Young Adult – Bitch Flicks

Violence and Morality in ‘The 100’

This act of mercy killing is the first of many moments when Clarke is forced to be violent for the good of others. It not only prompts an important change within herself – she loses her idealistic ways – but it prompts a change in the group dynamics. After this moment, Clarke begins to pull away from the co-leadership she and Bellamy had operated in and moves toward becoming the sole leader of the delinquents.

This guest post by Esther Nassaris appears as part of our theme week on Violent Women.

We see violence on screen a lot. In fact, some would argue we’ve become desensitised to it. And in a way I think that’s true. After all, a lot of the time it is used solely for shock value, something to make the audience gasp during sweeps week. Or in the case of women, a vile way to sexualise a character further and to feed into the male gaze. Yet violence on The 100 isn’t like that. It’s ingrained in the plot because of the world the show is set in, not thrown in to shock or titillate. It’s explored in an intelligent and thought provoking way. In short, it’s one of the many things that The 100 is doing right.

The premise of the show was brilliant from day one and from the moment one of the leads, Wells (Eli Goree), was killed off in episode 3 “Earth Kills” I knew that this show was different. The show picks up 97 years after a nuclear war is thought to have destroyed all life on earth. The rest of humanity survives on a massive space station, known as The Ark. Yet when resources run low and systems begin to fail they send a group of 100 expendable juvenile delinquents to Earth to see if the land is survivable. The delinquents quickly find out that they are not alone on Earth, and from day one have to fight to survive. In the futuristic world of The 100, discrimination has become a non-issue. The only way to differentiate between people is what clan you’re part of. Everything else just simply doesn’t matter. It’s the shows modern approach to gender, race, and sexuality that allows us a wealth of well-written women who encompass violence in different ways.

Like many sci-fi shows, The 100 is no stranger to violence; however, its relationship with it is complex and ever-changing. As Clarke (Eliza Taylor) is the protagonist of the show, we first consider violence from her perspective. Clarke is initially seen as a more idealistic character, hesitant to use violence and more likely to resist the use of force. This is shown through her immediate disagreements with Bellamy (Bob Morley) when he becomes a leader of the delinquents in a very Lord of the Flies-esque way. However, when one of the delinquents is critically injured in episode 3 “Earth Kills” and begs Bellamy to kill him, Clarke is the one to do it. This act of mercy killing is the first of many moments when Clarke is forced to be violent for the good of others. It not only prompts an important change within herself – she loses her idealistic ways – but it prompts a change in the group dynamics. After this moment, Clarke begins to pull away from the co-leadership she and Bellamy had operated in and moves toward becoming the sole leader of the delinquents.

As a leader Clarke swiftly becomes a much more pragmatic character, understanding that violence is a necessary part of life on the ground. In episode 7 “Contents Under Pressure” we can already see the change in her character as she authorises the use of violence against an enemy clan member. And while she is hesitant at first, she allows it to happen once she realises that it’s necessary to gain the information that she requires. Although she isn’t the one to directly inflict the violence, as a leader of her people it is her that is directly responsible for the actions of her people. While this is a more calculated version of the violence that Clarke has adopted, we see a more instinctual version in episode 11 “The Calm.” While captured by the Grounders, in a desperate attempt to escape Clarke brutally attacks and kills her guard. In this moment violence is clearly the resourceful thing to do. It is a sign of intelligence and strength of character that Clarke not only recognises that she must act quickly, but that she has the ability to do so.

As a sharp juxtaposition to Clarke, we have Octavia (Marie Avgeropoulos). An outsider from day one, Octavia is the first to adapt to the harsh way of life on the ground and is the first to transition into the Grounder clan. This is mainly because of her early acceptance of violence. While Clarke is a master of the calculated and strategic violence; Octavia is a front line kind of fighter. Yet even when Octavia finds her way into the Grounder clan we still see her as an outsider. The 100 plays with the idea that this type of violence isn’t appropriate for femaleness. It makes us challenge our own perceptions. If women are unable to be so powerfully violent, then why does Octavia thrive this way? It’s a very typical male role, and thus The 100 subverts expectations of traditional gender roles.

The Grounders offer the audience yet another viewpoint into violent women. As survivors of the nuclear war, The Grounders have adapted into a survival first way of living. In episode 11 “The Calm” we see that violence is taught from a young age when Anya’s (Dichen Lachman) second is a young girl. Violence is intrinsic for them. They know no other way. In the midst of their fight for survival, concepts of gender, sexuality, and race have largely fallen away. This allows many of the Grounder leaders to be women. Most notably Commander Lexa (Alycia Debnam-Carey), who leads the Grounder clans. However like the Sky People do, we initially distrust the Grounders. We see them as an enemy, and their way of living barbaric and ruthless. While Clarke has some clear reservations about making the harsh decisions to kill or torture, Lexa makes them without questioning it. She knows when these methods are necessary. It is interesting to consider if perhaps this is why some people dislike the character. It is harder to accept a violent woman who is completely committed to these acts. There’s no softening of the blow for the audience. This is who she is and these are the harsh actions that she will not hesitate to make.

As the stakes are raised in season 2, the level of violence also increases and thus morality becomes an even more prominent question on the show. It’s not just the characters that are left wondering whether their choices were right, the viewer is forced to ask the same question. Would we go to such a dark and brutal place? Could we? Often times when you watch a show or a film in which violence is a main theme, there’s a clear right and wrong, a good and evil. We don’t feel bad rooting for someone who’s inflicting so much damage because we know they’re on the good side. But violence on The 100 is presented in a morally grey area. Most importantly, there’s never a separate type of violence for men and women. When Clarke kills hundreds of people to save less than 50 of her own it doesn’t take away from her femininity. It doesn’t make her a masculine character. In fact gender is not taken into account. It makes her a good leader, and perhaps a flawed person, but never any less female.

Esther Nassaris is a Media and Communication student at Glasgow Caledonian University who is passionate about all things television, feminism, and pop culture. She spends most of her time either writing about, or watching television, and would like to become an entertainment journalist. Find her on twitter at @EstNas or blogging on https://tvforfeminists.wordpress.com/

The Disappearance of Sexism and Racism in Dystopian Fiction

Certainly, teenagers strain against authority and exert their independence. This doesn’t mean they’re immune to other big issues that plague society – issues such as sexism and racism. If the novels being written for this demographic want to call themselves true dystopias based on a futuristic society in which our current way of living led to some global disaster, then the writers of the novels and the film adaptations shouldn’t shy away from some of the biggest issues in current politics and society.

This is a guest post by Maria Ramos.

If book sales and box office numbers are any indication, young adults love their dystopian fiction. So much so that the creative powers that be are intent on keeping the momentum going with more and more additions to this fairly recent genre phenomenon, for better or for worse. Unfortunately, the repetition breeds dilution of the initial idea of a dystopia as an opposite of a utopia, or perfect world.

The idea of dystopia takes into account basic and flawed human nature, hinging on the idea that power, political in this case, corrupts, leading to a small group of oppressors and a greater group of oppressed. YA dystopian fiction tends to present this oppression as a necessary sacrifice to save the rest of humanity after some global and apocalyptic disaster, often environmental in nature and with the clear message that we should take care of our environment now or suffer our own dystopia later.

The common element in a true dystopia is politics, but in these YA versions, the politics have become metaphors for the seemingly oppressive nature of adult and school rules under which teenagers often chafe. This conversion leaves the stories one-sided and shallow, expecting the reader to assume that, because this is a common problem within the young adult mindset, it is also the biggest problem facing young adults today. At best, such an assumption stems from laziness, and at worst, it’s insulting.

Take The Hunger Games, for example. Society is divided by geography and profession as each of the 12 districts supplies the capital city with a specific product or skill. The districts live in various extremes of poverty and deprivation. While some would argue that such suffering would bring out the best in some people, the situation is also ripe for the desperation that leads to an irrational fear of other, a prime motivator of racism. And yet, while the author created a diverse group of characters, including Katniss who was described as “olive-skinned,” the discrimination based on this diversity is simply missing.

The same could be said for The Maze Runner series (the first film is available on demand through Google Play and DirecTV), which provides representation of various races to include Asian and African American and yet never a hint of racial tensions either in the grove or once they’re out of it and into The Scorch Trials, the second installment of the book and movie trilogy. Possibly the worst offender of recent offerings, however, is the Divergent series, in which society is divided by faction only, with each faction based on a particular character trait. Not only is there no hint of racism anywhere in any of the three novels of this trilogy, but sexism is gone, too.

This latter is particularly hard to swallow given that the domestically abusive and oppressive male leader of one faction (while actively opposing the female leader of another) never once makes a disparaging reference to her being deficient because she’s a woman, even after his true character is brought to light and his crimes against his own family are revealed to all. There is one comment made by a male to the lead female Tris when Peter tells her she has nice legs for a “stiff,” but this is a reference to her previous faction only. No reference to her appearance as a female, only faction.

Overall, if writers and filmmakers wish to reach the widest possible audience, they’ll need to take a harder look at more than struggles with authority. By leaving out other important problems faced by today’s young people, they leave a glaring hole in the message.

Maria Ramos is a writer interested in comic books, cycling, and horror films. Her hobbies include cooking, doodling, and finding local shops around the city. She currently lives in Chicago with her two pet turtles, Franklin and Roy. You can follow her on Twitter @MariaRamos1889.

‘The Hunger Games’: Proving Dystopia Is the Best Young Adult Genre

Dystopia, in its futuristic escapism and its contemporary relevance, is an ideal genre for the young adult demographic. By pushing the boundaries of disturbing content and reflecting on youthful idealism, dystopian narratives trust the YA consumer to be both literary in their consumption of the book or film, but also socially and morally insightful in their view of the imagined world they hold.

This guest post by Rowan Ellis appears as part of our theme week on Dystopias.

Dystopian narratives can generally be described as “An imaginary place where people lead dehumanised and often fearful lives,” which is accurate, but does not fully express key characteristics of the genre.^[1] The Hunger Games, for example, is temporally situated in a future version of America, and this relationship between time periods affects the causes of the dystopian societies and the extent to which our own world is responsible for their making. In this way, and especially looking at The Hunger Games as a Young Adult series, we can examine how dystopian landscapes are an overwhelmingly apt vehicle for social awareness in the younger generation by interacting with their world and self-identity.

The Young Adult label is a recent one, with a distinctive lack of research on the genre; even its definition is contentious as a mixture of both a self-styled labelling by authors themselves, and a marketing tool for publishing companies. Intended readership is perhaps the most useful way of understanding the Young Adult literature, with the genre then defined as those books, films, or TV written and produced specifically for young adults.

The contemporary relevance of YA protagonists ensure that the exploration of self-identity for characters within these films is inevitably reflected back onto the YA audience, helping to shape their own views of themselves and the world around them. By exclusively using protagonists who are young adults themselves, films like The Hunger Games are able to emphasise the need for social change, and the possibility of it, by giving power to its viewers; as the protagonists create a better world, so too can the audience. At a talk at Cadogan Hall, John Green asked for questions from the audience of young readers. On receiving insightful and pertinent questions, and reading aloud one on the pain of writing about unfulfilled lives, and another comparing the use of water in his book to that of James Joyce in Ulysses, he remarked “I wish all the journalists who tell me my books are too complex for teenagers could hear this.” Dystopia, in its futuristic escapism and its contemporary relevance, is an ideal genre for the young adult demographic. By pushing the boundaries of disturbing content and reflecting on youthful idealism, dystopian narratives trust the YA consumer to be both literary in their consumption of the book or film, but also socially and morally insightful in their view of the imagined world they hold. By extrapolating a possible future from wider themes of importance in the contemporary age, the need to change current society is heightened.

Literary critic Robyn McCallum prefaces her work on adolescent identity by proposing the relative truism that “concepts of personal identity and selfhood are formed in dialogue with society, with language and with other people.”^{^[2]} The implication of this for The Hunger Games, however, is far more significant, as the reaction to and rebellion against Panem shapes not only the self-identity of the characters, but also the audience’s attitudes toward them. Dystopian worlds are often a product of mankind’s inability to learn from history, and The Hunger Games utilises this by mirroring its world building with Ancient and contemporary civilisations while creating the new history of Panem. Penelope Lively’s argument that “to have a sense of history is, above all, to have a sense of one’s own humanity” ties Katniss’ identity to distant history, as much as to her father’s death in the recent past.^{^[3]} The use of the name Panem for the dystopian world Collins creates, gives a multi-layered sense of antiquity and contemporary history. The Latin translation of Panem as “bread” is most notably tied to the quintessential Roman phrase “Bread and Circuses,” directly paralleling the Games and historical Gladiatorial contests, with the pre-Games feast even mirroring the cena libera in Roman culture. However, there is also a similarity with the famous Pam Am airline, evoking the past glamour of American globalisation, ironically contrasted with the static divisive state of the future America. Similarly the Capitol ties together ancient Rome and modern Washington with the utopian setting of the high society in Collins’ novel. The film’s costumes and design has a similar relationship with history; District 12 has a distinctive feel of dustbowl America, as if stepping out of the Depression-era photograph of an impoverished farming community.

Although set in our future, Katniss’ outfit undeniably echoes the past.

McCallum argues that “to displace a character out of his/her familiar surroundings can destablise his/her sense of identity,” yet Katniss does her growing within the hostile and unfamiliar landscape of the Arena, as she refuses to mirror the career tributes bloodthirsty methods, even though we as an audience know she is already skilled in hunting and killing.^{^[4]} The Arena is a form of anti-society, as The Games encourage a distrust of society via a distrust of individuals and alliances on which communities are based. By placing Katniss in such a space, it ensures a shaping of her social identity as a victor, but also her internal one, as her compassion is not completely destroyed by the mistrust and cunning she demonstrates in order to survive.

For a dystopian society to flourish there needs to be, as a characteristic of its ruling elite, the ability to block out natural empathy, or to remove the lower citizens from full human status deserving of empathy, in order for these hardships to be justified.^{^[5]} For the Games in The Hunger Games to achieve their purpose, they have to be watched both in horror by the Districts, and with delight and wonder by the Capitol. The Hunger Games uses the Games as an extreme image of where desensitising an audience potentially extrapolates to. The most immediate reflection of empathy within The Hunger Games is the relationship between Katniss, Rue, and Prim, as Katniss finds herself unable to detach her feelings for her sister with those for her fellow Tribute. This creates a sense of her as an unexpected maternal figure, sensing a gap between the younger girls as small children, and herself as an adult with responsibilities to them. Haymitch, as a representation of the experienced, and therefore jaded, adult character, is able to comprehend consequences of Katniss’ actions, whereas she reflects the stereotypical teenage attitude of living in the present, allowing her to focus on empathy over practicality and preserving her as a moral character as she teams up with the defenceless Rue.

The Other is a vital component of social (rather than ecological) dystopian fiction, as the propensity of the ruling elite to create such a nightmarish reality often relies on the subjugation of those who are deemed different. Going through the physical gendering process of puberty emphasises gender divides for YA characters and viewers. Gender in Panem is never raised as an Othering principle, indeed both male and female tributes are treated with the same objectification and callousness, and both genders display compassion and ruthlessness equally. However, the problems of patriarchy are so present in our own society that we project these values onto the characters. The Atlantic magazine, for example, described Katniss as “the most important female character in recent pop culture history” and the success of the film franchise has bolstered support of an increase in films with female protagonists as both morally and financially justified.^{^[6]} In The Hunger Games, Katniss’ unbridled contempt for her Mother’s mental state, shapes her into becoming a traditional father figure, assuming the patriarchal rather than matriarchal role in the house. Similarly, although ostensibly the tribute Johanna Mason subverts the traditional gender stereotypes when fakes a meek sensibility in her own Games before revealing her bloodthirsty nature in order to win, there is a sense within the books that the same ploy would have worked had Joanna been Joseph.

Those of a high social rank in the Capitol become characterised by an extreme aestheticism, mirroring the turn of the Century upper-class preoccupation with art and beauty explored by Oscar Wilde and other Decadent artists. Cinna’s team work relentlessly on Katniss, as the ideals of beauty are vital to gaining support in the Capitol; looks help you win. In Finnick’s storyline, this preoccupation is given an added sinister twist, as he confesses Snow allowed Capitol citizen’s to rape him, inviting a comparison with the sexual exploitation of both men and women from the working-class backgrounds in Panem, with the sex industry in our own world.

Having Katniss act as the face of a building revolution, young adult viewers can see reflected in the films images of fictional young adults with the ability to change the world. They use a combination of fear and hope to allow young adult viewers to feel empowered, both in their internal self-identity and their engagement with the contemporary issues reflected in the films. Hope is traditionally the driving force in children’s fiction–to prevent despair from becoming the ultimate end of the experience, thereby preventing the impetus for creating a better alternative, and the same can be seen in Young Adult fiction. The actor Donald Sutherland, who portrays President Snow in the film adaptations of The Hunger Games has noticed the story’s “potential to catalyse, motivate, mobilise a generation of young people who were, in my opinion, by and large dormant in the political process,” through this combination of alarm and optimism.

Dystopian films relate the horror of the fictional worlds to the future of their own; in The Hunger Games the starvation in the Districts is a clear reflection of the poverty and famine experienced world-wide, even within contemporary America, where 57 percent of American children live in a home which is designated “poor” or “low income” and 20 percent live in poverty. Moreover, the extravagance of the Capitol’s food and clothes holds a mirror to the wasteful culture in the Western World, where up to half of all food produced is never eaten. Furthermore, the life or death conditions for children chosen as Tributes can be associated with the problems surrounding the use of child soldiers in countries such as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The empathetic fear of young adults towards these issues was illustrated clearly in the viral awareness campaign “Kony 2012,” where the plight of child soldiers captured the attention of hundreds of thousands of young people world-wide. Although critic Downey wrote in 2005 that “one of the great difficulties in teaching about horrific periods of history […] is addressing how to help students comprehend the incomprehensible,” she simplifies the abilities of young people by supposing that what is viewed as “incomprehensible” is relegated to the past, and that as adults, teachers are able to better understand these events.^{^[7]}

Hardships endured can both build and destroy characters, and although destruction can be viewed as a more realistic reaction to living in a dystopian society, forming positive identities around interacting with a society and set of values one finds unfair or lacking is a YA viewer’s reality. As the brilliant YA author Patrick Ness puts it, “Teenagers don’t see dystopias as dystopias; they see them as barely fictional representations of their day-to-day lives,” through their own powerlessness and fear. A fear which is inevitable in our world, and a reality to YA viewers–Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, for example, famously composed its terrifying society from real cultures and historic movements. Dystopian narratives gives a YA audience a way of processing this reality at a distance, while potentially using it for personal inspiration, to foster an empathy which allows them to create their own morality separate from and informed by imperfect societies.

^{^[1]} Merriam Webster Encyclopedia of Literature (Springfield, MA: Merriam Webster Inc, 1995)

^{^[2]} Robyn McCallum, Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction: The Dialogic Construction of Subjectivity (New York: Garland Publishing Inc, 1999) p.3

^{^[3]} Penelope Lively, “Child and Memory,” Horn Book, 49/4, (1973), p.400

^{^[4]} Robyn McCallum, Ideologies of Identity in Adolescent Fiction: The Dialogic Construction of Subjectivity (New York: Garland Publishing Inc, 1999) p.190

^{^[7]} Downey, A.L., “The Transformative Power of Drama: Bringing Literature and Social Justice to Life” English Journal, 95/1, (2005) p.33

Rowan Ellis is a British geek using her YouTube videos to critique films, TV, and books from a queer and feminist lens.

Unlikable Women: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for our Unlikable Women Theme Week here.

Dolores Jane Umbridge: Page, Screen, and Stage by Jackson Adler

Umbridge works as Undersecretary to Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge. Through her position in the patriarchal wizarding government, Umbridge enables job discrimination, segregation, incarceration and harsh sentencing, and physical violence and genocide against marginalized people. She not only politically supports these efforts, but personally enacts violence against marginalized people and their allies, including children.

Never Fear: Unlikable Black Women on Orange Is the New Black and Luther by Rachel Wortherly

When I searched my mental rolodex for Black female characters in film or television who are unlikable my mind continued to circle. I was lost.

“I’m Not Bad, I’m Just Drawn That Way”: The Exceptionally Beautiful Anti-Heroine by Jessica Carbone

And if you’re anything like me, every reader of this site wants the same thing: to see more portrayals of women on film, televisions, and beyond that reflect their complexities, strengths and weakness alike. We want a greater range of body types, a greater representation of lifestyle choices, a broader world of occupations and skill sets and backstories and destinies.

Evil-Lyn: Fantasy’s Underrated Icon by Robert Aldrich

A character with few rivals and even fewer scruples, Evil-Lyn was arguably one of the better developed villains in the show. And in the annals of females from sci-fi/fantasy, her name should be spoken of in the same breath as Wonder Woman and Princess Leia.

A Fine Frenzy: With an Outspoken Anti-Heroine and a Feminist Lens, Young Adult Is Excellent by Megan Kearns

In this witty, hilarious and bittersweet dramedy, Theron plays Mavis Gary, an author of young adult books living in Minneapolis. Mavis’ life is a hot mess. She’s divorced, drinks her life away and the book series she writes is coming to an end. She was the popular mean girl in high school who escaped to the big city. Mavis returns to her small hometown in Minnesota full of Taco Bells and KFCs intending to reclaim her old glory days and her ex-boyfriend, who’s happily married with a new baby. As she fucks up, she eventually questions what she wants out of life.

Political Humor and Humanity in HBO’s VEEP by Rachel Redfern

She’s a toxic political figure, a creator of monumental gaffes and inappropriate situations who doesn’t even have the excuse of good intentions. Her intentions are always self-serving and she treats her staff atrociously, often assigning them the blame for her mistakes.

Bad Girls and (Not-So)-Guilty Pleasures in The Bling Ring by Amy Woolsey

Coppola’s refusal to condemn, explain or apologize for her characters makes for a rather opaque experience. To state the obvious, these are not likable individuals. They exhibit no visible remorse for their crimes, seemingly oblivious to the concept of personal boundaries, and think about little besides fashion and D-list celebrities.

Why Maxine from Being John Malkovich Is The Best by Sara Century

Maxine is a perfect character. She stands up for herself, takes no guff off of anyone, and goes for what she wants while issuing remarkable and hilarious ultimatums to those around her. I don’t just like Maxine. I don’t just love Maxine. I am Maxine.

American Mary: In Praise of the Amoral Final Girl by Mychael Blinde

Directed by the Soska sisters, American Mary features a complicated female protagonist who starts out as a likable badass but ends up as an amoral psycho. The film celebrates the power of bodily autonomy and depicts the horror of taking it away.

Reclaiming Conch: In Defense of Ursula, Fairy Octomother by Brigit McCone

Ursula’s show-stopper, “Poor, Unfortunate Souls,” presents case studies of mermen and mermaids made miserable by culture. What this song really teaches is that internalizing cultural messages is a fatal weakness, and rejecting cultural conditioning is a source of great power. Small wonder that Ursula had to die the most gruesome onscreen death in all of Disney.

Bad Girls Go to Heaven: Hollywood’s Feminist Rebels by Emanuela Betti

Hollywood has produced some of the most memorable bad girls and wicked women on-screen—from silent era’s infamous vamps to film noir’s femme fatales—but bad women do more than just entertain, particularly if we’re talking about the sweepingly emotional and excessively dramatic world of woman’s melodrama.

Why We Love Janice and Why We Love to Hate Janice by Artemis Linhart

Is Chandler going somewhere, just minding his own business? Chances are that Janice is just around the corner. As Janice once put it, “You seek me out. Something deep in your soul calls out to me like a foghorn. Jaaa-nice. Jaaa-nice.”

Cristina Yang As Feminist by Scarlett Harris

As people, no matter what gender, it is seemingly second nature to want others to like us and to portray our best selves to them. Just look at the ritual of the date or the job interview. That Cristina defied this action (though we have seen her star-struck when meeting surgeons like Tom Evans and Preston Burke) made her not just a feminist character, but a truly human(ist) one.

Triumphing Mad Men’s Peggy Olson by Sarah Smyth

What exactly, then, makes a character “unlikeable”? How can we define this complex term? Broadly, a character is unlikeable when they behave in an amoral or unethical way (which, of course, depends upon our individual morals and ethics), particularly when their motivations are unclear. However, when it comes to female characters, this term seems to diversify and pluralize.

Hate to Love Her: The Lasting Allure of Blair Waldorf by Vanessa Willoughby

In an interview with the New York Times, Gillian Flynn says, “The likability thing, especially in Hollywood, is a constant conversation, and they’re really underrating their audience when they have that conversation. What I read and what I go to the movies for is not to find a best friend, not to find inspirations…It’s to be involved with characters that are maybe incredibly different from me, that may be incredibly bad but that feel authentic.”

Young Adult‘s Mavis Gary Is “Crazy” Unlikable by Diane Shipley

Mavis is truly transgressive. Not only is her plan against most people’s moral code, it shows no solidarity for the sisterhood and no respect for the institutions women are most conditioned to aspire to: marriage and motherhood. Mavis alienates feminists and traditionalists alike. Not that she cares–she only wants to appeal to men. And she has done so, seemingly effortlessly, for a long time.

Ruthless, Pragmatic Feminism in House of Cards by Leigh Kolb

Claire is a horrible human being for many, many reasons–but her abortions aren’t included in those reasons. The show makes that clear.

Top 10 Villainesses Who Deserve Their Own Movies by Amanda Rodriguez

While villainesses often work at cross-purposes with our heroes and heroines, we love to hate these women. They’re always morally complicated with dark pasts and often powerful and assertive women with an indomitable streak of independence.

Stephanie McMahon Helmsley: The Real Power in the Realm by Robert Aldrich

She’s proven herself to be as diabolical as she is brilliant, manipulating wrestlers against one another and circumventing any and all rules to reach the ends of her choosing. She’s pit wrestlers in matches with their jobs on the line, or the jobs of their spouses (in the case of a short-lived feud with Total Divas darling Brie Bella), added heinous stipulations to matches, or just flat-out fired anyone who disagreed with her.

Suzanne Stone: Frankenstein of Fame by Rachael Johnson

The would-be news anchor is not only an extraordinarily unlikable–though entertaining–protagonist; she also embodies certain pathological tendencies in the American cultural psyche.

King Vidor’s Stella Dallas and the Utter Gracelessness of Grace by Rebecca Willoughby

These repeated conflicts make for a number of scenes in the film that, as Basinger has also asserted, are painful to watch. Our emotions are in conflict: Stella’s aims are noble, her execution hopelessly flawed. It’s hard to like her when she’s so inept, impossible not to sympathize because her purpose is so noble.

The Complex, Unlikable Women of House of Cards by Leigh Kolb

These women are complex, if not likable, and that’s a good thing.

Summer: Portrait of a Recognizable Human by Ren Jender

When the family sits down to eat, a platter full of pork chops is placed in the center of the table just as Delphine announces she is a vegetarian. As the others interrogate her (a tedious line of questions familiar to many vegetarians) and one of the men even offers her a plate full of rose petals to feast on, she tries to walk the tightrope many women do–in all sorts of conversations–of not wanting to be seen as a “bother,” but still trying to stick up for her own beliefs.

Anne Boleyn: Queen Bee of The Tudors by Emma Kat Richardson

Anne Boleyn was considered by many contemporaries to be the very living, breathing definition of an unlikable woman. And perhaps “unlikable” is too soft a term here – at points in the 16th century, following her execution on trumped up charges of adultery and treason, Anne was so widely reviled that very few of her own words, actions, or even accurate portraits remain today, thanks to Henry’s redoubtable efforts to wipe her off the record completely.

Patterns in Poor Parenting: The Babadook and Mommy by Dierdre Crimmins

This is not to say that Amelia and Die are not sympathetic characters. Both want to do the best for their sons, but neither can handle the stress and actual responsibility of disciplining them. I do not mean for this to seem like an attack on Die and Amelia’s parenting skills, but rather a way to look at the sudden appearance of women in film who are not good at parenting.

The Real Hated Housewives of TV by Caroline Madden

Naturally, we are all on these anti-heroes’ sides, despite their bad deeds. And Tony Soprano, Don Draper, and Walter White all have an antagonist: their wives. They call their husbands out on their lies, moral failings, and oppose them. Thus, they are seen as the nagging wife that everyone hates.

With an Outspoken Anti-Heroine and a Feminist Lens, ‘Young Adult’ Is Excellent

In this witty, hilarious, and bittersweet dramedy, Theron plays Mavis Gary, an author of young adult books living in Minneapolis. Mavis’ life is a hot mess. She’s divorced, drinks her life away, and the book series she writes is coming to an end. She was the popular mean girl in high school who escaped to the big city. Mavis returns to her small hometown in Minnesota full of Taco Bells and KFCs intending to reclaim her old glory days and her ex-boyfriend, who’s happily married with a new baby. As she fucks up, she eventually questions what she wants out of life.

This repost by Megan Kearns appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

We so often see men as wayward fuck-ups. Ben Stiller in Greenberg, Zach Braff in Garden State, Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets all fill this role. Selfish asshats who do the wrong thing, lack ambition, or screw someone over for their own selfish needs. And yet they’re somehow loveable and charming. You champion them, hoping they’ll succeed and grow…just a little. Audiences want female leads nice, amiable, and likable. Not messy, complicated, complex, and certainly not unlikable. Heaven forbid! But that’s precisely the role Charlize Theron steps into in Young Adult.

Young Adult is a fantastic film, the best I’ve seen all year. I seriously can’t say enough good things about it. Diablo Cody’s feminist lens and sharply funny dialogue fuse with Jason Reitman’s knack for bittersweet direction, buoyed by stellar portrayals.

A force of nature, Theron gives both a subtly nuanced and bravura performance. In her Golden Globe-nominated role, she makes a flawed, cranky, bitchy, selfish, alcoholic charismatic and likable. When she’s doing something despicable (which happens all too often), I found myself cringing yet simultaneously rooting for her. That’s not easy to do. Theron, who’s been called a transformational chameleon, particularly for her award-winning role in Monster, melts into this role. She imbues Mavis with depth, caustic wit, raw anger and vulnerability. It’s hard to see the boundaries where Theron begins and Mavis ends.

Suffering from depression, Mavis tries to drown her sorrows, unleashing a destructive tornado of chaos. Even though Mavis fled her small town, she’s haunted by the prime of her youth. Most of us have moved on from high school. But Mavis hasn’t grown up yet. With unwavering determination and delusion, she thinks if she can recapture the past, all her problems will be solved.

With her popular girl swagger, you can picture how she sashayed down the halls in high school (and probably shoved people into lockers or hurled insults). That same bravado fools her into thinking she can bend the world to her will.

She finds an unlikely ally and confidante in nerdy, sarcastic yet tender Matt (Patton Oswalt), a former bullied classmate in an achingly touching performance. Some of the best scenes contain Mavis and Matt volleying their biting banter.

What made the film brutally funny is Mavis tosses retorts people think but would never dream of actually saying. She says hilariously wrong things. Matt asks her if she moved back to town, she replies, “Ewww, gross.” She shamelessly throws herself at a married man. When Matt reminds her Buddy has a baby, she retorts, “Babies are boring!” And trust me. I’m not doing Theron’s comic abilities justice.

Uncomfortably funny, hilariously heartbreaking, Young Adult passes the Bechdel Test several times. In one scene, the bandmates in the all-female group Nipple Confusion (love that name!), who also happen to be Mavis’ former high school classmates, briefly debate Mavis and her dubious intentions. Mavis confronts compassionate Beth (Elizabeth Reaser), her ex-boyfriend Buddy (Patrick Wilson)’s wife and the object of Mavis’s vitriolic hatred. Also, Mavis confides in Matt’s sister Sandra (Collette Wolfe), who desperately wants to escape small-town life, about the course her life has taken.

I felt a sigh of relief while watching this film. It felt fantastic to have a woman quip snarky comments that maybe she shouldn’t say but she does anyway. Because Mavis doesn’t give a shit what people think. She doesn’t conform to other people’s standards of who she should be. Most movies suppress women’s rage. Not this one. As the awesome Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood wrote:

This film is a fucking bitchy breath of fresh air.

Hollywood purports a double standard that only men can play unsympathetic roles. If a female actor portrays a complex character, she’s too often labeled a bitch. People don’t usually want to see complicated or unsympathetic women on-screen.

Besides the fabulous Kristen Wiig in the hilarious Bridesmaids, Lena Dunham in Tiny Furniture and Julia Roberts in the god-awful My Best Friend’s Wedding (which Young Adult strangely parallels – both contain selfish female protagonists struggling to recapture the past, hoping to break up a wedding/marriage), there really aren’t many examples of women in this kind of unlikable or flawed role.

In an interview with Silverstein, outspoken feminist (woo hoo!) Diablo Cody shares her inspiration for creating an unlikeable character:

The idea of a cold, unlikeable woman or a woman who is not in control of herself is genuinely frightening to people because it threatens civilization itself or threatens the American family. But I don’t know why people are always willing to accept and even like flawed male characters. We’ve seen so many loveable anti-heroes who are curmudgeons or addicts or bad fathers and a lot of those characters have become beloved icons and I don’t see women allowed to play the same parts. So it was really important to me to try and turn that around.

With female writers comprising 24 percent of ALL writers in Hollywood and women in only 33 percent of speaking roles in films (god that makes me cringe), it’s vital to have more women writing scripts to yield women’s diverse perspectives and stories.

Young Adult is entirely told from Mavis’ perspective. As Mavis scribes the last book in Waverly Prep, a Young Adult series, her writing mirrors events and feelings in her own life. It could have easily veered off course to examine how Mavis’ inappropriate flirting (or rather throwing herself at him) affected Buddy. But the film astutely anchors itself to Mavis, a unique female voice.

I often lament the lack of female-centric films as most either feature men in the spotlight or have women as merely secondary characters. If we want more diverse films, including those where women are front and center, we need to support those films by voting with our dollars and going to the box office.

At first, it seems Young Adult might succumb to the same fate as so many other films and end up revolving around Mavis finding love. Men go on quests and emotional journeys. They learn. They grow. Women often stagnate. Or more common, their lives revolve around men. They wait around for love, seek love, find love, and turn themselves inside out for love…and ultimately a man. We don’t often see them doing things for themselves.

That’s the rare beauty of Young Adult. It’s not really about Mavis finding love. It’s about confronting your mistakes, letting go of the past and growing up. Too many movies reinforce the notion careers and friends don’t count. It’s only your love life that matters. Only love can save you. But sometimes, you can save yourself.

Life is messy, complicated, and difficult. Women can be too. It’s about time we see more roles reflecting that on-screen.

Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. She blogs at The Opinioness of the World, a feminist vegan site. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Fem2pt0, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston with more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime.

‘Young Adult’s Mavis Gary Is “Crazy” Unlikable

This guest post by Diane Shipley appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

When the 2011 film Young Adult opens, things aren’t looking good for 37-year-old Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron). She’s divorced, her long-running gig ghost-writing the cheesy YA series Waverley Prep is coming to an end, and she spends her days asleep in front of the TV and her nights drinking herself into oblivion. So, naturally, when her high school boyfriend Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) includes her on a mass birth announcement email, she heads back to small town Mercury from Minneapolis in a misguided attempt to win him back.

Now her marriage is over and her future employment looks uncertain, she isn’t facing up to her problems – she’s exacerbating them. She’s been using everything from alcohol to junk food to sex to try to feel better, but nothing’s worked. Her reasoning is that the time she felt best was in high school with Buddy, so trying to relive those days is the only logical solution.

When women in movies are unlikable, it’s usually in specific, gender-coded ways. The only acceptable imperfections for the female lead in a romantic comedy are clumsiness and occasionally, bossiness (as long as she gets her comeuppance). Women who are unabashedly lusty are either killed off (Fatal Attraction) or tolerated so long as they make fun of their looks and sexuality (Rebel Wilson in Pitch Perfect, Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids). When they’re trying to steal someone else’s husband, usually they’re superficial and two-dimensional, like Sarah Jessica Parker in The First Wives’ Club. A male character, meanwhile, can be shlubby, make fun of his friends, ignore his family, and still be the hero of the story.

Young Adult gives us a woman as immature as any Judd Apatow avatar, who is unapologetic about being outspoken, and refuses to be coy about either the fact that she’s beautiful or that she’s intent on getting Buddy back. She’s refreshingly and entirely unconcerned with being nice. She says things like, “Babies are boring,” and “I like your décor… is it shabby chic?” When her former classmate Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt) refers to the assault that left him with a bent penis, neurological damage, and difficulty walking, she enthuses, “Oh, you’re hate crime guy!” And after Buddy tells her they can’t be together because he’s married, her sincere response is, “I know, we can beat this thing together.”

“What do you mean, 'grow up'?” — “What do you mean, ‘grow up’?”

Roxane Gay mentioned Young Adult in an insightful essay on unlikable characters, saying, “Some reviews go so far as to suggest that Mavis is mentally ill because there’s nothing more reliable than armchair diagnosis by disapproving critics… The simplest explanation, of Mavis as human, will not suffice.” She’s right to imply that we shouldn’t pathologize women for being complicated or unkind. Yet it’s not that much of a leap to conclude that Mavis is mentally ill.

She not only telegraphs this, she tells us. We see her pulling out her hair when she’s alone, lining it up in strands. Later, at her parents’ house, when she moves a hand to the back of her head, her dad says, “You’re not still pulling it out, are you?” signaling that this is a chronic issue. During an impromptu drinking session with Matt, she blurts out, “I have depression.” But the moment that’s key to understanding Mavis’s state of mind is when Buddy’s wife Beth (Elizabeth Reaser) explains that she teaches the “special needs” children she works with about emotions using a chart to illustrate the facial expressions that accompany each one. Mavis stares at it blankly before asking, “What about neutral? What if you don’t feel anything?”

Roger Ebert’s otherwise excellent review of the film said that if Mavis weren’t an alcoholic, she “would simply be insane.” The Guardian called her “ever so slightly bonkers.” And while YA author Maureen Johnson recognised that Mavis has serious mental health problems, she also went on to say that she’s “insane.” She isn’t, because that isn’t a thing: “insanity” is a legal defence, not a diagnosis. When someone wants to belittle a woman, they often call her “crazy,” say she’s “nuts” or “insane.” Whether the person in question is mentally ill or not, this helps stigmatise mental illness, drawing an artificial line between “them” and “us,” as if mental health isn’t a spectrum. As if millions of people don’t experience mental health problems all the time. For many of us, it’s something that makes a character more relatable, not less.

Yes, Mavis is either in deep denial or experiencing delusions about how her ex feels about her, and she needs to take responsibility for her appalling behavior. Plus, as she acknowledges twice, she’s showing all the signs of alcoholism. But she’s also survived on her own for years without a real support system, living in a major city and succeeding in a competitive field, as shallow as her writing might be. She’s even retained a girlfriend from high school. Considering how hard depression makes it to just get out of bed, she’s a fucking champion.

It’s plausible that depression is the reason for much of Mavis’ conduct, including her drinking. But it’s hard to tease out how much of her temperament is due to mental illness, and how much is her core personality. From what we hear about her time in high school (including that she called Matt “theatre fag”), she’s always been lacking in empathy, but maybe her mean girl act was a protective mechanism. We don’t know, and the fact that writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman don’t spell this out is a gift. Mavis being cruel and self-centred makes Young Adult more complex than many portrayals of mental illness. Too often, it’s either the basis for a “psycho” horror movie or an “inspiring” story where someone turns out to be sweet, charming, and boring as soon as they’re medicated.

A lot of the reviews I’ve seen suggest that Mavis has no character arc, that she isn’t changed by the events of the movie. But she is. When she has sex with Matt, she’s in a stick-on bra and tights, her hair limp, dress stained, and make-up smeared. It’s a stark contrast to the start of the film, where she gets dolled up to go to bed with a man she’s never met before. The next morning, she offers the coffee pot to Matt’s sister Sandra before pouring herself a cup. She even admits to Sandra that she’s not as successful as she’s making out, that she doesn’t know how to be happy. It seems like she might be about to make some major changes, but then Sandra blows smoke up her ass, enables her, and says she doesn’t need to change a thing.

Mavis accepts this, agreeing that she’s probably OK after all. But she still goes back to her hotel room, shows her dog some affection for the first time in the film, and throws Buddy’s old sweatshirt into the trash. More significantly, as she finally finishes the last Waverley Prep in a diner on the way home, she has her lead character waving goodbye to high school and never looking back.

Things aren’t wrapped up neatly, it’s true; we don’t know if Mavis will actually seek psychological help, if she’ll go to AA, or if she’ll just slump back onto her sofa and carry on falling asleep to the dulcet tones of early-2000s reality shows for the next 20 years. Here’s a movie that acknowledges that change is hard and often infinitesimal; that credits us with the intelligence to draw our own conclusions about the lead character’s fate. Personally, I hope that 57-year-old Mavis is sober, I hope she has a luscious head of hair, and I hope she’s found a job that fulfills her. She might not ever be a “people person,” and she’ll certainly never be perfect. But she’ll at least always be interesting.

Diane Shipley is a journalist, feminist, and fan of photos of miniature dachshunds. Find her on Twitter @dianeshipley, on Tumblr, or in the UK, where she lives, for some reason.

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

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

Written by Max Thornton.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good question.

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

Please, ‘Turn Me On, Dammit!’

The 2011 Norwegian film, Turn Me On, Dammit! is, in a word, excellent. In the world of about a thousand American Pie films and cliched male teen sex comedies that usually revolve around bathroom jokes and well-endowed foreign exchange students, Turn Me On, Dammit! follows a more female centered theme that is as insightful as it is witty.

The star of Turn Me On, Dammit! is Helene Bergsholm who plays Alma, a 15-year-old girl who lives in a small town in Norway and is just realizing the amazing, albeit embarrassing, world of teenage hormones and sex. One night at a party, Alma’s crush, a boy at her school named Artur, exposes himself to her (or as the film’s refrain goes, “pokes her with his dick”) but when Alma excitedly tells her friends about the encounter, a jealous girl refuses to believe the story and spreads it around that Alma is a liar. Artur as well, embarrassed that he’s been confronted with the situation, denies that it ever happened, sending young Alma into the lonely world of high school drama.

The film’s writer and director, Jannicke Systad Jacobsen, fills the film with an excellent commentary on the fact that often, men are believed over women in situations of sexual harassment and assault. Now, while Artur and Alma’s situation is slightly different since it was youthful, consensual experimentation and not assault, the point is still there: women accuse, men deny. Jacobson however doesn’t strike an agressive tone with this theme, rather she couches the exposition of it in terms of courage and cowardice. Artur is a young coward too scared to admit the truth and instead just watches as Alma is increasingly shunned and ostracized from her friends.

Malin Bjorhovde, Helene Bergsholm, Beate Stofring in Turn Me On, Dammit!

This theme is one that avoids blame and victimization, focusing instead on the human propensity to make stupid (and even cruel or damaging) mistakes and either be a coward about it, or face the consequences. A gender-relevant argument that doesn’t feel aggressive, giving the film a wide appeal to audiences.

While there is some slight “slut-shaming” that occurs in the film (Alma’s new nickname, “Dick Alma” is called after her by even small children), there is more of a focus on how Alma’s sexual activities lead the people of the town, as well as her mother, to think that she must be crazy or abnormal in some way. It’s a familiar sort of idea in the teen sex comedy, the raging sexual hormones of youth leading to a certifiably insane son or daughter whose activities seem to be those of pervert. Take for example the famous scene in American Pie when Jim decides to have sex with an apple pie because he believes it will simulate how sex actually feels; naturally, that is the exact moment that his father walks in the room.

The scene in American Pie, however, is so extreme that it could never be real, a problem that Jacobsen doesn’t have. Alma’s scene’s of “sexual craziness” are awkward and embarrassing to be sure, but never outside the realm of possibility, grounding her characters in in a more realistic comedy. Because of this, Alma is ultimately able to attain something that most characters in a teen sex comedy never can: self-respect. Turn Me On, Dammit! is at its core a film about growing up and gaining confidence in ourselves, a true coming-of-age story where Alma reaches self-acceptance and Alma’s mother is able to do the same for her daughter.

So many parental-child relationships are sacrificed in teen movies, parents becoming bumbling idiots whose outdated slang and terrible educational sexual analogies feed into cliched humor. It’s a shame that’s the case since Alma’s mother’s quiet confusion and occasional fear of her daughters healthy curiosity in sexuality lends a lot of subtle humor to the film. Alma’s mother feels her daughter must be abnormal in some way and so all she begins to see is the apparent erratic and embarrassing behavior of her daughter, not realizing the social exclusion her daughter is experiencing. Alma as well doesn’t see her mother’s loneliness and attraction to her boss; it’s a moment of selfishness for each character in their unwillingness to empathize with the other.

While the mother and daughter relationship is a strong plot point for the film, my favorite exposition is the very female-centered, sex-positive demonstration of female fantasy. So often visual sexual fantasy in films remains squarely in the center of the male gaze: women in bikinis washing cars, licking ice cream cones, and rising silkily out of a swimming pool come to mind. Alma not only has a very sweet, male phone sex worker friend (who is willing to also just listen to the problems of a young girl, albeit his solution to those problems are “booze”), but also fantasizes about her crush in both the sweet and the sexy, her boss (hilarity with a bike helmet and “I’m bringing sexy back”), and most notably, a fantasy about her female friend. Female fantasy is often kept in the overly dramatic (when it is portrayed at all) and rarely are same-sex fantasies expressed from a straight woman, a fact I find unfortunate since it’s been scientifically proven that most straight women are actually more sexually flexible in their arousal than men.

I suppose that my analysis has made the film sound like the only thing that is ever discussed is sex; this is however, not the case–obviously the issue of first love is important, drugs make an appearance, as does a surprising commentary on the American legal system. One of the main characters, Alma’s friend Saralou, is a social activist concerned with the plight of American prisoners on death row, she in fact writes letters to American prisoners, often discussing the local high school drama with various offenders.

The strengths (as well the flaws) of female friendships are portrayed in the film, giving a varied look at the silly and serious side of young people. Instead of a world bound by stereotype and cheap laughs, Jacobsen has created a rich and deeply human world filled with genuine characters and issues. And sex.

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and it’s intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

Why We All Need to See Young Adult, a.k.a. How Diablo Cody Shines a Light on the Cost of Beauty

This guest review by Molly McCaffrey previously appeared at her blog I Will Not Diet.

I’m thrilled that it’s finally Oscar season, and I get to see DOZENS of outstanding movies between now and Sunday, February 26th when I’ll walk the red carpet with The Help‘s Viola Davis and The Ides of March‘s Ryan Gosling (also of Feminist Ryan Gosling fame).

Okay, so I won’t really be walking the red carpet, but a girl can dream, right? And who knows? Maybe I’ll spring for a long roll of red tissue paper and unroll it in front of my flat-screen.

I’ve already seen The Descendants (loved it) and Hugo (bleh—too slow for me), and last night I also got to see Young Adult from the Juno writing-directing team of Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman.

First, let me say that Young Adult is an outstanding piece of filmmaking—it’s dark and funny and intelligent and honest in a way that not many films are anymore when they’re this entertaining.

But the reason I want you all to see Young Adult is not only because it’s such a good film, but also because it’s an important film for woman—a film that explores issues central to our identity such as beauty, gender, marriage, motherhood, and family among others.

Of course, the issue most relevant to this blog is beauty, which is one of the main themes of the film. Without giving anything away in terms of plot, I can tell you that the main character, Mavis—played with heartbreaking gravity by Oscar winner Charlize Theron—is obsessed with the way she looks and seems to gather a good deal of her self-worth from her looks.

At one point in the film—and the preview—Mavis tells a Macy’s clerk that she wants an outfit to help her seduce her ex. The clerk says, “You want to remind him of what he’s missing,” and Mavis responds by saying something like, “Oh, he knows what he’s missing. He’s seen me.” The implication is that Mavis’ value is completely derived from her looks: her gorgeous, heart-shaped face and her fit, flawless body.

But though other characters see only the physical manifestation of Mavis’ beauty, the viewer is treated to the lengths Mavis must go to to achieve that beauty.

In fact, Mavis spends a good deal of her time (probably a third of most days) primping in some fashion or another—she spends hours styling her hair, applying her makeup, shopping for expensive clothes, shaving her legs, and visiting a salon where she gets manicures, pedicures, facials, waxing, and various other treatments on a daily basis.

Yes, I said daily.

After all this is done, Mavis looks fabulous—almost as good as the real-life Charlize Theron. But when she doesn’t devote that much time to her looks, she is a disheveled mess—she walks the streets in sweats and a t-shirt, gulping from a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke and pulling at her matted tangle of hair.

The implicit message is frighteningly clear: a woman doesn’t look this good—at least not at the age of 37 like Mavis—without a hell of a lot of help. And money.

I especially love that these two versions of Mavis—the Mavis who takes hours of time and piles of cash to put together and the Mavis who rolls out of bed in the morning—are shown in such stark contrast to each other.

She is both the former Homecoming queen who has held on to her looks as she approaches forty…

and the lonely, depressed divorcee who can’t be bothered to change out of her pajamas…

I greatly appreciate this depiction of the two sides of Mavis because I think it’s incredibly real.

We all know what it’s like to want to spend the day in our pajama pants and favorite t-shirt, and we all know that some days we want to go to the trouble of getting dressed and made up for a night out on the town. Yes, we know the value of both of these extremes, but most of us—unlike Mavis—also understand that our worth isn’t wrapped up in our ability to do the latter. But Mavis, sadly, is obsessed with this aspect of herself.

It’s equally sad—and interesting—that Mavis is also depicted as a fast food junkie who hits what she calls the local “Ken-Tac-Hut” (a combo Kentucky Fried Chicken/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut) whenever she needs an emotional pick-me-up. I’ve known for a long time that many thin women eat as much as anyone else (even those who are overweight), so it was incredibly refreshing to see a thin and beautiful woman depicted this way—well, refreshing and painful.

But it is Mavis’ slavish devotion to her looks that is one of the more alarming part of this film.

In one particularly gruesome scene, Mavis is shown applying her makeup. I like to wear makeup as much as the next girl, but watching Mavis Gary put on what can only be described as a face-altering mask frightened me so much that I still haven’t gotten the image out of my head. Like a particularly poignant episode of The Twilight Zone, her beauty regime is scary enough to make us rethink our own. Her physical machinations are, in fact, so arduous that only a masochist would embrace them.

Clearly that’s what Mavis is—a masochist, a person who tortures herself regularly and doesn’t know how to be happy. She is like this in more ways than one, but I don’t want to give away the whole film.

In this way, she is a perfect role model for the kind of person we should all not want to be—beautiful, successful, and miserable, reminding us yet again that there is more to life than physical perfection.

—–

Molly McCaffrey is the author of the short story collection How to Survive Graduate School & Other Disasters, the co-editor of Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There, and the founder of I Will Not Diet, a blog devoted to healthy living and body acceptance. She teaches English and creative writing classes and advises writing majors at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Guest Writer Wednesday: A Fine Frenzy: With an Outspoken Anti-Heroine and a Feminist Lens, ‘Young Adult’ Is My Favorite Film of the Year

This guest review by Megan Kearns previously appeared at her blog The Opinioness of the World.

Audiences want female leads nice, amiable and likeable. Not messy, complicated, complex and certainly not unlikeable. Heaven forbid! But that’s precisely the role Charlize Theron steps into in Young Adult.

A force of nature, Theron gives both a subtly nuanced and bravura performance. In her Golden Globe-nominated role, she makes a flawed, cranky, bitchy, selfish, alcoholic charismatic and likeable. When she’s doing something despicable (which happens all too often), I found myself cringing yet simultaneously rooting for her. That’s not easy to do. Theron, who’s been called a transformational chameleon, particularly for her award-winning role in Monster, melts into this role. She imbues Mavis with depth, caustic wit, raw anger and vulnerability. It’s hard to see the boundaries where Theron begins and Mavis ends.

This film is a fucking bitchy breath of fresh air.

In an interview with Silverstein, outspoken feminist (woo hoo!) Diablo Cody shares her inspiration for creating an unlikeable character:

The idea of a cold, unlikeable woman or a woman who is not in control of herself is genuinely frightening to people because it threatens civilization itself or threatens the American family. But I don’t know why people are always willing to accept and even like flawed male characters. We’ve seen so many loveable anti-heroes who are curmudgeons or addicts or bad fathers and a lot of those characters have become beloved icons and I don’t see women allowed to play the same parts. So it was really important to me to try and turn that around.

With female writers comprising 24% of ALL writers in Hollywood and women in only 33% of speaking roles in films (god that makes me cringe), it’s vital to have more women writing scripts to yield women’s diverse perspectives and stories.

Young Adult is entirely told from Mavis’ perspective. As Mavis scribes the last book in Waverly Prep, a Young Adult series, her writing mirrors events and feelings in her own life. It could have easily veered off course to examine how Mavis’ inappropriate flirting (or rather throwing herself at him) affected Buddy. But the film astutely anchors itself to Mavis, a unique female voice.

Life is messy, complicated and difficult. Women can be too. It’s about time we see more roles reflecting that on-screen.

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Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. She blogs at The Opinioness of the World, a feminist vegan site. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Fem2pt0, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston with more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime.

Megan contributed reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed, !Women Art Revolution, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Kids Are All Right (for our 2011 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), The Reader (for our 2009 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), Man Men (for our Mad Men Week), Game of Thrones and The Killing (for our Emmy Week 2011), Alien/Aliens (for our Women in Horror Week 2011), and I Came to Testify, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, Peace Unveiled, and The War We Are Living in the Women, War & Peace series. She was the first writer featured as a Monthly Guest Contributor.