well it sure does suck...

I hoped Suckerpunch was gonna be good. The trailer, to me, smacked of determined and passionate (albeit a bit simplistic and old-fashioned) feminism: a young girl is put into an insane asylum by her evil stepdad after her mum dies. To escape containment and lobotomy, the girl conjures up a battle field in her own imagination, and creatively “fights” her way out of through fantastical scenarios of war, guerrilla tactics and hand-to-hand fighting (at all three of which she kicks butt, as do the fellow female patients she includes in her escape place). The basic metaphor, I gathered, was something about the oppression of women by the evil and abusive institution of patriarchy that contains women through violence – but that women are able to “break free” through the creative power of their minds, and through banding together.

Of course, I saw problems with this metaphor – it positions all men as generically evil, and it suggests that a “freeing of the female mind” is enough to make women feel ok about the real violence and oppression they may have experienced (ie. you wouldn’t tell a rape victim to just fantasise about killing the rapist, and then assume her own trauma has been dealt with, or that “rape” as an issue in society has been removed). In any case: whatever misgivings I had about the trailer, I hoped they would dissipate through the course of film. THEY DIDN’T. (In fact, they grew and mutated in huge horrible monsters named Disbelief and Disgust).

The offending school uniform get up.

For one, the whole film was a shameless excuse to get hot chicks flashing as much butt-cheek and cleavage as possible. Babydoll (the main character) actually has two levels of escapist fantasy – apart from world of fighting in her mind, she imagines that the mental hospital is crazy burlesque brothel (!!?!) where young (underage?) fake-tanned girls strut around in corsets, fishnet tights and stilettos, each with their own electronic rotating bed. The creepy lobotomy doctor becomes a creepy pimp and the “fantasy world” of fighting that I saw in the trailer can only be accessed by Babydoll when she does a pornographic stripper dance. It is while she mesmerises everyone with her “moaning” and “gyrating” (as the other girls in the film describe) that she can distract the chief doctor (pimp), the psychologist (the madam) and guards so that the other female patients can steal a map, a key and some other objects that will help during their escape. To the film’s credit, we never actually see the notorious dance. However, equating female, imaginative freedom with self-objectification and sexualisation is totally problematic, and suggests girls can only really achieve freedom through showing their bodies (which will only work if their bodies are “good enough” to have power over men). Obviously this is no freedom at all, and I should have realised at this stage that the film probably wasn't intended as a contribution to contemporary gender politics. 

In any case, the scenes which depict the gunfights and explosions in Babydoll’s fantasyland feature the girls in revealing school-girl uniforms, encouraging some weird paedophilic voyeurism on the part of the audience. Also, Babydoll meets some random old guy in the fantasyland who gives her instructions about what objects she needs to escape. On the “real” level of the story, one of the female patients does escape, thanks to Babydoll, and when she gets out of the hospital and into the town, the same random old guy is the bus driver, who gives her a knowing wink and lets her ride the bus for free. Babydoll and this woman, then, are actually totally dependent on this guy for having achieved any level of freedom at all. And yet we never find out who the heck this guy is – he’s just another vague male white father figure with the appropriate knowledge on how a women should behave (!!!?!). I’m not saying that men and women shouldn’t work together – of course I think they should. Some might argues that as a Christian (ie follower of Christ) that I am complicit in such a narrative of a masculine archetype - but actually, Jesus’ own history and claims are extremely specific and gender inclusive, as opposed to  the film's presentation of some vague cultural idea of manhood which refuses to account for its origin, its influence, or where it gets the omniscience it claims as natural to itself.

Plus, the film made no sense narratively. How did the real girls get into the brothel fantasy? The film nowhere explained what the correspondence was between the real life of the girl and her fantasies – presumably they matched up somehow, but it wasn’t clear. Plus, the fight scenes sucked – talk about boring, and pornographic. As my good friend blogged here, “[Snyder, the director] could have considered the fact that us chicks would definitely not be impressed by seeing the same jump and twirl that conveniently exposes lots of creamy thigh five times in a row (and countless of other times over the course of the movie.) And for the love of all that is holy, where is the gore?”

I’m going to hold it there, even though I could write another thousand words on many other aspects of badness into the film. MORAL OF THE STORY: filmmakers need to get out of the habit of writing films that position men as automatically having negative power and women automatically being on the defensive. How else will we move forward out of this thinking, to an ideology where men and women can work together on equal terms? I know I sound ranty. Soon I will find something I like and write a happy post :) To cheer you up, here is a shot from the hilarious scene in Wayne's World that inspired the name of this post, and exemplifies my feelings towards Suckerpunch. Love yas! 

HEROES we need more girl ones.

Well i'm sick as a dog but what really made things better was buying a set of cowgirl coasters this morning with my friend Deb after we had a coffee. Also we talked a lot about Supernatural and the weirdest TV characters we've been attracted to (both of us admitted they were aliens on badly scripted 90sTV shows which will remain nameless). But more importantly I was so sick last night that all I managed for dinner was a block of chocolate and some wine and THE LAST FOUR EPISODES OF HEROES SEASON 2. (This is going to be a really predictable post about why the representation of women really peed me off, btw. You can pretty much read the rest of my argument about this stuff HERE).

the male:female ratio is like so mid-20th century.

I mean seriously! here is how what started off good just went bad. All the chicks are kind of helpless and totally dependent on men to make decisions for them. Maya, for example, who can make everyone drop dead somehow while she's angry, cries all the time and gets really easily deceived by the bad Sylar. He doesn't even have to try, she just falls for his every word! Besides, totally annoying that she's the 'evil one' and she always needs some dude around to calm her down and stop her from killing people. Claire the cheerleader is probably the coolest. But even when she defies her deceitful father, she eventually believes that he was right in all the advice he ever gave her and that if she had only listened to him, everything would be alright - even though he totally lied to and manipulated her.

All Elle wants to do is make her Daddy proud of her, even though he tortured her as a child on the ground it would 'increase her powers' - except rather than enhance her own agency, she has just become his (and his company's) pawn in shady business which even Elle herself doesn't know the extent of! (Though at the end of the season she saved some people's lives, and they were grateful, and I got the impression she was starting to find a new sense of purpose in helping people, rather than just blindly doing what her dad says). I think the WORST scene possibly on TV during the past 5 years was where Noah and Bob (Claire and Elle's respective dads) take each other's daughter hostage and then trade them  with each other in exchange for peace. As if the trading and ownership of daughters was the way men negotiated peacefully. As if they were property to be exchanged! And the girls didnt even question it!!! (And it wasn't even peaceful - Elle got shot, and so did Noah). Not to mention Caitlyn, the lovely Irish girl who gets taken off to the future and left there; the Japanese Princess in the past who just shifts from male hero to male hero and looks pretty and then is left there; Noah's wife who nearly dies from the amount of memory removal he has subjected her to; and Matt's ex-wife who is written off as a lying and unfaithful wife. Moreover, it is the men on the show who remain the most powerful; who run the 'organisation' (and who run the coup to take the organisation down) men make all the big decisions about everyone else (including women); it is men who are always positioned as wanting to save the world or destroy it; it is women who are being   being neglected (Caitlyn and the Princess), seeking help for their problem (Nikki) or being lied to (Claire and Elle) but without any real chance (yet) of standing up for themselves or actually questioning the power dynamics of their world. 

Nicki's split personality kicks butt

Sure, it was pretty cool that Claire's blood is what can save everything. But it is because of that, that she remains an object to be protected and transacted - she becomes a resource. Why don't they take Adam or Peter's blood - those two guys have the same powers of regeneration?? No, those two are too busy doing more important things like destroying or saving the world or saving girls. Much easier to use up the cheerleader. I'm retaining my hopes for Nikki and Monica who are showing some promise. But they're still kind of positioned as emotionally unstable, despite their power. But Nikki is awesome - she is physically strong and beats up everyone, but still loves her son enough to sacrifice a lot for him. In fact Nikki is pretty good. So far she's been the best I think. Monica too, though haven't seen much of what she can do yet.  

As much as I loved the show, I felt pretty nauseated by the end of that season. Just sick of watching women fall back into some sort of dependency role when women and men should be taking on stuff like 'saving the world' (and whatever you might take that to mean metaphorically) TOGETHER. Action TV is still dominated by guys. thought things would've changed since Buffy but no, I guess I'll be watching Kill Bill again tonight to make up for it.

END RANT. I STILL LOVE HEROES BY THE WAY. 

PS If you're familiar with the show - I saw this japanese guy running really fast through the food court at Collins Place in melbourne with a poster tube slung over his back. Just sayin'. Time travel is probably for real.

how does peter pan grow up into uma thurman?

OK I’m writing this real quick coz I need to finish my PhD application TODAY however I just spent all morning trying to unlock a new racing cup on Mario Kart and now I feel dizzy from overdoing it on Rainbow Road. In any case hopefully writing a brief post will help bridge the intellectual gap between understanding Bakhtin’s idea of dialogism and avoiding being blown up by Bowser.

Jack hurts Peter by becoming Hook's "son"

I watched Hook for like the millionth time last night and of course it was amazing, who can get over Rufio’s midriff shirt and the cuteness of Maggie. But while the film has snappy dialogue, detailed sets, and hilarity (Robin Williams + Dustin Hoffman = deadly combo) it was full of BOYS. (Which of course makes sense, since Peter Pan is a boy, the Lost Boys are, well, boys, and Hook and Smee are men). The original female characters from Peter Pan (Wendy, Tigerlily) have been somewhat phased out/removed, in favour of Peter’s wife Moira and his daughter Maggie. But while Moira and Maggie play reasonably significant roles in the story, they are the morally stable and consistent ones: it is Moira who remains loyal to her family while Peter gets distracted by his working life, and Maggie who remains faithful to her family while Jack gets distracted by the attentions of Hook, who convinces Jack that Peter never really loved him.  Both father and son experience a crisis of ‘belonging’: once Peter realises that his “happy thought” truly is his son, he is able to fly and rescue his kids; once Jack understand he is his father’s happy thought, he apologises for betraying his father and allows himself to be saved. (At this stage, Maggie is of course already waiting to be saved and welcomes her renewed father back with open arms, just as Moira is waiting for her family to return from Neverland and welcomes her renewed husband with open arms). Marriage and family life become peaceful and whole again and father and son realise that the most important thing is loving and supporting each other.

The film is also about Captain Hook discerning his purpose (his purpose is to perpetually fight with Pan) as well as the lost boys, who are able to find a leader/father-figure in Pan again. I think the film does an effective and moving job of working through the issues associated with working through such crises, such as the need for humility and the importance of loving people in a way which puts them ahead of your own interests.

Watching Hook though, with its overwhelming amount of boys- hundreds of pirates, a large group of boy orphans, a man-hero with a conflicted son – made me ask the question: how many action/adventure films did I get to watch as a kid which featured girls? And I don’t mean just contained a token chick, but which actually portrayed the girl as the centre of the action. The films I loved as a kid were things like Hook, The Sandlot Kids, The Mighty Ducks, BMX Bandits, Aladdin, The Neverending Story, The Princess Bride, etc. Some of these contain strong female characters, such as the Connie and Tammy, the girl hockey players in the Mighty Ducks series. But other than that, not much. Others agree with me in the crisis of the female action hero - check out this Pajiba article for an argument that sounds a lot like mine, but provides an awesome and detailed list of the Best Female Action Heros! (lets just say that the fact the author puts Ripley from Alien and Sarah Connor from Terminator at the top of the list makes the author a LEGEND in my books).

I still wana be her when I grow up.

As a kid I didn’t really think about it that much, but as an adult (and potentially a parent one day) I would want my children, whether sons or daughters, to be exposed to films that portray male and female alike as able to participate in an action adventure. Not all little girls can faithfully sit there and await their parents to rescue them. Not all little girls should grow up to sit around at home waiting for their husband to “fix” everything (indeed: some little girls will not even get married, for a whole host of reasons). If girls can grow up to be as cool as Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, they should know it from a young age and not have to wait till they’re old enough to see an R-rated film! (Meaning kids films could include broader narrative/gendered possibilities – lets not show all 3-year olds Kill Bill).

To be honest I think that at the moment, cinema is doing a reasonable job of it. Hermione in Harry Potter is great, and in those books gender has no bearing on how or whether you participate in the fight of good against evil. You also get Lindsay Lohan in the Herbie films, Alice in Wonderland (this is an oldie but a goodie) and films like Hotel for Dogs and The Spiderwick Chronicles where again, gender is not a type of set role. Even though movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and How to Train Your Dragon contain cool female pirates/dragon-fighters respectively, these girls are one out of at least 10 men: I wonder if we will ever get to a point where an action film could contain all women and not be read as a type of feminist statement, but rather just enjoyed as another possibility. I hope we get there in my lifetime.

Azzled and Padazzled

I know I recently wrote about character Dean Winchester from Supernatural but seriously the man (and his brother Sam) deserve a post all to themselves. Really they deserve a whole blog EACH – ten blogs each – nay, the whole internet­ – but I have neither time nor skills to implement this.

Jared and Jensen

The two fictional fighters of fantastical crime (otherwise known as Jensen “Robobabe” Ackles and Jared “Too Chiseled To Be True” Padalecki) are actually the sole selling point of the show. It’s almost embarrassing at times, with the occasional (and superfluous) topless shot, manly rescuing and action, and the mandatory 5-minute bromance scene at the end of each episode where the boys share some emotional issue with each other, pat each other on the back, crack open a beer and then drive away in their (gorgeous) Impala. Sometimes I get the impression that the producers tripped over some screenplay that was on the floor (because it had fallen out of the trash) but saw the cost-benefit ratio in hiring ridiculously good-looking actors to attract a large female audience, and saving money by not having to hire a writer.

And really, apart from the boys’ appearance, I’m not sure how the CW Network gets away with such a show - even though I also was totally sucked in (and DVDs are really cheaps in the UK, got a whole season for less that 10 quid! whoo!). The premise of the show is two brothers fight all sorts of evil, ostensibly to protect the world. But really, the evil-fighting bit is just a backdrop to a hopelessly male-centric narrative, about men in all sorts of personal crises resolving their issues with and through other men. This in itself is not a bad thing, by the way. But rather than focusing on solving mysteries or using their wit to get out of tricky situations (like MacGyver) Supernatural is about two pretty Hollywood boys pretending to be hardcore (they drive an old impala, listen to Metallica and Black Sabbath, and drink beer all the time) having some sort of brotherly argument about family, self-esteem or their future together as a family, and then resolving it at the end in aforementioned bromance moment (and these moments are totally endearing and mostly very well acted). They have male role-models only: at first, their father, who they spend the first season searching for, and later Bobby, another hunter of evil who helps them along the way. (And even later, Castiel, an angel). For 5 seasons that’s pretty much what you get.

Sam and Dean have a man-to-man in the graveyard

While this male-centricity is sometimes interesting and develops (sort of) over the seasons, the women are not portrayed so favorably. Female characters are pretty much absent – unless they are evil (like the demon Ruby) being rescued (like a girl in nearly every episode) or being kissed/slept with (like a girl in nearly every other episode). It’s quite difficult to articulate female roles in this show without positioning them as passive – ie girls were rescued; girls were killed; girls were kissed. It’s troubling that women have so little agency in this world. Even Ruby, the demon, is not really a girl – the demon just possesses girls’ bodies, so the female body becomes a shell to be inhabited and used by some evil external force. Seriously: didn’t we get over these kinds of narratives in like the 19^th century??!?

Despite all this – here’s the stumper: the viewers are mostly teen and adult females (though, to be fair, the stats show lots of guys watch it too). Of course, this is because the good-lookingness of Dean and Sam is so great it outweighs any desire to analyse the gendered power structure presented by the destabilised sons, absent fathers, substitute male role-models and passive women in the show. Furthermore, their brotherly love is so exclusive that it almost repudiates female voyeurs even as it draws them in, making girl viewers believe that if they were the one to meet Dean and Sam, they really could win the heart of a Winchester.

So in a way…Supernatural provides something quite special for women which isn’t seen very often. They to feel an attachment to the brothers (you really do feel you know them like sooooo intimately after all the bromance moments) they get to experience foreclosed desire – and the unattainability of the boys, due to their brotherly exclusiveness, makes the desire all the sweeter (or something like that). Plus the eye candy, I guess. Anyway, it’s a show for women, much like the trashy 18^th and 19^th century gothic novels which were primarily read by women and contained an abundance of male characters, sexy demons, evil woman, etc. And while I may disagree with the objectifying aspects (of men AND women) of the show, I can't devalue the fact that at least it works for women in a way some other shows don't.

This all kind of freaks me out a bit - not because of its gender representation in the show but because I like it in spite of its gender representation.  Furthermore, I liked a show that in some ways objectifies men; and as someone always ranting about how bad it is to objectify women, this troubles me of course! So much so that I'm having a little break in the middle of season 4 till I get over it all and the desire to find out what happens outweighs my moral obligation to the advocacy of gender equality. You know what I'm sayin'?? (So NO SPOILERS PLEASE I will watch it again someday! I hear the show becomes more self-reflexive and aware of it's hilarity in the later seasons...)

Cold Mountain: not as cold as edinburgh.

Ok so normally I can’t stand Jude Law (ESPECIALLY in The Holiday, I mean WHAT is the with the fake tan? You live in England, and it’s SNOWING. And you’re cast as Kate Winslet’s BROTHER. In what way is a tan convincing?) But I did kind of warm to him in Cold Mountain, I think it was the fact he barely spoke a word, and played very convincingly the social awkwardness that comes with professing your love to someone before you know them properly, then being re-united with them years later after a war and wondering how to act and treat them. Which, basically, is the story of Ada (Nicole Kidman) and Inman (Jude Law) in Cold Mountain.

Renee as Ruby

What I liked even more than Jude Law was the relationship between Ada and the girl who comes to help her manage her farm once her father’s died and Inman has gone to war. The girl is Ruby, played by Renee Zellweger, a young girl abandoned by her father who knows everything there is to know about growing crops, building fences, baking pies, and finding her way around the nearby mountains. When Ruby first arrives, she finds Ada dying of starvation due to her inability to do anything (including grow food), inability to make money (she’s a ‘lady,’ she doesn't work!) and her pride, which means she is too ashamed to continue relying on other’s charity. As Ada cries when Ruby first arrives,

I can talk about farming in Latin. I can read French. I can lace up a corset, God knows. I can name the principal rivers in Europe, just don't ask me to name one stream in this county! I can embroider but I can't darn! I can arrange cut flowers but I can't grow them!

But within a few short months, Ruby has transformed Ada from profoundly useless Southern Belle to hardy, herb-growing, fence-building, pie-baking, not-starving lady-now-mountain-girl. Ada can repay her neighbours’ charity by cooking them food. She can protect her and Ruby’s friends, (deserters from the army) with a shotgun that she has learnt to shoot. In losing her role as lady, Ada gains the ability to survive as a woman dependent only on herself and other women.

What is most interesting about this transformation is that Ada arrives in Cold Mountain as the  traditional, beautiful Southern Belle – but one physically trapped by this position, not just by her corset, but by her lack of skills which force her into poverty once she is away from the money and society of men. It is only in shunning her role as lady that Ada is able to regain pride in herself, can participate in social transaction without shame (by baking food for her neighbours as payment) and gains a friend. This does come at some cost, though – for while her father’s death, a symbolic death of the patriarch, creates the space for Ruby to enter the father’s house and transform his daughter, Ada still experiences grief at this loss. She must also sell her beloved piano – the one thing of her old life that she loves and is good at – to have enough money to survive one particularly cold winter.

The doomed couple.

The other main cost is her loss of Inman. She does remain dependent on his memory and the possibility he will return, to get through difficult times. Initially, I felt uncomfortable about this because I felt it undermined the feminine independence she develops with Ruby. However, when Inman does finally return, years down the track, it’s actually not too clichéd. They don’t run to each other and make out. She nearly shoots him, then realizes who it is, and then they have an awkward conversation about how strange it is too see each other. (Then of course they get over it, hook up overnight in a mountain shack, and then he gets shot the following day protecting them from the City Guard. And of course she got pregnant from the one night they spent together and it’s the whole romantically tragic thing. But anyway).

While this ending was a bit predictable and attempted to pull every heartstring the audience had (admittedly, I cried LOTS) it does point to something quite profound: Inman’s return without death was actually an impossibility. This type of transformed, independent woman cannot exist with the providing husband on her arm. Ruby, on the other hand, who grew up with survival skills and who effectively taught herself  independence, can get married (and does). Ada’s narrative seems suggest that there is something about the act of shedding an old feminine role, or the act of removing a stereotype cast upon you, which inevitably involves loss, and probably some sort of masculine loss. It is this loss which catalyses Ada's transformation. Hence, Inman needs to die for Ada to remain who she has become, while Ruby can marry and have children because she has not has to “shed” anything: she is a type of independent woman who can choose a man without needing to revert to dependence on him.

Or something like that, anyway. Maybe I’ve been WAAAAY too sucked in by Hollywood, but as you know, I always am! Because it’s FREAKING COLD in Edinburgh right, and much nicer to stay inside watching and fantasizing about Hollywood that go outside in the rain. (But I still love Edinburgh. Don’t get me wrong).

Flying with De Niro: How "Heat" got me thinking

I obviously had only one choice on the 25-hour flight towards Edinburgh: stay awake and watch as many action movies as possible. Unfortunately, I only got through five before I passed out from tiredness and overeating (Qatar Airways definitely don’t skimp on the food). I started out with Heat (dir. Michael Mann, 1995) not realising I’d already seen it – but the rewatching got me thinking about the gender dynamics of action cinema and in particular, heist-films.

Pacino as Lt. Hanna

Heat is a story about two men, how they work, what they might prioritise, and the personal cost associated with these prioritisations. McCauley (Robert De Niro) is a high-profile thief and heist-master; Lt. Hanna (Al Pacino) is a jaded yet relentless cop obsessed with catching McCauley. The film is basically an exploration of what happens when you live by McCauley’s motto, “Do not have any attachments, do not have anything in your life you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner.” Both McCauley and Hanna are willing to walk out on relationships to  respectively avoid getting arrested/catch the bad guy. By "relationships", I mean both friendships with other men (and potentially each other) and also with women. McCauley walks out on a life of companionship with the sweet Eadie, who stays with him even after discovering he is a criminal, and Hanna walks out on his wife Justine and his stepdaughter, Lauren, who he has a soft sport for.

Even though Heat is not predictable and keeps you on the edge of your seat, the plot is not that surprising once it pans out. Experience tells us that thieves in heist-films usually end up with the girl and/or the prize (think The Italian Job, Inside Man, National Treasure, Gone in 60 Seconds, Ocean’s 11) as they are usually told from the thieves’ perspective, and we like seeing them stick it to the man. The alternative is we see it from the cop’s perspective and want to see justice done, so the thieves end up dead and the cop gets the girl (think Point Break, and all James Bond films). Heat’s originality lies in the fact we end up sympathetic to both cop and thief, wanting both to succeed, but also thinking the two of them are somewhat selfish, blinkered men who can’t see what’s important in life. Because McCauley and Hanna essentially lead the same life despite being on different sides of the law, it’s no wonder they both die: McCauley literally, as he is shot, and Hanna figuratively, as he has given up his family and just shot the one man who understood him and who, in a way, respected him.

Heat is a clever exploration of the heist protagonist and antagonist, deals effectively with moral ambiguity, and demonstrates the personal cost of McCauley and Hanna’s choices in a relatively moving way. However: what the heck happened to the women?

Justine, Eadie, Lauren: three women whose actions and presence are the main catalysts for the dilemmas Hanna and McCauley find themselves in, and yet they are written out of the story without so much as a backward glance. The final cut of Lauren is her bloodied body after she tries to commit suicide; the final shot of Justine is her trying not to cry as Hanna has just left their marriage for good; the final shot of Eadie is her bewildered face as McCauley walks out on her without explanation. The film ends with the chase between Hanna and McCauley and you get the impression that the women’s lives are merely the collateral damage of a boys’ club which deals with the “real” issues of life, such as thievery and justice.

But how do these women go about piecing their lives back together? How have they been affected by the actions of the men in their lives? Eadie, already suffering from chronic loneliness, surely lost all faith in all relationships after seeing McCauley walk away from her. Lauren just tried to kill herself and will wake up to find that her stepfather, the one person who vaguely cared for her, is gone. These are significant issues but there is no set of films that deal with what is going on.

Ashley Judd as self-sacrificial Charlene

I don’t mean to criticize Heat or suggest it should’ve been different. It’s important to explore the complexities of masculine cinematic roles and Heat does this well, and it certainly doesn’t endorse McCauley and Hanna’s treatment of women (more reveals it as a grim reality). Besides, Eadie, Justine and Lauren are in no way portrayed as weak or subservient – they are strong, bold and not afraid to stand up for themselves. In fact the character I admired most was Charlene (the wife of Chris, McCauley’s crime partner) who was the only person to actually take a risk and make a sacrifice for the person whom she loved (arguably she put her kid at risk in the choices she made, but the principal remains that she was the only character in the entire film to not put herself first). My point, though, in raising the Justines, Eadies and Laurens of the heist genre is that there is no archetypal narrative trajectory for these women: we simply don’t know what happens to them.

In defence of action cinema (one of my true loves) the genre has actually done a lot for women. The role of the gun-fighting, fist-fighting female is now common (though sometimes over-sexualized – but that is a another discussion altogether). This woman may be a reasonably 2D character (like Scarlett Johansson’s character in Iron Man 2) or a complex one (think Uma in the Kill Bills, Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, and to take it back to my faves, Princess Leia and Buffy). These may not be heist films per se, but you get the drift. 2D or 3D, these representations have been seminal in the development of female characterisation in cinema. What we rarely see, though, is what happens to the wives, the girlfriends, those who have been dropped when the heat’s around the corner. Romantic-drama The Time Traveller’s Wife deals with this to an extent (and actually the family-action flick Hancock through Charlize Theron’s character does quite a job of it). But I wish there more! Justine and Charlene were so interesting and drove the whole storyline – it’s such a travesty that these bold women have been ignored, when we know (mostly) what happens to any male character – even the periphery ones – in any heist film (they get the money, get the girl, or die and lose the girl).

To be honest I think feminists have had so much to say about cinema for so long because the archetypal trajectory for females in heist films is one where women get written out of stories – it is by nature problematic. However: never a fan of “victim” feminism, I will end by saying that the Justines, Eadies and Laurens of cinema have an important place in films like Heat, though films like Heat shouldn't dictate the representation of women in action films. Also, maybe I should give myself a kick up the bum and write some stories about these female characters myself, instead of complaining that no-one else has!

NB. Regarding Hancock, was anyone else mildly nauseated by (and yet strangely appreciative of) Charlize Theron’s eyeliner and low-cutted-ness once she became all hardcore and powery? Part of the feminist in me wishes they’d kept her all pretty and house-wife-like – the other part just thinks that all chicks should wear that outfit, all the time.

A good day to be a Julia!

Okay, I know it’s predictable but I just had to write a post on this most monumentous day – the day Australia has its first female Prime Minister. As a direct employee of J-Gil herself (though I work for the Victorian State Government, my specific project is Gillard’s and Ellis’ baby and my salary funding comes straight from DEEWR) and a crazy feminist, I am of course a bit biased about this turn of events. But I’m not here to rant and rave about Julia Gillard herself today – rather, I’m really intrigued by the response her PM-ship has drawn from some of my friends - mostly Liberals or those who aren’t usually that interested in politics.

While many facebook statuses this morning lauded Jules’ promotion, a large number of them either resorted to insulting her and Rudd, rather unproductively. For example:
• “She’s a bogan!”
• “Ranga wh*re”
• “Rudd just ruined what would normally be one of the most historic moment's in the countries history by just giving the job away” (I guess this one functions as a sort backhanded tribute to having a female PM)
• “Stay away, don’t come back, save yourself” (to an overseas friend in the context of Gillard’s appointment)
• “onya kevin, you big girl” (slightly ironic since it was a girl who took his place).

To me, it seems these people are missing the point. Shouldn’t we be celebrating the first female Prime Minister of Australia, whatever our political bent? Even my Liberal friends who despise Gillard couldn’t be too distressed about this fact in itself (the Liberal party instigated the Liberal Women’s Council, for example, which holds evenings entitled “Why we need more women in parliament” and so forth). Or, at least, couldn’t some level of discernment and finessed critique be employed in discussing Rudd stepping down, or Gillard’s opening press speech as PM, where she announced she is reopening negotiations with the mining industry and taking down the current advertisements, acknowledged she hadn’t been elected by the public (but that the public would have a chance to choose their own Prime Minister in the forthcoming federal election) and spoke far more articulately than Kevin did in his farewell (but give the guy a break, it’s the most public form of job-loss anyone could go through, how would you feel!).

I don’t understand why these people can’t see the positives in the situation (I admit this conclusion sounds primitive and somewhat naïve, even to myself). Maybe using facebook as my source stimulus for this discussion was my own mistake! That said, most of my friend’s statuses were somewhat positive about Gillard, or at least mildly interested in the idea of a female PM. I’m most excited about a female Governor-General swearing in a female Prime Minister, a great step towards the value of female leadership becoming embedded in standard practice. And doesn’t that final sentence make me sound like such a public servant!

Miley didn't kiss a girl...apparently

‘When you're 11, the word you would use to describe someone is definitely not sexy, and as you get older I think you grow into that. And I think I've done that but that's not my schtick. That's not what I'm trying to do to sell records. I want people to buy my record because of my music.’

Ahh, the wisdom of Miley Cyrus, in defence of her recent wardrobe choices (hot pants, low-cut pleather) and more interestingly, her behavioural choices (pole dancing on stage at the 2009 Teen Choice Awards and faux-kissing a female dancer during a performance of her new single “Can't Be Tamed” on Britain's Got Talent last week).

Let’s be honest, her antics are not surprising – she’s not the first female popstar to perform scantily clad, nor is she first to publicly plant a same-sex kiss (think fellow pop gals Britney and Madonna).

Miley has defended her kiss on her website, claiming that since it wasn’t a ‘real kiss’ it didn’t really happen: ‘I promise you I did not kiss her and it is ridiculous that two entertainers cant even rock out with each other without the media making it some type of story. I really hope my fans are not disappointed in me because the truth is I did nothing wrong. I got up there and did my job which is to perform to the best of my ability. I just want to put an end to this right now and just say one thing to everyone out there making this performance such a big deal.’

Wha?!? Has she gone mental? Firstly, Miley is fiercely policing the boundaries of her heterosexuality, as suggested by her vehement denial of any same-sex contact, her determination to distinguish between ‘actually’ kissing another girl or just “rock[in’] out” (aka simulating the kiss). This way, she keeps her heterosexuality intact, as she ‘did nothing wrong.’ She seems to be saying ‘it’s ok to pretend to be gay while I’m wearing almost no clothes, but it’s not ok to actually be gay.’

At the same time, Miley is using a same-sex act to garner the attention that she claims she doesn’t want – even The Age had a link to a short piece about it! If Miley’s not really kissing girls and not really seeking attention I don’t know whether the act can be except an outrageously silly and immature publicity stunt. It smacks of a young girl desperate to look sexy and instead appearing clumsy, hypocritical and lacking understanding of any sort of sexual or gendered sensibilities. Unfortunately (though ironically in Miley’s favour) the focus after this little exploit was certainly not on the music and despite her claims, may actually boost her record sales.

I do feel a bit bad for Miley. She is surrounded by other crazies after all - her ex-best friend Katy Perry did make herself famous by singing I Kissed a Girl (though later she assured audiences they shouldn’t worry, she never actually had kissed a girl). That said I’m pretty distressed about the way these young women act and call it ‘sexy’ - as if female sexuality must always be reduced to what brings in the highest profit margin, with no regard for (or rather, little demonstrated understanding of) the implications and inconsistencies of what they're doing.


Refs:
Opening quote at
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/miley-cyrus-not-trying-to-be-slutty-20100616-yepg.html
Miley's blog
http://www.mileycyrus.com/miblog/

death proof girls

For the past eight months I haven’t been able to get Tarantino’s grindhouse contribution, Deathproof, out of my head. It’s a pretty simple story at the outset. Frusrated, ageing ex-stuntman (played by Kurt Russell) stalks and kills three sexy young girls who have been flirting with him in a bar. The murder is brutal – he drives his ‘deathproof’ ex-stunt car head on into the girls’ car, and we see in slow motion and on repeat female limbs torn from hips, feet ripped from ankles, bits of face flying about. The man survives.
In the next scene, the ex-stunt man begins stalking three ostensibly similar girls, and the audience fears a repeat murder. But the tables are turned: the new girls are just as sexy as the dead ones, but their cars are faster, their attitudes fiercer, and their sexuality is not offered to the man in any sense. Once they realise he is chasing them, they drive the man and his deathproof car into the dust and proceed to beat the dude senseless with their fists and a pole that they pull from somewhere. The movie ends in a freeze of the girls triumphant and blood-spattered in mid-punch, Kurt Russell's stubbly cheek hollowed in mid-recoil.

Truth is I haven’t been able to get the pole hitting Russell’s head out of my mind; nor the shiny fast cars; nor a pretty girl’s foot flying out a car window. Maybe it’s because I love car chase films, maybe it’s because it turns traditional, male-dominated car chase films on their heads, demonstrating the uselessness and out-datedness of the stunt-man/stunt-car trope with scantily clad women fawning over him. Maybe it’s because the second lot of girls remain sexy but don’t project that sexuality for the benefit of the man who desires it. Maybe it’s because at the end of the day, nothing brings tears to my eyes more than chicks fighting back. To be honest it’s probably all of these reasons in part, but still, none of these seemed to explain why such shameless violence made my heart race so much – why it felt just as victorious as the girl’s facial expressions in the final scene suggested.

Last week, reading Helen Garner’s controversial The First Stone (thoughts about which I will save for another post!), she articulated almost perfectly what I had been unable to express. She talked about how she went to see a film about a female stripper who not only enacted the role of a sexualised and objectified woman but in fact made money from the gaze focussed on the nakedness of her own body. This stripper though, did not let men touch her or speak to her inappropriately or in a sexually derogatory way; rather, she spoke back and stood up for herself – as Garner notes, was able to “articulate the precise nature of her boundaries.”

I think this notion of a woman protecting her own physical and social boundaries is what affected me about Deathproof. In their offence, the second set of women in the film did not play the role of victim but simply stood up and fought for their right to exist as successful women (who in this case, did a better job at driving and surviving than the man did) without being treated solely as objects for the pleasure – sexual or otherwise – of a man. The second lot of women understand this one man’s desire for the erasure of their own subjectivity for the benefit of his own bruised ego (which is perhaps the core reason why he is so desperate to annihilate any female who can drive and survive better than he can. He has been bested by a younger and faster generation – and another gender) and stand up for themselves very effectively.

It reminded me of how important it is for women to actually articulate and express what is inappropriate treatment and actively work against it. Though I don’t think the practical real-life answer is slogging it out many-to-one with a pole, I do think that a woman’s refusal to be “chased” (when the chasing is selfish and self-gratifying on the part of the chaser) to the death (in real life death is usually figurative but can also be literal) and actually telling an offender what the problem is, is a more useful way of addressing such issues than the victim role that many women (particularly cinematically in this genre) fall into. In Deathproof, I feel this attitude of boundary articulation emboldens the female subject and helps demarcate her physically and socially from female stereotypes (the ones that have tended to appear in car and horror films, anyway).

By the same token, Deathproof is also about celebrating aspects of stereotypes – the amount of cleavage and close-up butt shots of the girls will tell you that. But at the end of the day, these girls for me were brave, strong, and didn’t take lightly an insecure man trying to make himself feel better by try trying to kill them. Plus they're super duper crazy fast drivers. Yeah!