I am the typical recent Bond consumer: I have seen a few of the old ones and enjoyed them, but I didn't get into it properly until the Daniel Craig reboot. I loved Casino Royale; I wasn't blown away by Quantum of Solace; I was optimistic that Skyfall would redeem itself. I don't pretend to be a Bond expert, or a film expert. My enjoyment of a film is usually closely related to whether or not it's enormously sexist, and whether or not it has musical numbers. Many films, however, slip through the net and find a place in my heart despite being neither musicals nor nice about women. And that's ok. I can love something and understand that it's flawed; I am capable of holding more than one thought in my head at once. No media is perfect.
So, to Skyfall (be warned: I spoil this film pretty thoroughly). Honestly, I loved it. No musical numbers, although Adele's theme is beautiful and haunting and the rest of the soundtrack is great. And it's not very kind to woman either. There are five: unnamed sex-partner#1, Moneypenny, practically-unnamed-plot-driver (and-of-course-sex-partner#2) Sévérine*, the MP who heads the enquiry into MI6, and M. Of these five, three are young and gorgeous and have sex with Bond. I would argue that none of them really get to be characters in their own right. Moneypenny, in addition to being a bad driver and a bad shot, becomes a secretary at the end, and unnamed sex-partner#1 is just that. Sévérine is a sexual possession who is passed between men until she dies. Her relationship with Bond is particularly upsetting: having learnt that she was a victim of sex trafficking when she was 12 or 13 and is now the miserable, terrified possession of the film's supervillain, Bond responds by creeping into her shower and feeling her up. Because this is a Bond film, she's actually pretty happy to see him.
Plenty of people have taken issue with Sévérine's death: when Silva shoots her, Bond quips "waste of good scotch", and a lot of commenters feel that this is rather callous and out of step with Bond's chivalrous character. Others think that Bond's quip is a ploy to cover up his true feelings, and allow him to regain the upper hand: Silva's MO so far has been to play with Bond's feelings, trying to throw him off his game, and his murder of Sévérine, coming as it does as part of a game which Silva sets up as a test of marksmanship in which the loser could accidentally kill Sévérine, could easily fit into this narrative. Either way, it's a nasty moment, and regardless of Bond's feelings about it, Sévérine's role in the plot is as possession, honey-trap, and motivation for Bond.
Honestly, though, I was bothered less by that unpleasantness than by the general treatment of women in this film. You don't have to make a joke about a woman's murder to be sexist. You have to only have five of them in a cast of hundreds, and make sexist commentary about all of them.
1) exists purely to have sex with Bond (because that's what Bond does).
2) is Bond's getaway driver in Istanbul, whose driving Bond criticises and even takes over by grabbing the wheel away from her. She also manages to shoot Bond when she's aiming for his opponent, knocking him into the river and (we think, but not really of course) killing him. Bond jokes about her incompetence for the rest of the film, telling her that "field work isn't for everyone". She ends up becoming a secretary, and she has sex with Bond.
3) is a victim of forced prostitution, is the sexual possession and pawn of Raoul Silva, and her sole purpose is to bring the hero and the anti-hero together. Oh, and she has sex with Bond.
4) is the snide, unnamed female MP who heads the enquiry into MI6, who talks so much that she is publicly upbraided by Mallory, allowing a glance of sympathy and understanding to pass between Mallory and M.
5) is M. Despite being a fabulous character in her own right, there are significant problems with the portrayal of M in this film, not the least of which is that she, too, cannot shoot straight. That's two women who shoot guns in an entire film of men who shoot guns, and neither of them hit their target. It's a plot point that Bond's marksmanship is poor in this film, and yet apart from his test where he proves how bad he has become, this issue is never in evidence in the actual plot. Even if it were, I would require more to prove to me that this isn't about women not being good at shooting, because there are plenty of men in this film who shoot straight 100% of the time. And Bond still manages to shoot the lock off a door and a roomful of fire extinguishers, despite his supposedly poor skills.
So M has a different skillset from that of a secret agent. I can accept that. What I find more difficult to swallow is her role as a mother-figure in this film. The whole plot revolves around a kind of Oedipal nightmare in which Silva both loves and hates M, wants her regard and attention yet blames her for betraying him, wants to kill her and yet cannot stand to see her hurt. It's a good plot: gripping and powerful. But I can't help but be a little disappointed by it. I've not seen many Bond films, but were any of the male Ms before Dench's time treated in this way? Were they accused, as Dench's M is, of being "sentimental" about Bond? I have to doubt it.
I'm pretty much used to female characters being sex bombs in Bond films. That's what they're there for: even the ones who are spies / agents / double agents / otherwise professional are also sex bombs, because Bond having sex with everyone is kinda the point of the films. I've no beef with that. (Well, obviously I do, but it's so unremarkable that I'm over it.) What's upsetting about Skyfall is that M, the one female character who doesn't double as a sexual conquest for Bond, is in this film reduced to the only other available female stereotype, the mother figure. Dench is brilliant, as always, and pulls off the role beautifully, and the film is powerful and moving and lots of fun. I still love it. I just think that the Bond franchise's woman problem is not exactly solved by adding a maternal stereotype to the stable of sex symbols, especially at the expense of an already-existing great female character.
--
* It's possible that someone said her name in the film and I missed it, but I've seen it twice now and I just had to look up her name in the credits. It's telling, I think, that of the four women, only M is consistently named: I'm fairly sure Sévérine isn't named at all, unnamed-sex-partner#1 certainly isn't, and Moneypenny doesn't get a name until the closing scene of the film, when it's revealed that she is the canon character Miss Moneypenny rather than another unnamed agent. Obviously that's a necessary trick, but there's something important going on with names and gender here. Consider Kincade's mishearing of 'M' as 'Emma'; the unnamed-ness of the other female characters; the fact that even though he's the secretest secret agent in the world, everyone knows 007 is Bond James Bond; and the psychological importance of M remembering Silva's real name, Tiago Rodrigues. Consider the fact that Mallory becomes M, whilst Judi Dench's M's real name is never known. To me, these little things add up to an interesting focus on names and naming, in which women are much less individual and much more interchangeable than men.
Showing posts with label films. Show all posts
Showing posts with label films. Show all posts
Sunday, 18 November 2012
Friday, 26 October 2012
Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
So I just saw this film, without knowing much about it except that it's about misfits and stars Ezra Miller and David Bowie's 'Heroes'. That was enough for me. And honestly, if that was all that was good about it, it would have been plenty. But man, does this film have more going for it than that. (Spoilers ahead.)
This isn't a perfect film. But what is? The best compliment I can give Perks is that it is complex enough that I'm willing to give it a bit of a pass on the places where it falls down. It has more than one gay character. It has two kisses between male characters; one of the kisses is between a straight character and a gay character, and the straight character doesn't freak out or question his sexuality or respond with violence or disgust or anger. It has a suicidal character who has more than one dimension. It has sexual abuse of a boy by a woman. It has complex family relationships, full of love and casual cruelty and support and abuse. It has friendships. Real, messy friendships. And real, messy sexuality.
And on top of all that, it has Ezra Miller as Dr. Frankenfurter. I actually squeaked in the cinema. That's two of my favourite turn-ons in one delicious parcel!
One of the things I didn't like as much is the treatment of women. Although there are some beautifully nuanced portrayals in this film (Emma Watson is really, really good) and a host of good female characters, some of the details were a bit frustrating. Sam, Emma Watson's character, suffers from standard girl trouble: she used to be a slutty slut. We don't get all the details, but basically she spent 'freshman year' not studying, getting drunk at parties, and sleeping around. She suffers from cripplingly low self esteem, which results in her dating people who "treat [her] like nothing". Charlie, our hero, is the only one who loves the real her, and we know that he'll treat her right. Charlie moons after her for the entire film, selflessly helps her with her studies, evil-eyes her boyfriend and complains to people that she isn't dating him, despite the fact that he's never asked her to. I call Nice Guy-ism.
Charlie's one-time girfriend, Mary-Elizabeth, has her own girl-problems. From being a snappy, bright, independent girl, she morphs into a jealous, possessive, nagging shrew the moment she starts dating Charlie - which happens after they've kissed once and Mary-Elizabeth announces that Charlie is her boyfriend. Their relationship ends when Charlie is dared to kiss the prettiest girl in the room, and unthinkingly kisses Sam instead of Mary-Elizabeth. Patrick, Sam's step brother, tells Charlie that it would be best if he just stayed away from the group for a while, since there is "history" between Sam and Mary-Elizabeth - history that apparently involves guys liking Sam better than Mary-Elizabeth. Charlie, who has realised that one reason that he is currently fairly stable is that he has a good group of friends, suffers a rapid decline when he takes Patrick's advice and returns to being a loner.
There are other factors involved, of course, in Charlie's breakdown, but one thing this careful chronology encourages is the belief that these silly girls and their silly jealousy have contributed to Charlie's deteriorating mental health. I'd say that Charlie brings it on himself, by callously kissing one girl in front of the girl he's dating, but Patrick makes it clear that Charlie must exile himself not because his behaviour was insensitive and wrong, but because the girls are going to be unnecessarily dramatic about it.
I really don't have the energy to detail all the sexist tropes this film utilises to talk about women. For something that's otherwise so progressive in terms of gender and sexuality, it's a real disappointment. But there are other problems too.
1) I counted one person of colour who spoke during the entire film. I didn't even see any non-white people in crowd shots.
2) Everyone is thin and beautiful - not unexpected in a teen film (or, sadly, any film), but still disappointing.
3) Everyone is incredibly rich. The kids buy each other suits and typewriters for Christmas, and have free run of enormous mansions where no parents are seen. Nobody has a job, or talks of getting one. You know how ridiculously rich they all are, because nobody mentions money. There isn't even a token poor character to throw the others into relief. It's as if nobody even notices how ludicrously privileged these kids are - not the writers, directors, actors or characters. It's bizarre.
4) The bulimia joke. Early on, Sam tells Charlie that she's not a bulimic, she's a bulimist. What does that mean? "It means she believes in bulimia." She loves bulimia! That might be acceptable if the film went on to explore Sam dealing with bulimia, but it doesn't. It's never mentioned again. It's just a throwaway line, perhaps to show how quirky and cool they are, perhaps to show how screwed up Sam is. I think that's pretty screwed up in itself.
It's disappointing that the film falls down in so many ways, because in so many other ways, it is groundbreaking. The main character has dealt with death and suicide and sexual abuse by his aunt. Can we talk about how rare that is? I'm not sure I can remember another instance - in a teen film, no less - of a woman sexually abusing a little boy. Charlie's parents are appalled and disgusted and heartbroken, but there is no question that they believe him. I think, for this alone, I can forgive this film a multitude of sins.
And, on top of all this, it's a really moving film. The themes are complex and emotional and frightening, but there are moments of pure joy in the film, and moments of pure love. It's messy and grim and optimistic and terrifying. I'm no film critic, but I really enjoyed it and I think it's got some really important things to say.
I still wanted it to be better, though. One of the problems of engaging regularly with this kind of criticism is that I've been infected by more-ism. The status quo is not enough. Better than the status quo is not enough. I want more. I expect more.
This isn't a perfect film. But what is? The best compliment I can give Perks is that it is complex enough that I'm willing to give it a bit of a pass on the places where it falls down. It has more than one gay character. It has two kisses between male characters; one of the kisses is between a straight character and a gay character, and the straight character doesn't freak out or question his sexuality or respond with violence or disgust or anger. It has a suicidal character who has more than one dimension. It has sexual abuse of a boy by a woman. It has complex family relationships, full of love and casual cruelty and support and abuse. It has friendships. Real, messy friendships. And real, messy sexuality.
And on top of all that, it has Ezra Miller as Dr. Frankenfurter. I actually squeaked in the cinema. That's two of my favourite turn-ons in one delicious parcel!
One of the things I didn't like as much is the treatment of women. Although there are some beautifully nuanced portrayals in this film (Emma Watson is really, really good) and a host of good female characters, some of the details were a bit frustrating. Sam, Emma Watson's character, suffers from standard girl trouble: she used to be a slutty slut. We don't get all the details, but basically she spent 'freshman year' not studying, getting drunk at parties, and sleeping around. She suffers from cripplingly low self esteem, which results in her dating people who "treat [her] like nothing". Charlie, our hero, is the only one who loves the real her, and we know that he'll treat her right. Charlie moons after her for the entire film, selflessly helps her with her studies, evil-eyes her boyfriend and complains to people that she isn't dating him, despite the fact that he's never asked her to. I call Nice Guy-ism.
Charlie's one-time girfriend, Mary-Elizabeth, has her own girl-problems. From being a snappy, bright, independent girl, she morphs into a jealous, possessive, nagging shrew the moment she starts dating Charlie - which happens after they've kissed once and Mary-Elizabeth announces that Charlie is her boyfriend. Their relationship ends when Charlie is dared to kiss the prettiest girl in the room, and unthinkingly kisses Sam instead of Mary-Elizabeth. Patrick, Sam's step brother, tells Charlie that it would be best if he just stayed away from the group for a while, since there is "history" between Sam and Mary-Elizabeth - history that apparently involves guys liking Sam better than Mary-Elizabeth. Charlie, who has realised that one reason that he is currently fairly stable is that he has a good group of friends, suffers a rapid decline when he takes Patrick's advice and returns to being a loner.
There are other factors involved, of course, in Charlie's breakdown, but one thing this careful chronology encourages is the belief that these silly girls and their silly jealousy have contributed to Charlie's deteriorating mental health. I'd say that Charlie brings it on himself, by callously kissing one girl in front of the girl he's dating, but Patrick makes it clear that Charlie must exile himself not because his behaviour was insensitive and wrong, but because the girls are going to be unnecessarily dramatic about it.
I really don't have the energy to detail all the sexist tropes this film utilises to talk about women. For something that's otherwise so progressive in terms of gender and sexuality, it's a real disappointment. But there are other problems too.
1) I counted one person of colour who spoke during the entire film. I didn't even see any non-white people in crowd shots.
2) Everyone is thin and beautiful - not unexpected in a teen film (or, sadly, any film), but still disappointing.
3) Everyone is incredibly rich. The kids buy each other suits and typewriters for Christmas, and have free run of enormous mansions where no parents are seen. Nobody has a job, or talks of getting one. You know how ridiculously rich they all are, because nobody mentions money. There isn't even a token poor character to throw the others into relief. It's as if nobody even notices how ludicrously privileged these kids are - not the writers, directors, actors or characters. It's bizarre.
4) The bulimia joke. Early on, Sam tells Charlie that she's not a bulimic, she's a bulimist. What does that mean? "It means she believes in bulimia." She loves bulimia! That might be acceptable if the film went on to explore Sam dealing with bulimia, but it doesn't. It's never mentioned again. It's just a throwaway line, perhaps to show how quirky and cool they are, perhaps to show how screwed up Sam is. I think that's pretty screwed up in itself.
It's disappointing that the film falls down in so many ways, because in so many other ways, it is groundbreaking. The main character has dealt with death and suicide and sexual abuse by his aunt. Can we talk about how rare that is? I'm not sure I can remember another instance - in a teen film, no less - of a woman sexually abusing a little boy. Charlie's parents are appalled and disgusted and heartbroken, but there is no question that they believe him. I think, for this alone, I can forgive this film a multitude of sins.
And, on top of all this, it's a really moving film. The themes are complex and emotional and frightening, but there are moments of pure joy in the film, and moments of pure love. It's messy and grim and optimistic and terrifying. I'm no film critic, but I really enjoyed it and I think it's got some really important things to say.
I still wanted it to be better, though. One of the problems of engaging regularly with this kind of criticism is that I've been infected by more-ism. The status quo is not enough. Better than the status quo is not enough. I want more. I expect more.
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Review: Wimbledon
Released in 2004, Wimbledon stars Kirsten Dunst and Paul Bettany as entrants to Wimbledon, she being young and ambitious and brilliant, he being 'old' and past-it and intending to enjoy one last Grand Slam as a wildcard entrant before retiring from professional tennis. Spoilers ahead.
I was really enjoying this film until about halfway through. There was a questionable scene at the beginning, where Peter Colt (Bettany) arrives at the Dorchester hotel and is given the wrong key, and walks in on Lizzie Bradbury (Dunst) in the shower. Instead of him being shocked and appalled and getting out of the room as fast as humanly possible, and Lizzie being angry and indignant, she smirks vampishly and displays her body unashamedly for Peter (if not, thankfully, for the camera). Peter stutters and stumbles and does his best Hugh Grant impression, hilariously getting his words mixed up so he accidentally says to her "good body" instead of "good luck": a classic error that could have happened to anyone. I know I always mix up those two words.
So far, so predictable. But that didn't make me angry, it just made me a little tired. He invades her privacy, she giggles and enjoys the attention. What made me really, truly angry was where the plot went from there.
Lizzie comes on to Peter, who can't believe his luck when she makes it clear that she'd like to have sex with him, mostly (as she also makes clear) because she believes "fooling around" on the night before a match improves her performance the next day. The two of them have sex; they have a montage; Lizzie's father/coach/owner warns Peter off Lizzie; Peter punches Lizzie's arrogant ex-lover in the face; Lizzie and Peter run away to Brighton and have lots of sex and pretend tennis and breakfast in bed. Then Peter's brother sells a photo of the couple to a newspaper, and suddenly the house is surrounded by press, and Lizzie's father arrives to shepherd her back to London. Lizzie, hiding, overhears her father's monologue to Peter about how Lizzie needs to remember her lifelong dream of winning Wimbledon, and how she's throwing it all away by falling for Peter, because actually liking someone means that her game suffers. Lizzie comes out of hiding saying "I still want it. I want to win Wimbledon. I'm sorry", and she leaves with him to return to London and training while Peter trails after them:
"You're gonna go?"
"Yeah. He's right. I'm sorry."
"Wait a second. Lizzie? Lizzie! Lizzie, this is ridiculous, you're a grown woman and you should be making your own decisions -
"This is my decision! We can be together after the tournament."
"After the tournament - ! What does that mean, you can't just switch me on and off like a bloody lightbulb - I'll call you at the hotel."
"I'm sorry kid. When she's with you she just - can't play."
And so, back to the tennis. Peter, long assumed to be past it, has been playing surprisingly well in this tournament, and has enjoyed two shock wins to reach the third round, where he will face highly-ranked Englishman Tom Cavendish. In his first round match, he fought back from two sets down after seeing Lizzie in the crowd watching him, the day after they have first slept together. This becomes a trope for the two of them, but it only goes one way: Peter gains strength from her support, but we never see him attend Lizzie's matches - not until things have fallen apart. In this third round match, Peter is playing terribly and is on the point of losing when Cavendish injures himself, allowing Peter to capitalise on his advantage and secure his place in the semi-finals. Meanwhile Lizzie, whose matches have had a tiny amount of screen time compared to Peter's, is assumed to be a sure-thing, and has been whipping through her matches with ease. Now, however, despite assuring her father that she's focussed and that "he's out of [her] head", she is listening to Peter's match on the radio in the car on the way to her own match. After winning his match, Peter goes to watch Lizzie's, and happens to receive some top-quality counsel from his sponsor:
"Me, I hate making a decision. Like right now, I'm very very afraid. If you don't see that girl again it's gonna mess with your head, it'll screw up your confidence, on the other hand I'm terrified, I'm petrified if I tell you where that girl's camped out her father's gonna fire my ass."
"Where's the girl camped out Ron?"
"32 Kensington Place. First floor apartment. I made a decision."
"Me too."
Ron, who sponsors both athletes, has for reasons passing understanding chosen Peter over Lizzie. Lizzie is young and ambitious and has potential. This tournament is Peter's last hurrah: he has already announced his retirement. Professionally, the decision to help Peter win makes no sense at all for Ron. The only reason it does make sense is if Ron wants to help Peter get laid. Which it does. We cut straight from that shot into one of Peter breaking into Lizzie's house, surprising her in bed. Once again, instead of screaming blue murder and telling him to get the hell out, she looks slightly annoyed before calmly accepting the fact that Peter has just invaded her privacy yet again - not to mention committed a crime. Here's how it goes:
"Peter! What are you doing here?"
"That's an excellent question. The sad fact of the matter is, I can't seem to get through 24 hours without you."
"I've missed you, Peter, Peter Colt."
"You have?"
"But I need you to go."
"No, you need me to stay."
"Peter - "
"Lizzie.
"Peter - "
"Lizzie. People have fallen in love before, you know."
"Oh, is that what we're doing here?"
Giggling and kissing. Joke. Heavy breathing. Cut to the next morning and Peter leaving without waking Lizzie to go to his semi-final match. At Lizzie's match, things start to go wrong when a string on her racket breaks, and she is distracted by a man yelling at her and brandishing a newspaper with Peter's photo on the front and the words "Lover Boy". Lizzie loses her match. Peter wins his.
Peter does seem to care that Lizzie has lost, and accepts, however minimally, that he may not have acted in her best interests. But when they argue about it, he doesn't apologise for putting his needs ahead of hers, or for not respecting her wishes when she leaves him or when she tells him she needs him to go. Instead, the argument is a chance for us to see that Lizzie is a heartless woman who only cares about winning, and to whom "Love means nothing" (her words). The two part on bad terms, and Peter skulks tragically about the place until it's time for his final.
And who is Peter playing in the final, but Lizzie's arrogant ex-lover, wunderkind Jake Hammond who, in the tunnel, says to Peter with a shrug "I tried to warn you about her." The kid is clearly a nasty piece of work, displaying unpleasant gamesmanship and not seeming to care when he hits a ball boy in the face with his serve, something which has previously distinguished Peter from his competitors: he is a nice man, and when Hammond shows a callous lack of care about injuring a small boy, he gets angry. This doesn't improve his game, however: Peter only manages to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat after Lizzie arrives to give him a pep talk during a rain break when he is 2 sets and 5 games to 1 down. She has come to help him win after hearing his tear-jerking pre-match speech about how love - meaning Lizzie - is the only reason he is in the final at all, and how truly sorry he is for having let her down. She was about to board a flight back to America, but instead she rushes back to Wimbledon to tell Peter she loves him, and when he apologises for his behaviour, she tells him "Forget about that! This is about you. Go out there and decide who you are." She also tells him how to read Hammond's serve, allowing Peter to come back from certain defeat. When it's looking dire, right at the end, Peter once more catches Lizzie's eye in the crowd, giving him the strength to play a blinding final point to win the championship.
There's an awful lot to hate about this plot, and a large part of it is how it revolves around Peter rather than Lizzie. This is inevitable, since Peter is the protagonist - we are with him from the beginning of the film, and Lizzie is the love-interest rather than getting equal billing. On the other hand, Lizzie's tennis is so completely sidelined by Peter's that it's rather sickening. As I have said, her matches get a tiny amount of screen time compared to Peter's, and the fact that she has to be knocked out of the tournament is galling: not only does she have to lose in order to prove that it's true that she can't focus on both love and tennis, she also has to lose in order to be free to be there for Peter when he needs her. She couldn't have counselled him through his final if she was focussed on her own, could she? The bludgeoned-home message is that love is damaging to Lizzie's tennis. It is clear that having sex is helpful to her - she describes it as relaxing, and when she and Peter are just having sex before their matches, everything goes well for her. It's when the narrative shows us that they are falling for each other that Lizzie's tennis starts to suffer, whereas love only improves Peter's game. When things start to go wrong between them, however, Peter's game suffers whilst Lizzie's remains stable. Lizzie loses after they have reconciled - after Peter has broken into her house and told her that they're falling in love.
Yet more galling is Lizzie's treatment as a possession of the men in her life. Throughout the film Lizzie is controlled by her father, and although she rebels against him it's only in order to spend time with another man who wants to dominate her attention, sulking when it is refused. Peter, for his part, wants Lizzie to make her own decisions, but only if she makes the decision to stay with him rather than go with her father. Then there's Hammond, who is set up as a possessive ex-lover and, on discovering that Lizzie and Tom are sleeping together, tells her "I thought all those things they said about you were just rumours, but you really are a cheap little - " and that's when Peter punches him in the face. Lizzie, incidentally, is excited by this, telling Peter that nobody has ever fought for her honour before, and that she kinda likes it. It's telling that this is the man that Peter has to beat in the final. It's almost as if he has to prove that he's worthy of Lizzie, because of course women don't like losers. It's ok for Lizzie to lose, though, because Peter's last hurrah is far more important. And, after all, he does make it clear that, now that the important stuff is out of the way, he's ready to make Lizzie's career his priority:
"There's so much I want to say to you!"
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Oh yes you are. You're going a long, long way!"
And in the voiceover at the end, over cute montages of Peter and Lizzie playing tennis with two little blond moppets, we learn that Lizzie did win the US Open. And Wimbledon. Twice. So that's ok then. She's allowed to succeed in her career - as long as she has succeeded in love first.
I was really enjoying this film until about halfway through. There was a questionable scene at the beginning, where Peter Colt (Bettany) arrives at the Dorchester hotel and is given the wrong key, and walks in on Lizzie Bradbury (Dunst) in the shower. Instead of him being shocked and appalled and getting out of the room as fast as humanly possible, and Lizzie being angry and indignant, she smirks vampishly and displays her body unashamedly for Peter (if not, thankfully, for the camera). Peter stutters and stumbles and does his best Hugh Grant impression, hilariously getting his words mixed up so he accidentally says to her "good body" instead of "good luck": a classic error that could have happened to anyone. I know I always mix up those two words.
So far, so predictable. But that didn't make me angry, it just made me a little tired. He invades her privacy, she giggles and enjoys the attention. What made me really, truly angry was where the plot went from there.
Lizzie comes on to Peter, who can't believe his luck when she makes it clear that she'd like to have sex with him, mostly (as she also makes clear) because she believes "fooling around" on the night before a match improves her performance the next day. The two of them have sex; they have a montage; Lizzie's father/coach/owner warns Peter off Lizzie; Peter punches Lizzie's arrogant ex-lover in the face; Lizzie and Peter run away to Brighton and have lots of sex and pretend tennis and breakfast in bed. Then Peter's brother sells a photo of the couple to a newspaper, and suddenly the house is surrounded by press, and Lizzie's father arrives to shepherd her back to London. Lizzie, hiding, overhears her father's monologue to Peter about how Lizzie needs to remember her lifelong dream of winning Wimbledon, and how she's throwing it all away by falling for Peter, because actually liking someone means that her game suffers. Lizzie comes out of hiding saying "I still want it. I want to win Wimbledon. I'm sorry", and she leaves with him to return to London and training while Peter trails after them:
"You're gonna go?"
"Yeah. He's right. I'm sorry."
"Wait a second. Lizzie? Lizzie! Lizzie, this is ridiculous, you're a grown woman and you should be making your own decisions -
"This is my decision! We can be together after the tournament."
"After the tournament - ! What does that mean, you can't just switch me on and off like a bloody lightbulb - I'll call you at the hotel."
"I'm sorry kid. When she's with you she just - can't play."
And so, back to the tennis. Peter, long assumed to be past it, has been playing surprisingly well in this tournament, and has enjoyed two shock wins to reach the third round, where he will face highly-ranked Englishman Tom Cavendish. In his first round match, he fought back from two sets down after seeing Lizzie in the crowd watching him, the day after they have first slept together. This becomes a trope for the two of them, but it only goes one way: Peter gains strength from her support, but we never see him attend Lizzie's matches - not until things have fallen apart. In this third round match, Peter is playing terribly and is on the point of losing when Cavendish injures himself, allowing Peter to capitalise on his advantage and secure his place in the semi-finals. Meanwhile Lizzie, whose matches have had a tiny amount of screen time compared to Peter's, is assumed to be a sure-thing, and has been whipping through her matches with ease. Now, however, despite assuring her father that she's focussed and that "he's out of [her] head", she is listening to Peter's match on the radio in the car on the way to her own match. After winning his match, Peter goes to watch Lizzie's, and happens to receive some top-quality counsel from his sponsor:
"Me, I hate making a decision. Like right now, I'm very very afraid. If you don't see that girl again it's gonna mess with your head, it'll screw up your confidence, on the other hand I'm terrified, I'm petrified if I tell you where that girl's camped out her father's gonna fire my ass."
"Where's the girl camped out Ron?"
"32 Kensington Place. First floor apartment. I made a decision."
"Me too."
Ron, who sponsors both athletes, has for reasons passing understanding chosen Peter over Lizzie. Lizzie is young and ambitious and has potential. This tournament is Peter's last hurrah: he has already announced his retirement. Professionally, the decision to help Peter win makes no sense at all for Ron. The only reason it does make sense is if Ron wants to help Peter get laid. Which it does. We cut straight from that shot into one of Peter breaking into Lizzie's house, surprising her in bed. Once again, instead of screaming blue murder and telling him to get the hell out, she looks slightly annoyed before calmly accepting the fact that Peter has just invaded her privacy yet again - not to mention committed a crime. Here's how it goes:
"Peter! What are you doing here?"
"That's an excellent question. The sad fact of the matter is, I can't seem to get through 24 hours without you."
"I've missed you, Peter, Peter Colt."
"You have?"
"But I need you to go."
"No, you need me to stay."
"Peter - "
"Lizzie.
"Peter - "
"Lizzie. People have fallen in love before, you know."
"Oh, is that what we're doing here?"
Giggling and kissing. Joke. Heavy breathing. Cut to the next morning and Peter leaving without waking Lizzie to go to his semi-final match. At Lizzie's match, things start to go wrong when a string on her racket breaks, and she is distracted by a man yelling at her and brandishing a newspaper with Peter's photo on the front and the words "Lover Boy". Lizzie loses her match. Peter wins his.
Peter does seem to care that Lizzie has lost, and accepts, however minimally, that he may not have acted in her best interests. But when they argue about it, he doesn't apologise for putting his needs ahead of hers, or for not respecting her wishes when she leaves him or when she tells him she needs him to go. Instead, the argument is a chance for us to see that Lizzie is a heartless woman who only cares about winning, and to whom "Love means nothing" (her words). The two part on bad terms, and Peter skulks tragically about the place until it's time for his final.
And who is Peter playing in the final, but Lizzie's arrogant ex-lover, wunderkind Jake Hammond who, in the tunnel, says to Peter with a shrug "I tried to warn you about her." The kid is clearly a nasty piece of work, displaying unpleasant gamesmanship and not seeming to care when he hits a ball boy in the face with his serve, something which has previously distinguished Peter from his competitors: he is a nice man, and when Hammond shows a callous lack of care about injuring a small boy, he gets angry. This doesn't improve his game, however: Peter only manages to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat after Lizzie arrives to give him a pep talk during a rain break when he is 2 sets and 5 games to 1 down. She has come to help him win after hearing his tear-jerking pre-match speech about how love - meaning Lizzie - is the only reason he is in the final at all, and how truly sorry he is for having let her down. She was about to board a flight back to America, but instead she rushes back to Wimbledon to tell Peter she loves him, and when he apologises for his behaviour, she tells him "Forget about that! This is about you. Go out there and decide who you are." She also tells him how to read Hammond's serve, allowing Peter to come back from certain defeat. When it's looking dire, right at the end, Peter once more catches Lizzie's eye in the crowd, giving him the strength to play a blinding final point to win the championship.
There's an awful lot to hate about this plot, and a large part of it is how it revolves around Peter rather than Lizzie. This is inevitable, since Peter is the protagonist - we are with him from the beginning of the film, and Lizzie is the love-interest rather than getting equal billing. On the other hand, Lizzie's tennis is so completely sidelined by Peter's that it's rather sickening. As I have said, her matches get a tiny amount of screen time compared to Peter's, and the fact that she has to be knocked out of the tournament is galling: not only does she have to lose in order to prove that it's true that she can't focus on both love and tennis, she also has to lose in order to be free to be there for Peter when he needs her. She couldn't have counselled him through his final if she was focussed on her own, could she? The bludgeoned-home message is that love is damaging to Lizzie's tennis. It is clear that having sex is helpful to her - she describes it as relaxing, and when she and Peter are just having sex before their matches, everything goes well for her. It's when the narrative shows us that they are falling for each other that Lizzie's tennis starts to suffer, whereas love only improves Peter's game. When things start to go wrong between them, however, Peter's game suffers whilst Lizzie's remains stable. Lizzie loses after they have reconciled - after Peter has broken into her house and told her that they're falling in love.
Yet more galling is Lizzie's treatment as a possession of the men in her life. Throughout the film Lizzie is controlled by her father, and although she rebels against him it's only in order to spend time with another man who wants to dominate her attention, sulking when it is refused. Peter, for his part, wants Lizzie to make her own decisions, but only if she makes the decision to stay with him rather than go with her father. Then there's Hammond, who is set up as a possessive ex-lover and, on discovering that Lizzie and Tom are sleeping together, tells her "I thought all those things they said about you were just rumours, but you really are a cheap little - " and that's when Peter punches him in the face. Lizzie, incidentally, is excited by this, telling Peter that nobody has ever fought for her honour before, and that she kinda likes it. It's telling that this is the man that Peter has to beat in the final. It's almost as if he has to prove that he's worthy of Lizzie, because of course women don't like losers. It's ok for Lizzie to lose, though, because Peter's last hurrah is far more important. And, after all, he does make it clear that, now that the important stuff is out of the way, he's ready to make Lizzie's career his priority:
"There's so much I want to say to you!"
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Oh yes you are. You're going a long, long way!"
And in the voiceover at the end, over cute montages of Peter and Lizzie playing tennis with two little blond moppets, we learn that Lizzie did win the US Open. And Wimbledon. Twice. So that's ok then. She's allowed to succeed in her career - as long as she has succeeded in love first.
Sunday, 23 September 2012
Friday, 24 August 2012
Review: Bride Wars
Having enjoyed watching and writing about Legally Blonde so much, I thought I'd follow up by writing about Bride Wars, which I watched last night with my long-suffering partner.
When I came home to house sit for a couple of weeks, I told my sister, who lives fairly close by, that I wanted all the happy girly films that she possessed. It took a while, because hey, my sister, but she came up trumps in the end with a healthy pile of boxes. She'd located some classics like Bridget Jones's Diary, some old favourites like Very Annie Mary and Bend It Like Beckham, some animations that she thought would fit the bill (Madagascar 1 and 2), and a couple of pink boxes that were unknown to me, one of which went straight to the bottom of the pile. No offense, I told my sister, and thanks for taking the time to think of stuff I hadn't asked for, but my criteria were pickier than I may have led her to believe. It wasn't good enough for a film to simply have more than one woman in it, or speak to issues that women are interested in (all caveats in place, as ever, of course). It wasn't enough for there to be lunches rather than explosions, relationships rather than car chases, shopping rather than video games. In fact, I told her, I would be happy to watch a film full of nothing but explosions, car chases and video games, as long as there are some women in it who are nice to each other.
That's the magic, crucial ingredient that I'm looking for in my films, particularly at the moment. I mean, I'm happy to watch films without this element, and I'll probably still enjoy them. Recently I've seen and enjoyed Zoolander and Lord of the Rings, which have about four female characters between them, none of whom even speak to each, let alone are nice to each other. The films were fine, and there's plenty to like about each of them, but they don't work for me on that base emotional level that I'm seeking out at the moment. However, while that kind of film - the kind that doesn't even have enough female characters to make a conversation between them possible - is annoying, I find them far more enjoyable than the ones where the women are unpleasant to each other. You know the ones I mean - films where the woman-woman interactions happen between a girlfriend and an ex-girlfriend, or a mother and her son's wife, or a man's fiancee and his best female friend. Those films routinely centre men, and the women who revolve around him are just-as-routinely bitchy, competitive, frivolous and jealous of each other. The two archetypes are 1) nice, normal woman and 2) beautiful bitch. There are so many versions of this it makes my brain hurt. Perhaps sometime I'll write up a nice long list! For now, though, suffice to say that I do not like this kind of film, and that they are legion.
So when I saw Bride Wars on the pile, I baulked. I saw the picture on the front, of two beautiful women glaring at each other, cake slices crossed like swords. I vaguely remembered the trailers, recalling a confused mix of competition, jealousy, cruelty, and a friendship sacrificed at the altar of marriage. I knew I wasn't up for it. I knew these women would not be kind to each other. So why did I end up watching it? I wanted something that I hadn't seen before, something lighthearted, something that would have a happy ending. It would have a happy ending, right? They would make up. Plus, my sister had brought it for me to watch. I had told her my reservations, and she had said that it was better than it looked. I didn't want to reject either her DVD or her reassurances. So we made dinner, closed the curtains, and I mentally lined up antidotes to watch afterwards, in case Bride Wars was exactly what I feared it would be.
And then it wasn't.
There were some heinous moments, for sure. There was fat hatred and slut shaming and heterosexism and, criminally, about 7 non-white actors in total - including crowd scenes - only 2 of whom spoke. This is not a fault-free film by any means, and my intention is not to pretend otherwise, or to pretend that these things don't matter because of the things I liked about it. However, I did like some things about it, much as my little bingo-card of bad filled up worryingly fast.
The plot did have some of the nastiness that I expected. Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway - Liv and Emma - are best friends their whole lives. They dream of the same perfect wedding at the Plaza hotel, with the same guests, bands, place settings etc - and with each other as their maids of honour. This all falls apart when their bookings are mishandled and it turns out that only one of them can get married on their chosen date. The other one can either book the Plaza's next available date, three years in the future, choose another venue, or get married in different rooms of the Plaza on the same day, at the same time (let's overlook the ridiculous implausibility of this scenario. We need to pit bride against bride somehow, and DAMMIT this is the best we could come up with). This is where things start to go wrong, as each woman thinks that the other should step aside and choose another venue - or perhaps wait three years to get married. Neither woman is willing to sacrifice her perfect wedding, or its immediacy, for her friend. There follows the main meat of the film, in which the two women fight over every wedding-related commodity, try to divide their mutual friends, and attempt to sabotage the wedding of their ex-best friend.
This, of course, is where the truly nasty stuff happens (apart from the ongoing whitewashing and heterosexism, of course). The two women become cruel, denigrating each other's appearances, exploiting each other's past troubles for their own gain, and generally doing anything they can think of to improve their own wedding and ruin their rival's. I didn't enjoy that in principle, and I definitely didn't enjoy the tropes that they were reduced to in pursuit of their goal. Emma, revealing that Liv used to be overweight, tricks Liv into eating fatty snacks so that she gets 'fat' and can't fit into her wedding dress. Liv sabotages Emma's tanning booth, turning Emma bright orange. Emma replaces Liv's blonde hair dye with blue, with the eventual consequence of Liv embarrassing herself at work and being demoted.
They do make up in the end, of course. They also, to their credit, don't descend into dreadful behaviour without twinges of conscience and attempts to reconcile. They each try to get in touch with the other, but due to the special magic of rom-coms (that same magic that drives every Friends episode ever), wires are crossed and opportunities are missed, leaving each woman certain that the other is entirely uninterested in reconciliation or compromise. They eventually make up at the last possible second, only after Emma has snapped and physically attacked Liv as she walks down the aisle. After they've rolled around on the floor for a bit, they instantly forgive each other (because reasons) and Emma walks Liv down the aisle to get married.
It seems irreparable, the damage that this film does to women, to brides, to female friendships and relationships of any gender. And, honestly, I'm not sure that its ending makes up the difference. Having said that, I was won over by the narrator's closing message, as trite as it sounds:
Not convinced? Emma doesn't end up with the guy she gets engaged to at the beginning of the film. When Liv's brother was introduced to the plot, I saw the telltale signs of a potential romantic interest, but I dismissed it because I assumed that this film couldn't possibly engage an extra source of drama. The fiancés must remain stable, because the catty women fighting over their weddings are the problem, not their patient, long-suffering partners. To have one of the relationships fail would be to introduce some complexity beyond the notion that bitches be crazy, and I just couldn't imagine it. The fact that the film actually goes with the idea that one of the men could be less than perfect in addition to the less-than-perfect women adds a touch of much needed complexity to the plot and, more importantly, highlights the significance of the women's platonic bond over the inter-gender romantic bonds. Obviously it's not exactly groundbreaking for a woman to begin a film with one guy, discover that he is wrong for her, and end up driving into the sunset with a more suitable guy. And it's way less daring than it could have been if, for example, Emma ended up (gasp!) single. But it's a nice touch, I think, especially as it foregrounds the importance of Emma and Lil's relationship, which is the one that survives and is truly celebrated.
So to sum up: Bride Wars is not a good film! It is reductive and insulting, it is incredibly white and boringly heterosexist, and the performances leave plenty to be desired. And it did indeed feature women being pretty nasty to each other because weddings are the most important thing in the world. Having said all that, the celebration of platonic friendship was truly refreshing, and it left me feeling uplifted despite the overarching banality of the film.
When I came home to house sit for a couple of weeks, I told my sister, who lives fairly close by, that I wanted all the happy girly films that she possessed. It took a while, because hey, my sister, but she came up trumps in the end with a healthy pile of boxes. She'd located some classics like Bridget Jones's Diary, some old favourites like Very Annie Mary and Bend It Like Beckham, some animations that she thought would fit the bill (Madagascar 1 and 2), and a couple of pink boxes that were unknown to me, one of which went straight to the bottom of the pile. No offense, I told my sister, and thanks for taking the time to think of stuff I hadn't asked for, but my criteria were pickier than I may have led her to believe. It wasn't good enough for a film to simply have more than one woman in it, or speak to issues that women are interested in (all caveats in place, as ever, of course). It wasn't enough for there to be lunches rather than explosions, relationships rather than car chases, shopping rather than video games. In fact, I told her, I would be happy to watch a film full of nothing but explosions, car chases and video games, as long as there are some women in it who are nice to each other.
That's the magic, crucial ingredient that I'm looking for in my films, particularly at the moment. I mean, I'm happy to watch films without this element, and I'll probably still enjoy them. Recently I've seen and enjoyed Zoolander and Lord of the Rings, which have about four female characters between them, none of whom even speak to each, let alone are nice to each other. The films were fine, and there's plenty to like about each of them, but they don't work for me on that base emotional level that I'm seeking out at the moment. However, while that kind of film - the kind that doesn't even have enough female characters to make a conversation between them possible - is annoying, I find them far more enjoyable than the ones where the women are unpleasant to each other. You know the ones I mean - films where the woman-woman interactions happen between a girlfriend and an ex-girlfriend, or a mother and her son's wife, or a man's fiancee and his best female friend. Those films routinely centre men, and the women who revolve around him are just-as-routinely bitchy, competitive, frivolous and jealous of each other. The two archetypes are 1) nice, normal woman and 2) beautiful bitch. There are so many versions of this it makes my brain hurt. Perhaps sometime I'll write up a nice long list! For now, though, suffice to say that I do not like this kind of film, and that they are legion.
So when I saw Bride Wars on the pile, I baulked. I saw the picture on the front, of two beautiful women glaring at each other, cake slices crossed like swords. I vaguely remembered the trailers, recalling a confused mix of competition, jealousy, cruelty, and a friendship sacrificed at the altar of marriage. I knew I wasn't up for it. I knew these women would not be kind to each other. So why did I end up watching it? I wanted something that I hadn't seen before, something lighthearted, something that would have a happy ending. It would have a happy ending, right? They would make up. Plus, my sister had brought it for me to watch. I had told her my reservations, and she had said that it was better than it looked. I didn't want to reject either her DVD or her reassurances. So we made dinner, closed the curtains, and I mentally lined up antidotes to watch afterwards, in case Bride Wars was exactly what I feared it would be.
And then it wasn't.
There were some heinous moments, for sure. There was fat hatred and slut shaming and heterosexism and, criminally, about 7 non-white actors in total - including crowd scenes - only 2 of whom spoke. This is not a fault-free film by any means, and my intention is not to pretend otherwise, or to pretend that these things don't matter because of the things I liked about it. However, I did like some things about it, much as my little bingo-card of bad filled up worryingly fast.
The plot did have some of the nastiness that I expected. Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway - Liv and Emma - are best friends their whole lives. They dream of the same perfect wedding at the Plaza hotel, with the same guests, bands, place settings etc - and with each other as their maids of honour. This all falls apart when their bookings are mishandled and it turns out that only one of them can get married on their chosen date. The other one can either book the Plaza's next available date, three years in the future, choose another venue, or get married in different rooms of the Plaza on the same day, at the same time (let's overlook the ridiculous implausibility of this scenario. We need to pit bride against bride somehow, and DAMMIT this is the best we could come up with). This is where things start to go wrong, as each woman thinks that the other should step aside and choose another venue - or perhaps wait three years to get married. Neither woman is willing to sacrifice her perfect wedding, or its immediacy, for her friend. There follows the main meat of the film, in which the two women fight over every wedding-related commodity, try to divide their mutual friends, and attempt to sabotage the wedding of their ex-best friend.
This, of course, is where the truly nasty stuff happens (apart from the ongoing whitewashing and heterosexism, of course). The two women become cruel, denigrating each other's appearances, exploiting each other's past troubles for their own gain, and generally doing anything they can think of to improve their own wedding and ruin their rival's. I didn't enjoy that in principle, and I definitely didn't enjoy the tropes that they were reduced to in pursuit of their goal. Emma, revealing that Liv used to be overweight, tricks Liv into eating fatty snacks so that she gets 'fat' and can't fit into her wedding dress. Liv sabotages Emma's tanning booth, turning Emma bright orange. Emma replaces Liv's blonde hair dye with blue, with the eventual consequence of Liv embarrassing herself at work and being demoted.
They do make up in the end, of course. They also, to their credit, don't descend into dreadful behaviour without twinges of conscience and attempts to reconcile. They each try to get in touch with the other, but due to the special magic of rom-coms (that same magic that drives every Friends episode ever), wires are crossed and opportunities are missed, leaving each woman certain that the other is entirely uninterested in reconciliation or compromise. They eventually make up at the last possible second, only after Emma has snapped and physically attacked Liv as she walks down the aisle. After they've rolled around on the floor for a bit, they instantly forgive each other (because reasons) and Emma walks Liv down the aisle to get married.
It seems irreparable, the damage that this film does to women, to brides, to female friendships and relationships of any gender. And, honestly, I'm not sure that its ending makes up the difference. Having said that, I was won over by the narrator's closing message, as trite as it sounds:
"Sometimes in life there really are bonds formed that can never be broken. Sometimes you really can find that one person who will stand by you no matter what; maybe you’ll find it in a spouse and celebrate it with your dream wedding, but there is also the chance that the one person you can count on for a lifetime, the one person who knows you, sometimes better than you know yourself, is the same person who's been standing beside you all along."Perhaps it doesn't sound like much, but I was struck by the rarity of the notion that a relationship with a friend can be as important as a romantic relationship. Sure, you could find that bond with a spouse, but you could also find what sounds very much like a soulmate in a platonic friendship. (Incidentally, the gender of that friendship - or spouse - isn't specified, which I appreciate.) Isn't that unusual? Few films think to question the validity of the ultimate goal of a stable relationship; still fewer chick flicks/rom coms do. And yet here is a miserable excuse of a a chick flick, in which women 'hilariously' lose any semblance of humanity in a humiliating struggle to have the best wedding, trampling over loyalty and love on the way, which ends up celebrating the bonds of friendship over those of matrimony.
Not convinced? Emma doesn't end up with the guy she gets engaged to at the beginning of the film. When Liv's brother was introduced to the plot, I saw the telltale signs of a potential romantic interest, but I dismissed it because I assumed that this film couldn't possibly engage an extra source of drama. The fiancés must remain stable, because the catty women fighting over their weddings are the problem, not their patient, long-suffering partners. To have one of the relationships fail would be to introduce some complexity beyond the notion that bitches be crazy, and I just couldn't imagine it. The fact that the film actually goes with the idea that one of the men could be less than perfect in addition to the less-than-perfect women adds a touch of much needed complexity to the plot and, more importantly, highlights the significance of the women's platonic bond over the inter-gender romantic bonds. Obviously it's not exactly groundbreaking for a woman to begin a film with one guy, discover that he is wrong for her, and end up driving into the sunset with a more suitable guy. And it's way less daring than it could have been if, for example, Emma ended up (gasp!) single. But it's a nice touch, I think, especially as it foregrounds the importance of Emma and Lil's relationship, which is the one that survives and is truly celebrated.
So to sum up: Bride Wars is not a good film! It is reductive and insulting, it is incredibly white and boringly heterosexist, and the performances leave plenty to be desired. And it did indeed feature women being pretty nasty to each other because weddings are the most important thing in the world. Having said all that, the celebration of platonic friendship was truly refreshing, and it left me feeling uplifted despite the overarching banality of the film.
Sunday, 22 July 2012
Review: Legally Blonde
In my current mood I am rampaging through all the happy girly films I can think of, decimating my collection within days and making regular pilgrimages to a second hand store to pick up classics for £1-2.
Some people I know disparage my taste for happy girly films, especially the ones which are often written off as chick flicks or rom coms. For some reason (many reasons, which I won't get into now) those kinds of films are routinely disparaged, and my liking for them is met with incredulity. In addition to their obvious trashiness, my presentation, some seem to think, suggests that I would be into boyish trashy films rather than girly trashy films. (That connotative gap between "boyish" and "girly", by the way, could make a whole other post.) But while I enjoy a silly action movie with muscles and explosions as much as the next person (and I really do, I'm not being sarcastic), chick flicks have a special place in my heart, and when I need comfort, nurturing and joy, that's where I go.
I'm not saying that they're shining beacons of perfect filmmaking, although some of them are. I'm not even arguing that any of them are any good, in a technical sense. I wouldn't know a 'good' film if I saw it. But, like many a derided art consumer, I know what I like.
Last night, whilst eating my lonely supper and filing and painting my nails (in my newest shade, a pretty opalescent pink called, gloriously, "ethereal"), I watched an old favourite: Legally Blonde, starring the delightful Reese Witherspoon, the gorgeous Selma Blair and the teen-movie staple Luke Wilson.
Legally Blonde is gratifyingly silly. A 'dumb blonde' from California is dumped by her boyfriend, who wants somebody "serious", and when she discovers that one of his brothers is engaged to a first year student at Yale law school, she decides to follow Warner to Harvard and prove to him that she is worth his attentions. Shenanigans ensue. I'm not going to recount the whole plot, but there will be spoilers ahead.
There's plenty not to like about Legally Blonde. It has moments of awful homophobia and horrifying racism / xenophobia, some pretty fucked-up narratives about sexuality/prudishness, and more sexism and gender essentialism than you can shake a stick at. This is not about being blind to the faults in the thing that you love. As someone who's into social justice issues, and dislikes jokes that punch down at any marginalised community, there's really very little media that I can consume completely happily. Nothing's perfect, is what I'm saying, and if I wrote off everything that had an offensive joke or a problematic message, I would never get to consume anything, and that would make me sad. The trick, for me anyway, is to tread the line between 'perfect' (ie. nothing = sadness) and 'so offensive it ruins the whole thing' (many things = sadness). In between there is a wealth of stuff which makes me laugh, makes me think, makes me reflect, makes me happy.
Incidentally, there's something weird going on with feminism in Legally Blonde. There is only one openly feminist character - not that she calls herself a feminist or anything, but we are intended to understand that she is one of those militants because she has a degree in women's studies from Berkeley, including a specialism in the history of combat, is probably a lesbian (she suggests to Elle that Elle would have called her a dyke, although this doesn't necessarily mean that she is a lesbian, only that she imagines that Elle would assume that she is one), and argues with Warner about the subliminal domination of the English language, telling him that she is petitioning to have the Winter semester referred to as the Winter ovester in an attempt to combat the school's discriminatory preference of semen to ovaries. A straw-feminist if ever there was one. On the other hand, this little exchange is immediately followed by Elle, wearing the traditional sexy bunny girl costume, approaching Warner and being told "Wow! Don't you look like a walking felony?!" to which she replies "Thank you. You're so sweet" and Enid, our feminist friend, rolls her eyes incredulously and stalks off. Now it looks to me as if we're meant to empathise with Enid here, despite the fact that she has just been dismissed as a ludicrous feminist harpy. What's interesting is that this scene seems to disparage feminism by setting up a "god, feminists are just so ridiculous" moment using a trivial argument that I've never seen any feminist espouse, but follows it up with an actual feminist position (rape is not a compliment, one's attire does not invite rape, etc) with which we are intended to sympathise. Warner is an arse: he doesn't have one redeeming feature, and everything he says, from "I need a Jackie, not a Marilyn" to "You're just not smart enough, sweetie" to "If you tell him [the alibi] he'll probably hire you as a summer associate. Who cares about Brooke? Think about yourself" is intended to show us what an awful, vacuous person he is. By using him here to oppose a feminist position, the film sets up the position as something we can agree with, all the while openly deriding feminists and their positions. Stealth feminism indeed.
I could go on for hours about the weird back-and-forth of feminism in this film, but that's not actually what I was going to talk about. During last night's screening of Legally Blonde, I realised just what it is that is so great about the film. Femme-bonding. Although the whole premise of the film is that feminine grooming is frivolous and somewhat contemptible, its joyful moments come, again and again, from rituals of grooming and bonding. When Elle is dumped by Warner, her friends take her to a beauty salon, where she has the epiphanic realisation that she must follow him to Harvard. When she discovers that he is engaged to Vivian, she is driving at random when she spots another salon, which she makes a desperate beeline for, and plants herself in front of an employee, saying tearfully "Are you free? It's an emergency." The employee, Paulette, asks "Bad day?" and then, as she puts aside her sandwich, "Spill." Elle recounts her tale one miserable exhalation of breath, and Paulette sympathises, empathises, and advises, culminating in her counseling Elle to "Steal the bastard back!" OK, so it's not brilliant advice, but the point is the ritual of grooming that provides the environment for the counseling, the regrouping, the finding of common ground and the regaining of strength. Later, the whole contingent of customers and staff bond over Elle's famous technique for getting the attention of a man when she advises Paulette on how to flirt with the UPS guy. Later again, when Elle tells Paulette that she is quitting after her professor hits on her in his office, the salon again provides the backdrop for fortification and resistance, as Elle's other (female) professor is revealed behind a hairdryer and tells her "If you're going to let one stupid prick ruin your life, you're not the girl I thought you were." This professor, who is "tough", who smirks at Elle's 'fluffy' demeanour and kicks her out of her first class, becomes Elle's ally when relocated in that centre of female-bonding, the beauty salon.
There are some less joyful moments related to female grooming. Elle discredits a witness by proving that he is gay after he correctly identifies her shoes as Prada, which is apparently all the evidence that she needs. And she finally wins the trial by using her knowledge of perm technicalities, which doesn't really say much for her abilities as a lawyer. Female grooming isn't only a force for good in this film. But what's important about it to me - what keeps me coming back to this film - is its status as a source of power and comfort for the women involved, particularly Elle who is trying to prove herself in the face of crushing contempt which is mostly based on her high-femme appearance. The salon and what it represents is a safe space for Elle to be honest about her emotions and her drives (personal and professional). Although there are plenty of unpleasant messages to be picked up from Legally Blonde, (and even this one - that grooming rituals are powerful - is balancing on a fine line and could easily be used for evil rather than good), the central theme of female friendship and support that is grounded in the often-disparaged pastime of female-grooming is something I can really get behind.
I also find it refreshing, if I'm honest, to see a film which celebrates the the joy the main character takes in grooming, rather than celebrating the endearing ignorance of the 'plain' girl who is in fact a natural beauty, who doesn't own any makeup or use straighteners, who doesn't know what an eyelash curler is, who wins the guy in the end, and who is throughout pitted against the mean girl who is perfectly coiffed, depilated, made-up - in short, groomed to within an inch of her life. That girl is always mean and vacuous, contemptuous of the 'plain' girl who doesn't subscribe to these silly, frivolous notions of beauty, and she is always, always, taught a lesson by the end. She loses the guy. She is exposed as a fraud. Her friends discover she is two-faced and ditch her. The beauty rituals are revealed to be inadequate to mask the ugliness of the person beneath them, and it is the plain girl who is kind and sweet and, above all, smart. Elle gets to be all of these things, which may not seem revolutionary, but which feels to me like a small victory won over the mechanics of competitive femininity, which insists that you can be beautiful or you can be smart/nice, but you can't be both.
This brings me back to my opening suggestion that films like this are routinely disparaged. As I said, there are many reasons for this disparagement, but I think that what I have described in this post is in fact central to their reputation as frivolous bits of fluff. Women, talking to each other about their lives, bonding over things that women are taught to find important, and taking strength and joy from those very things which are routinely used to dismiss and belittle them. That's what I want from my happy girly films, and it crops up again and again in my lists of favourites. And I won't apologise for it, and I will, as I've just demonstrated, talk your ear off about their qualities if given half a chance.
Some people I know disparage my taste for happy girly films, especially the ones which are often written off as chick flicks or rom coms. For some reason (many reasons, which I won't get into now) those kinds of films are routinely disparaged, and my liking for them is met with incredulity. In addition to their obvious trashiness, my presentation, some seem to think, suggests that I would be into boyish trashy films rather than girly trashy films. (That connotative gap between "boyish" and "girly", by the way, could make a whole other post.) But while I enjoy a silly action movie with muscles and explosions as much as the next person (and I really do, I'm not being sarcastic), chick flicks have a special place in my heart, and when I need comfort, nurturing and joy, that's where I go.
I'm not saying that they're shining beacons of perfect filmmaking, although some of them are. I'm not even arguing that any of them are any good, in a technical sense. I wouldn't know a 'good' film if I saw it. But, like many a derided art consumer, I know what I like.
Last night, whilst eating my lonely supper and filing and painting my nails (in my newest shade, a pretty opalescent pink called, gloriously, "ethereal"), I watched an old favourite: Legally Blonde, starring the delightful Reese Witherspoon, the gorgeous Selma Blair and the teen-movie staple Luke Wilson.
Legally Blonde is gratifyingly silly. A 'dumb blonde' from California is dumped by her boyfriend, who wants somebody "serious", and when she discovers that one of his brothers is engaged to a first year student at Yale law school, she decides to follow Warner to Harvard and prove to him that she is worth his attentions. Shenanigans ensue. I'm not going to recount the whole plot, but there will be spoilers ahead.
There's plenty not to like about Legally Blonde. It has moments of awful homophobia and horrifying racism / xenophobia, some pretty fucked-up narratives about sexuality/prudishness, and more sexism and gender essentialism than you can shake a stick at. This is not about being blind to the faults in the thing that you love. As someone who's into social justice issues, and dislikes jokes that punch down at any marginalised community, there's really very little media that I can consume completely happily. Nothing's perfect, is what I'm saying, and if I wrote off everything that had an offensive joke or a problematic message, I would never get to consume anything, and that would make me sad. The trick, for me anyway, is to tread the line between 'perfect' (ie. nothing = sadness) and 'so offensive it ruins the whole thing' (many things = sadness). In between there is a wealth of stuff which makes me laugh, makes me think, makes me reflect, makes me happy.
Incidentally, there's something weird going on with feminism in Legally Blonde. There is only one openly feminist character - not that she calls herself a feminist or anything, but we are intended to understand that she is one of those militants because she has a degree in women's studies from Berkeley, including a specialism in the history of combat, is probably a lesbian (she suggests to Elle that Elle would have called her a dyke, although this doesn't necessarily mean that she is a lesbian, only that she imagines that Elle would assume that she is one), and argues with Warner about the subliminal domination of the English language, telling him that she is petitioning to have the Winter semester referred to as the Winter ovester in an attempt to combat the school's discriminatory preference of semen to ovaries. A straw-feminist if ever there was one. On the other hand, this little exchange is immediately followed by Elle, wearing the traditional sexy bunny girl costume, approaching Warner and being told "Wow! Don't you look like a walking felony?!" to which she replies "Thank you. You're so sweet" and Enid, our feminist friend, rolls her eyes incredulously and stalks off. Now it looks to me as if we're meant to empathise with Enid here, despite the fact that she has just been dismissed as a ludicrous feminist harpy. What's interesting is that this scene seems to disparage feminism by setting up a "god, feminists are just so ridiculous" moment using a trivial argument that I've never seen any feminist espouse, but follows it up with an actual feminist position (rape is not a compliment, one's attire does not invite rape, etc) with which we are intended to sympathise. Warner is an arse: he doesn't have one redeeming feature, and everything he says, from "I need a Jackie, not a Marilyn" to "You're just not smart enough, sweetie" to "If you tell him [the alibi] he'll probably hire you as a summer associate. Who cares about Brooke? Think about yourself" is intended to show us what an awful, vacuous person he is. By using him here to oppose a feminist position, the film sets up the position as something we can agree with, all the while openly deriding feminists and their positions. Stealth feminism indeed.
I could go on for hours about the weird back-and-forth of feminism in this film, but that's not actually what I was going to talk about. During last night's screening of Legally Blonde, I realised just what it is that is so great about the film. Femme-bonding. Although the whole premise of the film is that feminine grooming is frivolous and somewhat contemptible, its joyful moments come, again and again, from rituals of grooming and bonding. When Elle is dumped by Warner, her friends take her to a beauty salon, where she has the epiphanic realisation that she must follow him to Harvard. When she discovers that he is engaged to Vivian, she is driving at random when she spots another salon, which she makes a desperate beeline for, and plants herself in front of an employee, saying tearfully "Are you free? It's an emergency." The employee, Paulette, asks "Bad day?" and then, as she puts aside her sandwich, "Spill." Elle recounts her tale one miserable exhalation of breath, and Paulette sympathises, empathises, and advises, culminating in her counseling Elle to "Steal the bastard back!" OK, so it's not brilliant advice, but the point is the ritual of grooming that provides the environment for the counseling, the regrouping, the finding of common ground and the regaining of strength. Later, the whole contingent of customers and staff bond over Elle's famous technique for getting the attention of a man when she advises Paulette on how to flirt with the UPS guy. Later again, when Elle tells Paulette that she is quitting after her professor hits on her in his office, the salon again provides the backdrop for fortification and resistance, as Elle's other (female) professor is revealed behind a hairdryer and tells her "If you're going to let one stupid prick ruin your life, you're not the girl I thought you were." This professor, who is "tough", who smirks at Elle's 'fluffy' demeanour and kicks her out of her first class, becomes Elle's ally when relocated in that centre of female-bonding, the beauty salon.
There are some less joyful moments related to female grooming. Elle discredits a witness by proving that he is gay after he correctly identifies her shoes as Prada, which is apparently all the evidence that she needs. And she finally wins the trial by using her knowledge of perm technicalities, which doesn't really say much for her abilities as a lawyer. Female grooming isn't only a force for good in this film. But what's important about it to me - what keeps me coming back to this film - is its status as a source of power and comfort for the women involved, particularly Elle who is trying to prove herself in the face of crushing contempt which is mostly based on her high-femme appearance. The salon and what it represents is a safe space for Elle to be honest about her emotions and her drives (personal and professional). Although there are plenty of unpleasant messages to be picked up from Legally Blonde, (and even this one - that grooming rituals are powerful - is balancing on a fine line and could easily be used for evil rather than good), the central theme of female friendship and support that is grounded in the often-disparaged pastime of female-grooming is something I can really get behind.
I also find it refreshing, if I'm honest, to see a film which celebrates the the joy the main character takes in grooming, rather than celebrating the endearing ignorance of the 'plain' girl who is in fact a natural beauty, who doesn't own any makeup or use straighteners, who doesn't know what an eyelash curler is, who wins the guy in the end, and who is throughout pitted against the mean girl who is perfectly coiffed, depilated, made-up - in short, groomed to within an inch of her life. That girl is always mean and vacuous, contemptuous of the 'plain' girl who doesn't subscribe to these silly, frivolous notions of beauty, and she is always, always, taught a lesson by the end. She loses the guy. She is exposed as a fraud. Her friends discover she is two-faced and ditch her. The beauty rituals are revealed to be inadequate to mask the ugliness of the person beneath them, and it is the plain girl who is kind and sweet and, above all, smart. Elle gets to be all of these things, which may not seem revolutionary, but which feels to me like a small victory won over the mechanics of competitive femininity, which insists that you can be beautiful or you can be smart/nice, but you can't be both.
This brings me back to my opening suggestion that films like this are routinely disparaged. As I said, there are many reasons for this disparagement, but I think that what I have described in this post is in fact central to their reputation as frivolous bits of fluff. Women, talking to each other about their lives, bonding over things that women are taught to find important, and taking strength and joy from those very things which are routinely used to dismiss and belittle them. That's what I want from my happy girly films, and it crops up again and again in my lists of favourites. And I won't apologise for it, and I will, as I've just demonstrated, talk your ear off about their qualities if given half a chance.
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Pirates! In an Adventure with Gender!
I was linked to this review of The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! at the F-word from a blog round-up at the fabulous Lashings of Ginger Beer blog, which I have recently discovered and am rather in love with. I happened to see Pirates myself last week, when I was in a filthy mood and wanted something to cheer me up. I knew Hunger Games would be out for a while longer, and I thought Pirates would probably do a better job of lifting my spirits anyway. Obviously I can't speak (yet) for what Hunger Games would do for my spirits, but Pirates certainly worked for me. Here's why I'm on a different page of the same book as Laura when it comes to gender in the film.
Pirates is not a progressive film in terms of gender. There are just three female characters (plus three 'ladies' who faint at the 'Scientist of the Year' competition, when a particularly exciting exhibit reaches the 'Ladies Fainting' section of the clap-o-meter, and some scantily-clad island beauties, about whom more later). One of these is a member of Pirate Captain's crew, disguised as a man. One is Cutlass Liz, a borderline racist characterisation of a sexy Barbadian pirate. And one is Queen Victoria, who is a badass villain whose beef with pirates is that they are so old-fashioned.
Cutlass Liz doesn't get to feature in the story - she is pretty much a token character. The crew member, who is addressed as "Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate" by Pirate Captain in the opening scene, isn't exactly foregrounded either. I could have done without her love-sick swoon in the same scene, where she sighs "I'd take a jellyfish in the face for [Pirate Captain]", but at least she doesn't end up marrying him, and her crush isn't a plot point. Queen Victoria is the best female character by a mile - she is mean, single-minded and deadly. Her diminutive stature and waddling plumpness do not hinder her in the slightest in setting aside her restrictive costume and waging war on Pirate Captain.
Three women in a film is pretty poor, especially when one of them only makes one appearance in 80 minutes. I suppose it's the old excuse, "well, there just weren't any women pirates!" Aardman, you've made a great argument that there probably were female pirates, perhaps disguised as men, and you could have done much more with that than give your token the most boring motivation in the history of female characters - that she's in love with a male character. You could even have had some women scientists. But I guess that would just be too unrealistic ...
I also disliked the closing joke of the film, in which Pirate Captain's deputy makes an emotional speech about the lessons they've all learnt. Pirate Captain asks him, sotto voce, whether he's sure he isn't a woman disguised as a man, quipping "apparently there's a lot of it about!" This is just boring gender-essentialism. I suppose it isn't necessarily all bad, because Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate is never suspected of being a woman, which turns the joke back onto Pirate Captain. But this does sail dangerously close to "exceptional woman" territory, in which one woman can escape the defining characteristics of her gender to prove her worth at the expense of other women. But I'm also slightly worried by the character description for the deputy that I found in what looks like an official Tumblr for the film:
So much for the women. What about the men of Pirates? To my mind, the film is just as hard on men as it is on women. Women are largely invisible, which is problematic. But men are very visible, and most of them are muppets. Pirates are loveable but ineffectual or swaggering macho-men; scientists are lonely unlovable nerds. The motivation of a high number of characters is to see scantily-clad women or get a girlfriend. I actually laughed at the introduction to Charles Darwin, when I thought that his journal entry documenting his discoveries and ending with "I will never get a girlfriend. I am so unhappy" was a throwaway joke, and not the basis for his entire narrative arc. Really, the film is incredibly unkind to scientists, who are without exception socially-inept, mind-numbingly boring, terminally unattractive and childishly obsessed with women. As Laura points out in her list of things Pirates taught her about women,
It's not much of a choice. Women are mostly invisible except when they're lust-objects, whilst men are invariably "pervs". I'm not saying that Pirates isn't sexist, because it most certainly is. But it cuts both ways, and it's not only offensive to women. I agree with every word of the F-word review - except I actually rather enjoyed the film, despite its issues - but I think it's important not to frame this particular sexism (or indeed any sexism) as damaging solely to women.
Pirates is not a progressive film in terms of gender. There are just three female characters (plus three 'ladies' who faint at the 'Scientist of the Year' competition, when a particularly exciting exhibit reaches the 'Ladies Fainting' section of the clap-o-meter, and some scantily-clad island beauties, about whom more later). One of these is a member of Pirate Captain's crew, disguised as a man. One is Cutlass Liz, a borderline racist characterisation of a sexy Barbadian pirate. And one is Queen Victoria, who is a badass villain whose beef with pirates is that they are so old-fashioned.
Cutlass Liz doesn't get to feature in the story - she is pretty much a token character. The crew member, who is addressed as "Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate" by Pirate Captain in the opening scene, isn't exactly foregrounded either. I could have done without her love-sick swoon in the same scene, where she sighs "I'd take a jellyfish in the face for [Pirate Captain]", but at least she doesn't end up marrying him, and her crush isn't a plot point. Queen Victoria is the best female character by a mile - she is mean, single-minded and deadly. Her diminutive stature and waddling plumpness do not hinder her in the slightest in setting aside her restrictive costume and waging war on Pirate Captain.
Three women in a film is pretty poor, especially when one of them only makes one appearance in 80 minutes. I suppose it's the old excuse, "well, there just weren't any women pirates!" Aardman, you've made a great argument that there probably were female pirates, perhaps disguised as men, and you could have done much more with that than give your token the most boring motivation in the history of female characters - that she's in love with a male character. You could even have had some women scientists. But I guess that would just be too unrealistic ...
I also disliked the closing joke of the film, in which Pirate Captain's deputy makes an emotional speech about the lessons they've all learnt. Pirate Captain asks him, sotto voce, whether he's sure he isn't a woman disguised as a man, quipping "apparently there's a lot of it about!" This is just boring gender-essentialism. I suppose it isn't necessarily all bad, because Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate is never suspected of being a woman, which turns the joke back onto Pirate Captain. But this does sail dangerously close to "exceptional woman" territory, in which one woman can escape the defining characteristics of her gender to prove her worth at the expense of other women. But I'm also slightly worried by the character description for the deputy that I found in what looks like an official Tumblr for the film:
If the Pirate Captain is the crew’s flashy but unreliable dad, the Pirate with a Scarf is their slightly put-upon mum. [...] [He is s]mart, resourceful, and perhaps just a little TOO loyal ...Now that's definitely a "he's a girl" joke, but is it also a "he's gay" joke? Perhaps I'm reading too much into it (this accusation has been levelled at me from time to time) but those sentences together make me pretty suspicious that the deputy's "loyalty" might be crush-based.
So much for the women. What about the men of Pirates? To my mind, the film is just as hard on men as it is on women. Women are largely invisible, which is problematic. But men are very visible, and most of them are muppets. Pirates are loveable but ineffectual or swaggering macho-men; scientists are lonely unlovable nerds. The motivation of a high number of characters is to see scantily-clad women or get a girlfriend. I actually laughed at the introduction to Charles Darwin, when I thought that his journal entry documenting his discoveries and ending with "I will never get a girlfriend. I am so unhappy" was a throwaway joke, and not the basis for his entire narrative arc. Really, the film is incredibly unkind to scientists, who are without exception socially-inept, mind-numbingly boring, terminally unattractive and childishly obsessed with women. As Laura points out in her list of things Pirates taught her about women,
It's fun to perve on women. During a presentation to the Royal Society of Scientists, the inventor of a hydrogen-powered flying device points out that one of its main advantages is that it lets you look down women's tops. [...] Finally: scantily clad women exist to cheer men up. When Pirate Captain's crew are down in the dumps, he suggests setting off on an adventure to an island where the women don't wear many clothes. Lucky old Darwin ends up on this wonderful island after having his heart broken by Queen Vic - get in there son!Now, those things are reprehensible. But what they teach us about men is just as nasty as what they teach us about women - possibly even nastier. Women do indeed often need to fulfill certain narrow criteria to be in a feature film, and that is highly problematic. However, when there are only three women in a film, at least you can argue that there might be other women in existence who aren't like that. That's not much of a recommendation, but when your cast is populated by huge numbers of grown men acting without exception like horny teenagers whose sole motivation is to impress, perv on or 'get' women, it sends an equally damaging message: that all men are like that.
It's not much of a choice. Women are mostly invisible except when they're lust-objects, whilst men are invariably "pervs". I'm not saying that Pirates isn't sexist, because it most certainly is. But it cuts both ways, and it's not only offensive to women. I agree with every word of the F-word review - except I actually rather enjoyed the film, despite its issues - but I think it's important not to frame this particular sexism (or indeed any sexism) as damaging solely to women.
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