It looks like yet another movie about how women are evil and unknowable, especially beautiful women. Here’s what we can glean from the teaser: the Huldra is inhuman (has a tail), brutal (chopped tail off herself and is keeping it in the fridge, apparently, which is pretty terrifying), beautiful, and completely unsympathetic as a character. The one shot we get of her radiates “inhuman” and “probably going to kill you horribly.”

Okay, internet. Now explain to me why you’re excited, please. I don’t get it.

You know what could be a fantastic movie? This same movie with the Huldra humanized and sympathetic. So we’ve got a Norwegian horror film based on Norwegian mythology. Great start. Suppose you try for a poignant, haunting film that leaves the viewer terrified of the Huldra and yet a little bit in love with her. I know you, Norwegian film. You could rock that.

But instead we’re going to go with the “aah, watch out, beautiful women are evil and inhuman (sometimes literally)!”? Really, Norway?

Youtube turned up another trailer on the same story, this one an amateur student production. That one actually looks halfway interesting.

I love a well-done horror film, and this was a well-done horror film, with plenty of dark comedy mixed in. The humor of the movie was a lot like Teeth, which I also recommend, but less teenage awkwardness and more ass-kicking awesomeness.

I’m also usually pretty picky about horror films that I’ll watch, because I hate slasher films, torture films, and anything that has scantily clad females who have no personalities and only exist to be mistreated and eventually brutally slaughtered. Or, and this is Film Studies 101, in addition to being the topic of my last post, women in films who kill men are almost invariably characterized as monsters and horribly punished (by men) for their crime.

Jennifer’s Body is none of these things. (Well, okay, it might be a little bit slasher.) It’s amazing and hilarious, go watch it.

Chicago was originally written as a play, based on a couple of real-life murders. Maurine Dallas Watkins (you’ll know her as Mary Sunshine, from the movie), was the reporter who wrote about two “jazz babies” corrupted by men and liquor. I love these two stories.

Beulah Annan, the inspiration for Roxie Hart, was a bookkeeper for a laundry. She had an affair with one of her coworkers, and she ended up shooting him in the back. Apparently she changed her story repeatedly, so the details are unclear (and I’m working on tracking down the original news articles–I have the exact dates and everything, but I can’t get at the Chicago Tribune archives without a subscription). Beulah and her beau had been drinking, and, of course, they both reached for the gun. She then sat drinking cocktails and playing a foxtrot record, “Hula Lou,” over and over for about four hours as she sat watching Kalstedt die.

Belva Gaertner, on the other hand, who you’ll know as Velma Kelly, was a cabaret singer with a string of divorced husbands. From wikipedia: “[Her lover, Walter Law] was found sprawled out dead in the front seat of Belva’s car, a bottle of gin and a gun with three shots fired lying beside him: Belva, found at her apartment, with blood-soaked clothes on the floor, confessed that she was drunk, was driving with Law, but couldn’t remember what happened. Belva was arrested for the murder of Law in Chicago on March 12, 1924, and admitted drinking with Law at various bars and jazz houses, saying she carried a gun for fear of robbers. One of Law’s co-workers testified that Law had confided that Gaertner was a possessive lover who had threatened him with a knife when he tried to leave her, and that Law believed she would kill him one day.”

I took full advantage of this opportunity to go browse old newspapers. All by Maurine Watkins:
DEMAND NOOSE FOR ‘PRETTIEST’ WOMAN SLAYER
BEULAH ANNAN SOBS REGRET FOR LIFE SHE TOOK Lives through crime again as she awaits trial. “of course I’m sorry! I’d give my life to have Harry Kolstedt alive again! And I never said I was glad. Why, I couldn’t Why–” and tears filled the eyes of Mrs. Beulal May Annan, the “prettiest murderess,” held to the grand jury for shooting her sweetheart in a drunken quarrel…
BEULAH ANNAN AWAITS STORK, MURDER TRIAL
JUDGE ADMITS ALL OF BEULAH’S KILLING STORIES They Differ; Which Will Jury Believe?
Jury Finds Beulah Annan Is “Not Guilty” SELF-DEFENSE PLEA GAINS HER FREEDOM Thanks Each Member After Verdict. Beulah Annan, whose pursuit of wine, men, and jazz music wan interrupted by her glibness with the trigger finger, was given freedom last night by her “beauty proof” jury.
MRS. GAERTNER HAS “CLASS” AS SHE FACES JURY Demure but with an “Air” at Murder Trial.
JURY FINDS MRS. GAERTNER NOT GUILTY Verdict found after eight ballots. Belva Gaertner, another of those women who messed things up by adding a gun to her fondness for gin and men, was acquitted last night at 12:10 o’clock of the murder of Walter Law. “So drunk she didn’t remember” whether she shot the man found dead in her sedan at Forrestville avenue and…

No wonder it became such a phenomenon, right?

Moving on with the post, the play that Watkins wrote (three years after her newspaper articles) was a satire, loosely based on events of the Annan and Gaertner murders. The play’s out of print, and the movie’s deep in archives at UCLA, only being let out for the occasional history or film festival event. I’ll update this post if I can actually find a copy of either. The original tagline read “DRAMATIC STORY OF A JAZZ CRAZED WIFE.” From what I can gather, the original play and the movie are meant to be a satire on the media sensationalism that takes the story and gallops madly away with it. Roxie’s guilty, no question, but she gets away with it because she’s blond, pretty, and–as we all know–they both reached for the gun. I did find one reference that she didn’t do too well for herself in the end, because the cinema didn’t want to depict criminals benefiting from their crimes.

Skipping ahead to 1942, you may or may not know that there was a second version of the film. This one was called Roxie Hart, starring Ginger Rogers. Because of the Production Code in power at this time, the story had to have a few changes (although I was still shocked with what they get away with). I’m amazed it got through at all.

In brief, the Production Code dictates:
1. No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
2. Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
3. Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

Roxie Hart, uh, liberally bends all three of those principles. Because the Code prohibits criminals getting away with a crime, and prohibits sympathizing with a criminal, Roxie Hart … is innocent! Yep. Hands clean. Didn’t do it. The scenario’s the same one you’ll recognize in the other versions: all the evidence points to Roxie, whether or not they both did reach for the gun, and that’s even the story that Roxie tells. Catch is, she repeatedly states (off the record) that she’s innocent. On the record, she says she did it, with the “both reached for the gun” story. The only other possibility is her husband, Amos, is guilty, which is briefly hinted but never explored, and most of the movie brazenly acts like both Roxie and Amos are innocent and the murdered boyfriend Casely was shot repeatedly by … I don’t know, ghosts?

In this version, Roxie confesses to the murder because several people convince her that it’ll make her career as a dancer, since she currently can’t even get auditions. I still don’t understand how this version got past the Production Code, because she spends the whole movie lying extravagantly and making a mockery of legal process, and is rewarded for it with glamour, fame, and a romantic interest. Bonus points for her being rampantly violent: there’s an early scene in the movie where she tackles one of the other murderesses in jail, and the two of them roll around on the floor tearing at each other (to sound effects of angry cats) while the jail matron sips alcohol and ignores the wanton violence.

Seriously, someone explain to me how this movie got past the Production Code restrictions.

Back in the 21st century, Chicago is a glitzy musical, and the murderesses are guilty again. Shamelessly, unapologetically guilty. In the modern version, their crimes are excused to the viewing audience because these women were the victims of lying, cheating, abusive men. The only character who’s shown with any shade of remorse is the Russian (oops, my mistake) Hungarian ballerina, who is presented as being innocent. She’s the one who gets executed, while all of the remorseless murderesses are rewarded with fame and careers on the stage. There’s very little time spent in the actual courtroom, which is presented–literally–as a three-ring circus.

We sympathize with the murderesses, who treat their crimes like street cred, and use their media coverage to further their theatrical careers. Their crimes aren’t necessarily excused, but they are certainly marginalized to make room for the glamour and newspaper headlines.

Thing is, I actually think this is an unusual treatment of women murderesses in modern movies and news media, and I prefer it to the more common dehumanizing of women criminals. (I’ll spare you all my rants on the brutally anti-feminist themes in Fatal Attraction.)

Real-life murderess Pamela Smart, in 1990, conspired with her 15-year-old lover (coincidentally named) Billy Flynn and his friends to kill her 24-year-old husband. In the media, “Assistant Attorney General Diane Nicolosi portrayed the teenagers as naive victims of an ‘evil woman bent on murder.’ The prosecution portrayed Pamela Smart as the cold-blooded mastermind who controlled her young lover.” Smart’s defense was that “she had had an affair with the teenager, but claimed that the murder of her husband was solely the doing of Flynn and his friends, born as a reaction to her telling Flynn that she wished to end their relationship and repair her marriage.” (From Wikipedia)

She also argued that the media had influenced her trial and conviction. Probably true. Her trial was the first fully-televised case in the U.S., watched by millions. Despite being given a life sentence without hope of parole, she has never wavered on her claims that she’s innocent, and apparently has spent her time in prison gaining two masters degrees (literature and legal studies), and is a member of the National Organization for Women, campaigning for rights for women in prison.

In the movie version (To Die For, with Nicole Kidman), she’s unquestionably guilty, and presented as a manipulative psychopath who uses her sexuality to further her ruthless ambition. She specifically decides to kill her husband because he wants her to abandon her career and start a family. (Yet another movie in which ambition turns women into inhuman monsters, because everyone knows that’s what happens if you let women have a real career, instead of a part-time job as a secretary or elementary school teacher.) She’s acquitted in court, despite proof of her guilt, which frees up the movie makers to write in a more brutal punishment than the courts would allow: she’s murdered by a mafia hitman, and her body is dumped unceremoniously under the ice in a frozen lake.

Can anyone else think of examples of how women murderers are presented in movies and media? Aside from Chicago, are there any modern movies that let them get away with it, and even glamorize the crime; or are most of them dehumanized as evil and manipulative, and brutally punished at the end?

I want to talk about a movie called My Geisha (1962), starring Shirley Maclaine and Yves Montand. The two of them play a husband and wife duo in Hollywood. She’s a famous and charismatic actess named Lucy, known for her comedic roles, and he’s a director–well, he’s her director. He’s known for doing her movies, and the both of them are very successful at it.

Problem is, he’s not happy being known as her director. He wants to prove himself as a serious director, and get out from under his wife’s shadow. (There’s never any mention of her being unhappy as his actress, of course, or her feeling trapped in his shadow. The nearest thing is that she feels trapped in comedic roles, because that’s what the public wants from her.) He’s decided that the best way to do this is to direct an epic Hollywood version of Madame Butterfly. Lucy is immediately delighted by the project, until she’s told that she won’t be starring. Actually, she won’t be in it at all. They’re doing the project in Japan, with a Japanese actress, because it’s a serious, artistic film. Lucy is not welcome.

A few initial hijinks ensue, because Lucy and Paul’s usual producer flat out refuses to fund this risky artistic project if their big-name star is not involved in it. So Lucy gets the idea to dress up as a geisha, and to audition for the part as an unknown actress, presuming that Paul would never recognize her in the geisha make-up. It works, of course, and there are more hijinks as she attempts to conceal her identity throughout the movie, even though she’s not a real geisha and doesn’t actually speak Japanese.

In Lucy’s and the movie’s defense, they actually do a pretty earnest job at pulling this off. They treat the geisha profession and culture with respect, the Japanese characters are played by Japanese actors, and there’s relatively little caricaturing of Japanese stereotypes. However, there’s still the major problem of how the movie appropriates Japanese culture as something to be rehashed for Western entertainment, and most especially in how the white woman is shown as a better geisha than, uh, the real geishas. It may take those primitive Japanese women years to study this quaint geisha stuff, but that’s okay, Lucy gets the important stuff learned in a matter of weeks.
(For why this is racist, see this io9 post, talking about how movies like Avatar and District 9 represent a white man who becomes one of the aliens and then becomes their savior, because, y’know, they couldn’t save themselves and needed white people to do everything for them.)
Plus, you’ve got the white male director doing an “accurate” representation of geisha culture (and by “accurate” we of course mean “just choosing the parts that will appeal to a western audience for entertainment value”) based upon an opera written by a white man to fulfill another racist white fantasy (in which the native woman falls madly in love with him and abandons her morals and culture so that she can be with him, but he then leaves her for his real (read=white) wife).

Yay racism. But here’s the part of this movie that I really want to talk about: at the end of the movie, Lucy realizes how to use the lessons she’s learned as a geisha in order to save her marriage. That’s a good thing, right? Not quite.

So those lessons she learns as a geisha? Their importance (for western women especially) is driven home by a scene at the end, where Lucy’s Japanese geisha friend gives her a gift of a hand-painted fan. On the fan is a quote, written in Japanese: “You above all, my husband, even myself.” With that, Lucy realizes that her ambition is going to destroy her marriage, because if she reveals herself publicly and takes credit for her acting, it will undermine her husband’s desire to make a serious film and show that he can make good movies without needing her star power to carry the show. It’s Lucy’s fault that their relationship is on the rocks, because she’s emasculating her husband by being more famous and successful than he is! She needs to learn that women belong in the kitchen a kimono. This is stated in various forms throughout the movie: if only Western women were be more like geishas, who are silent, demure, and basically worship the ground men walk on.

In fact, even though Paul’s actions aren’t in any way justified for being a total jerk to her at the beginning of the movie and telling her that she isn’t a good enough actress and she can’t do serious films, he never apologizes for this in their big making-up scene. She has to apologize, for being selfish and ambitious (and nearly destroying their marriage!), but he doesn’t even do a bullshit “I’m sorry, too, let’s put all this behind us!” for his telling her that she wasn’t good enough. Or for his decision to intentionally sabotage and abandon their marriage because he thinks she’s going to take credit for her acting (therefore overshadowing his directing) at the gala opening. Or for his cruelly making her cry and think that he’s cheating on her when he finds out that she’s been playing the geisha actress but she doesn’t know he knows. Oh, am I ranting? Yeah.

Even though the movie repeatedly shows that they’re both to blame for this muddle of their relationship, at the end of the movie, we are clearly told that it is all her responsibility, and he doesn’t have to apologize for anything, even when he’s clearly acted like a total cad. The message at the end of the movie is quite clearly that he is infallible in their relationship, because he is the husband, and all of their relationship problems stem from her wanting to have a career and be a funny, intelligent, modern woman, when she should really take some lessons on being a geisha, and bring him another beer dammit. I actually find this a little bit puzzling, what they expect her to be, because the whole movie centers around how funny, intelligent and downright adorable Lucy is (she’s the main character, not Paul), and Shirley Maclaine was known for the same traits, but at the same time they’re using that to blame her for the downfall of the institution of marriage?

So what’s with the modern movement to Westernize the geisha? (See the controversy regarding the book Memoirs of a Geisha, for one example.) Is it inherently tied in to feminist issues and the idea that Western women should be more like (the biased Western perception of) geishas? And am I the only one who thinks that the infallibility of the male romantic lead (he’s not required to apologize, but she is) is a theme still prevalent in movies today, perhaps even especially in romantic comedies (like this one)?

In the movie, as you may have gathered from the movie and post title, Millie is a “modern woman” of the 1920s. As seen through the lens of the 1960s, which was in the midst of the feminist movement, and the movie of course wanted to appeal to the “modern women” of the 1960s, as well.

In the beginning song sequence, we see Millie start out as an old-fashioned girl with curls and a flowered hat, and a prim wool dress-suit. During the song, she looks around and sees the fashions being worn by other young women, and transforms herself by cutting her hair into a bob, ditching the flowered hat, and donning a potato sack flapper dress and beads. She tries also to flatten her chest, unsuccessfully, and it is a source of concern for her the entire movie that her beaded necklace doesn’t hang straight (like it does for the fashionable, flat-chested girls).

She declares herself a modern woman, man’s equal, a woman who can do anything, and states her goal: to marry her boss. “Well, who’s your boss?” another character asks. “I don’t know,” Millie tells us, “I haven’t met him yet. I start interviewing bosses tomorrow.”

Which, although it’s cute and humorous, makes me pause and wonder “okay, uh, man’s equal, but her big goal is not to BE the boss, it’s just to marry the boss?” Which is further undercut at the end of the movie, when she throws herself into the arms of her beau and exclaims “I don’t want to be your equal, I want to be your woman!”

So marrying the boss and being his secretary/wife is too equal. Women don’t really want that. They just want to be arm-candy and stay in the kitchen.

As much as I love the women’s movements that occurred in the 60s and 20s, and as much as I love the 20s in general, I can’t say this is an entirely unfair portrayal of the modern woman of the 20s. For comparison, I want to talk about the 1927 film It, starring Clara Bow.

Clara Bow was–quite literally–the original It Girl. “The concept of “it” was invented by Elinor Glyn for a story she wrote and published in serial form in Cosmopolitan in 1926. She defined the concept as

that quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force. With “IT” you win all men if you are a woman — all women if you are a man. “IT” can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.

In an era when the word “sex” was considered unacceptable for use in polite company, Glyn’s concept was enthusiastically adopted by the public as a euphemism for “sex appeal”.” (From Wikipedia)

The article is referenced liberally, that quote shows up in the movie, and Glyn gets a cameo as herself.

I also find it interesting that Clara Bow’s dark-haired in the film. Is anyone else surprised that the original It Girl wasn’t yet another blonde bombshell? Brunettes rejoice, here’s at least one movie where you aren’t insulted and told that “Gentlemen prefer blondes”.

In the movie, shopgirl Betty Lou Spence decides that (as a modern woman, of course) she’s going to marry her boss. Well, her boss’ boss’ boss, the manager and heir to the “world’s largest store”. (There are hints that it’s the Macy’s in New York, but they don’t drop any names.)

In the middle, there are some antics, including a mix-up about unmarried mothers which is worth mentioning. Betty Lou’s roommate Molly is an unwed mother with a young baby, and Betty Lou pretends to be the baby’s mother to fool the welfare people who want to take the child away. But this causes problems when Betty Lou’s target (the multimillionaire heir) is also fooled, and offers her an “arrangement”, because he’s all respectable and stuff, really.

In the end, the mix-up is clarified and Betty Lou marries her multimillionaire. (Guess what? So does Millie.)

I’m not sure, were either of them “modern” women? That term is used–at least by Millie–to indicate that she’s “man’s equal.” But they’re clearly not. Both of them are poor shopgirl/secretary types who marry a man with money and power, and Millie even has to disown her equality and “modern woman” status in order to do so! Betty Lou never had to disown her equality, she never tried for it in the first place. She enjoyed the freedom of being a woman of the twenties, with her short skirts and bobbed hair, but her ambition is entirely based on catching a man–and making sure she has “IT” (sex appeal) in order to do so.

Have we made any progress? I’m a feminist, and yet the Cinderella story of these two movies still appeals to me. I’m a poor feminist, and if a handsome and charming multimillionaire showed up, offering to make me his trophy wife? Hell yeah, that’s an attractive fantasy. (Assuming, of course, that I would fall madly in love with him before finding out about his money, or that I’d fall madly in love with him despite his money, like in the movies I just discussed.) It’s a more attractive fantasy to BE the multimillionaire who then falls in love with the handsome working-class gentleman, but I have yet to figure out how to make my fortune.

Actually, this brings up one more thing about the movie that’s worth mentioning. The character of Muzzy serves the role of Millie’s fairy-godmother. She’s actually the stepmother of the multimillionaire heir who Millie marries, and she tells Millie her own life story: she was a showgirl who fell for a guy and later found out he was rich. He died a few years back, and now she’s rich! Muzzy flirts outrageously with her array of “tutors”, in a variety of languages and subjects (French, German, Dancing, Airplane Piloting, Acrobatics, Bullfighting…), and it’s strongly hinted that she sleeps with most of them (three of them are seen exiting her room late at night, within seconds of each other).

She IS the modern woman that Millie wants to be: rich, independent, man’s equal and sexually liberated to take multiple partners. But she had to marry a man to get there, and no one actually refers to her as a modern woman; only Millie is called a “modern.”

I guess I haven’t talked much about the “Today” part of the title. What does being a modern woman mean today? As a man or a woman, if you’re reading this blog, what do you think are the ways in which it’s most important for the sexes to be equal–and do you think that they are equal in those ways, in 2010?

What I want to talk about is how they construct a science fiction “future”, compared to how other science fiction shows and movies have depicted the future.

Setting a show in the future is always problematic, in the way that the Jetsons version of the future is now so dated. It’s what people in the 1960s thought the future would be like, and aw, isn’t that cute. Whereas the people of the 1980s seemed to think the future involved a lot of spiky-hair, apocalypse and cyborgs.

There are a lot of signifiers that we, as a culture, use to indicate something set in the “future.” Flying cars and AI computers are pretty high on the list. But at the same time, most of our shows about the future end up telling more about our current culture than anything else.

With Caprica, I have a major problem with how much the future–thousands of years from now, on another planet–looks like the present. Actually, it’s pretty identical to the present.

In Battlestar Galactica, I thought they usually handled this pretty well–sure, you were still looking at a culture very, very much like our own, but I felt like they’d really put some thought into the differences. It helped that most of the fashion we saw was uniforms, so that cut down on their clothes looking just like ours, and most of it was set on spaceships, so that their architecture didn’t have to look just like ours, and they even had a polytheistic religion, which was a pretty cool theme to be explored.

The trouble is that apparently the producers of Caprica forgot they needed to maintain that space between society in U.S.A. 2010 and Caprica Whenever. Their clothes look like our clothes. Exactly like our clothes, in fact. Their houses look like our houses. Again–exactly like our houses. The very first scene is set in a rave, which might as well be footage from a rave of any movie set in the present. (Some brief research on wikipedia and the official website tells me that “the production design references 1950s America to reinforce the sense of viewing the past”, and… yeah, sorry, that wasn’t successful, either.)

The first point where I thought the science fiction worldbuilding went from “poorly thought-out” to “laughably bad” was when, early in the episode, a teenage female character is grounded, and her mother tells her she can’t use “car”, “phone” or “holoband”. Okay, so the car’s a flying car or something? Which is otherwise used… just like modern cars and even fills the same place in society? Okay, sure. And “holoband”, sure, that’s a pretty awful choice at trying to make it sound like cool tech, when it’s shown as literally a funny looking headband that lives in front of your eyes and has flashing green LEDs, as the science fiction version of our internet, but I’ll give that a pass for futuristic. But phone? Really, you just gave them cell phones and had them function just like cell phones and they kind of look just like cell phones… Come on, the Jetsons tried harder. The only thing in the whole scene that even vaguely tries to remind you that this isn’t a modern show is that one word, “holoband.”

This seems like a pretty major problem to me. Sure, there are some things that are all futuristic, and they’re pretty cool, but the vast majority of those things were thought up and given to them by the Battlestar Galactica writers, so, uh, no bonus points there. But when this show is trying to capitalize on how it’s “television’s first science fiction family saga” (like Rome, but in space), and they don’t actually have any science fiction points going for them, that seems like a bad sign.

See, I like science fiction as a genre. I watch–and enjoy–shows all the time that would be a lot less appealing if they didn’t have the exciting and exotic world for the characters to interact with. I love world-building, and I absolutely appreciate when books and movies put real thought into the universe where there characters live–even if it’s just a change like “vampires are real!” I expect the writers to put real thought into what that means, how that works, and the impact it has upon society and politics.

To bring this back to the point, I watched–and loved–Rome because it was a back-stabbing dramatic saga set in Rome, and even when it made me think “okay, NOT historically accurate right there”, I still felt like it was true to the world which they had created for the show. If the show had been lifted out of Rome and set in the modern day with all the same characters and plot, I would not have watched it. Because if it’s just another back-stabbing dramatic saga, I really don’t care. There are enough of those on television.

So why would I want to watch just another back-stabbing dramatic saga where occasionally they throw in some holobands with their cell phones, if that’s all the effort they’re going to put in to make this “science fiction”? Screw that. I’ll watch Mad Men or the Sopranos, instead, where they don’t try to use science fiction as a crutch to cover up a sucky show.

Maybe I’m judging it harsh, from just the pilot. My intent here isn’t really to discuss whether characters and plot are any good–I didn’t watch enough to be able to know. But I think their worldbuilding is crap.

If you’ve seen the pilot, what do you think of their worldbuilding? Am I too harsh on their science fiction world? If you haven’t seen the pilot, what do you think about science fiction worldbuilding in general? What makes a good sci-fi universe, and what doesn’t?

Both movies are scripted around a love triangle involving two women and one man, and as the movie unfolds, the romantic-comedy conflict is whether the central female will end up with the male or female character who is in love with her. In both cases, the promotional material that I saw before watching the film indicated that conflict, but both movies were promoted as “romantic comedies”, and targeted to a general audience, whereas the films I’ve seen that center on female relationships (without the extra male option thrown in) have been targeted towards the LGBT niche. In both movies, I had no clue how the relationships would eventually fall into place.

I saw Gray Matters more recently, so I’m going to talk about that one first.

As the movie starts, we are introduced to Gray (female) and Sam (male), a co-dependent couple, age 30, and it’s only a few minutes in, at a dinner party they’re hosting, we’re informed that this “couple” is actually a brother and sister–common mistake. Embarrassed by the mistake, the two of them realize they need to get out of their house and date other people.

They head to a dog park, borrow a dog from a 12-year-old boy (I found this creepy–hey, kid, can we borrow your dog? here, have some candy…), and immediately meet a beautiful brunette, Charlie (Charlotte). The two of them invite her to dinner, and both become infatuated. When Sam realizes that his sister Gray is also interested in Charlie, the two siblings begin competing over her. Sam “wins” the competition and Gray heads home alone.

The next day Sam comes home with the information that he and Charlie have decided to head to Vegas this weekend to get married, and Gray’s invited. (I find the depictions of dating in this movie to be wildly unrealistic: As soon as you start looking for a romantic partner, you will find The One within 30 seconds in the first place you look, and they won’t be at all creeped out if you propose the next day.)

All three of them head to Vegas, where the girls ditch Sam in order to have a girl’s night out in Vegas. The two of them get drunk, head back to the suite (which they are sharing, to the exclusion of Sam), and share a kiss. Charlie doesn’t remember this kiss the next morning, too drunk, but Gray does, and proceeds to agonize over it, because Charlie kissed back, which suggests that the marriage is a bad idea.

The marriage proceeds, Gray agonizes, and everyone goes back to life as normal. Gray decides she’s a lesbian, and tells her therapist, who convinces her that she’s not a lesbian, she’s just jealous and afraid of losing her brother, which is why she’s trying to sabotage his relationship. Worst therapist ever. Gray goes from ecstatic (“I’m gay!”) to agonizing and miserable again in a matter of seconds.

(As a slight tangent: It’s a semantic problem for me that this movie never uses the term “lesbian”, which I prefer. Gray exclusively refers to herself as “gay”. I personally prefer the distinction between gay (male) and lesbian (female), though either way has gender problems–gay can be used as male or female, because women are women, but men are people.)

Attempting to fix herself and reestablish her heterosexuality, Gray goes on three dates in one night, and rediscovers that she’s definitely more interested in women. She talks to both Charlie and her brother, and at this point in the movie, the love triangle breaks. Sam gets the girl.

As Sam tells his sister, this is inevitable. Since Charlie was Gray’s first love (not counting the crush on the 3rd grade teacher that is mentioned), of course they can’t end up together. Gray has to go though “gay puberty” before she finds The One. (Never mind that she’s 30 and has had relationships before–they didn’t count, because they were relationships with the wrong gender. Can you tell I have problems with this?)

The whole tone of the movie changes after this. It is no longer a romantic comedy. There’s no longer a question of who gets the girl. This is now a movie about Gray discovering her gay identity, and the viewer is pretty bluntly expected to realize that that’s what the whole movie has been about. The entire genre of the film changes. Never mind those cute antics of the first 2/3 of the movie, to trick you into thinking this was a romantic comedy.

This actually pisses me off quite a bit. It bothers me that GLBT characters cannot appear as protagonists in movies unless it’s a movie about GLBT issues. Just like black characters are very rarely protagonists unless it’s a movie about black people, targeted at a black audience. This even applies to women–mainstream movies that actually pass the Bechdel test are often demoted to “chick flicks”. And what this movie has just told me is that these rules are so important that they will change the entire genre of a film as soon as the main character’s sexual orientation changes, even in a cheery little indie film that’s trying to portray homosexuality in a positive light with very little stereotyping.

If you’re wondering, the film ends when Gray goes to a all-female bar, and within 30 seconds meets the perfect woman (who actually had showed up as a minor character earlier in the film). Because, if you didn’t pick up on this the first time it happened, dating works by finding the perfect person in the first place you look, within the first minute that you’re there.

I’m now going to switch to talking about Imagine Me & You. This one has a very similar set-up for the central conflict. The main character, Rachel, is getting married. On her wedding day, while walking up the aisle, she makes eye contact with the florist, and feels an instant connection with her. They make friends, and Rachel & Huck (husband) try and hook Luce (florist) up with their single friend Coop, so they can form into neat, heterosexual pairings. This fails from the start, because Luce announces that she’s a lesbian.

Rachel and Luce become close friends, and Rachel begins to question her own sexuality. Antics continue, as they must, as Rachel flip-flips back and forth between wanting to preserve her happy, loving marriage, and wanting to pursue her undeniable connection to Luce.

In the end, she chooses Luce.

Unlike Gray Matters, the tone of the movie doesn’t change when this happens (of course, it happens in the last thirty seconds). Imagine Me & You is still a romantic comedy, and I will stubbornly insist that it belongs in the romantic comedy genre, not the LGBT genre, despite the lesbian relationship at the center of the movie. Also, unlike Gray Matters, the odd (lesbian) woman out isn’t treated like her role in the relationship is less valuable. In Gray Matters, there’s this sort of attitude of “that’s cute, now leave the heterosexuals alone and go date your own kind” when she’s rejected from the love triangle.

I came out of Imagine You & Me feeling that both versions of relationships were respected, and that I would have been happy and satisfied with the movie whichever direction it took (though getting the lesbian relationship in the end was, for me, a bit like having a movie I enjoyed and then getting SURPRISE CAKE at the end). (Lesbian smooches and delicious cake exist on the same level on my mind.)

What do you think? Does it bother anyone else that in both movies the options are either “I’m a lesbian” or “I’m not a lesbian”? Why is bisexuality not presented as legitimate? And what about the option of a threesome? How would these movies be different if bisexuality or polygamy were acceptable within the scope of the movie?

As a post script, I’ve just noticed that I’ve written both LGBT and GLBT in this post, without realizing the difference. I’m leaving my transpositions intact, but now I’m curious. Is there an accepted, politically-correct version? Are both versions common, or is this a letter displacement that only occurs in my head? And why? Switching around the first two letters makes sense, to indicate that there’s no order preference between the L and the G, but there IS still an order preference that the B comes after both of them (because bisexuals get to cash in on straight privilege, so they’re not as prioritized in the letter scramble), and the T always comes last of all, unless you toss in some more letters, like Q (questioning, or queer), and A (allies) — I imagine there are more. Identifying with the B in this sandwich, I’ve always felt that the GLBT+ label is inherently flawed, in multiple ways. Can anyone shed some light on this?

The other day, I started reading this Young Adult fantasy novel called Twilight with Fairies Wicked Lovely. Despite being Young Adult fantasy (which I consider suspect by nature), it had received decent reviews, and the premise sounded intriguing.

I didn’t get far. About two chapters in, the centuries-old and ethereally-handsome vampirefairy started hitting on the reclusive (but still liked by everyone she meets!) high-school main character. The specific point at which I stopped reading was when she was described as having blue-black hair, and so pale, petite, and skinny that she was like a wraith. Immediately after describing her this way, the creepy stalker fairy begins to fetishize that she is pale, petite, and skinny. Literally the next sentence. She’s described, and then she’s fetishized.

Guess how the book ends. (I cheated and looked it up online so I don’t have to read the damn thing.) Let’s see… she embarks upon a tempestuous (and abusive) relationship with the centuries-old pedophile, although she has some mid-story waffling back and forth between him and the werewolf human romantic interest. In the end she goes for the creepy pedophile. In book four they get married and have a kid, we’ll call it “Leneesmee”… Bonus points for Wicked Lovely because the main character also turns out to be ~*~the chosen one~*~.

There are a few different points in this that I’d like to open for discussion. The first one is necrophilia. Completely skipping over the vampire issues of the Twilight parallels I’ve been drawing, I’m still really bothered by the way the main character is described (and fetishized). During her description, which goes along the lines of skin white as snow, hair black as ebony, my very first thought was wondering if we’d comment on her blood-red lips in the next few sentences.  The Snow-White story is one I find very interesting, partly because of the vampiric and necrophiliac themes woven so deep into it. She looks like a vampire even before she dies, with her too-pale skin and too-red lips.

Sticking to the book being discussed here, it really disturbs me that the main character is described so heavily in corpse metaphors. The paleness of her skin is emphasized, and her thinness. She’s literally described as looking like a “wraith”, and it’s the center of the description. Not nymph, or angel, or any variety of warm-blooded animal (how about doe-eyed, or kittenish, to name some very common (and less creepy) ways to fetishize your female main character?). No, she’s described as a dead thing, which immediately makes the male main character want to cuddle her.

The second point I want to discuss is–the idea of women wanting to date controlling and even abusive “bad-boys” aside (though if anyone wants to go there, we can)–what’s with the fetishizing of the creepy pedophile? Has this always been a sub-category of women in literature who choose to fall for the bad boys? I think this comic is again worth referencing here.

Or, what’s the appeal of the vampire in general? Dracula is still on my to-read list, so maybe someone else can shed some light on the subject. Was the modern vampire idealized and sexualized from the start? From the early movies I’ve seen (Nosferatu is one of my favorite silent films, and may very well be worth a post of its own), the vampire is a dehumanized creature, a monster, absolutely not a romantic interest. Is this a Beauty and the Beast complex, the (particularly female) compulsion to humanize the monster and discover the enchanted prince within?

I’m baffled. What do you all think?

I don’t know if any of the rest of you have seen it, but it shaped an important part of my childhood. It’s an animated fairytale musical, in the tradition of Disney movies. As animated fairytale musicals go, it’s definitely on the upper end of the spectrum. However, as animated fairytales go, it seems like all of them like to lean on the Disney tradition, even when they’re not Disney. In the case of the Swan Princess, it’s pretty obvious that the tradition in question comes directly from Sleeping Beauty. Well, sure, the story comes from the Swan Lake ballet. But in order to make it into an animated musical, we clearly need to steal a couple of scenes directly from Sleeping Beauty.

When the movie starts, it tells you about how the king of a faraway kingdom really, really wants a child, and is worried, because he’s getting old. Not to worry, Kingy! Because here comes a servant, carrying your new baby daughter! (Bonus points if you can guess what color blanket the baby daughter is wrapped in. Pink? How did you know!) So the king presents the baby to a cheering populace. Yay it’s the heir to the kingdom! (Thank any number of pagan deities that she actually is referred to as the heir to the kingdom.)

Pause there. Who sees something missing? I didn’t actually catch this until after the movie, when I was telling Rachel about it. Apparently in this world babies either grow on trees or are delivered by storks, because there’s no queen. Remember the problem in Sleeping Beauty because the queen had no name? Well, in this movie there’s no queen at all. The narration says that the king was getting old and wants a child. The baby is brought by a servant. The existence of a queen is never even hinted. Since we must assume that a legitimate heir to the throne came from a legitimate marriage, the king must have been married, but apparently the queen dies in childbirth without a mention.

In the next scene, the baby’s suddenly about a year or more old (given by that full head of hair), and the royalty, nobility and gentry (no sign of rabble here, not even fairies!) have all shown up to pay tribute, including the king’s friend from a neighboring country, now a widow (or was he friends with the former husband? that wasn’t clear to me). I like how the viewer is told that the visiting queen is a widow, but we don’t know what the local king is. (Maybe he’s a bluebeard type, and the poor queen is kept locked up in a tower, only remembered when people wonder where the baby came from…) But one person is not pleased by the new princess! Maleficent! I mean… uh… Mr. Maleficent. His name is apparently Rothbart. We will be calling him Mr. Maleficent, even though the real Maleficent totally had better style.

So the parents from the two kingdoms decide that they should betroth their kids. They sing about how clever they are, and every year Princess AuroraOdette and King Bluebeard go to visit Prince PhillipDerek and his widowed mother Queen Uberta (the internet assures me this is a real name but I am unconvinced), so that the kids can get to know each other. They hate each other from the start, and sing about it in an adorable montage that I love to bits even despite some of the inherent problems. Until they get to be of marriageable age, at the end of the song-montage, and suddenly realize that their betrothed is actually pretty hot and they’re in love.

At the end of the song, Prince Derek tells the court to prepare for the marriage. Then (this part is great), Odette stops him. She wants to know why they’re getting married. Derek is very confused. “Because you look exactly like Aurora and I love that movie I love you,” he tells her.

“But why do you love me?” she persists.

“Because… you’re beautiful?” Poor Derek is really confused right now.

“What else?” she says, and kudos for being the earliest animated musical princess (at least as far as I know) to insist on criteria other than beauty for falling in love.

Derek apparently thinks the way that all the creators of those other animated musical princesses do, because his totally classy response is: “What else is there?”

I love the HORRIFIED LOOKS that go around the court as everyone screeches to a halt at realizing their prince is a shallow idiot. It’s great.

In Derek’s defense, you find out later that what he wanted to say was “because you’re awesome and your character development suggests that you’d actually make a pretty decent queen”, but apparently the only words in his vocabulary for talking to women are “love” and “beauty.” (He later tells her that he loves her for her kindness and courage.)

Celebrations (and marriage plans) soured, Princess Odette and King Bluebeard (yes, I’m going to keep calling him that) leave to return home, but on the way they’re attacked by Mr. Maleficent, who kills the king and turns Odette into a swan, keeping her prisoner on a lake near his sorcerous island palace. Every night he demands that she marry him (so that he can be king, because taking it by sorcerous force wouldn’t be as much fun as marrying the hot princess and taking the throne legitimately).

Meanwhile, Derek harasses servants into helping him train by playing medieval paintball, and an archery technique that involves shooting an arrow at the unarmored crown prince so that he can catch the arrow and shoot it back at the apple on the head of his (heavily armored, thankfully) best friend. WHAT PART OF THIS SEEMED LIKE AN INTELLIGENT AND PLAUSIBLE TRAINING STRATEGY?

Back on the lake, Odette has befriended a turtle, a frog, and a puffin. For unexplained reasons, she can talk to them whether in swan form or human form, but no one else can hear them talking. Go figure. Anyway, Odette and friends try (unsuccessfully) to plot escapes, and Derek tries (unsuccessfully) to find her. Finally their plans crash into each other, and they are able to meet briefly.

In order to break the spell, Derek has to vow everlasting love to her and prove it to the world. The two of them decide that the way to do this is to invite her to the big ball tomorrow night, which his mother has thrown in order to try to find a new fiance for him (since the last one rejected him and then disappeared). Never mind that in order to get to the ball, Odette has to wait until the moon rises on the lake, then travel on foot the miles and miles to the castle. Derek doesn’t offer any help with the transportation (or wardrobe). Unfortunately they forgot that there’s no moon the night of the ball. Oops.

Also, Mr. Maleficent overheard their plans, so he decides that his own plan is to lock up Odette and send his hideous elderly female assistant to the ball in Odette’s human form. He divulges this in a musical number, which interestingly features the one token black character in the movie. She’s one of the three female back-up singers. They all have the same hair, size 2 dress, and anglo-saxon facial features, but her hair and skin are inexplicably dark brown. It’s like she exists only to provide value contrast among the back-up singers.

In the next scene, at the ball, I’m now actively looking for other racial diversity that’s been thrown in. And, coincidentally, the scene is a song called “Princesses on Parade”, showcasing all these princesses who have come from foreign and exotic lands in hopes of marrying the prince. Excellent, I say to myself, let’s see how they present foreigners and other races.

Guess what! They don’t. Every single one of the twenty or so “Princesses on Parade” is white, and they all apparently came from European foreign and exotic lands.

This then makes the back-up singer a greater mystery. She’s the only non-white character in the whole movie. Why does she exist? Why her? Why did the back-up singers in that one scene require diversity, but the rest of the movie should stay whitewashed?

Anyway, stuff happens that vaguely resembles plot, and Odette’s life is in danger because Derek made his vow of eternal love to some girl in an Odette-suit, and now Odette’s swan curse is going to kill her. You see why I say “vaguely resembles” plot.

There’s a final showdown scene, where Prince Phillip Derek confronts Maleficent Rothbart, and Maleficent Rothbart turns into a dragon“great animal” (that looks like a furry bat-dragon). Then, with the help of Aurora’s Odette’s three fairy friends animal companions, who put his sword bow into his hands, Prince Phillip Derek is able to shoot the villain in the heart.

Yay Phillip! … I mean Derek. Really.

I watched Sherlock Holmes the other day, and I have to admit I was disappointed. Not that I’m a truist in this case, since it ended up having more references to the source material than I expected. But what I was expecting was a no-holds-barred adventure romp, and I felt that what I got was a hollywood action cliche. I felt like I was watching National Treasure, as written by some fanboys of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I could have forgiven it for being disappointing, but I’m holding a grudge on the account of Irene Adler. This seemed like a case of show vs. tell as demonstrated in movies. They told us, early on and then repeatedly, that Irene was awesome and had outsmarted Holmes on many occasions. She was confident, intelligent, independent, and all-around kick-ass. Problem is, they then proceeded to show us very clearly how she was actually incompetent and helpless.

We’re never told how she outsmarts him the other times, but from what we’re shown, she’s clever, but not nearly as intelligent as either Sherlock or Moriarty, or even Watson. The one time we’re shown her to outsmart Sherlock, she blatantly has to use her sexuality in order to distract him, so that he falls for what is actually a really obvious trick. Sure, I liked the resealed-bottle cleverness to hide that she’d drugged the wine, but she’s also half-naked for the entire scene, and it’s visible that her cleavage is impairing Sherlock’s intellectual abilities to about half their normal level (one fears what effect full nudity would have).

Never mind that the movie fails the Bechdel test. ( http://bechdel.nullium.net/ ) Though there are two named female characters, they never talk to each other, and pretty much only exist to make the main characters seem more manly and heterosexual. (Come on, do Mary’s scenes really have any relevance to the plot or the movie as a whole? Would the movie be any different or any weaker if her character was cut wholesale?)

And–this part impresses me most–the movie’s representation of Irene Adler is more sexist than the original. Let me emphasize this. More sexist than a book written in the Victorian era by an upper-class white male. From my experience in Victorian-era literature, ideal heroines and romantic interests ought to be delicate and feminine, soft-spoken and talented at painting and piano, but not too clever, and absolutely not clever enough to challenge the intellect of the male lead. In the original, from what I recall, Irene was every bit as intelligent as Holmes or Moriarty, and she was considered a nemesis–just like Moriarty–because of how much trouble Holmes had trying to unravel her complex schemes. Plus, she always outsmarted Holmes and got away, in the end, and never had to take off her clothes to do it.

Whereas in this movie, her motivation is given as follows: She’s helping the villain to destroy Sherlock Holmes, because if she doesn’t, he’s threatened to hurt Sherlock Holmes. So we’re given to believe that either she’s too stupid to realize that the villain’s repeated tasks for her to manipulate and distract Sherlock Holmes might be planned with ill intent, or just that since she’s a female, her mind shut down from the emotions at the mere hint of threat to her beloved, after which she became a willing puppet for opportunistic meglomaniacs. Right.

She’s not a person. She’s just a clever pet who can do tricks for her master (whichever one that might be).
And that, right there, is why I think that sexism creates plotholes.