Fixable You

I keep hearing this song when I'm out in the world, innocently going about my day, and my teeth grind automatically every time I hear it.

It's not just the insipid poppy tune, or the irritating voice, or the fact that he really ought to drop this song a semi-tone or two so he can hit the top note without sounding like he's straining something. It's not the fact that this song is called a "dance ballad" as if those words mean something. All those things are pretty annoying, but the worst thing about this song is its lyrics. I submit for your consideration the first verse and chorus:

Much as you blame yourself, you can't be blamed for the way you feel
Had no example of a love that was even remotely real
How can you understand something that you never had
Ooh baby if you let me, I can help you out with all of that 

Girl let me love you
And I will love you
Until you learn to love yourself
Girl let me love you
And all your trouble
Don't be afraid, girl let me help
Girl let me love you
And I will love you
Until you learn to love yourself
Girl let me love you
A heart of numbness
Gets brought to life
I'll take you there.

I'm really not a fan of songs by men about women which take as their subject the idea that women need men to sort them out. I know they're incredibly popular, especially with young women (the comments on the Ne-Yo song are full of "marry me, Ne-Yo!") but I find them insulting, patronising, and not the least bit romantic. There's a real trend at the moment for boy bands and solo male artists to write 'love songs' in this style. The general gist of them is that the girl is awesome, but she doesn't know how awesome she is, so she needs the boy/s to show her. Consider last year's enormous hit by the ubiquitous One Direction, What Makes You Beautiful, which epitomises this trend. As if the chorus lyrics weren't bad enough ("You don't know you're beautiful; That's what makes you beautiful"), the introductory verse is infuriating:

You're insecure
Don't know what for
You're turning heads when you walk through the door
Don't need make up
To cover up
Because the way that you are is enough.

The only thing she could be insecure about is her looks? Check. Make-up is something women use to make themselves more attractive to men? Check. Make-up is something only used by unattractive women to 'cover up'? Check. I know better than you whether you're 'enough'? Check. "Don't worry honey, we can see the real you and you get the One Direction seal of approval!"Women and girls everywhere ate this rubbish up like they were starving. The fact that 1D are all about 12 years old makes this even more annoyingly condescending.

The Ne-Yo song, however, doesn't even have the decency to just stick to praising a woman's looks. What's wrong with Ne-Yo's woman is that she's broken psychologically: she's been deprived of "real" love, and so can't understand it when she sees it. Ne-Yo is offering her real love. He wants to help her. He wants to bring to life her heart of numbness, and love her until she learns to love herself. This song is in the mould of my all-time most-hated song, Coldplay's Fix You. Although the lyrics are slightly more abstract than those from the songs I've mentioned already, the idea is right there in the title: whoever Chris Martin is singing to is broken, and he will try to fix them. Like the other songs, there is the sense that he knows his addressee better than they know themselves: "when you get what you want but not what you need".*

I get that all these songs are intended to be flattering. I get that the writers/singers aren't intending to insult their (female) audience/addressee. And in some ways, I can understand their enormous popularity. A guy who will love you despite the fact that you're broken? Yes! A guy who says you're beautiful, even though you can't see it yourself? Yes! In a society that constantly tells women and girls that they're broken and ugly whilst they should be beautiful and whole, and that being beautiful (and also whole, but mainly beautiful) is the most important thing in the world, I can see how these songs are perceived to be valuable. But they're not the right kind of valuable. In fact, they perpetuate some damaging ideals which don't serve women and girls - or anyone - at all well. The 1D song is particularly troublesome in its claim that the addressee is beautiful precisely because she doesn't think she's beautiful. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be beautiful, but compare the sentiment with Christina Aguilera's lyric "I am beautiful, no matter what you say". Christina's acknowledgement of her own beauty is what would disqualify her from 1D's kind of beauty, wherein you are required to be beautiful but not know it. One of the most insulting things that can be said of a girl or woman is that they think they're beautiful/attractive/sexy, and yet self-confidence is surely a better goal to strive for than external validation. It would be nice if we could strive for things other than physical perfection in the first place, but since we can't, let's at least aim for self-worth rather than for a world in which men and boys will consider you beautiful only if you don't have the audacity to believe it of yourself.

These songs are just a tiny part of pop culture, and I get accused of taking things too seriously when I attempt to critique them. The truth is that, as small as they are, they are a depressingly accurate summation of attitudes to girls and women today. Accusing people who critique pop culture of "sweating the small stuff" or being "focussed on trivia" to the detriment of the 'important' things overlooks the fact that the important things are composed of the trivial; that a culture in which governments control women's bodies is a culture in which men police women's appearance, a culture in which men get to decide whether women are crazy or not, and which ones are beautiful or worthy. A bunch of adolescents reassuring a girl that she's ok in their book, or a man generously offering to help a woman understand true love, are small examples of this world in which women must be validated by men before they can even exist, whether that existence entails being beautiful, being sane, having a brain or a job or an abortion.

I don't know, maybe it is trivial. I'm just tired of hearing about all the things that are wrong with me (but that will be graciously overlooked) in pop songs.

--

*Caveat: I'm almost willing to give Coldplay the benefit of the doubt, since it seems like the lyrics are self-addressed: the video is Chris Martin, alone, all sad-seeming until he gets to the gig where there is a real sense of community and belonging, which makes it seem like the 'home' referenced in "lights will guide you home". However, having never seen the video before, this song always gave me an uncomfortable feeling, and without the video, which is how we most often hear pop music, I think it's reasonable to assume that "you" is addressed to a listener and not the singer.

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.

Classic Literature

What makes a work of art a classic?

In case you're under the impression that this is going to be a thoughtful, well-constructed, analytical argument about the value of art in today's 'disposable culture', allow me to let you down gently before we begin. This notion popped into my head the other day, and I entertained it because it was a much nicer idea than all those proper, structured arguments about the value of classic literature and what constitutes it.

What if a classic is just something that you assume everyone has consumed? This came to me after I was chatting with a friend about books, and brought up The Post Birthday World as something that I had read recently: "it's by Lionel Shriver, you know, who wrote We Need to Talk About Kevin?" At which point my friend revealed that he had never read We Need to Talk About Kevin, and I was genuinely shocked. I had just assumed that he would have read it, and thus that we had a framework within which to discuss The Post Birthday World, and other books by other people and about other things. "But how could you not have? It's a classic", I told him.

So what made me think that? A few ideas spring to mind. Kevin was huge when it was released; it was all anyone talked about for weeks; its subject matter was dark and unusual and had shock value; it provoked discussions of morality. I mean, it's my privilege to move in groups of people where reading is normal and highly valued. I imagine not every social group passed around We Need to Talk About Kevin until the pages were literally falling out, until someone passed it to someone who passed it to someone else and somehow it got lost so that, when I wanted to re-read it a few weeks ago, I had to find a new copy. But I'm sure it wasn't just me. There were newspaper editorials, there were tv programmes, there were school projects. I remember learning some formative facts about my relatives and friends from how they reacted to that book, things that still stick in my head today. "Well, she was just evil, wasn't she? The mother. Didn't you just want to smack her?" I hadn't wanted to smack her, and I was fascinated by people's differing interpretations. To this day I like finding out what people think of that book.

And so, back to the idea of classics. It's medium-specific, I think. Although in some ways classics transcend their media, meaning that even people who don't, for example, like/watch films have seen Star Wars, there is perhaps a line to be drawn between the two types of classic. So when I talk to this particular friend about dystopian fiction, which we both love, and he reveals that he hasn't read any Margaret Atwood, I am surprised, as I class Margaret Atwood's work as classic dystopian fiction. Speaking to a non-reading friend, I wouldn't be at all surprised that they haven't read Atwood, because despite her massive industry fame, she's not the kind of writer who transcends literary culture into the worlds of people who aren't huge readers. She's not, for example, Steven King, James Paterson, Dan Brown, EL James, JK Rowling, Stephanie Meyer or Suzanne Collins: all recent examples of authors who overcome their specific media to reach a wide audience, including people who don't normally read. Oddly, I haven't read all of those authors. And it's often those authors that people ask me about, if they're people who don't read who know that I do read. But I digress.

We often talk of classics in very narrow terms. When someone asks if you like the classics, they mean Dickens, Austen, Tolstoy, Melville. Sometimes recent books get called "modern classics", which can mean anything from "this is a really good book" to "this is impenetrable; it must be clever". But for myself, although those usages are far from inappropriate, I most often use "classic" to refer to something that has hit a zeitgeist in some way - something that taps into a current concern and makes connections between people, objects, issues, events. Something that spreads like wildfire and causes conversations. So Moby Dick might be a classic, but I'm not surprised when somebody hasn't read it, whether they are big readers or not. I am much more surprised when a reader hasn't read Harry Potter, despite the fact that Moby Dick is, probably, the 'better' book. I wonder if the notion of the 'classic' novel - as we understand it - is just a stubborn hangover. Will we call The Hunger Games a classic in 100 years? It's surely doubtful, but I have no problem calling it a classic now, since for me, it means that something is noteworthy, of its time, thought-provoking and stimulating. I could ask a stranger on the tube what they thought of The Hunger Games, and probably 3 out of 5 times have a conversation about it. I doubt I would get the same odds with Moby Dick or, god forbid, Bleak House.

I imagine this might offend some people, who would prefer that the term "classic" be attached only to 'good' works of art, but frankly I think my definition is better and far, far easier to manage. We can argue all night (and some of us have) about what is 'good' art and what is not, but it's far harder to disagree with the claim that "everyone has read Fifty Shades of Gray" than it is to disagree with "Fifty Shades of Gray is really good". A much less bitter pill to swallow.

I'm as much of a culture snob as the next blogger, but I'm all about conversation. I'm all about - if it's not too much of a cliché - the exchange of ideas. I love Moby Dick, and I love Harry Potter, and I know which one I'm more likely to chat about at work. That's my idea of a classic.

Review: Hope Springs

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Doctor Who and the Transgender Horse

What else would I do on a Monday morning but write a blog post about a throwaway joke in Saturday's episode of Doctor Who?

Although I barely kept up with the last season of Doctor Who, and didn't really feel its absence, so far this time I am keeping myself interested. It's only 3 episodes in, so not much of an achievement thus far. If I get bored I'll stop watching it - autumn is full of brilliant (awful) TV to keep me entertained.

So Saturday's episode was good, I thought. I expected it to be a bit silly - remember how, last season, we had deep philosophical heart-wrenching episode followed by funny looking aliens / bow tie jokes with nary a character-development in sight? Well, I'm pretentious, and I always liked the first kind of episode better. I find the silliness of Doctor Who tiring at times. I suppose you could tell me to not watch a kids' show, but a lot of TV does the same thing. One of my favourites, New Tricks, is majorly guilty of this. I guess they're filling an odd spot: family friendly often equals lots of issues to play with and lots of masters to please. Doctor Who often chooses not to integrate silliness with seriousness in one episode, but I think perhaps I've noticed more integration in these first episodes of the new series. All three episodes have dealt with big questions, emotional turmoil and ethical dilemmas - and yet there have been plenty of jokes, both aural and visual, and a fair bit of silliness, particularly in episode two (Mitchell and Webb as cranky robot soldiers, anyone?).

But it's one particular tiny, barely noticeable joke that I want to discuss today. Take a guess? It's the transgender horse, of course!

"He's called Joshua. It's from the bible. It means the deliverer."
"No he isn't."
"What?"
"I speak horse. He's called Susan. And he wants you to respect his life choices. Hup!"

I exchanged a significant look with my viewing partner. Warning: I'm about to overthink this massively, so if that kind of thing makes you roll your eyes, feel free to move on!

So, is this a transgender horse? When I was looking online for a transcript this morning I came across this opinion that no, Susan is not a transgender horse, because the Doctor still uses male pronouns. Ah, but is he misgendering the horse? Obviously the horse wouldn't have referred to itself using a pronoun, so perhaps it's the Doctor's mistake and he should have referred to the horse as "she" not "he"? The author then acknowledges the absurdity of the question:

and the ridiculousness of that very question is also why I really hate the idea of gender issues being joked about, especially through animals because yeah, even if the horse is cis *snort* it's still being really flippant with name choices that don't necessarily match up to other people's gendered expectations and that's definitely a trans* issue 

so even if the joke wasn't directly targeting trans* people, it still perpetuated the idea that asking someone to refer to you by your chosen name (and since it's a name generally associated with "the opposite sex", it hints at pronoun usage as well) is ridiculous, laughable, and a lifestyle choice.

So, ok, maybe this conversation is absurd. But that's no reason not to have it. Hell, we're so starved of any trans* visibility on our TV screens, I'll take a horse if it's on offer.

I think I disagree with dearjimmoriarty on this one. Yes, the joke is flippant. But who are we laughing with? We see the owner rolling his eyes as the Doctor gallops away, but it seems to me like we're laughing at the taken-for-granted notion that we slap names (and genders?) on our animals and assume that we've had the last word. Kind of like the mice in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who are running experiments on the Earth, although not as fully explored of course. We laugh at the realisation that animals have 'inner lives': the joke is in the reversal. Having said that, why make the horse trans*? I do think that this is a bit of a fail, since it's clearly a case of "what's funnier than flagging up the notion that animals have their own chosen names rather than our arbitrarily applied ones? I know, it's transgender!" But don't forget that after this little exchange, which is clearly set up to be a joke, the Doctor calls the horse Susan. The joke for the audience may have been the reveal ("haha! transgender horse!") but the Doctor doesn't treat it as a joke. And the Doctor, whilst hardly the moral compass of the programme, does unfailingly sort the wheat from the chaff in terms of what's important. He always hones in on the salient point, whether it's where Oswin gets the milk from, or why there are electric street lamps, or that Amy and Rory need a little push from a social engineer to 'fix' their relationship.

It's also a kinda neat bit of commentary on the issue of names for trans* people. What do we do, but reject the name that has been chosen for us and replace it with our own choice of name? That's our real name, right? The name that we choose, that fits us, that makes us feel known when we hear it. That's more real than Joshua.

And actually, I do think it's a choice. I may not have a choice in how I feel about myself and what my gender is, but I make a choice every day to refer to myself by my chosen name and pronouns. I make a choice to ask others to do the same. Sometimes I make the choice to be strict about it, and sometimes I make the choice to let a slip go and not make a big deal out of it. Sometimes I choose to ask people to respect my pronouns, and sometimes I don't mention pronouns but make sure that they have my name right. No, I didn't say Holly. Trust me, I am making choices all day every day.

Maybe this joke doesn't deserve too many analytical words. But in a way, I think its brevity is its power. Throwaway joke, quick laugh - and then the Doctor calls the horse Susan. As representation, it could be a lot worse.

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: 

"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.

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.

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: 

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.

Musings on 'Scott and Bailey'

I so enjoyed writing about gender in Dirk Gently that I thought I'd have a go at ITV's Scott and Bailey too. This will be slightly different, since a whole series has already aired, and although I know I had a lot of thoughts about it at the time, I can't remember too many details! I've watched the last three on ITV Player to remind myself, but unfortunately missed the first three, so I missed my most growled-at storyline, in which one of the title characters accidentally gets pregnant, schedules an abortion, can't go through with it, and then conveniently miscarries so that she doesn't have the inconvenience of pregnancy/parenthood, but doesn't have to make any evil baby-killing decisions. I saw it coming, of course, but I still snarled a lot.

There's a whole lot of gender stuff going on in Scott and Bailey. The three main characters are women, almost the entire creative team are women, and the whole idea for the programme was conceived by women. This is obviously good news for us women-friendly folks - we (ok, I) like things that have a lot of women involved in them. On the other hand, it does heighten the stakes for Scott and Bailey to be "feminist". We (ok, I) want to see a woman-heavy show with 'good representations' of women; I want to see lots of women in lots of different roles, with lots of different skills/characteristics/flaws/voices etc. I don't want to see six different stereotypes of women, although that would certainly be an improvement on the two different stereotypes of women that you get in much mainstream media.

Thankfully, Scott and Bailey doesn't fall into this trap (I suspect the woman-heavy creative team may have had something to do with this). The two title characters, Janet Scott and Rachel Bailey, are very different women. Neither are perfect, which is a good start. Janet Scott is 'older', married with kids, a fixture in the MIT in which they both work. She is stolid, calm, dependable and determined. Rachel Bailey is 'younger', a new addition to the team. She is called "Sherlock" by the rest of the team, due to her intuitive style of detective work, and she is often talked up as being brilliant. She is also flighty and impatient, and given to making questionable choices about both her personal and her professional life. The third main character is DCI Gill Murray, a fast-talking, no-nonsense boss who demands the highest level of achievement from her team.

These characters form the backbone of the programme, and they are constantly interacting with each other about their professional and personal lives. Both Murray and Scott act as 'mentors' to Bailey in different ways, with Scott keeping Bailey on the "more traditional" lines of investigation whilst also giving her space to let her personal detecting style blossom, and Murray giving Bailey multiple opportunities to experience different sides of police work within the team, often talking her through new things. This is one facet of the show that I like very much. It's great to see the different levels of knowledge being treated as significant but not laughable - Bailey is not a silly kid, but she has less experience than the other two and they are keen to help her progress as a detective, encouraging her development and being patient with her inexperience. They recognise her potential and want to enhance it, even when her inexperience and impatience leads her down the wrong paths. The three women are supportive of each other both professionally and personally - there is little evidence of the jealousy, competitiveness and cattiness that is the mainstay of many TV relationships between women.

The personal storylines of the women are interesting. Janet's marriage and potential affair form the main drive of her personal plot, whilst for Rachel it is her relationship with a man who, unknown to her, has a wife and children living elsewhere. Gill Murray's storyline is less prominent, but what there is of it is centres around her life as a single mother of a teenage son. Rachel also has that unintended pregnancy to contend with. One part of me is disappointed that these plot-lines are so dependent on the womanhood of the characters. Having female protagonists be driven by their relationship- (and (potential) parenting-) concerns is not exactly ground-breaking. On the other hand, the programme is mainly about their detective work, where they are Scott and Bailey rather than Janet and Rachel after all, so I think I give this a pass. Being concerned about their relationships alongside their jobs is progressive, in comparison with so many portrayals of women on TV, who are only concerned about their relationships, or who exist as extensions of the male protagonists (who are usually concerned about their jobs). On the other hand, perhaps it is telling that so much of this programme, which is titled Scott and Bailey, is devoted to the personal lives of Janet and Rachel. The last episode of the first series, for example, is barely about solving the 'main crime' of the episode at all - their only witness gives it up in his second interview after cursory questioning by Scott. The meat of the episode is concerned with Rachel's entanglement with slimy barrister Nick Savage (about whom more in a moment).

On the other side of binary gender representation, the treatment of recurring male characters on the show is somewhat less progressive. Nick Savage is probably the biggest male role, and he is essentially a villain. After a 2-year relationship with Rachel, it is revealed in the first episode that he is married with children. When she later discovers that he had an affair with a jury member whilst defending a client in court, he threatens her with the retribution of the client that he successfully defended if she gives him away, and in the final episode is charged with Rachel's attempted murder. Nick Savage (whose name is obviously significant) starts off suave and manipulative and ends up vicious and murderous. Not exactly a fully realised character. DC Kevin Lumb (whose name also seems significant) is a bit of a buffoon - he is sexist, arrogant, lazy and seems to exist as an 'intelligence' comparison to Bailey (at one point, Murray says to Bailey "you're not Kevin" (Series 1, episode 4)). DS Andy Roper, who is in love with Scott, is really nothing but a means of character-development for Scott - after their one-night-stand prior to the shows beginning, he tries to persuade her to leave her husband, prompting her to reevaluate her relationship and her priorities. Ade is Janet's patient, loyal husband, and DCS Dave Murray, Gill Murray's ex-husband, had a string of affairs and left her when he "got a 23-year-old uniform pregnant" (Series 1, episode 5). His biggest scene so far is when he suggests to Gill that she shouldn't be "taking up with another man" right in the middle of their son's A-levels (Series 1, episode 6):

Dave: It's Sammy. It's fine, it's his A-levels. I don't want you to take this the wrong way. Don't you think - right in the middle of his exams - is the wrong time for you to be taking up with another man?
Gill: How dare you? After all the turmoil and upheaval and disruption you caused that boy? How dare you.
Dave: He's not happy.
Gill: That's rubbish. This is about you, not him. Despite the fact you walked out on me and him, despite the fact you were at it with all and sundry for God knows how long, you can't stand the idea I could possibly get into bed with someone else, can you? Hypocrite.
Dave: I knew you'd take it the wrong way.
Gill: (walking away) On your bike, mush.
Dave: I've told him if he wants to move in with me and Emma for a little while he's more than welcome. He seemed quite keen.
Gill: How've you managed that then? Promised to buy him a car? 
(he makes a face)
Gill: No - Dave - you can't do that, I told him I would buy him a car when he got his A-level results, if they were good enough, so you'd better retract that promise.
Dave: I'm not retracting a thing.
Gill: You fucking arsehole.
(he nods)
Dave: Cheerio.

Dave is clearly the bad guy here - we're not asked to sympathise with his (entirely unreasonable) behaviour, and Gill is set up as the victim. What's interesting to me about this exchange is the way the characters say the things they say. Gill's words are the ones we are to agree with, and Dave's words are not. But Gill raises her voice, she swears at him, she gets passionate. She shows emotion. Dave, on the other hand, speaks quietly and calmly, and doesn't respond to Gill's emotion. When she calls him a "fucking arsehole" he just nods slightly, says "cheerio" and leaves. This is a nice subversion of gender norms: the man is calm and collected while the woman is emotional and 'sensitive', yet we are clearly to side with the woman, despite being conditioned to approve more of the communication style of the man.

Compare that with this scene from earlier in the episode, after Bailey has told Scott that she's seeing Nick again, and Scott has been brutally honest about her concerns:

Rachel: (coming in) Hey. You know I spent ages organising the balloons, the helium, the other - well it's shit - and all anyone else had to do was go pick stuff up, and she talks to me like bollocks and everyone else is fucking wonderful!
Nick: Well - why?
Rachel: (turns tv off) D'you wanna marry me? I'm proposing to you. D'you wanna marry me.
Nick: (amazed) Well - um - I can't - I -
Rachel: After the divorce goes through. (Nick is making faces and laughing in disbelief) I didn't think so. (she walks away)
Nick: Have you - 
Rachel: What, been at the bottle? Yeah. You know, she implied - no she didn't, she didn't imply, she said it, she said that the only reason you're going out with me is because you're frightened I'll wreck your life for you, if I don't stay on the right side of you. Are you?
Nick: No.
Rachel: But you don't want to marry me.
Nick: I wish you wouldn't talk to your colleagues - 
Rachel: Am I just kidding myself?
Nick: About what?
Rachel: About this, about us.
Nick: I wish you wouldn't drink.
Rachel: Pff, you drink.
Nick: Well, to that extent, before you even get here.
Rachel: Did Caroline [his wife] not like a little drink?
Nick: Can we not talk about Caroline?
Rachel: Or Martina [the juror], what about her? (he rolls his eyes) You know I said to her, I said he's changed. But you know, she's amazing Janet, 'cos she just cuts to the chase, she goes right for the jugular. 
Nick: Rachel, I have changed, and I don't give a damn what Janet thinks or says, I just think getting married is ... it's a big step! 
Rachel: She's right though, isn't she?
Nick: (exasperated) Well I don't know because you haven't told me what she said yet - 
Rachel: You're just protecting your own paltry little carcass.
Nick: That's just rubbish!
Rachel: First thing in the morning I'm gonna go to Godzilla's office, and I'll tell her all about you and your little juror friend or I might just do it right now. (gets out her phone)
Nick: Rachel ...
Rachel: What, don't make calls when you're pissed? Or, only in emergencies - (he tries to snatch the phone from her and she fights him off. There's a pause)
Nick: Alright look, we'll get married.
Rachel: (laughs) What?
Nick: We'll get married, if this is what it takes to prove to you that I love you, we'll get married, I just wish you wouldn't GET like this! (he puts his face in his hands and she looks stricken)
Rachel: I'm sorry. 
Nick: It's alright.
Rachel: Is it?
Nick: Yeah.
Rachel: I  had a really shit day, after she had a go at me - I've never fallen out with her, not for more than 10 minutes, and then I started to think things, so I - I'm sorry. (they kiss)
Nick: Smoking.
Rachel: Yeah. Sorry. I'll go and brush my teeth. (she walks out and he shakes his head, looking worried)

This is, in some ways, quite similar to the exchange between Gill and Dave. There is some question as to the moral 'truth' of what's going on (is Nick just keeping Rachel sweet? is Dave acting out of concern for his son) and in both cases, I think the audience is intended to side with the women in their interpretation. The difference is in the attitudes of the characters. While Dave stays very calm in contrast to Gill's rising emotion, the emotional temperature of the conversation between Nick and Rachel starts off high and gets higher, with both of them speaking loudly and quickly. We think we know that Rachel is right in her suspicions (we trust the judgement of Scott, for a start, and we already know how manipulative and slippery Nick is) and that allows us to see more clearly the insidious nature of his machinations here. His continual evading of the issue (bringing up her drinking, and her talking to her colleagues) looks more suspicious than it might if we hadn't previously been persuaded that he's manipulating her. As it is, his implication that she's only accusing him of this because she's drunk looks desperate and rather pathetic. It's also very telling that she manages to brush this evasive behaviour off until the end of the conversation, after he has convinced her that she is the one in the wrong by insisting that it's her behaviour that is unreasonable rather than his. When she capitulates and they kiss, that innocuous little exchange about her smoking highlights perfectly the insidious nature of his controlling behaviour. Whereas earlier his comments about her behaviours that he finds unacceptable are brushed off, now she quickly apologises and goes to make herself more acceptable to him.

This scene, for me, is a perfect illustration of a potentially abusive relationship. Nick's focus on Rachel's unacceptable habits, his complaints about her talking to other people about him, his attempt to make her believe that things are different from how she perceives them - this is classic emotional manipulation and it's one of the things that, for me, clearly marks this show out as progressive. We know that Rachel is right (and it is proved later in the episode), we know that Nick is lying and this is therefore a chilling portrayal of a man manipulating a woman in order to control her behaviour for his own benefit. The fact that both Murray and Scott can see this where Bailey can't, and try to make her "open her eyes" is also significant. Bailey is far from perfect - she is impetuous and stubborn and has made any number of foolish decisions, both professional and personal. Her professional misjudgement often stems from her poor personal judgement, as when she uses her role as a DC to find out Nick's home address from his car registration after she discovers that he is married. She also tells Nick confidential information about her job.

Is Rachel sadly un-feminist, for being potentially brilliant professionally but a complete mess personally, and allowing her personal life to cloud her professional judgement? Well, it may not be ideal, but it has enabled some wonderful interaction between three extremely strong women characters. Scott and Murray have Bailey's back throughout, and although they chastise her for her poor judgement, they ultimately support her, whilst making it clear that her behaviour is both stupid and unacceptable. In the next series, presumably the Nick Savage storyline will be finished with, and we'll get to see Bailey in other contexts. Something else to look forward to is a new character to be introduced, described in the blurb as "the formidable DCI Julie Dobson". I am keeping my fingers crossed for another intriguing, imperfect, highly-watchable character.

Musings on 'Dirk Gently' and 'Sherlock'

I've just watched the second episode of Dirk Gently on BBC iPlayer. The pilot was great, as I remember it (it was screened in December 2010), and the first episode was fun, if silly. But with the second episode came the introduction of Dirk's partner's girlfriend, played by Helen Baxendale, and that's where the problems begin.

Susan's main function in this episode, unsurprisingly, is to throw the relationship between Dirk and Macduff into relief. She gets to be present because the pair are working on a case in Cambridge, and Susan happens to be applying for a job in Cambridge. Here's their conversation before her interview.

Susan: I really need to get ready for my interview - are you sure you're alright?
(they are interrupted by plot stuff, which concludes with an automated voice reading out Macduff's emails)
Computer: Hello Richard. Only Mum. Just a short note to remind you about lunch on Sunday. Do bring Susan if you feel you must.
Susan: I'll see you later.
Macduff: No - Susan - ! 
(she walks away but he is detained by Dirk and catches her up a bit later)
Macduff: Susan! Hey. I'm sorry. Don't - you know my mum, she doesn't mean that.
Susan: It's a relief to be honest. Now I don't have to feel guilty about not liking her. 
Macduff: You don't like my mum?
Susan: Oh Richard, nobody likes your mother.
Macduff: I suppose she is uniquely unlikeable.
Susan: Are you going to wish me luck for my interview then?
Macduff: Yes. Good luck for your interview.
Susan: You don't mean that, do you.
Macduff: I don't want to move to Cambridge Susan, I don't, I really don't. I'm sorry. Dirk, and the Agency, you know I can't, I can't just walk away. I'm - look, ignore me, forget it, don't think about that now. Listen, hey! You might not even get the job!
Susan: Thanks.
Macduff: Good luck. (kisses her)

Susan is offered the job. When she presses Macduff, this is how he responds:

Susan: Richard, wait! They need an answer about the job by the end of the day. That's if we haven't both been arrested by then.
Macduff: I don't want to move to Cambridge.
(break of a few scenes)
Macduff: I want to be Dirk's partner - I want to make the agency work.
Susan: Richard, he will never treat you as his partner.
Macduff: It's just how he is. Despite everything he does and as difficult as it is to believe, I think he might be brilliant. (pause) Don't ever let him know I said that. And I think that, deep down I think he needs me even though he'd rather die than admit it. (pause) Please don't make me choose. 

So there's plenty of good stuff to choose from here. Firstly, the cliched dislike between a man's girlfriend and his mother, which inevitably pits them against one another as competitors for the man's affection and respect. It is played for laughs here, as it almost always is (those silly women and their jealousy!), and here we also have the knowledge, suggested by Susan and confirmed by Macduff, that Macduff's mother is "uniquely unlikeable" (as indeed we can see for ourselves, thanks to her unpleasant email to her son). She's a mother-in-law joke waiting to happen.

But my main issue with their relationship, as portrayed by these few short scenes, is what is revealed by Macduff's attitude to Susan's potential job. We aren't shown much more than this, so we can't know if they have already discussed it and come to the conclusion that if Susan gets the job, they both must move to Cambridge. But I'm going to assume it, based on the fact that neither of them brings up the possibility of him staying in London without her, or them staying in London together and her commuting to Cambridge (an unlikely solution, granted). We can assume that this is the only possible option if Susan takes the job - and, indeed, this is necessarily the case if the point of this whole story-line is to endanger the working relationship of Macduff and Dirk, which is how I see it. Susan's sole purpose in this episode is to bring to a head the tension between Dirk and Macduff, who Dirk treats pretty badly, insisting on calling him his "assistant", giving him the most mundane / unpleasant / dangerous tasks and generally taking him for granted. Macduff needs another character to express this to, and who better than a pseudo-girlfriend who can act as a catalyst for their troubled working relationship?

Throughout the rest of the episode Dirk apparently assumes that Macduff will be leaving him, and at the end, back in their London offices, he seems surprised when he sees Susan and Macduff, saying "shouldn't you two be halfway up the M11 en route to your new life in Cambridge?" Susan tells him that she didn't get the job - "they had a last minute change of heart". I knew straight away what this change of heart would entail, and sure enough, it is soon revealed that Dirk has called the company and given Susan a damaging character reference, including details of "her history of sexually harassing patients". Susan hears this on an answering machine message and rounds on Dirk, saying "You conniving little - !" and the bouncy theme music plays as the credits roll.

Now, I don't think the programme is exactly excusing Dirk's behaviour. The 'joke' is set up at the end with Susan trying to pay Dirk a compliment and apologise for thinking he is a self-serving bastard. They are interrupted by the phone message which reveals his duplicity. He is clearly shown to be a self-serving bastard, as Susan says. But this plays out in the same way that Sherlock Holmes' selfishness does in the BBC's Sherlock (as indeed it does in many recent adaptions of the Holmes/Watson stories. Holmes is a clever, unpleasant man. His sidekick Watson is exasperated but loyal, and his romantic relationships with women are continually undermined by the behaviour of Holmes, who acts out of a selfish desire to keep Watson to himself). In Dirk Gently, Dirk is less of an analytical machine than Holmes - his is more of a bumbling, random-chance, instinct-led type of detection which is none-the-less successful - yet his treatment of his sidekick is strikingly similar. Macduff is the down-to-earth voice of reason who acts as a foil to Dirk's quirky 'holistic' detective work, and he is also the long-suffering dogsbody, constantly making tea, being refused a chair or desk in the office and trying ineffectually to keep Dirk on the right side of the law. His relationship with Susan is brought up for the first time in this episode, and its inclusion is for the sole purpose of highlighting this unequal relationship with Dirk. Through Susan, the cipher-girlfriend, we learn that Dirk is brilliant, even if he is a bastard. We learn that Macduff is deeply invested in both Dirk and his detective agency. We learn that Dirk "needs" Macduff, but that Dirk must never know that Macduff knows this. We learn that this relationship, which looks so flawed, works for both parties, and we know that we don't need to question it because Susan has done it for us.

Susan gets no characteristics, no personality of her own, beyond that which is necessary to throw those of Dirk and Macduff into relief. Her professional ambition is acceptable only in that it throws a spanner into the relationship between the two men, and it can be killed off neatly at the end once we have learnt that their working relationship is perfectly fine, thank you very much. Dirk's behaviour is not excused - he is definitely a self-serving bastard - but I think it is exonerated by its positioning at the end of the episode, by the way in which Susan's obvious and entirely justified outrage is cut off by the chirpy theme music. That's just the way he is! He's a bastard, and people will suffer because of him, but that's ok because he's on the side of the righteous. He and Macduff can detect in peace, now that Macduff's inconveniently independent girlfriend has been put back in her place.

And don't even get me started on the gay nerds. There are three non-straight men in this episode, all of whom met on an online gaming site. Two of them are shown in bed together wearing pointy elf ears, and the third (Asian-British) is highly feminized, squealing shrilly and comically when Dirk breaks his nose. So that's sexism, racism, homophobia, geek-shaming, mother-in-law jokes and playing the ruining of someone's career for laughs. Nice work, BBC!

This detective-sidekick pairing follows very similar lines to the Holmes/Watson pairing in Sherlock. There hasn't as yet been any evidence of the homoerotic subtext that is so common in the Sherlock Holmes canon, but the triangular relationship between detective-sidekick-sidekick's partner is incredibly similar. The two men have a working relationship which is also ambiguously personal, and the partner of the sidekick threatens this relationship in some way. (Although the gay subtext isn't there between Dirk and Macduff, it is interesting that Macduff is continually insisting that he is Dirk's "partner", something that Dirk refuses to admit although it is technically true.) The detective is jealous of the sidekick's partner for taking the attention of the sidekick, and the sidekick's partner is eye-rollingly tolerant of the businesslike-but-oddly-personal relationship between her partner and the detective. The situation continues tolerably until some incident in the romantic relationship (marriage, a job in another city) threatens the stability of the relationship between detective and sidekick, and that's when the detective starts behaving badly in order to scupper the relationship between the sidekick and his partner (embarrassing them at a fancy dinner in the 2009 Guy Ritchie film Sherlock Holmes, sabotaging the career of the partner in Dirk Gently. Interestingly this aspect hasn't been depicted in Sherlock - perhaps we need to wait for the third series. Watson's relationships so far - all minor - have been scuppered by his obsession with Holmes - he can barely remember his girlfriends' names and keeps abandoning them to work on cases with Holmes. This is more to do with Watson's inadequacy than Holmes' selfishness).

There are multiple layers to the tension between the two pairings. The detective sees the romantic relationship as a hindrance to the important business of detecting, and the sidekick's partner sees the detecting as a childish distraction from 'real life' (this seems to involve marriage / settling down / making sacrifices for one's partner like moving to Cambridge). The woman is at once portrayed as the grown-up, responsible outsider who tolerates the childish games of the boys, and as the nagging adult bore who wants to spoil their fun / doesn't understand the importance of the job.

The programmes themselves seem ambivalent on the proper response to this. Are these romantic partners silly, frivolous nags who represent a feminine threat to the relaxed, manly pursuits of detection? Or are they mature, responsible adults trying desperately to persuade their immature man-children to grow up and engage in a real relationship / proper job / normal life? I don't think the programmes come down firmly on one side or the other. Both interpretations are implied, and both represent a zero-sum understanding of the options involved. Either the homosocial pairing is adventurous, clever, successful and fun, whilst the heterosexual pairing is boring and restrictive, or the homosocial pairing is childish and comically inept whilst the heterosexual pairing is mature, responsible and fulfilling. What is clear is that men and women are irreconcilably different, and that the sidekick - poor everyman Watson - cannot have both. He must choose: fun times and boyish adventures with his infuriating but brilliant pal? - or a nice, normal, heterosexual relationship? At no point in any of these adaptations is it suggested that the two can coexist. Either the working relationship is damaging the romantic relationship by taking all the time and attention of the sidekick, or the romantic relationship is damaging the working relationship by giving the sidekick non-work-related responsibilities (such as the honeymoon in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows).

What this means for gender portrayals in Dirk Gently, then, is that Susan - the only woman on the detecting 'side' - is inevitably invisible as a real character. Her whole purpose is to create drama and highlight the issues between Dirk and Macduff. I'm not arguing that the programme is sexist, or that men are portrayed more flatteringly than the women - Dirk's is not exactly a positive portrayal of manhood - but poor Susan is given no life at all. She is definitively absent from the real meat of the episode, on which she can only provide a commentary and, by her mere existence, shore up the emotional interplay between the two 'real' characters. Nobody wins the gender wars here: presenting conflicting relationships as a zero-sum game in which one wins and the other loses inevitably denies the humanity of all concerned, and ultimately keeps men and women safely distanced from one another, with little hope of a nuanced portrayal.