Somewhere in the middle of this film I found myself with a few tears flowing down my cheeks due to the lucious tableaux of small but sturdy folk encircling a funereal pyre in a mythic, magical, mystical forest, combined with the sound of a Capella singing of Celtic mourning hymns - I call them hymns because the tone took me to my Black Baptist church upbringing, when elderly women would break into spontaneous song. I suppose I can call the film its own sort of hymn since Snow White and the Huntsman completes the impossible task of being at once a spiritually engaging meditation on good versus evil and a wonderful summer adventure flick whose well known/worn concerns are here rendered as newly feminist and communal.
To explain further, this is not your mother's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In this version of events, we meet a spunky Snow whose greatest virtue is not her beauty - although that is noted by many - but her compassionate and warm heart. Whether taking in a bird whose wing needs mending, or accepting with grace and reserve the woman her father, the king, has decided to marry a year after the tragic death of her mother. Chalk this film up as another reminder of why I never yearn for "days of old" when death usually came with unknown cause, and with even greater frequency! But I digress.
Rupert Sanders reveals himself to be a filmmaker whose eye for visuals binds a seminal story like this one in a new but still understood fashion. Thus the drops of blood from Snow's mother's hand that hit the snow after she pricks her finger (on the rose bush that blooms mysteriously in winter) are as beautiful as the the scene itself - calling to mind the banked nature of winter filled with promise. Yet this moment that inspires her choice of name, when touched so earnestly by Sander's camera, calls up its own irony and sets Snow White among the Apples and Kal-El's of today's naming culture. If it wasn't iconic, how many of us would believe the name patently ridiculous? However, the current moment is called to mind when we consider characters.
Chris Hemsworth as Thor, I mean, the Huntsman, shakes off some of his self-righteous fury and replaces it with drunken self-righteous fury. To wit, he does display greater depth than he had to as the demi-god forced to take holiday on Earth in Thor (2011). But I find myself still waiting to see what else he is capable of when not in period costume immersed in a character of such firmly rooted history. That said, as a widower in a land without hope for a future, his performance offers a stoic and at times touching grounding in the immediate presence of loss that would have been missing and missed otherwise.
As our modern Snow White, who is imprisoned for a decade and must lead an army against the evil queen to retake her throne, we have Kristen Stewart. Stewart does a far better job here at conveying emotional complexity and acting chops than in her more famous forays into werewolf/vampire love triangles, although that might not be saying much. I found myself surprised and curious if it was Chris Hemsworth's effective, if at times confused seeming turn as the titular Huntsman that drew out this performance from Stewart - who thankfully did none of the repetitive blinking that stands in for responsive emoting in the Twilight movies! (Not that I don't Love that pulpy gothic blather for its own quirks.) The two of them together, if not really giving off the sparks we are meant to feel between them, do give off the glow of comrades on a common mission and with the common goal of redemption and purpose.
Of course the One To Watch is Charlize Theron's evil queen Ravena, who oozes a deceit that requests no apologies - although a brief back-story is shoe-horned in for those who may feel need to understand her pain. Sanders' affection for the queen is clear when, as Stewart trudges through yet another dirty swamp in her tattered dress, Ravena slips from one delectable scene and outfit to the next. At one moment nude save her crown and completely covered in milk the consistency of Elmer's Glue, Theron's performance seems to show off the settings, giving them more depth, rather than the other way around. Colleen Atwood's gorgeous costumes - sure to earn her another well deserved nomination unless the Academy members are watching the film while inhaling some of that glue Ravena was drenched in, and get distracted - offer no shortage of eye candy.
But the film's strength lies in the movement from castle to forest where I doubted my eyes at first, and then thought the filmmakers had found little people who looked exactly like Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Toby Jones and Nick Frost. Only to discover some magical trickery was afoot as they were all simply made to appear small compared to Stewart and Hemsworth. The scenes Snow and the Huntsman spent around forest fires with the "seven dwarfs" could have devolved into hammy, cheesy mockery. But instead, even with limited exposition, the wonderful actors infuse their characters with a humanity that draws the audience in, and you care about them. Hence the scenes where they sing become less hokey repetitions of 'high-ho" and are instead immediately elegiac and bewitching.
In other words, like a hymn the scenes stir the soul through sound and sight, but possesses a message about the complexity of their relationship to each other and to what Snow represents. When the dwarfs give their allegiance to Snow as the rightful queen who can save the kingdom, and agree to follow her into battle, we're again reminded that we're not in Kansas, err, Disney anymore. As an antidote to the spate of silly fare directed at young girls, full of the concerns of boys and clothes, the film triumphs. Snow's princess is both innocent and tough, capable of carving a three inch trench from forehead to chin in the face of the lecherous brother of the queen, and bringing a thirty foot tall bridge Troll to a sweetly submissive state by the force of her good will alone.
And despite having the unfortunate designation of Evil Queen, Theron's Ravena is a woman full of the unyielding desire for her own way and the desire for a beauty that she knows (even in medieval times) can ensure one's comfort and success in life. Such commentary is often cloaked in fairy tales, whose moral imperitives were either shoved in or the story altered for them to fit. But here, they are revealed and then subverted by the fact that both women desire to rule, and the preference only goes to the one who seems to show greater care for folks in her kingdom.
In other words, although Ravena must answer for the evil she does, and she does engage in a lot of vile acts, her punishment feels less an argument that the purity of Snow is preferable to her evil than a suggestion that any woman who rules must needs combine her desire to rule with attention to crops and prosperity as well, or be drummed out by the locals! In this way, Snow's rule is the better since her view of the best kingdom possible is one wherein community and the good of all comes first. And because she doesn't regularly suck the very youth out of random neighborhood girls to keep herself young.
Community comes even before her own desires, as becomes clear towards the end. One could call it a cheap, cheesy attempt to cash in on the "love triangle" trope running rampant through films and books aimed at youngsters, but the "choice" between her childhood friend William - a forgettable and sad Sam Claflin who suffers from being unable to rescue Snow as a child, and showing up after the Hunk, I mean, the Huntsman - and the Huntsman is about the impossibility of a queen finding a man both suitable to the drawing room, the bedroom, and the battlefield, who won't one day try to take over her throne! Ravena too rules alone after murdering Snow's father, and both women evoke Cate Blanchet's Queen Catherine forced to rule alone if she would have her own will actually prevail.
Overall, the feminist depth I happily gleaned from the viewing was unnecessary to the group of small children and adolescents there with their parents and the greater crowd of old and young Harlem movie go-ers who, in typical New York City fashion, shouted at the screen "She showed that b#*ch what was up!" as Snow's good triumphed over evil, and laughed good naturedly at the shenanigans of the dwarfs letting in Snow's army by sneaking in the castle and opening the gates. A film that will entrance old and young with its beauty and offer young girls a nice alternative to being a vampire or werewolf's meal/plaything.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Genre - A-
(as fairy tale action/adventure, its far better than most!)
Epidermal/Ethnic Variance - C+
(some children of different hues and ethnicities at a remote village, otherwise, even magical lands are again for Whites only)
Visuals/Audio - A
Gender Rep - A+
(for women re-framing what it means to be princess and in charge!)
Narrative - B+
Leaving Theater, Gut Said - B+/A
OVERALL GRADE: A-
14 June 2012
13 June 2012
Prometheus (2012)
The Greek myth of Prometheus involves a superior and powerful being who, out of compassion and the desire to generously give to his creation, gives fire to mankind, and is punished by his fellow powerful being "colleagues." His punishment is the daily violent consumption of his liver by an eagle - the liver grows back each day. With these images and ideas in mind - that of a god creating a creature both wonderful and violent, and giving a force both destructive and beneficial to that creature, and being punished for it - one cannot help but be enraptured by the questions, and there are many, many questions, raised by Ridley Scott's entrancing film.
Beginning with our interstellar Prometheus' voluntary self-annihilation at Victoria Falls, which allows mankind to exist by dispersing his DNA through the water, the film revolves around questions of sacrifice, consequence, compassion, and how they structure relations between people. The film begins with the discovery by academics of Scottish cave paintings similar to those found all over the world with large beings standing next to much smaller people, and a representation of a specific group of planets far, far away. These scholars of, seemingly all ancient cultures(?!) - Noomi Rapace and a sadly forgettable turn from Logan Marshall-Green - conclude that these alien engineers are suggesting we humans go visit them. For the sake of time I suppose, the methods these two use to determine that the drawing is an invitation is not explored, lending their conclusion an air of farce. As invitations to visit go, this one is probably the most vague and least well explicated or elaborated, but as one character says, they're running on faith - and hoping we'll follow them on some faith too.
From there the film smartly moves into space, which serves as a blank slate on which to project the crew's desires, both mundane and spiritual. As usual, Ridley Scott's fastidious attention to the environment in which he places his characters can be so lovely as to overshadow them. As is the case with our Ripley/Sigorney Weaver surrogate this time around, Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw. Between the child-like, tinny, timidly inconsequential quality of her voice, and a dour, flat aura/demeanor that persists even when she is supposed to be happy, the world Scott wraps around Dr. Shaw is frequently more interesting to consider than she is! And unfortunately, even with the cotton stuffing of a similar haircut and tendency toward survivalist intelligence, her performance falls far, far short of filling Ripley's shoes. The sparks of fire that Rapace exhibited so easily at times in Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows (2011), and which seared her performance into people's minds in the Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009) are missing here completely, and I left feeling her current It-Girl status to be undeserved, if it lacks the vulnerability, reserve, complexity and power that made Weaver's Ripley someone to cheer for. In other words, Elizabeth was the one character I was supposed to care about most but cared about least.
As the movie's titular heroine this would make one think the film suffers, but not as much since Scott has filled the other roles with actors of singular grace and nuance. Notably Charlize Theron as the ambiguously motivated and alluringly sibilant Weyland Company representative, Idris Elba as the ship's aloof but humane captain, and Michael Fassbender in a benignly vicious role as the ship's android robot, David. The texture and tone of Fassbender's performance nearly deserves a review all its own, and is thrilling considering that, in what one can only assume to be a nod to the original film, at one point he is still emotionally compelling as a disembodied head! Overall his performance is so wonderful because he perfectly reflects - in gesture, facial tic, vocal modulation - the subliminal questioning about consequence and humanity that the film is obsessed with. For example, when preparing for arrival, as the only sentient "being" awake on the ship, David evokes a creepy voyeurism tinged/satiated by longing with very few spoken lines or movements. His performance fills one with wonder at the complexity of what it means to be human as reflected in what we project onto/into our creations.
After the perfunctory but necessary opening, we arrive on the planet LV-223 and - in somewhat haphazard fashion - at a site with ancient alien "buildings" - the first place you fly over has alien construction on it, really? Despite the revolutionary, 'first contact for humanity with other sentient life' quality of this discovery, and despite the fact that he is supposed to be a brilliant Ph.D./scholar, Marshall-Green's Dr. Charlie Holloway acts like a frat boy on holiday. This is a man who spends his life in remote locations, for long hours, plying small brushes in delicate strokes, seeking the bits of history that, once assembled, reveal a larger picture. And then over the course of months or longer, he works at carefully preparing to present that work to other people. And yet he displays bizzare inattention to detail and a refusal to engage with the discovery. For example, after understandably insisting on visiting the amazing discovery regardless of there only being six hours of remaining daylight, upon entering the system of tunnels and chambers, he quickly sours on the discovery when live alien beings do not immediately reveal themselves. Holloway turns to calling the central chamber with the massive stone head from the promo posters "just another tomb" without investigating even a fraction as superficially as the others (who, incidentally, are collecting a perfectly preserved alien Engineer's head and checking out massive oozing canisters within twenty feet of him). And he is so disappointed, he takes no samples/specimens, takes no notes, and spends precious time on an alien world getting drunk and laid on the ship. Holloway's further indulgence in downright brutish and insensitive treatment of android David for being a robot feels a bit ham-fisted, sloppy and odd as a way to keep the audience from caring for him too deeply, since we fully expect in a Ridley Scott film to care about those whose lives are lost. Thankfully, the character's unexpected, unusual, and unprofessional behavior is given little screen time, and the performances of the other characters dominate.
As is to be expected, the film is one of those where folks are picked off one by one, and since poor Ripley's 1979/2122 Nostromo crew is unaware of the history of the planet when they stop by to answer a distress beacon, we know none of them will make it home. This film is less concerned with making us care about all of the crew than the first film was, but the encounters between human and planetary "wildlife" makes up a bit for this. The creature effects are beyond amazing, and I was happy to see H.R. Giger's delicious manipulation of human reproductive and other body parts again brought to bear on the alien life. What also became clear is that, whether planned or not, the symbolism used in creating Alien's body makes sense considering the same superior beings who created us also created the Alien - albeit very indirectly, accidentally, and against their will. But I won't ruin the fun by saying more... Suffice it to say that more than one scene had the audience, and me as well, groaning out loud over not just the death of a character, but the appearance of the critter that killed them!
The action sequences are both awe-inspiring and lovely as the crew discovers planet LV-223 to be less cradle of the alien Engineers' civilization and more Area 51/1950's New Mexico desert. But the real thrill comes from the realization that each character's actions are constantly pushing and pulling at what the cost of sacrifice is, whether the sacrifice is one's body, one's life, one's dignity, or one's ultimate desires. In other words, obvious ideas about 'what it means to be human' aside, the film's strength lies in the other ideas it plays with. Ridley Scott's film glows with its ability to make the environment itself an active force compelling choice and suggesting that sacrifice is often as much about the human as it is about the "alien" - ie, the tension between that which is presumably us and that which is profoundly Not us/is hostile to us.
A bit esoteric a viewing lens, and maybe reading too much? Perhaps. But the unexpected depth and beauty of the film's play with the ideas of compassion and sacrifice made me less annoyed by 1) the number of unanswered central questions and 2) the obviousness of inevitable sequels suggested by the end of the film. By managing to raise similar, but more complex questions than the first Alien, fans of the terrifying and the brainy are both sure to be satisfied, and excited for what Scott has planned next.
-----------------------------------------------------
Genre - A+
Epidermal/Ethnic Variance - C+
Visuals/Audio - A
Gender Rep - B
Narrative - B+
Gut Says - A
OVERALL GRADE: B+
Beginning with our interstellar Prometheus' voluntary self-annihilation at Victoria Falls, which allows mankind to exist by dispersing his DNA through the water, the film revolves around questions of sacrifice, consequence, compassion, and how they structure relations between people. The film begins with the discovery by academics of Scottish cave paintings similar to those found all over the world with large beings standing next to much smaller people, and a representation of a specific group of planets far, far away. These scholars of, seemingly all ancient cultures(?!) - Noomi Rapace and a sadly forgettable turn from Logan Marshall-Green - conclude that these alien engineers are suggesting we humans go visit them. For the sake of time I suppose, the methods these two use to determine that the drawing is an invitation is not explored, lending their conclusion an air of farce. As invitations to visit go, this one is probably the most vague and least well explicated or elaborated, but as one character says, they're running on faith - and hoping we'll follow them on some faith too.
From there the film smartly moves into space, which serves as a blank slate on which to project the crew's desires, both mundane and spiritual. As usual, Ridley Scott's fastidious attention to the environment in which he places his characters can be so lovely as to overshadow them. As is the case with our Ripley/Sigorney Weaver surrogate this time around, Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw. Between the child-like, tinny, timidly inconsequential quality of her voice, and a dour, flat aura/demeanor that persists even when she is supposed to be happy, the world Scott wraps around Dr. Shaw is frequently more interesting to consider than she is! And unfortunately, even with the cotton stuffing of a similar haircut and tendency toward survivalist intelligence, her performance falls far, far short of filling Ripley's shoes. The sparks of fire that Rapace exhibited so easily at times in Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows (2011), and which seared her performance into people's minds in the Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009) are missing here completely, and I left feeling her current It-Girl status to be undeserved, if it lacks the vulnerability, reserve, complexity and power that made Weaver's Ripley someone to cheer for. In other words, Elizabeth was the one character I was supposed to care about most but cared about least.
As the movie's titular heroine this would make one think the film suffers, but not as much since Scott has filled the other roles with actors of singular grace and nuance. Notably Charlize Theron as the ambiguously motivated and alluringly sibilant Weyland Company representative, Idris Elba as the ship's aloof but humane captain, and Michael Fassbender in a benignly vicious role as the ship's android robot, David. The texture and tone of Fassbender's performance nearly deserves a review all its own, and is thrilling considering that, in what one can only assume to be a nod to the original film, at one point he is still emotionally compelling as a disembodied head! Overall his performance is so wonderful because he perfectly reflects - in gesture, facial tic, vocal modulation - the subliminal questioning about consequence and humanity that the film is obsessed with. For example, when preparing for arrival, as the only sentient "being" awake on the ship, David evokes a creepy voyeurism tinged/satiated by longing with very few spoken lines or movements. His performance fills one with wonder at the complexity of what it means to be human as reflected in what we project onto/into our creations.
After the perfunctory but necessary opening, we arrive on the planet LV-223 and - in somewhat haphazard fashion - at a site with ancient alien "buildings" - the first place you fly over has alien construction on it, really? Despite the revolutionary, 'first contact for humanity with other sentient life' quality of this discovery, and despite the fact that he is supposed to be a brilliant Ph.D./scholar, Marshall-Green's Dr. Charlie Holloway acts like a frat boy on holiday. This is a man who spends his life in remote locations, for long hours, plying small brushes in delicate strokes, seeking the bits of history that, once assembled, reveal a larger picture. And then over the course of months or longer, he works at carefully preparing to present that work to other people. And yet he displays bizzare inattention to detail and a refusal to engage with the discovery. For example, after understandably insisting on visiting the amazing discovery regardless of there only being six hours of remaining daylight, upon entering the system of tunnels and chambers, he quickly sours on the discovery when live alien beings do not immediately reveal themselves. Holloway turns to calling the central chamber with the massive stone head from the promo posters "just another tomb" without investigating even a fraction as superficially as the others (who, incidentally, are collecting a perfectly preserved alien Engineer's head and checking out massive oozing canisters within twenty feet of him). And he is so disappointed, he takes no samples/specimens, takes no notes, and spends precious time on an alien world getting drunk and laid on the ship. Holloway's further indulgence in downright brutish and insensitive treatment of android David for being a robot feels a bit ham-fisted, sloppy and odd as a way to keep the audience from caring for him too deeply, since we fully expect in a Ridley Scott film to care about those whose lives are lost. Thankfully, the character's unexpected, unusual, and unprofessional behavior is given little screen time, and the performances of the other characters dominate.
As is to be expected, the film is one of those where folks are picked off one by one, and since poor Ripley's 1979/2122 Nostromo crew is unaware of the history of the planet when they stop by to answer a distress beacon, we know none of them will make it home. This film is less concerned with making us care about all of the crew than the first film was, but the encounters between human and planetary "wildlife" makes up a bit for this. The creature effects are beyond amazing, and I was happy to see H.R. Giger's delicious manipulation of human reproductive and other body parts again brought to bear on the alien life. What also became clear is that, whether planned or not, the symbolism used in creating Alien's body makes sense considering the same superior beings who created us also created the Alien - albeit very indirectly, accidentally, and against their will. But I won't ruin the fun by saying more... Suffice it to say that more than one scene had the audience, and me as well, groaning out loud over not just the death of a character, but the appearance of the critter that killed them!
The action sequences are both awe-inspiring and lovely as the crew discovers planet LV-223 to be less cradle of the alien Engineers' civilization and more Area 51/1950's New Mexico desert. But the real thrill comes from the realization that each character's actions are constantly pushing and pulling at what the cost of sacrifice is, whether the sacrifice is one's body, one's life, one's dignity, or one's ultimate desires. In other words, obvious ideas about 'what it means to be human' aside, the film's strength lies in the other ideas it plays with. Ridley Scott's film glows with its ability to make the environment itself an active force compelling choice and suggesting that sacrifice is often as much about the human as it is about the "alien" - ie, the tension between that which is presumably us and that which is profoundly Not us/is hostile to us.
A bit esoteric a viewing lens, and maybe reading too much? Perhaps. But the unexpected depth and beauty of the film's play with the ideas of compassion and sacrifice made me less annoyed by 1) the number of unanswered central questions and 2) the obviousness of inevitable sequels suggested by the end of the film. By managing to raise similar, but more complex questions than the first Alien, fans of the terrifying and the brainy are both sure to be satisfied, and excited for what Scott has planned next.
-----------------------------------------------------
Genre - A+
Epidermal/Ethnic Variance - C+
Visuals/Audio - A
Gender Rep - B
Narrative - B+
Gut Says - A
OVERALL GRADE: B+
19 October 2011
True Blood's Pariah, America's History, and Black Women's Representaitons
There has been a great deal of hate poured on Tara as a character on the show True Blood on HBO in the form of multiple Facebook groups dedicated to hoping she dies, and blog posts complaining about her. Did I mention Tara is a strong, outspoken, often justifiably angry, and determined Black Female character? Sigh.
I found the most cogent and sharply examined analysis of the hatred Tara receives so far in a blog post about "Strong Female Characters" at TigerBeatDown.com. Demanding a full reconsideration of what it means to be "strong" in the context of these cinematic and visual media, the author calls upon us to consider why to be "strong" is good for White women - historically rooted perceptions of weakness and and wilting-Lilly quality as natural - and why it is always perceived as very bad for Black women - historically grounded perceptions of Black women as inherently masculine, animal like, the diametric opposite of all that is wonderful and White. Therefore, a strong White woman is good and show's gumption, a strong Black woman is annoying.
Unfortunately, I found this analysis through the link in a Think Progress blog posting about why the brilliant critique at Tiger Beat Down was wrong because Tara is unloved due to being "Static" not due to being Black. If I wasn't also reading Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts and Hortense Spillers' Black, White and In Color, I might not be quite so imbued with excitement over TigerBeatDown's insight and anger over this blogger's shortsightedness and seemingly ill-intentioned attack. But alas, reading the history of Black women's treatment within the U.S. will do that to you. But that aside...
As is too often the case, liberal, well educated, White women still refuse to believe race can play a role in the abuses suffered by a Black woman and other Women Of Color because it would force a questioning of their own relatively privileged position within an extant representational/power hierarchy, within an evolving cultural milieu, and within a functioning historical narrative that prizes their supposedly inherent positive attributes to the detriment of Women Of Color who are perceived as all that is opposed and awful. After one too many frustrated flipping of pages, figurative and literal, to escape their narrow thinking, I decided to answer the lunacy of this blogger, and have included the content below:
Alyssa, your comments about Tara with regards to race and her representation on True Blood go from unfair to downright vicious - especially growing as they do out of a desire to declare the profound and insightful commentary at TigerBeatDown.com to be false. You state:
"It’s that the character never grows, and exhibits consistently poor judgement [sic], sabotaging a potential relationship with a nice, stable man and taking up with a former criminal, seeking protection with and then falling under the spell of a powerful, chaos-inclined magical entity, and then when she gets therapy and rebuilds her life outside of Bon Temps, sabotages it again for no discernable [sic] reason, taking up with a genocidal witches’ coven."
What character on the show miraculously evolves as you would demand of Tara? NONE. Part of the show's allure is the constant danger and impulse of so many characters to constantly make decisions which place them in mortal danger. Thus you could create a list like the one you spill over Tara for any of the other characters on the show! The only one to demonstrably change in any real way is Eric, and only because he suffered a witches curse, now his memory is back and lord knows if he'll stay all sweet.
Everyone on the show consistently makes bad decisions - Sookie can only love men who desire to eat her. She slept with Eric! He's hot, but vicious. She didn't pick the hot, available, stable werewolf, but instead the crazy, scary vampire. Or how about Arlene who went from a serial killer to a mildly deranged military vet. Or Sam who consistently does the Wrong thing - whether killing folks in the past or kicking his brother out when what his brother needed was stability, a place to call home without dog-fights, and someone to call him on his BS for a change.
But even if we only consider what you are asking of Tara and not her characterization compared to others (even if I think the comparison is sufficient to show similarity, but in the interest of answering the insulting length of your demands...) there is still something amiss in your desire to declare Tara "Static" if we consider what you list as the reasons why she is a static and hated/unloved character:
1- Who is this nice stable man she sabotages a relationship with? Who on this show has ever been shown to truly be stable at all? Maybe werewolf man, but then he does change into a beast when the full moon pops up.
2- Are you really beyond the ability to understand or see the desire of a child of an alcoholic single mother (with no other family) to take advantage of the shelter and care being offered by a woman with so much to give and other people in need under her care? Can you truly be faulting Tara for being bewitched? Do you fault everyone else for their bewitchment as well? And are You Really asking Tara to have been psychic and discerned that the nice lady was really a maenad intent on destroying her life? Because I refuse to believe that someone who went to college would expect precognition of a Black female character as the grounds for the character to be considered 'dynamic.'
3- If you do not know why Tara sent her girlfriend away - to avoid her being hurt/killed - and believe the show's creators so inept as to have had her take up with the coven for no reason - if you watch the show, there is a reason - then I don't know what to say.
Clearly, the reasons you present for why Tara is "static" are really reasons rooted in a desire for her character to be superhuman, infallable, maternal, and rooted in a quasi-behavioral Whiteness which you point out as being necessary for this to be possible. And before you dispute this, you do say:
"Tara’s character [in the novels] is a recovering abuse survivor who’s sometimes brittle because of it, but she’s also a small business owner, a good friend to Sookie (though they have their fallings [sic] out), a wife and mother—and she’s white. If Ball had kept that character development arc, and committed to that emotional growth, but cast Rutina Wesley in the role, I think we’d think Tara is a hero. Instead, he both made her black and an object of perpetual humiliation. If we’re not cheering Tara it’s because the character has no discernable [sic] investment in her own life and happiness."
Now, if you list wonderful things and add, "--and she's white.", then follow by saying, "he made her black and an object of perpetual humiliation", what you are doing, even if inadvertently, is setting up the similarity between the wonderful world of possibility that is White Tara in the book and how awful Black Tara is in the show. You are linking the characteristics to color not for the purpose of clarity, but to further establish why Black Tara is so faulty for this indistinct, intangible but seemingly preferential list of vague plot details. (We'll leave aside discussion for now of all the troublesome undercurrents of your desire to see a Black, single mother Tara character with children.)
Done so casually, this comparison is scary to me. Especially because it renders inauthentic your claim to want to add business-owner as a part of Tara's character to make her better. Oh, and a business-owner without any ups or downs natural to all characters on a show, and with a perfect supportive relationship to Sookie at all times. Perhaps one can fault the show for not giving Tara enough purely self-motivated, self-oriented actions, but to demand perfection is... odd.
And it goes without saying that None of the characters demonstrate a serious investment in their own happiness as far as making good decisions.
When you present such an insubstantial and specious list of reasons for why Tara is hated by so many, and use it as a direct assault on the sound, historically and theoretically grounded arguments of the authors at TigerBeatDown.com, I would question the stakes for you in derailing the cause of honest discourse about women and racial representations on TV. I would question your reasons for trumpeting Tara as "perpetually humiliated" rather than as an able, adaptable, strong, survivor of multiple horrific incidents who still manages to support her friend Sookie by refusing to sugar-coat the truth or allow her to make crazy decisions without reflection. The best moments are when they are honest and real with each other about what is going on, even if one end up angry about it. So again I ask, what is at stake for you in derailing the cause of Honest discussion about these representations the way you are?
I found the most cogent and sharply examined analysis of the hatred Tara receives so far in a blog post about "Strong Female Characters" at TigerBeatDown.com. Demanding a full reconsideration of what it means to be "strong" in the context of these cinematic and visual media, the author calls upon us to consider why to be "strong" is good for White women - historically rooted perceptions of weakness and and wilting-Lilly quality as natural - and why it is always perceived as very bad for Black women - historically grounded perceptions of Black women as inherently masculine, animal like, the diametric opposite of all that is wonderful and White. Therefore, a strong White woman is good and show's gumption, a strong Black woman is annoying.
Unfortunately, I found this analysis through the link in a Think Progress blog posting about why the brilliant critique at Tiger Beat Down was wrong because Tara is unloved due to being "Static" not due to being Black. If I wasn't also reading Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts and Hortense Spillers' Black, White and In Color, I might not be quite so imbued with excitement over TigerBeatDown's insight and anger over this blogger's shortsightedness and seemingly ill-intentioned attack. But alas, reading the history of Black women's treatment within the U.S. will do that to you. But that aside...
As is too often the case, liberal, well educated, White women still refuse to believe race can play a role in the abuses suffered by a Black woman and other Women Of Color because it would force a questioning of their own relatively privileged position within an extant representational/power hierarchy, within an evolving cultural milieu, and within a functioning historical narrative that prizes their supposedly inherent positive attributes to the detriment of Women Of Color who are perceived as all that is opposed and awful. After one too many frustrated flipping of pages, figurative and literal, to escape their narrow thinking, I decided to answer the lunacy of this blogger, and have included the content below:
Alyssa, your comments about Tara with regards to race and her representation on True Blood go from unfair to downright vicious - especially growing as they do out of a desire to declare the profound and insightful commentary at TigerBeatDown.com to be false. You state:
"It’s that the character never grows, and exhibits consistently poor judgement [sic], sabotaging a potential relationship with a nice, stable man and taking up with a former criminal, seeking protection with and then falling under the spell of a powerful, chaos-inclined magical entity, and then when she gets therapy and rebuilds her life outside of Bon Temps, sabotages it again for no discernable [sic] reason, taking up with a genocidal witches’ coven."
What character on the show miraculously evolves as you would demand of Tara? NONE. Part of the show's allure is the constant danger and impulse of so many characters to constantly make decisions which place them in mortal danger. Thus you could create a list like the one you spill over Tara for any of the other characters on the show! The only one to demonstrably change in any real way is Eric, and only because he suffered a witches curse, now his memory is back and lord knows if he'll stay all sweet.
Everyone on the show consistently makes bad decisions - Sookie can only love men who desire to eat her. She slept with Eric! He's hot, but vicious. She didn't pick the hot, available, stable werewolf, but instead the crazy, scary vampire. Or how about Arlene who went from a serial killer to a mildly deranged military vet. Or Sam who consistently does the Wrong thing - whether killing folks in the past or kicking his brother out when what his brother needed was stability, a place to call home without dog-fights, and someone to call him on his BS for a change.
But even if we only consider what you are asking of Tara and not her characterization compared to others (even if I think the comparison is sufficient to show similarity, but in the interest of answering the insulting length of your demands...) there is still something amiss in your desire to declare Tara "Static" if we consider what you list as the reasons why she is a static and hated/unloved character:
1- Who is this nice stable man she sabotages a relationship with? Who on this show has ever been shown to truly be stable at all? Maybe werewolf man, but then he does change into a beast when the full moon pops up.
2- Are you really beyond the ability to understand or see the desire of a child of an alcoholic single mother (with no other family) to take advantage of the shelter and care being offered by a woman with so much to give and other people in need under her care? Can you truly be faulting Tara for being bewitched? Do you fault everyone else for their bewitchment as well? And are You Really asking Tara to have been psychic and discerned that the nice lady was really a maenad intent on destroying her life? Because I refuse to believe that someone who went to college would expect precognition of a Black female character as the grounds for the character to be considered 'dynamic.'
3- If you do not know why Tara sent her girlfriend away - to avoid her being hurt/killed - and believe the show's creators so inept as to have had her take up with the coven for no reason - if you watch the show, there is a reason - then I don't know what to say.
Clearly, the reasons you present for why Tara is "static" are really reasons rooted in a desire for her character to be superhuman, infallable, maternal, and rooted in a quasi-behavioral Whiteness which you point out as being necessary for this to be possible. And before you dispute this, you do say:
"Tara’s character [in the novels] is a recovering abuse survivor who’s sometimes brittle because of it, but she’s also a small business owner, a good friend to Sookie (though they have their fallings [sic] out), a wife and mother—and she’s white. If Ball had kept that character development arc, and committed to that emotional growth, but cast Rutina Wesley in the role, I think we’d think Tara is a hero. Instead, he both made her black and an object of perpetual humiliation. If we’re not cheering Tara it’s because the character has no discernable [sic] investment in her own life and happiness."
Now, if you list wonderful things and add, "--and she's white.", then follow by saying, "he made her black and an object of perpetual humiliation", what you are doing, even if inadvertently, is setting up the similarity between the wonderful world of possibility that is White Tara in the book and how awful Black Tara is in the show. You are linking the characteristics to color not for the purpose of clarity, but to further establish why Black Tara is so faulty for this indistinct, intangible but seemingly preferential list of vague plot details. (We'll leave aside discussion for now of all the troublesome undercurrents of your desire to see a Black, single mother Tara character with children.)
Done so casually, this comparison is scary to me. Especially because it renders inauthentic your claim to want to add business-owner as a part of Tara's character to make her better. Oh, and a business-owner without any ups or downs natural to all characters on a show, and with a perfect supportive relationship to Sookie at all times. Perhaps one can fault the show for not giving Tara enough purely self-motivated, self-oriented actions, but to demand perfection is... odd.
And it goes without saying that None of the characters demonstrate a serious investment in their own happiness as far as making good decisions.
When you present such an insubstantial and specious list of reasons for why Tara is hated by so many, and use it as a direct assault on the sound, historically and theoretically grounded arguments of the authors at TigerBeatDown.com, I would question the stakes for you in derailing the cause of honest discourse about women and racial representations on TV. I would question your reasons for trumpeting Tara as "perpetually humiliated" rather than as an able, adaptable, strong, survivor of multiple horrific incidents who still manages to support her friend Sookie by refusing to sugar-coat the truth or allow her to make crazy decisions without reflection. The best moments are when they are honest and real with each other about what is going on, even if one end up angry about it. So again I ask, what is at stake for you in derailing the cause of Honest discussion about these representations the way you are?
27 June 2011
Kerry Washington Lovely in Lift (2001)
Comment in response to Elvis Mitchell's review of this wonderful little film:
Lift (2001) is a sharp, witty cinematic effort, giving us well drawn characters whose lives we care about. Its also a stunning turn by Kerry Washington in a heavy indictment of consumer culture. It is filled with complex and generous portrayals of these characters. And even if the reasons underpinning their desire for the designer goods is something which the audience is expected to know already - which, depending on the viewing audience could determine whether these characters end up stereotyped or understood - the actors still give them such depth one should feel for them.
Elvis Mitchell calls these young Black characters small-minded and short-sighted, but this is an ungenerous read at best and at worst its a rough essentializing. Especially because, at its most poignant, this film proves that ironically, the accusations of otherness slopped onto Black people in the U.S. can easily be disproved when one considers the fact that the All American Love of bigger, better, more, now is shared by White and Black Americans! If nothing else we know that the oppressed, or formerly oppressed, follow the suit of their oppressors, so if we are to nag these young people for their behavior, we must condemn all American culture for making it seem there is nothing in life but to own and have more stuff...
Lift (2001) is a sharp, witty cinematic effort, giving us well drawn characters whose lives we care about. Its also a stunning turn by Kerry Washington in a heavy indictment of consumer culture. It is filled with complex and generous portrayals of these characters. And even if the reasons underpinning their desire for the designer goods is something which the audience is expected to know already - which, depending on the viewing audience could determine whether these characters end up stereotyped or understood - the actors still give them such depth one should feel for them.
Elvis Mitchell calls these young Black characters small-minded and short-sighted, but this is an ungenerous read at best and at worst its a rough essentializing. Especially because, at its most poignant, this film proves that ironically, the accusations of otherness slopped onto Black people in the U.S. can easily be disproved when one considers the fact that the All American Love of bigger, better, more, now is shared by White and Black Americans! If nothing else we know that the oppressed, or formerly oppressed, follow the suit of their oppressors, so if we are to nag these young people for their behavior, we must condemn all American culture for making it seem there is nothing in life but to own and have more stuff...
21 June 2011
Jennifer's Body (2009): Misunderstood Brilliance
Jennifer's Body suffers from a few major afflictions: reviews that want it to be something gorier or more evil than it is, reviews that attack it for an assumption of cheap opportunism, and some reviewers that plain just don't understand at all what's going on.
What is going on is that, within the context of a friendship of lopsided power dynamics but seeming genuine affection between two teen girls, the more dominant and narcissistic friend is sacrificed to a demon by a group of young men so they can be a successful rock band. This sacrifice turns her into an undead succubus who must then consume young men to survive. Her best friend must then decide how she might be stopped, while navigating the tricky terrain of their lifelong friendship.
I felt compelled to write this review not because Diablo Cody has created the perfect horror movie, or even one it seems most (male?) horror fans will enjoy. The film does suffer a few moments of seemingly forced dialogue which only works because Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried produce such wonderful, natural feeling performances. The reason why this film is amazing has to do with it being the logical conclusion to or heir apparent to Mean Girls and Chumscrubber: The Perfect White Suburban Female Horror flick. Playing on the suburban malaise and disconnections which sometimes structure empty lives, this film ensures we feel fear at the thought of the dark underbelly of small town American teens! Rather than a rehash, it takes Mean Girls to another level, one where female friendships and rapidly proliferating youthful apathy are revealed to be the true terror and not some indestructible man in a mask.
What is going on is that, within the context of a friendship of lopsided power dynamics but seeming genuine affection between two teen girls, the more dominant and narcissistic friend is sacrificed to a demon by a group of young men so they can be a successful rock band. This sacrifice turns her into an undead succubus who must then consume young men to survive. Her best friend must then decide how she might be stopped, while navigating the tricky terrain of their lifelong friendship.
I felt compelled to write this review not because Diablo Cody has created the perfect horror movie, or even one it seems most (male?) horror fans will enjoy. The film does suffer a few moments of seemingly forced dialogue which only works because Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried produce such wonderful, natural feeling performances. The reason why this film is amazing has to do with it being the logical conclusion to or heir apparent to Mean Girls and Chumscrubber: The Perfect White Suburban Female Horror flick. Playing on the suburban malaise and disconnections which sometimes structure empty lives, this film ensures we feel fear at the thought of the dark underbelly of small town American teens! Rather than a rehash, it takes Mean Girls to another level, one where female friendships and rapidly proliferating youthful apathy are revealed to be the true terror and not some indestructible man in a mask.
Aaaarghh! There be Spoilers Ahead!
In dreadcentral.com's review - which at times implies that that Diablo Cody does not understand even the basics of narrative structure - they accuse the film of being too concerned with seeming important, and using a whirlpool as a useless plot device at the film's climax. I argue here that part of what they've missed is that Cody and Kusama are all too aware of both the levity and weight of the film, and have used each element purposefully.
It may not be a strictly feminist horror film - Needy escapes, but after all they do kill Jennifer in the end, bad form! But the film does a great job at revealing the true horror, fear, resentments, distrust, and oppression at the center of so many female friendships!! All women at sometime have thought a friend to be a demon: evil, ruthless, heartless, cruel, and capable of infinite evil. This film is what would happen if one could prove it. Therefore the whirlpool is far from a useless plot point, and is instead a potent visual metaphor for a number of things:
First, the terrible fear most civilizations have of female sexuality as that swirling thing that may have no depths, operates beyond man's comprehension, and can consume infinitely. It is no mistake that one of the film's early scenes is of two men dumping boxes of balls into the whirlpool (to try and understand its trajectory and operations) which are consumed by the vortex and never seen again. This gynephobic undercurrent may be represented, to me at least, in somewhat heavy-handed fashion, but I have yet to read a review that points this out, which means folks are missing the significance and it is a cool thing to note!!
Second, the vortex that bad female friendships can become, sucking energy, joy, even life out of you even as you find them impossible to escape. See the previous comments about female friendships.
Third, and finally, the terrifying depths of female abjection and violation in the face of stronger men. It is no mistake that it is near that infinite whirlpool that the band decides to sacrifice Jennifer to a demon. Ostensibly she has to be sacrificed in the name of the band's financial success, but the placement near the whirlpool reminds one of the vast numbers of women who go missing, are raped, assaulted, and abused worldwide and whose cries are either laughed at or go unheard altogether.
Reviewers complaining about the improbability of Cody's language have spent little time around groups of girls age 13 to 19, because the made up slang, the viciousness, and constant pushing and testing is a hallmark of current female interaction - the latter to a disturbing degree I believe. And scenes in the classroom, of Jennifer's demon possessed form laughing about death and sadness is not so far fetched in our mass media, rapidly evolving, 24 hour news cycle lives. A reviewer in Australia complained that the movie fails to create anything a viewer could identify with as scary. Well he clearly has never been in a female friendship.
If there's anything to truly complain about in this film it is the narratively necessary and therefore inevitable, but ultimately uninspiring demise of Jennifer. In a womanist read of the film, Jennifer lives a toxic-masculinist dream: taking on "lovers" when she wants, disposing of them at will, and using their adoration and fear of losing out on the opportunity she offers to suck them dry of energy and leave them empty in her wake. How many films celebrate just this sort of male behavior wherein women occupy cardboard placement in service to men's sexual whims or maternal needs? I adore The Hangover, Wedding Crashers, and Swingers, but these films are no friends to women.
Here, unlike in for example Weird Science (1985), Jennifer as whirlpool does the supernatural selecting and discarding. Her death therefore somehow feels an appeasement of scared male egos - the film's scientists - who really just want that whirlpool to be clarified, contained, and understood. Beyond the usual requirement that horror films punish the bad (often) and save our heroine (sometimes), it seems that Jennifer has to die for her bad friendship, her ruthless high school demeanor, but most importantly for her murder of young men whose only crime was to fall for her beauty imagining it covered a nice person too. Hence the film requires Needy's discovery of the end of the whirlpool, the end of Jennifer's sexually charged rampage through male flesh, the end of male fear of the unpredictable or dangerous in dreamily imagined encounters with strange, hot women. After all, men need to believe there are hot women out there who will sleep with and satisfy them without then eating them afterwards.
What does the whirlpool mean for Needy? In one read, we could say that Needy has discovered her own empowered connection to the whirlpool's violent, powerful possibility - she has become part demon after all, and can truly enjoy her sexuality, refusal to be a victim, and no-nonsense attitude. Now, Needy may become the perfect melding of Jennifer's power, sensuousness, and self-containment, and her own composed, moral, logical self. Thus, in truly amazing and womanist inspired writing, Jennifer and Needy are two halves of a whole, and the perfect woman is and can be (if she wants) a mix of the sassy and sweet, brutal and tender, powerful and empowering!
However, in a more likely read, the discovery of the end of the whirlpool still harkens back to scary female sexuality since the end of the whirlpool equals the earlier deposited, disembodied balls and an obscenely large hunting knife - castration anxiety anyone? And why does the whirlpool seemingly dump out on the side of an empty stretch of road? A lonely no-man's land, where the next person Needy encounters is a motorist played by actor Lance Henriksen. Yes, Henriksen who has been forever immortalized on celluloid as being the male representation of how terrifying and destructive a force reproduction is - pregnancy is death! BUT this does not spell the complete death knell of womanist/feminist readings, and I would have to really stretch to believe Cody and Kusama did not want a less sad reading of this film.
All in all, I found this film full of the necessary frights - that evil friend just might kill me or destroy my life or steal my boyfriend and eat him!! It had genuinely scary moments - groups and solitary men do in fact kidnap and torture women all the time - and legit representations of youthful behavior - I have actually heard dialogue from high schoolers and middle schoolers that eerily resembles this film's dialogue... The film Kick's Ass!!
So reviewers out there, give the film a shot and stop hating just because its "cool" to hate it! The creative minds behind Girl Fight (2000) and Juno (2007) deserve more consideration than you've given them!!
In dreadcentral.com's review - which at times implies that that Diablo Cody does not understand even the basics of narrative structure - they accuse the film of being too concerned with seeming important, and using a whirlpool as a useless plot device at the film's climax. I argue here that part of what they've missed is that Cody and Kusama are all too aware of both the levity and weight of the film, and have used each element purposefully.
It may not be a strictly feminist horror film - Needy escapes, but after all they do kill Jennifer in the end, bad form! But the film does a great job at revealing the true horror, fear, resentments, distrust, and oppression at the center of so many female friendships!! All women at sometime have thought a friend to be a demon: evil, ruthless, heartless, cruel, and capable of infinite evil. This film is what would happen if one could prove it. Therefore the whirlpool is far from a useless plot point, and is instead a potent visual metaphor for a number of things:
First, the terrible fear most civilizations have of female sexuality as that swirling thing that may have no depths, operates beyond man's comprehension, and can consume infinitely. It is no mistake that one of the film's early scenes is of two men dumping boxes of balls into the whirlpool (to try and understand its trajectory and operations) which are consumed by the vortex and never seen again. This gynephobic undercurrent may be represented, to me at least, in somewhat heavy-handed fashion, but I have yet to read a review that points this out, which means folks are missing the significance and it is a cool thing to note!!
Second, the vortex that bad female friendships can become, sucking energy, joy, even life out of you even as you find them impossible to escape. See the previous comments about female friendships.
Third, and finally, the terrifying depths of female abjection and violation in the face of stronger men. It is no mistake that it is near that infinite whirlpool that the band decides to sacrifice Jennifer to a demon. Ostensibly she has to be sacrificed in the name of the band's financial success, but the placement near the whirlpool reminds one of the vast numbers of women who go missing, are raped, assaulted, and abused worldwide and whose cries are either laughed at or go unheard altogether.
Reviewers complaining about the improbability of Cody's language have spent little time around groups of girls age 13 to 19, because the made up slang, the viciousness, and constant pushing and testing is a hallmark of current female interaction - the latter to a disturbing degree I believe. And scenes in the classroom, of Jennifer's demon possessed form laughing about death and sadness is not so far fetched in our mass media, rapidly evolving, 24 hour news cycle lives. A reviewer in Australia complained that the movie fails to create anything a viewer could identify with as scary. Well he clearly has never been in a female friendship.
If there's anything to truly complain about in this film it is the narratively necessary and therefore inevitable, but ultimately uninspiring demise of Jennifer. In a womanist read of the film, Jennifer lives a toxic-masculinist dream: taking on "lovers" when she wants, disposing of them at will, and using their adoration and fear of losing out on the opportunity she offers to suck them dry of energy and leave them empty in her wake. How many films celebrate just this sort of male behavior wherein women occupy cardboard placement in service to men's sexual whims or maternal needs? I adore The Hangover, Wedding Crashers, and Swingers, but these films are no friends to women.
Here, unlike in for example Weird Science (1985), Jennifer as whirlpool does the supernatural selecting and discarding. Her death therefore somehow feels an appeasement of scared male egos - the film's scientists - who really just want that whirlpool to be clarified, contained, and understood. Beyond the usual requirement that horror films punish the bad (often) and save our heroine (sometimes), it seems that Jennifer has to die for her bad friendship, her ruthless high school demeanor, but most importantly for her murder of young men whose only crime was to fall for her beauty imagining it covered a nice person too. Hence the film requires Needy's discovery of the end of the whirlpool, the end of Jennifer's sexually charged rampage through male flesh, the end of male fear of the unpredictable or dangerous in dreamily imagined encounters with strange, hot women. After all, men need to believe there are hot women out there who will sleep with and satisfy them without then eating them afterwards.
What does the whirlpool mean for Needy? In one read, we could say that Needy has discovered her own empowered connection to the whirlpool's violent, powerful possibility - she has become part demon after all, and can truly enjoy her sexuality, refusal to be a victim, and no-nonsense attitude. Now, Needy may become the perfect melding of Jennifer's power, sensuousness, and self-containment, and her own composed, moral, logical self. Thus, in truly amazing and womanist inspired writing, Jennifer and Needy are two halves of a whole, and the perfect woman is and can be (if she wants) a mix of the sassy and sweet, brutal and tender, powerful and empowering!
However, in a more likely read, the discovery of the end of the whirlpool still harkens back to scary female sexuality since the end of the whirlpool equals the earlier deposited, disembodied balls and an obscenely large hunting knife - castration anxiety anyone? And why does the whirlpool seemingly dump out on the side of an empty stretch of road? A lonely no-man's land, where the next person Needy encounters is a motorist played by actor Lance Henriksen. Yes, Henriksen who has been forever immortalized on celluloid as being the male representation of how terrifying and destructive a force reproduction is - pregnancy is death! BUT this does not spell the complete death knell of womanist/feminist readings, and I would have to really stretch to believe Cody and Kusama did not want a less sad reading of this film.
All in all, I found this film full of the necessary frights - that evil friend just might kill me or destroy my life or steal my boyfriend and eat him!! It had genuinely scary moments - groups and solitary men do in fact kidnap and torture women all the time - and legit representations of youthful behavior - I have actually heard dialogue from high schoolers and middle schoolers that eerily resembles this film's dialogue... The film Kick's Ass!!
So reviewers out there, give the film a shot and stop hating just because its "cool" to hate it! The creative minds behind Girl Fight (2000) and Juno (2007) deserve more consideration than you've given them!!
28 May 2011
Hangover II: The Hunt For Greater Offensiveness
In response to The Hangover II's completely tone-less, tasteless, and inappropriate use of iconic imagery, I searched the internet for a review which also mentioned this mis-fire. Here's my comment based on Roeper's review of the film:
Thank God one reviewer has said it! My husband, brother and I thought we were the only ones to notice the horribly offensive and far, far from funny re-enactment of the iconic Viet Nam war photograph of a man being executed by a gunshot to the head during the end credits. While I argued that there is no way Phillips could actually have thought this would be funny and had done it unintentionally (using an image stuck in his head but not purposefully referring to this horrible image), my brother and husband argue that he intentionally used it and thought it would be funny. Regardless, I am happy to hear someone else point out its taste-less-ness and as an end to what had in general been expected and tolerable offensiveness, closing with this intolerable image has left us with a terrible taste in our mouths.
Thank God one reviewer has said it! My husband, brother and I thought we were the only ones to notice the horribly offensive and far, far from funny re-enactment of the iconic Viet Nam war photograph of a man being executed by a gunshot to the head during the end credits. While I argued that there is no way Phillips could actually have thought this would be funny and had done it unintentionally (using an image stuck in his head but not purposefully referring to this horrible image), my brother and husband argue that he intentionally used it and thought it would be funny. Regardless, I am happy to hear someone else point out its taste-less-ness and as an end to what had in general been expected and tolerable offensiveness, closing with this intolerable image has left us with a terrible taste in our mouths.
15 May 2011
Pushing Women's Humor Back Into The Stone Age....
Response to Edelstein's review of BrideWars over at NPR:
Dear Edelstein,
As a female-of color-English Ph.D. student with very broad interests and sensibilities, I am having trouble figuring out in what way your 'review' of this film is most offensive! Is it:
1)In its essentializing of the female experience - as if there is some exclusively female frailty that is inherent and prohibitive of certain behavior. In other words, you seem to believe that if men find it funny women can't as well because...?
2)In your presumption that to be Female is to only find specific (what, "ladylike"?) forms of humor funny or acceptable. The scene at the bridal shop became more funny for me than for my husband because he doesn't know the value/cost of bridal gowns (I do) nor the strain women regularly are under Not to allow any untoward smells to escape their person- let alone a food poisoning explosions. For the women of our group, this made the scene a cathartic rush revealing that we too are human... and in pain over that gorgeous ruined gown!
3)Your reduction of Melissa McCarthy's wonderful and emotionally complex performance to one of playing off of her Girth! There was more nuance and grace to her portrayal than you give her credit for, and your review smacks of your inability to see beyond her weight.
Part II:
I'm sorry, but I must make one more comment or suggestion about what makes this review problematic - as 'Analytical Ph.D. Student' I cannot fail to give "suggested reading" if I take issue with an argument.
It seems that at best, this Review would be better described as an ill-intentioned and oddly toned Referendum on what women are or are not permitted to find humorous, or what experiences women are or are not entitled to have/claim as part of their functioning as human beings in an American cultural setting!
I suggest you watch the South Park episode on queefing. (Though unladylike I suppose, there is no other more appropriate and simple word to choose.) I thought they did a great job at highlighting that women have a sense of humor as well that can intersect with bodily (mal)functions.
Women have bodies too, and in some ways are more of our bodies than men are by virtue of our frequent object status. (See fast food places giving girls dolls and boys trucks in kid's meals.)
There is a prim propriety thrust upon women which I am happy to see these hysterical, bright women shake off the yoke of in this film! Please stop trying to tie them back down with antiquated, prescriptive genre titles.
Dear Edelstein,
As a female-of color-English Ph.D. student with very broad interests and sensibilities, I am having trouble figuring out in what way your 'review' of this film is most offensive! Is it:
1)In its essentializing of the female experience - as if there is some exclusively female frailty that is inherent and prohibitive of certain behavior. In other words, you seem to believe that if men find it funny women can't as well because...?
2)In your presumption that to be Female is to only find specific (what, "ladylike"?) forms of humor funny or acceptable. The scene at the bridal shop became more funny for me than for my husband because he doesn't know the value/cost of bridal gowns (I do) nor the strain women regularly are under Not to allow any untoward smells to escape their person- let alone a food poisoning explosions. For the women of our group, this made the scene a cathartic rush revealing that we too are human... and in pain over that gorgeous ruined gown!
3)Your reduction of Melissa McCarthy's wonderful and emotionally complex performance to one of playing off of her Girth! There was more nuance and grace to her portrayal than you give her credit for, and your review smacks of your inability to see beyond her weight.
Part II:
I'm sorry, but I must make one more comment or suggestion about what makes this review problematic - as 'Analytical Ph.D. Student' I cannot fail to give "suggested reading" if I take issue with an argument.
It seems that at best, this Review would be better described as an ill-intentioned and oddly toned Referendum on what women are or are not permitted to find humorous, or what experiences women are or are not entitled to have/claim as part of their functioning as human beings in an American cultural setting!
I suggest you watch the South Park episode on queefing. (Though unladylike I suppose, there is no other more appropriate and simple word to choose.) I thought they did a great job at highlighting that women have a sense of humor as well that can intersect with bodily (mal)functions.
Women have bodies too, and in some ways are more of our bodies than men are by virtue of our frequent object status. (See fast food places giving girls dolls and boys trucks in kid's meals.)
There is a prim propriety thrust upon women which I am happy to see these hysterical, bright women shake off the yoke of in this film! Please stop trying to tie them back down with antiquated, prescriptive genre titles.
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