld at Highbrow Magazine
Toronto: ’12 Years a Slave’ Wins Audience Award by Etan Vlessing at The Hollywood Reporter
Double Consciousness in Lee Daniels’ The Butler by Jonathan Harrison at Sociological Images
Is There Any Satisfying Way to End a Modern Drama? by Matt Zoller Seitz at Vulture

My Life as a Warrior Princess by Jennifer Sky at The New York Times

Danai Gurira talks Mother of George by Wilson Morales at blackfilm.com

My Summer With Agent Scully by Sarah Mirk at Bitch Media

Salon Pictures Announces Slate of Women Directed Films by Kate Wilson at Women and Hollywood

The Feminist Power of Female Ghosts by Andi Zeisler at Bitch Media
Do We Really Need a Feminist Press? by Leora Tanenbaum at The Huffington Post
 

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!
 
 

A (Bad) Teacher

Written by Max Thornton.
  
Movie poster for A Teacher
People sure like to make movies about teacher-student relationships. It’s always incredibly skeevy, of course, to watch someone in a position of authority abuse their power, but cinematic representations are rarely as nakedly awful as the reality.
A Teacher consciously downplays the really appalling aspects of intergenerational classroom romance without ever intimating that it’s anything other than a very bad idea. As suggested by the title, the film focuses entirely on young English teacher Diana Watts (played by Lindsay Burdge), for whom the relationship is at least as destructive as it is for Eric, the pupil (who is, if it makes a difference, a high-school senior and significantly bigger physically than she is).
The total focus on Diana is signaled from the opening classroom scene, where the camera stays fixed on her, regardless of who is speaking. This directorial choice recurs throughout the film, and it serves to highlight her naïve solipsism. It’s tricky to maintain audience empathy for a viewpoint character while also drawing attention to her self-centered immaturity, so props to director Hannah Fidell for finding a deft way to put us inside Diana’s head (hearing other characters’ dialogue from her perspective) while still maintaining an outsider’s gaze (looking at her face).
Lindsay Burdge as Diana.
Overall, both style and acting contribute to an odd sense that Diana is not the one doing the victimizing in this circumstance. Factor out her job, and this movie would just be the story of dumb puppy love, a young woman so hopelessly smitten with the very idea of romance that she’s heedless of the realities of the situation. But, of course, her job is the point – the movie’s called A Teacher – and the experience, knowledge, and wisdom implied by that position are dramatically at odds with her incredibly adolescent attitude toward the whole relationship.
Early in the film, while hooking up with Eric in his car, Diana reminisces about similar trysts from her own high-school days. It’s a tellingly sad and uncomfortable little moment that kicks off a spiral of nonstop sadness and discomfort: Watching a grown-ass woman sext and Facebook-stalk a teenage boy is both tragic and kind of disturbing. There’s something Carey Mulligan-esque about Burdge’s face when she’s in bed with Eric, evoking (as does the title) another film in which the questionable sexual relationship is the other way around, age- and power-wise.
Perhaps the echo is deliberate. Diana never seems to have any power in this relationship, never acts like the teacher or the one giving the education. Even in the bedroom, Eric calls the shots (“Take your clothes off.” “Come here.”), and, while driving his car, he describes feeling as though his penis is getting bigger, coming into its own, “powering up.” For him, sex with an attractive young teacher is a power fantasy come true. The lovelorn look of the infatuated is notably absent from his face throughout the film, even as Diana is distracted from grading papers by soft-focus fantasies of him.
Oh girl.
Diana doesn’t have to be alone in these delusions of romance. The hand of friendship is consistently extended by her coworker and her roommate – both of whom are women, the latter of whom is even named Sophia– but she ignores this potential salvation in order to continue down the self-destructive path of reliving her high-school sexuality and daydreaming of underage man-meat.
That’s not really an unfair assessment of Eric, who is little more than a cipher. He’s just there to be strong and silent and sexy, a backdrop for Diana’s nostalgic projections, whose actual personality she never seems to take into account. Almost everything he says to her is to do with sex. By contrast, Sophia tells Diana she cares about her. In a heartbreaking pre-Thanksgiving scene, Sophia monologues anxiously about the upcoming holiday with her family, and Diana completely ignores her in order to text topless selfies to her teenage boyfriend.
Ultimately, the film’s lesson is of the value of companionship and empathy, and the danger of total self-absorption. Someone who only chases empty nostalgia for her former self (check her name, Diana, and in case you didn’t get it her brother’s called Hunter), and never bothers with the richness of female friendship that is right there in her life, is not going to end happily. A shallow focus on finding hunkitude in all the wrong places, instead of paying attention to your friends, is not the pathway to a fulfilling life. 
Max Thornton blogs at Gay Christian Geek, tumbles as trans substantial, and is slowly learning to twitter at @RainicornMax. He can never format this bio line correctly.

Unconventional Women

Screening of Like the Water in Rockland, Maine
This is a guest post by Emily Best.

I am lying on the floor of a small bedroom in an East Village mansion in New York City. It’s the holding room of a site-specific production of Hedda Gabler in which I am playing Thea, and Caitlin FitzGerald (who is soon to co-star in Showtime’s Masters of Sex) is playing Hedda. We have been playing for about two weeks to sold out, packed crowds of 28 people who sit around the living room while the show happens so close to them they can feel us breathing (and we them).

We are warming up. I am reading over some sides that Caitlin is preparing for an audition the next day–for the role of a chronic masturbator. The dialogue is trite, the character non-existent. This woman who stands across from me every night in full possession of the force of her intelligence, complexity, delicacy, beauty, humor, and wrath is auditioning to play a trope. 

Director Caroline von Kuhn on set with Like the Water cast
I remember that day as the deciding factor for me. For Caroline von Kuhn–who wrote a piece for Bitch Flicks about directing Like the Water, the film we would eventually make together–I’m not sure what it was. Or for Caitlin, who was perhaps tired of being asked to audition for parts like that. Or for the other seven women who would join the production of our film, all of whom I count as dearest friends. But somehow, together we decided we would attempt to make a film about women we recognized. We would attempt to make a film about women who do not fall into one of two categories we typically see in films: the mouthy, too-smart for her own good teenager, or the emotionally stunted 35 year old for whom the solution to the world’s problems is a man. (You could add to this perhaps the oversexed Other Woman and the mean mom/stepmom.)

We wondered what it would be like to make a movie about situations familiar to us, with characters who react the way they do in life: imperfectly. But it was also important for us to include something about the nature of our friendships: funny, challenging, loving, and absolutely necessary.

DP Eve Cohen — Like the Water and Mana O’Lana: Paddle for Hope
We made Like the Water to lean against what we felt like were the conventional portrayals of women in their 20s and 30s. Until we made the film, I hadn’t gone out of my way to seek out the ways other directors were pushing the boundaries of female characters. It was only through my own experience producing Like the Water that I realized just how difficult a task it is to fund and lock down distribution for a film that bucks these conventions. So when we started Seed&Spark, I suppose it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that most of our early submissions both for crowdfunding and distribution were from women. It’s so exciting to be able to bring together a slate of films that I hope adds to the conversation about those conventions, and also what it means to be unconventional.

My good friend Anna Kerrigan made her directorial and acting debut with the film Five Days Gone, an exceptional screenplay she wrote which she turned into a feature film about family, sisterhood, and the subtle complexities in relationships between men and women. In The Sound of Small Things, Pete McLarnan found an actress who possessed so much of her own life, he turned the camera on her and for the most part, stayed out of her way. (This film has one of the most beautiful, intimate scenes of a deaf woman finding an unconventional way to connect to her musician husband.) In Café Regular, Cairo, Ritsh Batra trains the camera on a Muslim woman testing her relationship by playing with taboo. In I Send You This Place, Andrea Ohs opens her creative world to the audience as she explores her relationship to her brother’s schizophrenia. And in Mana O’Lana: Paddle for Hope, documentarian Eve Cohen enters into her mother’s story of arduous ocean paddling with a group of determined breast cancer survivors.

Film posters and stills
None of these women can be put in a box or labeled, reduced or diminished. In many ways, all of these films are political acts, though I am sure few intended them to be. I look forward to adding films to this conversation and learning from the discussions that ensue. Hopefully those teachings will filter back up through the chain, and the next generation of studio writers will give us new, broader conventions–ones we will happily defy with the next generation of independent films.

Like the Water, inspired Seed&Spark. Before producing Like the Water, Emily produced theater, worked as a vision and values strategy consultant for Best Partners, ran restaurants, studied jazz singing at the Taller de Musics, tour guided and cooked in Barcelona, and before that, was a student of Cultural Anthropology and American Studies at Haverford College. Recently, Emily was named one of the 2013 Indiewire Influencers, dedicated to 40 people and companies who are asking the big questions about what the independent film industry is today (and why) and, more importantly, what it will become. Emily is touring film and tech festivals around the world, Sundance and SXSWV2V to Sheffield and Galway, to educate filmmakers and learn their best practices in connecting with their audiences to build a sustainable career. Emily founded Seed&Spark to make a contribution to the truly independent community in which she would like to make moving pictures. In 2011, she had the great fortune of producing her first feature with a remarkable group of women. The spirit, the community and the challenges of that project.

Our Stories: ‘Babylon Sisters’

Writer Pearl Cleage and Filmmaker Ayoka Chenzira
This guest post by Yvonna Russell previously appeared at The Huffington Post and is cross-posted with permission.

New York Times bestselling author (What Looks like Crazy on an Ordinary Day, Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do) and playwright (Blues for an Alabama Sky, Flyin West) Pearl Cleage has teamed up with filmmaker (Alma’s Rainbow) Ayoka Chenzira to produce the feature film adaptation of Pearl Cleage’s novel, Babylon Sisters.
Single mother Catherine Sanderson has her hands full with her job helping immigrants and a college-bound daughter, Phoebe. But when news journalist Burghardt Johnson blows into town, she finds her world turned upside down. Catherine, impassioned, asks, 
I wondered if it was possible to be in love with a man and develop a vocabulary free of the responses that make every conversation a minefield of hurt feelings, half-truths, and dashed expectations.

Not only do they have history, BJ enlists her help in a story on a female slavery ring operating in Atlanta. Pearl Cleage fans agree with director Chenzira: 
I love the flaws in the romance — it’s so human. The romantic leads have personal struggles but also understand that they are also fighting for something greater than themselves. Rarely do we see this in American cinema.

The story casts light on the fight against human sex trafficking. USA Today reported, “According to the U.S. Department of Justice, human trafficking has become the second fastest growing criminal industry — just behind drug trafficking — with children accounting for roughly half of all victims.” Atlanta Fox 5 reporter Tacoma Perry uncovered, “Atlanta is a hub for human trafficking — where sex or labor is forced, and it’s not just a city problem.” Chenzira echoes the condition of modern-day slavery in Metro Atlanta exposed in the plot by the lead characters Catherine and BJ:
Babylon Sisters honors the everyday heroes in the fight. There are people dedicated to rescuing those who are being exploited, abused and held captive by modern day slavery, and despite their own personal struggles they manage to make a crippling impact on sex trafficking … Atlanta is one of the largest sex trafficking cities in the country, and Babylon Sisters is centered in metro Atlanta — this brings a focused light in exposing this international criminal activity by unearthing the real tragedies taking place under our noses.

The film project has a platform on Junto Box Films. Junto Box Films, the brainchild of Oscar winner for Best Actor (The Last King of Scotland), director (Waiting to Exhale) and producer (Fruitvale Station) Forest Whittaker has established a social media platform to fund, produce and distribute films. Chenzira chose Junto Box Films over other crowdfunding platforms because,

The Junto Box platform allows people to support Babylon Sisters from the development process by signing up to follow, rate, and share the project through social media. Substantial support translates into a real chance of being green lit and fully funded through Junto Box Films. Junto Box allows supporters of Babylon Sisters to hear why Pearl and I decided to collaborate. It also allows them to hear from notable people about their support of this project through video. From the legendary Susan Taylor who served as editor-in-chief of Essence Magazine for twenty seven years and who is considered one of the most influential African-American women, to Broadway stage and film director Kenny Leon who produced Pearl’s plays. Junto Box uses a democratic process that gives people a voice to determine the success of a film about people with little or no voice. It is important for women in the film community to come together to tell the stories of women who donʼt have a voice.

The film project Babylon Sisters deserves our support for a master storyteller’s passionate and compelling voice on the inhumane issue of human trafficking today.


Follow Yvonna Russell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/StilettoFilms.

Like the Water

Like the Water, DP: Eve M. Cohen, Dir. Caroline von Kuhn
This is a guest post by Caroline von Kuhn.

Artists in every discipline play out our personal neuroses in our work, but there are few outlets as indulgent a playground as film.

My most pleasurable experience of a contemporary film in a theatre last year was Leos Carax’s Holy Motors, which I saw twice on the big screen. It raises the ultimate question of identity near and dear to my heart: is human existence a truth formed through an evolution of identities building on one another until we are whole? Or merely a series of empty performances conformed to our given circumstances? Do we evolve, dropping deeper into our Self with each relationship we enter or instead chip away until only an empty shell remains?

Carax houses these dark, looming questions in a delightful succession of dream-like vignettes. The film transpires over the course of one day in which M. Oscar (Denis Lavant) takes a series of appointments, each a distinct, if not surreal, homage to film and literature. We, like M. Oscar, get lost in the act, re-emerging to digest the one and prepare for the next: left to return to the question of his, of our, identity.

My first attempt at filmmaking was a collective autodidactic pursuit of the medium with a team of five other female artists. We set out to tell a story of self-identity and the even bigger struggle of self-acceptance in one’s 20s. We set out to tell a story of the imperfection of the Female. We set out to tell a story of that first taste of a contemporary’s mortality, which leaves youth grappling with grief in its rawest, ugliest, truest form. We set out to teach ourselves the craft of filmmaking through this story.

What results is our Like the Water.

Caitlin FitzGerald in Like the Water, DP: Eve M. Cohen, Dir. Caroline von Kuhn
The inspiration for our film stemmed from a deeply formative shared experience Caitlin FitzGerald, my lead actress and co-writer, and I had of losing childhood friends in our early 20s. We both found that encountering death at a young age – especially that of a contemporary – provoked a seismic shift in the way we came to understand the world. We not only shared experiences of grief but had turned to writing in a therapeutic attempt to capture and express something ultimately inchoate: the memory of a life.

The 20s prove to be a time of extraordinary growth – a fuller awareness, a deeper appreciation, of the world and the self. It was more or less around this transitional chapter that we six artists met and committed to exploring, perhaps exploiting, iterations of our story. One of the universal feminine, in a way that film never allows the feminine to be portrayed. The film that results is a product of this particular chorus of women’s voices. We discovered a shared urgency for us to tell this story with these women that summer because our voices were right for it at that moment.

On the set of Like the Water, photo by Lori Traikos
So we wrote a script, raised some money, cast our friends and family (yes, my parents are in my movie, as are many of our parents), assembled a great crew and went up to Maine. A very generous community of Mainers welcomed us into their fold and set us up to pull off this adventure. Within 16 months we had conceived, written, funded, shot, edited and premiered our first film – most of us first-timers in our positions.

With age does come wisdom, or, at the very least, a more weathered, cynical perspective. Maybe it was exactly this naivety that ultimately allowed us to pursue such an ambitious endeavor with such uninhibited sincerity and gusto. For the gift of directing my first film, I will forever be indebted to this group of women – for indulging me in the pursuit of our story.

And I look forward to this continued pursuit with the next.


Like the Water is written, produced, directed, stars, shot & edited by women. It can be viewed on Seed&Spark.
Caroline von Kuhn works as the Managing Director of the Camden International Film Festival and is producing The Fixer (Dir. Ian Olds).

[Photo Credit: Frances F. Denny]