Guest Post: Tara is Better Not United

 
This guest post also appears at Professor, What If... and the Ms. Magazine blog.

As I began watching the second-season premiere of the Showtime series The United States of Tara, I eagerly ask what I always do before an episode starts: “Which ‘alter’ will it be this time?”

Alas, to my dismay, the show’s bubbly focus on a recovered Tara Gregson (Toni Collette) meant that the “alters”–alternate personalities of this 21st century Sybil–were gone, thrown out like the unwanted clothing ceremoniously dumped into a charity bin in the show opener. Instead, we have happy, functioning Tara, and an upbeat musical soundtrack trying to manipulate us to believe that, indeed, all is well in the Tara-verse.

But we soon learn that Tara as one person, no longer suffering from dissociative identity disorder, is not nearly as fun or interesting as she is as five different people. Instead, the “true Tara” now displays some of the most annoying traits of all five of her alters.

She incorporates her Alice-esque alter by donning a 50s-style apron and throwing herself into a dinner party with the neighborhood’s token gay couple. She speaks her mind Buck-style (Buck was a beer-swigging male alter) when a neighbor commits suicide, bragging “The lady with all the personalities is not the most fucked up person on the block.” After the dinner party, her T-proclivities (that was the teenaged alter) come out, and she performs a manic Bollywood number, ending with provocative thrusting in her hubby’s face. Her sister Charmaine assures her new beau that Tara has not actually “transitioned” into the other personality, indicating that perhaps it would be better if she did, while Tara’s husband Max is visibly worried that the new “sane” Tara might be more insane than before.

Given the show’s emphasis on the self as performative, and on the impossibility of performing to societal standards (especially if one is female), this suggestion that Tara’s recovery may not be a step forward is intriguing. Though the show reveals all the difficulties Tara’s disorder causes for her and her family, it also seems to be indicating that the real problem is a society that expects us to perform in very particular, stable and normative ways. These regulatory ideals are so oppressive that we either bind ourselves into limited roles (i.e., Alice-the-50s-housewife) or run the risk of being seen as “crazy”–as “normal” Tara is when she laughs too loud, makes a suicide joke or has too much fun at a dinner party.

The show’s underlying critique of such normative ideals, and the relatively freeing notion of embracing the self as performance, is evident in other characters as well. Marshall, Tara’s closeted gay son, tries hard to be serious, smart and talented, but finds that flaunting his identity by sitting at the “gay-ble”–the school lunch table where gays and their allies sit–is a welcome relief, and results in him joining a campaign at his school aimed to raise queer visibility.

Charmaine, Tara’s sister, struggles with regulatory norms in choosing between a relationship with traditional hunk Neil vs. unattractive and vertically challenged Nick, who is personality-privileged and emotionally supportive. Charmaine tried to follow normative requirements in the past by augmenting her breasts to please her then-husband, a choice that resulted in lopsided and off-center nipples. Now that she has had these “corrected,” she seems to believe she can do better than short, balding Nick.

The character of Tara’s teenaged daughter Kate has thus far been largely challenged around the regulation of her sexuality, as indicated with Tara’s concern that she was not able to “micromanage her daughter’s vagina.” Kate’s struggles with a creepy boss and an abusive boyfriend expose a society populated by males wishing for similar micro-managing power.

Max appears to be the character least affected by social norms. He doesn’t seem to care that his wife is far from typical, worrying only about her health and happiness rather than what others think. He does not condemn or regulate his son’s sexuality nor attempt to micromanage his daughter. If any character seems too good to be true, it’s him. This is perhaps why Max is a bit empty as a character: a sort of dad/husband placeholder who comes off as boring and conventional in a cast of otherwise entertaining family members.

While Robert Abele laments at L.A. Weekly that “United States of Tara plays like surface feminism with an added gloss of snark and a bewilderingly blah sentimentality,” I would counter that the snark is integral to the feminist critique the show enacts. The snark reveals that our “normal” selves are “blah,” and thus we should embrace those aspects of our identity that subvert regulatory norms lest we end up living in a world full of bores.

Diablo Cody, the show’s creator, readily admits that she asks of everything she writes, “How am I going to sneak my subversive feminist message into this?” With Tara, she sneaks in this message beautifully, conveying that societal ideals–be they a stable self, heterosexuality or conventional attractiveness–do not an exciting world (or episode) make.

Natalie Wilson, PhD is a literature and women’s studies scholar, blogger, and author. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos and specializes in the areas of gender studies, feminism, feminist theory, girl studies, militarism, body studies, boy culture and masculinity, contemporary literature, and popular culture. She is author of the blogs Professor, what if…? and Seduced by Twilight. She is a proud feminist mom of two feminist kids (one daughter, one son) and is an admitted pop-culture junkie. Her favorite food is chocolate.

Releasing on DVD: Tuesday, March 30

During our Oscar round-up, Jesseca Cornelson reviewed An Education. Women & Hollywood also reviewed the film. Guest reviewer Rachel Feldman wrote:

As a feminist mom, my big ax to grind in popular culture is vulgarism. I don’t want my son to grow up one more immature, boob-obsessed male with little understanding or appreciation of a female’s character or her anatomy and so I appreciated that the film did not weigh the impact of Jenny’s transgression on the loss of her virginity alone. Yes, the headmistress, a wonderful Emma Thompson, alluded to the fact that a non-virgin would not have a place in her school, but no one else, including her own parents, highlighted the loss of her virginity as the sole focus of her misguidedness. We are a culture that had devoted entire movies to plots revolving around losing one’s virginity, often stories that minimize this precious bridge to adulthood as something a character wants to get or get rid of. But in AN EDUCATION, betrayal was the true ruiner and I was glad for our son to see a movie that certainly did not make light of her loss but placed the emphasis on a broader set of values of which her virginity was only a part.

And, check out the Dana Stevens review on Slate. An excerpt:

The release of this film on the heels of the Roman Polanski and David Letterman scandals will make, if nothing else, for some lively post-movie conversations. David and Jenny's sexual relationship is consensual, but what does consent mean between a 16-year-old and a man in his mid-30s? David is creepy, yes, but ultimately the film wants us to file his and Jenny's affair under the category of "youthful mistakes we're glad we made." Jenny seems so self-possessed, and blossoms so visibly under David's tutelage, that you find yourself rooting for her as she schemes to deceive her parents.

Maryann Johanson over at FlickFilospher had this to say:

It’s almost an unneeded bonus that An Education is that rarity: a movie about a female character that treats her like a person, and not like a prize or a foil or a motivating factor for the flawed hero to make himself a better man so as to be worthy of her. The cinematic pedestal that The Movies so often put women on -- as faultless and complete, as unrequiring of growth... as, in other words, less than human -- is nowhere in sight here. And that may be the most exhilarating thing about this wonderful, wonderful film.

***

There's also an interesting Japanese film releasing on DVD called High Kick Girl! I haven't heard much about the movie, but the 25-second trailer got some hype awhile back. The people at Spank the Monkey argued that it didn't live up to its feminist principles:

About halfway through, Kei undertakes an audition for The Destroyers, which is entertaining enough as an orgy of schoolgirl-on-schoolgirl violence. But after that, the focus switches away from Kei, and it becomes a film about her being rescued from The Destroyers by Matsumura. As The BBG noted, we paid to see High Kick Girl!, not High Kick Girl's Sensei Saving Her Sorry Ass! The target audience for this film falls into two camps - feminists rooting for a strong female character, and men with a more fetishistic agenda - and turning Kei into a mere woman-in-peril for half the running time is nothing less than a betrayal of that audience, regardless of their motives.

Here's the full-length trailer.

***

A film from 1968, Separation, releases on DVD as well. Written by and starring Jane Arden, the movie has been talked about as an early piece of feminist cinema. Brandon DuHamel writes:

A perplexing, enigmatic and surreal exploration of feminist ideals, Separation finds Arden portraying the 39-year-old “Jane,” a woman separated from her husband, before Britain’s 1969 Divorce Reformation Act, and exploring her newfound sexual freedom. The film was not well received by critics upon its release in 1968 and it is not difficult to understand why. Separation fails to follow any strict narrative and neither does it put forth its feminist viewpoint assuredly. In fact, Separation is masked in a veil of post-war, 1960s Western anxiety. It could be easily interpreted as a woman’s descent into madness, schizophrenia and masochism. Take one scene that shows a woman having her hair roughly clipped by a man as she begs to have it torn out by its roots.

Of course, one could also look upon this imagery, such as another naked woman being slapped by a gloved man as she is massaged by another woman, as visualizations of the humiliation and subjugation that women have endured at the hands of men over the years and the natural anxiety that comes with parting ways with someone you’ve attached yourself to for so many years.

***

In television, Sports Night! I love this show. Here's a brief synopsis.

Smart, fast-paced, witty and featuring a fine ensemble cast, Sports Night struggled in the ratings from the start, particularly during its second season, when it was routinely pre-empted and moved from night to night. Art imitated life imitating art, as the show took on a consultant (William H. Macy in his first TV role since his stint on ER), was hired to "tweak" the ratings. The show within a show continued to falter, amidst rumors of the imminent sale of its network and the subsequent gutting of its staff, until it, like its parent Sports Night, simply disappeared from the schedule. Upon its cancellation, several networks, most notably HBO came to Sorkin for a possible move to the respected network, but nothing was ever solidified.

Do yourself a favor and rent it.

Movie Preview: Bluebeard

Based on Charles Perrault's grisly fairytale, Bluebeard tells the story of young Marie-Catherine, child bride to an aristocratic ogre with a reputation for murdering his wives. Controversial director Catherine Breillat (The Last Mistress, Fat Girl, Romance) brings her personal touch to this classic tale, a favorite of good little French girls since the 1950's. Princess Marie-Catherine must employ all her cunning to outwit her husband and escape a potentially unpleasant fate. 

Written and directed by Catherine Breillat, Bluebeard (Barbe Bleue) likely explores the same themes that Angela Carter highlighted in her retelling, "The Bloody Chamber." Read the original fairy tale by Charles Perrault here and Angela Carter's version here.

Variety's Leslie Felperin:

Having built a career on provocative, sexually explicit yet cerebral fare ("Romance," "Sex Is Comedy"), Catherine Breillat shocked auds with her 2007 period piece, "The Last Mistress," because it was not all that shocking. Now the Gallic helmer's latest, "Bluebeard," features considerable blood but no sex. This offbeat but compelling take on the tale, arguably the first serial-killer yarn, emphasizes sisterly bonds but still gets to the original story's heart of mysterious darkness with impressive results. 

The New York Times' Manhola Dargis:

In “Bluebeard,” a sly rethink of the freakily morbid fairy tale, the filmmaker Catherine Breillat makes the case that once-upon-a-time stories never end. Divided into two parallel narratives — one focuses on Bluebeard and his dangerously curious wife, while the other involves two little girls in the modern era revisiting the tale — the movie is at once direct, complex and peculiar. It isn’t at all surprising that Ms. Breillat, a singular French filmmaker with strong, often unorthodox views on women and men and sex and power, would have been interested in a troubling tale about the perils of disobedient wives. Ms. Breillat never behaves.

You can watch the trailer here.

Our Second Blogiversary!

Two years ago today we started the Bitch Flicks project. A big thanks to all of our readers, and those who link to us, comment on posts, and write guest posts. Here's to another great year!

Apatow/Bay: A Fantasy

Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: New Moon

The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Starring Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson, and Billy Burke. Written by Melissa Rosenberg (screenplay) and Stephenie Meyer (novel). Directed by Chris Weitz.

Critics have rightly argued that Twilight gives off a certain metaphor for teen abstinence vibe. Edward desires Bella so much that he refuses to let himself lose control with her. So, the audience gets a couple of scenes of passionate, intense kissing before the two melodramatically pull away from each other and decide to spoon innocently on the bed instead. If they decide to fornicate, after all, Bella could easily end up wounded by Edward’s thrusting vamp-strength or sucked completely dry. Of her blood. By Edward, her lover, who would of course be entirely unable to stop himself from sucking.

(For those of you unfamiliar, the Cullens, who are Edward’s vampire family, only drink the blood of animals to survive, even though they prefer human blood. The other, evil vampires in the movie, murder humans at will. Tsk, tsk.)

Twilight portrayed Bella as the passive object of vamp-Edward’s desire, who needed constant saving by him, from other vamps and from other men and from runaway cars, and who couldn’t make any decisions on her own throughout most of the movie. It shifts a little in the end, when Bella runs off to save her mother, ignoring the advice of the vampires who want to protect her. But by becoming an active subject in that scene, she’s punished, ultimately finding herself in a situation where Edward must save her yet again, literally by sucking poison from her blood.

But New Moon! How did you make me like you? It makes no sense—Bella still ends up in constant need of boy-saving, and she loses her freaking mind for months when Edward breaks up with her, which is not melodramatically showcased at all I swear, ha, by her constant nighttime screaming fits that force even her dad to run to her rescue. For the most part, Bella seems powerless, at the mercy of Edward, at the mercy of her nightmares, and eventually, at the mercy of the evil vampires who want to kill her (as punishment for Edward, who killed a vampire in Twilight).

So why did I find myself finally turning into an uber-fangirl as I watched? Because this time, the film is, dare I say … complicated.

Enter Jacob, Bella’s good friend who just happens to be a werewolf and who just happens to have the most incredible abs I’ve seen since Brad Pitt in Fight Club and who just happens to walk around with his shirt off constantly. And let’s remember the early scene in the school parking lot, where Bella watched as Edward walked toward her in exaggerated slow-motion, hair and button-down shirt blowing wistfully in the breeze, the camera steadied on him as Bella and me and fangirls across the country, yes, I’m going to say it, swoon. And then I started to wonder, “Is Bella entirely powerless?”

Not necessarily.

Because what strikes me most about the men in the Twilight saga is their desire to be looked at by Bella, which (fangirls everywhere unite!) positions Bella as the active subject (the gazer) and the men as passive objects (the gazed at). In the first film, Edward removes his shirt in the sunlight, revealing his twinkling vampire skin, and, upon seeing it, Bella says, “You’re beautiful.” She uses those words again in New Moon, this time with Jacob. When he says something along the lines of, “Why are you looking at me?” She responds with, “You’re sorta beautiful.”

Interestingly, (fangirls everywhere unite!) this direct physical objectification of women doesn’t exist in either movie—for instance, we don’t get traditional scenes of scantily clad girl-vamps trying to seduce men who they eventually eat (played as girl-power when it’s really just male fantasy).

But Bella isn’t without self-scrutiny. In the opening scene of the film, Bella dreams of herself as an old woman with Edward still at her side. That scene reveals an important plotline: fear of aging. Bella sees herself through the eyes of Edward (and therefore, men in general). She sees herself getting older while he stays young and twinkly-beautiful. She says, “You won’t want me when I’m a grandmother.” These feelings stem from living in a society that devalues aging women, and I like that the film explores the issue. Edward’s response? “You obviously don’t understand my feelings for you, Bella.”

Okay, so this is a total fangirl fantasy, right? I mean, a beautiful man loving you for what’s on the inside? I mean, honestly, we’re smarter than that, right? Right?! (Am I kidding?)

Still, in New Moon, even though Bella performs reckless acts, like jumping off a cliff and wrecking a motorcycle, just so faux-Edward will magically appear in some wavy fog-mist to male-dominate and tell her it’s dangerous, she still performs reckless acts. She makes decisions. She risks her life. For love! Ha. Of course, the fact that Edward can no longer save her—he isn’t physically there for real—means Jacob must step in. He does nice things … like taking off his shirt to reveal his Brad Pitt in Fight Club abs and to coincidentally wipe the blood from her forehead. He turns into a werewolf and saves her from one of the bad vamps. He performs CPR. Oh Jacob!

But then, after all this constant being saved by vampire-men and wolf-men, something amazing happens. Bella saves Edward. And even after she saves him, she saves him again, by convincing the Lead Evil Vampire God or Whatever to kill her instead of Edward. He doesn’t kill Bella, of course, because he becomes interested in—check out this awesomeness—her immunity to vampire powers. That’s right: the vampire mind readers can’t read Bella’s mind and the Dakota Fanning vampire can’t inflict mystical pain on Bella just by looking at her. It’s like Bella’s a vamp’s version of a superhero!

Look, is the film flawed? Yes.

The objectification of the men, for instance, also becomes an objectification of The Other (vampire/werewolf). Bella wants Edward to turn her into a vampire so they can be together forever but also because she doesn’t want to age (i.e. become undesirable). Bella can’t function when Edward leaves her, and she risks hurting herself just to get a glimpse of him again. Edward is 106 years old and she’s 18—would that work if the genders were reversed? And, when Edward agrees to turn Bella into a vampire, he insists that they marry first, which plays an awful lot like some creepy, conservative, let’s-get-married-before-I-take-your-virginity nonsense, creating that metaphor for teen abstinence vibe again.

But Bella isn’t a one-dimensional character anymore. In New Moon, she’s much more fleshed out, and perhaps most importantly, she doesn’t have to take her clothes off or perform a certain kind of femininity to get the boy. Edward falls for her because he finds her intriguing: he can’t read her thoughts (see True Blood), and he’s drawn to her because she smells delicious, sex metaphor? Jacob falls in love with Bella after they spend significant time together; it’s not some love-at-first-sight fantasy where he sees Bella, and the camera pans from her feet all the way up her legs and finally to her face where she either smiles coyly or looks down shyly.

As Dana Stevens writes in her review of New Moon:

The feminist in me wishes a lot of things. But say what you will about the Twilight films; they take female desire as seriously as a grad student from the early '90s. The whole overcooked vampire vs. werewolf mythology (which also involves packs of shirtless wolf-boys and a sort of vampire Pope, played with camp glee by Michael Sheen) is, in essence, an excuse to place the viewer in Bella's Timberland boots: torn between two flesh-eating monsters, feelin' like a fool. Haters may construe Bella as a passive victim eager to be served up as vampire meat, but she's the subject of this love story, not its object; she's the lover while Edward and Jacob are her diametrically opposed beloveds, one hot-blooded (Jacob runs a constant body temperature of 108 degrees), the other pale and cold as stone.

Be sure to check out the Salon article, "Could New Moon Be a Feminist Triumph?" where Kate Harding argues that the movie's box office gross could be a game-changer for the future of women in film.

Releasing on DVD: Tuesday, March 23

Seraphine

We previewed Seraphine in June of last year, when it was opening in select cities. Now you can rent it on DVD.

amazon.com synopsis:  

Séraphine is an elegantly fictionalized biopic about 19th century modern primitive painter, Séraphine de Senlis, who was a contemporary of Henri Rousseau's. The tale spans approximately 25 years during which Séraphine and her champion, German art critic and collector, Wilhelm Uhde, survive two wars and drastic economic changes that affect the art market. Martin Provost's feature is completely character driven, and as such relies on Yolande Moreau's caring portrayal of the eccentric Séraphine, and Ulrich Tukur's calm, academic demeanor as Mr. Uhde. In Provost's telling of this virtually unknown story, Séraphine is a middle-aged woman working as a housekeeper in Senlis, France, when Uhde arrives as a guest and discovers that this odd woman is a talented visionary artist. Since Uhde's main focus is garnering respect and precious Parisian salon space for artists deemed "naive," it is an uncanny and fortuitous coincidence that he stumbles upon Séraphine.

Sarah Boslaugh writes,

In one of those strokes of luck upon which lives can turn, the art dealer Wilhelm Uhde (Ulrich Rukur) sees one of her paintings at a neighbor's house. An early champion of Picasso and the primitive painter Henri Rousseau, Uhde recognizes her raw talent and becomes her patron. Besides his professional interest in her art, he may be motivated by the fact that they are both isolated outsiders, she by her poverty and mental illness, he by his German nationality and homosexuality (the latter is underplayed in the film).

In his review, "The Vision of an Uncanny Painter," A.O. Scott writes:

... the director is properly immersed in the sensual and spiritual dimensions of Séraphine’s art, which grows out of an ecstatic — both in the erotic and religious sense — engagement with the natural world. She paints fruits and flowers in arrangements that at first look merely decorative, like the patterns on wallpaper or pottery, but that on closer examination are charged with a marvelous and unsettling power.

Kenneth Turan of the L.A. Times writes:

A long time is spent with Seraphine and her daily routines in the town of Senlis before we have any notion of her as an artist. Stolid and seemingly simple, Seraphine is treated like a piece of furniture by the people she works for, but in her private moments we sense a yearning in her spirit, an unspoken, almost pagan passion for nature in all its manifestations.
When we do see her paintings of flowers and trees, we come to understand that making art is a holy act for Seraphine.
She paints because of a kind of spiritual compulsion, as if she were a devout member of a religion with but a single worshiper. Art is not a choice or an option, but a brutal necessity.

In her review, Liz Braun writes,

Seraphine is a film about the painter Seraphine Louis, a scrubwoman from the French village of Senlis whose paintings hang in museums around the world.
For the subversive among you, the movie is also a commentary on the class divisions and other pesky social inequities that abound in the art world.

You can also listen to a review/discussion of the film on NPR.

Review in Conversation: Sex and the City: The Movie

Welcome to our second installment of the Review in Conversation: Sex and the City: The Movie. Our first RiC discussed the film Black Snake Moan.

Since Sex and the City 2 is due in theatres this May, it's time to discuss the first movie.

I had liked the early seasons of Sex and the City when it was on HBO, and while acknowledging its problems--unawareness of class most troubling, though in the late 90s perhaps it was permissible in our cultural imagination for a newspaper columnist to live a fabulous life --I thought it was funny and well-written. Oh, how things have changed. The fantasy of a newspaper writer being able to afford shoes with designer names I can’t pronounce has morphed into a successful book writer being so fabulous that she receives a free couture wedding gown from a designer I’ve even heard of, and her super-rich boyfriend buys a multi-million dollar penthouse apartment. The silly consumerist fantasy exploded like a vomit balloon all over this materialistic movie.

Here’s a secret: I like fashion. It’s an art form, and its creators are capable of beautiful design and cultural statements. It’s also an industry, and like all major industries, has a very ugly side. I liken it to professional sports: I watch from the sidelines, aware of the way I’m being manipulated, but enjoy it nonetheless—all without expressly participating. In the TV show, Carrie Bradshaw stepped into the world of New York fashion, and we could laugh at her ridiculous ensembles and her forays into a world in which she didn’t—and probably didn’t want to—completely belong. In the movie, we’re watching The Carrie Bradshaw Brand, and she's become very much a part of that thing called fashion. The fact that she wore a bird on her head as part of her wedding ensemble isn't a joke, but played straight and serious. In other words, we're no longer identifying with an outsider to fashion; she's now part of the machine.

Carrie's friends have all been similarly transformed from dynamic characters into commodities—who are all far too rich and insincere for any comedy to ensue. There were clearly moments in the film when we were supposed to laugh (and during which I imagined a cheesy sitcom laugh track), but all felt so dated, so out of touch, and so, frankly, ADOLESCENT MALE, that they completely fell flat. I mean, come on, Charlotte shits herself? Samantha gets a pocketbook dog that humps everything in sight (standing in for her own caged libido)? A 50-year-old woman gains ten pounds and is OMG! FATTY McFAT FAT? Are you fucking kidding me? This is only the tip of the iceberg, but my question is this: In a movie we can’t possibly take seriously (in terms of reality), which claims to be nothing more than a (guilty) pleasure, did you laugh at all?

Stephanie's response:

No, I didn't laugh. I didn't laugh when Charlotte shit her pants. I didn't laugh at Samantha's dog humping its (his/her?) way through the film. I didn't laugh at Charlotte's screaming over-reaction to Carrie's engagement, where she went as far as to stand up and announce it to the entire restaurant. (That's just the kind of crazy stuff women do, isn't it ladies?) I didn't laugh at Miranda's unshaved bush. I didn't laugh at the stereotypical workaholic Mom who won't fuck her husband (forcing him to cheat!). And I certainly didn't laugh at Jennifer Hudson's role as Carrie Bradshaw's slave. Yeah, I said it. I'm not sure we weren't meant to take this film seriously. Where's the evidence of that? Because I'm an intelligent person, I can discern ridiculousness from reality, but I also personally know many people, men especially, who would most certainly walk away with the notion that women actually behave this way. Call me a humorless feminist, but honestly, were there actually any women in this movie?

However, when this film opened, it dethroned Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull for the number one spot at the box office. It seemed as if women (who comprised about 85% of the audience, according to sources that keep track of such things) couldn’t wait to see it, and it’s since been touted as the biggest box office opening for a women-centered film (and romantic comedy) … basically ever. When I read about these female-driven films raking in the money, like The Proposal, for instance, which made tons of money as a woman-centered romantic comedy, I never know quite how to handle it. On one hand, yes! Go women! But on the other hand … seriously? We can’t do better than characters who start off as gung-ho career women who, by the end of the film, ultimately validate the dominant ideology that women are, by their nature, relationship-obsessed?

Sex and the City also wants to claim it’s about female sisterhood, but I couldn’t take that seriously so much. I’ve heard some women in the blogosphere describe this film as nothing more than Pop-Feminism. To me, that might be a criticism of the idea of female sisterhood showing up as shoe-obsessions, clothing-obsessions, (eg “Big, please build me a gigantic closet for all my shoes and clothing,”) obsessions with thinness and fashion in general, and other materialistic obsessions that ultimately become symbols of female empowerment. And let’s not forget, this is also a film about white women. Doesn’t that seem to be the trend, especially in the most recent onslaught of romantic comedies?

Amber's response:

While I dismiss the film itself as pure fantasy—in the way that a prince-charming fairy tale is fantasy—you may be right to question that reaction. It’s naïve to think that the Disney princess fantasy is anything but insidious, so why give the adult fantasy a free pass? Hyper-consumerism has become inseparable from female identity in the media, and I don't think we really need yet another citation of this ideology. Purchasing the right products doesn't equal empowerment, and while the film half-assedly nods to this fact, its product obsession completely undermines any real effort to argue that friendship is the most important thing in life.

However, Pop-Feminism or not, these are women who sincerely love one another--who aren't conniving against each other, who aren't in direct competition with one another. Also, they are over twenty-five, have healthy sex lives, and aren't shamed in any way for being sexual beings. This was a revolutionary element of the TV show when it premiered in 1998, and considering the cultural environment, is no less revolutionary ten years later. Yet, ten years later, we should expect something more than basic "women are human beings" arguments masquerading as feminism. And, yes, we should expect something more than thin, beautiful, wealthy, fashionable, white ladies representing female empowerment.

Jennifer Hudson's role was abominable. Not only was she Carrie Bradshaw's servant and charity recipient, we didn't see her character grow and mature. What she learned, apparently, while working as a PA in NYC, is that boys are really important, and that knowledge led her back to her hometown to get married. Hell, maybe working for that vortex of narcissism, I'd run too. But the only thing I see about the inclusion of her character is a cynical instance of tokenism. It's really as if the filmmakers said, "Hey, there are a whole lot of black women out there--maybe we should try to not completely alienate them. Let's give Carrie an assistant!" FAIL. Is it just me, or does mass media seem more segregated now than in any other time during our lives? Also, how many sequels do you predict?

Stephanie's response:
The reason I refuse to take Sex and the City’s self-proclaimed celebration of sisterhood very seriously is because the women rarely permit one another to slack off on their duty to maintain Fabulous Fashionista status at all times. As I stated earlier, Miranda gets shit for not porn-waxing and Samantha gets shit for gaining weight (from comfort-eating due to her tanking relationship—because that’s another thing we all do, ladies!). They permit Carrie’s days of depression when Big leaves her at the altar, literally feeding her at one point, but I still couldn’t help but cringe at that simultaneous depiction of female-infantilizing coupled with creepy mommy-moment.

Yet I believe they do really love one another. You’re right to point out the refreshing portrayal of women who aren’t in direct competition or who aren’t conniving against one another. One could also point out many scenes where genuine love exists among them—my favorite scene is when Carrie sucks it up and takes the train (but not without fur coat!) to Miranda’s apartment so she won’t be alone on New Year’s. It feels … honest, in a way that so much of the rest of the film doesn’t.

I never saw the television series. From what I’ve heard and read, the women were very much unashamed sexual beings. So I had to ask myself after I saw the movie, “Where the hell is all this sex I’ve been hearing about?” Samantha has sex exactly zero times on-screen. Miranda struggles with sex and her husband’s infidelity—it’s very much implied that he cheats because she won’t sleep with him (another one of her wife-duties shirked). Charlotte claims to have a wonderful sex life, but … where’s the evidence? Perhaps the film wants to show the progression of their lives and the complications that might come with aging, but they chose to do it by regressing to traditional gender expectations regarding marriage and pregnancies and preoccupations with couple-hood.

I get the feeling that the show, while still portraying the women as rich and fashion-obsessed, actually represented their shunning of traditional, more conservative ideas regarding adult womanhood. They didn’t have to get married and have babies and buy houses. They could have sex! And live in the city! And have fulfilling careers! If that’s the case, the film-version seriously dropped the ball.

With scenes like Miranda telling her child to “follow the white person with the baby” when they’re looking for a new apartment in a less-rich neighborhood; with scenes like Carrie showing up to reclaim her metaphorical glass slipper while her metaphorical prince conveniently awaits in her giant, specially built metaphorical (closet)-castle—the film only reinforces good ol’ traditional American values about class, heterosexual relationships, and especially about womanhood.

Movie Preview: The Runaways

The Runaways were a 1970s girl rock group, best known for their hit "Cherry Bomb," but perhaps later best known for rocketing Joan Jett (and, to a slightly lesser extent, Lita Ford) to stardom. The movie is based on Cherie Currie's memoir, Neon Angel.

This is a movie I want to see in the theatre. I'm often content to wait for DVD, but a female-centered film, written and directed by uber-cool Floria Sigismondi--who formerly directed music videos--has to be good. Even if it's good in that candy necklace sort of way.

Discussing the sexual politics of the film, Karina Longworth, of The Village Voice, says

When the band turns on Cherie for submitting to a solo soft-core photo shoot, it's because Joan understands that unless they set the terms of their own sexual empowerment, and its commoditization, then what's really happening is exploitation. "You could say 'No,' " she tells Cherie. It's a shock to the blonde; it's also the thesis of the film.

Any film about teenage girls, rock music, and the requisite sex and drugs that goes along with it will not be without its faults. A director's feature-length debut will not be without its faults. The border between sexual empowerment and exploitation is a line we're still trying to negotiate in 2010. I'm pumped to see some gutsy women from the 1970s rock as they come of age.

Opening in limited release tomorrow, and wide release April 9th, The Runaways stars Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie.

Director Spotlight: Kathryn Bigelow

Welcome to our second installment of Director Spotlight, where we explore the biographies and filmographies of an often overlooked group: women film directors. (We've also spotlighted Allison Anders.)

Kathryn Bigelow is all over the web right now for being the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Directing (not to mention the Oscar for Best Picture, the BAFTA for Best Director and Best Picture, and the DGA for Directing, among dozens of other awards for The Hurt Locker). Her win is a source of pride and great relief everywhere, though it's not without its controversy (chiefly because the Academy rewarded a woman interested in portrayals of masculinity).

The 2000 book Feminist Hollywood: from Born in Flames to Point Break, by Christina Lane, contains a section on Bigelow that nicely rebuts critical reaction to her and her films.

Bigelow, who has taken up the traditionally "male" genre of the action film, has been criticized for lacking any new insight into gender politics. Feminist critic Ally Acker contends that Bigelow "adopt[s] the patriarchal values of fun-through-bloodshed and a relishing of violence" creating "nothing more than male clones." Similarly, more mainstream male critics have echoed David Denby's remark: "I can't see that much has been gained now that a woman is free to make the same rotten movie as a man." These simplistic generalizations do not allow for the nuances in Bigelow's work, nor do they stop out of essentialist notions about what is possible in the "male category" of action films. I propose that Bigelow's films rely on a complex relationship between genre and gender, often blending genres or reversing generic expectations, and that they are best understood in the context of her independent origins.

 Bigelow had been making films thirty years before being critically lauded for The Hurt Locker; here is a snapshot of her career.

The Loveless (1982)

Bigelow's feature film debut was also Willem Dafoe's debut. An homage to The Wild One, The Loveless parodied Reagan-style nostalgia for the 1950s. In a scathing review, Janet Maslin of The New York Times says:

This movie, a slavish homage to ''The Wild One,'' is full of peach and aqua luncheonette scenes, which give it some minuscule visual edge over the original. But otherwise, it's no improvement. Its evocation of tough- guy glamour is ridiculously stilted. (''This endless blacktop is my sweet eternity,'' says the not-very-Brandoesque hero.) And it regards the past with absolutely no perspective or wit.

A more positive perspective come from Time Out London:

'Man, I was what you call ragged... I knew I was gonna hell in a breadbasket' intones the hero in the great opening moments of The Loveless, and as he zips up and bikes out, it's clear that this is one of the most original American independents in years: a bike movie which celebrates the '50s through '80s eyes.

Near Dark (1987)

Fun fact: the above poster was designed to promote the DVD release of Near Dark, and the resemblance to a certain tween sensation is no coincidence--from a marketing perspective. The poster may, however, be the only thing these films have in common.

From Maryanne Johanson, The Flick Filosopher:

As darkly amusing as Near Dark is, though, Bigelow never romanticizes one of the great American perils. This is an intense film, an eerie depiction of the isolated, empty middle of America and the dangers that lurk there... and a surprisingly haunting, if never entirely sympathetic, portrait of the loneliness and torment of the eternally undead.

Blue Steel (1989)

Jamie Lee Curtis stars in Blue Steel, a psychologically intense cop thriller. IMDb describes it simply: "A female rookie in the police force engages in a cat and mouse game with a pistol wielding psychopath who becomes obsessed with her."

Roger Ebert, in his review from 1990, says:

"Blue Steel" was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, whose previous credit was the well-regarded "Near Dark." Does that make it a fundamentally different picture than if it had been directed by a man? Perhaps, in a way. The female "victim" is never helpless here, although she is set up in all the usual ways ordained by male-oriented thrillers. She can fight back with her intelligence, her police training and her physical strength. And there is an anger in the way the movie presents the male authorities in the film, who are blinded to the facts by their preconceptions about women in general and female cops in particular.

The bottom line, however, is that "Blue Steel" is an efficient thriller, a movie that pays off with one shock and surprise after another, including a couple of really serpentine twists and a couple of superior examples of the killer-jumping-unexpectedly-from-the-dark scene.

Point Break (1991)

Perhaps her best-known film before The Hurt Locker, Point Break is a film about an FBI agent (Keanu Reeves) who goes undercover to find a group of surfing bank robbers. It's campy, goofy at times, but full of suspense and wonderfully-shot action sequences. As with most of her films, critics were harsh.

Filmcritic.com says:

It's hard to decide whether Point Break is a really bad good movie or a really good bad movie. On one hand, it boasts thrilling, original action sequences, a tightly woven caper plot, and a cast jam-packed with Hollywood middleweights acting -- and surfing -- their asses off. On the other hand, it also suffers from terrifying leaps of story logic, a vacuous emotional core, and some of the silliest dialogue ever spoken onscreen. It's a Hollywood formula movie at its best and worst.

Strange Days (1995)

Written by James Cameron and starring Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, and Juliette Lewis, Strange Days tackles the sci-fi topic of virtual reality.

The IMDb plot summary:

Set in the year 1999 during the last days of the old millennium, the movie tells the story of Lenny Nero, an ex-cop who now deals with data-discs containing recorded memories and emotions. One day he receives a disc which contains the memories of a murderer killing a prostitute. Lenny investigates and is pulled deeper and deeper in a whirl of blackmail, murder and rape. Will he survive and solve the case?

Once again, Mr. Ebert:

"Strange Days" does three things that will make it a cult film.

It creates a convincing future landscape; it populates it with a hero who comes out of the noir tradition and is flawed and complex rather than simply heroic, and it provides a vocabulary. Look for "tapehead," "jacking in" and the movie's spin on "playback" to appear in the vernacular.

At the same time, depending more on mood and character than logic, the movie backs into an ending that is completely implausible.

The Weight of Water (2000)

Adapted from Anita Shreve's novel, The Weight of Water stars Sean Penn, Elizabeth Hurley, Sarah Polley, and Catherine McCormick. Perhaps best known for its two-year release delay (complete in 2000, but not released until 2002), the film received uneven reviews.

Here is the Rotten Tomatoes synopsis:

Two stories unravel simultaneously in this dark and suspenseful film. The first story, set in the present day, concerns a photographer, Jean (Catherine McCormack). She is working on an article for a magazine about a pair of bloody murders that happened 200 years before on the Isle of Shoals, just off the coast of New Hampshire. To get the pictures she needs she must visit the location of the murders, and so her husband, Thomas (Sean Penn), arranges a yachting trip with his brother, Rich (Josh Lucas), and Rich's girlfriend, Adaline (Elizabeth Hurley). The foursome pal around, enjoying the sea and the sun, while Adaline shamelessly seduces Thomas. Meanwhile, Jean is reliving the Isle of Shoals murders in her head, which is where the second story comes in. Maren (Sarah Polley) is a Norwegian woman who has recently immigrated to America with her husband. When her sister (Katrin Cartlidge) and sister-in-law (Vinessa Shaw) are brutally bludgeoned to death with an axe, she is the sole survivor, and thus the only one who knows the truth about what happened. THE WEIGHT OF WATER draws a parallel between these two tense episodes, as the surf swirls menacingly, foretelling imminent disaster.

Stephanie Zacharek's review from Salon:

Bigelow's movie might not come together as cleanly as it should. But as it moves along, there's always something to watch for, either in the performances or in the way the scenes are so thoughtfully joined. Bigelow is an uneven director -- although I find pictures like "Point Break" hugely enjoyable, I couldn't bring myself to face "K-19: The Widowmaker." But in "The Weight of Water," she's clearly trying to tell a much different type of story, in a way that at least stretches her capabilities. (Considering the way Hollywood pigeonholes directors, that may have been her chief problem in getting this picture released.) We all complain when filmmakers "sell out" and give us recycled Hollywood formula. But maybe it's also time to stop listening when we hear those handy, zombielike, all-purpose words, "I hear it's not very good."

***

Kathryn Bigelow has directed feature-length films, short films, and television episodes which aren't included here. She isn't afraid to take risks in filmmaking, and this trait alone insures we'll see more work from her in the future.

A last word from Christina Lane:

By rewinding and fast-forwarding through Bigelow's films--and thereby refusing to adhere to the counter-cinema/Hollywood divide--we can begin to locate her complication of genre conventions and her re-casting of the politics of gender and sexuality. While there is no need to label Bigelow's films "feminist" per se, they certainly move within a "feminist orbit" and engage political issues. Her films encourage spectators to ask questions about gender, genre, and power.

Releasing on DVD: Tuesday, March 16

We previewed The Princess and the Frog back in June, noting the potential perpetuation of racial stereotypes and lamenting yet another princess movie where the princess still portrays the humanly-impossible physique of all who came before her. I actually watched this. The movie flirts with improvement, at least in its attempt to make the heroine independent and career-focused. And for the most part, she maintains an active role throughout, which isn't a characteristic I associate with the former Disney princesses. But this time, one of her active roles becomes attempting to reform the prince. No thank you, Disney.

However, Matthew Belinkie at Overthinking It posts an interesting defense of The Princess and the Frog, arguing that even though it maintains traditional Disney Princess elements, it still manages to do things a little differently, in a good way. Definitely check out his article, and his Magical Disney Princess Chart below!

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Oh Suicide Girls. Feminist? Anti-feminist? Since they burst on the scene in 2001, these women have certainly stirred up debate throughout the feminist community. From Megan Jean Harlow's article, "Suicide Girls: Tattooing as Radical Feminist Agency," to Wired's 2005 article, "SuicideGirls Gone AWOL," which reported that 30 models quit because "its embrace of the tattoo and nipple-ring set hides a world of exploitation and male domination" ... well, what's a feminist to do? If you're interested, check out the new documentary Suicide Girls: Guide to Living, which releases on DVD today. You can also watch the trailer here.

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Of Veiled Voices, a documentary about feminism in Islam, Margot Badran writes, "The film, the first of its kind...is not to be missed by any who wish to enter the world of contemporary Islam with its lively gender dynamics being refashioned under our very eyes." And, contributing editor Mata H. over at BlogHer writes about the film as follows:

This grassroots movement of women establishing themselves as teachers of Islam may seem like a non-event to the Westerner used to female clergy, female teachers, religious and secular classes and worship where the two sexes sit next to each other. But in most parts of the Arab world, the realities of the West are as foreign to them as their realities are to us. And as Huda's daughter says, all Americans are not George Bush, and all Arabs are not Osama bin Laden.

You can watch a trailer and read an interview with the producer/director Brigid Maher here.

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For those of you who didn't get to see Lesley Stahl's full 60 Minutes interview with Kathryn Bigelow, it's being released on DVD today. I'm sure many have seen clips of the interview, and Jezebel also covers it in good detail.

******

I don't know much about the following films, but each of them focuses on women, and the stories appear to be interesting. If you see them (or have already), let us know what you think!


Broken Embraces

from amazon.com (this looks a little sketchy from the description): A luminous Penélope Cruz stars as an actress who sacrifices everything for true love in Broken Embraces, Academy Award -winning filmmaker (2003, Best Writing, Original Screenplay, Talk to Her) Pedro Almodóvar's acclaimed tale of sex, secrets and cinema. When her father becomes gravely ill, beautiful Lena (Cruz) consents to a relationship with her boss Ernesto (José Luis Gómez), a very wealthy, much-older man who pays for her father's hospitalization and provides her a lavish lifestyle. But Lena's dream is to act and soon she falls for the director of her first film - a project bankrolled by her husband to keep her near. Upon his discovery of the affair, Ernesto stops at nothing to ruin Lena's happiness.


Paris

from amazon.com: From Cédric Klapisch the award-winning writer/director of L AUBERGE ESPANGOLE comes a deliciously intimate new valentine to The City Of Lights featuring an all-star cast that includes Oscar®-winner Juliette Binoche (THE ENGLISH PATIENT), Romain Duris (THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED), Mélanie Laurent (INGLORIOUS BASTERDS) and François Cluzet (TELL NO ONE). It s the story of a young Moulin Rouge dancer (Duris) awaiting a heart transplant, his single-mother/social worker sister (Binoche), and their rediscovery of the life, laughter and love that hides within every balcony, apartment window, street corner and market stall. These are the stories of the middle class and bourgeois, immigrants and students, fashion models and homeless, and all the lovers and strangers whose paths could only cross and whose worlds are about to change forever in PARIS.


Bandslam

from amazon.com: Not just another by-the-numbers teen-angst movie, Bandslam is a joyful expression of pop exuberance, with an unexpectedly thrilling (and retro) soundtrack and numerous moments of visual excitement. Actor-turned-director Todd Graff brings stylish imagination and heart to this story of a much-taunted and beleaguered kid named Will (Gaelan Connell), whose miserable life at a Cincinnati high school comes to an end when he and his single mom (Lisa Kudrow) move to New Jersey. At his new school, Will befriends two very different girls: the laconic Sa5m (High School Musical's Vanessa Hudgens; the "5" is silent), and the take-no-prisoners, former cheerleader Charlotte (Aly Michalka of the pop group Aly & AJ), who is trying to get her rock band off the ground. The latter sees in Will--a student of pop music history--a potential manager who can help her group take top prize at an inter-school competition called Bandslam.


America's Sweetheart: Gale Storm

from amazon.com: Winner of a national 1940s talent search on CBS radio's Gateway to Hollywood (a precursor to today's American Idol), Texas teen Josephine Cottle (now Gale Storm) literally took Hollywood by storm, becoming a legendary star of radio, film, television, records and stage. The wholesome, auburn-haired beauty won a contract with RKO Studio where she completed her schooling while filming. In 1941 alone, she starred in eight movies. Her debut television series in 1952, My Little Margie, a summer replacement for I Love Lucy, was a huge hit on live radio and TV. Following was the equally successful series, The Gale Storm Show, Oh! Susanna. A record breaking headliner at Las Vegas' famed Thunderbird Hotel, her first record, I hear You Knockin', sold over a million copies going 'gold' (platinum by today's standards). Other hits followed and she starred in many popular musical stage productions. The '50s icon continued to work into her later years, passing away in 2009. Also featuring Roy Rogers, Zasu Pitts, H.B. Warner, Frankie Darro, Mantan Moreland, Charles Farrell and more!

Preview: Toe to Toe

In his NYT review of Toe to Toe, A.O. Scott says

If “Toe to Toe” were a young-adult novel, it would be embraced and argued about in classrooms and eagerly read by thoughtful teenage girls. The film’s observations about race, class and friendship are clear and accessible without being overly didactic, and its sometimes harsh candor about female sexuality would not be unfamiliar to devotees of contemporary adolescent literature. But because it is a movie — the first nondocumentary feature film by the writer and director Emily Abt — “Toe to Toe” is likely to languish in art-house limbo, far from the eyes of its ideal audience.

He's probably right, and it's a shame. As much as we adult women want movies that speak to our intelligence and experience, I'd guess the need is at least double for adolescent girls.

Melissa at Women and Hollywood summarizes the movie:

Tosha (Sonequa Martin) is a poor African American girl in a private prep school who is pushed by her grandmother (Leslie Uggams) to believe in herself and her ability to get into Princeton.  She also encourages her to play lacrosse because no African American girls do.  It is on that field that she meets Jesse (Louisa Krause) a troubled, sexually provocative white girl who has been kicked out of many schools.  Jesse and Tosha are drawn to each other and become friends even while the outside world is conspiring against them.  But like most teenage girls they also compete.  Their friendship is messy, and at times disappointing and destructive.  But they try, which is more than can be said for Jesse’s busy single working mom (Ally Walker) who is so oblivious to her daughter’s needs and desperation that you want to throttle her.

 Be sure to check out the interview with Emily Abt on the same Women and Hollywood post.

Watch the trailer. (The official movie site seems to have vanished; if anyone has the link, please leave it in the comments section.)

Toe to Toe is currently playing in NYC and LA.
Written and Directed by: Emily Abt

Starring: Louisa Krause and Sonequa Martin

Releasing on DVD: Tuesday, March 9

Two Oscar-nominated films release on DVD today: Up in the Air and Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. Be sure to check out our guest reviews of both Precious and Up in the Air.

Also releasing on DVD is The Stoning of Soraya M., which is based on a true story from 1980s-era Iran. Check out our preview of the film to watch the trailer and for links to excellent reviews.

The Wedding Song, a film lauded for its portrayal of female relationships, releases on DVD as well. An excerpt from the NYT's review by Jeannette Catsoulis:

Filmed with subtle eroticism and dreamy intimacy, the girls’ bond becomes a compelling love story that will be tested not only by personal grudges but also by anti-Jewish propaganda and inflamed animosity for the French colonists. Against a background of marching jackboots and falling bombs, the film’s women look to one another for emotional sustenance, and Ms. Albou creates a marvelously fleshy, female world in the casual nakedness of the bathhouse and the ribald humor of Nour’s engagement party.

But from henna-stained fingertips to a blood-spotted wedding sheet, the film’s images (lovingly captured by Laurent Brunet) remind us that here, female flesh is always the property of men.

Here are some additional women-centered films releasing on DVD that we haven't yet seen, so they may (or may not--don't blame us!) be interesting viewing:

Flick's Chicks

imdb synopsis: Flick's Chicks is a romantic comedy that centers around a young mother named Flick. After a lifetime of problems and disappointments with men, she decides she wants to spend her life with a woman. As sweet and funny as she is, Flick is flawed and confused but has come up with an unconventional way to find her new mate; A weekend sleepover. She finds the 5 women that she's recently met and has been attracted to in one way or another and invites them to spend a weekend at an out of the way summer house by the beach. A weekend to get to know her and her daughter Roxy, who at only 10 years old, has a maturity far beyond her years. The only problem is, she has invited all 5 women to stay with her at the same time in the same house and none of them know that.

Plan B

amazon.com synopsis: There's no telling what her Plan A might have entailed (perhaps a one-woman rendition of "Grey Gardens?"), but Bamford's Plan B turns out to be a virtuoso, one-woman performance of a self-imposed stint in Northwoods exile. Filmed live at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis, the extra-packed DVD now out from Stand Up! Records has an intimate and theatrical flavor that may feel unexpected to some of Bamford's followers, but skillfully weaves together the most well-wrought portions of her repertoire. More focused than her usual stand-up routine, in Plan B Bamford takes on the story of her own Hollywood life, viewed from the much safer and possibly much weirder climes of Duluth, MN. Playing all of the characters, from her parents to her high school nemesis-cum-Target checkout girl, Bamford lovingly skewers her origins, reminding us that, while there may be no place like home, there's really no place like home.

Shattered

imdb synopsis: Nikki, Claire, Regina and Heather have been best friends since the first grade. Now adults, they have just mortgaged their lives to open a bar together. But on the morning of its grand opening, Heather is attacked inside. She manages to escape, trapping her assailant in the bar's storage room. As the clock ticks closer to opening night, they push their friendship to the limit deciding whether they will trust justice to take it's course... or take justice into their own hands.

Stained Glass Windows

imdb synopsis: A darkly intelligent teenage girl struggles to overcome her past and the restraints of suburban society while trying to come to terms with the present.

Oscar Review Wrap-Up

A big thanks to all of our Best Picture nominee review contributors over the last ten days. If you haven't read their reviews, catch up now!

• An Education by Jesseca Cornelson
• Up in the Air by Kate Staiger
• District 9 by Sarah Domet
• Up by Travis Eisenbise
• A Serious Man by Lesley Jenike
  
• Inglorious Basterds by Amanda ReCupido
• Precious by Carrie Polansky
• Avatar by Elizabeth Tiller

Movie Review: An Education

*This is a guest post from Jesseca Cornelson.

An Education is a perfectly fine film. The performances are pleasant enough to watch, but much of the plot and characterization seemed to me to be yet another retelling of the popular “how to make a proper woman” story, complete with yee olde stereotypes of the necessary dowdiness of smart women in popular films and a shot of Carey Mulligan, dressed like Audrey Hepburn, shrieking with joy at winning at the dog track à la My Fair Lady. The “how to make a proper woman” story has as much to do with class as it does gender. In this incarnation, Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a smart, pretty girl being groomed for Oxford by her middle-class family—or rather, I should say, by her father Jack as her mother does almost no talking. The whole family’s being seems to pin its hopes on Jenny’s hoped for acceptance into Oxford. The family’s aspirational longing is as keenly felt as any teenage lust, though for Jenny it means living the life of an intellectual bohemian, and for her father it means marrying her off to a lawyer. This longing renders the whole family vulnerable to the charms of smooth-talking David, impeccably played by Peter Sarsgaard, a sometimes art thief who turns out to be married (oh noes!). Predictable stuff predictably ensues. Both Jenny’s English teacher and the uptight school headmistress warn her that her Mr. Rochester figure (of course there are Jane Eyre reference—this movie is highfalutin!) will likely disappoint her and worry that Jenny (wait, Jane E?) may squander her chance at Oxford before she comes to her senses. Jenny, of course, will have none of it and, of course, David disappoints. So, of course, she once more pins her hopes for the future on Oxford. Wanna guess whether or not she gets in? The last few minutes play out with all the suspense of an uplifting afternoon special of redemption.

I had high hopes when I saw that the screenplay was adapted by Nick Hornby. His story “Nipple Jesus” ranks among my favorite ever, and I was impressed with his book How to Be Good, which is written from the first-person point of view of a doctor mother who strays from marriage to her househusband. In each of these—the story, the novel, and the film—I find his presentation of the moral ambivalences to be the most striking element. Each, it turns out, is concerned with how people negotiate the appearance of morality with actual morality, and each implicates pretty damningly middle-class values of maintaining an appearance of morality while being oh so quick to compromise any actual morals the moment it becomes convenient or self-serving. It makes me wonder how much of Hornby himself we hear in David and Danny when first one tells Jenny not to be bourgeois in her moralizing and then the other turns her moral condescension around on her by noting that she had watched them steal from little old ladies without saying much either. I guess I should admit that I’m using “morality” and “moralizing” to stand in not only for everyone’s obsession with Jenny’s virginity and the various duplicities perpetrated in the film, but also for that middle-class form of snootiness that is so quick to judge others in its desire to be respectable.

An Education is at its best when it subtly complicates and plays against audience expectations. The scenes where Alfred Molina’s jolly but domineering Jack practically stutters and falls over himself as he is charmed by David are delicious. We, wise audience, see how easily the big man’s desires for upward mobility are used to seduce him as well. Dominic Cooper’s Danny, David’s art thief buddy, is worried enough that Jenny will get hurt that he says something to David about it, but then doesn’t actually do anything about it except dance flirtingly with Jenny.

What bugs me is how tidily Hornby’s script draws on familiar types for characterization and sets up a whole series of foils. Take Olivia Williams’ portrayal of Miss Stubbs, Jenny’s English teacher. The movie tells us in a conversation that Miss Stubbs is both smart and pretty (unlike some films which present pretty actresses as ordinary—Kate Winslet is a Plain Jane in Little Children, puh-lease!). And yet the film presents Miss Stubbs as dowdy, as if smart women are incapable of doing anything other than wearing severe buns (or, for one all-too-brief scene, a ponytail that manages to be both severe and sloppy) or compulsively quaffed with prim bobs, like the headmistress’, something like an upper-class, executive severity. Yawn. And how convenient that after Jack’s rant about Oxford trees, school trees, private tuition trees, and pocket money trees growing out in the garden, David justifies his art theft by saying that “these weekends [in Oxford and Paris], and the restaurants and the concerts don’t”—here it comes!—“grow on trees.” Convenient, too, the discussion in Jenny’s English class on Mr. Rochester’s blindness in Jane Eyre and King Lear, with its own themes of blindness. When it comes to David, Jenny and her family are so hungry for the world he offers that they are willingly blind to his deceits. Jenny watches gleefully as he forges the signature of C.S. Lewis, whose acquaintance he falsely claims in order to get Jenny’s parents’ permission to take her to Oxford for a week, and Jack later tells Jenny that he and her mother Marjorie (Cara Seymour) had heard on the radio that Lewis had long since moved to Cambridge and rather than accept David’s lie they convinced themselves that the radio announcer had it all wrong.

The script isn’t bad. After all, if movies didn’t routinely take shortcuts by using familiar, stylized codes for characterization, they couldn’t tell their intricate tales in about 100 minutes. It’s just that the script is so tidy and effective that it doesn’t come anywhere close to transcending its form. At times I wondered if the film would have felt as artful if it had been cast with more familiar Hollywood types, say Julia Roberts as Miss Stubbs or Anne Hathaway as Jenny, both of whom I find exude a sweetness that always makes me aware of how terribly charming they are. Would the film have been as engaging if everyone had American accents? I wonder if audiences’ own aspirations to sophistication might make us a bit blind to how ordinary this film is.

And here’s where I want to shift gears and put An Education in conversation, however briefly, with another film from this year that blew me away, Lee Daniel’s Precious, which also features a young woman, who’s been manipulated by an older man and whose hopes for the future are likewise pinned to her education. I know Precious has been accused of being exploitative, and maybe it is, but it is a far more interesting film, in terms of characterization alone. Here we have another female teacher who reaches out to her young student. And while Paula Patton’s Ms. Rain is also smart and pretty, she’s a fully developed character and not just a type. She in fact is presented as pretty and well groomed (a pretty, neatly dressed, well-groomed lady English teacher, oh my!) and, in another surprise, she’s a lesbian! Ms. Rain’s relationship with Precious, far from being limited to a few words of encouragement or knowing warnings, is central to the film. In An Education, all of the relationships seem comparatively superficial. Jack’s semi-mock anger at having to pay for so many lessons and longing for social standing is nothing compared to Mo’Niquie’s brilliant turn as Precious’ self-loathing and enraged mother, who is herself starved for affection.

And back to that ending. Holy voice over! It’s never a good sign that all of a sudden you need a voice over to close a movie after a minute-long montage of redemptive studying. How tidy, how comforting: see Oxford was the way to go after all! I would have preferred if the film had ended with the long closing shot of Jenny hugging her knees on the stairs, her face caught somewhere between relief and worry, not fully capable of enjoying her victory. Yeah, I know: The Graduate. But we all get off easy when the movie lands very near where it would have had Jenny never met David. Oh, sure she’s now been to Paris and all the boys she dates at Oxford are, we’re told, really boys. But her earlier questions about the value of an education and the limited options for women go unanswered. She was right to tell Emma Thompson as the headmistress that “it’s not enough to educate us anymore. You’ve got to tell us why you’re doing it.” It is indeed “an argument worth rehearsing”—an argument that the film fails to rehearse even as it resolves with Jenny’s acceptance to Oxford. What is the value of an education if the only things you can do with it are teach or go into civil service? Compare that to Precious, whose closing moments of victory aren’t tinged with yet another level of superior condescension, but rather present a young woman, HIV-positive before the AIDS cocktail, walking into the sunlight hand-in-hand with the children fathered by her own father. It’s a much more genuine ending. What do I mean by that? I suppose that the victory is both more humble and more hardly earned. As Precious walks down the street, we know her life cannot help but hold more difficulty and heartbreak. As Jenny cycles carefree down a different street, we suspect that the Oxford education will serve her just fine. So maybe what I mean by genuine is that Precious offers up the rare ending that opens out, leaving the audience with a sense that the character’s life and struggles will continue in spite of her current moment in the sun.

And isn’t that more like real life anyway? I know boatloads of smart, pretty women who find disappointment in their careers and relationships as much as those of a plainer sort, but we don’t really get the sense that Jenny will struggle with the difficulties of being a smart woman in 1960s Britain that she had so clearly articulated earlier in the film. And that seems a bit counterfeit.

Jesseca Cornelson is currently working on a collection of documentary poems about the history of Mobile, Alabama, which will serve as her dissertation for a doctorate in English and Comparative Literature from the University of Cincinnati. She blogs about her research and writing at Difficult History.