HopkinsCinemAddicts

Get Your S*** Together, Girls

    A lot of people have been talking about her, the girl with the fat arm tattoo.  But Lena Dunham is more than just a person who should always wear sleeves; she is a very endearing woman with a pretty awful vision of the lives of young women in New York.  Her new HBO series Girls is neither terrible nor excellent, and really neither good nor bad.  Three episodes have aired so far, and while plot points have emerged, nothing has really happened.  Even with the issues of financial instability, job hunts, abortion, dead-end relationships and the occasional horrifying sexual partner pervading each episode, I as a viewer have not really been fazed by any of it because the eponymous girls haven't been fazed either.

    All these "not really" qualifiers point to the show's great weakness: all four girls seem to be stagnating in a muddy puddle of drab furniture, unflattering clothes and profoundly unsatisfying professional, romantic and sexual lives.  These girls are languishing in apartments they deem too impermanent and transitional to decorate; they are entertaining the whims and inappropriate behavior of their first bosses to much too great an extent; they are pseudo-pursuing or passively staying in relationships that do worse than just fail to satisfy them--they further diminish what little joie de vivre these particular girls can occasionally muster.  Yet they seem to believe they are self-possessed, independent, worthwhile young women who have inexplicably been thrown into situations they can only sigh and shrug their way through.  They do not pursue opportunities, they let themselves be led. They never demand anything, never even show an interest in making their desires known.  They graduated from college, hopped in their car and followed the traffic towards the road to adulthood; but then their tire blew out.  No one can figure out how to use the jack, none of their contemporaries is stopping to help and none of the girls had the foresight, the capital or even just the autonomy to become a member of AAA.

    These girls fail to entertain me because they themselves do not actually do anything (entertaining or otherwise)--things happen to them and they barely react, they merely acquiesce.  There is no private torture of the dependent, the confused, the hopeless; there is no public outrage of the oppressed, the overzealous, the aggressive; there is only the blank-faced displeasure of the unmotivated, the uninterested, the utterly passionless.

    It infuriates me to hear female critics call this show an affront to womankind, because I believe we should not allow these girls to represent womankind.  They certainly do not represent the kind of women who deserve immense respect and appreciation.  If you allow yourself to be sexually subjugated time and time again and continue to pursue your subjugator, that is entirely your fault.  Men, particularly awful men, do not have absolute power over how women are treated; women have to command respect and never stop.  The onus is on the woman to demand proper treatment, and every time the choice is hers to discard, punish or educate the wrongdoer who treats her poorly.  We are not natural victims, and we should put no faith in women who act as if they are.  We don't go back to some jerk's apartment day after day, playing into his perverse desires and indulging in the wrongheaded but popular notion that all men are terrible.  There are countless situations in which being a woman works against you, but this is not one of them.

    On another character's note, you don't stay with the effete and overly wholesome boyfriend you can no longer stand and with whom you have terrible sex just because you have been together for four years.  To revisit the driving metaphor: you actually have to try to free your wheel from a rut, you can't just sit in your car with your head in your hands and wait out the rest of your life.  So, as I said, Girls, get your s*** together. There are plenty of women who have.

 

Many thanks to Lucy Bucknell for the above image and for the chance to write this blog.

Clever Kids: The Depiction of Precocious Children in David Slade's Hard Candy.

As a child I got a thrill out of watching movies that featured kids outsmarting adults. I could never forget the ingenuity of Macaulay Culkin’s character in Home Alone (1990) or how his spectacularly booby trapped house and quick thinking foiled the plans of two hardened (albeit dimwitted) criminals taking advantage of the Christmas season. I also loved watching Lindsay Lohan take on a dual role as twin sisters swapping lives and sabotaging their parents’ affairs in The Parent Trap to the point where I had to watch the movie almost every weekend.

With the exception of films like Home Alone and The Parent Trap—family friendly movies whose plot focuses on crafty children—most films give children a secondary role. Sometimes children bridge the emotional gap between two prospective lovers in romantic films; other times children are seen but not actually heard, serving no greater purpose than to be part of a family unit. For this reason, even now as an adult, I am still drawn to films that show children asserting their authority or even films that capture the brilliance and a child’s awareness of the world. A film that truly alters the balance of authority between child and adult is David Slade’s Hard Candy (2005).

Hard Candy, a film about a 14-year-old vigilante who confronts and psychologically tortures an unsuspecting man, whom she believes to be a pedophile, demonstrates a non-adult character taking charge and behaving in an atypically mature manner. The film plays on the audience’s preconceived notions about children being helpless without supervision. When I first watched the movie (having been completely clueless about Hard Candy’s premise), I assumed I was going to be sitting through a film about some unfortunate girl enduring a traumatic experience at the disposal of the villainous pedophile Jeff. The opening scene plays up the young girl Hayley’s supposed naiveté in order to make her control and maturity more effective later in the film.

The façade of Hayley Stark’s innocence begins with a close up of an inappropriate chat dialog between a 39-year-old photographer Jeff aka “lensman319” and Hayley. Neither character is seen but the nature of the conversation is cause for concern. Hayley’s suggestively promiscuous yet childish screen name, “thonggrrl14” coupled with her flirtatious comments make her seem like the stereotypical teenage girl who carelessly draws attention to her age while trusting a complete stranger with her inner thoughts and personal information. While reading  lensman319’s texts insisting that he and Hayley “finally hook up” and Hayley’s suggestion that he “film [her] with [his] vidoecamera” before “doing it,” I could not stop myself from wondering if she either had ever seen Primetime or was just plain stupid. Needless to say, after seeing Hayley’s character for the first time, I was thoroughly convinced that she would fall into the trap of

In the subsequent scene, the first meeting of Hayley and Jeff, Hayley is the epitome of puerility, and Jeff the calculating and personable pedophile.  If I wasn’t already disturbed by this little girl so eager to get in a stranger’s car and drive to the man’s house alone, the intimacy established with back-to-back close-ups of Hayley’s and Jeff’s faces made me extremely uncomfortable.  The first shot of Hayley is a close-up in which she turns around; her soft features, round face, round eyes as wide as a baby’s, and slightly confused expression as she asks, “Jeff?” give evidence to her apparent youth and naiveté. A close up of Jeff follows; his smiling face and open demeanor are inviting to Hayley even as he inspires suspicion in the viewer. Even though Jeff is rather attractive –with his stylish hair, chiseled face, and boyish charm— his predatory looks, the way he undresses Hayley with his eyes, and his wolfish grin make him seem like a lecherous old creep.

The cuts between Hayley and Jeff ‘s close-ups reveal the difference in their height since Hayley’s head is almost always tilted up and Jeff’s is always at a downward slant.  A long shot of Jeff’s tall figure is a startling contrast to Hayley’s petite frame and size.  This difference in stature symbolizes Jeff’s authority and draws more attention to Hayley’s childishness. Just as Jeff typically dominates the frame in his non-close-ups, he seems to be entirely in control of the situation. As is typical of his type, he engages Hayley in conversation making sure to only speak about topics that interest her, boy-bands and teen novels—things that would be trivial to any grown man. For a brief moment a flier with the face of a smiling girl and the word MISSING come into focus, standing out on the wall just opposite of where Hayley and Jeff decide to sit. The appearance of the missing girl’s photo led me to believe that a similar fate would befall Hayley. Everything suggested Hayley’s eventual demise, and I had no way of knowing how wrong I was until everything takes a strange turn at Jeff’s home.  

After Hayley manages to get Jeff drunk in his own home, her demeanor becomes sadistic. With Hayley’s childishness sentiment exchanged for a cold mask of indifference and sadism, Jeff becomes the target of the viewer’s sympathy.  While the close-ups are still a factor in this scene, Hayley’s eyes are no longer round and her mouth becomes a thin disapproving line, proof that she was putting on a face the entire time in the café. Having tied Jeff up in a chair she insults him for believing she would be dumb enough to “chase him to the next drink.” When Hayley says, "Just because a girl can pretend to be a woman doesn't mean she's ready to be a woman," she let's both Jeff and the viewer know that her logic is sound and she's aware of how things should be. Her verbiage becomes more complex and less moronic as she explains her true intention to discover what secrets Jeff may be hiding in his home.

 Hayley proves her intelligence as she admits to intentionally behaving like a trusting young girl, who would foolishly believe that “anyone could know so much about her.” The balance of power has clearly changed. The few long shots, show Jeff—his height stolen by the low position of the chair—now appearing shorter than Hayley who stands confidently before him with her hands on her hips.  This reversal of stature is also apparent in the close-ups with  a discombobulated Jeff, staring up at Hayley with a confused expression and Hayley looking down at Jeff.  Jeff’s growing uncertainty and anxiety comes out in his voice as he asks Hayley, “What are you going to do to me?” Overwhelmed by the drastic change in events, I couldn’t help but see the irony in Hayley’s response, “Anything I want!” With Hayley’s dubious nature revealed, and the ambiguity of Jeff’s involvement with the missing girl, Jeff becomes the prey and Hayley the predator. 

 

GINGER SNAPS and Hell in a Handbasket

As the decades keep ratifying the truism, “High school is hell,” filmmakers too continue to find adolescence a rich playground for the supernatural. The cinematic landscape of the new millennium is positively rotting with juvenile gore and romanticized horrors. But perhaps one can extract a modicum of truth out of such teenage populist delights this Halloween. John Fawcett's 2000 film Ginger Snaps, for one, makes a bloody lycanthropic mess out of feminism. The film is equal parts teen comedy and camp horror, exploiting the werewolf metamorphosis as a metaphor for puberty.

Meet Ginger and Brigitte, sisters on the precipice of adulthood. Hobbies include making suicide pacts and slideshows of their gruesomely staged deaths in their dungeon of a bedroom – clearly humor tempered by a thousand paper cuts. Late bloomers, the two dread the thought of menstruation for it would mean yielding to conformity and venerated womanhood. Menstruation disgusts and embarrasses them but also threatens their sense of identity as misanthropic outcasts, which they gladly play up as students. When Ginger finally gets her first period, a werewolf attacks her the same night to make the transformations run parallel. Ginger begins to take on masculine qualities, becoming sexually aggressive and physically abrasive, sprouting a tail in the process. She learns how to wield her newfound sexual confidence to disrupt the the social hierarchy at school and racks up a body count along the way. Consequently Ginger comes to resemble the archetype of the monstrous femme fatale, which in turn is the manifestation of the historically male fear of being overtaken by a woman; she might as well have sprung fifty feet.^[1]

The title of the movie itself is a pun of a binary opposition between femininity and masculinity, wherein the domesticity evoked by baked goods is contrasted with the machismo Ginger develops once she “snaps.” Qualities of feminine power – being nurturing, tender and positively aggressive – are seemingly rejected in this story by Ginger's dubious transformation, but subtly reaffirmed by her mother and younger sister. It is, after all, the gleefully ignorant mother who takes to investigating the girls' behavior and actually discovers the truth. Brigitte, the more introverted sister, also demonstrates power through her unwavering devotion to Ginger. Overcoming her social inertia, she even enlists the help of others to save her sister. Indeed, it is through her triumph that those growing pains of youth finds the most cathartic articulation.

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¹ See 1958 cult classic, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

Image courtesy of the author.

From a Whisper to a Scream: On the Artaudian Cruelty of LA PIANISTE

Emerging from her “cage” at the Vienna Conservatory, Erika Kohut now enters a prison of a different make: the apartment she owns with her mother. They have a confrontation over what forty-something Erika has done earlier in the night – namely shopping for frivolous clothing – and hair-pulling and ugly histrionics ensue before mother and daughter reconcile to take their nightly place in the bed they share. In this title sequence, director Michael Haneke presents the microcosm of their relationship, bipolar and incestuous in all but deed. Adapted from the novel by Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek, La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher) carries the fragrance of an old novel, but the film's motifs of ritualized sexual violence and voyeurism come across as a contrarian gesture. Marrying the contemporary and classic in an incisive study of brutalized passions, Haneke explores man's urge to direct his own suffering.

Isabelle Huppert inhabits the eponymous part of Erika, a woman whose personal and professional lives are thoroughly dedicated to control and the pursuit of perfection. Huppert has a history of playing self-contained women and here she is in fine form as a Viennese specimen of severity whose transgressive desires seethe underneath a mask of icy poise. Operating on the principles of classical tragedy, Haneke paints two distinct and opposing artistic tendencies within her, worrying the tension between the chic and the abject.^[1]

The film chronicles her suffering, which begins with small acts of rebellion in the form of sexual compulsions. Erika's identity is fractured by disparate roles; At home, she simultaneously plays the infantilized daughter and the surrogate husband for her mother. Outside of her conservatory and home, she is a lurker, a voyeur with latent violence directed towards others and herself. Indeed, Erika is something rarely seen in cinema - a beautiful female pervert. This uncomfortable tension is acknowledged even within the film, at a sex shop on one of Erika's furtive excursions where her very presence disturbs and shames the male customers and breaks them out of the fantasy. Erika is seemingly repulsed by her femaleness, cutting her sex as a hobby. Thankfully Haneke doesn't predicate our empathy on the provision of backstory. One simply reacts to the shocking but plaintive truths of what she's doing and to the questions of why or why not. The character cannot be so easily consumed by the viewer, who must activate his or her fantasy in the detangling of her motivations. It is not clear, for example, whether Erika, the middle aged piano teacher, has fallen below expectations of fame and fortune because she lacks the talent or because she has purposely thwarted her ambitions out of spite for her mother. One does get the sense her artistic drive has curdled when she browbeats her admiring students. Her self-loathing in this respect perhaps manifests most clearly in a subplot where she sabotages the potential career of a female student with an equally domineering mother.

Haneke, in his infinite perversity, sets up the love triangle between Erika, her mother, and the rakish student, Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel). While Walter's eagerness provokes Erika, Freudian principles of transference help explain why Erika cannot feel or respond to the latter's conventional expressions of love.^[2] He even changes a public performance of a Schönberg piece to one of Schubert's just to impress her (and that is quite a difference – jumping from the Modern discordance to Romanticism).^[3] Walter pursues her ardently, initiating a game of seduction meanwhile failing to (or refusing to) recognize her bizarre symptoms of illness. For an instant he is a paragon of mythic muscularity, the white knight to liberate the repressed heroine but, alas, the film is decidedly anti-love.

For Erika has an uncompromising idea of love, in which art is to be confused with real life. Music is the predominant metaphor for love in the film, and the recurring scenes in which Erika gives rigorously precise note-by-note analysis of a piece of music serve as reminders of the fact. Walter, while attractive to her, is not the perfect lover because he does not play music they way she expects, which is to say with complete dedication to the art. Walter uses music to seduce Erika, who does not want to be seduced and possessed in the same way she is possessed by her mother. Her rigid rules for sexuality in turn convey the Romantic paradox of applying Apollonian order to Dionysian emotions. “Feelings won't defeat my intelligence,” Erika states to Walter after an unconsummated sexual encounter. Later she gives Walter explicit “instructions” by letter expressing her desires to be beaten and gagged. Alternatively infuriated and disgusted, Walter is curious enough to keep playing. Subtextually, Erika controls Walter's pleasure in the same way the director controls the emotions of the viewer. Haneke is a formalist and he shoots meticulously, so his presence is felt less in the stationary camerawork and more in the actions of the characters. Haneke identifies with Erika and projects those active, masculine characteristics onto her, but Haneke does not turn her into feminist statement. Erika is not so much aware of her behavior as she is reacting defensively to protect her selfhood.

When Erika's wishes are granted in the traumatic climax, the scene is devoid of sexual gratification. Walter's transformation from the precocious admirer to the abusive savage is shocking. “Not as you imagined?” Walter mercilessly posits, and with this statement Haneke seemingly implicates the viewer seeking vicarious thrills from a movie about sadomasochism.

In the end, life goes on and the contemptuous young man abandons the broken older woman as the viewer similarly walks away from the film. With Huppert's indelible parting look of agony and her final tragic gesture, Haneke draws back the curtain over his theatre of cruelty.

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[1] Refer to the Apollonian-Dionysian axis. " Fredrich Nietsche, Raymond Guess, Nietsche: The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Cambridge: University Press, 1999.

[2] Freud describes transference as "...re-experiencing emotional relations which had their origin in…earliest object-attachments during the repressed period of…childhood." Sigmund Freud, The Freud Reader. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1989.

[3] For curious minds, the two pieces in question are Schönberg's Opus 33b and Schubert's Scherzo from the Sonata in A Major.

Image courtesy of the author.

The Works of Satoshi Kon, and the Impossible Pursuit of Perfection

Fans of Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan would find watching Satoshi Kon's 1998 animated film, Perfect Blue, something like a case of retro déja vu. The similarities between the films are not a coincidence – Aronofsky was not only aware of Perfect Blue, he had even purchased the rights to it when making Requiem for a Dream, in order to exactly re-create the bathtub scene for his film. While Black Swan is not a remake of Perfect Blue, it draws heavily from the same themes – duality, madness, and the desire to reach a stage of impossible perfection.

 Perfect Blue is the story of Mima, a pop idol who wishes to leave her idol profession and branch into acting. This seems to please no one – her ex-pop idol manager is extremely protective of her, and disapproves of the roles she is offered and how she is treated by the directors of the television show Mima is cast in. The one most upset is Mima's number one fan, who stalks her every move and runs a website dedicated to Mima. In order to succeed and distance herself from her idol past, Mima agrees to appear in a violent rape scene, and then to pose for nude pictures – which brings her both success and misery.

 As she questions whether she is following the right path, she begins to hallucinate a double of herself – the Idol Mima, still fresh-faced and innocent, who taunts her for her mistakes and insecurities. Mima begins to sink into delusions and madness – she begins to read the blog on her website (which are not even written by her) in order to remember what she did that day. The scenes from her television show begin to merge with her real life. The Idol Mima pops up everywhere she goes. When the photographer from her nude photo shoot is stabbed to death, Mima can't remember whether or not she is the murderer.

Mima struggles with the duality of her image and her self, unable to reconcile her past as a pop idol, and her future as an adult woman in charge of her acting career. But unlike Nina in Black Swan, who destroys herself in order to achieve perfection, Mima finds that she is the victim of her manager, Rumi, who has been living vicariously through Mima. The climactic ending sequence is a grotesque and physical battle of the Mima's – and while it is revealed that Rumi was heavily manipulating Mima's life, it does not explain away how Mima continues to see Rumi as a ghostly specter of herself. In the end, it is implied that they are both disillusioned – but Mima has been able to reconcile her personality split, while Rumi could not.

 In the search for her identity, reality for Mima becomes mutable and fluid, a jungle of mirrors and images, a cobbled-together world of illusion, constructed experiences, false narratives, and deception.

 Satoshi Kon continues to play with the theme of distorted reality and narrative in his 2001 film, Millennium Actress. The film follows the life story of Chiyoko Fujiwara, an actress whose career spanned for decades in Japanese cinema, as she is interviewed by her biggest fan, Genya Tachibana. A scene towards the opening of the story is an early hint of the merging of reality and film that is to come – the audience watches as a young Chiyoko climbs into a spaceship which begins to liftoff. The camera then cuts out to reveal the scene is actually a video that Genya is watching, and as the spaceship rumbles into space, the room around Genya begins to shake. For a brief moment the film world and the real world are one – until it is revealed that it isn't the spaceship shaking the room, but an actual earthquake.

 The merging of reality and narrative continues as Chiyoko tells her story to Genya and his cameraman, and the flashbacks become not only her interior reflections, but an interactive experience. Genya and the cameraman become part of the flashbacks, watching and commenting on Chiyoko's actions and experiences. Yet there are even more layers to this constructed reality, as her recounting of her life becomes the recounting of her film roles, with no distinction between the two. The narrative becomes an epic of not only her story, but the story of Japanese cinema, of Japanese history, and Japanese history as told through cinema. She journeys through time and space in order to achieve her goal – to reunite with a painter, in order to return a key he lent to her with a promise to meet again.

It proves impossible for her to meet her painter again. Yet the story of Chiyoko's chase is more thrilling and fulfilling than any outcome where she and her beloved painter could be reunited. The narrative of her life story is what gives it meaning, even as it seems to be foolish to chase an impossible goal. On some level, Millenium Actress and Perfect Blue are both about the same thing – the impossible pursuit of perfection, and the toll it takes on an individual. Perfect Blue presents a pessimistic outcome – the complete fragmentation of Mima and Rumi's identities. Millenium Actress is more optimistic, presenting the impossible pursuit as more personally enriching than the goal itself. Both films present challenging and complex narratives, and are excellent examples of animated films that are not just for children. 

Women in Television: Lovers, Mothers, and... Oh. Take 2.

As I wrote last semester, Fox's Fringe is a sci-fi procedural following the investigations of the FBI Fringe unit. Made up of Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), a half-mad scientist named Walter Bishop (John Noble), and Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), Walter’s genius son with a history of petty crime, the Fringe team look into crimes of the strange and fantastic. Essentially, picture a quirkier X-Files, with parallel universes rather than aliens. Each of the three seasons has thus far twisted the show in an intriguing new direction, but while season 2 seemed to be where the show found its rhythm and established Olivia as a complex character and independent agent, season 3 has since fallen into tired and unoriginal gendered tropes.

While by no means a feminist utopia, seasons 1 and 2 of Fringe establish Olivia as a pivotal actor. Take season 1's “Ability,” where she must come to terms with her own superhuman mental abilities in order to stop a bomb, or season 2's “Jacksonville,” where she must do the same in order to save a building full of people. As William Bell (Leonard Nimoy), the head of Massive Dynamic, states, Olivia is the “guardian” of our universe, a gatekeeper and protector. While this position is in many ways established by her history as the test subject of two powerful men, Bell and Walter, she nevertheless holds a key position wherein she must act, and she does so over and over. In season 2, Olivia is the only one to have heard William Bell's warnings and is thus the only one capable of acting on them. When it comes down to a a choice between catching the season's Big Bad or saving Walter, Olivia is the one who decides.

Olivia's characterization further establishes her as a multifaceted person who acts, rather than a female object merely acted upon. Yes, the show brings in a sister and a niece to feminize her. Yes, her story starts off revolving around a man. But that is not where her story remains. Olivia spends much of the first half of the second season coming to terms with injuries from a car accident and a trip across universes, a condition based not in her gender but in her humanity. Later, when a building in New York is about to be pulled to another universe, Olivia is the only one who can find it, and in order to do so, she has to confront not her past as a little girl but her past as a test subject. This is not to say that Olivia's portrayal is absent of gender essentialism. As “Brown Betty,” an episode near the end of season 2, demonstrates, the writers conceive of Olivia as someone who fights for this universe because she cares for others, with true love as one of her primary motivations. Granted, this episode is essentially a fairy tale told by a very under-the-influence Walter, but the key themes echo the character interactions in the rest of the show. Olivia starts as a girlfriend first, using her professional skills in support of that role, and at the end of season 2, she partners with other child test subjects to bring them to the parallel universe—to get Peter back to be with him. This motivator, however, while stereotypically female, remains merely a facet of Olivia's character rather than the key aspect.

For the first third of season 3, Olivia is a prisoner in the parallel universe with the alternate Olivia having taken her place in ours. Gender-wise, this season unfolds much like the previous one in that both Olivias do their jobs and do them efficiently, with family and love as aspects of their characters but not the aspects. Olivia has visions of Peter but these are to tell her that she's in the wrong universe; the alternate Olivia develops a relationship with Peter, but she does so as part of her infiltration into our universe.

And then both Olivias return home.

I titled my first blog entry here, “Lovers, mothers, and... Oh” to draw attention to the fact that, no matter what else women in television may have going for them, they are almost always eventually reduced to someone's girlfriend and/or mother.

Apparently, Olivia Dunham is no exception.

After being kidnapped, tortured, and convinced by powerful drugs that she's the other Olivia Dunham, Olivia returns to our world and has a difficult homecoming—not because of the various traumas she's endured, not because she just left a mother dead in our world, but because Peter undertook a relationship with the other Olivia. With the exception of a single episode that at least acknowledges the disconnect she feels from her own life, Olivia spends a good five episodes pining after Peter and wondering how he feels about her. Of course it's possible, even probable, that she continues to have trouble readjusting, but we never see this. We never even see her sister or niece. Remember “Ability” and “Jacksonville”? Contrast that with season 3's “6B,” where she and Peter avert a similar disaster by appealing to romantic love and loss. Now that Olivia has a vibrant romantic interest, that is all her character becomes.

Things are no better for the other Olivia. After spending two months on a stressful undercover mission in a completely different world, she comes home in love with Peter and pregnant with his child. Although this pregnancy is potentially lethal for her and she almost aborts, a kidnapping and accelerated pregnancy come together to take that choice away from her. In a climactic birthing scene, she begs another male figure in her life to do anything to save this child, including sacrifice her, and it is pure luck that both child and loving mother survive.

Even Olivia's role as protector of our universe is undercut. It doesn't actually matter what Olivia does, we learn. Rather, Peter is destined to step into a doomsday device, and the Olivia he chooses will be the one whose universe survives. From this point forward, Olivia is no longer an actor in the narrative. She is an object for Peter to take or reject, and the idea that one or both might not even want to be with him becomes unthinkable. That Olivia, after all, would destroy her universe. And with so much of the story devoted to this love triangle, it seems unlikely that the show would suddenly swerve in another direction.

There is no will here for these two women, not on a narrative level. There is a woman, lover and mother, but an independent and fully developed character? She got lost somewhere around the episode where, ironically enough, a young woman's dead body became a literal marionette for her male admirer.

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There is nothing wrong with a woman who loves her partner or a woman who has a child, and there's nothing wrong with such a storyline. When it becomes a problem is when these plotlines are taken for granted. Women want love, women want babies—the thinking goes—and so women do these things, without any attention to how this particular character might react to that situation while, simultaneously, to the other situations in her life. Such a reduction not only makes for offensive television, it makes for boring and recycled television. I've seen this plot, I know how it goes, and so have the millions of other viewers slowly trickling away from Fringe's plummeting ratings.

Over the course of the first two seasons, Olivia Dunham developed into a complex character with a life, with family, with a history, with her own personality. I miss that Olivia, rather than the one who smiles at Peter over corpses. I miss that Olivia, rather than the one who wonders not how to reconnect with her entire universe but, rather, only whether Peter loves someone else.

Deconstructing the Geisha: Hollywood vs. Mizoguchi

Who are geisha, these women of the floating world, whose image is so often associated with femininity in Japan? In the west, geisha are often mistaken for high-class prostitutes – which is a misconception even some Japanese continue to have. Geisha are entertainers, thoroughly trained in traditional arts such as music and dance. The world of the geisha is a complicated web of money, social responsibilities, debts, relations with men, relations with women, and the art of being living, breathing entertainment. The individual's struggle to keep all of these complications in balance makes the geisha's life an inherently fascinating, and cinematic, story. Japanese cinema has a long history of portraying geisha on film, and Hollywood has even taken an interest, cashing in on the appeal of the exotic in the 2005 film Memoirs of a Geisha. 

Memoirs of a Geisha was directed by Rob Marshall, and was adapted from the novel of the same name, written by Arthur Golden. The story follows Sayuri on her journey from being a servant to becoming an accomplished giesha. The film obsessively follows the details of Sayuri's training – her dance lessons, her music practices, the art of dressing in a kimono – and revels in the exoticism of the geisha experience. When Sayuri first gets her hair done up in the traditioanl style, she must sleep on a special propped up pillow surrounded by a circle of rice. When she wakes up, her hair is covered in rice because she fell off her pillow, and her hair is ruined. The film makes a great deal of the pain and preparation of becoming a geisha to emphasize to the audience how strange and foreign these practices are. Yet these glimpses are merely surface level – never is the audience truly brought into Sayuri's inner world.

This is the problem with Memoirs – the struggles of its characters are all surface-level, or flimsy external constructions. For a film so obsessed with the exotic in Japanese culture, the conflicts brought upon its subjects are decidedly Hollywood. The opening scene shows Sayuri and her sister being bought from her family and carted away from their hometown – only for Sayuri to be sold to the okiya, the geisha house, and her sister to be sold to a whore house. Instantly, the life of a geisha is equated with slavery and forced labor. Being a geisha is not something a girl chooses to do, but is forced into.

Sayuri fights against this fate at first, but her perceptions rapidly shift when she meets Chairman Iwamura by chance on the streets of Kyoto. She instantly falls in love with him, and sees that becoming a geisha will allow her to grow closer to him. Thus, she throws herself into the diligent studies needed to become a geisha. Here a love story is substituted for any kind of self-actualization or reflection for Sayuri. She exists to become the perfect woman for the Chairman, and to become that woman she must become a geisha. There is no concept of being a geisha so that she can be a financially independent woman, or so she can support herself. The film does not explore the questions of what happens when personal and professional boundaries are crossed. Sayuri at one point is sexually harassed by a patron, but the film does not venture deeper into the concept of the systematic objectification of women that geisha can fall prey to. These are not the conflicts the film is invested in – it is invested in the love of the Chairman and Sayuri, and the dramatic external forces, like World War II, that keep them apart.

There is one scene which suggests that there is more to Sayuri than just her persuit of the Chairman. When her mentor suggests that Sayuri take on a patron because it is her best choice for supporting herself, Sayuri refuses and shouts back, “I want a life that is mine!” Here is the idea that is unexplored in the film – the opportunity to build a private identity within the structure of the geisha lifestyle.

The work of Kenji Mizoguchi delves into the conflicts inherent in these social structures. In his 1953 film, Gion Bayashi (A Geisha), Mizoguchi portrays two geisha – one an older, established giesha, Miyoharu, who takes in a pupil, Eiko. Unlike in Memoirs, the geisha of Gion Bayashi are not portrayed as slaves or women cut off from any family connections. Eiko's mother was a geisha and was friends with Miyoharu, thus why Eiko saught Miyoharu out after her mothers death. Eiko is not forced into becoming a geisha – she begs Miyoharu to train her. She longs to become like the maiko (young, elaborately dressed geisha) she sees on postcards from Kyoto.

After Miyoharu takes Eiko under her wing, she is quickly trained and then brought into society as a maiko. It is here where the tangled webs of loyalties and monetary transactions become entangled with Miyoharu's and Eiko's personal priorities. Miyoharu and Eiko are pursued by two business men, Kanzaki and Kusuda, who both desire more than just artistic entertainment from the women, in exchange for financial security. On a disastrous trip to Tokyo, Kusuda tries to force himself onto Eiko – and to protect herself, she bites and severely wounds his face. Hearing her screems from a room close by, Miyoharu runs to Eiko's aid – and finds her dazed, her face covered in blood, her hair and kimono askew. The image of the immaculate maiko that Eiko so coveted is now shockingly destroyed and subverted.

Eiko's image of the geisha is further complicated and tarnished in the ensuing difficulties surrounding this incident. They find themselves blacklisted from all of the tea houses they used to frequent, because of Eiko's supposed misbehavior. Miyoharu becomes desperate to keep themselves from being swallowed by debt, and agrees to become Kanzaki's mistress so that she may protect Eiko's integrity. Eiko is disgusted by this idea, but can see that Miyoharu saw no other way out of the situation.

What Gion Bayashi lacks in the glamor and gloss displayed by a film like Memoirs of a Geisha, it makes up for tenfold in its fearlessness in portraying the dichotomies inherent in the geisha world. Geisha depend upon each other, and the bond between Miyoharu and Eiko is ultimately the most important one – yet they also depend financially on the support of their male patrons. Miyoharu especially struggles with having to protect Eiko, keep them financially stable, and still maintain her self dignity – which in the end proves to be a nearly impossible task. Gion Bayashi, in contrast to the flashier Memoirs, shows that the conflict in a film does not have to evolve from a forced love story and a world war. 

 

Girl, Interrupted - An Exploration of Mental Illness and its Treatment

Girl, Interrupted is one of those movies from the late ‘90s that stays with you. Based on a memoir by Susanna Kaysen, this film tells the story of a fictional Susanna, played by Winona Ryder, and her stay in Claymore, a psychiatric hospital. It is a film not so much about the process of recovery as it is about what makes a person choose to recover (or not), about all the factors surrounding that process rather than the process itself. Although sensationalized, the film nevertheless provides a worthwhile exploration of mental illness and the effectiveness of the mental health care system.

What is mental illness? What is mental health or normality? In the world of Girl, Interrupted, the answers aren’t as clear-cut as one might expect. For one thing, the film questions idea that mental illness even exists. Set to the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the whole world outside of Claymore seems to have gone crazy. As Susanna’s draft-dodging boyfriend says, “Everything’s changing, man. What the f--k do they know about being normal?” Repeatedly, Susanna questions the validity of her diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, and at the end of the movie, even after she has taken advantage of the services available at Claymore, she reiterates that she still does not know what her diagnosis or even mental illness mean. One possible interpretation of these plot points, however, is that Susanna, like the rest of the world, is simply different from the others at Claymore. At first glance, the film does seem to create a dichotomy between Susanna (‘sane’) and these others (‘crazy’). This is true not only at the start of the film, when she first enters a psychiatric unit of women behaving bizarrely, but is continuously reaffirmed. The head nurse (Whoopi Goldberg), for instance, explicitly differentiates Susanna from those who are actually “crazy.” In contrast to them, Susanna is “driving herself crazy.” Similarly, Susanna’s psychiatrist tells her that, for her, “sane” and crazy” are “courses of action” that she must choose between. Together, these scenes seem to imply that some people are just fundamentally mentally unstable, while others are not (but can choose to be).

To a large extent, these statements are undermined by the events of the film. Susanna is only in Claymore because of a suicide attempt, and she delivers a heartbreaking soliloquy about just how much emotional pain it took to get her to that point. It seems doubtful that she chose to be that way any more than anyone else would choose to experience debilitating suffering. Rather than a black-and-white crazy-or-sane world, what Girl, Interrupted portrays is a spectrum of mental health, with mental illness on one end and mental health on the other. Interpreted differently, Susanna’s psychiatrist’s words sound less like an affirmation that she is not like those others but that she rests somewhere in the middle of this continuum, with more opportunity for recovery but not necessarily as someone fundamentally unlike her peers. The film also attempts to provide hope even for those at the far end of this spectrum. Even Lisa (Angelina Jolie), the diagnosed “sociopath” who feels no sympathy or guilt after Daisy’s suicide, breaks down after being called “dead inside,” and the film implies that she may yet recover. “Crazy,” Susanna says in her final voiceover, “isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified.” In the world of Girl, Interrupted, those who are mentally ill and those who are perfectly sane are fundamentally the same.

Even as it provides a less than straightforward depiction of mental illness, Girl, Interrupted’s portrayal of the mental health care system is even more ambiguous. Not only is Susanna’s diagnosis consistently questioned, but so is the process of psychiatric care. Susanna’s first psychiatrist, for instance, sleeps during one of their therapy sessions; incompetence thus becomes more than just an implication, but a fact. Even the idea of recovery is brought into doubt. While Susanna does ‘get better’ and leave the hospital, the idea that one cannot recover from mental illness, that all that’s required to escape Claymore is to lie, is brought up time and again. When Daisy (Brittany Murphy) is released from Claymore, for instance, she is clearly not recovered or healthy, and she engages in numerous self-destructive behaviors before committing suicide. Overall, the film appears to criticize the mental health care system for its vagueness, inconsistencies, and incompetence, even as it acknowledges that psychiatric care can be beneficial for at least some people.

Girl, Interrupted is a film about mental illness and its treatment, created over a decade ago, set in the late 1960s. While both of these facts date it to some extent—particularly in the treatments portrayed—the movie remains relevant in its exploration of mental illness, mental health, and psychiatric care. Are “crazy” people really all that abnormal or different from the rest of the population? Is psychiatry legitimate? Can treatment work? The questions are still pertinent, and the film’s answers—that those with mentally illnesses aren’t that much different from anyone else, that the system can help but has fundamental problems—continue to resonate.

Mexican Women in Salt of the Earth and Biutiful

On a superficial level, there is very little in common between Salt of the Earth (1954), a bare-bones narrative of labor unrest in an arid, desolate New Mexican mining village dubbed Zinctown, USA, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s vivid, saturated, and jarring portrayal of contemporary Barcelona, entitled Biutiful (2010). Iñárritu addresses a distinctive socio-economic underbelly in Spain, filtering experience through a single Mexican protagonist, Uxbal (Javier Bardem). But he suggestively exposes broader demographic and immigration changes underway across Europe.

Javier Bardem in Biutiful. Creative Commons, by Cinema Davar.

At its core, Salt of the Earth is a decidedly local film. It employed neorealist techniques and was subjected to a variety of constraints imposed by Cold War politics. Political pressures helped to mold a particular atmosphere and imparted an unrehearsed quality to the film. According to Rosaura Revueltas, the actor who played Esperanza Quintero, “[The cast] never saw any rushes. The film was shot blindly. Scenes were never repeated. During filming, helicopters flew overhead in order to protest…”[1] Salt exudes a spontaneity that pervades even the most didactic scenes. This natural quality reinforces Esperanza’s radical and incisive soliloquy. In it, she articulates the crux of the conflict with her husband, Ramón: Anglo employers undermine and antagonize the Mexican miners, yet Ramón is complicit in discrimination, debasing his wife by discouraging her political engagement. The dismissive nature of his responses (“You’re talking crazy!” and “Will you be still!”) betray the truth in her words.

 

Biutiful represents an essentially global film, in which characters from developing nations are linked to each other and to Europe in a tightly wound economic network. This is not to insinuate that Iñárritu disregards the local environment. With the utmost care, he conveys textural and chromatic details of Marambra’s (Maricel Alvarez) apartment, the dank sweatshop housing Chinese laborers, and the living quarters of the Muslim Senegalese. Still, a nascent internationalism emerges, with Barcelona functioning as a hub for émigrés, human trafficking, and other illicit activity. The resulting social universe is exceedingly complex, and the wealth of visual information contained within each frame only compounds that impression. Iñárritu’s filmic precision approaches hyperrealism. His style proves expressive and photogenic, if at times unsettling.

Interspersed throughout the film are supernatural moments, which call to mind the magical realism of Latin American literature. Those moments function as visual breaths, which alleviate the slightly claustrophobic and suffocating experience of material poverty. In one sequence, two massive swarms of birds dance in flight over city. For a moment, they exist not as birds, but as abstract entities. Uxbal fixates on this display, which is at once bizarre and extraordinary.

  

Calatrava Bridge, Barcelona. Creative Commons, Zio Fabio.

Stylistic distinctions between the two films reflect their unique historical contexts. Salt of the Earth was produced under tremendous political pressures. Actual workers participated in the production process, lending a greater degree of authenticity and making  Salt slightly more astonishing than if it had relied purely on professional actors. In some ways, Salt of the Earth and Biutiful represent polar opposites; in terms of scale, stylization, casting, sound, and complexity of the mise-en-scene, the films could hardly be more different. Yet, both films convey a particular experience of Mexican transplants, engaging issues of male anxiety, gender equality and inequality, and the adverse consequences of free-market capitalism. They occupy separate parts of the temporal and geographic spectrum (1950s United States, and present-day Spain), yet the films address a number of related cultural questions. A full comparative analysis is beyond the scope of this entry. Instead, I will outline the construction and experience of women in the Mexican émigré culture.

 

Salt of the Earth may be considered groundbreaking for its apparent foray into feminist activism. It subverts, or at least challenges, an established gender order in post-War America, and does so rather obliquely. When Esperanza articulates her condition, it is without flourish or euphemism. Early in the film, she shies away from politics and tacitly accepts her domestic identity. For instance, she asserts her ambivalence about entering the union meeting with the other women. Moreover, it is Consuela (Angela Sanchez) who proposes the women’s auxiliary branch for the miners’ union. In the wake of the meeting, Ramón brusquely acknowledges, “At least you didn’t make a fool out of yourself like Consuela.”

The formation of the auxiliary, and its ultimate effectiveness in maintaining the picket line after a court injunction prohibits future miners’ strikes, reflects a morality in the filmic universe of Salt, which contends that men and women are essentially the same. Although tensions exist between husbands and their wives, a mutually beneficial partnership gradually emerges in the film. Ramón even invokes unity between “brothers and sisters” in the aftermath of the attempted eviction. Still, feminine acquisition of a labor relations discourse, and the subjection of women to physical violence (in the form of strikes and imprisonment), runs contrary to many of the entrenched gender norms espoused by the men.

In one of the most memorable dialogues in the film, Esperanza asserts Ramon’s total reliance on her involvement in the negotiations: “You can’t win this strike without me. You can’t win anything without me.” He responds with a threatening gesture, but it elicits no spasm of fear; rather, it spawns her complete renunciation of “the old way.” Esperanza’s final instructions, “Sleep where you like, but not with me,” convey the transformative potential of her political engagement in realigning power dynamics within the home.

Interestingly, Biutiful presents a far more ambivalent picture of the Mexican female. In Salt of the Earth, men occasionally adopt a feminine perspective, as when Ramón hangs the wash to dry and wonders why indoor plumbing had not been a major union demand from the beginning. But masculine and feminine perspectives in Biutiful seem nearly irreconcilable. Uxbal’s wife Marambra is presented as rather wretched and manipulative, even if these traits are beyond her control and likely symptomatic of her mental illness. Whereas Esperanza is indispensible to Ramon, Marambra seems only to sap Uxbal’s energy: her alcoholism and apparent bipolarity, her incessant need for sex, and her total economic dependence add up to a woman who resembles a child more than a spouse. Marambra also actively undermines Uxbal’s attempts to create and maintain order in the household. His exertion of control is not coercive, but rather intended to establish much-needed boundaries for his children, Ana and Mateo.

Nowhere is the fissure between male and female perspectives exemplified more clearly than in a late sequence in Uxbal’s brother’s strip club. Whether Iñáarritu intends to communicate something about Mexican, Spanish or European attitudes towards women is not entirely clear. What is evident, however, is that objectification of the female is rampant, and the audience’s limited exposure to such imagery prior to this scene merely reflects Uxbal’s relative dignity within the film’s dubious moral spectrum. Perhaps what is more shocking than the seedy costumes, inflatable decorative flesh, incessant pounding music, and seizure-inducing lights, is the exchange that occurs between Uxbal and a young woman (whom his brother boasts he has slept with). Their physical proximity only amplifies the sense that she and Uxbal are separated by a lifetime of experiences. Her youth underscores his impending death, seemingly accelerated by his drug and alcohol-induced intoxication. When she asks why he isn’t dancing, he responds, “Because I’m dying.” It is unclear why he is doing what he is doing – perhaps it is a defensive strategy in this grotesque and demeaning atmosphere. A profound sense of isolation and male anxiety settles around Uxbal at that moment. It is a loneliness that no female presence can attenuate.

 

 

 

 

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[1] Esteve Riambau and Casimiro Torreiro,“This Film is Going to Make History,” Cineaste 19 (1992): 50.

The Myth of Economic Opportunities for Women in Osaka Elegy and Flowing

Kenji Mizoguchi's Naniwa Ereji (Osaka Elegy) and Mikio Naruse's film, Nagareru (Flowing), are films that seem to speak to each other across the divide of time. Osaka Elegy came out in 1936, while Flowing came out in 1956, and so the films sit in history on either side of World War II. While the films were made nearly exactly twenty years apart from each other, and by different directors, both star the actress Isuzu Yamada, and both are deeply invested in exploring the condition of life for the women in their respective eras. Elegy and Flowing are inherently different films – they differ in their frames of reference, their directors, and subject matter. Yet both films provide commentary on the pre-war and post-war economic and social opportunities for women.

In Osaka Elegy, Isuzu Yamada plays Ayako Murai, a young working class girl who embodies the popular idea of a modern girl, or moga, that was Japan's answer to the flappers in American youth culture. Modern girls were presented as sexually promiscuous, financially independent working girls who were uninterested in politics or social concerns, and only in themselves and their affairs. Ayako is Mizoguchi's answer to the popular image of the modern girl – but he simultaneously subverts the image as he creates it.

By the end of the film, Ayako does become the image of the modern girl – finely coiffed hair, stylish accessories, western clothing – but she is styled in other images first. She is first dressed very simply, in Japanese style robes with her hair pulled into a modest bun. Ayako is the picture perfect obedient daughter. When her father is about to be arrested for embezzlement, she becomes the mistress of her boss – donning a more expensive kimono and the elaborate hairstyle of a bride. When she finds that the only way of supporting herself and her family is to continue to be the mistress of older men, Ayako dons the western look of the “modern girl.” In her patriarchal society, this modern girl is viewed as a threat because of her ability to provide for herself and choose her her sexual partners. But for Ayako, its just a costume for a roll she must play in order to survive.

When her former coworker, Susumu, who also had proposed marriage to her previously, comes to visit her at her own apartment, the dramatic nature of Ayako's costume is acted out. She greets him in one half of the room, and they sit down to a western style table and chairs, and she seems the master of this lavishly decorated apartment. Yet as she confesses to Susumu what she has done, becoming a mistress to support her family, she moves into the other half of the apartment – which is decorated in a very traditionally Japanese style. She becomes more defeated as the scene goes on, retreating further into the room – the illusion is revealed, and the audience and the actors have all been brought backstage. The illusion of the modern girl is destroyed, and economic mobility is confirmed to still be under the rule of patriarchal authority.

In Mikio Naruse's Flowing, Isuzu Yamada now plays Otsuta, the head geisha of a struggling geisha house. Here, the post-war outlook on economic authority for women is even more bleak. In Flowing there is barely even the illusion that it is glamorous or an option for the women to be the masters of their own money and destiny. The life as a geisha is not shown as an existence floating above the world, a sequence of delightful parties and merriment - but one of debt and duty, resentment and resignation. The world of the geisha is collapsing in around Otsuta, who strives to keep her house together, as being a geisha is what she is most suited to.

The Tsuta house seems to be a place of dead ends for the women who live in it. Otsuta is a middle aged woman long separated from her husband and father of her grown up daughter, Katsuyo. Once a renowned geisha, Otsuta has fallen on difficult times and has few junior geisha to support her house. Katsuyo, although brought up within a geisha house, never had skills for the arts, and feels unsuitable to ever be married. Someko is a senior geisha buried in debt, who is later abandoned by her much younger boyfriend. At the start of the film, the house takes on a new maid, Oharu, a widower who has been rejected from other households for being considered too old to do maid's work. For each of them, they have nowhere to go but the Tsuta house, and depend on its functions for their livelihood - even as the geisha profession is becoming less profitable. Their confinement to this lifestyle is absolute, unless they marry out of it – an option each of them has found is not for them. The film even rarely strays from the setting of the house, only occasionally going to the neighboring streets and stores. Economic and social mobility is not even an illusion for Otsuta anymore.

Even with the bleak outlooks portrayed in both films, their endings show that neither Ayako or Otsuta are defeated by their social confinement. The last sequence in Osaka Elegy shows Ayako in profile striding down a dark street – and then instead of just fading out, the camera swings around to see a closeup of Ayako walking straight towards us. The audience is forced to look at her, and on her face is not a look of resignation. She is walking straight ahead into the future.

Likewise, the women in Flowing do not give up on the geisha house. In the last sequence, Otsuta is singing and training young geisha students along with Someka. Katsuyo is practicing sewing in a room above the shamisen rehearsal. Outisde, the river continues flowing, and life continues on.

 

Black Swan and the Hazards of Female Autonomy

In many ways, Aronfsky’s award-winning Black Swan is a film about femininity and repressed womanhood. Following the struggles of Nina Sayers, played by Natalie Portman, to master the lead role in Swan Lake, Black Swan focuses on the pressure on women not only to reach perfection but to be perfect. In this respect the film’s message is clear. This pressure is destructive, leading to the main character’s breakdown and ostensible suicide.

When it comes to more nuanced notions of gender and repression, however, Black Swan becomes much more thematically murky. For purposes of this post, I will focus on the issues of female adulthood, independence, and sexuality in our protagonist, Nina. Through its depiction of her journey to self-destruction, Black Swan delivers the clear message that a free woman is a dangerous woman, perhaps less miserable than the trapped girl but certainly more devastating.

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The primary female influence on Nina is her mother, Erica Sayers, played by Barbara Hershey. A failed ballerina who gave up her career for her daughter, Erica lives vicariously through Nina. At the same time, Erica keeps her daughter in a consistently infantile state. Nina’s room is pink and filled with stuffed animals, and her bedroom door is perpetually open. When Nina gets the lead role in Swan Lake, her mother buys her a cake and, after Nina refuses a large piece, almost throws the whole thing out. The proper balance is restored only when Nina relents, if only a little, and Erica feeds Nina some frosting off the tip of her finger as one might to a baby or a pet. Even Nina’s sexuality is strictly corralled. Erica sometimes spends the night in her daughter’s room, explicitly preventing Nina from exploring that part of herself. This mother-daughter relationship, clearly, is not a healthy one, and it is one that explicitly keeps Nina from entering into adulthood, much less taking control of it.

This is the Nina we have at the start of Black Swan, a young woman trapped in a child trapped in a woman’s body, and this is the Nina who is perfect for the innocent White Swan but not so for the dark and sensual Black Swan. This is the woman the head of the ballet company, Vincent Cassel’s Thomas Leroy, casts as the Swan Queen.

When we first meet Thomas, he is stalking through a room of ballerinas, appraising them, touching them as a mark of who gets to audition for the Swan Queen and who does not. This scene oozes male dominance, male ownership, over the female, and this impression is affirmed when Nina visits his office in order to ask for the role. She knows to do her hair and put on lipstick, to put on a sexualized feminine presentation. And Thomas notices, Thomas points it out, and Thomas grabs her and kisses her.

To the film’s credit, this scene is portrayed as the assault it is, and when she bites him and runs away we see his behavior as horrifying, sexist, and unfair. Nina’s talent should win her this role, not Thomas’s decision to take sexual advantage of an employee.

But it is this scene—or, more accurately, her willingness to fight in a sexually aggressive situation—that lands Nina the part.

Repeatedly, what can be described most accurately as sexual harassment or all-out assault from Thomas is depicted as disturbing but overwhelmingly necessary or justified, not only to get ahead in the ballet industry but also for Nina’s personal growth. Intrusive questions about Nina’s sexual habits, an order to masturbate, and even a physical seduction are Thomas’s methods for teaching Nina to become the Black Swan, and this harassment sparks Nina’s sexual awakening. Nina even develops feelings for Thomas. Repeatedly the film tells us that Nina is repressed, infantilized, shut in by herself and her surroundings, and while Thomas is certainly not the good guy for what he does, his role as sexual gatekeeper blurs what should be a morally clear-cut issue. It’s no coincidence that the director states, “That whole scene with Natalie when he tells her to go touch herself, it's really not that out of line” (Source). For the director and for the film it isn’t, because the end product is justified by the means.

The product here being a woman crafted into the perfect Swan Queen, the means an aggressive male authority figure forcing his sexuality on a female employee, something the rest of us might call a crime.

One must be careful, however, to note that Nina’s sexuality is not depicted as a particularly good thing. In keeping with tradition, the dark and even the murderous are sexual in Black Swan. Perhaps because that which is repressed must be released in an equally violent manner, Nina’s sexuality is destructive and a marker of her own moral degradation. Her growing independence is treated in a similar manner, and develops alongside this sexuality.

Take Mila Kunis’s Lily, the embodiment of everything Nina has buried deep inside her. Free in her dance, in her consumption, in her speech, in her manners, in her sex, Lily acts as Nina’s foil, both for the character and for the audience. She is also the one to lead Nina into autonomy, especially sexual autonomy, first by a visit to a club and then through oral sex. Lily literally takes Nina away from the controlled environment of her mother’s apartment, but even then, she spikes Nina’s drink. This free spirit is deceitful and dangerously so, and as Nina becomes more and more confident and sexually aggressive, performing a mind-blowing performance as the Black Swan and kissing Thomas in front of the other dancers, she becomes more violent and morally questionable, killing “Lily”/herself and attempting to cover up the crime.

Also notable is that, during their sex scene, Nina is not actually with Lily but with the dark version of herself, Lily simply a hallucination. (I could go into the theme of female homosexuality as something dark, forbidden, wrong, and tantalizing here, but that’s a topic for another post.) After reaching orgasm, Nina is literally smothered by her own doppelganger, this sexual release leading to a sort of breakdown and death.

By repressing all of these aspects of her adulthood and womanhood, what could be healthy is blown up to unhealthy extremes—one can’t help but wonder, though, just what would healthy extremes be? In Black Swan we only see unhealthy femininity, unhealthy sexuality, unhealthy womanhood. Healthy limits are never defined, and it is in fact left questionable whether these even exist, especially for women.

By the end of the film, Nina can be considered an independent actor. She has broken away from her mother and calmly convinced Thomas to give her the role of the Swan Queen. She has even gained control of her own sexuality, as seen in her kiss of Thomas. At the same time, however, we have actually seen her physical metamorphosis into the Black Swan—a hallucination or delusion, perhaps, but no less a symbol of transformation into something dark and unnatural. After all, escaping her mother involved breaking her mother’s hand. The relationship with Thomas was never a healthy one, and so even this expression of her desires is darkened. Perhaps most importantly, reaching this stage in her adulthood has literally cost Nina her moral and physical life. In order to keep the part of the Swan Queen Nina has committed murder, if only in her mind, and in actuality she has stabbed herself.

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In Black Swan, we follow what is in many ways a coming of age tale. Nina, a sexually innocent young woman, is infantilized by her mother and surrounded by figures of an aggressive and developed sexuality, and in order to play the role of the Black Swan, she must force herself to grow up, and she must do so quickly. At every stage of this process, however, she is either revictimized or must victimize others, including herself, in order to reach any sort of autonomy. It is tempting to read this negative portrayal as a scathing criticism of a sexist culture, but there is scarce evidence for such a reading; not in a world where even Lily, the closest thing Nina has to a friend and the film to a positive portrayal of female sexual independence, is cruel enough to spike Nina’s drink in a club. If this is how friends help friends, I’d hate to see how they hurt each other.

Black Swan is a fairy tale of broken womanhood. It is a world where mothers are wicked and little girls might be unhappy at home but at least they’re not stabbing themselves with broken glass. Black Swan is a world where women can’t win and not necessarily because of their circumstances, a world where men hurt women and this is bad, yes, but to some extent justified because it seems there is something fundamentally twisted about female sexuality anyway.

It is a world where, the moment you let the women free, they’re more than capable of destroying themselves.

And Introduction to Mikio Naruse with When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

    Amongst film directors from Japan, there are three that are the most internationally recognized: Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, and Kenji Mizoguchi. Each of them has a certain claim to fame. Kurosawa, for his sweeping epics of samurai and sword play. Ozu, for his immaculte depictions of every day life for the common family, and the delights and dissapointments that are brought on with the passage of time. Mizoguchi, both for his vivid period films and stirring contemporary films focused on the difficulties of women in society. 

    Outside of Japan, Mikio Naruse is relatively unknown compared to these three, although he is often considered as just below them in prestige. Naruse was a contemporary of them, and directed around 80 films in his lifetime. Naruse even was trained at the same studio along with Ozu, and the two are often compared together for their thematic focus on the Japanese family in transition as the culture was rapidly becoming urbanized. Yet Naruse's films have a much bleaker viewpoint, with none of the transcendence or light comedy of Ozu's. His filming is less stylized and not as recognizably "Japanese" as his contemporaries, although the content and heart of his films were completely relevant to the society. These features may be why Naruse has been long overlooked in international film studies. Naruse's storytelling, however, is just as finely crafted as those of his contemporaries. With films centering 
around strong female characters, Naruse's stories are rich with emotional depth and clarity. The strengths that lie at the heart of his films are exemplified in his 1960 film, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. 

    When a Woman Ascends the Stairs follows the story of Keiko Yashiro, played by Hideko Takamine, an aging widow working as a bar hostess in the glittering nightlife district of Ginza in Tokyo. She was married at a very young age to her true love - who died in a truck accident, leaving her with nothing. Now, after turning to hostessing to support herself, Keiko is too old for her line of work and finds her future prospects closing in around her. 

    In the first ten minutes of the film the audience is shown how Keiko can escape her life as a hostess. In the opening scene, the other hostesses from her bar are celebrating the marriage of one of their former co-workers. Marriage is one way out. After being scolded for poor sales by the owner of the bar, Keiko wishes she could open up her own bar and be her own boss. Investing and becoming a self-employed entrepreneur is another way out. Naruse then presents the darkest, and most extreme alternative - as Keiko returns to the bar, a crowd of hostesses gather around a stretcher being rushed into an ambulance. A hostess from another bar has committed suicide. Death is another way out. These are the options available to Keiko, each confining in a different way. Marriage would permanently make her dependant on a man, and owning a bar would commit her to a business that she despises. Death would be completely giving up, proving that she was unable to handle the difficulties forced upon her. 

    Keiko's obstinence, and her absolute refusal to humiliate herself for anyone else's gain, demonstrates Naruse's attention to the emotional realities of women. The entire world of the Ginza bar is not seen from the customer's perspective - an entitled male perspective - but from the worker's behind-the-scenes viewpoint. The film shows how they approach their work, and is not the narrow portrait of the giggling and charming hostess only there to serve her patron. Even if the other hostesses are not as emotionally burdened as Keiko, they each have their own emotional core and physical reality that their actions stem from. For each of them lies the struggle of earning a profit, maintaining self respect, and preserving the outward image of a woman who is self-reliant. Yuki, the owner of Keiko's rival bar, buys a car even as she struggles to cover her dept. Keiko struggles with debt as well, as she can barely  
afford her appartment and a new kimono. For these women, the physical demands of reality are 
innescapable. The glitz and glam of Ginza nightlife is not the reality for them, it is the image they are bound to uphold for their customers. Keiko's reality is one of dissapointments, debts, and self compromise. 

    Naruse's outlook is bleak, but the attention he gives to telling the lives of his characters is absolute. His insight to the struggles of women is as illuminating as it is grim. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is an excellent introduction to the richness of Naruse's storytelling, and a film that can hopefully draw more viewers into Naruse's world of strong female characters. 

Girls and boys, and the daddy who got away

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who loved her father very much. One sad day, her father went away never to return, leaving behind a very sad little girl who grew up into a very brave, very smart young woman who never stopped her missing her daddy. One day she stumbles into a strange new world and, in a quest for independence, a quest chasing after her father, she discovers him only to lose him again, and only to discover herself. In the end, she returns home.

This is the story, and it is repeated over and over again. Interestingly, two recent uses of this storyline occur in the Syfy channel’s Alice miniseries and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (AiW) film, both adaptations of Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Although sexuality and Alice’s father barely figure in the original novels (if at all), they become vital components of both modern works, resulting in a female adulthood that revolves around a choice between men.

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Syfy’s Alice can be considered a sequel to and modern reimagining of the original story. Once again run by a tyrannical Red Queen, Wonderland has become a futuristic city of people dependent upon tea made of human emotion, extracted from kidnapped victims from our world. This is a world on the brink of collapse. It is a world in need of saving.

And who better to save it than a young woman named Alice?

In Alice, when Alice was a little girl, her father disappeared, and ever since then, she has been searching: with maps, online, and even in relationships. “Just because Daddy left doesn’t mean they all will,” Alice’s mother tells her, and here we have our first major difference between the two Alices: in the novel, she is a child first, an essentially asexual being driven by curiosity and a sense of adventure. But as a young woman, Alice’s gender and sexuality cannot be ignored; she has breasts, she has a past, and she has boyfriends.

All of a sudden, growing up has taken on a whole new romantic and sexualized meaning, one dependent on her relationships with others. As this quote tells us, a dichotomy exists between Alice’s father, the figure who presides over her childhood, and her (male) romantic partners, those who preside over her current life. This Alice is consistently caught between men, with her choices and motivations dependent on these figures. Consequently, this Alice’s trip to Wonderland is not driven by a strange white rabbit but, rather, a man with suspiciously rabbit-ear-like hair kidnapping her boyfriend, Jack.

After Alice arrives, she finds her way to a tea shop, run by the Hatter, only this Hatter is not particularly mad. He is attractive, charismatic, and a member of the resistance against the Queen. Unresolved sexual tension abounds, until such time as Alice is captured and reunited with Jack.

Jack Hart, that is—the Queen’s son, already engaged to another woman. Another member of the resistance, he came to our world with a purpose, you see: to find the daughter of the brainwashed man who makes tea shops possible. Alice’s father, you see, no longer remembers his old life, and he is now the lead scientist responsible for emotion extraction.

At this point, Alice remains in Wonderland not to rescue Jack but to rescue her father—the parent who left, the parent who drives her forward, the parent who does not keep her safe and comfortable as her dinner-cooking mother does. Although Alice is still reeling from these revelations about Jack, her journey now revolves around becoming daddy’s little girl once more.

Eventually, Alice does meet her father, but no amount of stories about his past can seem to make him remember. Only after Alice begins to cry, infantilizing herself back into that little girl, does he get some inkling of his memory back. Alice’s father comforts her with her old childhood nickname.

The moment quickly fades, however, as the Queen’s guards storm the area. Alice is once again taken prisoner, as is the Hatter. Ultimately they escape and soon find themselves in a room full of prisoners from our world, zombie-like figures with their emotions being drained from them. “Wake up!” Alice yells, and on the other side of a video feed, watching the commotion, her father remembers.

In the end, it is not infantilization but an act of adult agency that brings Alice’s father to her, and after a decade of separation, the two share a poignant reunion.

His death should come as no surprise.

By this point, Alice is no longer a little girl. She no longer trusts Jack, a man clearly wrong for her, but does trust the Hatter. Once daddy’s little girl, Alice has become a leader urging others to save themselves. This Alice, all grown up, has no need for daddy anymore. Having matured, it is now time for her to let go of her father, to let go of childhood, to defeat the Red Queen and leave Wonderland, and move on.

Once Alice is home, though, the story is not yet over. It can’t be, because that would leave her alone. Just as she finishes packing away her map of potential father-locations, Hatter arrives, and the two share a passionate kiss. In this way, an exchange of women reminiscent of Elizabethan-era plays is finalized: Alice moves from a strange limbo between two men, an absent father and a very present boyfriend, to the new “right” significant other. Although seemingly a self-driven character, her motives and storyline remain tied to the men in her life, and most actions are motivated by, or symbolically tied to, these characters.

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Although a very different reinterpretation, AIW shares many thematic similarities with Alice. Set in the 1800’s, the film follows the original Alice’s return to Wonderland, years later. Notably, AIW begins not with Alice, but with her father. He is discussing a business idea when a young Alice, frail and frightened, emerges. She has had another dream about her first trip to Wonderland and needs her father to comfort her. “Do you think I’ve gone round the bend?” she asks him.

Gravely, he answers, “You’re mad, bonkers, off your head. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

Even after his death years later, Alice’s father continues to dominate the narrative of her life. When Alice’s mother reacts badly to one of her daughter’s jokes, Alice’s immediate response is, “Father would have laughed.” When the Mad Hatter asks if he has gone mad, she repeats her father’s words nearly word-for-word: “I’ll tell you a secret,” she says. “All the best people are.” Even during the climax of the film, when Alice must defeat the Jabberwocky, it is her father’s philosophy that leads her to victory; he believed in “six impossible things before breakfast,” and by recounting her own mad adventures, she saves the day.

Alice’s father, in other words, is responsible for the person Alice is and becomes, creating a curious and precocious young woman who cannot conform to the societal standards her mother both stands for and enforces. Similar to Alice, while her mother represents a drab and ensnaring domesticity, Alice’s father represents the adventure and independence of Wonderland. It is this mindset, in combination with a fear of being trapped in domesticity with a truly atrocious suitor, that leads Alice to chase the white rabbit down the rabbit hole one more time.

In the end, having recovered the “muchness” she lost just as she lost her father, Alice returns home, now an adult with a particular life in mind. After turning down her suitor, she decides to follow her father’s business dream and co-founds the East India Trading Company.

As tempting as it is to construe this ending as Alice taking control of her own life, however, her father’s profound influence makes another interpretation necessary: namely, that Alice chooses her father, rather than herself. After all, this business venture was her father’s idea. The movie begins with him proposing it, and it is always discussed in regards to him.

Although the final shot of AIW of Alice sailing into freedom at the head of a new economic empire, she nevertheless does so while chasing her father’s dream.

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In both of these modern interpretations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Alice’s life consists of two domains: a domestic sphere of comfort and even stagnation, represented by a mother, and a public sphere of growth and adventure, represented by a father. Unlike in the original novels, however, these Alices are young women on the cusp of adulthood; they are now women first. For both the Alice of Syfy’s Alice and the Alice of Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, growing up thus becomes about a choice of men: whether to stay with father or to stay with Hatter, whether to marry or remain daddy’s girl. Other options are never even brought up in the script, much less considered by Alice.

Although supposedly self-driven, these Alices are not their own people, not really. They do not even seem aware that they could perhaps choose, as they once did as children, to follow solely themselves.

Glee Season 1: Violence, Rape, and the Problem of Gender

Unless you have been living under a TV rock this past year, you have no doubt heard of Fox’s hit show, Glee. Part musical, part melodrama, part satire, Glee follows the daily lives of a high school glee club and associated adults. Due to its reliance on stereotypes, Glee walks a fine line between progressivism and tired tropes, between reinforcing these stereotypes and pointing out their absurdity. While successful in some arenas (such as homophobia), this balance is particularly shaky when it comes to gender. Despite its seemingly progressive nature, Glee relies on traditional gender expectations to a dangerous extent, as evidenced by its use of romance, pregnancy, and even unacknowledged rape.

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To say much of Glee revolves around romance is a bit like saying the club sings songs sometimes. Rachel is into Finn who is dating Quinn, until Finn and Quinn break up and he and Rachel date for a while until he breaks up with her and she begins dating Jesse, only she and Finn are still in love and then Jesse betrays Rachel and Rachel and Finn become an item. Will is married to Terri but has a thing with Emma who is going to marry Ken until Terri and Will split up and Will and Emma kiss, only then Will kisses another woman and Emma and Will split up and Emma starts dating a dentist and then Will kisses her again. And that’s not even getting into the side-characters’ love lives.

What is telling about these romances, however, is just how dependent they are on traditional gender roles. Take the break-up between Rachel and Finn. The initiator, Finn, is driven by very predictably “male” motivations: lust, and a dislike of actually listening to his girlfriend talk. Granted, some degree of restlessness can be expected due to his recent breakup with Quinn, and Finn does regret his decision and spends a good chunk of the first season pining after Rachel. That said, the basic story is still this: a guy leaves his clingy girl for other hot chicks, a plotline that is not only cliché but also insulting to both men and women.

The story between Will and Emma is nearly identical, only in this case, Emma all but disappears from the show after their quasi-breakup. Now that she and Will are no longer steeped in unresolved sexual tension, she has served her purpose on the show.

Intertwined with these romances are the pregnancy storylines, which range from predictable to borderline offensive. Both are based on one fundamental idea: women lie.

First there is Terri, Will’s shrew of a wife. Terri is the one with the power in their dysfunctional relationship, which of course means that she is both manipulative and emotionally abusive. When Terri believes herself to be pregnant, she is thrilled, as this means she can keep Will with her; when Terri learns this was a “hysterical pregnancy,” a false pregnancy brought upon by her own womanly emotions, she decides upon the most logical course of action: to lie to Will and fake a pregnancy for several months, going so far as to blackmail a doctor into showing her husband another woman’s ultrasound.

When Will learn of this deception, he is understandably upset. Who wouldn’t be? To the show’s credit, his pain and his love for Terri and his would-be unborn child are palpable, and the show does not shy away from allowing Will to tear up. Unfortunately, the show also does not shy away from making the scene in which Will learns of Terri’s betrayal downright offensive.

In theory, the scene of Will’s realization is a tragically honest depiction of pain, hurt, and horror for both Will and Terri. In actuality, it portrays borderline physical abuse, with Will grabbing Terri’s wrist, pushing her against a wall, and violently ripping the pregnancy pad off of her stomach.

This borderline abuse is also portrayed as justified behavior from the show’s seemingly ‘good’ and ‘admirable’ protagonist. After all, Will’s emotional reaction is understandable, is it not? And he’s merely acting out his pain. And it’s not as if he actually hits Terri, just overpowers her and scares her a little.

Considering that one in four women in the United States suffer from domestic abuse at some point in their lifetimes, according to the National Institute of Justice and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, such a message is dangerous, reinforcing the popular idea that there exists an acceptable level of abuse. Unlike Terri’s deception, which happens rarely and, to this extent, probably never, this sort of partner violence happens all the time.

And yet, the behavior condemned is not that of the man grabbing a woman’s wrist and backing her up against a wall.

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Quinn’s pregnancy storyline is not much better. She, too, lies about her pregnancy—not about its existence, but about the father. The father, you see, is Puck, an irresponsible jock who does little more than bully others or sleep around. Despite his low intellect, her boyfriend Finn is at least somewhat responsible and loyal, and he is taken advantage of by Quinn again and again: for example, he takes a job to support her and the baby, and his mother even takes Quinn in after her parents kick her out.

To the show’s credit, Quinn is not simply condemned for her premarital coitus and subsequent deception; rather, she is portrayed sympathetically, shown as struggling with acceptance from her peers and even her parents. Nevertheless, the show places the responsibility for the pregnancy on Quinn, even though she was raped.

When Quinn and Puck sleep together, Quinn is drunk. When Quinn expresses hesitation, Puck’s response is, “Here, have another wine cooler.” What the show does not seem to realize, however, is that a drunk person cannot consent. By purposefully getting Quinn drunk in order to have sex with her, Puck rapes her, yet another instance of violence against women that happens all the time.

So much, in fact, that it seems to have become normalized to the point of invisibility. Glee never acknowledges this rape but plays it up as romance, and the responsibility for this sexual activity and for the pregnancy, Glee tells us, rests primarily with Quinn.

Another particularly egregious example of unacknowledged rape also involves drugging. In particular, when Sue Sylvester, the evil gym teacher, wants to blackmail Principal Figgins, she takes him out to dinner, spikes his drink, brings him back to bed, strips him, and takes incriminating pictures. Sue then blackmails the principal by saying she will show the pictures to his wife, thus making his wife think he is having an affair.

Just imagine this sequence of events with the genders switched, with a man spiking a woman’s drink and taking her to bed—it’s more than a little disgusting, isn’t it? At best, Sue merely pretends to have raped Figgins, all the while relying on the expected public perception that they were having an affair.

Instead of focusing on Sue’s actions, the show emphasizes the humor of framing a man for cheating and then plays this plotline for laughs. After all, it is not as if a man can be raped, and especially not by a woman.

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As should be evident by now, Glee is not exactly the fun progressive show it makes itself out to be. Nor can it even be considered “just” satire or comedy—the scene where Will finds out the truth of Terri’s pregnancy, for instance, is certainly not played for laughs. By hiding behind humor and common tropes, by writing as if the show exists in a vacuum of character interactions even as it draws on common stereotypes, Glee does a disservice to its viewers. Even as it condemns certain behaviors such as using homosexual slurs, it normalizes gender norms and violence against women. In this way, the show reinforces such behaviors even as it makes them invisible by never acknowledging its own usage of them.

A mainstream show holds a responsibility to be aware of the messages it sends out. Unfortunately, Glee does not even seem aware of its own gendered storylines and themes.

 

The Essential Women of Film Fashion

Why do we love film? Obviously, that’s a big question – huge – and certainly too big to tackle here.  But let me try: in so many words, we love film because we love any reminder of what it means to live the human experience. And a lot goes into a film to earn our trust on that. Whether or not the plot is plausible in any way, we crave that feeling of knowing we’re in good hands – that something about what we’re seeing is authentic and genuine. Sets, locations, props, lighting – they all contribute to our ability to imagine ourselves within the context of that movie. But arguably the most important, at least to me, is fashion.

Now, why do we love fashion? Still a tough, slippery question to try to answer. But I believe we love it because it’s the best, most direct way of telling the world who we are. Life choices, social standing, our level of creativity, our goals in life, our human experiences thus far and the way we see the world, the way we hope for the extraordinary. You can’t possibly tell a person all of these things in your first conversation with them. You can, however, wear clothes that show them all.

As a film audience, we automatically get a sense of a character from the clothes on her back. (For the sake of space, I’m being sexist and dealing with women’s wear; the same can be said for men too, though.) Once fashion becomes important to you, it becomes a part of the way you see the world. And once a character from a film becomes a style icon, history has shown that culture will never be the same.

It may not say great things for the fashion industry’s ability to push forth in fresh directions, but it is a comforting fact to know that, every season, I will open a fashion magazine and see many of the same film icons referenced as inspiration. The people that, without fail, continue to be the source of inspiration for trendy new runway shows. The pieces that say something, that suit certain classic personalities. The effortless looks that are the cleanest ways to tell the world who we are.

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Katharine Hepburn, Sylvia Scarlett (1935) / You are: A spunky, determined, perhaps career-driven woman who likes men…but sure doesn’t need them.

Four days out of seven, I wear pants. (That’s an actual statistic.) I wonder if that would be true without Katharine Hepburn. Sylvia Scarlett may not be the most popular of her films (or quite frankly, the best), but pants appearing on screen – on the legs of a woman – would change fashion, film, and the American woman forever. But she did more than simply wear pants: somehow, Katharine had the magic to turn wide-legged, high-waisted trousers into the boldest statement of female independence. We take for granted the jeans and slacks hanging in our closets. Without her undeniable sense of self, I wonder how long it would’ve taken for them to reach us.

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Jean Seberg, Breathless (1959) / You are: A tomboy or a Francophile. Or both.

 

 Somehow, I made it through 19 years without ever having seen this Godard masterpiece. Luckily, the rest of the world was not so slow: at least twice a year, I open an issue of Vogue, Elle or Vanity Fair only to see a black and white photograph of Jean’s sweet-yet-sly smirk surrounded by cut-outs of fedora hats, striped boat-neck shirts, skinny black pants and little cinch purses to help readers “get the look.” Breathless put a charming, doe-eyed American on the map as a model for Parisian style – and we have looked to her to mimic it ever since.

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Brigitte Bardot, And God Created Woman (1956) / You are: A feminine, vivacious woman who may or may not be used to men falling at her feet.

Pouty lips, check. Wavy hair, check. Hourglass shape, check plus. Whether she appeared on screen in underwear, sheer shirt dresses or... well, nothing at all, Brigitte set a new standard for what it means to be a sexy woman. In life and film, she dressed her bombshell personality with cinched waists, corseted bodices, full skirts and dark liquid eyeliner. Brigitte Bardot opened a door for women, showing that a sexualized image could actually be empowering – not demeaning. This was an idea that would endure not only through the next decade, but as a timeless template for seductive style.

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Uma Therman, Pulp Fiction (1994) / You are: Mysterious and tough as nails, period.

 

Yes, I’m going there. Fashion might not have been the first thing on your mind while watching Quentin Tarantino’s crowning achievement, but women left the theatres ready to bring touches of Mia Wallace into their everyday. Think black: midnight nail polish, inky blunt bobs, and sharp dark stilettos exploded with Pulp Fiction. More importantly, women tend to look to these accessories for the quickest way to an edgy, darker style even today. We’ll pass on the needle through the heart, though – no need to be that edgy. 

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I know I’m committing a blogging crime by leaving another pretty Hepburn off this list (the little black dress is incredibly iconic and one of my favorite films of all time, Funny Face, is so fabulously rooted in fashion that I felt I couldn’t do them justice), but the truth is that there are still so many more. The newbies – Zooey Deschanel, Anne Hathaway, Sienna Miller, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kirsten Dunst. The classics – Lauren Bacall, Catherine Deneuve, Grace Kelly, Greta Garbo, Diane Keaton. They are archetypes of the facets of female style that don’t grow stale: the girly girl, the sophisticate, the tomboy, the low-maintenance, the eclectic. It’s no secret that women are complex, if not slightly confusing, creatures…but these style icons complete us. I venture to say that is why their faces smile up at us from glossy pages on a regular basis. And with these staples already in our closets, we’ll walk confident, knowing we’re already one timeless step ahead.

Women in Television: Lovers, Mothers, and… Oh.

The depiction of women in television tends to be problematic, to say the least. This is true from ensemble shows to one-character shows, from comedy to science-fiction. For purposes of brevity, I’m going to focus on three particular shows, each with a different format, topic, and genre: Stargate: Atlantis, House, and Fringe. These shows demonstrate not only the continued dominance of male characters but also the limits of gender presentation in television, especially as it relates to women.

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For those of us who don’t frequent the SyFy Channel, Stargate: Atlantis (SGA) is a fairly good example of how science-fiction shows tend to treat women. An ensemble show about an expedition team from modern-day Earth that sets up base in a distant galaxy, SGA focuses on Atlantis’s primary exploratory team: John Sheppard, the sharp-witted team leader; Teyla, an alien warrior and eventual mother; Ronon, an alien warrior; and Rodney McKay, the brilliant yet socially awkward scientist. Interestingly, of the three leaders of the Atlantis expedition, two are women, and so is the second head of Atlantis’s infirmary, Dr. Jennifer Keller. In other words, despite the majority male cast, both men and women hold important positions of power within the show. As tempting as it is to watch Teyla kick serious amounts of butt, however, significant issues exist surrounding how exactly these characters are used.

In SGA, it is easy to see that the show does not give every character equal attention, or even close to equal attention. In general, the show is about John and Rodney—their friendship, their personal struggles, their love lives, and all the times they save the day. Furthermore, Rodney is by far the quirkiest, most flawed, and most interesting character of the show, and while the male characters pale in comparison, the women become flatter than paper; for example, when Stargate SG-1's Samantha Carter joins SGA, her character is simplified down into a rather boring archetype: the Leader. Teyla, one of the main characters and a key player in Atlantis’s struggles against the Big Bad, falls into a similar trap. After seasons of being the Meditative Warrior, her final and most significant story arc centers around pregnancy, kidnapping, rescue at the hands of her (all male) team, and motherhood, after which her character receives even less screen time. Granted, the character’s pregnancy was the result of a real-life pregnancy, but this does not change the very particular “woman’s story” depicted onscreen.

The portrayal of women becomes even more problematic when one looks at the characters of the week—or, in the case of women, John’s love-interest of the week, a pattern often found within episodic works. John Sheppard is to Captain Kirk as CSI is to Law and Order: not exactly a carbon copy, but the idea’s the same. Even during the rare times when that week’s woman is not in love or lust with John, she is in love or lust with another male character or her characterization relies on stereotypes. Take, for instance, the fifth season episode “Whispers,” in which John and Dr. Carson Beckett meet an all-female Atlantis team. This team’s characters are, respectively: an uncharacterized background character, another uncharacterized background character, the mindless soldier, and Beckett’s love interest. Unlike most fictional men, these characters are not people first but, rather, women first, with stock characters imposed on them.

By the end of the show, only two female cast members remain: Teyla, the mother, and Jennifer Keller, Rodney’s love interest. By this point, their storylines have been reduced to that which is “feminine,” rather than that which is Teyla or Jennifer.

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A more mainstream example is Fox’s House, which follows the misanthropic antics of Dr. Gregory House and his associates. Once again, the show focuses on a male character; once again, the most original and flawed character is male. And, once again, the presentation and storylines of women rely on romance and motherhood. To demonstrate, let’s take a look at the women who have played the most significant roles in House: Allison Cameron, Thirteen, and Lisa Cuddy.

Although her character certainly develops, Cameron is nevertheless the “heart” of House’s team, just as you would expect from the main female character of a television show (or movie, or book, or comic…). At every point, she is also someone’s love interest, moving from House to Chase and, at several points, both at once; after all, it is not as if a single woman can be happy or have other principal interests.

Then we come to Thirteen, whose story initially revolves around being mysterious and slowly dying. Finally, it seems we have found a female character who has a life, concerns, and desires of her own, rather than that of some generic woman. Of course Thirteen and Foreman then become an item, and the issues surrounding this relationship become the impetus behind many of her decisions and even her storyline. In contrast, although this relationship forms an important part of Foreman’s character arc, most of his years on the show focus on his struggles to emulate and avoid becoming House. In other words, Foreman has had, and continues to have, a life outside his love interests; Thirteen’s storyline has become about the men in her life.

Although Cuddy is the youngest and first ever female Dean of Medicine, her storyline is similarly overshadowed by a will they/won’t they, did they/didn’t they relationship with House. Despite the fact that House is typically cruel and un-PC, one cannot help but be disturbed at the way half of Cuddy’s scenes involve being sexually harassed or ignored by House, often for humorous purposes. After all, it is one thing to depict a romance; it is quite another to depict love as harassment, and to depict a (female) character desiring the purveyor of such abuse. Similarly, although the audience is told Cuddy holds power due to her position, the show instead depicts Cuddy giving in to House or being summarily dismissed by him time and time again. Cuddy’s plotline predictably devolves into a desire to be a mother and her relationship with someone who is Not House, reinforcing this stereotypical female role.

Does it really surprise anyone that the last shot of the latest season was the clasped hands of Cuddy and House?

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Unlike, yet similar to, the aforementioned shows is Fringe. Another of Fox’s primetime dramas, Fringe is an effective blend of procedural and science-fiction elements, following the investigations of a Department of Defense unit looking into bizarre, or “fringe,” phenomena. The main characters of this show, the unit’s point team, are: FBI agent Olivia Dunham, a half-mad scientist named Walter Bishop, and Walter’s genius yet lifetime failure of a son, Peter Bishop. Also of note is Nina Sharp, the CFO of the mega-corporation Massive Dynamic.

Unlike in most science-fiction or investigative dramas, the primary investigative agent of Fringe is a woman. As in many shows in general, there is a man (Peter), and a woman (Olivia), and the unresolved sexual tension between the two of them could break down the barriers between alternate universes—which, if you’ve seen Fringe, it sort of does.

Did I mention Olivia strips down to her undergarments in the very first episode?

The feminization of Olivia’s character does not stop at titillation or love, however. During the first season, Olivia’s sister and niece move in, thus humanizing (or womanizing) Olivia without actually limiting the show by giving Olivia a child of her own. The viewer gets to see Olivia reading bedtime stories and skipping trips to the amusement park for work, but she can still go on dangerous assignments without the guilt of (or the audience’s judgment for) leaving a child motherless. As far as female representation goes, it’s a clever way to make sure we remember that this character is not a heartless automaton a la common perceptions of Hilary Clinton, even as she solves case after case after case.

Most of the women in Fringe are subjected to this feminization. Astrid Farnsworth, for instance, is theoretically an FBI agent and Olivia’s assistant. In practice, she is Walter’s lab assistant/babysitter. Not only does Astrid exist in the background for most episodes, but she also spends most of her time playing secretary, a role women are often confined to so that a show can increase female representation without actually having female characters do anything. Even Nina Sharp, the Fringe unit’s continuous nemesis/ally, is implied to have romantic feelings for William Bell, the head of Massive Dynamic. Depending on interpretation, many of her actions can be traced back to this bond.

Nevertheless, Fringe is progressive in a number of ways. Despite the issues in her presentation, Olivia, the show’s main character, is the one who carries a gun and makes discoveries. When a body is found under strange circumstances, Olivia Dunham is the first agent called, and typically the one to save the day. When kidnapped, Olivia saves herself.

Then there is Nina Sharp. Although William Bell is the puppeteer behind many strings, Nina controls nearly all of Massive Dynamics’ current actions and is the person the Fringe unit negotiates with, the person the Fringe unit threatens, the person the Fringe unit actually communicates with. Many confrontations occur between Olivia and Nina, and most men they discuss are the bad guys of the week, rather than one of Nina or Olivia’s love interests.

Nina Sharp is not simply a villain or a lackey who can be dismissed. Rather, she is a power in and of herself—a depiction of women difficult to find on contemporary television.

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So, what can we learn from these three shows, which, while certainly not representative of television as a whole, do demonstrate much of the breadth of female characters? For one, while still underrepresented, women do have a substantial presence on television. Slowly but surely, their interests and positions in structures of power seem to be increasing beyond loving, caring, and mothering.

That said, women’s characters remain anchored by “feminine” characteristics. Women remain love interests, nurturers, mothers first. And while there is nothing wrong with any particular woman having such characterization, the problem comes in when that is the extent of women’s representation. When men are always more interesting. When men have a greater breadth of things they can do, do do, are allowed to do.

Such inequality not only reinforces outdated stereotypes but it is also stale and boring. It leads to predictable plotlines, predictable television. And with the amount of television out there, who really wants to sit down and watch the same old thing over and over again?

Out of Time: The Passion of Joan of Arc

Carl Theodor Dreyer directed The Passion of Joan of Arc in 1928.  And yet, despite this unequivocal fact, the film does not belong to the year 1928.  It doesn't seem to concretely belong anywhere; indeed, the film is strangely atemporal.  Instead, the film belongs to a world where a close up can be stretched out over 85 minutes; where an entire world can be built on the physiognomy of a face.  And this world is built upon the face of Maria Falconetti, a face unadorned by make up but imbued with the ability to turn the most subtle of facial ticks into a moment of emotional anagnorisis.  The entire film is like a prolonged flash of revelation, and though Falconetti's eyes get increasingly wider and more desperate, they never stop conjuring up that which remains unspoken.

The film, if the opening titles are to be believed, dutifully follows the written record of the trial, imprisonment, and death of fabled martyr Joan of Arc.  She is not the only character shot almost exclusively in close-up; the men who decide her fate are shot in a similarly close range, though admittedly to very different effect.  If the camerawork acts as an hour an a half long elegy to Joan, it is effectively putting the men who judge her on trial.  They are captured in harsh black and white tones and even harsher facial expressions.  They are the ugly, jeering men whose faces keep no secrets but tell only lies, and the camera pans across their faces as if they were Roman portrait busts riddled with imperfections, at home in a museum but never at home in Joan's psyche. 

And it is in Joan's psyche that the film takes place: these leering men stand in for the Satanic visions they constantly accuse Joan of having, and the look in Joan's eyes as they turn upward towards heaven does in fact seem to emanate the ethereal.  And these awful faces get closer and closer until they seem to close in on Joan entirely, violating her space and the space of the film.  And all of this is filmed with extreme attention to detail: from the warts on the faces of her accusers to the insects that occasionally land on Joan's face.  And it is this strange detail, enlarged and crystal clear, that allows the film to escape any form of realism.  By creating a film based on minutiae, tiny little flaws and facial movements that would be unremarkable in a wider shot become absurd and surreal, and through attention to the mundane, the film is able to portray the ethereal.     

In the last scene of the film, Joan is burned at the stake.  As flames engulf her tiny body and her shorn head, the camera pans across a different sort of people: not the judges who assigned this fate to Joan, but regular people, openly weeping at the sight before them.  And the claustrophobic close-ups all of the sudden seem a bit less claustrophobic, as Joan begins to disappear into the smoke and tears roll down the faces of grown men.  The image of birds soaring across the sky is intercut with the flames of the stake and the mounting anger of the people.  And with this moment of emotional synchronicity, the disparate close-ups are no longer at odds.  It is as though the discordant elements of Joan's tale have come together, and the film, which oftentimes feels like an 85 minute reconstruction of a second, is finally able to end.  And the stake goes up in flames, and Joan is finally set free.     

 

Rebecca: Never there but always there.

Three women:  The first is gentle and meek.  The second is dark and menacing.  The third is beautiful, powerful, conniving, and most importantly, dead.  In Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940) these three women are locked in a constant struggle, but the most important of the three, Rebecca, is never even on screen. 

“Rebecca” is a story of a young innocent girl who finds herself quickly married to an incredibly wealthy and arguably charming man, Maxim de Winter, whom she met at a hotel.  Shortly after arriving at her new mansion, she quickly discovers she is living in the great shadow of Maxim’s previous wife, Rebecca de Winter.  She is also introduced to Mrs. Danvers, the head maid of the mansion.  Mrs. Danvers despises the new Mrs. de Winter (I refer to her as such because she isn’t actually given a first name) and constantly compares her with Rebecca.  Despite being dead, Rebecca is perhaps the most controlling and intriguing character in the film.

Rebecca’s post-death presence drives the actions of every character.  Maxim de Winter lives a life of secrecy and unhappiness.  His past wife haunts him.  As much as he tries to separate himself from her, he can’t.  He is driven to search for a new wife and forget the past; hence, the new Mrs. de Winter.  Mrs. Danvers is also fundamentally driven by Rebecca.  Her negativity towards the new Mrs. de Winter stems from her obsession with Rebecca.  It leads her to make the life of the female protagonist a living hell through a series of cruel actions culminating in an attempt to convince her to commit suicide.  Ultimately, her obsession with Rebecca triumphs over her sanity, and Mrs. Danvers burns the mansion to the ground with herself inside.  It is clear that she wouldn’t have been able to live in a world in which Rebecca had been replaced, especially by the feeble new Mrs. de Winter.  Most obviously, Rebecca’s presence controls the protagonist.  The second Mrs. de Winter spends the majority of the film trying to live up to someone she believes to be better than herself.  She repeatedly fails to become the woman that she thinks Rebecca was. 

Hitchcock wonderfully constructs the character that isn’t there.  Even though she physically isn’t present, we feel her everywhere.  Her things litter the estate, and monogrammed ‘R’s seem to be stamped onto every possible surface.  Hitchcock is especially successful in building mystery surrounding her room; it only takes one look for us to immediately want to see what’s behind the huge double doors.  We start to question everything surrounding Rebecca’s death.  Later, the second Mrs. de Winter sees a woman in the window of Rebecca’s room, but we are unable to make out who it is.  The mystery builds… it’s almost as if Hitchcock has twisted the film into a ghost story.  Our female protagonist senses what we sense and she can’t hold back any longer.  Despite her tentativeness, she ventures to Rebecca’s old room.  Behind the doors, we find a perfectly put together room; it’s as if Rebecca never left.  It tells us just how supposedly perfect Rebecca lived, and equally just how important it was to Mrs. Danvers that the room appeared as if Rebecca had never left.  The story and mystery behind Rebecca and her death heighten.

Finally, Maxim is forced to tell the new Mrs. de Winter and the viewer what exactly happened to Rebecca.  In doing so, he chillingly recounts her final moments in a brilliantly filmed scene.  Hitchcock has the camera follow the empty space in which Rebecca would have walked had the scene been taking place in front of our eyes.  She is as much placed in the room as she could possibly be without physically being there.  When the camera collides with Maxim, the story reaches its peak, and we learn of Rebecca’s death at the hands of poor Maxim.

Ultimately, we learn that Rebecca, despite being murdered, had even controlled her own death.  The devilish life she lived continued well past her death, and luckily for us, culminated in a wonderful 130 minute film.

Rebecca, 1940.  130 minutes, 1.37 : 1 Aspect.  Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  Adapted from the novel by Daphne Du Maurier.