HopkinsCinemAddicts

When TV Gets Spooky (Yelena)

TV shows and their Halloween episodes—it's a hallmark of the season, so long as the show isn't taking a hiatus that week to accommodate children being led door-to-door. One would think sci-fi and fantasy shows, shows that already delve into the edges of belief, would have a particularly easy time with these sorts of episode.

Well, yes and no. It's a gimmick, and when your show already has vampires, or takes place on another planet, how are you going to fit in children and masks and make it interesting?

A variety of ways, it turns out. I'm just going to run through a few of my favorites here.

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Probably the most straightforward example of this trope that I'm going to discuss is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Here we've got quite a few episodes that could qualify as implicitly Halloween-themed, but the two obvious ones are “Halloween” and “Fear, Itself.”

The twist in these episodes is that, in a world of demons and vampires, the baddies stay in on Halloween. Performing evil deeds when everyone around you is dressed up all scary in order to score candy? It's cheap. And so, Halloween is meant to be a calm and relaxing night—except, of course, unless you're Buffy or one of the gang.

While not exactly scary, “Halloween” is definitely an entertaining episode with several character twists—Xander as the capable soldier, Buffy as the maiden in distress, Willow as a sexy ghost. Whatever costumes the characters put on, they become. While the plot could be more gripping, the episode is very much worth it just for the clothing and the symbolism inherent in every character change.

Then we have “Fear, Itself.” As one might guess from the title, the fear factor for this episode is greatly improved. Here, we have a college haunted house that actually appears to be haunted. The gang is split up, characters are abandoned or attacked, and a demon has been summoned. With traumatized co-eds hiding amidst the cobwebs, and characters all alone in the darkness, the episode becomes a chillingly effective success.

I'll let you, reader, find out what happens to the demon. Let's just say he goes out with a bang.

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Our next show is Castle. (While it's a bit of a stretch to describe this show as fantastical, these episodes either refer to Nathan Fillion's stint on the cult sci-fi hit Firefly or toy with the supernatural. They're also really fun.) Take season two's “Vampire Weekend,” otherwise known as vampires, goths, and ghouls, oh my! (Okay, maybe not ghouls.) This episode begins with Castle dressed as Mal, captain of the spaceship Firefly.

“Didn't you wear that, like, five years ago?” his daughter asks him.

“So?” he replies.

“So, don't you think you should move on?”

“I like it!”

The episode continues in standard fashion: a body has been found in a graveyard, a stake driven through the victim's heart. Castle and Beckett find themselves in a subculture of black clothing and synthetic fangs, and the possibility of real vampires excites Castle in a delightfully childlike manner.

Eventually, they solve the crime, and there is no immortal life involved. The journey there, however, is endlessly entertaining. Also, for those among us with an appreciation for the more Gothic side of the clothing spectrum, highly aesthetically pleasing.

More recently is the episode “Demons,” wherein Castle and Beckett investigate a murder in what appears to be a real-life haunted house, home to several murders. There are no Firefly references in this episode, but the was-or-wasn't-it-a-ghost tension works, and the banter is top-notch. Is it the best episode of Castle ever? Probably not. But it's certainly worth the price of the candy corn you'll snack on while watching.

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Perhaps my favorite example of this trope, though also the least straightforward, is the Farscape episode “Kansas.”

John Crichton is an astronaut, trapped for 3 years in a distant part of the galaxy, who finally makes it home to Earth. Problem: he makes it back several years too early, in 1986. Problem: his friends are aliens, very non-human looking aliens, though mainly with two arms and legs. Sometimes with bonus tentacles or blue skin, but still, the general shape is the same.

Solution? Visit during Halloween. Also, focus your plot on John Crichton's attempts to fix the timeline and John's familial relationships. Just make sure to have several sugar-related jokes, and have a cop investigate our jolly group for their suspiciously realistic masks and limited English skills.

Truth be told, this episode is fantastic. By far the best I've discussed here.

John's homecoming to Earth does not disappoint, and the difficult relations between John's parents (with one another, with a teenage John, and with our adult John) pull at the heartstrings. Even Chiana's short fling with a teenage John does not disappoint, or disturb too badly. Perhaps the one downside is that this episode comes late in the show and is thus the culmination of a lot of emotional drama. After all, who would want to start watching The X-Files on the day Mulder learns the Truth?

In other words, Spoilerphobes beware. Everyone else? Please choose this scare.

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Obviously this list is by no means exhaustive. While not strictly supernatural, Psych's “This Episode Sucks” is as silly as it sounds, and when Dead Like Me features children and costumes, it's a bit funny, a bit sad, and a bit horrifying.

These are some of my favorites, though, and if you're as in love with TV and Halloween as I am, they are sure to make for one awesome weekend.

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

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.

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

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.

Black Swan and the Hazards of Female Autonomy (Yelena)

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.

Girls and boys, and the daddy who got away (Yelena)

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 (Yelena)

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.

 

Women in Television: Lovers, Mothers, and… Oh. (Yelena)

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?