Tag: Women in the Military

A Fragile Masculinity: Genderswapping Male Characters

Part of this belief comes from the assumption that casting women in these roles is always an attempt to tone down the masculine-coded characteristics associated with these characters. Vaguely omnipotent feminist forces are conspiring to emasculate hyper-masculine characters by recasting them as women, so the argument goes.

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This guest post by Alyssa Franke appears as part of our theme week on Masculinity.

Recasting major characters of beloved franchises is always tricky. Even when creative teams attempt to recreate the original character as closely as possible, there will inevitably be complaints that the new actor could never be as good as the original. But when creators attempt to radically change the character by, say, changing their gender or race, then shit really hits the fan.

Fans of established franchises are conditioned to expect men in certain roles. Starbuck and Thor are supposed to be portrayed by hyper-masculine men. John Watson and James Moriarty aren’t supposed to be Joan Watson and Jamie Moriarty. The Master from Doctor Who is supposed to be played by the likes of Roger Delgado, Anthony Ainley, and John Simm, not Michelle Gomez. Or so say some disgruntled fanboys.

But these iconic male roles have all been successfully portrayed by women. These women have received critical acclaim for their portrayals and have amassed male and female fans alike. However, there’s a certain segment of viewers that are fundamentally, irreversibly opposed to casting women in roles that were previously portrayed by men. To them, casting a woman in these roles isn’t just an affront to the franchise — it’s a direct attack on men and masculinity.

Part of this belief comes from the assumption that casting women in these roles is always an attempt to tone down the masculine-coded characteristics associated with these characters. Vaguely omnipotent feminist forces are conspiring to emasculate hyper-masculine characters by recasting them as women, so the argument goes.

When Marvel announced that the new Thor would be portrayed by a woman, some readers argued that this was an attempt to create a more “politically correct” Thor. This argument was repeated so frequently and so loudly that the creators actually referenced it in Issue #5 in a battle between the new Thor and the villain Absorbing Man. When Absorbing Man learns that a woman is now Thor, he responds:

“Damn feminists are ruining everything! […] Thor’s a dude. One of the last manly dudes still left. What’d you do, send him to sensitivity training so he’d stop calling Earth girls ‘wenches’?”

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Dirk Benedict, who portrayed the original Starbuck in the 1978 Battlestar Galactica series, made a similar argument when his character was recast and portrayed by Katee Sackhoff in the rebooted 2003 series. He argued that “the Suits” had attempted to tone down his cigar-smoking, womanizing character during the original series run, and when given the chance to recast his character, they accomplished their original aim by recasting Starbuck as a woman:

“The best minds in the world of un-imagination doubled their intake of Double Soy Lattes as they gathered in their smoke-free offices to curse the day this chauvinistic Viper Pilot was allowed to be. But never under estimate the power of  the un-imaginative mind when it encounters an obstacle (character) it  subconsciously loathes. ‘Re-inspiration’ struck. Starbuck would go the way of most men in today’s society. Starbuck would become ‘Stardoe’. What the Suits of yesteryear had been incapable of doing to Starbuck 25 years ago was accomplished quicker than you can say orchiectomy. Much quicker. As in, ‘Frak! Gonads Gone!’”

The particular irony in regard to Benedict’s argument is that the new Starbuck portrayed many of the same characteristics Benedict assumed “the Suits” were trying to eradicate from his portrayal of Starbuck. Sackhoff’s Starbuck gambled and smoked cigars. She was the best Viper pilot in the fleet, and made sure that everyone knew it. And she was freely, openly sexual. She flirted, she talked dirty, and she had sex without shame.

And although most media with a genderswapped major character does make a commentary on gender, they’re hardly making an attack on masculinity writ large.

The creators of Battlestar Galactica were certainly thinking of representations of masculinity and femininity when they recast Starbuck. Executive producer Ronald Moore commented that they decided to switch Starbuck’s gender in order to avoid the “rogue pilot with a heart of gold” cliche, and because the notion of women in the military was still a relatively new idea at the time. Portraying Starbuck as a woman was a way to broaden Starbuck’s story. It is a way of showing that the stories of soldiers, charming rogues who drink and smoke, and arrogant pilots don’t solely belong to men.

In the latest take on the Sherlock Holmes canon, the TV show Elementary offers a critique on infantilizing perceptions of women by genderswapping Holmes’ most infamous rival. Though most recent adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes canon introduce Irene Adler as a pawn of Professor James Moriarty, in Elementary Irene Adler is a persona used by Jaimie Moriarty in order to get close to Sherlock Holmes. She isn’t a damsel in need of saving, but she’ll play one if flattering a man’s ego gives her the advantage. When her identity is revealed, she comments that she often had a male lieutenant impersonate her in order to placate clients who may have dismissed her for her gender, “As if men had a monopoly on murder.”

In Thor, a very clear contrast is drawn between how Thor and his father Odin react to a woman becoming the new Thor. Odin is angry and threatened that Mjolnir has declared his son unworthy, and lashes out in increasingly aggressive and dangerous ways in an attempt to forcefully reclaim Mjolnir. Thor, though initially angry at becoming unworthy, ultimately accepts that he has been replaced, gives the new Thor the respect she deserves, and begins the hard work of examining how he became unworthy. This isn’t an attack on masculinity — it’s a commentary on a particularly toxic form of masculinity.

But even when no overt commentary is made on masculinity, simply having a woman portray a character previously portrayed by a man can be seen as challenging representations of masculinity. Allowing a woman to portray characteristics associated with that male character — strength, logical reasoning, aggression, obstinance — destabilizes the idea that these characteristics are inherently male.

And again, it’s Dirk Benedict who summarizes this perspective in his attack on Katee Sackhoff’s Starbuck. His argument that recasting Starbuck as a woman diminishes the character relies heavily on gender essentialist stereotypes:

“Women are from Venus. Men are from Mars […] Men hand out cigars. Women ‘hand out’ babies. And thus the world, for thousands of years, has gone round.”

Even when Sackhoff’s Starbuck portrays the same characteristics as his Starbuck, Benedict grants them less legitimacy as displays of power or dominance because she is a woman. For example, Sackhoff’s Starbuck smokes a cigar like a man — if she’s not smoking it casually for own enjoyment she’s puffing on it aggressively as a sign of power and dominance.

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But regardless, Benedict chooses to interpret Sackhoff smoking a cigar as something titillating for male enjoyment:

“I’m not sure if a cigar in the mouth of Stardoe resonates in the same way it did in the mouth of Starbuck. Perhaps. Perhaps it ‘resonates’ more. Perhaps that’s the point.”

This type of diminishing commentary is fairly common around genderswapped characters. In discussions about whether the Doctor from Doctor Who could regenerate into a woman, someone inevitably condescendingly asks whether the Doctor would have to be renamed “the Nurse.” Readers of Thor wondered if the new woman Thor would get a new name — a scenario the creators shot down decisively in the comic when the original Thor proclaimed that his replacement would simply be called “Thor,” not Lady Thor, Thorette, or Thorita.

Benedict also laments that this new version of Battlestar Galactica is “female-driven”:

“The male characters, from Adama on down, are confused, weak, and wracked  with indecision while the female characters are decisive, bold, angry as hell, puffing cigars (gasp) and not about to take it any more.”

I disagree strongly with his characterization that the men of Battlestar Galactica are universally confused, weak, or wracked with indecision. Like any good character, they have moments of indecision or weakness, but they also are firm, decisive, and commanding. They also have moments where they are challenged fiercely — particularly by women leaders — and must acquiesce to their leadership or admit they were wrong. And I think it says a lot about Benedict’s opinion of women if he believes being challenged or commanded by a woman is a sign that a man is weak or confused.

That’s one of the main reasons why genderswapping male characters can be so transformative in a franchise. Male roles are frequently written to portray men as active characters who drive their own lives and narrative arcs, while women are largely written as passive characters who are viewed, pursued, and driven by the actions of men. When a woman inhabits a role previously given to a man, that formula is reversed.

Though franchises that change the gender of major characters can offer compelling, insightful commentaries on gender, their greatest contribution to this discussion may lie in the way they reveal our various insecurities around representations of gender. We accept that so much about these characters can change. Thirteen different men can play the Doctor, a frog can become Thor, the Sherlock Holmes canon can be reinterpreted in a thousand different contexts — but we cling to the idea that these characters must be portrayed by men.

These genderswapped characters destabilize a gender binary which encourages us to think that certain characteristics and stories belong to men. Some, like Dirk Benedict, cling even more fiercely to those old representations of masculinity. But hopefully, these characters are pushing us to broaden our perceptions of masculinity and femininity.

 

Alyssa Franke is the author of Whovian Feminism, where she analyzes Doctor Who from a feminist perspective. You can find her on Twitter @WhovianFeminism.

 

All You Need is White People: Whitewashing in ‘Edge of Tomorrow’

Learning that ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ is based on a Japanese work with a Japanese hero with the action set in East Asia really changed my feelings about the resulting film. I actually really enjoyed the movie despite its derivativeness and lapses in sense-making, well-chronicled by my colleague Andé Morgan here. But now it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Because I’m fine with liking an unoriginal and illogical sci-fi movie, but I’m not so cool with liking an unoriginal, illogical, and racist sci-fi movie.

Because turning Keiji Kiriya into William Cage, casting Tom Cruise, moving the action to Western Europe, and casting white people in 98% of the speaking roles are all racist acts perpetuating bullshit white supremacy in Hollywood.

Tom Cruise is White Dude in 'Edge of Tomorrow'
Tom Cruise is A White Dude in ‘Edge of Tomorrow’

 

I watched Edge of Tomorrow without knowing it was an adaptation. It seems like a movie without source material, because the plot depends on you not thinking too critically about any of the details. (How does this time loop work? Why does it also involve psychic visions? Why are these alien invaders called “mimics” when the only thing they mimic is the Sentinels from The Matrix?)

Edge of Tomorrow is in fact based on Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill, which was also adapted into a manga of the same name by Ryōsuke Takeuchi and Takeshi Obata. Edge of Tomorrow is SWIMMING in source material.

Cover of Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel 'All You Need Is Kill'
Cover of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s novel All You Need Is Kill.

 

I have read neither the novel nor the manga, but learning that Edge of Tomorrow is based on a Japanese work with a Japanese hero with the action set in East Asia really changed my feelings about the resulting film. I actually really enjoyed the movie despite its derivativeness and lapses in sense-making, well-chronicled by my colleague Andé Morgan here. But now it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Because I’m fine with liking an unoriginal and illogical sci-fi movie, but I’m not so cool with liking an unoriginal, illogical, and racist sci-fi movie.

Because turning Keiji Kiriya into William Cage, casting Tom Cruise, moving the action to Western Europe, and casting white people in 98 percent of the speaking roles are all racist acts perpetuating bullshit white supremacy in Hollywood.

Emily Blunt as Rita Vrataski, the most interesting character
Emily Blunt as Rita Vrataski, the most interesting character.

 

Sure, there are no Japanese actors as big as Tom Cruise. There are few actors, period, who are as big as Tom Cruise. That didn’t stop Edge of Tomorrow from pretty much tanking at the box office, though. And they could cast their precious white Name Actor as the female lead Rita Vrataski, who is a white American in the book and a white Brit (Emily Blunt) in the film. She’s a more interesting character anyway, and the film would probably benefit from re-centering on her. And maybe a sci-fi movie headlined by a woman and a Japanese man would have gotten more notice from audiences who dismissed Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow as generic enough to wait for home video?

And why change the setting to Europe? What makes that more interesting or dramatic a setting, other than racism? I was reminded of this summer’s Godzilla, which used “increasing whiteness of populations at risk” as its form of raising the dramatic stakes as the monsters trekked across the Pacific Ocean.

Wait... why are we in Europe?
Oh man, that is pretty racist.

 

I need Hollywood to figure out that white people’s lives are not intrinsically more valuable. And that white movies stars are often not as valuable as they’re supposed to be. “Bankability” is not a justification for whitewashing. I’d like to think the weak performance of Edge of Tomorrow might clue Hollywood in on this. Especially because Edge of Tomorrow was saved from being a total bomb by the foreign grosses from the very countries deemed not interesting enough to be the setting of the adaptation (although, notably, there was tepid reception in Japan).

In Edge of Tomorrow, every time Tom Cruise’s character dies he learns from his mistakes. But when a movie like it dies at the box office, Hollywood just shrugs and says “it probably needed more white people.”

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town.

‘Edge of Tomorrow’: Yesterday’s Tom Cruise

Please don’t let my snarky tone fool you – I love science fiction, particularly near-future stories with a dystopic veneer. So does everyone else, which is why this film genre has been so strongly represented lately, e.g., ‘RoboCop’ (2014), ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ (2014), and ‘X-men: Days of Future Past’ (2014), to name a few. And that’s the problem – it’s difficult to watch ‘Edge’ without comparing it to its contemporaries.

Written by Andé Morgan.

Edge of Tomorrow stars Emily Blunt and Tom Cruise as near-future warriors battling alien invaders. It was directed by Doug Liman.

Release Poster.
Release Poster.
There is something perverse about attacking a film for its lack of originality when the central conceit is that the main character repeats the same day over and over again. So, in an effort to preserve my purity, now for something completely different. You remember Groundhog Day (1993), yes? It had plenty of Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, but it was lacking… sci-fi. Specifically, it needed some quantum pseudoscience and a horde of generic squido-mechanical pod people.
Anyway, Edge of Tomorrow (2014). Released this weekend (June 6), it stars Tom Cruise as military PR weasel Major William Cage. We meet him after a trite news reel intro composed of an anthology of worldwide unrest footage (most, it seems, from the last century for some reason). He has been summoned by a large man who commands the world’s unified armed forces. Instead of spinning war from afar, Cage will be imbedded with the troops during the imminent (second) landing at Normandy. This time, humanity is attempting to take back continental Europe from an alien aggressor, so far only vaguely referenced as the “Mimics.” Cage is a coward, and clumsily threatens blackmail in an attempt to avoid combat. It doesn’t work. Instead, Cage is arrested and sent to a forward base to meet his fate as a deserter conscript. Behold, the premise.
Tom Cruise does ride a motorcycle.
Tom Cruise does ride a motorcycle.
Please don’t let my snarky tone fool you – I love science fiction, particularly near-future stories with a dystopic veneer. So does everyone else, which is why this film genre has been so strongly represented lately, e.g., RoboCop (2014), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), and X-men: Days of Future Past (2014), to name a few. And that’s the problem – it’s difficult to watch Edge without comparing it to its contemporaries.
Like the films mentioned above, Edge features frenetic action sequences and trailer-worthy tech pieces. Most notable are the exo-suits (“jackets”) employed by the Earthican forces. Exoskeletons are having something of a moment recently; see RoboCop (2014), The Amazing Spiderman 2 (2014), the Iron Man franchise, and others. So, who wore it better? My sense of aesthetics favors Murphy in RoboCop. Perhaps this is not a fair comparison, as RoboCop was much more concerned with the ethics and practical reality of cyborgism. Still, the exosuits in Edge, which are really the film’s party piece, were just so mundane compared to those envisioned in RoboCop. Instead of a fresh vision of technological advancement, they seemed like a regression from the Caterpillar P-5000 Powered Work Loader in Aliens (1986). In fact, they seem like tech that might really only be a few years away, much to the detriment of their wow factor.
That loader.
That loader.
The Mimics too, are unremarkable. Spastic glowing balls of slashing alien death have been done better by the Matrix films, and, even, by Battleship (2012). It’s explained that the mimics have a hierarchal structure composed of a legion of small fiery footsoliders, rare blue “alphas,” and a central “server” being (I was reminded of the brain bugs in Starship Troopers). During the first iteration of the beach landing Cage is, of course, killed. On his way out, he kills an alpha and the alien’s blood mingles with Cage’s. The brain mimic has the power to TURN BACK TIME, and does so whenever an alpha is killed. However, while the head mimic can list time travel, telepathy, organo-metallic bioengineering, and interstellar travel as hard skills, it is unable to discern that Cage is actually a human. Time is reversed, and Cage awakens to face battle once again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
Hilarious.
Hilarious.
Yeah, I am down on this movie. I can forgive a lack of originality if the other elements of a story shine, but we don’t even find out why the aliens are called mimics! What do they mimic? Aliens from other movies? What the hell, man?
The supporting cast doesn’t fare much better. Cage’s fellow soldiers are a rag tag crew in the vein of every war movie ever. There is a mean southern (y’all can tell by the accent, y’all) drill sergeant, a fat guy, a “crazy” guy, a black guy, a foreign guy, and a woman. It can be refreshing to see women depicted in combat roles, but Edge, like so many other films before, falls into tropes in its depiction. The female solider is shown as less clean, less sensible, and gratuitously gruff, as if she has to curse and posture constantly to defend her presence in the unit.
Blunt’s character, Rita Vrataski, is something different. She is a battle-hardened soldier that Cage has set up as a figurehead for the military to rally around. She wears practical armor (except for a helmet – no one has time for hat hair on the battlefield), and dispatches her foes with a badass Final Fantasy sword. To his credit, Liman avoided eroticizing her combat moves and generally stayed away from FFD clichés, save for a few superfluous yoga poses. A superior warrior, she teaches Cage in anti-chrome-cephalopod techniques in a training montage filled with hilarious homicide sight gags.
It is great to see a feature with a woman warrior who is not also a sex object, but there are a few problems. The other soldiers in the film refer to Rita as the “Full Metal Bitch,” a term she clearly does not care for.  And while she initially trains Cage, he soon takes over a protector role, and attempts to use time travel trickery to seduce her. This scene is kinda creepy, and it does not help that Blunt and Cruise lack chemistry.
The best image in the film.
The best image in the film.
Rita does make it to the climax without getting well and truly fridged, and joins Cage in making a heroic sacrifice. Unfortunately, the script fails both the spirit and the letter of the Bechdel test. I did not note any female characters talking to each other, and the several women in the film were always either talking to Cage or talking about Cage.
Edge of Tomorrow is not a repugnant film – its treatment of women is uneven, but trending towards positive. But neither is it a great film (despite what the interwebs may tell you). For example, the dialogue was hokey in a way befitting it’s genre. Midway through the film a wild-haired-scientist tells us that the aliens’ “only vulnerability is…humanity.”
Post climax, a feel-good ending closes with a slapsticky shot of Cruise laughing to camera right. As the credits start to roll, the viewer is left with a quickly fading memory of an unremarkable vision of the future. The film does borrow heavily from the other movies mentioned above, as well as from previous Cruise vehicles like Minority Report (2002) and Oblivion (2013). In fact, Rachel Redfern was on point in her review of Oblivion: “Tom Cruise’s latest movie…is exactly that, a movie about Tom Cruise.”
I agree. Likewise, it’s best not to evaluate Edge as an original film, a science fiction film, or a feminist film – it’s a Tom Cruise film.
Note: For more information on things like “why are they called mimics,” and “what the hell is this movie supposed to be about,” here’s the source material: All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.

Andé Morgan lives in Tucson, Arizona, where they write about culture, race, politics, and LGBTQ issues. Follow them @andemorgan.

‘Battlestar Galactica’: The Show Where All of the Women Die

Taken in the larger scope of what’s available, it’s so rare to find a TV show with so many great parts for women – so many characters who are interesting and smart and competent and vital to the stories they live in – that it’s kind of a bummer when all of them die. That said, I do think there’s a case to be made for why this may not be a horrible choice.

Um… spoilers for Battlestar Galactica.

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What Battlestar Galactica is
To recap for anyone who isn’t familiar with the show but still wants to hear about death, Battlestar Galactica (2004) is a remake of the original series, in which humanity lives on a ragtag group of spaceships because robots are trying to kill everyone. The robots are called Cylons, and they look like human people, and it’s a metaphor for how the Other is really the same as we are, and that’s a lesson we need to learn to make peace.

In practical terms, there are twelve models of humanoid Cylon and multiple copies of each. So, whenever a Cylon dies (with a few specific exceptions) he or she downloads into a new, identical body and gets to come back again.

The main story line is about how the ragtag band of humans tries to find a mythical planet called Earth with the Cylons acting (mostly) as antagonists along the way. There’s also a supernatural/religious element in which there are prophecies and angels, and God has a special plan to save both the humans and Cylons by making the most vile man in their number his prophet.

Laura Roslin is the president, Kara “Starbuck” Thrace is the hotshot viper pilot, and there are videos on YouTube that recap the first three seasons if you want to know what happens.

As other Bitch Flicks writers have previously discussed, there are a lot of really good, well-written, interesting female characters, human and Cylon alike. And almost every single one of them gets killed.

Teach the Controversy: What We Mean When We Say “All of the Women Die”
As the show was winding down in its final season, Slate ran an article by Juliet Lapidos called “Chauvinist Pigs in Space” that criticized several aspects of the way women are filmed and portrayed on BSG. Among other points, Lapidos argued that, “The main female characters are all dying, dead, or not human” and that this trend sent the unintentional message that “women…just can’t hack it when the going gets rough.” The piece prompted several responses, including this one from Slant, but Lapidos wasn’t the only one saying it; similar comments were popping up on message boards and blogs (by which I mean Live Journal, because that’s where we all hung out in 2009, amirite?), especially after the series finale aired, and both Starbuck and Roslin were down for the count.

One common response to Lapidos’ article, and to the more general complaint that so many women die on this show,  is to either start listing all of the male characters who died – and, since the overall death toll on this series was high, it’s a very long list, or to argue that, hey, there are still cylon women alive at the end of the show, and they’re women, too, goddammit. The problem is that comparing the number of dead characters, or human versus Cylon characters, doesn’t get at the real issue. A better way to ask the question is, “Who, of all the characters on the show, was able to survive four whole seasons without getting killed?”

On the men’s side, we’ve got all three of the leads (William Adama, Apollo, and Gaius Baltar), several important secondary characters (including Chief Tyrol, Colonel Tigh, and Helo), and a few other randoms who we never got to know that well. On the women’s side, we’ve got more randoms and (probably) a minor character named Seelix who does not appear in the final episode.

That’s all.

All of the non-Seelix women we know, including all of the lead female characters, have died. The human women are gone, and every Cylon woman left standing at the end died on screen earlier in the series. Tyrol and Tigh are also Cylons, and they didn’t have to die ever.

While I don’t like her phrasing that much, I have to agree with Lapidos that there’s a sense in which this doesn’t sit well. A sense in which it seems like, intentionally or not, the show is telling us that capable women need to die, either as a warning to the rest of us (“the price for being good at things is that you won’t survive”), or as a way of making the audience feel safe around them. Sort of like how you feel safe at the end of a monster movie when the monster gets swallowed by lava – like, don’t be afraid! These women are not roaming the Earth, continuing to be really awesome. They’re dead, like Xena, and the threat is contained.

Um… spoilers for Xena: Warrior Princess.

On a personal note, as a woman who’s watching TV, it’s also just kind of a downer. Taken in the larger scope of what’s available, it’s so rare to find a TV show with so many great parts for women, so many characters who are interesting and smart and competent and vital to the stories they live in – that it’s kind of a bummer when all of them die.

That said, I do think there’s a case to be made for why this may not be a horrible choice, so…

starbuckgun

Why This May Not Be a Horrible Choice
Like almost every TV show, Battlestar Galactica is a mixed bag when it comes to storytelling. Some of the women die stupid deaths, but some of them die pretty good ones that follow from actively participating in the world in which this story takes place.

Starting on the Bad Death side, the main example that Lapidos focuses on is Chief Tyrol’s wife, Cally, and how she gets murdered by Tyrol’s Cylon mistress on her way to commit suicide. That’s a fair death to focus on, because it’s probably the worst, especially when paired with the mistress’ murder (by Tyrol!) in the series finale, which was just a WTF moment that got buried in all of the other explosions and stories that came to a close.

After she’s married to Tyrol, Cally is almost completely defined by her relationship with him and, even before they get married, it sometimes feels like her only role in the story is be jealous because he’s with someone else. Her death happens firstly as a surprise switcheroo for the audience, and secondly as a way to complicate Tyrol’s relationship with his boring, boring mistress who was never that great of a character, either. The show does this last minute thing where it tries to take us inside Cally’s experience when she finds out her husband’s a Cylon, but it’s really too little, too late.

Also in the not-such-a-great-death category are popular secondary characters Dualla (who shoots herself in the head out of nowhere during the final season) and Kat, who gets a very special, very manipulative episode all about her, so that we can learn about her backstory and feel bad when she gets radiation poisoning, which she gets by addressing a problem that also only exists in that one episode.

In fairness to the show, though, there are plenty of pointless, annoying, cannon fodder, and/or emotionally manipulative deaths to go around for both men and women. Starbuck has a dead boyfriend who exists only to create tension between her and Apollo, and she’s lost some male pilots just so she’ll feel bad about what a crap teacher she was. Roslin’s sidekick Billy gets offed pretty randomly when he no longer serves the story, and the whole point of his death is to show us that Dualla and Apollo were mean to him on the last day that he was alive (and he was too gentle to live in this world, or something).

That said, because all of the women die, it makes sense that viewers would take a more critical attitude to examining how they die and to what purpose in the story.

And that’s where it starts to seem like it might not be a horrible choice because, while some of the women die stupidly, a lot of them die because women are the do-ers of Battlestar Galactica. They’re making things happen; they’re driving the story, and, when the supernatural element rears its head, they’re the prophesized saviors of the human and Cylon race.

Like a lot of militaristic stories, Battlestar Galactica measures its characters’ heroism partly through their capacity to suffer, both physically and emotionally. And unlike a lot of stories, BSG splits its heroic suffering pretty evenly between its male and female characters.

Starbuck is the action hero of the story – she goes on the dangerous missions, she gets the crap kicked out of her by robots, she has a tragic backstory with a dead boyfriend and an abusive mother, and she has a special destiny that requires her to sacrifice herself to save the people she loves. Roslin finds out that she has terminal cancer on the same day that she becomes President, and in order to lead, she has to overcome the fear that she feels for herself. During the last season, her body is falling apart just like the Galactica is falling apart, like tenuous hopes for the future are falling apart, and the question is whether any of those things will hold together long enough to find Earth. She and the beat-up old spaceship are both trying to complete their final missions by bringing the people to Earth.

Starbuck and Roslin are two of the most important characters on the show, and one could make the argument that, along with Gaius Baltar, they make up a trinity of the most important characters on the show, in terms of moving the primary story line forward. They die in the process, but it’s part the heroic journey.

Even some of the other, more perfunctory deaths come from a pretty strong place. Admiral Cain is there for three episodes before she bites it, but her character is right at the center of everything and killed as a direct result of the choices she makes as a leader (to place revenge above everything else). Athena, a Cylon, has her husband kill her so that she can download into another body on a Cylon ship and rescue her kidnapped baby – it’s pretty badass. Ellen Tigh gets murdered for betraying the humans to the Cylons. D’Anna Biers dies multiple times while investigating the identities of the final five Cylons (who are unknown to the remaining seven). The list goes on. In a universe where lots of people die as the product of doing, many female characters die because they do something that affects the story.

This is one of those instances where everyone’s a little bit right. It’s legitimately kind of annoying that, in a story full of strong, well-written women, none of them but (probably) Seelix can manage to survive. The television landscape being what it is, it makes you wonder what’s going on there. At the same time, and without this cancelling out the annoyance, a lot of the women died because they were such good characters and because the show was fairly egalitarian in determining who would drive the story.

Personally, I wish that in those last, sweeping shots of the surviving characters standing on Earth, we had seen Cally, or Dualla, or Kat, or someone we cared about who was female and lived for four years. I wish that it seemed possible, in the BSG universe, to be female and live for four years. And that feeling exists side-by-side with my joy at having such great characters to begin with.

 

See also at Bitch Flicks: Women in Politics Week: “I Don’t Take Orders from You”: Female Military Authority as Represented by Admiral Helena Cain in Battlestar Galactica by Amanda Rodriguez; Reproduction & Abortion Week: Procreation at the End of Civilization: Reproductive Rights on Battlestar Galactica by Leigh Kolb; 10 Fascinating Female TV Characters Who Are Often Overlooked by Rachel Redfern

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer and couch potato who yells about movies and TV on her blog.

Cool Robots, Bad-Ass Monsters and Disappointment in ‘Pacific Rim’

Pacific Rim movie poster.


Written by Leigh Kolb

Spoilers ahead!

The theme at the core of Pacific Rim is that collaboration and trust lead to success. And while the sweeping visuals of human-team-led robots (Jeagers) fighting with ocean monster-aliens (Kaiju) left me surprisingly entertained and satisfied, the dialogue and plot relied heavily on tired tropes.
Pacific Rim, directed and co-written by Guillermo del Toro, treads lightly around commentary on humans’ environmental abuse of Earth and allowing women in combat roles, but the bulk of the plot relies on trope after trope to support the larger-than-life action sequences between the Jaegers and Kaiju.
Overall, the film works, and it continues to get great reviews; however, it could have worked so much better had the writers tried a little harder to stay away from clichés.
The film takes place just a decade in the future, in a world that’s been rocked and partially destroyed by the Kaiju coming from the depths of the Pacific Ocean and attacking cities. The international government is halting the Jaeger program (which puts two pilots–who must share a “neural handshake” mind-meld–in the driver’s seat of an enormous robot), and the crew has one more opportunity to fight the Kaiju. Marshall Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) leads a crew that includes his hand-picked choice of Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and, eventually, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi).
Stacker Pentecost.
Each of these three characters has an emotional weight–Pentecost feels protective of and responsible for Mori (he rescued and adopted her when her family was killed by the Kaiju), Becket lost his brother to the Kaiju while the two were mentally connected and fighting as co-pilots in a Jaeger, and Mori lost her family to the Kaiju when she was a little girl and has spent her life studying and training to become a pilot–and she’s “one of our brightest,” Pentecost says.
In his leadership position, however, Pentecost is concerned that Mori’s vengeance and difficult memories will impede her abilities to be a pilot, so he limits her career. Becket–who was literally in his brother’s mind when his brother was ripped from their Jaeger and brutally killed–and his memories are of no real concern to Pentecost.
Mako Mori.
While Pentecost’s fatherly feelings of protection and concern are justifiable, Becket is forceful in his desire to have Mori as a co-pilot. Her test numbers are strong and she fights him as an equal, which none of the male candidates could. With trepidation, Pentecost allows Mori to be Becket’s co-pilot.
The larger idea that women are “too emotional” for combat positions has been pervasive throughout the debate of women serving in combat positions (which the American military officially accepted in January 2013). Mori does get caught in her memories in her first major flight simulation with Becket; however, if she’s had hands all around her wringing about that possibility, certainly her anxiety over it would have helped push her over the edge. When anyone is told, over and over again, that she is fragile and emotional–chances are, some of that will be internalized.
Pentecost angrily dismisses her after her memory drift almost causes mass destruction (in fact, she asks to be dismissed, as she “respects” Pentecost, which she tells Becket is different than being “obedient”). Becket–after seeing her memories–tells Pentecost, “You rescued her, you raised her… now you’re holding her back.”
Mori is an equal to Becket.
Mori’s respect/obedience is troubling at times, but overall she is a strong female character. She’s excellent at what she does, and she is persistent at succeeding and meeting her goals. In fact, when Becket gets in a fight when another pilot is disrespectful to Mori, it feels odd and out of place–“nonsensical” and “unnecessary,” as Zev Chevat says at The Mary Sue. Otherwise, Becket is her greatest champion and leads with experience without being condescending.
And while the plot ebbs and flows in regard to its depiction of women (and I use that term broadly–Mori is really the only female character with lines), the film comes close to satisfying my desire for diversity and empowered female roles, but then it quickly regresses into tired tropes.
Becket is happy to see Mori is his co-pilot.
Becket seems to be the protagonist (and I almost thought at the beginning that there would be some interesting commentary on masculinity and military culture–from the monstrous masculine robots to the fact that Becket has to work in a dangerous menial construction job before being reassigned), but Mori is more fully developed, in terms of her memories and motivations. The two share a clear bond, and whether or not it’s a romantic one depends on the viewer (del Toro wasn’t totally sure, either).
At the end (after Pentecost has figured out that they need Mori and he asks her to “protect him”), Becket and Mori travel into the depths of the Pacific to Save Humanity. Once they get there to drop the bomb, their oxygen levels plummet and Becket tells Mori to retreat into a protective pod so he can drop the bomb. “I can finish this alone,” he says, giving her his oxygen.
So he does. His motivations are pure, but it still seems like a letdown to the viewer after all that Mori has accomplished. The final blow that does, indeed, Save Humanity, is dropped by our white male protagonist (the black man has sacrificed himself, and the Asian woman is protected in a little bubble).

 

I would have loved to at least see Mori giving Becket CPR to save him in the aftermath (instead of him just waking up), or something to level the heroism. Her role feels diminished at the end.
Becket and Mori are both heroes, but Becket is the default protagonist.
I don’t need a female protagonist in every film. However, when a film like this focuses on and develops the female lead without giving her the satisfaction of being a clear hero, something feels off. Either more needed to be done with Becket’s emotional baggage, or less with Mori’s. As it stands, the film perpetuated the notion that women’s emotions could be a hindrance in combat, and men’s emotions translate to strength in battle. Stuffing Mori into a pod at the climax of the film is symbolic of trying to shoo women back into their protected spaces so they don’t fly too close to the sun. I don’t think Becket as a character would have approved of that idea, nor would del Toro, probably. But that scene certainly left that taste in the viewer’s mouth–let the white guy finish the job!

I can’t stress enough how entertaining and well-done the visuals of this film are–and again, that’s coming from someone who did not expect to feel exhilarated while watching monsters fight robots. The lightly developed characters and don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it female empowerment, however, left much to be desired. And while the optimistic ending and refreshing lack of American exceptionalism reinforce the idea that everyone–different ethnicities, genders, and races–needs to work together to succeed, the lackluster writing and reliance on tropes still sends the message that women’s emotions can be a hindrance and that they need to be protected.

Mori is instrumental in helping save the world–but she doesn’t get to set off the bomb. She’s not fully treated as a damsel in distress, but she comes too close for comfort. Maybe, just maybe, next time Becket can retreat to the pod while Mori fries the enemy.

In addition to having an almost-not-really female protagonist, Pacific Rim really only caters to the female gaze, in terms of mild sexual objectification. I guess I am simply perpetuating this.

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Women in Politics Week: “I Don’t Take Orders from You”: Female Military Authority as Represented by Admiral Helena Cain in Battlestar Galactica

First off, the TV series Battlestar Galactica just plain rules. It’s exciting, dramatic, beautifully shot, has a racially diverse cast, and places many women in positions of power. Let’s take a minute to consider the fact that the benevolent commander of the military protecting the human race from extinction is portrayed by a Mexican American (Commander William Adama/Edward James Olmos), and the President of the Colonies is a woman (Laura Roslin). Bravo! My favorite aspect of the show, though, is the way it tackles complex ethical dilemmas. Issues of race (the Cylons as stand-ins for racial Others), women’s issues (rape, abortion, breast cancer), philosophical/scientific issues (religious extremism, mysticism, whether or not some species “deserve to survive,” what makes one “human,” evolution), and post-colonial issues (the Cylons as stand-ins for an oppressed race that genocidally revolts against its oppressors).
One of the complex ethical dilemmas the show took on was the implied question, “What would’ve happened to the surviving human race if they hadn’t decided to find Earth? What if they’d chosen a path of vengeance instead?” This idea is explored in the Season 2 episodes “Pegasus” and the two-part “Resurrection Ship” as well as in the feature-length film Battlestar Galactica: Razor. These episodes and companion film follow the path of the Battlestar Pegasus and its actions following the Cylon attack that obliterates the Colonies. Though the “what if” question is ostensibly the premise of this arc, in reality, they become a scathing, anti-feminist critique of women with military authority.
Meet Admiral Helena Cain, commanding officer of the Pegasus.
It’s important to note that in the original series, Commander Cain was portrayed by a man whom Adama outranked and had a tendency to be insubordinate. In the reboot, Admiral Cain is a lesbian who outranks Adama and is a very strict interpreter of military law. Therefore, we must view the changes made to the character as deliberate.
Throughout the Pegasus arc, we learn that, when the chips are down, Cain develops a propensity for brutality. After the Cylon attack, Cain gives a speech to her crew with the poignant line, “War is our imperative, so we will fight.” She sees revenge-based guerrilla warfare against the Cylons as the only path for the surviving members of humanity, and she will brook no insubordination, no questioning of her authority, and no hints of mutiny. In one of the most shocking acts in the entire series, Cain disarms her good friend and XO, Jurgen Belzen, before shooting him for refusing to follow an order, which ends up costing the lives of a significant portion of the crew. 
Not only that, but the Pegasus encounters a civilian fleet that Cain orders her soldiers strip of any useful resources. This includes their FTL drives, which allow them to travel at faster than light speed, as well as any potentially valuable passengers who can be drafted to work aboard the Pegasus. When it’s all said and done, Cain leaves 15 civilian ships helpless and adrift in space after killing 10 family members who resisted her passenger transport order. Where Adama is a commander who values each and every human life, frequently risking the lives of the many to save a scant handful of his people, Cain takes a hard-line approach, valuing her mission of Cylon destruction over individual human losses. In a way, she is a caricature of military masculinity, overcompensating for being a woman by allowing no compassion to enter her decision-making. Her sense of authority is so tyrannically absolute that she becomes inhuman, ruthless, and the villain of the arc.
The most striking display of Cain’s brutality is the way she deals with Gina Inviere, her lover who is exposed as a Cylon (model 6). The Cain/Inviere relationship is the only lesbian romance shown or developed in the entire series (despite the fact that some of us believe Starbuck would’ve been a lot happier had she come out of the closet). I’d even go so far as to say that portraying Cain as a lesbian is yet another example of her hyper-masculinization. She’s trying so hard to shun her femininity and embody masculinity that she even likes to sleep with women, which is an exceedingly problematic depiction of lesbianism. 
When Inviere’s status as a Cylon spy is discovered, Cain gives yet another of the series most chilling commands, “Interrogate our Cylon prisoner. Find out everything it knows, and since it’s so adept at mimicking human feeling, I’m assuming that its software is vulnerable to them as well, so pain, degradation, fear, shame. I want you to really test its limits. Be as creative as you feel the need to be.” Inviere is cruelly and mercilessly beaten, starved, and forced to lay in her own waste and filth, but worst of all, she is raped repeatedly. In an act that encourages the excessive, brute side of masculinity, Cain has allowed her crewmembers to line up and take turns gang raping Inviere. Even the crewmembers of Galactica who despise Cylons are appalled to learn this.
Cain’s treatment of Inviere is not that of a commander dealing with an enemy soldier and spy. Cain is punishing Inviere for betrayal as only an ex-lover and scorned woman can.
Certainly, Cain has a legitimate hatred of the Cylons, and her pursuit and harassment of them was initiated before she learned of Inviere’s betrayal. However, Cain’s death scene poignantly recontextualizes her actions and motivations. Baltar allows Inviere to escape custody, giving her a gun. Of course, she sneaks into Cain’s quarters to take revenge on her tormentor. The exchange between the women is revealing, as Inviere holds a gun to the defenseless but still defiant Cain.
When Inviere tells Cain, “You’re not my type,” the camera flashes to Cain briefly before we hear the shot that kills her, and the look on her face is one of terrible anguish. This moment of pain and weakness makes the viewer question whether all her choices after learning of Inviere’s betrayal are those of an overly emotional woman whose heart has been broken, causing her to behave recklessly. She is, in effect, lashing out at the Cylons because one of their agents preyed upon her frailty as a woman in love, and the brutality with which she executes these attacks strives to bury that weakness. This reading, along with the reading of Cain as overcompensating for her femaleness by being excessively masculine in her military command, form a paradox. The show asserts that lesbian military officers are simultaneously too masculine and too feminine. 
The show presents Roslin’s form of authority as more in-line with feminine capabilities. Roslin, as President of the Colonies, is a very maternal role. She is trying to ensure all of her people/her children survive. After the Cylon attack, it is her words of reason that turn Adama from the path of vengeance toward the search for Earth. Though she is dying of breast cancer (a very female-targeted disease), she sacrifices every last bit of comfort to save the human race, martyring herself. She often defers to Adama’s military command, and she very rarely resorts to violence as she finds it morally repugnant. As a fellow woman, though, Roslin recognizes the grave threat Cain poses to the fleet and for the continuation of the human race. Roslin reacts like a cornered mother, insisting that Cain’s assassination is the only solution. These two examples of female authority cannot co-exist. The series asserts that Roslin’s brand of power is strong and righteous while Cain should be put down like a rabid, dangerous animal that can’t be controlled.
The legacy of Cain is another theme upon which the show meditates. In Razor, Admiral Cain’s mentorship of Kendra Shaw is a foil for Bill Adama and Starbuck’s mentor relationship. Cain exclusively mentors young, attractive women (first Shaw then Starbuck), subtly positioning her as something of a sexual predator. Shaw and Starbuck are both their commanding officers’ favorites; they’re both fiercely loyal, both of them are frequently insubordinate and, naturally, dislike each other. When both commanders are given similar raw material with endless potential in these young officers, what happens? Cain turns Shaw into a cold civilian murderer and drug addict whose loyalty resembles that of a dog rather than that of an intelligent, independent woman. On the other hand, Adama’s firm, but understanding, hand shapes Starbuck into an amazing pilot, brilliant tactician, and a leader whose persistence leads her people to Earth. Shaw is only allowed redemption with her selfless death under the command of Bill and Apollo Adama. 
Cain’s “razor” philosophy insists that in order to survive, we must put aside our human delicacies and fragility in place of strength and decisiveness: “Sometimes we have to do things that we never thought we were capable of…setting aside your fear, setting aside your hesitation and even your revulsion, every natural inhibition that, during battle, can mean the difference between life and death. When you can become this [shows knife blade] for as long as you have to be, then you’re a razor. This war is forcing us all to become razors because if we don’t, we don’t survive, and then we don’t have the luxury of becoming simply human again.” This is very much a PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) survivor coping mechanism. Survival becomes the only goal, and emotions, weakness, and empathy become liabilities. Adama, on the other hand, insists on a full life with honor, dignity, companionship, and compassion. These distinctly human traits, he believes, set his people apart from the Cylons, and survival doesn’t mean anything without the preservation of these qualities. Though some lip service is paid to the notions that Cain’s command decisions and her philosophy weren’t technically wrong and that the fleet was safer with her in charge, the show paints (and majority of viewers see) her as one of the most evil characters ever represented on Battlestar Galactica.
Perhaps the most damning foil used to compare Cain’s command to that of Adama is their treatment of their Cylon prisoners. When Inviere is exposed as a Cylon in CIC, she kills people, but when she turns her gun to Cain, Inviere hesitates and clearly does not want to kill her lover, though it is her duty as a soldier. Eventually, though, she kills Cain, and because the horrors inflicted on her are so unimaginable, Inviere wishes to permanently die outside the range of a resurrection ship. Cain’s unspeakable torture of Inviere has confirmed every fear, every bigotry, and every hatred Cylons have for humans. Yes, Adama’s relations with Cylons are, at times, rocky, but the Sharon/Athena model on-board Galactica during the Pegasus arc is treated humanely, her half-human/half-Cylon child is brought to term, her expertise and wisdom consulted, and her information is valued until she is no longer a prisoner, but a crewmember. This collaboration, this peace, this commingling and hybridization of the human and Cylon races is the true key to survival. If Cain continued her command of the fleet, that fleet, along with the entire human race, would have perished.
Though Cain is a charismatic figure who viewers love to hate, I’m troubled by how thoroughly irredeemable her character is. She embodies every fear and stereotype popularly held about women in power, i.e. that they’ll try to be men, that they’ll be too weak and womanish to make rational decisions, that those decisions will come from a place of heightened emotions, and that, ultimately, they’ll harm those they were charged with safeguarding. The sparseness of queer character representations on the series is also troubling, and to have the lesbian admiral be such a “butch stone cold bitch” makes me question the series’ true progressiveness with regards to women in power, especially queer women in power. The series succeeds on many levels, and I applaud them for tackling complex moral issues. I also applaud them for depicting the highest ranking military officer alive as a strong lesbian. How much richness and complexity, though, would have been added to Cain’s story if she’d been portrayed with more compassion, her choices less black and white, her struggles and reactions more defensible? How much more interesting would the Pegasus arc have been if Adama and Roslin still chose to assassinate Cain despite her representation as a flawed woman trying to do what was best? Hell, what if Cain had lived, and the Adama/Roslin regime had been toppled? What if Cain and Adama truly had to work together in a long-term, meaningful way? In the words of Bill Adama, “I’d like to sell tickets to that dance.” 
Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Women in Politics Week: “I Don’t Take Orders from You:” Female Military Authority as Represented by Admiral Helena Cain in Battlestar Galactica

First off, the TV series Battlestar Galactica just plain rules. It’s exciting, dramatic, beautifully shot, has a racially diverse cast, and places many women in positions of power. Let’s take a minute to consider the fact that the benevolent commander of the military protecting the human race from extinction is portrayed by a Mexican American (Commander William Adama/Edward James Olmos), and the President of the Colonies is a woman (Laura Roslin). Bravo! My favorite aspect of the show, though, is the way it tackles complex ethical dilemmas. Issues of race (the Cylons as stand-ins for racial Others), women’s issues (rape, abortion, breast cancer), philosophical/scientific issues (religious extremism, mysticism, whether or not some species “deserve to survive,” what makes one “human,” evolution), and post-colonial issues (the Cylons as stand-ins for an oppressed race that genocidally revolts against its oppressors).
One of the complex ethical dilemmas the show took on was the implied question, “What would’ve happened to the surviving human race if they hadn’t decided to find Earth? What if they’d chosen a path of vengeance instead?” This idea is explored in the Season 2 episodes “Pegasus” and the two-part “Resurrection Ship” as well as in the feature-length film Battlestar Galactica: Razor. These episodes and companion film follow the path of the Battlestar Pegasus and its actions following the Cylon attack that obliterates the Colonies. Though the “what if” question is ostensibly the premise of this arc, in reality, they become a scathing, anti-feminist critique of women with military authority.
Meet Admiral Helena Cain, commanding officer of the Pegasus.
It’s important to note that in the original series, Commander Cain was portrayed by a man whom Adama outranked and had a tendency to be insubordinate. In the reboot, Admiral Cain is a lesbian who outranks Adama and is a very strict interpreter of military law. Therefore, we must view the changes made to the character as deliberate.
Throughout the Pegasus arc, we learn that, when the chips are down, Cain develops a propensity for brutality. After the Cylon attack, Cain gives a speech to her crew with the poignant line, “War is our imperative, so we will fight.” She sees revenge-based guerrilla warfare against the Cylons as the only path for the surviving members of humanity, and she will brook no insubordination, no questioning of her authority, and no hints of mutiny. In one of the most shocking acts in the entire series, Cain disarms her good friend and XO, Jurgen Belzen, before shooting him for refusing to follow an order, which ends up costing the lives of a significant portion of the crew. 
Not only that, but the Pegasus encounters a civilian fleet that Cain orders her soldiers strip of any useful resources. This includes their FTL drives, which allow them to travel at faster than light speed, as well as any potentially valuable passengers who can be drafted to work aboard the Pegasus. When it’s all said and done, Cain leaves 15 civilian ships helpless and adrift in space after killing 10 family members who resisted her passenger transport order. Where Adama is a commander who values each and every human life, frequently risking the lives of the many to save a scant handful of his people, Cain takes a hard-line approach, valuing her mission of Cylon destruction over individual human losses. In a way, she is a caricature of military masculinity, overcompensating for being a woman by allowing no compassion to enter her decision-making. Her sense of authority is so tyrannically absolute that she becomes inhuman, ruthless, and the villain of the arc.
The most striking display of Cain’s brutality is the way she deals with Gina Inviere, her lover who is exposed as a Cylon (model 6). The Cain/Inviere relationship is the only lesbian romance shown or developed in the entire series (despite the fact that some of us believe Starbuck would’ve been a lot happier had she come out of the closet). I’d even go so far as to say that portraying Cain as a lesbian is yet another example of her hyper-masculinization. She’s trying so hard to shun her femininity and embody masculinity that she even likes to sleep with women, which is an exceedingly problematic depiction of lesbianism. 
When Inviere’s status as a Cylon spy is discovered, Cain gives yet another of the series most chilling commands, “Interrogate our Cylon prisoner. Find out everything it knows, and since it’s so adept at mimicking human feeling, I’m assuming that its software is vulnerable to them as well, so pain, degradation, fear, shame. I want you to really test its limits. Be as creative as you feel the need to be.” Inviere is cruelly and mercilessly beaten, starved, and forced to lay in her own waste and filth, but worst of all, she is raped repeatedly. In an act that encourages the excessive, brute side of masculinity, Cain has allowed her crewmembers to line up and take turns gang raping Inviere. Even the crewmembers of Galactica who despise Cylons are appalled to learn this.
Cain’s treatment of Inviere is not that of a commander dealing with an enemy soldier and spy. Cain is punishing Inviere for betrayal as only an ex-lover and scorned woman can.
Certainly, Cain has a legitimate hatred of the Cylons, and her pursuit and harassment of them was initiated before she learned of Inviere’s betrayal. However, Cain’s death scene poignantly recontextualizes her actions and motivations. Baltar allows Inviere to escape custody, giving her a gun. Of course, she sneaks into Cain’s quarters to take revenge on her tormentor. The exchange between the women is revealing, as Inviere holds a gun to the defenseless but still defiant Cain.
When Inviere tells Cain, “You’re not my type,” the camera flashes to Cain briefly before we hear the shot that kills her, and the look on her face is one of terrible anguish. This moment of pain and weakness makes the viewer question whether all her choices after learning of Inviere’s betrayal are those of an overly emotional woman whose heart has been broken, causing her to behave recklessly. She is, in effect, lashing out at the Cylons because one of their agents preyed upon her frailty as a woman in love, and the brutality with which she executes these attacks strives to bury that weakness. This reading, along with the reading of Cain as overcompensating for her femaleness by being excessively masculine in her military command, form a paradox. The show asserts that lesbian military officers are simultaneously too masculine and too feminine. 
The show presents Roslin’s form of authority as more in-line with feminine capabilities. Roslin, as President of the Colonies, is a very maternal role. She is trying to ensure all of her people/her children survive. After the Cylon attack, it is her words of reason that turn Adama from the path of vengeance toward the search for Earth. Though she is dying of breast cancer (a very female-targeted disease), she sacrifices every last bit of comfort to save the human race, martyring herself. She often defers to Adama’s military command, and she very rarely resorts to violence as she finds it morally repugnant. As a fellow woman, though, Roslin recognizes the grave threat Cain poses to the fleet and for the continuation of the human race. Roslin reacts like a cornered mother, insisting that Cain’s assassination is the only solution. These two examples of female authority cannot co-exist. The series asserts that Roslin’s brand of power is strong and righteous while Cain should be put down like a rabid, dangerous animal that can’t be controlled.
The legacy of Cain is another theme upon which the show meditates. In Razor, Admiral Cain’s mentorship of Kendra Shaw is a foil for Bill Adama and Starbuck’s mentor relationship. Cain exclusively mentors young, attractive women (first Shaw then Starbuck), subtly positioning her as something of a sexual predator. Shaw and Starbuck are both their commanding officers’ favorites; they’re both fiercely loyal, both of them are frequently insubordinate and, naturally, dislike each other. When both commanders are given similar raw material with endless potential in these young officers, what happens? Cain turns Shaw into a cold civilian murderer and drug addict whose loyalty resembles that of a dog rather than that of an intelligent, independent woman. On the other hand, Adama’s firm, but understanding, hand shapes Starbuck into an amazing pilot, brilliant tactician, and a leader whose persistence leads her people to Earth. Shaw is only allowed redemption with her selfless death under the command of Bill and Apollo Adama. 
Cain’s “razor” philosophy insists that in order to survive, we must put aside our human delicacies and fragility in place of strength and decisiveness: “Sometimes we have to do things that we never thought we were capable of…setting aside your fear, setting aside your hesitation and even your revulsion, every natural inhibition that, during battle, can mean the difference between life and death. When you can become this [shows knife blade] for as long as you have to be, then you’re a razor. This war is forcing us all to become razors because if we don’t, we don’t survive, and then we don’t have the luxury of becoming simply human again.” This is very much a PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) survivor coping mechanism. Survival becomes the only goal, and emotions, weakness, and empathy become liabilities. Adama, on the other hand, insists on a full life with honor, dignity, companionship, and compassion. These distinctly human traits, he believes, set his people apart from the Cylons, and survival doesn’t mean anything without the preservation of these qualities. Though some lip service is paid to the notions that Cain’s command decisions and her philosophy weren’t technically wrong and that the fleet was safer with her in charge, the show paints (and majority of viewers see) her as one of the most evil characters ever represented on Battlestar Galactica.
Perhaps the most damning foil used to compare Cain’s command to that of Adama is their treatment of their Cylon prisoners. When Inviere is exposed as a Cylon in CIC, she kills people, but when she turns her gun to Cain, Inviere hesitates and clearly does not want to kill her lover, though it is her duty as a soldier. Eventually, though, she kills Cain, and because the horrors inflicted on her are so unimaginable, Inviere wishes to permanently die outside the range of a resurrection ship. Cain’s unspeakable torture of Inviere has confirmed every fear, every bigotry, and every hatred Cylons have for humans. Yes, Adama’s relations with Cylons are, at times, rocky, but the Sharon/Athena model on-board Galactica during the Pegasus arc is treated humanely, her half-human/half-Cylon child is brought to term, her expertise and wisdom consulted, and her information is valued until she is no longer a prisoner, but a crewmember. This collaboration, this peace, this commingling and hybridization of the human and Cylon races is the true key to survival. If Cain continued her command of the fleet, that fleet, along with the entire human race, would have perished.
Though Cain is a charismatic figure who viewers love to hate, I’m troubled by how thoroughly irredeemable her character is. She embodies every fear and stereotype popularly held about women in power, i.e. that they’ll try to be men, that they’ll be too weak and womanish to make rational decisions, that those decisions will come from a place of heightened emotions, and that, ultimately, they’ll harm those they were charged with safeguarding. The sparseness of queer character representations on the series is also troubling, and to have the lesbian admiral be such a “butch stone cold bitch” makes me question the series’ true progressiveness with regards to women in power, especially queer women in power. The series succeeds on many levels, and I applaud them for tackling complex moral issues. I also applaud them for depicting the highest ranking military officer alive as a strong lesbian. How much richness and complexity, though, would have been added to Cain’s story if she’d been portrayed with more compassion, her choices less black and white, her struggles and reactions more defensible? How much more interesting would the Pegasus arc have been if Adama and Roslin still chose to assassinate Cain despite her representation as a flawed woman trying to do what was best? Hell, what if Cain had lived, and the Adama/Roslin regime had been toppled? What if Cain and Adama truly had to work together in a long-term, meaningful way? In the words of Bill Adama, “I’d like to sell tickets to that dance.” 
Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

‘Return’ – One of the Best Films You Probably Haven’t Seen – Features a Story Rarely Depicted: A Female Soldier Struggling to Resume Her Life

Linda Cardellini as Kelli in Return
Written by Megan Kearns.
When people discuss war, they often don’t take women or gender into account. While we regularly watch male soldiers on-screen, we almost never see war through women’s eyes. If women are in war films, they serve as wives and girlfriends. We see women supporting men, never soldiers themselves. That’s what makes Return so unique. It puts a female soldier center stage.
Written and directed by Liza Johnson (her directorial debut) and executive produced by Abigail Disney and Meredith Viera, Return features a captivating and quietly powerful performance by Linda Cardellini (the soul and strength of the film) as Kelli, a female soldier grappling to step back into her life after returning home from her tour of active duty.
Kelli is excited to reunite with her husband (Michael Shannon) and her two young daughters. Disconnected from her former life, she eventually finds she can no longer relate to her friends, co-workers and family. Return tells the story of a complex woman struggling to survive and wrestling with her inner demons.
While it moves at a glacial pace, it pays to be a vigilant audience. For in those silent moments, the restrained film speaks volumes. The devastatingly outstanding Cardellini (it will seriously be a crime if she’s not nominated for an Oscar) doesn’t need to utter a single word. Her expressive face reveals everything. We glimpse Kelli’s isolation and torment. It’s incredibly moving and heartbreaking as we see a woman trying to assert control as her life begins to crumble.
Unlike her husband and daughter, Kelli doesn’t find humor in a woman falling down on an America’s Funniest Home Videos show. She watches in stunned silence as another mother ebulliently applauds her daughter at cheerleading practice. When she goes to get a drink with her girlfriends, Kelli crawls out the bathroom window to escape. She quits her factory job thinking it’s a “giant waste of time.” Her relationships suffer as she unravels.
Linda Cardellini and Michael Shannon
Throughout the film, people keep telling Kelli to open up and talk about her deployment. They claim sharing trauma will heal her wounds. But Kelli insists there’s nothing to tell and incessantly says, “A lot of people had it worse than I did.” While researching her role, Cardellini found reticence and refusal to discuss combat a common thread connecting veterans, both female and male.
We never really discover Kelli’s war experiences other than she worked with military supplies. The beautifully restrained film shows rather than tells as subtle clues to Kelli’s inner turmoil unfold. When she’s in a large cage with some pigeons, Kelli cowers, her hands protecting her head. She watches a TV screen with a hollow dazed stare. When her husband tries to reignite their spark by tickling her, Kelli becomes increasingly uncomfortable and defensive, finally screaming for him to stop.
Her family and friends, while relatively supportive at first, seem to expect Kelli to remain unchanged and have little tolerance for her growing instability. Adrift with no anchor, we witness Kelli’s growing desperation as she spirals out of control. When her friend accuses her of “acting crazy” and asks her what happened to her over there, Kelly replies:
“Yeah, well a lot of people had a lot worse. You know I didn’t get raped in a port-o-potty. I didn’t have to fucking carry a dead body. And I didn’t get blown up by an EOD so I consider myself pretty lucky cause that’s what happens over there.”
It’s vital we include a gender lens when discussing soldiers and war. Female soldiers face unique challenges such as rape (although yes, men are raped too) and sexual harassment. 1 in 3 women are raped while serving in the military. In fact, female soldiers are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed in combat. Horrifying. Return isn’t a film about female soldiers surviving rape. Yet it subtly weaves in a crucial gender commentary.
Linda Cardellini and John Slattery
As I’ve said before, mothers are supposed to be everything to everyone. So when she falters, Kelli’s motherhood is called into question. Amidst a fight, her husband tells her to “be a mother.” She struggles to provide the attention and care her daughters need. At her wits end, Kelli tries to get pregnant in order to prevent another deployment and stay with her daughters. The most poignant and wrenching scenes are the ones with Kelli playing with and embracing her daughters.
Inspired by a friend’s experiences, writer/director Johnson spoke with “women who have been deployed.” Talking about gendered expectations for female soldiers, Johnson said:
“Expectations and pressures are different for women – dealing with rage is harder for them and not as acceptable as it is for men.”
Kelli tries to deal with her anger, frustration and disappointment in a world telling her to express her feelings in an “appropriate” way yet really expecting her (and basically all women) to swallow her pain.
Soldiers risk their lives for our country. Return doesn’t make any overt political statements. It honors and respects soldiers’ sacrifices. Yet Kelli’s struggles crystallize the physical and emotional toll war exacts on soldiers and their families. Is the price worth it?
Without preaching or sermonizing, the film affirms we must do more to support our troops. And it reminds us women serve in the military too. Something we obviously all know yet too easily forget.
We need more films about women, created by women. And we desperately need more movies telling stories of female soldiers whose stories too often go unheard.

Reproduction & Abortion Week: Procreation at the End of Civilization: Reproductive Rights on ‘Battlestar Galactica’

The cast of Battlestar Galactica

This is a guest review by Leigh Kolb. 

“All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.”

The opening credits of each episode of Battlestar Galactica, which aired from 2004 – 2009, set the premise for the plot: “The Cylons were created by man. They evolved. They rebelled. There are many copies. And they have a plan.” During a few episodes later in the series, the plight for humans’ survival is highlighted with the announcement: “The human race. Far from home. Fighting for survival.” Most of the beginning credits also show the population tally, which dwindles after each battle. President Laura Roslin says at the beginning of their journey, “The human race is about to be wiped out. We have 50,000 people left and that’s it. Now, if we are even going to survive as a species, then we need to get the hell out of here and we need to start having babies.”

When a society is thrust into time of struggle and chaos and its existence is threatened, reproductive rights and bodily autonomy are among the first rights to be taken away by those in power. Battlestar Galactica shows us, as good science fiction does, the moral struggles we face now, and what they might look like in the future.

There are moral issues at stake throughout the entire series, including the erosion of prisoners’ and laborers’ rights so that others may live more comfortably. The same critical lens is cast on forced birth, forced abortion, eugenics and abortion restrictions.

Early in the second season, Kara “Starbuck” Thrace has returned to Cylon-occupied Caprica (home planet for the crew of Battlestar Galactica) to find her destiny and aid the resistance, a group of humans who have stayed behind to fight the Cylons. She is kidnapped and knocked out, and wakes up in a hospital bed. Her “doctor” (who later is revealed as a Cylon) tells her she was shot in the abdomen and they have removed the bullet. As she drifts in and out of consciousness, she becomes suspicious. The doctor has excuses for every inconsistency. He tells her they’d operated because they suspected she had a cyst on her ovary. He says, “You gotta keep that reproductive system in great shape… it’s your most valuable asset these days. Finding healthy childbearing women your age is a top priority for the resistance. You are a very precious commodity to us.”

Starbuck replies, “I am not a commodity. I’m a viper pilot.”

Admiral William Adama, left, and President Laura Roslin

He persists, and finally says, “The human race is on the verge of extinction. Potential mothers are a lot more valuable right now than a whole squadron of viper pilots.” He keeps pushing her into more vulnerable territory by bringing up old scars that suggest she was abused, and perhaps that’s why she’s afraid to have children. This pushes Starbuck over the edge and she screams at him to get out.

Her reproduction has become a commodity; it takes precedence over anything that she might be as an individual. When she pushes back against these ideas, she’s made to feel shame and vulnerability, as if that will guilt her into wanting to procreate. This philosophy is consistent among anti-abortion groups—if women are perceived as too strong, independent and resistant to motherhood (as Starbuck certainly is), they simply need to be coerced into realizing the importance of that goal. It’s their responsibility to mother more than anything else.

When she wakes again, she has a new scar and the doctor tells her “We’re just about done with you, Starbuck.” He attempts to put her back under, but she has removed the IV—she’d never told him her handle was Starbuck. She stumbles out of the room—the hospital used to be a mental institution, which begs the audience to consider the implications of maternity and captivity—and overhears the doctor and a Cylon talking about her ovaries, suggesting that her eggs had been harvested or were about to be.

Eventually she kills the doctor, takes his keys and stumbles into a room full of drugged, barely conscious women with their knees up and machines and tubes coming out from under their hospital gowns. She recognizes a friend from the resistance, Sue-Shaun, and tries to start freeing her from the machinery. Instead, she begs Starbuck to kill the power. “It’ll kill you,” Starbuck says, but Sue-Shaun pleads, “I can’t live like this—they’re baby machines. Please. Please.” Starbuck takes a surgical instrument and smashes the power supply; sparks fly, and the women die.

Sharon, a Cylon who has joined ranks with the resistance after falling in love and becoming pregnant with Helo, another viper pilot, informs Starbuck that this was one of the Cylons’ Farms, where human women were taken and inseminated to attempt a human/Cylon breeding program, which hadn’t yet been successful. The Cylons had failed to reproduce naturally, so they were finding other means. Sharon says, “Procreation is one of God’s commandments—be fruitful.” Starbuck fires back that “raping women” is what they’re doing, and Sharon defensively counters that love was the missing component, since she and Helo have successfully become pregnant.

Sue-Shaun’s insistence that the power be shut off, thus killing every woman-turned-incubator, further shows the lengths that women will go to resist reproducing unwillingly. Sharon’s insistence that if love were in the equation, and if a Cylon and human were “set up,” like she and Helo were, that the forced reproduction would somehow be more palatable, shows the ideology that allows these atrocities to be committed—procreation above all. It’s what God wants.

Starbuck “rescues” Sue-Shaun from forced reproduction

All Starbuck wants to do at this juncture is get a raider ship and liberate every Farm—but she’s reminded this is not her destiny. The women, the audience sees, will have to wait. Because while procreation is so important to a threatened species that women’s bodily autonomy and choice can be set aside, righting those wrongs are not among the first priorities.

Later in season two, there is much turmoil surrounding the Sharon and Helo’s pregnancy. Back on Battlestar Galactica, Sharon is in a holding cell because she is a Cylon. President Laura Roslin, who is on her deathbed (she was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer before the attack), orders that Sharon’s baby be aborted after Dr. Cottle tells her that there are some genetic abnormalities showing up in the fetus. Dr. Gaius Baltar disagrees (for self-serving, political reasons). Roslin says, “Allowing this thing to be born could have frightening consequences for the security of this fleet—I believe the Cylon pregnancy must be terminated before it’s too late.”

As Admiral Adama and the men around her question her decision, she remembers something Caprica’s former president said to her and says, “The interesting thing about being president is that you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone” (most certainly a reference to the same quote attributed to President George W. Bush). She is in control, and will use that control over another woman’s body because, being half-Cylon, the fetus is “the other,” and represents the enemy.

As Adama tells Helo the abortion must take place, Helo asserts, “We’re talking about a child—a part of me. I guess it’s easier to kill when you call it a Cylon.”

Sharon reacts with anger and rage, screaming “Let them try and take my baby” to Helo before she starts banging her head bloody into the thick glass keeping her separated from the rest of the fleet. Armed guards come to get her and she uses her chair as a weapon, and they must hold her down and sedate her.

As Sharon is wheeled into the medical unit for the procedure, Baltar bursts into the room saying that the fetal bloodwork has a resistance to disease, and seems to kill cancer cells on contact. Instead of receiving an abortion, blood is drawn from Sharon’s fetus and injected into Roslin. Roslin seizes as Sharon gazes at her from her nearby bed—as Roslin comes to and instantly heals, she and Sharon make eye contact. Two women, utterly in control of one another’s futures.

The cancer is gone. The half-Cylon, half-human is safe.

Back in her holding cell, Sharon’s belly has grown larger, and she strokes her much-wanted future child lovingly. Roslin sees her, and has a pained look on her face.

Again, power, fear and desperation lead those who can to make decisions for other people, especially when those people are “the other.” Procreation is necessary and blessed, unless it’s not.

And just as Sue-Shaun was willing to die instead of mother without her consent, Sharon was willing to kill before losing the baby she wanted.

Later in the series, Sharon’s baby will be taken from her again and, while she has been told the baby is dead, given away to another couple to raise. Starbuck will be haunted by who she’s made to believe is her little girl from her egg harvest, and she’s thrust into a (false) motherhood and personal turmoil. The choices they did not get to make tear them from the life they desired.

Toward the end of season two, after the audience has been presented with the reproductive issues of attempted forced births and abortion, the question of choice in the face of societal turmoil is posed. A stowaway teenager has made it on to Galactica from her colony of Gemenon, where abortion is illegal. Cottle tells Adama that he performs abortions for women: “I do my work, she leaves, I don’t ask a lot of questions.” “You’re going to start,” says Adama, who has been contacted by the frantic parents of the missing young woman.

The young woman says, “It doesn’t matter what you say, I’m not going to change my mind,” and then begs them to not send her back, because she is afraid of her parents and the fundamentalist religious rules of her colony—she wants asylum on Galactica.

“Some might say,” says Cottle, “she was the victim of political persecution.”

Adama glares at him, and the doctor walks away.

As is so often the case in matters of reproductive decision-making, the doctor is pushed out of the picture because of politics.

The colonial representative from Gemenon, Sarah, comes to Roslin to plead for the young woman. She says that abortion “is an abomination in the eyes of the gods” and threatens to remove support for Roslin’s campaign unless the young woman is released back to Gemenon.

Roslin is strong in her convictions (at first) that abortion was legal in the Colonies, and it must be legal still. “I’ve fought for woman’s right to control her body my entire career,” she says, clearly struggling with the tension of political and seemingly practical ramifications of her orders.

As she makes these assertions, the white board with 49,584 written on it looms behind her. The population, Adama reminds her, is a consideration, and reminds her that she herself had said, “We’d better start having babies.”

Roslin researches demographics, and Baltar tells her that if humans continue on their present course, they would be extinct in 18 years.

The audience then hears Roslin’s voice at a press conference making a radio address, saying that while people have enjoyed the rights and freedoms they had before the attack, “One of those rights is in direct conflict with the survival of the species.” The pregnant teenager touches and looks down at her swollen abdomen as Roslin says, “We must repopulate the fleet.” She then announces that she’s making an executive order that “anyone seeking to interfere with the birth of a child—mother or medical professional—will be subject to criminal charges.”

Sharon reacts violently to the news that her fetus will be aborted without her consent

However, before the executive order is in place, Roslin is sure that the Gemonese teenager is granted an abortion and asylum.

When Sarah confronts Roslin with this information, she says “Word has it you’re not going to prosecute the Gemonese girl.” Exasperated, Roslin says, “She has a name, Sarah—I think she’s suffered enough… Take your victory and move on.”

Another press conference, another political power play by Baltar on Roslin, and we come full circle again—women’s reproductive rights reduced to a political wedge, to keep support, win voters, and attempt to repopulate the fleet. It’s not about the woman.

Nor is it in 2012 America, on Earth, far away from the notion of battleships and humanoid machines.

While America is still in the throes of economic decline, already in 2012 944 reproductive health and rights provisions have been introduced by legislatures, including many that restrict access to abortion and contraception. Much of the rhetoric used by anti-abortion and anti-contraception factions (like the monotheistic Cylons) includes the ideology that women should be mothers, should embrace motherhood and fulfill their purpose as a procreating species.

At the same time, the US has a legacy of eugenics and sterilization. Even as recently as 2011, a Louisiana lawmaker proposed legislation that would give incentives to poor women to be sterilized. He also has proposed a ban on all abortion—again showing that reproduction is beautiful and necessary—unless the state says otherwise. Modern society is also no stranger to forced adoptions.

The Cylons, throughout the series, demonstrate a monotheistic religion that has similar rhetoric to fundamentalist Christianity. On the other hand, the Colonies are polytheistic—seemingly more progressive and inclusive, having legalized abortion. President Roslin is clear in her personal struggle to make decisions that go against a lifetime of pro-choice activism. Eventually, though, the rhetoric all converges. Women must reproduce for the greater good. Their individual autonomy must be put aside for the fleet, for God/the gods, for politics and for others to live.

At the end of the opening credits of Battlestar Galactica, there is an intense teaser reel of what was coming up in the episode. We would always close or eyes, or look away from the screen, because we didn’t want to see what was coming. It’s easy to do that with every issue that science fiction and dystopian fiction bring before us—look away, because we don’t want to know what’s coming. In reality, these political and moral dilemmas are not taking place in some star system light years away; they are taking place here. They are taking place now.

———-

Leigh Kolb is an English and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri, and has an MFA in creative nonfiction writing. She lives on a small farm with her husband, dogs, chickens, and garden, and makes a terrible dinner party guest because all she wants to talk about is feminism and reproductive rights.

Biopic and Documentary Week: Poster Girl

This piece on Poster Girl, by Stephanie Rogers and Amber Leab, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on February 17, 2011, as part of their coverage of the Athena Film Festival.

Poster Girl (2010)
Poster Girl was, without a doubt, my favorite film at the Athena Film Festival. It’s no surprise that the film is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary – Short Subject, even though this was a first effort at filmmaking from director Sara Nesson. 
[…]
Nesson also juxtaposes photos of Robynn prior to her Army experience–where she’s in a cheerleading uniform, smiling and having fun with friends–with the post-Army Robynn, a tattooed, pierced, PTSD victim who stares at the former photos as if they couldn’t possibly be her. And they aren’t anymore. The new Robynn is an activist who speaks out against war and gun violence, even while dealing with debilitating panic attacks.

‘The Invisible War’ Takes on Sexual Assault in the Military

This is a guest post from Soraya Chemaly.
How many movies have you watched in which rape is a notable, if not integral, part of the plot? Not sure? Well, I started thinking about it and poked around. The short list I compiled is at the end of this article.
Amazing, right? I personally have spent probably hundreds of dollars and entire weeks of my life paying for and watching these movies. Given the list below, it is clear that we do not shy away from movies in which jarring and often graphic rape scenes are featured. The most recent and extraordinarily explicit example, of course, is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. War movies, in particular, often feature or allude to rape. Indeed, militarism and sexual violence seem to go hand in hand — but we don’t usually think of the rape being intra-military. In addition, these films are almost always fictional, edifying tales of retribution that leave audiences entertained and emotionally satisfied. But what about real rape — especially rape in the military?
You don’t see any blockbusters on the list about that. So, in return for the hours of entertainment pleasure that you may have derived from some of these films, take just two minutes and watch this:
The Invisible War, which premiered at The Sundance Film Festival on January 20th, is a groundbreaking investigative documentary about one of our country’s most shameful and best kept secrets: the epidemic of rape within our military. Focusing on the powerfully emotional stories of several young women, the film reveals the systemic failure of the military to confront these crimes and follows their struggles to fight for justice.
In 2009, 16,150 service members were assaulted (addition details for service academies can be found here at Stop Military Rape.) Although both men and women are subject to assault, women in the military are now more likely to be raped by fellow soldiers than they are to be killed in combat. In a 2005 study of 540 female veterans, 30 percent reported assaulted by a male colleague and/or supervisor. Of these, 14 percent reported having been gang-raped and 20 percent reported having been raped more than once.
Estimates indicate that anywhere from 8 percent to as high as 37 percent of the victims of sexual assault and trauma cases reported last year were men. The Pentagon believes that fully 80-90 percent of assaults (of men and women) are not reported. Only 1 in 15 men report assault, versus 1 in 5 women. It is harder for service men (and civilians), who face the real risk and consequences of being stigmatized as weak and “not masculine” to report assault. In this way, the military is a sluggish, tradition-bound, concentrated distillation of prevailing cultural norms. The portrayal of rape in the media and our culture at large (everything from victim-blaming to exaggerated claims of false accusations) contributes to the difficulty of getting accurate information about men being victimized. Sexism, misogyny and hetero-normative standards result in rape being largely understood as forcible vaginal penetration of a woman by a man. Trigger warning for this link: “Rape [for a man] is a very emasculating thing,” says Rick Tringale, who was the target of a military gang rape and came forward with his story.
This is compounded in the military, which values and demands uber-masculinity and for which “male” aggression is vital to survival. Don’t forget, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was in place until one year ago. Until we have a broader cultural acceptance (not just in the military) of the link between homophobia and misogyny, male abuse will continue to be under-reported, ignored and misunderstood. Ironically, it is the addition of more women into military service that has allowed men to come forward in greater numbers every year.
Military survivors of assault report several additional factors in explaining their reluctance to come forward.
Sexual assault is is deeply traumatizing and stigmatizing for any victim, but for military survivors of assault the effects can be significantly worse. In the first place, they cannot quit their jobs but instead have to continue working with their rapists, sleeping with their rapists, eating with their rapists, being “led” by their rapists and, in many cases, protect their rapists from harm and expect them to do the same. Given the power dynamics, sometimes the closest analogy is parental rape of a child.
Military Sexual Trauma is the Department of Veterans Affairs’ term for the effect of intra-service sexual assault or repeated, threatening sexual harassment on a veteran. Survivors suffer higher rates of PTSD, anxiety, depression, increased risk of homelessness and alcohol and substance abuse. Female military personnel report getting pregnant (some are raped while pregnant), having to find difficult to access abortifacients and often starting birth control to prevent the possibility of pregnancy in the face of the high likelihood that they will raped again. This is an environment where female service members sleep with knives to protect themselves from their fellow soldiers.
Yet another intensifier is the military’s handling of rape claims. Here is a particularly troubling description of a rape and how it was handled:

Beth, a major in the U. S. Army Reserve, was sexually assaulted by a noncommissioned officer during a scud missile attack during Operation Iraqi Freedom. She followed reporting procedures, including undergoing the collection of evidence during another scud missile attack. Emergency contraception (EC) was “simply handed to me as a lot of pills to take. I went on birth control pills in the event that this happened to me again.”

Even recent changes in The Defense Department’s military rape policies have been criticized by both Protect Our Defenders and the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) as insufficient.
What happens when people report this crime?
Only 8 percent of rape complaints get prosecuted, only 2 percent result in conviction. This isn’t a slap on the wrist — it’s a slap in the face to victims: 80 percent of perpetrators and the accused are discharged with honor, while 90 percent of victims are eventually “involuntarily” discharged. (In the general population conviction rates are 40 percent for prosecuted and 6 percent for all cases reported.)
The military chain of command has a vested interest in not escalating complaints. Unit commanders’ depend on obedience, harmony and cohesion — all of which are threatened by soldiers’ accusing other soldiers of assault and the fallout of those accusations. There is no incentive to resolve complaints legally and systematically in ways that will enter the official record. It means paperwork, investigations, dishonor, admission of responsibility, a loss of reputation and possibly rank.
In November, 2011 California Congresswoman Jackie Speier introduced the Sexual Assault Training Oversight and Prevention Act–the STOP Act, H.R. 3435, which would take the reporting, oversight and investigation of these cases away from the military’s normal chain of command and into the jurisdiction of the the newly created, autonomous (civilian and military expert) Sexual Assault Oversight and Response Office.
In February of 2011 a landmark lawsuit was filed on behalf of 17 active duty service members and veterans, 2 men and 15 women. It accused the Department of Defense of cultivating a culture that fails to prevent and prosecute rape and sexual assault, violating plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. The case named Robert M. Gates and Donald Rumsfeld as heads of institutions that trivialized, denied, openly mocked the claims of rape victims and failed to take preventive measures to stop further assaults. This landmark case was dismissed last December.
Lawyer Susan Burke filed an appeal for the case in early January (2012). The plaintiffs in this case are 28 current or former members of the military who allege that they were raped by coworkers and, similarly to the above cited case, that the defense secretary’s failure to act on the issue of sexual assault in the military amounts to a violation of their constitutional rights.
Some people feel that talking about these rapes, prosecuting them and seeking legal recourse weakens our military. It is the exact opposite. The persistent drumbeat of denial and blithe dismissal is dangerous and harmful. Not revealing, admitting and fixing the problem of rape in the military, and our culture at large, is what undermines cohesion and hurts soldiers.
“We will continue the legal battles until the military begins to punish and dishonorably discharge the sexual predators, rather than retaliate against those who report the crime,” explains Burke.
As far as I’m concerned, one rape is too much. I know, pie in the sky for some people — but a matter of life and death for others. From my perspective, it’s a shame we can’t sue our entire culture since, in actuality, the military’s rape statistics aren’t that radically different from the nation’s.
You can follow the release of the movie at @Invisible_War or check out the Take Action list on The Invisible War website.
Movies That Include Rape and Sexual Assault
This is a short list of movies in which rape occurs. I couldn’t even begin to compile a list in which rape is implied or threatened. Multiple iterations of IMBD searches consistently resulted in anywhere between 2,000-4,500 titles, depending on whether or not you included TV. Interestingly enough, however, some of the movies that involve the assault of boys and men did not appear on the first pass list of movies including rape.
9 ½ weeks
The Accused
American Psycho
The Astronaut’s Wife
Bastard Out of Carolina
Blue Velvet
Cape Fear
Cider House Rules
Clan of the Cave Bear
Clockwork Orange
The Color Purple
Dead Man Walking
Death and the Maiden
Deathwish I, II and II
Deliverance
Devil’s Advocate
Eve’s Bayou
Eye’s Wide Shut
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Forrest Gump
The General’s Daughter
Gia
G. I. Jane
Gladiator
God and Monsters
The Good Girl
The Green Mile
Last Tango in Paris
Lawrence of Arabia
Lolita
Moulin Rouge
Once We Were Warriors
Platoon
Precious
Pulp Fiction
Rob Roy
Robin Hood
Saturday Night Fever
Schindler’s List
Shame
The Shipping News
Thelma and Louise
Traffic

Soraya Chemaly writes feminist satire. She is a regular contributor to The Good Men Project and The Huffington Post (where this piece originally appeared). She is also the creator of the retired blogs: Poog, a Goop Spoof and The Guide to Manic Moms.

Athena Film Festival Mini-Review: Poster Girl

 
Poster Girl synopsis:  
Poster Girl is the story of Robynn Murray, an all-American high school cheerleader turned “poster girl” for women in combat, distinguished by Army Magazine’s cover shot. Now home from Iraq, her tough-as-nails exterior begins to crack, leaving Robynn struggling with the debilitation effects of PTSD and the challenges of rebuilding her life. Directed by Sara Nesson.

Amber’s Take:
Poster Girl was, without a doubt, my favorite film at the Athena Film Festival. It’s no surprise that the film is nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary – Short Subject, even though this was a first effort at filmmaking from director Sara Nesson.

Robynn Murray’s trauma was palpable. Her anxiety came through in her near-constant breathlessness, emotional breakdowns, and outbursts of anger. Although she had enrolled in the division of the army sent in after combat missions–to rebuild and ‘win hearts and minds’–she was sent directly into combat. Although women are officially forbidden to participate in combat in the US military, most people will acknowledge that the distinction between combat and non-combat roles is archaic and even non-existent in 21st century war zones. That Murray was assigned a gunner position atop a tank (the most dangerous, exposed position) on the second day of her tour of duty in Iraq shouldn’t surprise the realists among us, but is nevertheless shocking when told from a raw, personal perspective.

Rooting for this film (and, in turn, rooting for its star and director) is enough to make me excited for next weekend’s Oscar ceremony.

Stephanie’s Take:

Watching Poster Girl was by far the highlight of my experience at the Athena Film Festival. Not only is it a convincing portrayal of the serious effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, but it’s a subtle anti-war film, one that illustrates the often disastrous consequences of repeated exposure to death and violence–and not just for women in combat. Nesson gets moving footage of several former soldiers, including Robynn, who create art from their uniforms, and the soldiers all emphasize the healing power of that process. (I personally loved watching each of them rip their uniforms to shreds.)

Nesson also juxtaposes photos of Robynn prior to her Army experience–where she’s in a cheerleading uniform, smiling and having fun with friends–with the post-Army Robynn, a tattooed, pierced, PTSD victim who stares at the former photos as if they couldn’t possibly be her. And they aren’t anymore. The new Robynn is an activist who speaks out against war and gun violence, even while dealing with debilitating panic attacks.

The film shows just how screwed up our system is for soldiers returning from service:  it’s heartbreaking to watch Robynn practically beg for the disability checks the government owes her, as well as witness the lengths she has to go to to “prove” that she’s disabled. But even after all this, Poster Girl somehow ends on a hopeful note, with a smile from Robynn that we hadn’t seen since before she entered the Army.

Watch the preview: