What Do People Think Is Wrong With The Film Industry?

Most people have an opinion on film in some way, whether it’s serious and critical like myself, or simply concerned with the quality of acting or visual effects.  This blog post is examining the different things people think are wrong with films.

I was inspired to explore this when in a conversation the other day I was asked what I was studying.  I replied that I was studying film, and was further asked what does that entail.  My simplistic and inarticulate answer was “Watching films then writing about them, like the ideas and messages and stuff”.  The paraphrased response was “Can you sort out all this pornography and bad language that’s damaging the kids?”.  So of all the things pornography and swearing, to this person, are the worst things in the film industry.  I disagree because neither are inherently bad, as with most things it’s how they are used that is the problem, such as the pervasive use of pornography to reinforce the objectification and oppression of women – but it’s the repeated narratives of power and abuse, not that it is filmed sex, that is responsible for that.

As my blog reveals, I’m primarily concerned with issues of gender (on and off screen) in the film industry.  This can be in the form of limited roles for women in the film industry, or widespread stereotypic, idealised and objectified female characters in films.  This can be extended to other forms of institutionalised discrimination, such as homophobia, racism, and ageism.

Most of the people I talk with about film (who aren’t studying it) usually comment on either acting styles, how ‘realistic’ it is, continuity errors, the special effects (cringingly referred to as “graphics”), or how terrible it is that so many films are being remade.  This last point is interesting, because some remakes are allowed, and others not.  Take Sherlock Holmes for example.  There have been many remakes of Sherlock Holmes, often with little twists or differences to set the adaptation apart from the rest.  Again, it seems some of these differences are acceptable, but others unthinkable and disrespectful.  In my experience, in Sherlock updating the tales to the modern day is fine, as with Elementary and House.  Even more so, in the latter Holmes becomes Dr. House, Watson becomes Wilson and so on, and is set in a hospital.  Even this is fine.  But in Elementary, John Watson becomes Jane Watson.  This apparently crosses the line.  It baffles me that switching Holmes to a hospital is fine, but switching Watson’s gender is treason.  Similarly, the all female reboot of Ghostbusters is unthinkable evil – apparently.

It’s interesting to see what different people take from films and TV programmes, what they class as problems, and whether they’re really paying attention to all the film/ show has to offer.

Avengers: Age of Ultron and the Same Old Ideas Surrounding Motherhood

I wanted to do a post on the new blockbuster Avengers: Age of Ultron, and how it upholds certain ideas and stereotypes that Hollywood cinema, and mainstream culture incessantly peddle.  So I thought ok we’ve got all white main characters, few female characters, all heterosexual romance, foreign villains, and the non-gendered robots default to male stereotypes.  But what I really want to hone in on is the treatment of Natasha Romanoff/ Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).

She’s in a privileged position as the only female Avenger, and what’s more is she’s non-American (though the actress is).  Natasha conforms to many conventions of female superheroes and film characters more broadly in variously occupying the positions of: carer, love interest and damsel in distress – as well as you know, saving the world.  What is most troubling about her is how her sterility informs her character.

Natasha confides in Bruce Banner/ Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) who she is beginning a romantic relationship with, that at the end of her training as an assassin she was sterilised to make her more efficient and less likely to be distracted from her missions.  Then she says “You thought you were the only monster on the team”.  This is problematic beyond the film because it says that women who can’t, or choose not to have children are monsters, not human, subhuman, not normal.  With regards to the film it makes her character ‘weak’, which I put in inverted commas because it’s a contentious description to apply to her.  She is a less effective fighter, gets captured and needs saving, and has emotional episodes.  In the eyes of the film which privileges machismo, feminine equates to weak, and her maternal yearning is used to code her as such.  This is primarily displayed through the strong relationships she has with fellow Avenger Clint Barton/ Hawk Eye’s (Jeremy Renner) children, and pregnant wife – who again reinforces the sanctity of the heterosexual romance and children as an essential part of that.

There’s another aspect to mothering in Avengers: Age of Ultron however, and the clue is in the title.  Ultron is created.  But more importantly, Ultron is created by a man.  Which is bad – apparently.  Whereas maternal parenthood is celebrated and glorified, male parenthood is a recipe for disaster – because Ultron basically tries to destroy his creator and the world.  Again this serves to link the feminine with parenthood and separate the masculine from it.

Lastly, I think this all comes down to Natasha’s defining characteristic being her femaleness.  Hawk Eye is a skilled archer, the Hulk is the Hulk, Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) is good with technology etc.  But Natasha is “a slut” in the words of Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner, because she’s entangled in romantic relationships primarily.  Then her fertility must be addressed – whereas the virility of all her male colleagues isn’t brought up, because their gender isn’t their defining characteristic.

Top 5: Female Directors

A new blog has started called Shit People Say To Women Directors, where people can anonymously post about the sexism they have received in the film industry.  Hopefully, much like the similar Everyday Sexism Project, before it, it will make visible the deeply ingrained sexism and provide qualitative evidence to support the already abundant quantitative research.  Some disparaging figures are that last year only 26% of the major filmmaking roles were occupied by women, 23% of films were directed by women, and of the top 100 films only 1.9% were directed by women.

This blog post will hopefully celebrate female film directors.  But it is a shame that such a post has to be done.  There would be no ‘Top Male Directors’ list, it would just be ‘The Top Directors’ and feature no women.  This would then be attributed to men being better directors, and/ or women obviously aren’t as interested in film.  In the documentary film Miss Representation, director Catherine Hardwicke said that even after her film Twilight was wildly successful, the studios opted for men to direct the sequels and that since she has been denied jobs because men would apparently be more suited for that film.  This is a firsthand account of how women do want to make films, but are denied the possibilities.

Female directors raise many questions, like: should they make explicitly feminist films?  Should they make films about ‘male’ subject matter?  Should they only make films about ‘female’ subject matter?  Etc.  This list shows female directors can turn their hand to any type of film, designed for any audience.

This list is largely limited to mainstream Hollywood directors, and my own preferences.  So before beginning the countdown I’d like to look at some other types of female director.  Female avant garde directors are fairly common, such as Germaine Dulac (The Seashell and the Clergyman), Agnes Varda (Vagabond) and Leni Riefenstahl (The Triumph of the Will).  And nowadays there’s a growing number of high profile actresses moving behind the camera, such as Drew Barrymore (Whip It), Angelina Jolie (Unbroken), Joan Chen (Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl), and Madonna (W.E.).  Also, ashamedly I’m not that familiar with their work but there are renowned female directors of colour, dealing with intersectional discrimination.  Some of these include Alice Wu (Saving Face), Amma Asante (Belle), and Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball).  Lastly there is a large body of female directors directing supposedly ‘men’s’ films, dispelling the myth that men direct films for men (and women), and women direct films for women.  For example Penny Marshall (Big), Mary Harron (American Psycho), and Penelope Spheeris (Wayne’s World).

5. Lone Sherfig

Lone Sherfig is an up-and-coming Danish director, best known for An Education, One Day, and last year’s The Riot Club.  She studied film in Denmark before making adverts and programmes for television, and moving West to make feature films.  She has won a selection of awards for best film and screenplay, and has been nominated for best director also.

4. Catherine Hardwicke

Hardwicke started with the extremely low-budget Thirteen, which was fairly successful critically and commercially.  Since then she directed the first film in the Twilight franchise.  Although this film is problematic in its romanticising of female passivity and implied domestic violence, it was nonetheless very popular with female audiences and was very successful.  As stated above, Hardwicke was denied the opportunity to direct the sequels.  She has since made other films, such as Red Riding Hood.

3. Jane Champion

Jane Champion, originally from New Zealand, leans more towards overtly feminist films, such as The Piano (for which she won an Oscar).  In more recent years she’s turned to TV with the successful series Top of the Lake.

2. Kathryn Bigelow

Bigelow specialises in what could lazily be labelled ‘men’s films’.  She usually sticks to genres of action, thriller and war, and offers her outsider perspective to explore masculinity in a way a male director perhaps couldn’t.  Three of her most successful and best known films are: Point Break, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty.

1. Sofia Coppola

Daughter of acclaimed director Francis Ford Coppola, Sofia Coppola is a thriving director in her own right.  Like Jane Champion, feminist overtones are prominent in her work, and she more often than not deals with female protagonists.  Three of her best are The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, and The Bling Ring.

BAFTA Cymru Event: Culture, Alienation, Boredom and Despair & Top 5: Music documentaries/ biopics

Yesterday BAFTA Cymru held a screening of Culture, Alienation, Boredom and Despair followed by a Q&A with director Kieran Evans.  The film is a documentary about the Welsh band the Manic Street Preachers’ early years, focused around their debut album Generation Terrorists, (which was at one point going to be titled Culture, Alienation, Boredom and Despair).  The documentary is composed of interviews with the band, press and managers that know them and archive footage of early shows and press material.

In the Q&A director Kieran Evans talked of the prejudices he faced working in the film industry in London because he was Welsh.  He also went on to say that although he had made many successful music videos and was in high demand, that it was boring and repetitive and that clients would simply reference his older videos and ask him to recreate them.  Lastly he talked about his BAFTA winning film Kelly + Victor, and how after receiving a BAFTA award he got inundated with terrible scripts from people who just wanted an award winning director.

From here I thought I’d look at other music documentaries and biopics, giving my top 5.

5. In Bed With Madonna/ Madonna: Truth or Dare

This documentary followed the huge star Madonna on her 1990 Blond Ambition tour.  It shows various controversies that impeded the tour because of her daring antics, and also her down-to-earth, ‘normal’ side.  But the documentary still doesn’t let you quite get to know Madonna; she always keeps you at arms length.

4. The Runaways

This is a biopic of the all-female rock band The Runaways.  Joan Jett and Cherie Currie are brilliantly played by Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning respectively.  It’s more about the girls coming-of-age and their struggles in the music business, than the actual music.  It’s an incredibly interesting story of a group of teenage girls jetted around the world to sing songs of rebellion.

3. Don’t Look Back

This 1967 documentary about Bob Dylan is a pivotal film not only in terms of music documentaries but documentaries in general.  The film utilises the observational/ direct cinema approach used largely by documentary filmmakers in the 1960s thanks to the arrival of lightweight portable cameras and recording equipment.  Don’t Look Back leaves more questions than answers about Bob Dylan, and showcases his truly enigmatic persona.  I’m not a huge fan of his music, but this is a very enjoyable documentary nonetheless.

 

2. Kurt & Courtney

A controversial documentary by Nick Broomfield (who also directed Biggie & Tupac), which is possibly going to be outshone by the recent documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck.  Kurt & Courtney tries to make sense of the circumstances under which Kurt Cobain died, and deduce whether it was suicide or murder.  The film doesn’t blatantly point a finger at Courtney Love murdering her husband, but certainly considers it plausible.

1. Control

Control is a biopic about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis.  A tragic story ending in suicide, it shows how Curtis put everything he had into his music which led to him losing his wife, his mind, and ultimately his life.  Sam Riley nails Curtis’ look and character (based off archive footage of him).  The use of black and white heightens the melancholic tone of the film established by the themes and Joy Division soundtrack    .

Silver Linings Playbook at Cardiff University SciSCREEN

Cardiff University regularly holds sciScreen events which screen a film then features presentations and a discussion on the issues raised.  For more information on events at Cardiff University click here.

Yesterday I went to see Silver Linings Playbook, an event for Mental Health Awareness Week 2015.  This blog post will summarise some key points on the film, and also what the guest speakers had to say.

Firstly, to outline the film.  The protagonist is Pat (Bradley Cooper), who has bipolar disorder and begins the film in a mental institution because he violently attacked the man her wife was having an affair with.  He is released to the safety of his parents, on the condition that he continue psychotherapy and take his medication; several arguments occur throughout the film because Pat does not want to do either.  Pat delusionally thinks that his wife Nikki (Brea Bee) will take him back, and she is his sole motivation.  He starts helping Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) with a dance competition because she promises to help him get back in contact with Nikki.  Tiffany has an unspecified mental illness, but we are made aware that she took her husband’s death badly and became very sexually promiscuous.  In the end Pat realises it was Tiffany he wanted all along – happy ending.

The first speaker was Professor Nick Craddock, a psychiatrist and leader of the world’s largest bipolar study.  He began by saying that bipolar is different in every person, so no on screen depiction would ever show everything.  However he did describe the representation in Silver Linings Playbook as “reasonable”.  Craddock went on to emphasise the importance of filmic depictions of mental illness to spread awareness and foster discussion.  Key areas in the film that Craddock highlighted as being true to life were the familial struggles Pat’s mental illness brought with it, the arguments about treatment, and also the delayed diagnosis, since that is typical of real life.  Furthermore, he brought attention to Pat’s father’s (Robert De Niro) own mentally ill characteristics, such as OCD and having superstitions of “delusional intensity”. Lastly he said he enjoyed the representation of a psychiatrist having a life outside of their work, and being humanised through small things like swearing.

Next was Mark Smith, a mental health campaigner with a lived experience of bipolar disorder.  Smith drew attention to the press surrounding the film whereby the characters suffering with mental illnesses were patronisingly labelled “kooky” and as an “oddball”.  Furthermore he questioned the polished representation of mental illness with a happy ending and attractive A-list cast.  Smith specifically said there was not enough of the “dark” and “depressive” side of bipolar. He did congratulate the way the characters wear their mental illnesses on their sleeves and openly talk about it in public, such as about their medications at a dinner party.  This, he said, further encourages people in the real world to not be ashamed of their illnesses and to openly talk about them.  Mark Smith concluded by saying that research into mental illness is still seriously lacking and that events such as this are crucial in raising awareness and gaining donations.  Mark Smith runs Making Minds, an art group for people with mental illness.

Lastly was Dr. Susan Bisson, a film and media expert with an interest in mental health themes.  Her research is into how people with psychosis perceive representations of psychosis.  Bisson stated that things such as the filmmaker, budget, time period and location the film was made influence this.  But she firmly stated that there is no pattern of Hollywood = bad representation/ independent film = good representation.  Next she went on to look at how Silver Linings Playbook conformed to and departed from the norms in terms of filmic portrayals of mental illness.  The happy ending, popular theme of love conquers all, and common but unrepresentative stereotypes of violent men and hyper sexual women, show ways the film conforms to these norms.  But the absence of creative genius and more uncommon presence of self-management are departures from the conventions.  And finally she talked about how pleasure is limited for the audience, for example that awkward lift at the end of the dance.  But there are still pleasures, such as them getting the 5 they needed, or the aesthetic pleasures of the stars and cinematography.

Girl, Disgusted: Abjection, Mental Illness, and Female Adolescence

I’ve adapted this post from a paper I gave in university.  I’ve included a bibliography at the end.  TW: self-harm/ suicide/ eating disorders.

There’s lots written on mental illness in cinema.  Some of the key areas include: glamorisation; stigmatisation; and accuracy.  Here, I will be making a link that I don’t think has yet been explicitly made, and that is between mental illness and abjection, with particular reference to female adolescence.

What is the purpose of this?  Abjection is already a large area of study within film studies.  By applying it to mental illness, it will hopefully shed light on how representations of mentally ill characters are both coded and received.

I’ll be focusing Girl, Interrupted, but this will be set against a backdrop of films that similarly portray American teenage girls suffering with mental illnesses, such as The Virgin Suicides, Thirteen and Prozac Nation.  Firstly to summarise Girl, Interrupted.  It is based on Susanna Kaysen’s memoir of her time in her late teens in a mental hospital in the 1960s.  Through the film we see Susanna, played by Winona Ryder, coming to understand her illness as well as bonding with the other patients.

Abjection

So what is abjection?  It is a critical concept used across many academic areas including medicine, literature and psychoanalysis.  Its meaning is complex, but here I am using the interpretation established by feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva in Powers of Horror (1982) and then developed by Barbara Creed inThe Monstrous Feminine (1993).  In a nutshell, abjection concerns borders and boundaries, and more importantly, things crossing those boundaries.  These boundaries don’t have to be physical, but can also be socially constructed boundaries, such as laws or taboos.  Julia Kristeva says “We may call it a border; abjection is above all ambiguity.  Because, while releasing a hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from what it threatens it – on the contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger.”, what she means is that the abject is ever present.  We continually acknowledge its existence, yet keep it separate.  You cannot fully remove what is abject.  Cynthia Freeland similarly notes the “duality of our attraction/ repulsion” to the abject because it provides us with the knowledge of what is unacceptable while reaffirming the acceptable.  The abject must always be acknowledged, despite what it threatens.

Mental Institutions

A simplistic example of a boundary in films and reality concerning mental illness is the mental institution or hospital.  The appearance of the mental hospital in films concerning mental illness is frequent, such as in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, Twelve Monkeys, and Shutter Island to name a few.  Vera Chouinard writes that there is an “impulse to exclude” the mentally ill from the rest of society.  This is because they threaten social order through their unpredictability, and also depict what people have the capability of becoming.  So they are abjected in their separation.

Girl, Interrupted is set in a mental hospital and one episode sees Susanna and Lisa, a sociopath played by Angelina Jolie, escaping.  During their time outside they stay with Daisy, a recently released patient.  Lisa mercilessly taunts Daisy about her father’s sexual abuse and her continued self-harm despite being released from the hospital, which leads to Daisy’s suicide.  Lisa then steals her money and leaves. This serves to highlight the supposed necessity for the mentally unstable to be in essence, locked away.  It reaffirms the notion that they are to be feared and that they are incapable of functioning in society.  It confirms their abjection.

Institutions, however, are only one example of abjection concerning mental illness.  Plus not all films on the subject of mental illness feature institutions.

Female Adolescence

Another example of abjection is the boundary of the body, and is especially relevant when reading a text through a gendered lens.  Kristeva and Creed both explore how the female body is always connected to the idea of abjection.  As Barbara Creed says, “the abject is placed on the side of the feminine”.  She explores how abjection is used to code women as monstrous in horror films.

Two examples she uses, The Exorcist and Carrie can be seen as metaphors for mental illness – as much of horror is.  Interestingly, both protagonists are teenage girls who have just hit puberty and their emerging sexuality is the root of their monstrosity and mental instability – something that carries over to less horrific representations.  For the purposes of this paper I wanted to veer away from the horror genre’s depictions of mental illness and stick to more of what could be tenuously described as ‘realistic’ depictions in melodramas.  As with The Exorcist and Carrie, puberty and developing sexuality are recurrent factors in the representation of teenage girls on screen as being mentally ill.

Towards the beginning of Prozac Nation Elizabeth says that a girl getting her period is where all the trouble starts, which exemplifies this.  In Girl, Interrupted Susanna’s supposed sexual promiscuity is a key reason for her categorization as not mentally sane.  Similarly, Tracy in Thirteen has casual sex, along with doing drugs and self-harming, to act as expressions of her pubescent instability.  And likewise in The Virgin Suicides, it is the parental repression of the Lisbon sisters’ sexual development that leads to their suicides.

The life stage of adolescence is particularly relevant not only because it is when sexuality develops, but also because it is a liminal life stage, defined as being between childhood and adulthood. Elizabeth Marshall says that her time in a mental hospital “allows Kaysen to hover between little girlhood and womanhood.”, suggesting the progression into adulthood, crossing that boundary, isn’t always easy for young girls.  Furthermore, Marshall describes female adolescence as a “period of traumatic passage”, and likewise, Kathleen Rowe Karlyn describes it as a “perilous time”.  There are a number of reasons for this, but what’s recurrent is the idea of becoming a proper woman.

Angela McRobbie encapsulates this when she says of the film Thirteen that it “depicts a world where the fashioning of a credible female self brings with it incalculable injuries and loss, and the requirement to become a ‘real girl’ gives rise to unfathomable rage.”.  Injuries can refer to physical ones that I will look at shortly, and loss can refer to the loss of childhood.  The requirement to become a real girl I think is unavoidably linked to sex.  There is an appropriate amount of sex and sexual desire young women are supposed to have, but they can’t be at either extreme: asexual or hypersexual.  Similarly, Karlyn states that “bad girls … typically transgress by acting out sexually.”, most female characters across the four films I’m looking at do this: Susanna and Lisa in Girl, Interrupted, Tracy and Evie in Thirteen, Lux in The Virgin Suicides, and Elizabeth in Prozac Nation. 

Barbara Creed says on The Exorcist that “Possession becomes the excuse for legitimizing a display of aberrant feminine behaviour which is depicted as depraved, monstrous, abject – and perversely appealing.”  The same can be applied to how the societies presented in these films view these girls but with mental illness in place of possession.  It is because these girls are mentally ill that they have, or want to have, a lot of sex – basically.  I must be careful though, and tread the fine line that is the characters having these opinions, rather than the films themselves (or myself even) projecting them.   To varying degrees, all of the films I’m looking at are critical of the ways in which female sexual desire is regarded as a symptom of mental instability – rather than merely upholding them.

Self-harm

Moving on now to another recurrent aspect of abject imagery in these films, which is the purposeful drawing of blood through self-harm.  Blood is always abject. It belongs inside the body and its presence outside is fearful and repulsive.  Furthermore it is unavoidably linked with menstruation, specifically linking it to the female body.  Blood is key iconography of the horror genre, think slashers, vampire films and so on.  So its more unfamiliar presence in melodrama makes it instantly striking.  Blood in the form of self-harm adds another level of abjection.  These people are choosing to draw the blood, so they are not rejecting what is abject, they are welcoming it.  If the abject serves to teach us what is appropriate by comparison, then what does it say about these girls when they willingly embrace the abject?  It’s another example of how they threaten society’s rules.  I think this cements the mentally ill as abject.

To a lesser extent eating disorders function in the same way.  In Girl, Interrupted Daisy states that eating around other people is like defecating around them, so she restricts when and where she eats.  Similarly the anorexic Janet limits what she eats.  In this sense it is like they have created more boundaries than normal; they abject more.   They highly police their bodies and what enters them.  Again this reaffirms the connection with mentally ill to the abject, since they either have too relaxed boundaries or have created more unnecessarily.

Similarly, a common abject image is the corpse.  Kristeva says that “refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live… There, I am at the border of my condition as a living being.  My body extricates itself, as being alive, from that border”.  In more simplistic terms, what she’s saying is that we acknowledge death to be our ultimate end and corpses are the symbol of this.  Therefore they are abject, crossing the border of life.  Similarly, where she says refuse she refers to bodily waste, which again must be removed from the body, but the decay it represents repels us.  In Girl, Interrupted and as the title suggests The Virgin Suicides suicides occur and the corpses are shown.  Here they show not only the logical end to life, but to mental illness – something heightened by the young age of those who have committed suicide.

What’s recurrent is self-mutilation.  Emphasis on the ‘self’ – which is interesting if you think mental illness in the horror genre usually involves harming others.  Self-mutilation can be read in two different ways: a desire to harm or destroy oneself, or an attempt at controlling oneself and the harm received.  For instance, Lisa suggests that Daisy cuts herself to make herself less physically appealing to her father who sexually abuses her.  Therefore Daisy is harming herself as an attempt to control the overall harm she receives. Marshall states that “girls continue to ingest a cultural pedagogy that teaches girls to turn their anger inward rather than outward, that instructs them to view self-destruction as the only viable option for resistance.”.  So perphaps it would have been better for Daisy to target her anger at her father to change her situation, rather than increasing the harm she herself received.

What is possibly the epicentre of abjection in terms of mental illness, is the ability of the characters in all of these films to be at times kind, vulnerable and innocent and at others destructive and cruel, or calm and logical one moment and doing unthinkable damage to themselves at others.

Chouinard hints towards this when she says “The horror which Lisa’s monstrous otherness and others’ complicity in it evokes is intense because they convey the fluidity of boundaries between the other and the self, monstrous and human, mad and sane.”  These characters are abject because they cross boundaries within themselves.

Conclusion

To conclude my paper, I have demonstrated that mental illness is coded as abject in Hollywood portrayals.  This is done through the presence of institutions, characters crossing boundaries in themselves in terms of behavior, their refusal to comply with society’s rules, and through self-destruction such as self-harm, eating disorders and suicide.  Furthermore, the female body is central to debates on abjection and the adolescent life stage heightens this sense of liminality.  These women aren’t coded to be feared as they would in a horror film, but they are nonetheless abject and viewed as abnormal, and separate from the rest of society.

Where should research go from here?  Can mental illness be portrayed on screen without such visual and abject imagery as self-harm and suicide?  And, I’ve looked specifically at teenage girls, are male and older characters portrayed in similar ways?  I tried thinking on films featuring examples of male self-harm and suicide, and could only think of Boys Don’t Cry and Filth, but in both of these films as well as being destructive to themselves these men harm other people and they’re given considerably less sympathy than the female characters I’ve looked at, so that might be an interesting avenue for further research.

Bibliography

žChouinard, V. (2009) ‘Placing the Mad Woman: Troubling Cultural Representations of Being A Woman With Mental Illness in Girl, Interrupted’, Social & Cultural Geography,10(7), pp. 791-804.

žCreed, B. (1993) The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London & New York: Routledge.

žFreeland, C. (2004) ‘Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films’, in Braudy, L. and Cohen, M. (eds.) Film Theory and Criticism. 6th edn. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 742-763.

žKarlyn, K. R. (2011) Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers: Redefining Feminism on Screen. Austin: University of Texas Press.

žKristeva, J. (1982) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.

žMarshall, E. (2006) ‘Borderline Girlhoods: Mental Illness, Adolescence, and Femininity in Girl, Interrupted’, The Lion and the Unicorn, 30(1), pp. 117-133.

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The Princess Elite

I recently went to see the new live action Cinderella.  I was disappointed because I love Disney and fairy tales, especially princess films.  I couldn’t help compare it to the 1950 animated Disney film and Anna Kendrick’s performance in Into The Woods, which came out earlier this year; against both it seemed to fall short.  Perhaps I didn’t like it as much because it’s not a musical.

Anyway, it got me thinking on princesses . . . so many princesses.  Of the Disney films princesses have their own category, seemingly positioned above the others (makes sense for the monarchy to sit at the top of the hierarchy I suppose).  Some are born princesses like Jasmine in Aladdin, or marry princes, like Ariel in The Little Mermaid.

This image of the Disney princesses is peculiar.  It includes Mulan and Pocahontas who are not princesses.  So apparently you now only have to be female to be a princess?

Furthermore, why no queens?  Why princesses over queens?  Queens typically feature in redundant passive roles, with little dialogue (Sleeping Beauty), don’t exist at all (Cinderella) or are the evil villains (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) – I think the only counter-example is Elsa, and she was very nearly in the villain role.  I think there’s a bit of ageism and sexism at play here.  Princesses are valued as being young (and here always attractive) whereas queens are older, and importantly have power.

Speaking of attractiveness, it’s nothing new to note how white-washed Disney is or how the women are usually unnaturally thin.  I feel I must cover the corset controversy surrounding the new Cinderella.  Even if it wasn’t changed with special effects, Lily James has said that she found it hard to eat and breathe in the corset she wore.  Surely that is too thin!

Disney is not the only example of princess mania.  It’s everywhere.  From constant ‘news’ updates about Kate Middleton’s wardrobe, other film franchises such as Star Wars‘ princess Leia, the music sub-genre of pop-princess, or in video games.  For instance there’s princess Zelda, princess Peach and the many princesses of the Final Fantasy franchise (Reina [V] and Garnet [IX] pictured) – all of whom typically need rescuing.

It just doesn’t sit right with me that a certain type of female is being privileged over others in popular culture – wealthy, young, attractive, passive, white, thin – the list goes on.  It really grates when parents call their children princesses.  I just don’t get it.  Nevertheless I will continue to love Disney princess films, just not this new Cinderella.

The Imitation Game at Cardiff University sciSCREEN

Cardiff University regularly holds sciScreen events which screen a film then features presentations and a discussion on the issues raised.  For more information on events at Cardiff University click here.

The most recent event was a screening of The Imitation Game, a film about Alan Turing, who helped end WWII by cracking the enigma machine.  This blog post will summarise some of the points made during the presentations and discussion.

Firstly was Alison Parken talking on inequality.  She highlighted how The Imitation Game tackles both homophobia and sexism through the characters of Alan and Joan, and how they are drawn together because they are both outsiders.  Furthermore, the only way for them to resolve this outsider status seems to be to normalise themselves by becoming engaged.  Sadly, Parken emphasised how little things have changed since the 1940s as there is still widespread normalised gender-bias when it comes to employment and skills.

Next, Harry Collins discussed Turing tests and imitation games.  He noted how the initial imitation games were not to detect a human (as opposed to a machine) but were based on gender (men pretending to be women and vice versa).  Collins went on to talk of more recent imitation games concerning religion, sexuality and blindness.  Apparently blind people are far better at passing as being sighted, than sighted people pretending to be blind.  Also, in terms of sexuality it is clear that in homophobic regions heterosexual men are much less likely to be able to pass as a homosexual man than in more equal countries.  Lastly, Collins threw out a controversial conspiracy theory (that apparently has some merit) that Turing was murdered, rather than committing suicide, as he was a security threat.

The third speaker was Andrew Edgar, speaking on moral philosophy and the blitz.  Edgar centred in on the point in the film where the group have cracked the code and can read the German messages, but they must keep it a secret lest the Germans find out and devise a new code.  This then seemingly shifts the moral responsibility onto Turing and co. for failing to prevent deaths, even though they did not incite them.  Finally, he talked about the tensions between rationality and emotion, and how although treating people as statistics (as in healthcare) may be a clear way to see the best course of action, it lacks emotional motivation.

Lastly was Vince Knight talking on women in mathematics.  Like Alison Parken, Knight acknowledged how little things have changed since the period the film depicts.  He announced that the first woman to win a mathematics field medal was in 2014.  However, Knight insisted that despite their lack of recognition, women have always been involved in mathematics and science.  Although Turing is often credited as being the inventor of the computer, a woman was the first to write a computer algorithm, in the 1800s.  And to end, a little trivia that the term ‘debug’ comes from literally having to remove a moth from the computer.

The next sciSCREEN event is Silver Linings Playbook.  It’s already booked up but you can put your name on the wait list so if anyone drops out you’ll be contacted to take their place.

Fifty Shades of Abuse

Fifty Shades of Grey is presented as an erotic romance film centred on the emerging BDSM relationship between Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey.  I argue – along with many others – that this is not a film about a particular sexual preference, but rather romanticised domestic abuse.  Before I evidence this claim I’d like to state that I’m looking at the film and recent press opinions, but not the source novel since I haven’t read it.  Also, I did pop out for a wee during the film so I could have missed something completely revelatory, but I doubt it.

I didn’t enter with entirely negative expectations.  As a film student I’m constantly protesting that you shouldn’t judge a film by a book and vice versa – they’re separate.  So I tried to ignore any preconceptions I had regarding what I know of the book and judge the film impartially.  Problems aside, this was not an enjoyable film.  I felt neither loved up nor aroused, so it failed on both accounts.  Considering the film had a large guaranteed audience due to the popularity of the book and online buzz following the release of the trailer, I expected more experimentation and stylistic flourishes, instead of the idealised ‘realism’ that pervades Hollywood.  Take as comparison Lars Von Trier’s sex-epic Nymphomaniac, released last year, that featured beautiful imagery (no I’m not referring to Shia LeBeouf) and poignant symbolism – the trees, and that opening zoom into a vent, vagina much?  There’s nothing like that in Fifty Shades.  The closest was the lift which was returned to a few times.  But I think that’s just a lazy inference that they’re ‘going down’ together.

The storytelling is lazy throughout, for example the clumsy and awkward scene in Ana’s workplace where Christian buys cable ties and rope –ok we get it he’s into bondage.  There’s also a sprinkling of sickly sweet romantic rubbish like “I’d like to get to know more about you” as he stares into her eyes and what I’ve described in my notes as ‘wishy washy harp music’ plays.  Also, when Christian says “I don’t make love, I fuck hard.”  I spat my metaphorical popcorn out.  Yet another example of an unimaginative plot device is Ana wearing white and being revealed to be a virgin in his playroom – aww she’s an innocent little petal, and you will recognise that!

On a tangent, the repeated references to Tess Of The D’Urbervilles (a seminal proto-feminist novel) seemed to be trying to colour Fifty Shades of Grey as similarly feminist and progressive in tone (which it is bloody not!).  Similarly, there are multiple references to the film The Graduate and a reference to Alice in Wonderland via the ‘eat me’ and ‘drink me’ notes.  I can’t help but think all these allusions to prestigious novels and films are a cheap attempt to place Fifty Shades alongside them.

Now to the real problems.  In a recent Guardian interview, director Sam Taylor-Johnson explained how she portrayed Ana as an autonomous and independent woman by introducing her first, not through Christian’s eyes.  Christian is introduced first, shown choosing from his many ties and watches which instantly tells us he’s wealthy, which carries further connotations of being greedy, powerful and influential.  Ana is the first given dialogue, but she is by no means assertive, as Taylor-Johnson suggests.  Her posture is constantly slumped or with arms folded, she even falls over.  She’s frequently taken advantage of and doesn’t stand up for herself, like her flatmate stealing her sandwich or her mother refusing to go to her graduation which obviously upsets her but she doesn’t do anything about it.  Also, considering she’s an English literature student she’s not very articulate or eloquent.

When Ana finally arrives at Grey’s building she is shot from an extremely low angle to emphasise her inferiority against towering Grey.  Similarly in the interview she sits and he stands above her.  Grey’s control starts during this interview where he finishes her sentence and then steals her notes.  This behaviour of doing things without Anastasia’s permission but supposedly for good reasons is continued throughout: he picks her up from the club, arranges for her laptop to be fixed, sells her car and buys her a new one, and breaks into her house then has sex with her.  These may be ‘nice’ gestures but they lack Ana’s permission and are Grey’s primary source of emotional blackmail.  Here we wander into objectification territory whereby Ana is being systematically bought by Grey in a series of commercial transactions.  This is really cemented by the contract he wants her to sign in which she’s not only agreeing to have sex with him, but also surrender control of what she eats, drinks, what contraception she uses, where she lives and who she can see.  Christian Grey wants to own Ana.  She does negotiate some of the terms, which is probably the most assertive action she has in the film, but she remains uneasy about the whole thing – not that he cares.

Considering it is meant to be the main subject matter, BDSM is greatly misrepresented in two ways in Fifty Shades of Grey: that there needs to be something wrong with you to want to practise it, and that the dominant and submissive roles carry over into normal life beyond the bedroom.  Tackling the latter first, Christian Grey punishes Anastasia on several occasions.  The most notable is when he’s angry at her for wanting to visit her mother so he lifts her over his shoulder and spanks her.  Likewise he spanks her when she rolls her eyes at him.  I don’t understand how people cannot see that this is just him hitting her because she’s done something that displeases him.  If the punishment carries over then his role as ‘dominant’ also carries over; here the relevance of his financial power over her isn’t to be underestimated.

The other issue is where Christian is portrayed as “fifty shades of fucked up” in his own words because his mother was a crack addict and a prostitute.  I’m torn on whether his being “fucked up” is what has lead him to enjoy BDSM or enjoy controlling women in general.  I think I lean towards the former since all instances of abuse seem to be regarded as romantic.  Many people enjoy BDSM, it’s not something people with problems do.  Another misrepresented aspect of their sexuality is the lack of aftercare and discussion after the BDSM sessions.

All in all this film is not enjoyable, it misrepresents the main subject (BDSM) and promotes dangerous ideas.  The only positive is in the lessening of taboo surrounding sex, specifically female masturbation.  Hopefully the film industry will take more chances on some half-decent films about sex now.

Gone Girl (Snatch)

This was originally posted on Snatch zine.

Tonight, in case you hadn’t heard, is the annual film awards, The Golden Globes. Along the nominees is last years controversial yet prized motion picture, Gone Girl – for Best Lead Actress in a Drama (Rosamund Pike), Best Director (David Fincher) as well as Best Screenplay and Best Original Song… In honour of this, and the fact it has some questionable feminist/anti-feminist facets, we are providing you with an in-depth analysis! So here is the 411 on Gone Girl provided by our loyal staff writer, Arian Cross…

A little late with it but I’m finally on the Gone Girl band-wagon adding my two cents of somewhat useless opinions to the greasy mix.  But first a warning, do not read ahead if you have not read/ seen Gone Girl – I will ruin it for you.  The book was hugely popular and now so is the film.  Journalists seem to love it and so there are lots of half-cocked ideas on it floating around cyberspace.  Take your pick, Amy is a: misogynist, feminist, psycho-bitch, misandrist, misanthrope, bad role model, good role model – you get the point.  I’m going to address Gone Girl in three different ways, the three I see as most central to the film/ book as well as recent discussions on it: the ‘cool girl’ trope; crime being turned into a media spectacle; and the female victim narrative.

Firstly the ‘cool girl’ phenomenon; which I’m going to have to define because people seem to be deeply torn on its meaning.  A cool girl (or cool guy – not gender specific) is someone who pretends to like something that someone they are attracted to likes in order to appeal more to them.  It’s really that simple.  It’s not attacking women who genuinely like sex and drinking and football and other stereotypically male pastimes, it is criticising people who pretend to like things in order to get with someone – and as we know deception is at the heart of Gone Girl and arguably the fatal flaw of both Nick and Amy.

Diary Amy is a ‘cool girl’, real Amy admits that later.  For instance Diary Amy talks about ‘dancing monkey’ men who are under the thumb and that she’d never treat Nick that way.  But real Amy later says that it’s not keeping men under the thumb it’s expecting respect from them.  At Amy’s reveal when we realise she faked it all, she delivers a cool girl monologue and gives examples of what a woman might pretend to be like as she drives past women exemplifying these things.  To sum up, a ‘cool girl’ is pretending to be something you’re not to get with someone.  It’s not inherently misogynistic, nowhere does it state this is a specifically female occurrence, nor does it generalise that all women are ‘cool girls’.  I hope I have cleared that up.

Next to the blurring of boundaries between police and media (I really wanted to say ‘blurred lines’ but I didn’t want to make all you lovely readers vomit over yourselves).  A key theme in Gone Girl is the extraordinary impact the public and media have on police proceedings.  Flynn herself has stated that this is one of the key agendas of the book.  It is perfectly encapsulated in a scene near the end after Amy has returned when there’s an awkward encounter between Nick and Ellen Abbott, since she’d previously fingered him as her killer.

As soon as Amy disappears Nick is scapegoated to give the public someone to hate.  Then Nick has to not only navigate through police interrogations, but also the public perception of him which will inextricably have an effect on the police’s view of him.  Nick states that he doesn’t reveal his affair with Andie precisely because it will sour the public opinion of him, and jeopardise his case.  Despite being a fleeting remark this is an extremely potent piece of evidence for the convergence of police investigations and media in Gone Girl.  Nick withholds evidence because he anticipates the public reaction and detrimental effect that will have for him.  This is all expanded on when Tanner Bolt enters the frame and there’s discussions of how and when to present the evidence to the police and the media.  In fact it is just this that Amy plays on to set up Nick, she knows the public will believe the poor, defenceless, abused, pregnant housewife.

This media scapegoating of Nick leads to serious harassment of himself and his peers.  Paparazzi are staged outside his house and bombard anyone who dares enter with photos and questions.  Then there’s the likes of Ellen Abbott who stir the pot further and cement the public perception of Nick as guilty (even though he’s innocent!).  Regardless of whether Nick had committed this crime or not, surely he should not have been treated this way.  I think Flynn is making an important point here about media bullying and harassment, and suggests a divorcing of media and the judicial system.

This leads nicely to the part the public plays in this.  Why do they want to be a part of someone else’s nightmare?  Why are women trying to chat up Nick when his wife has just gone missing – and he might have done it!?  Why are people so determined to punish Nick when there’s no real evidence?  Why don’t they trust the police and justice system to resolve the situation?  The whole crime provides a voyeuristic, perverse spectacle for them.  A perfect example of this is people taking photos at The Bar and turning a supposed murderer into a celebrity.  Crime should not be for public consumption and enjoyment.  But it is arguable that ubiquitous fictional crime narratives – Gone Girl being one of them – have created this spectacle.

Now to the female victim narrative, where I will explore why Amy is regarded simultaneously as those things I listed above.  The female victim narrative in simplistic terms is the constant portrayal or perception of women as primarily victims.  This can be in stories from literature, films etc. or just public opinions (ever been told you’re not allowed to go for a walk on your own – in the middle of the day even! – because you’re female so you’re a defenceless little flower who’ll be raped by a big bad man if you dare venture outside without a bodyguard?).  I think the female victim narrative is at the centre of Gone Girl.  Real Amy manipulates this prevalent stereotype to her own ends, for example when she claims to have been domestically abused by Nick and raped by Desi.  Her victimhood isn’t questioned because it’s seen as inescapably true.

Before people jump at my throat, in the fashion of many short-sighted journalists on the topic of Gone Girl, I’m not saying we should doubt victims.  Amy is a horrible woman, she lies, deceives, manipulates, makes rape accusations, and murders.  She is not representative of all women.   That needs to be underlined because some seem to think that because Amy faked a rape that must mean that Flynn/ Fincher are saying all women claiming to be raped have faked it.  No.  This kind of backlash is only occurring because we’re so used to seeing women in the passive, victim role and when a woman breaks from that to become the antagonistic/ villainous character people appear to become confused.  Faked rape accusations are very rare, but so is the representation of that onscreen (to the best of my knowledge).  Surely feminism, equality, accurate representations – whatever you want to call it – means female characters should be good and bad?

So I hope this has resolved some questionable issues from Gone Girl.  Amy is female and she is not a nice person, but that does not mean all women are not nice people.  The same for ‘cool girls’, they’re a specific group of shallow, deceptive women and not representative of all women.  Also I hope people will stop and think about the meta-narrative (in the style of Flynn herself): what themes are being explored; how does this challenge conventions; does this fulfil my expectations – etc.