Bitch Flicks

Call for Writers: LGBTQI Representations in Film and Television

2012-06-01T14:58:00.000-04:00

It's that time again!

This is a wide-open theme, and we welcome all proposals that examine LGBTQI themes in film and television, however one chooses to interpret it; there are, after all, no strict definitions. You can find a slew of lists online that might give you some ideas on where to start, and I'll link to a few here:

Greatest Lesbian Movies

List of Television Programs with LGBT Characters

Lesbian Film Review

The Big Queer Movie List

List of Transgender Characters in Film and Television

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These are a few basic guidelines for guest writers on our site:

--We like most of our pieces to be 1,000 - 2,000 words, preferably with some images and links.

--Please send your piece in the text of an email, including links to all images, no later than Friday, June 22nd.

--Include a 2-3 sentence bio for placement at the end of your piece.

Email us at btchflcks(at)gmail(dot)com if you'd like to contribute a review. We accept original pieces or cross-posts.

Submit away!

Quote of the Day: Scarlett Johansson Tired of Sexist Diet Questions

2012-05-31T18:08:00.001-04:00

Robert Downey, Jr. and Scarlett Johansson at The Avengers press conference in London

Cross-posted at Women and Hollywood.

Wow, who knew I could love Scarlett Johansson so much?? I posted this on Bitch Flicks' Facebook page but thought it was too great not to post here too.

At The Avengers press conference in London, a reporter proceeded to ask Robert Downey Jr. an in-depth, thought-provoking question about his character (Tony Stark/Iron Man) and then asked Johansson about her diet. I shit you not.

Reporter: "I have a question to Robert and to Scarlett. Firstly to Robert, throughout Iron Man 1 and 2, Tony Stark started off as a very egotistical character but learns how to fight as a team. And so how did you approach this role, bearing in mind that kind of maturity as a human being when it comes to the Tony Stark character, and did you learn anything throughout the three movies that you made?

"And to Scarlett, to get into shape for Black Widow did you have anything special to do in terms of the diet, like did you have to eat any specific food, or that sort of thing?"

Scarlett: "How come you get the really interesting existential question, and I get the like, “rabbit food” question?"

Amen, sister! If you watch the video, you'll see just how perturbed Johansson is to be asked. As she should be. Why the hell did the reporter save the diet question for one of the two women on the panel??

Johansson has spoken in favor of feminism (yet doesn't necessarily call herself a feminist) and female friendship, supports Planned Parenthood and condemns Hollywood's ageism against women calling it "a very vain, vain industry.” So it's no surprise she calls out this bullshit. I only wish more actors and members of the media would follow her lead.

The reporter's question particularly rubs me the wrong way because lots of women have such a contentious relationship with food. Eating should be a fun, sensual, pleasurable experience. But too many women fear food, afraid of what it will do to their bodies. The media monitors and polices women's consumption. Between diet books, exercise DVDs, weight loss shakes, low-fat foods – the dieting industry is a money-making juggernaut. And it’s geared towards women.

In response to the asinine question, Sarah at Pop Cultured astutely asserts:

“The respect given to you if you’re a man in the entertainment business, and the respect given to you if you’re a woman in the entertainment business: all perfectly summed up in one idiotically thought out line of questioning.”

It's ridiculous -- not to mention offensive and sexist -- Hollywood, the entertainment industry, and the media lavish praise on men for their minds and their talents while objectifying women and reducing female actors to their appearances. As we recently witnessed with Ashley Judd fighting back against toxic bodysnarking and the heinous criticism of Jennifer Lawrence's body, the media constantly scrutinizes, visually dismembers, critiques and polices women’s bodies. The media wreaks havoc on women's body images, telling us we're too fat or too skinny. Never just right.

This constant bombardment of objectification of women leads to normalizing sexism and violence against women. It reinforces the notion that women are nothing more than sex objects for the male gaze.

So reporters, think twice before you ask a woman yet another stupid diet question. Ugh.

'Return' - One of the Best Films You Probably Haven't Seen - Features a Story Rarely Depicted: A Female Soldier Struggling to Resume Her Life

2012-05-30T20:50:00.000-04:00

Linda Cardellini as Kelli in Return

When people discuss war, they often don’t take women or gender into account. While we regularly watch male soldiers on-screen, we almost never see war through women’s eyes. If women are in war films, they serve as wives and girlfriends. We see women supporting men, never soldiers themselves. That’s what makes Return so unique. It puts a female soldier center stage.

Written and directed by Liza Johnson (her directorial debut) and executive produced by Abigail Disney (love her) and Meredith Viera, Return features a captivating and quietly powerful performance by Linda Cardellini (the soul and strength of the film) as Kelli, a female soldier grappling to step back into her life after returning home from her tour of active duty.

Kelli is excited to reunite with her husband (Michael Shannon) and her two young daughters. Disconnected from her former life, she eventually finds she can no longer relate to her friends, co-workers and family. Return tells the story of a complex woman struggling to survive and wrestling with her inner demons.

While it moves at a glacial pace, it pays to be a vigilant audience. For in those silent moments, the restrained film speaks volumes. The devastatingly outstanding Cardellini (it will seriously be a crime if she's not nominated for an Oscar) doesn’t need to utter a single word. Her expressive face reveals everything. We glimpse Kelli’s isolation and torment. It's incredibly moving and heartbreaking as we see a woman trying to assert control as her life begins to crumble.

Unlike her husband and daughter, Kelli doesn’t find humor in a woman falling down on an America’s Funniest Home Videos show. She watches in stunned silence as another mother ebulliently applauds her daughter at cheerleading practice. When she goes to get a drink with her girlfriends, Kelli crawls out the bathroom window to escape. She quits her factory job thinking it’s a “giant waste of time.” Her relationships suffer as she unravels.

Linda Cardellini and Michael Shannon

Throughout the film, people keep telling Kelli to open up and talk about her deployment. They claim sharing trauma will heal her wounds. But Kelli insists there’s nothing to tell and incessantly says, “A lot of people had it worse than I did.” While researching her role, Cardellini found reticence and refusal to discuss combat a common thread connecting veterans, both female and male.

We never really discover Kelli’s war experiences other than she worked with military supplies. The beautifully restrained film shows rather than tells as subtle clues to Kelli’s inner turmoil unfold. When she's in a large cage with some pigeons, Kelli cowers, her hands protecting her head. She watches a TV screen with a hollow dazed stare. When her husband tries to reignite their spark by tickling her, Kelli becomes increasingly uncomfortable and defensive, finally screaming for him to stop.

Her family and friends, while relatively supportive at first, seem to expect Kelli to remain unchanged and have little tolerance for her growing instability. Adrift with no anchor, we witness Kelli’s growing desperation as she spirals out of control. When her friend accuses her of “acting crazy” and asks her what happened to her over there, Kelly replies:

“Yeah, well a lot of people had a lot worse. You know I didn’t get raped in a port-o-potty. I didn’t have to fucking carry a dead body. And I didn’t get blown up by an EOD so I consider myself pretty lucky cause that’s what happens over there.”

It’s vital we include a gender lens when discussing soldiers and war. Female soldiers face unique challenges such as rape (although yes, men are raped too) and sexual harassment. 1 in 3 women are raped while serving in the military. In fact, female soldiers are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed in combat. Horrifying. Return isn’t a film about female soldiers surviving rape. Yet it subtly weaves in a crucial gender commentary.

Linda Cardellini and John Slattery

As I've said before, mothers are supposed to be everything to everyone. So when she falters, Kelli's motherhood is called into question. Amidst a fight, her husband tells her to “be a mother.” She struggles to provide the attention and care her daughters need. At her wits end, Kelli tries to get pregnant in order to prevent another deployment and stay with her daughters. The most poignant and wrenching scenes are the ones with Kelli playing with and embracing her daughters.

Inspired by a friend’s experiences, writer/director Johnson spoke with “women who have been deployed.” Talking about gendered expectations for female soldiers, Johnson said:

"Expectations and pressures are different for women - dealing with rage is harder for them and not as acceptable as it is for men."

Kelli tries to deal with her anger, frustration and disappointment in a world telling her to express her feelings in an “appropriate” way yet really expecting her (and basically all women) to swallow her pain.

Soldiers risk their lives for our country. Return doesn’t make any overt political statements. It honors and respects soldiers’ sacrifices. Yet Kelli’s struggles crystallize the physical and emotional toll war exacts on soldiers and their families. Is the price worth it?

Without preaching or sermonizing, the film affirms we must do more to support our troops. And it reminds us women serve in the military too. Something we obviously all know yet too easily forget.

We need more films about women, created by women. And we desperately need more movies telling stories of female soldiers whose stories too often go unheard.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Happily Never After: The Sad (and Sexist?) Rush to Cast Some of Our Most Promising Young Actresses as Fairy Tale Princesses

2012-05-30T16:22:00.000-04:00

Kristen Stewart as Snow White in Snow White and the Huntsman

This guest post written by Scott Mendelson was originally published July 2011 at Mendelson's Memos. Cross-posted with permission.

There were a few interesting articles written over the last several months about the unusual amount of ass-kicking (or at least take-charge) young female roles being written into mainstream cinema. Whether it was Chloe Moretz in Kick-Ass, Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit, Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone, or Saoirse Ronan in Hanna, the last 18 months or so has seen a mini-wave of genre pictures where young females were basically the lead characters (or in the case of Kick-Ass the star attraction), 'strong independent character' (god, I hate that cliche) who not only could fend for themselves but were not defined in any way, shape, or form by their male love interest (not a one of them had a boyfriend). Yes, I would include Sucker Punch in this category, as it was basically a satiric examination of whether ass-kicking young women in pop culture were automatically sexualized by virtue of the salacious nature of such imagery (stop whining and read THIS). The somewhat negative undercurrent of this trend is that these actresses were generally under 18, often barely passed puberty. Point being, what would become of these actresses once they reached adulthood? If recent developments are any indication, Hollywood has a genuine desire to roll back the progress clock and turn these actresses into fairy tale princesses.

At the moment, we now have two competing variations on Snow White set to be released in the next year. One, pictured below, will star Lily Collins (from The Blind Side and soon to be seen as Taylor Lautner's token girlfriend in Abduction) as the titular princess, while the other will star Kristen Stewart as the 'fairest of them all'. Both are claiming to be somewhat revisionist, and for the moment I shall take them at their word. But no matter how much armor and battle-axes you give Snow White, you're still hiring one of our more talented actresses (say what you will about Twilight, but she absolutely sells Bella Swann and shines in the likes of Adventureland) to play a woman whose primary job is to run away from an evil witch, play house with a bunch of asexual dwarves, then finally bite a poison apple and await rescue from a theoretical Prince Charming. Of course, you could argue that Ms. Collins isn't one of the 'great actresses of our time' yet. But the fact that we have two competing projects based on Snow White is a sad commentary on our times, both as a statement about how obsessed the studios are with any kind of brand recognition as well as the kind of roles available for actresses on the cusp of adulthood.

Lily Collins as Snow White in Mirror, Mirror

And it gets worse. What was Hailee Steinfeld's reward for earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for a film where she was unquestionably the lead? What was her follow-up project for stealing True Grit from Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin? She gets to play Sleeping Beauty in (yet again) a revisionist variation on that old-chestnut. And we'll see who gets to play Princess Aurora in the other competing project, Maleficent (allegedly starring Angelina Jolie as the villain) which was to be directed by Tim Burton before he came to his senses. Worst of all (and the catalyst for this rant) is the news that Emma Watson, who portrayed one of the great feminist icons of recent times, Ms. Hermione Granger herself, is being wooed for the lead role in Guillermo del Toro's live-action variation of yes, Beauty and the Beast. Never mind that Guillermo del Toro certainly has better things to do with his time. Never mind that we have no real need for a live-action version of "Stockholm Syndrome: The Movie" (even my 3 year old dismissed the Disney version, because she stated that the Beast was mean and a grouch). It is sadly predictable that, as soon as Ms. Watson (a fiery feminist in her own right) was able to basically play adult roles, she would be shoved into the helpless fairy-tale heroine box.

Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried in In Time

And that is really the point. To be fair, it's not an all-encompassing issue. Chloe Moretz remains fairy tale-free at this point, and Saoirse Ronan has yet to be cast in a theoretical live-action version of The Little Mermaid. She does have a 'teen girls as hit-women' caper with Alexis Bledel, Violet and Daisy, that I desperately want to see. And Dakota Fanning has yet to be cast as the token hot girl quite yet. But there remains a disturbing trend that allows young actresses to be vibrant and active in their onscreen fates only until they reach young adulthood. Once they are old enough to be legally sexualized, their worth as empowered heroines is seemingly lost and they end up being tasked with playing the token love interest (SEE Emily Blunt be pulled by the hand by Matt Damon in The Adjustment Bureau!), helpless hostage/potential woman in refrigerator (SEE Blake Lively as the kidnapped girlfriend of both Taylor Kitsch and Aaron Johnson in Oliver Stone's Savages!), or both (SEE Amanda Seyfried as Justin Timberlake's hostage who learns to love him in In Time!). It is as if female roles can only be worthwhile when they are too young to be viewed exclusively as sexual objects. Now there is a new category for which to pigeon hole these actresses: perfectly pretty princess. Once they are old enough to be cast in stereotypical female roles, it's straight to the 'token' box, with an occasional diversion in fairy tale theater. Is this new mini-fad simply another variation on tokenism, or a more insidious attempt to keep said young actresses virginal and pure?

It is telling that bloggers and pundits bemoaned Jennifer Lawrence passing on Savages and picking The Hunger Games instead. Maybe, no matter how prestigious an Oliver Stone film might be (because he writes SO well for female characters...), Lawrence chose to be a lead in her own action franchise rather than play a random hottie who is abducted as a pawn in a drug spat involving her dueling boyfriends (on the surface, it seems like a prestige variation on Double Dragon). And it is telling that no one seems to notice or care that a number of our most promising young actresses are being jammed into the 'girl cage' just at the age when they would be old enough to play quality adult female roles. Of course, roles such as that are few and far between. For the likes of Watson and Steinfeld, it appears once again that the choice is between no mainstream roles or regressive token roles or playing a live-action Disney princess. Oh well, I'm sure they can find an episodic television series when the time comes. When it comes to quality roles for adult women, for too many actresses, it is television instead of film that is the pathway to happily ever after.

Scott Mendelson is, by hobby, a freelance film critic/pundit who specializes in box office analysis. He blogs primarily at Mendelson's Memos while syndicating at The Huffington Post and Valley Scene Magazine. He lives in Woodland Hills, CA with his wife and two young kids where he works in a field totally unrelated to his BA in Film Theory/Criticism from Wright State University.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Fatsronauts 101

2012-05-30T14:46:00.000-04:00

This guest piece by Melissa McEwan is cross posted with permission from her blog Shakesville.

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Fatsronauts 101 is a series in which I address assumptions and stereotypes about fat people that treat us as a monolith and are used to dehumanize and marginalize us. If there is a stereotype you'd like me to address, email me.

[Content Note: Fat bias; dehumanization.]

#3: Fat people are jolly/mean, and fat people are shy/loud.

These are a whole bunch of temperamental stereotypes about fat people, but these are probably the most common—and let us note the immediate irony that they can be conveniently grouped into two dichotomous pairs!

Fat people are jolly! Except for how we're all mean. And fat people are shy! Except for how we're all so loud and obnoxious.

How can all of these conflicting stereotypes about fat people be true?! Spoiler Alert: None of them are!

Obviously, not all fat people are jolly, nor are all fat people mean, and not all fat people are shy, nor are all fat people loud. Like any sweeping generalization made about any group, these are just garbage observations offered by people who attempt to justify their biases with dehumanizing monolithic narratives. Whoooops your bigotry!

Fat people, being actual human beings and all, experience a spectrum of emotions and have individual complex personalities, most of which can't be contained in a single reductive adjective.

That said, it's informative to examine exactly why these particular stereotypes are so ubiquitous.

The Jolly Fatty. The Jolly Fatty is a very recognizable stereotype, especially but not uniquely in the West. Children in many cultures are introduced to the Jolly Fatty in the form of a gentleman you may have heard of named Santa Claus, aka Father Christmas, aka St. Nick—red-cheeked and perpetually grinning, his big round belly jiggling as he "ho-ho-ho"s his way into their hearts.

The Jolly Fatty is also a staple in comedic duos (Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello), trios (The Three Stooges), and troupes (Chris Farley, Horatio Sanz, Kenan Thompson, et. al. on SNL; John Candy on SCTV). Generally, the Jolly Fatty in comedic groups has been a male stereotype, owing primarily to the misogynist stereotype that women aren't funny, full-stop. But as female comedic groups emerge, the Jolly Fatty Female Edition emerges, too, e.g. Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids and Phyllis Smith on The Office.

Partly, the Jolly Fatty exists because it's fun to laugh at fat people just because we're fat. Partly, it exists because it's fun/amazing to see fat people engaging in exuberant activities that we're allegedly unable to do. Chris Farley was a master at physical comedy, and the legendary Chippendales SNL sketch with Patrick Swayze is a classic example of being exhorted to laugh at the fatness of, but also the unexpected physical prowess of, a Jolly Fatty. Kevin James routinely plays the hilariously gravity-defying fat guy. After watching Paul Blart, I observed: "[The most depressing thing about the film is] that Kevin James is a fat guy who can move! He can run and jump and do somersaults, and he was kick. ass. on that Segway—had it doing all kinds of tricks. It was so sad that the movie was so rife with fat-hating stereotypes, because Kevin James himself actually defies so many of them!" The Jolly Fatty isn't meant to break down stereotypes, though: The Jolly Fatty is meant to play to them for laughs.

And partly, the Jolly Fatty exists because real, live, actual fat people who aren't created by or dependent on the media use a façade of cheeriness as a self-defense mechanism.

That's not to say there are not fat people who are naturally happy. I'm dispositionally disposed to contentment myself. But that is a very different thing from a consciously constructed veneer of impenetrable ebullience worn like armor into a hostile world. I know the difference—because I have worn that armor myself.

It is terribly easy to slip into the always-accessible costume of the Jolly Fatty, because people are nicer to the Jolly Fatty than to a real, complex, vulnerable fat human being. I've said before that being publicly, shamelessly, unshakably fat and happy is an act of both will and bravery—and, the truth is, being publicly, shamelessly, unshakably fat and not-happy about things other than your fatness is even harder.

The thing is, affecting the Jolly Fatty is most useful/necessary around people who are fat-haters, between whom and ourselves fat people feel obliged to construct a deflective artifice of self-protection off of which can bounce the judgment and bullying central to fat hatred.

It's not a coincidence that it's fat-haters who most readily pronounce all fat people to be jolly. It's because their bigotry results in inauthentic interactions with fat people.

The Mean Fatty. It's also not a coincidence that it's fat-haters who are most likely to declare all fat people to be mean. The fact is, if you go around treating fat people like shit, it's no wonder most of us aren't bundles of joy in your presence.

The Mean Fatty is similarly a familiar comedic staple. John Belushi and Jon Lovitz generally played Mean Fatties on SNL—or some variation of mean, e.g. grumpy, acerbic, bitter. Comedic foils and villains are often rotund—Pee-Wee Herman's nemesis Francis is an iconic over-indulged, gluttonous, greedy Mean Fatty. The Coen Brothers also love a good Mean Fatty, and Disney routinely associates fat with villainous.

The Mean Fatty is also a more dramatic staple, showing up especially in dramatic fare for kids as a bully who makes like difficult for the thin protagonist—the classic ginger-haired, freckle-faced, chubby bully in his striped brown shirt, hurling snowballs or snarling epithets with a lisp at our long-suffering hero.

Partly, the Mean Fatty exists because it's fun to hate fat people just because we're fat. Partly, it exists because it reinforces—and validates—preexisting prejudices against fat people. It's okay to hate them; look, they're all nasty, anyway.

And partly, the Mean Fatty exists because there are real, live, actual fat people who are "mean" specifically around their fatness. And by "mean," I mean defensive.

Which, of course, is meant to be A Terrible Thing—especially since we all know that fat people are supposed to be jolly! Fat people are supposed to make preemptive self-deprecating jokes about our own fat to diffuse the awkward situation of your quietly judging us! We're not supposed to get all testy about being quietly (or not-so-quietly) judged by people who have decided to make our bodies their business! GEEZ! THE NERVE OF THOSE MEAN FATTIES!

You know the old saying that everything looks like a nail when you're holding a hammer? Well, maybe every fatty looks mean when you're a fat-hater.

The Shy Fatty/The Loud Fatty. I'll take these two together. These are variations on the same stereotypes about members of all marginalized groups, which pivot around an invisible centerpoint of perfection in which the marginalized person is not too quiet/compliant/disengaged from activism around hir identity, but is also not too loud/defiant/engaged with activism around hir identity.

To fail to take a position is too quiet. To take a position in opposition to the narratives, stereotypes, and people which oppress us is to be too loud.

Basically: We are meant to have opinions, but only those which echo the opinions of our oppressors.

(See how that works?)

The Shy Fatty and Loud Fatty function in tandem as a way for people with thin privilege to deflect blame for fat hatred back onto fat people: Shy Fatties don't speak up and demand better treatment. Loud Fatties are always shoving their fat in people's faces and making them resentful of fat. Two extremes who fail to find the perfect balance in which fat people command respect in precisely the right tone.

The Shy Fatty and Loud Fatty stereotypes also exist partly because there are a lot of shy fat people whose shyness is inextricably linked with their fatness, who chose to withdraw and be as invisible as possible in an attempt to avoid attention on their transgressive bodies, and because there are a lot of loud fat people whose loudness is inextricably linked with their fatness, who choose to be boisterous and as visible as possible in a rejection of the cultural pressure to take up less space—to hunch, to crouch, to fold, to squeeze, to be unseen.

These stereotypes, when reflected in actual fat people, are reactions to fat hatred. And thus are they seen primarily by people who routinely express fat hatred and/or unexamined thin privilege.

It's a self-reinforcing cycle of bullshit, which is broken by creating spaces in which fat people can express without fear of shame, hatred, or retribution the full spectrum of their emotional lives.

Presuming all fat people are all one thing—besides, ya know, deserving of respect—is failing to provide that sort of space.

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Melissa McEwan is the founder and manager of the award-winning political and cultural group blog Shakesville, which she launched as Shakespeare's Sister in October 2004 because George Bush was pissing her off. In addition to running Shakesville, she also contributes to The Guardian's Comment is Free America and AlterNet. Liss graduated from Loyola University Chicago with degrees in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology, with an emphasis on the political marginalization of gender-based groups. An active feminist and LGBTQI advocate, she has worked as a concept development and brand consultant and now writes full-time.

She lives just outside Chicago with three cats, two dogs, and a Scotsman, with whom she shares a love of all things geekdom, from Lord of the Rings to Alcatraz. When she's not blogging, she can usually be found watching garbage television or trying to coax her lazyass greyhound off the couch for a walk.

Women-Centric Films That Opened Friday, May 25 and Opening Friday, June 1

2012-05-28T13:49:00.002-04:00

There aren't many female-centric films that opened last Friday (only one...boo) or coming out this Friday. But I'm so excited to FINALLY see Snow White and the Huntsman.

Now, that might surprise some of you, considering I complained that this version of the Snow White story, no matter how much of a badass action-fantasy retelling, still seems to perpetuate stereotypes of women and aging, women deriving power from beauty and pits women against each other. But it's always a delight to see the incredibly talented Charlize Theron, a veritable chameleon who effortlessly slips into any role. She looks like she's having a blast here as the Wicked Queen Ravenna. As Allison Heard pointed out, Kristen Stewart as Snow White is "not a helpless, damsel in distress, but instead is a sword-wielding, armor-wearing warrior that fights her own battles, literally and metaphorically." It may not be a feminist film (but god I hope it is) but it still looks intriguing and entertaining.

I missed it at the 2012 Athena Film Festival, so I also want to see country music star Chely Wright's documentary, Chely Wright: Wish Me Away, about her journey coming out as a lesbian. It looks heartbreaking and inspiring. Directed by Lea Pool, Pink Ribbons, Inc.'s exploration of the "pinkwashing" of breast cancer looks compelling too, especially in light of the Susan G. Komen Foundation's bullshit debacle when they supported defunding Planned Parenthood. Directed by Julia Murat, the Brazilian film Found Memories sounds interesting as it features two women who forge a deep bond. And we don't see nearly enough female camaraderie on-screen.

So what films are you excited to see??

Friday, May 25

Cowgirls N’ Angels

Ida, a feisty and rebellious young girl, dreams of one day finding her father, a rodeo rider, whose identity her mom has kept from her. While searching for her dad at a local rodeo, Ida meets the Sweethearts of the Rodeo, a team of young female trick riders run by cowboy legend Terence Parker. Terence discovers that Ida is the grand-daughter of a friend who passed away years before, so he decides to help her. Ida joins the Sweethearts and embarks with them on a tour of rodeos throughout the west. Ida hopes to find her father, but she discovers much more, including a love for horses that redefines her life. -- (C) Sense and Sensibility Ventures

Friday, June 1

Chely Wright: Wish MeAway

Chely Wright: Wish Me Away is the story of Chely Wright, the first country music star to come out as gay. Over three years, the filmmakers were given extraordinary access to Chely's struggle and her unfolding plan to come out publicly. Using interviews with Chely, her family, her pastor, and key players in Nashville interwoven with Chely's intimate private video diaries, the film goes deep into her back story as an established country music star and then forward as she steps into the national spotlight to reveal her secret. Chronicling the aftermath in her hometown of Nashville and within the larger LGBT community, Wish Me Away reveals both the devastation of her own internalized homophobia and the transformational power of living an authentic life. -- (C) First Run

Found Memories (Historiasque so existem quando lembradas)

Like every morning, Madalena makes bread for Antonio's old coffee shop. Like every day, she crosses the railways where no trains have passed for years; she cleans up the gate of the locked cemetery, and listens to the priest's sermon before sharing lunch with the other old villagers. Clinging to the image of her dead husband and living in her memories, Madalena is awakened by the arrival of Rita, a young photographer who is arriving in the ghost village of Jotuomba, where time seems to have stopped. A deep relationship is forged between the two women, which gradually builds to have a profound effect on both of their lives, as well as the rest of the villagers. -- (C) Film Movement

Pink Ribbons, Inc.

The ubiquitous pink ribbons of breast cancer philanthropy and the hand-in-hand marketing of brands and products associated with it permeates our culture, providing assurance that we are engaged in a successful battle against this insidious disease. But the campaign obscures the reality and facts of breast cancer, more and more women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, and face the same treatment options they did 40 years ago. Yet women are also the most influential market group, buying 80 percent of consumer products and making most major household purchasing decisions. So then who really benefits from the pink ribbon campaigns - the cause or the company? -- (C) First Run

Snow White and the Huntsman

In the epic action-adventure Snow White and the Huntsman, Kristen Stewart plays the only person in the land fairer than the evil queen (Charlize Theron) out to destroy her. But what the wicked ruler never imagined is that the young woman threatening her reign has been training in the art of war with a huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) dispatched to kill her. Sam Claflin joins the cast as the prince long enchanted by Snow White's beauty and power. -- (C) Universal Pictures

All film descriptions taken from Rotten Tomatoes

Motherhood in Film & Television: Is Terminator’s Sarah Connor an Allegory for Single Mothers?

2012-05-25T16:59:00.001-04:00

Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Mothers are supposed to be everything to everyone. Sadly, society often stigmatizes, vilifies and demonizes single mothers. Single moms are blamed for “breeding more criminals.” Single parenthood is criminalized and “declared child abuse.” On top of that, “almost 70% of people believe single women raising children on their own is bad for society.” WTF? Seriously?? Wow. Way to be misogynistic people.

So it’s no surprise to see broken and dysfunctional single moms reflected on-screen. And don’t get me wrong. I love watching flawed female characters. But what about single mom Sarah Connor, “the mother of destiny?” Often labeled a feminist hero, topping lists for greatest female characters, is she the “ultimate protective single mother?”

Along with Ellen Ripley, Sarah helped pave the way for strong female characters. In Terminator, Sarah (Linda Hamilton) is a friendly college student and food server, lacking confidence, who “can’t even balance [her] checkbook.” Targeted by cyborg assassins sent from the future to kill her son, the future resistance leader fighting against domineering machines, she is thrust into a hellish nightmare fighting for her life. The Sarah (Linda Hamilton) of Terminator 2: Judgment Day transforms into a badass goddess. With her sculpted muscles doing pull-ups and firing guns, she’s a ferocious warrior filled with rage (something women are rarely allowed to exhibit) yet haunted and struggling with mental stability. In the cancelled-way-too-early fantastic TV series Sarah Connor Chronicles, we witness Sarah (Lena Headey) as a brave single mother, passionate, smart, angry and flawed, doing everything she can to not only survive but thrive.

Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) in Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles

As kickass as she is, Sarah possesses no other identity beyond motherhood. She exists solely to protect her John from assassination or humanity will be wiped out. Every decision, every choice she makes, is to protect her son. In Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cameron tells Sarah that “Without John, your life has no purpose.” Sarah tells her ex-fiancé that she’s not trying to change her fate but change John’s. Even before she becomes a mother in Terminator, her identity is tied to her uterus and her capacity for motherhood.

Now, I realize she's saving the world, trying to keep her son alive and stop a cyborg onslaught. But the underlying theme -- motherhood must consume women -- is troublesome. Mothers don't have to squelch their desires and sacrifice their identity and entire lives in order to be a "good" mother.

Succumbing to the Mystical Pregnancy Trope (which usually reduces women to their reproductive organs) with the father of her baby coming from the future, Sarah’s pregnancy and birth of her son eerily parallels the Virgin Mary and the birth of Christ. A woman who gives birth to a messianic son. Kyle Reese (Sarah’s time-traveling love and baby daddy) tells Sarah she’s revered in the future as a warrior and strategist, for raising and teaching her son John to be a leader and the world’s salvation. So not only is she John Connor’s mother. Sarah transcends her role becoming the mother of humanity.

While not sexualized, Sarah is still defined by her relationship to the men in her life. In the films, there are no women for her to interact with, aside from her roommate Ginger and a female guard at the institution. One of my favorite components of Sarah Connor Chronicles is that we’re introduced to several strong, complex women. Sarah is forced to work with Terminator-reprogrammed-protector Cameron (Summer Glau) whom she distrusts. Of course Cameron isn’t even human. But she takes the form of a teen girl so people she encounters treat her accordingly. While I love the series, it can’t go unnoticed that rather than showcase female camaraderie, the series pits its two female leads against one another -- a common media theme -- essentially competing for John’s trust.

Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) and John Connor (Eddie Furlong) in Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Single mothers are often portrayed as reckless, promiscuous or damaged. Or the trifecta jackpot…all 3! As competent and fierce as Sarah is, she’s still portrayed as mentally unstable in Terminator 2. Suffering from PTSD, she's terrorized by nightmares and flashbacks. Sarah's trauma is never truly discussed, treated as if it's something she needs to snap out of or shake off. She's often calmed down and reined in by John. Now, as a child raised by an emotionally unstable single mother, I understand this dynamic. And of course if someone told me I was going to give birth to humanity’s savior, that machines were coming to kill me and then machines did…yeah, I might lose my shit too.

Throughout T2, Sarah’s humanity erodes as she becomes more and more cold and calculated like a machine. Her emotional journey and breakthrough -- balancing her fierce survival instincts with her humanity -- doesn’t transpire until her son stops her from killing an innocent man and she crumbles, breaking down in tears. Was Sarah’s state of mind depicted to convey her character’s complexity? Or was it to show John’s strength and resolve at such an early age? Either way, it’s her motherhood that essentially conjures her transformation.

A theme throughout the Terminator films and series is “child-rearing divides our attention, making us less fit for heroism.” At the start of Terminator 2, Sarah’s actions cause her to lose custody of John as he’s raised in foster homes. In Sarah Connor Chronicles, she struggles to balance her duties as a nurturing single mom to John and her role as a soldier trying to alter the course of history. In the series, she’s the one reminding John and Cameron about what they’re fighting for: the value and beauty of humanity.

Sarah Connor (Lena Headey) and John Connor (Thomas Dekker) in Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles

While I always love seeing fierce ladies kick ass, punching a foe or firing a gun isn’t synonymous with strength. Many people believe women in action films promote empowerment and equality. But in reality, most female action heroes in film don’t shatter gender stereotypes. They rarely lead as heroes, usually serving as love interests and props to the male protagonist. Ultimately, most female film characters succumb to stereotypical gender roles.

Of the few truly empowered female characters in action films, most (Sarah Connor, Ripley, The Bride/Beatrix Kiddo) are lioness mothers. Linking violence “with the archetype of protectress,” these women risk everything to save their children. But women who are assertive, intelligent, complicated, self-reliant survivors (like Sarah) exhibit empowerment, whether they strap on a gun or not.

Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in Terminator

Patriarchy presents itself as a constant threat. Like Alien’s Ripley, Sarah constantly tries to assert her agency and is stifled. Both women try to convince the men around them that threats -- murderous robots and acid-bleeding aliens -- are real. Yet no one heeds their warnings. In T2, when talking to Miles Dyson, the scientist responsible for the creation of Skynet, Sarah talks about the threat of patriarchy and the salvation of motherhood:

“Fucking men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you thought it up. You think you're so creative. You don't know what it's like to really create something; to create a life; to feel it growing inside you. All you know how to create is death...and destruction...”

Sarah designates a gender binary implying that women create and men destroy, reifying the stereotypical gender roles of women as caretakers and men as conquerors. Yet she herself straddles that line -- a nurturing, protective mother utilizing violence as a freedom-fighting soldier to save her son and the planet.

Of course, everything John Connor learns can be attributed to his mother’s resilience and ingenuity. And that’s awesome. But while I love Sarah Connor every bit now as I did when I was 10 years old, I can’t shake my unease that just like the majority of films in Hollywood echoing society’s views, a woman is supposed to sacrifice everything for a man. Even her son.

Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in Terminator 2

On the surface, it seems like the Terminator franchise revolves around a dude often searching for a father figure rather than appreciating his mother. And problematic depictions of motherhood do emerge. But who’s really the hero? Is it the smart hacker son destined to be a leader? Is it the cyborg that learns humanity? Or is it the brave and fierce single mother who sacrifices everything to protect humanity and doesn’t wait for destiny to unfold but takes matters into her own hands?

Ultimately, the Terminator story is an allegory of single mothers in today's world. With her narrations throughout the films and series, we hear her perspective and see the world through her eyes. Whether juggling jobs to pay the rent, balancing the demands of work and raising a child, or battling cyborgs -- Sarah crystallizes the sacrifices and struggles single moms endure in a patriarchal society to ensure a better life for their children.

Single mothers aren't vilified in the Terminator saga, they're admired and celebrated. If that’s not feminist, I don’t know what is.

Motherhood in Film & Television: MOTHER

2012-05-25T12:00:00.000-04:00

Mother (2009)

This is a guest post from Tatiana Christian.

This review contains some spoilers.

For the past few years, I’ve been slowly immersing myself in international cinema; specifically France, Korea and Japan. So when Bitch Flicks did a call for reviews on films about mothers, I immediately thought of MOTHER (also known as Madeo), a Korean film made in 2009, directed by Bong Joon-ho. Bong Joon-ho is also the mastermind behind another Korean classic, The Host. So naturally, I HAD to watch it, and writing a review for Bitch Flicks offered me the perfect opportunity!

Categorized as a drama, MOTHER centers about a mother, (who is played by Kim Hye-ja) who lives with her 27-year-old son, Do-joon (played by the luscious Won Bin) in the countryside. The film chronicles Hye-ja’s search, after her mentally challenged son is convicted of murdering a local girl, as she attempts to find the real killer.

As expected by the title, MOTHER focuses extensively on Hye-ja’s journey -- in the opening of the film, we see her wander out into a field and start dancing. In the next scene, we watch as she’s chopping medicinal herbs, observing her son across the street as he plays with a dog. Her gaze never shifts from him, even as we’re being led to believe that she’s going to cut herself if she doesn’t pay attention.

When Do-joon is hit by a speeding Benz, his mother rushes out to see if he’s okay – even though he’s alright and doesn’t appear to have any bruises or scratches. Even when she’s having her cut treated, she’s obsessive about finding her son, and making sure that he’s okay. And this type of concern is portrayed through the film; such as in the scene where he’s peeing outside and she holds the bowl for him to drink his medicine. This particular scene struck me as rather intimate, as she stares down at his penis for a moment or two before encouraging him.

I found this relevant because in a later scene when Do-joon comes home intoxicated, he crawls into bed with his mother (presumably the only bed in their small apartment), and immediately rests his hand on her breast. She murmurs that it’s “too late” and eventually he withdraws his hand. MOTHER never delves much deeper into the potentiality of incest, and aside from another character teasing Do-joon by suggesting that they’re having sex – that’s it.

However, I can’t really suggest that their relationship is necessarily codependent, as Do-joon demonstrates his independence several times (such as telling his mother to go to sleep when she calls because he’s out late at the bar or confronting her when he remembers that she attempted to kill him as a child). Hye-ja is shown caring and worrying more about Do-joon than he does for her, and he seems not all concerned with the fact that he has confessed to a crime he didn’t commit.

MOTHER is driven more by Hye-ja’s desire to save her child, to protect him based on the belief that he is innocent. (Portrayed as a mentally challenged character, there’s an air of innocence -- or general ignorance -- to him. For example, when he’s taken to the crime scene and there is a crowd of spectators, he looks out to someone he knows, takes off his mask and begins to wave while smiling -- seemingly oblivious to the severity of what‘s happening.)

So Hye-ja takes on the burden of caring; trying to locate a lawyer who will take on Do-joon’s case, trying to convince a police officer who is a family friend to investigate further, sneaking into Jin-tae’s (played by Ku Jin) cabin to search for clues, approaching the friend of the girl Je-Moon (played by Je-mun Yun) who has died, and so on. It’s all rather impressive actually, watching Hye-ja commit to discovering the real story behind the murder, and enlisting the help of Jin-tae (who proves invaluable in her quest) and having no qualms about getting involved, lying or impersonating someone.

Without giving away too much of the ending, she discovers who the real killer is and commits yet another crime in response to the truth she learns. At the end of the film, we see her taking a type of bus retreat with other mothers, and she’s the only person sitting as the others dance in the aisle. In her lap is her acupuncture kit, and she inserts a needle into her upper thigh in an effort to open her heart and let her emotions flow. Soon after she begins to dance with the other mothers, perhaps finally free. But this time, her dancing is more expressive, versus when we see her in the beginning of the film.

According to Horrornews.net: “She is absolutely riveting and roles like this, especially for women, are almost never found in American cinema.”

This quote ultimately summarizes my experience with MOTHER – a film about a mother willing to do whatever it takes to save her child. In many American films, mothers are often portrayed as deranged (such as the biopic Mommy Dearest) or some kind of superhero (based entirely on tropes) mom who does everything for everyone else but nothing for herself (such as I Don’t Know How She Does It, starring Sarah Jessica Parker).

In MOTHER, Hye-ja is a full-fledged character with both flaws and strengths; she’s unafraid, determined and single-minded in her purpose. In the film, we see her attend the wake of the murdered girl to insist that her son is innocent. Expectedly, the family violently confronts her, dragging her off the premises, while cursing both her and her son. In the very next scene, we see the mother has wandered into a nearby graveyard, looking into her compact and applying lipstick so that she can meet up with the lawyer who will help her son’s case.

MOTHER isn’t about the ideal or perfect depiction of a mother and her relationship with her children; MOTHER is about one individual in her search to save her son.

Tatiana loves watching foreign cinema, and thanks to Netflix, she's definitely gotten to watch a bit more of it too! Currently, she's the Marketing Director for Side B Mag (an awesome lit mag!), always on the search for literary magazines to submit to and has recently continued her self-study to help her become more proficient in French. Merci beaucoup!

Motherhood in Film & Television: Julia Roberts in 'Steel Magnolias,' 'Stepmom,' and 'Erin Brockovich'

2012-05-25T09:08:00.002-04:00

This is a guest post from Allison Heard.

J.D. Salinger wrote in his famous novel Catcher in the Rye that “mothers are all slightly insane,” typifying motherhood as a feat of strength, bravery, and oftentimes a few glasses of wine. While Salinger and many other legendary authors narrated the triumphs and downfalls of motherhood, film and television brought these stories to life. Who could forget the prim and proper Carol Brady (Florence Henderson) from The Brady Bunch, the slightly kooky Bren MacGuff (Allison Janning) from Juno, or the homemaking, badass witch Molly Weasley (Julie Walters) from the Harry Potter series. Even Robin Williams tosses his hat in the ring for mother-of-the-year in his role in Mrs. Doubtfire while disguising himself as a housekeeper in an outfit so ridiculous it could be a Halloween costume just to spend more time with his kids. Among these, another awesome on-screen mom is Julia Roberts, an actress known for her portrayal of all different mothering sorts.

Steel Magnolias (1989)

One of Roberts first major roles came in 1989 with the release of Steel Magnolias, a film about two mothers both fighting for their children. The films main characters are Shelby Eatenton Latcherie (Roberts) and her mother M’Lynn Eatenton (Sally Fields). The film opens on Shelby and her mother in a local hair salon, preparing for Shelby’s impending nuptials to her fiancé Jackson later that afternoon. Arguing with her mother about whether or not she can bear children, Shelby falls in to a state of hypoglycemia due to her diabetic condition. She quickly recovers, but this proves to her mother that she is in no state to become a mother. Despite the day’s early events, the wedding goes off without a hitch, and several months later Shelby announces that she is expecting a child with Jackson. While Shelby is ecstatic to have a child, her body does not respond well to childbirth. She goes in to kidney failure and M’Lynn donates her kidney to her ailing daughter. While the kidney responds well temporarily, Shelby’s body eventually rejects it and she slips in to a coma. M’Lynn’s friends help her move past the loss of her daughter by celebrating her life instead of remembering her death.

Steel Magnolias shows the undying love of mothers and daughters through disagreements, tragedy and happiness. Shelby exemplifies the young woman desiring to become a mother despite unruly and unpredictable circumstances. Her choice to bear children despite her physical limitations shows that all she wanted was motherhood, despite the cost. M’Lynn exemplifies the experienced mother who only wants to protect her daughter from harm. Both Shelby and M’Lynn make the ultimate sacrifice for motherhood, that being a kidney and a life.

Stepmom (1998)

Nearly ten years after the release of Steel Magnolias, Julia Roberts was thrown into a mothering role once again. This time, however, she was quite different. Stepmom portrays a businesswoman, Isabel (Julia Roberts), who becomes a stepmom after marrying recently divorced attorney, Luke (Ed Harris). Isabel lacks any maternal instinct and is further degraded by the children’s biological mother and Luke’s ex-wife, Jackie (Susan Sarandon). Their disagreements and feuds are only worsened when Jackie is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Jackie doesn’t think it’s fair that Isabel gets to witness her children grow up, while she becomes just a memory, and Isabel is secretly worried she cannot compare to Jackie. The two women eventually admit these fears to each other, and become a true family before Jackie’s death and Isabel’s marriage to Luke.

In this film, Julia Roberts plays an unwilling mother, completely opposing Shelby Eatenton Latcherie and her ultimate desire to become a mother. Roberts represents a sect of women who are thrown in to motherhood through unusual circumstances and come out successful. While there are numerous struggles and hardships for Isabel to become a mother that Jackie approves of, she eventually does so. This film not only shows motherhood as a role of importance, but also the interpersonal relationships between women, despite the circumstances. Jackie and Isabel could have continued their feuding, but settled their differences for the sake of the children, both exhibiting strong maternal traits.

Erin Brockovich (2000)

Possibly Julia Roberts most noted role as a mother, Erin Brockovich tells the story of an unemployed, single mother who loses a personal injury lawsuit after she was in a car accident. Upset by her lawyer’s failure, she demands a job at his firm in compensation. He offers her a position as a file clerk in his office, and she soon uncovers a ring of deceit surrounding a major company. Brockovich eventually reveals that the company has been destroying files and laying off its employees. This discovery leads to a huge settlement that is split between the injured employees.

Again, this film shows Roberts in a different motherly role. This time, she is a single mother struggling to support her three children. Her struggles are only furthered when her accident happens and she loses her settlement case. Despite her uphill battle though, Brockovich overcomes and shows that she can survive amongst the high-powered attorneys and deceitful corporations. Based on true-life events, this story is an uplifting account of motherhood and the struggle to survive it alone.

These three films show a variety of motherhood roles in the film industry. Julia Roberts plays a single mother, an unwilling mother and a woman desperate to become a mother. Amongst all of these films are other mothers trying to protect their children from harm, like Shelby’s mom M’Lynn or Jackie in Stepmom, who also show off their maternal instincts.

Motherhood in film and television, while oftentimes portrayed by actresses who are not real life mothers, offer a narrative for the struggles and triumphs of mothers in the audience and at home. These films offer mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and other caretakers an escape from their real life mothering to feel the comedy, tragedy, drama and sheer bliss of being a mother. Without these film and television portrayals, we would be left without the experiences and stories of other women, whether alike or different from your own personal story.

Allison Heard is a writer for HalloweenCostumes.net, and wants to remind you all that your stepmother is not the Wicked Witch of the West.

Motherhood in Film & Television: Hey, let's do some Mommy Issues! (Babies not required)

2012-05-24T18:00:00.000-04:00

This is a guest post from Glosswitch

Imagine this:

You are a beautiful single mom. You get on well with your baby's father - indeed, perhaps you are still in love with him – but you’ve decided it’s not to be. You’ve been offered a dream job on the other side of the Atlantic, in a country where they don’t even speak your language, and you’ve decided to go for it.

Do you:

a. go through a great deal of soul-searching about uprooting your daughter, taking her away from her father and managing on your own, then stoically board the plane clutching both your child and a ton of crap toys which will keep her entertained for about five seconds on a transatlantic flight.

b. go through a great deal of soul-searching because, basically, you still want to rip the clothes off your baby’s daddy, then stoically board the plane looking cool and stylish. Your daughter is off somewhere or other, maybe already in France with your mom or something. Anyhow, that’s all a bit boring. So boring, in fact, that when you have another change of heart you get off the plane and don’t give a second thought to the fact that little Emma might already be waiting, “Mommy” sign held pluckily aloft, at Charles de Gaulle airport.

Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) from Friends

Did you answer a? If so, we have established that you are not in fact Rachel from Friends. Well done, you (after all, if you were, you’d be all barren and pining for Brad Pitt by now, with all your other rom-com achievements mere ashes at your feet).

Here is another scenario:

You are a beautiful single mom (again), but this time working in a crime lab. Perhaps you are called Catherine Willows and in another life a woman called Marg Helgenberger will portray you in a biopic of your life. Anyhow, you have a daughter, possibly called Lindsey, and she can, to put it mildly, be a bit of a pain in the ass.

Do you:

a. use any and every opportunity to remind your colleagues that you’re a mom and therefore understand certain things that only a mom can understand. Stuff like other moms being sad if their kids get murdered, that sort of shit. You know about this because you’re a mom. And also because you finally got rid of that bitch Lindsey by shoving her in some posh private school.

b. tend to shut up about being a mom while you’re in the workplace. It wouldn’t do you any favors come the next round of promotions.

So, what did you pick? Was it b? Me too. That’s why no one’s offered either of us a job in the Las Vegas crime lab to date.

Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) from CSI

Now look, I’m not stupid. I know that TV comedies are meant to be funny, and dramas meant to be dramatic. It isn’t real life. That’s why we don’t see characters needing to take a piss in the middle of an important monologue, or stumbling over their words when pronouncing the dic vead, sorry, the vic dead. It’s all made up. I bet everyone working in the real Las Vegas crime lab is ugly as sin and that they all hate each other and are useless at solving crimes. Actually, that’s probably not true either. It’s probably a lot more boring than that. They probably all just plod along, solving some crimes, not solving others, then go home, watch a bit of TV (not CSI – I’m sure they hate that) and then just go to bed. No one would want to watch that. So why does this unrealistic portrayal of mommies end up annoying me so much?

The thing is, I wouldn’t mind if characters like Rachel and Catherine were just like all the other characters – ridiculously gorgeous and ace at their jobs, yet somehow flawed and kooky at the same time – while also being mommies, albeit ones whose lives aren’t that much impinged on by having a child. I wouldn’t mind that. It’s just that Rachel and Catherine seem to have MOMMY tattooed in big letters across their botoxed foreheads. You can almost hear the sound of scriptwriters patting themselves on the back. “Hey guys, relax! We’ve done the “mommy issues” bit! Now let’s send everyone off to Central Perk.” This creates an environment in which it no longer seems legitimate to assert that motherhood still doesn’t really exist as a theme in our TV programmes. But by and large it doesn’t. You wouldn’t have to do much. You don’t literally have to show shitty diapers or a woman crying her eyes out at 3am with engorged breasts and a howling newborn. It’s just the little things. Perhaps you have women who aren’t able to go to the bar with colleagues at the drop of a hat. Women who don’t always have childcare issues magically resolved by a grumpy ex who’s half new man, half self-pitying passive aggressive bully. Women who work part-time. Women who are, most of the time, in the company of children, not for one “doing the issues” childcare episode, but all the time. You can still have humor and drama in that. Let’s face it, children can be total lunatics; there’s loads of humor and drama in that.

Abby (Maura Tierney) from ER

In ER (yeah, another oldie) Abby has a full-on dramatic birth, followed by lots of trauma caring for a sick child and then gradually going back to work. See, that’s quite good. They sure milked the drama from that. But then she just goes back to being another TV mom with an invisible child. Said child is useful for hostage situations and for making the Abby character “softer” than all the other female leads, but not for affecting the actual structure of the plot itself. That would just be too messy.

I guess that messiness is a big part of the problem. Motherhood is portrayed as a women’s issue – a thing to be picked up, examined then dropped – rather than as something that structures the flow of life and shapes the plots we all live out. This is as true for real life as it is for fiction. Mothers have to fit in around everyone else’s plots, plots in which no one in paid employment really has children and no one who isn’t paid employment is ever believed to be working.

When did you last see a TV programme that treated having a job or having grandparents or being male as an “issue” to be covered? They’re not; they’re just long-term ways of being, which might sometimes be the cause of issues but without being issues in themselves. Being a mom ought to be like that. Instead, it’s “a thing.” A thing that can be covered in a half-hour show, including ad breaks, before Mommy puts her invisible child back in the closet and heads back out to spread the fake mommy wisdom that, thankfully, doesn’t prevent her heading off to an all-night club with friends at the end of the evening.

Lois from Family Guy

In Family Guy we see Lois frequently exploiting the trope of the put-upon Mommy whom no one values. Hey, good issues coverage, guys! The fact that Lois leaves her baby in the care of the family dog whenever it seems appropriate doesn’t even come into it. And yeah, this is a cartoon, and it’s silly and surreal and why should I even bother worrying about that? But the trouble is, we then get the “I am Peter, hear me roar” episode in which Lois ends up taking on hardcore feminist Gloria Ironbox and dramatically asserting her own “choice” to be a mother and homemaker. It’s here that you start to feel the scriptwriters are taking a little too many liberties. How many issues can you squeeze from a portrayal of motherhood that isn’t even remotely realistic? Despite the catfight and the stripping and the sex with Peter at the end, there’s something horribly serious and sanctimonious about Lois’s little outburst. It's like having Cleveland and Loretta solemnly discussing affirmative action, albeit with them only being permitted to be "actively" black 10% of the time.

Allison from Medium

Of all the shows I’ve seen in (fairly) recent years, the only one where I find the portrayal of motherhood even vaguely satisfactory is Medium. That is, I’ll admit, a little weird. Motherhood, for me, has not yet involved having crazy psychic dreams and then passing “the gift” on to my sons, and them getting all stressed about it, and me having to comfort them because, hey, it’s okay; it might seem distressing now but later on you could solve crime, just like Mommy! No, my experience of motherhood has not been like that. But what I like about that show is that underneath it, there still seems to be quite a lot of “normal” mess. The scriptwriters have allowed motherhood to invade the plot. Alison puts her children to bed and strokes their heads and it’s just what happens, not the chance for some once-in-a-lifetime monologue. Alison goes into the kitchen in the morning and there they are, making a mess of the kitchen table and demanding more food. In normal TV-land, she’d have the kitchen to herself, at least assuming no one was having a psychic crisis at the sight of the Cheerios. I found Medium difficult to watch while pregnant, not because it gave me funny dreams, but because I’d think “Wow! That parenting thing looks like hard work!” In truth, it’s not as bad as all that. It’s probably worse if your nights are interrupted not just by kids, but by pesky dead people. If it were that bad, I’d probably run away to France, just like Rachel. Or shove my kids in some private school, like Catherine. But hey, if I did that, you shouldn’t judge me too harshly. I’d just be following the plot.

Disclaimer: Most of the shows referred to here are from over four years ago. I'm sorry. I had a couple of those "real" babies in the interim. If only I'd had a plot device child, all this would be way more up to date.

Glosswitch is a mother of two living in the UK, hence the unfortunate mixture of US and UK spellings in this piece. She blogs at http://glosswatch.com about feminism, motherhood and anything that annoys her (i.e. anything).

Motherhood in Film & Television: Being a Good Mother in 'Gilmore Girls'

2012-05-24T12:11:00.001-04:00

Rory and Lorelai Gilmore are the Gilmore Girls

This is a guest post from Friederike Wunschik

The two main characters of Gilmore Girls are a mother-daughter pair: Lorelai and Rory Gilmore. There are two things the viewer is told almost instantly: they are only 16 years apart and actually have the same first name (though the daughter goes by a baby-version of it).

The Lorelais’ adventures and development are what propels the series forward. Their relationship is characterized by friendship, mutual understanding and respect, with only a few hiccups when the older Lorelai actually goes into mom-mode. They live in Stars Hollow (the imaginary Connecticut town that serves as the backdrop for most of the series), which is quaint, safe, and homogenous (there are practically no persons of color and income disparity is not an issue). Both are depicted as strong and independent women with the occasional romantic interest that never really threatens this independence.

Lorelai Gilmore is certainly depicted as a non-conventional mother. She has been described as a “disgraced Connecticut Brahmin teen heiress who flees prep school to keep and raise her now teen-aged daughter while estranged from her own parents” (Jennifer Crusie, Coffee at Luke’s, p. 174). But she is not the only mother in the series. Gilmore Girls spends a surprisingly large amount of time focusing on mother-characters, some of which are shown more often and more in-depth than others.

The first episode deals with Lorelai reluctantly contacting her parents (after 16 years of barely talking to them) in order to ask them for financial help. The viewer is immediately aware of the awkwardness and manipulation between Lorelai and her mother, Emily. Later we meet one of Rory’s friends, Lane, whose Korean immigrant mother is shown to be very strict and religious – she is only ever addressed as “Mrs. Kim”.

In subsequent seasons other mothers are show-cased:

Liz Danes, Luke’s sister (Luke is one of Lorelai’s main love-interests) and mother of Rory’s troubled second boyfriend Jess
Sookie (Lorelai’s best friend; she becomes pregnant in season 3)
Sherry Tinsdale (the absent mother of Rory’s much younger half-sister Gigi)
Lane, Rory’s best friend (she becomes pregnant in season 7)

This list is not complete in any way, and many of the female inhabitants of Stars Hollow take on temporary parenting responsibilities throughout the series.

Despite the various complications and problems the characters experience as mothers, motherhood is depicted as a fundamentally good thing in Gilmore Girls. Each mother in this series tries her best and finds her own solutions to various problems.

However, the different mother-models occasionally clash, causing the characters to question each others’ and their own style and technique. They even go so far as to openly criticize each other, forcing the viewer to consider both points of view and weigh the advantages and disadvantages of the parenting approaches. Nevertheless, it is important to note that every child in the series turns out alright, despite any problems it might have encountered.

In the following paragraphs I will analyze some of the issues the mothers of the series struggle with.

Nurturing and Food

It is easy – but not fair – to extrapolate the quality of parenting a mother provides from the quality of the meals she serves.

One of the most emphasized aspects of Lorelai Gilmore’s mothering, apart from her youthful mother-friend approach, is the lack of home cooking. The Gilmore girls barely use their kitchen and table. They make coffee and Pop Tarts. They order take-out – a lot. The biggest effort Lorelai ever puts into the preparation of food is when she makes peanut butter sandwiches and marshmallow and gummy bear skewers for a movie marathon or “dessert sushi” to cheer up Rory (Season 07 Episode 02; check out http://gilmoregirlsgourmet.tumblr.com/post/12420447490/dessert-sushi for more on dessert sushi).

Dessert sushi

This lack of culinary skill is a matter of pride for Lorelai. She and Rory eat quite a lot junk food during each episode, but most “real” meals are consumed either at Luke’s diner, at Emily’s house, or consist of a selection of take-out eaten in front of the television. Lorelai is a working mom and does not have a lot of time to prepare meals. Her refusal to even try can be interpreted in several ways: she enjoys her consumerist lifestyle too much, she is too much of a child herself to consider providing a healthy and balanced diet to her daughter, or she is happy to be free of a chore she doesn’t enjoy.

Emily's dinner table

Emily on the other hand uses Friday night dinners to guarantee a certain involvement in her daughter’s and granddaughter’s lives. She does not prepare meals either, she has help do that for her. Nevertheless she plans the meals and insists they be eaten at an impeccably set dining room table. Because she tries to control Lorelai’s life through the forced attendance, these dinners are often the site of conflict; in one instance Emily even tells the maid to take away Lorelai’s plate, thereby showing the viewer how much she is willing to use these meals as a means of control. (S04E06)

Mrs. Kim's dinner table

Mrs. Kim’s Korean cooking is only used to highlight her Otherness. Lane longs for the pizza and candy diet Rory is on, yet she must endure weird foreign food that none of her friends know. Because Mrs. Kim is so strict about a healthy diet, Lane is forced to hide a stash of candy bars under the floorboards in her room and is afraid to eat fried foods, convinced her mother can smell it on her later.

As a chef, Sookie is used to cooking elaborate haute cuisine meals. She likes experimenting with ingredients and tastes. When she is asked to cater a children’s birthday she serves decidedly grown-up food. This incident serves to highlight her unpreparedness for motherhood: how can she look after a child when she doesn’t even know what to feed them? (S04E03) This unpreparedness is mirrored in the final season when Sookie finds out she is pregnant for a third time. (S07E12) After giving birth to her second child, Sookie had ordered (not asked) her husband to get a vasectomy, which he failed to do. This third pregnancy freaks Sookie out and she lists all the ways she is not mentally prepared for this baby “there was less than 4000 left […] diapers! For the last year and a half I’ve been changing more than 20 diapers a day! […] There was a light at the end of the tunnel. […] Diaper rash, colic, and potty training.”

Controlling One’s Child

As mentioned before, Emily uses Friday night dinners to keep tabs on both her daughter and granddaughter. She has a history of trying to control every aspect of Lorelai’s life (Lorelai occasionally compares her mother to dictators). Lorelai says that she would have run away, teen pregnancy or not, because she had “nothing in that house; I had no life, I had no air; you strangled me.” Emily argues that she did everything to provide a good life for Lorelai “I put you in good schools, I gave you the best of everything, and I made sure you had the finest opportunities.” (S01E09) These efforts were not only wildly unsuccessful, but might have actually driven Lorelai to actively seek out activities and people her mother would disapprove of. (S07E03)

Given her reaction to her mother’s parenting, it is not surprising that Lorelai is much more lax when it comes to Rory. Lorelai tries not to pass too much judgement on boyfriends and is not too strict about curfews. However, when Rory slips up and doesn’t come home at all (S01E09), Lorelai almost lets Emily convince her that Rory will make the same mistakes Lorelai did and will “ruin everything” by becoming a teen mom.

Emily is not the only one to criticize Lorelai’s laissez-faire attitude: Mrs. Kim confronts her in S01E07 and tells her “maybe you should be less busy […] then you could keep your daughter from running around kissing boys. […]” Arguing that “Lane is a young impressionable girl, she doesn’t need to hear about your daughter’s kissing.” Obviously Mrs. Kim feels that Lorelai and Rory are undermining her efforts to raise Lane appropriately. In the end, her strict parenting does not stop Lane from dropping out of college, joining a band and marrying a man who is not Korean. Nevertheless, Mrs. Kim makes peace with that in the end, helping her son-in-law to write a song, throwing Lane’s wedding, and offering her support when Lane unexpectedly becomes pregnant. None of her religious parenting has really stuck, except one thing: Lane won’t have sex until she is married and when she does have sex she comes away believing that her mother was right when she said it is not enjoyable at all. (S07E02)

Liz Danes presumably also had her first child very early, though not as early as Lorelai, and her son Jess serves as an example of a child running wild because his mother cannot control him. She is a single mother and somewhat of a wild child herself. Because she cannot provide a stable household to her son, Liz sends Jess to live with his uncle Luke in Stars Hollow. Despite being a troubled teenager, Jess later finds happiness in running an independent publishing house. (S06E18) Liz becomes pregnant again in season 6. This second pregnancy makes Liz panic and she convinces herself that her husband, TJ, will be a horrible father and she needs to avoid the mistakes she made with Jess. (S06E21) In the end, though, she and TJ are very happy together and have fun raising their daughter.

Parental Absence

Absent parents play a substantial role in Gilmore Girls. Lorelai is a single mom, Liz was a single mom, the viewer is never told whether there is a Mr. Kim or not, even Luke finds out he’s missed the first 12 years of his daughter’s life because he didn’t know about her. Yet, the parent whose absence is seen as most problematic is Sherry’s.

Shortly after Rory’s father, Christopher, decides to be more involved in his daughter’s life, the viewer is introduced to his girlfriend Sherry (S02E14), only to find out that Christopher is unhappy in his relationship and wants to leave her. Nevertheless, when he finds out she is pregnant, he goes back to her. (S02E22) Two years later Sherry leaves Christopher and their daughter Gigi to take a job in Paris, France. (S05E06) After another two years she contacts Christopher and says she would like to see Gigi again. (S07E07) Her disappearance and reappearance drive the plot of several episodes in which Lorelai and Rory contemplate and try to make sense of Sherry’s actions. Although ultimately no real judgement is passed, the Gilmore girls are obviously baffled and alienated by this behavior and wary of Sherry’s reconnecting with Christopher and Gigi.

No Bad Mothers Here

Ultimately, none of the mothers shown in Gilmore Girls are bad mothers. Even Emily is shown to be understanding and nurturing. In the end everything turns out alright: Rory graduates from Yale, making her mother and grandparents proud; the entire town of Stars Hollow throws Rory a graduation party, prompting Emily and her husband to express their pride in their daughter for cultivating such strong friendships for herself and her daughter; Jess has redeemed himself and his mother by pursuing an intellectual life as an author and publisher; Lane has reconciled herself with Mrs. Kim and gives birth to twin boys.

Lorelai is obviously celebrated as the best mother in town, she is young, fun, independent, and interested in letting Rory be herself. But throughout the series the viewer sees that she doesn’t have the answers to all the questions and all the mothers are just doing the best they can.

Further reading:

Calvin, Ritch, ed. Gilmore Girls and the Politics of Identity: Essays on Family and Feminism in the Television Series. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008.

Crusie, Jennifer, ed. Coffee at Luke's: An Unauthorized Gilmore Girls Gabfest. Dallas, TX: BenBella, 2007.

Friederike Wunschik lives in Germany and has an M.A. in American Culture Studies. She occasionally blogs on friederike.wunschik.net. She will become a mother later this year and is excited and terrified at the same time.

Motherhood in Film & Television: Absent Mothers in Urban Fantasy

2012-05-24T09:00:00.003-04:00

Urban Fantasy is here to stay

This is a guest post from Paul and Renee.

Urban Fantasy -- the bringing of the fantastic (vampires, werewolves, magic, fae and so much more) to a modern, real world setting -- has become ever more popular as a mainstream genre. From Twilight to True Blood to The Vampire Diaries, it is now firmly entrenched on our televisions. The books regularly reach the best seller lists - this isn’t a fringe genre. It’s here, it’s huge and it’s here to stay.

This means the portrayals represented matter. Any popular media has the power to shape culture and society; any stories that are consumed by a large number of people are going to draw upon our societal prejudices and, in turn, feed and encourage those prejudices and portrayals.

Urban Fantasy is a genre that seldom gets critical examination. At first blush, the opposite would appear to be true when one considers the social conversation around Twilight or True Blood, but these are only two examples within an extremely large genre. It is interesting to note that much of Urban Fantasy contains female protagonists and is largely produced and consumed by women. Considering the ongoing gender divide, it is hardly surprising that this immensely popular genre is being ignored by critics.

Just because Urban Fantasy is largely produced by women and consumed by women does not mean that it is free of sexism and misogyny. When it comes to motherhood, a role that most women will one day assume, it is hardly surprising that within the genre most examples are highly problematic -- when they appear at all.

The lack of representation of motherhood is so extreme that the viewer is forced to ask is, “where are the mothers?”. It seems like such an odd question, because you’d expect most characters, like most people, to have a mother lurking around somewhere; especially since most of the heroines in these stories are young women or even teenagers. Search as we might, the mothers are conspicuous by their absence.

The most common cause of the missing mother seems to be death -- indeed, it is almost mandatory for an Urban Fantasy heroine to have a tragically dead mother. In The Vampire Diaries Elena’s mother is dead. True Blood has the orphaned Sookie; Charmed killed the sisters’ mother off before the series even started; Cassie, Diana, Melissa, Jake and Adam all have dead mothers in The Secret Circle. Buffy’s mother died part way through the series. In The Dresden Files, Harry’s mother died before the series began. In Grimm, Nick is yet another protagonist with a dead mother. The whole beginning motivation of Supernatural revolves around their dead mother. In Blood and Chocolate, both mother and father are brutally murdered. In The Craft Sarah Bailey's mother is dead. In Underworld, Selene’s mother is murdered by Viktor.

This list is extremely -- even excessively -- long but it’s shocking that we looked through all the shows and movies that we’ve watched and actually found it hard to find a series where the mother was alive and present.

Even in stories where the mother is lucky enough to have dodged the bullet and is actually alive, she is still often absent. In Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, Renee, Bella’s mother, is absent, living in a completely different state. In The Vampire Diaries, Bonnie’s mother, Abby, is absent through much of her childhood and, when they are finally reunited, Abby not only presents Bonnie with a child that she raised as a replacement, but quickly disappears after becoming a vampire. Abby is well aware of the pain that her absence has caused Bonnie and yet she steadfastly finds a reason not to engage with her daughter. Once Upon a Time sets records for absent mothers -- Augustus never had one, Snow White and Ruby’s mothers are dead, and Emma grew up in the foster system without her mother.

I suppose we should be grateful these mothers ducked the Urban Fantasy plague that has put so many parents in their graves, but they still have little to no actual influence and presence in their children’s -- the protagonists' -- lives.

With such a massive pattern, we have to ask why. Why is it almost a requirement in Urban Fantasy for the young, female protagonist to be lacking a mother (and often a father too for that matter)?

One reason seems to be to make the characters sad, relatable and, frankly, angst ridden. It’s quick, cheap and easy characterisation to establish a sad, tortured or otherwise issue-laden character with “depth” to kill off a parent and have them be sad about it. These dead mothers are sacrificed for quick and easy back story for the protagonist. Take a heroine, load her up with a shiny ability, a bit of snark, a love interest -- now kill her mother so she has “depth.” The back story is established: we have a “3-dimensional character” who has suffered (which seems to be shorthand for an established character in far too much fiction).

The mother is thrown away, killed -- often violently -- for the sake of the heroine’s story. These absences (often deaths and often graphic, violent deaths) are thrown in almost casually. These mothers are disposable, convenient story points, not characters in their own right. In fact, “disposable characters” may be giving them too much credit, since they don’t even have chance to become characters before they’re cast aside to haunt their children.

We live in a world in which violence against women, while often decried publicly, is still very much acceptable socially. These deaths, even when in faultless instances like traffic accidents, amount to violence against women because of the frequency in which they occur. We can see this especially emphasised in Rise of the Lycans, when Viktor murdered Sonja when he discovered she was pregnant with a lycan’s child. Violence rates against pregnant women are even higher than against other women and this also reflects not just the disposability of mothers but also the control of men over their fertility. Men decide whether she is “allowed” to carry that child, which is often seen as a threat to the man -- in this case to Victor’s power base but often in real life to a man’s freedom or lifestyle. To be clear, there are instances in which both mother and father dies; however, the near universality of the death of the mother definitely makes it a female-driven trope. When death comes through an act of violence it serves to reify the violence that women are forced to live with.

As it stands, it seems almost as though women are being punished for being mothers. Motherhood has often served as the impetus for women to engage in civil disobedience but, in Urban Fantasy, motherhood -- more often than not -- results in death. Women are given very little opportunity for agency. These deaths deny motherhood as a site of power for women and instead turn women into eternal victims who are then responsible for the misery of their children.

This also serves to emphasise how little we regard mothers as characters or people in their own right. A mother is seen as an extension of her child rather than a person -- and since a mother is all about her child, why shouldn’t she be sacrificed to further her child’s back story? She isn’t important as a person, and if she contributes best by being dead or absent, so be it, she doesn’t matter.

Related to this lack of independent existence is the eternal trope of the Bad Mother. It is a societal constant that mother is always to blame for whatever problems a child faces or suffers. While “blame the parents” is commonplace, this by far and away falls more on the mother than the father. The mother is a constant scapegoat for any and every issue in their child’s life.

Lettie Mae in True Blood

Do we really care about the issues of Lettie Mae, Tara’s mother from True Blood? Or is her alcoholism there to reflect on how hard a life Tara has to lead? Do we analyse Bonnie’s mother, Abby, on The Vampire Diaries to consider what drove her to pursue a life outside of Mystic Falls? Or does she only appear as and when she helps her daughter’s friends? It is not accidental that Lettie Mae and Abby are women of colour. Historically, women of colour have been seen as unfit mothers, unless we are nurturing and raising White children. Lettie Mae is not only absent but she is an alcoholic and she engaged in emotionally abusive behaviour throughout Tara’s childhood. For respite, Tara was forced to flee to the Stackhouse residence. What does it tell us when a Black girl can only find safety in the care of a White family, and abuse and neglect in her own mother’s home? Ruby Jean Reynolds is Lafayette’s mother on True Blood and we are first introduced to her in a mental institution. She is neurologically atypical and we learn that Lafayette has been doing sex work and selling drugs in order to pay for her care. She is extremely homophobic and uses anti-gay slurs to refer to both Lafayette and his now deceased boyfriend on the show, Jesus. The depiction of African-American mothers who are both physically and emotionally unavailable, and neglectful and abusive, is just another negative manifestation of how the media has chosen to construct the motherhood of African-American women.

It’s also worth noting how many of these “failure” mothers are marginalised. Lettie Mae is both black and poor. Abby is black. Darla from The Crow is a poor drug user. Even Sally’s mother on Being Human (US) is only around for 2 episodes of character growth for Sally -- and in that time we learn she had an affair while with Sally’s father and wasn’t there for Sally as she wanted and needed. All the mothers we’ve mentioned are disposable characterisation tools -- but the wealthy or middle class white mothers in The Secret Circle, Charmed, The Vampire Diaries, The Dresden Files, Once Upon a Time, Underworld and True Blood are killed off or absent through forces outside their control. They are absent because they are victims -- and certainly beyond reproach. While poor women or mothers of colour are not innocently absent, they are to blame for their failure.

Finally, we have to take it to the full extreme - the villainous mother. Again, this is, in many ways, an easy characterisation. You have instant angst and pain and emotional conflict just because of the relationship between the antagonist and the hero/heroine.

It also feeds further into the prevalent theme of mother blame we see repeated so often and it is, again, used as an excuse to blame any of the problems the protagonist has. In Lost Girl, Bo’s problems of being a succubus without any guidance is down to her villainous, succubus mother’s abandonment. In Being Human (US), Mother’s smothering control over Suren is to blame for her childishness and self indulgence. In Once Upon a Time all of Regina’s evil plans ultimately stem from her mother’s ruthless ambition and destroying her dreams. They are the ultimate problem mother, to blame for everything in the child’s life - both their own personal issues and their ongoing conflict -- it’s all completely Mother’s Fault.

It is disturbing that this prevailing idea of the dead, absent or outright villainous mother is so common within the genre. It devalues motherhood, sets mother up as disposable and ultimately to blame for the wrongs in their children’s lives, and this heavy burden of blame falls all the more heavily on marginalised mothers. In the aftermath of these absent mothers we have a mob of young female protagonists who have no mothers, frequently no parents at all. They’re alone, usually much younger, less experienced, more naive than the male love interest. They are exposed to the often predatory advances of these men -- which is another topic entirely, but the seeds of it are planted by the absent mother leading towards her vulnerable, lonely daughter.

Paul and Renee blog and review at Fangs for the Fantasy. We're great lovers of the genre and consume it in all its forms - but as marginalised people we also analyse critically through a social justice lens.

Motherhood in Film & Television: Laura Petrie of 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'

2012-05-23T18:00:00.000-04:00

Laura (Mary Tyler Moore), Richie (Larry Matthews), and Rob (Dick Van Dyke) in The Dick Van Dyke Show

This is a guest post from Caitlin Moran

Before Mary Tyler Moore tossed her beret to the Minneapolis sky as Mary Richards, she was the sunny princess of sitcom wives and mothers as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Laura Petrie was a different kind of TV mom. She was young, only 17 when she married on-screen husband Rob. She was perpetually fresh-faced, nimble-footed and smart, a perfect foil for the gangly, handsomely goofy Van Dyke. Laura was the young mother that young mothers wanted to be. I grew up watching reruns of Dick Van Dyke on TVLand with my parents, who had grown up watching it when it originally aired in the sixties, and we all could agree that Laura Petrie was the paragon of feminine charm.

Oh, and did I mention the capri pants? She wore capri pants. She not only wore them, but she rocked them. And she not only rocked them, but she was the first housewife to wear pants on television. The credit for that style decision goes to Moore, who has stated in interviews that while TV shows were constantly showing stay-at-home moms in dresses and aprons and heels, “woman don’t wear full-skirted dresses to vacuum in.” While it may be tempting to brush aside Laura Petrie’s forward-thinking style, her lack of skirt caused a minor flap with the network censors when the show first aired in 1961 (“but how will we know she’s a woman if she’s wearing the pants???” some capris-hating misogynists may have wondered). Laura Petrie’s signature look launched capris into the 1960s fashion zeitgeist, and earned her a spot in InStyle magazine’s Top Ten Most Stylish TV Housewives of All Time.

Laura and Rob Petrie had one child together, a son named Richie. Because Richie is in elementary school for the whole of the show, Laura’s role as a mother focuses on the challenges of raising a small child. She worries that he might be sick when he refuses a cupcake, and helps Rob explain why Richie’s middle name is Rosebud. (It’s an acronym for the names that their parents and grandparents suggested for the baby. Unsurprisingly, that was Rob’s idea.) In the episode “Girls Will Be Boys,” Richie comes home from school three days in a row with bruises on his face, and admits that a girl has been beating him up. After Rob’s visit to the suspected lady bully’s father turns up empty, Laura goes to the child’s house to get to the bottom of the strange beatings. After the girl’s mother insults and dismisses her, Laura refuses to leave until she’s said her piece. “You may not be the rudest person I’ve ever met,” she declares with her trademark quiver, “but you are certainly in the top two.” Door slam, and our girl storms off with the moral high ground and not a hair out of place in her perfect coif.

Laura was never afraid to stand up to her husband when Richie was involved. In the memorable episode “Is That My Boy??” Rob believes that he and Laura have brought home the wrong baby from the hospital. Laura, just days removed from giving birth, attempts to be the voice of reason to her emotionally overwrought husband and, when that fails, plants herself as a barricade in front of the cradle as Rob answers the door to let in the couple he believes took home his actual baby. The ending of the episode, of course, is the most famous of the entire series—the couple that Rob has invited over, the Peters, is black, and the surprise caused one of the longest uninterrupted laughs from a studio audience in sitcom history. Laura herself has a good laugh with Mr. and Mrs. Peters at Rob’s expense, and domestic peace is restored.

Laura pouring Richie a glass of milk

That doesn’t mean that The Dick Van Dyke Show’s treatment of Laura Petrie is without its problems. It is more or less assumed throughout the show that she is a mother and a housewife above everything else, leaving her former aspirations of a dancing career behind. In season three’s “My Part-Time Wife,” Rob is woefully unable to handle Laura stepping in as a secretary at his office, even though she performs her tasks at work deftly and still keeps up the house and supports Richie. When Rob throws a grown-man tantrum over her abilities, Laura apologizes and concedes that she has been “flaunting her successes.” Everyone groan on the count of three.

And the show isn’t exactly subtle when it compares Laura’s domestic bliss with Rob’s cowriter Sally’s romantic woes. Brash, hilarious single girl Sally’s search for a fella is a constant punch line for coworker Buddy, and a source of pity for Laura. Why oh why can’t Sally just find a nice man and have a kid or two of her own? It’s bad enough that Sally writes detailed letters about her cat, Mr. Henderson, to her Aunt Agnes in Cleveland, but does Mr. Henderson have to be named after a former fiancé? Do you have to kick her when she’s down? In many ways, The Dick Van Dyke Show is a product of its era, and its obvious glorification of Laura’s married motherhood over Sally’s career life speaks to a time before the women’s liberation movement, before NOW and Gloria Steinem and certainly before Mary Richards. The tension between career, marriage and motherhood has by no means disappeared (witness the recent debacle over Hilary Rosen’s criticisms of Ann Romney), but to see it played for laughs so openly is disheartening.

Though it has its faults, The Dick Van Dyke Show remains a monument to early-60s Kennedy-era optimism (in fact, the first episode aired on the very day Kennedy was sworn in as president), and no character represents the youthful promise of Camelot more than the Jackie-esque Laura Petrie. In his memoir Dick Van Dyke: My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business, Dick Van Dyke describes her charm thusly: “The first time I stood across from here in rehearsal and heard her say, “Oh, Rob!” I thought, That’s it, we’re home.”

Laura Petrie is a TV mom we’d all like to come home to.

Caitlin Moran is a graduate of Boston College with a degree in English and creative writing. After spending many years battling Western New York winters, she now lives in New York City with a cat and too many books for her apartment. Her work has appeared in the Women’s Media Center, Post Road, Pure Francis, the Susquehanna Review, Winds of Change magazine, HerCampus, and other outlets.

Motherhood in Film & Television: 'The Great Lie'

2012-05-23T15:00:00.001-04:00

The Great Lie (1941)

This is a guest post from Erin Blackwell

My mother used to sit me down to watch movies in front of a small black-and-white TV in our Southern California livingroom, not far from Hollywood, where she'd spent the happiest years of her childhood. Watching movies was part of a wide-ranging curriculum of aesthetic exercises she assigned my brothers and me. Not just any movie. The classics from MGM, the comedies from Paramount, an occasional noir from Warners. I've never been able to simply watch a movie like a normal person. I'm always evaluating the design elements, the performances, the script.

Bette Davis stars in The Great Lie

In 1941, when my mother was 17, the United States entered World War II and Warner Brothers released The Great Lie, starring Bette Davis and George Brent. Bette Davis was a great actress and George Brent was the only actor in Hollywood who hadn't gone away to war. Unthinkable today that an actor would put his high-priced face in harm's way but in 1941, the U.S. did not have a standing army, or a "volunteer" army of mercenaries, let alone private contractors. What was called “the war effort” included the publicity generated by the donning of uniforms by Hollywood stars, several of whom saw active duty.

There are two scenes in The Great Lie that made an indelible impression on my teenage psyche. One involves crossdressing, the other involves food, and both express the anxiety attached to giving birth and the difficulties modern women have integrating this biological imperative into an otherwise blithely artificial lifestyle. But mostly, these two scenes depict powerful moments of emotional intimacy between women in which conventional gender roles go out the window.

The Great Lie, despite its portentous title, was not part of the war effort, although George Brent's character, Pete, dons a uniform right after his wedding and flies off on a secret mission to a South American jungle. Pete's lackluster presence at movie's start and extended absence during movie's middle is characteristic of what was called "women's films," in which the man is merely a rag doll to be fought over by the real characters: female rivals who vie to possess him.

Mary Astor plays Sandra

Mary Astor, whose name is one-third the size of George Brent's (whose name is one-third the size of Bette Davis's — whose name is alone above the title) on the original poster, is the pivot point of this romantic triangle. She's better known for playing Brigid O'Shaughnessey opposite Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, a truly great film released the same year. Astor's particular cocktail of beauty, eroticism, class, emotivity, intelligence, weakness, and the febrile glamour synonymous with mental instability raise The Great Lie to the level of... what exactly? Something more exciting than it deserves to be, something operatic with the frisson of a tabloid. She won an Oscar for her performance.

Astor plays Sandra, the internationally acclaimed concert pianist, whose manager (Grant Mitchell) refers to her as Madame Kovac. Unthinkable today that a concert pianist could feature as a love interest in a Hollywood film but in the 40s, classical music was part of the national dialogue and every kid in Brooklyn was trying to get to Carnegie Hall. Astor is believable as a concert artist, although the script by Leonore Coffee (revised on set by Davis and Astor) trades in clichés about the artist's life. No matter. Astor brings an innate musicality to her scenes. Her voice, a rich contralto, is itself a stunning instrument.

The opening credits roll over a series of tightly framed shots of a woman's arms banging out Tchaikowsky's Piano Concerto Number One on a Baldwin, backed by a healthy string section. The piano is muscular, the ascending chords weighty, rhythmic, obsessive. The whole sequence establishes the beating heart of passion which is the source of the great lie. (Those aren't Astor's arms, but we do get some choice glimpses of her banging away at the keyboard. She brings to it the conviction of a trained pianist.)

The production values in this film, dynamically directed by Edmund Goulding, are uniformly excellent, from the supporting cast, to the sets, props, costumes and the kind of chiaroscuro lighting you only get from Warner's. Watching it for the umpteenth time, I was struck by the pacing, how the camera patiently tracks the actors. This approach is futile when filming George Brent, who has little to give, but pays off with Mary Astor, who has the reactivity of uranium. And, of course, Davis knows exactly what to feed the camera at all times. Starting with her famous eyes.

Maggie and Pete post-wedding

Exhibiting those characteristics considered essential to the life of a temperamental musician, Sandra marries Pete while they're both on a drunken spree, but the marriage is annulled post-consummation when it's revealed Sandra's divorce from her previous husband wasn't yet final. That frees a newly sober Pete to rush back into the arms of Maggie (Davis), his true love. They marry without delay but the rivalry continues when Sandra discovers she's pregnant. The fetus is considered a powerful bargaining chip in her attempt to recapture her runaway husband.

When Pete's plane's reported missing somewhere in the South American jungle, the great lie is concocted in the head of his wife Maggie, who sees a way to preserve Pete's only known earthly remains — his DNA — by getting his ex-wife to carry his child to term. In a stunning surrogate switcheroo, it's not the paternity but the maternity that's going to be in question. Maggie shows up at Sandra's Central Park apartment in full noir regalia: wide-body fur coat and oversized black hat. Sandra's in haute bohemian chic: a stunning floorlength black dressing-gown.

Maggie arrives at Sandra's apartment in suddenly-noir lighting

Sandra leans back on her white satin bed, cowed by the interloper's assertiveness. Maggie stands looking down at her and explains, "He left us two things in this world. I have his money. You might have his child. You're extravagant. You're a woman of the world, a public figure. Your piano, your success, they won't go on forever. None of us gets younger. Let me insure your future. And you ensure mine."

Sandra asks, "Your future?" Maggie says, "His child. That could be my future. And I'd make you secure financially always." Sandra considers this, then says softly, "Money." Maggie says, "Yes." Sandra shakes her head dismissively. "It's so completely mad." Exactly what the audience is thinking.

Fifty minutes in, we're at the heart of the matter: an extended showdown between virtuous wife Maggie and vicious baby mama Sandra. Implicit to the great lie is the thwarting of an abortion but that precise issue is never raised. This kid's life only has meaning as an extension of Pete's. That's the one thing these two women can agree on. They love that man!

Their car arriving at the Arizona safe house

This scene kicks off twenty minutes of high histrionic and low comedic bliss as Bette convinces Sandra to hide out in a clapboard house in the Arizona desert, surrounded by dust and cactus, serviced by an untraveled road. Scenes of delicious intimacy suddenly erupt as the actresses sink their teeth into their new roles-within-roles. None of this would work with lesser actresses playing for laughs or, worse, camp. There's a same-sex erotic undercurrent a mile wide to these domestic scenes, under a thin frosting of glamour puss personality. Astor unleashes a volatile vulnerability which Davis parries with pugnacious charm. And I'm suddenly reminded of a similar set-up in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), where Bette Davis dominates the wheelchair-bound Joan Crawford. That's the late-career, Grand Guignol version.

Maggie deploys wifely know-how to tend the tempestuous Sandra, grown crankier in a terrycloth bathrobe through forced isolation, dietary restrictions, and the gratingly upbeat companionship of her arch rival. But is Maggie the wife or the husband? She runs errands for Sandra in town. She monitors her cigarette smoking, unsuccessfully. She even keeps her from eating a pickle during a middle-of-the-night fridge raid. This scene is unique in the canon, for the pathetic self-abasement Astor offers up in her quest for a ham sandwich.

Maggie relents and cuts a slice of ham for Sandra

Awakened by a wind storm, Maggie's attracted by the light under the door to the kitchen. She enters and finds Sandra, frozen in dread, like a mouse cornered by a cat. Maggie gestures to the table full of food. "Sandra. Ham, onion, butter. Everything the doctor said you couldn't have. What have you got behind your back? Come on. Hand it over." Sandra puts a jar on the table. "Pickles. Oh, Sandra." Sandra answers, "Yes, pickles. I like them. I want them. I'm sick and tired of doing without things I want. You and that doctor with your crazy ideas of what I can and what I can't eat. You're starving me." The martyred Sandra practically sings her lines. "I'm not one of you anemic creatures who can get nourishment from a lettuce leaf. I'm a musician. I'm an artist. I have zest and appetite and I like food. I've being lying awake in there thinking about food and now I'm going to have it." So Maggie gives in and makes her a sandwich.

Maggie alone on the deck, awaiting the birth of the baby

The greatest transgressive thrill comes when the country doctor arrives to deliver the baby. Maggie's prowling around in men's slacks and loafers, odd man out at this female ritual. When the doctor says he's used to having the father around, nervously wondering when the baby'll be born, he's describing Maggie. Then he closes the door to the bedroom, shutting her out of this women's mystery. Virile Maggie can't sit still but goes out onto the deck, alone in the night, smoking and pacing like a guy until that universal signal, a baby's cry, summons her back inside. Women, too, can be fathers! She enters the bedroom only long enough to eyeball Junior. This baby is an abstract goal for Maggie and Davis is not a convincing mom.

Sandra playing Chopin, dressed to impress

I don't think it'll spoil the movie for you to reveal that Pete is not dead and that his resurrection as a plot point reignites the women's rivalry. The Great Lie is nothing if not a primer in how to get melodramatic mileage out of a baby. That's when Pete surprises us all by declaring that he prefers a childless Maggie to a babied-up Sandra. Like the judgement of Solomon, this remark reveals the identity of the "true" mother, Maggie, who, while not the biological parent, is the one who wants to keep the kid. To cover her humiliation, Sandra sits down at the baby grand and starts banging out the same concerto we heard under the opening titles. We’re back where we started.

Violet (Hattie McDaniel) leads the celebration

The one big glaring no-no smack in the middle of The Great Lie is Hattie McDaniel’s reprise of her role of Mammy from Gone With the Wind (1939). They’ve changed her name to Violet, but her function is the same. Treating Maggie the way she treated Scarlett O'Hara (a role Davis famously fought for and lost to Vivienne Leigh) only makes sense within a regressive, racist fantasy. It’s mind-boggling to watch the scenes of happy blacks celebrating their mistress’s wedding. Did anything remotely resembling that world exist in 1941? Because it sure doesn’t exist now. But then, The Great Lie is a time capsule full of outmoded conventions. Which is what makes it so fascinating.

Erin Blackwell reviewed films for the Bay Area Reporter in San Francisco. She just finished writing a play. Her blog is Pinkrush.com.

Motherhood in Film and Television: Phoebe in Wonderland

2012-05-23T12:00:00.000-04:00

This review of Phoebe in Wonderland, by Stephanie Rogers, first appeared at Bitch Flicks on September 14, 2009.

Movie poster for Phoebe in Wonderland

For a film that wants to explore the difficulties of marriage and motherhood and, essentially, what it means to exist as a woman in a society that places so many demands on wives and mothers, I found it disconcerting to say the least that this film only barely passes the Bechdel Test. If it weren't for one scene, where Felicity Huffman's character, Hillary Lichten, engages in a brief conversation about her daughter, Phoebe, (played by Elle Fanning) with her daughter's drama teacher, Miss Dodger, (played by Patricia Clarkson), then this entire movie, a movie about women, would plod along without one woman ever speaking to another woman.

imdb plot summary: The movie focuses on an exceptional young girl whose troubling retreat into fantasy draws the concern of both her dejected mother and her unusually perceptive drama teacher. Phoebe is a talented young student who longs to take part in the school production of Alice in Wonderland, but whose bizarre behavior sets her well apart from her carefree classmates.

Well, on the surface, the movie is about Phoebe and her struggle to fit in with her peers. But it quickly turns into an examination of motherhood and parenting in general, when Phoebe's odd behavior gradually worsens: she spits at classmates, she obsessively repeats words and curses involuntarily, she washes her hands to the point that they bleed—and she explains to her parents over and over again that she can't help it. However, her mother (and father), being academic writer-types (Hillary is actually attempting to finish her dissertation on Alice in Wonderland), merely choose to see their daughter as nothing more than eccentric and imaginative.

The caretaker role falls exclusively to Hillary. She's a stay-at-home mom trying to write a book while also attempting to care for two young daughters. While her struggle to play The Good Mom definitely lends sympathy to her character—I mean, honestly, what the hell is a good mom?—I couldn't help but despise her selfishness and blatant disregard for Phoebe's needs. Even though both parents decide to (finally) get Phoebe into therapy, it's Hillary who refuses to accept the doctor's diagnosis, even going so far as to remove Phoebe from therapy, deliberately hiding the diagnosis from her husband.

The problem here, and where the movie most succeeds, is that Hillary feels alone as a parent. She believes that her children's struggles will ultimately reflect poorly on her as The Good Mom, and she even says at one point that she doesn't want her daughter to be "less than." Obviously, we live in a society that mandates the over-the-top importance of living up to an unattainable standard of proper mothering (see: any celebrity mother and the scrutiny she faces, with barely a mention of celebrity fathers), and Hillary definitely effectively represents that unattainable standard.

The movie also successfully portrays the societal trend of the working father: he pokes his head in when necessary, checking in on his daughters, and demonstrating just the right balance between quirky annoyance at their neediness and curiosity about their daily lives—he shows up to parent/teacher conferences, he consoles Phoebe when she gets in trouble at school, and he genuinely wants to participate; he's just not required to maintain the role of The Good Dad—it doesn't exist.

Click here to read the rest of the review.

Motherhood in Film & Television: Spawning the World: Motherhood in 'Game of Thrones'

2012-05-23T09:45:00.002-04:00

Game of Thrones

This piece by Rachel Redfern is cross-posted with permission from Not Another Wave.

Game of Thrones is the buzzword for this season's TV community: the backbiting, the plotting, the violence, the sex (which everyone is discussing). What horrific plot twist will the Lannisters think of next, we wonder out loud?

So I won’t really talk about those things, because to my mind, those aspects of the show have been reviewed by dozens of worthy reviewers: The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Mary Sue and Bitch Flicks, just to name a few. (If you’re not really sure of the plot or premise of the movie, you should definitely Wikipedia it, as I’m not really going to talk about that here, considering that so many other reviewers and websites have already provided a synopsis for it.)

One of the aspects that struck me in the show though, is the portrayal of motherhood. Far from being absent or swept to the side, the film’s mothers are a driving force in the plot development and are some of the most multi-dimensional of the series (credit has to be given to the actresses who play them).

There are thee instances of motherhood being portrayed here: Cercei and Lady Arryn’s obsessive, spoiling, “my child is a god” kind of motherhood, Lady Stark’s “good mom” style, and lastly, the Dothraki queen Daenerys Targaryen’s pregnancy where she is worshipped by her people.

Lady Arryn is mentally unstable, we can see that. Hell, the other characters can see that and are sending concerned glances to each other whenever she speaks and this outlandish behavior is most noticeable in regards to her son. Her child is a picture-perfect example (almost a caricature) of the spoiled child—the kind of spoiled child who still nurses at the age of ten (which, no matter what you say, is always weird). Her kind of motherhood, the indulgent nothing-is-wrong-with my child is interesting in that it also coincides with her isolation, as her castle is one that is almost completely cut-off from the world.

It’s a common trope, the mother who does everything for her son, so much so that we never see outside of the role of mother. She appears to have nothing else in her life and so instead showers him with inappropriate attention.

There is another example of spoiling a child, one in which the child is in the later stages of his aberrant and spoiled behavior. Lady Cersei, though, is a different kind of mother from the unstable and isolated Lady Arryn. Cersei is the mother to a prince, and then later to a king, and her kind of mothering seems to revolve around the difficult lifestyle of maintaining power for her son and, therefore, for her. It’s a selfish sort of spoiling, one in which the son is used as a way to protect the mothers status, a situation she is able to maintain by creating an “Us vs. Them” mentality in the cruel Joffrey.

In both instances, their treatment of their children is one way that the case for their “evilness” is created; it appears that the road to creating an evil female character is to highlight the way that she uses her children, in that here, the children become a mirror for the mother. It’s a common trope, motherhood being the most unselfish of occupations and perhaps the most revered, therefore in order for a woman to be truly evil, she must also be a bad mother.

So two examples of bad motherhood, one completely consumed by her child, the other only consumed by her child because of the power and status it offers her, both characters however revealed by their relationship to their children (something I find a little frustrating, personally).

Then there is the nice mother; there always has to be a nice mom. Someone who legitimately cares for her children and does her best to offer them a stable and happy home, free from a “take whatever you want” kind of attitude, and while that is how the lovely Lady Stark begins (every time someone says Stark in the show though, I totally think of Iron Man and subsequently, Robert Downey Jr.; it’s a happy thought), she ends up being a very different kind of mother.

I find it interesting that she decides to join her oldest son Robb on the battlefield and become his most valuable diplomat and negotiator, scoring him alliances and armies at every turn. It’s possibly the most unique portrayal of motherhood in the show, in that it morphs from kindly lady sitting by the fire, watching her sick child, to wartime confidant and adviser. The Lady Stark pounds around on her white horse, offering counsel to her son, but also taking his commands as she rushes into hostile camps and offers a truce here and a daughter there in exchange for a few more soldiers. It’s a very different kind of motherhood, one that is loving, but ultimately becomes a bit harder when she begins to bargain off her children (giving Arya to one of Lord Frey’s sons and Robb to one of his daughters) in order to keep them safe, and even to get what she wants: a little revenge for her husbands death.

I suppose you can therefore read it two ways: Lady Stark is merely caught between a rock and a hard place and is doing what she must in order to protect them, or she, like the other mothers, is willing to use her children in order to fulfill her own selfish ends. I’ll let you decide in her case.

The last instance of motherhood is rather short-lived and consists mostly of pregnancy; I’m referring to the delicate-turned-fiery (literally) Daenerys Targaryen and her unborn son. Daenerys is queen (by marriage) of the Dothraki, a war-like, horse-loving people of nomads and once she gets pregnant with a son (it’s always a son) she becomes an object of worship for her people. Her ability to become impregnated elevates and causes an outpouring of love for her amongst her people, a circumstance that I see repeated often in films and even in our society.

The worship of fertility has a huge place in our history: fertility gods, fertility idols, fertility rites are everywhere as a symbol of the divine power inherent in childbirth. Now, I am not a mother, I’ve never had children, but I see it even today, the belief that the pregnant lady can do no wrong (believe me friends, she can); I’m not trying to belittle this situation, or even criticize it, merely pointing out it’s prevalence in our society.

In the scene above, Daenerys is kneeling on a dais, surrounded by people cheering her name, while she eats a raw horse heart as a power ritual designed to give her son strength. Daenerys is in positioned above everyone else as she takes on the divine mother role; she is to be the deliverer of a mighty new son and ruler, a vessel of the future.

However, I find this problematic sometimes, as it seems to suggest that Daenerys’ worth is directly tied to her ability to be used by something else (in this case, her child). Though perhaps that analogy doesn’t work in this situation as she ends up sacrificing her own son’s life in order to save her husband. So again, in this series, the child becomes something to be used in order to achieve her own ends.

On a depressing note, I guess what I’m saying is, the mothers in Game of Thrones are not very nice mothers.

Rachel Redfern has an MA in English literature, where she conducted research on modern American literature and film and it’s intersection, however she spends most of her time watching HBO shows, traveling, and blogging and reading about feminism.

Motherhood in Film & Television: Sherrybaby

2012-05-22T18:00:00.000-04:00

Maggie Gyllenhall in Sherrybaby

This is a guest review by Gabriella Apicella.

In all areas of our lives, women are neatly packaged into stereotypes that strip us of complexity and personality. Dating back to the original typecasting of Virgin vs Whore, there are other labels that fall along the same trajectory, just as inadequate and inaccurate: Wife, Mother, Slut, Gold-digger, Victim, House-wife, Lesbian, Office Bitch, etc. All of these unhelpful words have been embodied by countless depictions in film, from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” to “The Devil Wears Prada,” to “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” So much so, that there appear to be very defined ideas in society of how any one of these characters may or may not behave.

What is so extraordinary about “Sherrybaby” is the main character is so completely rounded and real that she bursts free from the predictable constraints imposed by stereotypes. The film follows Sherry Swanson, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, as she tries to reconnect with her daughter after being released from prison. Yet although this provides the main motivation for virtually everything she does in the film, writer and director Laurie Collyer has brought to the screen a female character who is not just a passionate mother, not just a recovering addict, not just a victim of abuse, not just a sexually confident woman, not just a sweet primary school teacher, but ALL of these things.

Maggie Gyllenhaal in Sherrybaby

Even within my own circle of friends I have had conversations where they have expressed concern about how they should or should not behave now that they have become mothers. This revered state of Motherhood has them calling into question how much they should now drink, have sex, enjoy their careers: clearly something is very wrong if women are feeling that they are not free to be themselves, because they have become a mother. Other friends have confided to losing close friends since having a child – as if they are perceived as not even being the same person anymore!

Flaws within a mother are almost inexcusable by society: how dare they drink, have sex, work, put anyone but their child first 24 hours a day every day for the rest of their lives! Film and society at large have both upheld this unattainable expectation of virtuous behaviour, giving transgressors the harshest of punishments. In film “bad mothers” tend to end up dead, alone or insane, whereas the rates of women being imprisoned is climbing at an extraordinary rate, with nearly two-thirds of the prison population being mothers.

Director Laurie Collyer with Maggie Gyllenhaal

Watching the painstaking journey Sherry Swanson takes in “Sherrybaby” is almost unbearably moving at times. Her resolve to be with her child is steadfast throughout, yet as she makes attempts to reconnect with her, the audience is also shown the different sides to her personality; sexual, troubled, playful, over-sensitive, kind, immature, ruthless, Gyllenhaal’s performance is nuanced and raw.

Whilst she explodes into a violent rage at one of the bullying women harassing her in a halfway-house, she maintains her composure and diplomacy with the far more painful handling of a conversation with her sister-in-law, who has instructed Sherry’s daughter to call her Sherry instead of “Mom.” When her child Alexis appears to be scared of her, and is reluctant to spend a day with her, Sherry never loses her patience, and only displays love and tenderness to the child; entirely at odds with her declaration at an interview “I’ll suck your dick if you give me the job I want.”

Director of Sherrybaby, Laurie Collyer

There is no straightforward way to describe this character, as all the contrasting facets of Sherry’s personality are evident, and yet she remains consistent. Perhaps this has been the quandary of filmmakers, and the reason for stereotypes: how is it possible to reconcile so many different characteristics into one person? So “Moms” (and let’s face it, Women) are wholesome and good, or crazy and bad. But people are multi-faceted, as are Moms, and the sensationally real depiction of Sherry by Laurie Collyer demonstrates expertly that there is no need for the two-dimensional predictability we are used to from female roles.

Without using over-egged sentimentality, Collyer even affords Sherry the possibility of happiness, showing that despite her drug-taking, sexual misadventures and lack of parenting skills, she deserves a second chance. This compassion is certainly missing from film depictions of women, and is all too often missing from wider society also. Both must change so that women may smash through the stereotypes.

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Gabriella Apicella is a feminist writer and tutor living in London, England. She has a degree in Film and Media from Birkbeck College, University of London, is on the board of Script Development organisation Euroscript, and in 2010 co-founded the UnderWire Festival that aims to recognise the raw filmmaking talent of women. Her writing features women in the central roles, and she has been commissioned to write short films, experimental theatre and prose for independent directors and artists.

Motherhood in Film & Television: The Evolution of Margaret White

2012-05-22T15:00:00.000-04:00

Piper Laurie and Sissy Spacek (1976 film)

This piece is from Monthly Contributor Carrie Nelson.

(Warning: Contains spoilers about Stephen King’s Carrie and its film and stage adaptations.)

I love Stephen King’s Carrie, and not just because we share the same name. More than anything, I love the way that Carrie honestly explores the tensions and horrors of being a teenage girl. The details of the story aren’t terribly realistic – not many teenage outcasts have telekinetic powers, and few high school send-offs involve murdering everyone at the prom. But the anxiety around getting your first period, the fear that the boy asking you on a date is only doing it as a prank, the compulsion to make fun of others even though you know it’s wrong – these are normal parts of being a teenager. King’s book taps into those experiences incredibly well, which is why the story has resulted in numerous artistic adaptations.

Carrie was first made into a film in 1976. Since then, it has become a stage musical, a made-for-TV movie, and it will soon be made into a new film, directed by Kimberly Peirce and starring Chloë Moretz in the title role. Every adaptation of Carrie contains similar elements (notably the torturous shower scene in the beginning and the fatal prom toward the end), but other aspects of the story change slightly in each incarnation. What I want to talk about today are the ways in which the character of Margaret White, Carrie’s religious fundamentalist mother, has evolved over the years. Margaret is arguably the most frightening character in Carrie, and I believe that she has only become more disturbing in each new incarnation, but for a different reason than one might suspect.

In the 1976 Brian De Palma adaptation, Piper Laurie plays Margaret. Laurie’s interpretation of the role is iconic, but something about the performance has always rung false to me. Laurie’s Margaret is loud and bombastic and evil, to a degree that’s almost campy. In particular, the scene in which Margaret dies is significantly different from King’s novel. In the book, Carrie uses her telekinetic powers to stop Margaret’s heart, but in the De Palma film, Carrie uses her powers to send knives flying at Margaret, crucifying her and mimicking the imagery of Saint Sebastian that torments Carrie throughout the film. It’s an unforgettable image, and given the visual nature of cinema, it makes sense that this particular detail would be modified from the book. (It’s important to note, however, that the De Palma adaptation is the only version with this ending – all others I’ve seen remain true to King’s original ending.) However, the excessive spectacle of the scene (and the film as a whole) lessens the emotional impact. Laurie’s Margaret is shocking and disturbing, but there’s an emotional element missing from the performance, which has always bothered me.

Marin Mazzie and Molly Ranson (2012 musical revival)

I saw the 1976 version of Carrie for the first time nearly five years ago, and it wasn’t until recently that I realized what doesn’t work for me about Laurie’s performance – it’s entirely one-dimensional. It’s cartoonish, even. It’s hard to be frightened by Laurie’s Margaret when she seems so unlike any mother who could realistically exist. But that isn’t how the character has to be. I thought about this in March, when I saw the MCC Theater’s Off-Broadway revival of the Carrie musical. Now, I did not see the original version of the musical, which opened on Broadway in 1988 and closed after only five performances, making it one of the biggest Broadway flops of all time. I cannot speak to that version, but I can speak to the heavily revised revival, in which Marin Mazzie played an unnervingly sympathetic version of Margaret. Though the story is the same, and Margaret is still deeply disturbed and abusive, there is a greater emphasis on Margaret’s inner struggle and the reality that she truly wants to help her daughter. In the second act, Margaret sings, “When There’s No One,” a moving ballad that reveals her intention to murder her daughter and the despair she feels about that decision. Rather than solely seeing Margaret’s evil and rage, in this version we see her rationalization. We see a fully developed character, a person who truly believes she is making the right decision, which makes the decision even more horrifying. There is nothing cartoonish about Mazzie’s Margaret, which made her far more terrifying than Laurie’s Margaret ever could be.

Patricia Clarkson (2002 made-for-TV movie)

I feel similarly about Patricia Clarkson’s interpretation of Margaret in the 2002 made-for-TV movie version. In a dramatic shift from Laurie’s excitable reading, Clarkson nearly whispers all of her dialogue. Clarkson’s Margaret is completely understated, so much so that you almost believe she might come around and change her mind about her daughter. Of course, she doesn’t, and the scene in which Margaret tries to kill Carrie is shocking not because of the spectacle but because it catches you off-guard. This isn’t to say that the 2002 Carrie isn’t filled with spectacle – it is, sometimes to a distracting degree. But Clarkson’s performance as Margaret remains the calm, quiet element of the film, making her ultimate act of violence against her daughter all the more frightening.

Kimberly Peirce’s highly anticipated remake of Carrie will be released in 2013. Little has been revealed about Peirce’s plans and vision, but Chloë Moretz promises the film “really looks into the relationship of Margaret and Carrie.” Julianne Moore recently signed on to play Margaret, a decision that makes me incredibly excited and anxious to see the film. I believe Moore will be able to add subtlety and nuance to the role, adding layers to Margaret’s character that have never been present before. I look forward to reading more about the film and Moore’s work on it as it enters production.

I recently spoke with a friend who said that she didn’t think Carrie should be remade. She said the original is good enough as it is, so why change it? While I agree that the 1976 version is a classic, and nothing will ever replace it in cinematic history, I do think that much more can be done with the story. Particularly, I believe Margaret has much more room to grow as a character, and if the 2002 television film and the 2012 stage adaptation tell us anything, it’s that Margaret’s horror doesn’t come from her anger and violence – it comes from the completely calm way in which she rationalizes her beliefs and her actions. I hope to see Peirce’s version take Margaret even further as a character. I don’t know what that will look like, but I am anxious to find out.

Fan-designed poster for upcoming remake

Carrie Nelson is a Bitch Flicks monthly contributor. She was a Staff Writer for Gender Across Borders, an international feminist community and blog that she co-founded in 2009. She works as a grant writer for an LGBT nonprofit, and she is currently pursuing an MA in Media Studies at The New School.

Motherhood in Film & Television: 'Rosemary's Baby'

2012-05-22T12:00:00.000-04:00

This is a guest post from Erin Fenner.

Rosemary’s Baby, the Roman Polanski 1968 adaptation of the novel with the same name, uses minimal effects. While it is a horror story about the mother of Satan’s child, we only briefly glimpse the arm and eyes of the feature’s supposed monster. And, while the plot against Rosemary is conceived by a coven of witches, we don’t see bubbling potions. That is because Rosemary’s Baby is not a horror story about Satan or witchcraft.

Rosemary’s Baby is a horror story about being a woman.

Watch the trailer:

Rosemary, played by the waifish Mia Farrow, is a young woman excited for her role as wife and soon-to-be mother. But, even in her acceptance and celebration of traditional gender roles she is exploited, robbed of autonomy, discounted as hysterical and ultimately must give up all control of herself and her body.

Sound familiar? That’s because her terrors are real ones with just a dash of supernatural motivations.

We meet Rosemary when she and her husband, Guy, played by John Cassavetes, decide to move into a new apartment house. She is the picture of a cheerful stay-at-home wife – taking pleasure in decorating the house, filled with bubbling optimism and one who enjoys pleasing her husband. All she wants beyond her currently cozy situation is to become a mother.

She gets her wish when Guy, an ambitious actor, declares he’s ready to be a dad. The audience learns quickly that his motivations aren’t rooted in a comparable desire for fatherhood, but because he’s made a pact with peculiar neighbors we later discover are witches. He gets a shot at success if he delivers them a baby.

While the viewer can deduce this easily, we never see the world from anyone’s perspective but Rosemary’s. We spend most of the film cooped up with her, claustrophobic and powerless, in the apartment house.

The conception of Rosemary’s baby happens in a particularly brutal way – through rape. Guy drugs his wife and takes her to a ritual to be impregnated by Satan. Rosemary is semi-conscious and cries out, “This is no dream – this is really happening!” And, when she wakes up the next morning, Guy casually mentions that he had sex with her while she was sleeping. So, even though upon waking she concludes the rape was a dream, she still considers the conception of her baby as one derived through non-consensual sex. Her first step toward motherhood is one where she is deprived the right to control her own body.

Her journey into motherhood is further hijacked by Guy and her witch-neighbors who insist on her going to a different doctor – one we learn is part of the Satanist coven. Her new doctor, Dr. Sapirstein, played by Ralph Bellamy, demands she ignores the advice of her friends and books, and only listen to his instructions. Whenever she expresses concern about her pregnancy, he shoots her perspective down and shames her for self-education.

Rosemary (Mia Farrow)

We see the already thin Rosemary develop pronounced dark shadows under her eyes and become emaciated. She says she’s in a constant state of pain. It’s only when, during a party with her peers, that she is validated by other women. One of her friends even pushes Guy out of the room so that they can express their support and concern. It’s from this very brief exchange with her friends, where they insist her pain is abnormal, that Rosemary is empowered and encouraged to change doctors and take charge of her own health.

This empowerment is short-lived, because she gives up after a fight with Guy and her pain eases up. She relinquishes to her husband and her body.

Her small rebellions against others’ attempts to control her body – like not drinking the drink her witch-neighbors prepare for her – cease. She falls easily into passivity until she reads a book left to her by an old friend who we can presume was murdered by the coven next door.

The book details the history of the coven that had lived in her apartment house generations before, and helps her conclude that her pregnancy is central to a plot devised by her neighbors, husband and doctor.

With this new realization Rosemary rushes to her old obstetrician, Dr. Hill, played by Charles Grodin, to seek help. After pleading with him for assistance, Dr. Hill brings her into a room for rest, but then returns with Guy and Dr. Sapirstein to sedate her and take her away. She is dismissed as being a hysterical woman: pre-partum.

The next scenes are delirious. Rosemary is sedated, and when awake she attempts to make demands, but is denied. And, when she gives birth, she is not allowed to see her baby and is deceived about its condition.

Rosemary’s only motivation now is centered on her motherhood. It’s the only power she can claim. So, after recovering from giving birth, she sneaks around her apartment house, and finds a hidden passage to the witch-neighbors. There she finds the coven surrounding a satanic crib.

The scene is almost anti-climactic. There is no struggle and no high drama speeches. Rosemary discovers her baby is a monster – the son of Satan. She learns the truth – her husband and neighbors were plotting against her. And then, she resigns herself. She has already lost control of her body long ago and has nothing left but her role as a mother.

Rosemary lives up perfectly to the norm of womanhood. Unlike the women who we begrudgingly expect to be punished in films because they are promiscuous, independent, “bitchy” or uninterested in family life – we would expect Rosemary’s story to pan out positively because she adheres to gendered expectations.

But, Rosemary’s Baby is not a film meant to encourage a fearful narrative about the value of following prescribed roles – instead it is about a woman who is victimized by the very gender roles she had enthusiastically accepted. Rosemary accepts her societal role as a woman. Still, she is punished and suffers. And, because it is so close to reality, it is horrifying.

Erin Fenner is a legislative intern and blogger for Trust Women: advocating for the reproductive rights of women in conservative Midwestern states. She also writes for the Trust Women blog and manages their social media networks. She graduated from the University of Idaho with a B.S. in Journalism.

Motherhood in Film & Television: Three Generations of Mothering on 'The Gilmore Girls'

2012-05-22T09:12:00.000-04:00

Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham)

This is a guest post from Megan Ryland.

For me, no television mother springs to mind faster than Lorelai Gilmore of the long running show The Gilmore Girls. In fact, what is arguably so special about the show is that it offers a popular mainstream venue to focus on mothering, and especially the challenges of mother/daughter relationships. Of course mothers are a constant feature in the media (how else would mothers know how to behave!?) but teenagers are rarely depicted as having a positive relationship with their mother. Rory and Lorelai have a tight bond that remains the central focus of the show despite relationship drama for both mother and daughter. They also bring in the dual roles of mother and daughter when Lorelai interacts with her own mother, Emily.

Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel)

Lauren Graham plays Lorelai, an over-caffeinated, high energy manager of a successful inn. As her daughter Rory, Alexis Bledel is a teenager striving more for a Harvard acceptance letter than a date, who has inside jokes with her mother, and clearly thrives in this single mother household. Lorelai’s status as a single mother is important because we are reminded time and time again that Lorelai has created a life that she (and her daughter, and the rest of the townsfolk) finds satisfying and valuable. This is a very different portrayal of the consequences of teenage motherhood.

Although coming from money and privilege, Lorelai left behind the trust fund life when she had Rory at 16. She rejected her parent’s assistance, refused to marry Rory’s dad, and struck out on her own. This further soured Lorelai’s already poor relationship with her own mother, Emily Gilmore, but has not led to Lorelai being a “Bad Mother.” There are many factors that allow for this, including racial, geographic, cultural, class, etc. For example, as a young white woman with the cultural capital of high class status, Lorelai is able to dodge stereotypes and the accompanying discrimination that a young woman of colour and/or low socioeconomic standing might face. This is an unspoken advantage that may allow viewers to accept Lorelai as a successful single mother. However, I still believe that the representation of Lorelai as a mother who has done a great job raising a child without the aid of huge financial resources or a masculine figure is a major plus for the show. And of course her position as a single mother remains difficult. In fact, the impetus of the show is that the lack of financial resources for Rory’s schooling brings all three generations of Gilmores back together, because Lorelai asks her parents to help pay for Rory’s elite education and in exchange her parents re-enter her life.

Movie night with the Gilmore Girls

Rory and Lorelai have a very complex relationship. Rory is occasionally mothering Lorelai, but it is never a permanent role. Superior experience is always on Lorelai’s side and she is able to act as mentor to Rory as she grows up. Lorelai doesn’t always advise her in the most conventional ways, but I would argue that she rarely verges into juvenile territory while parenting. Her temperament is youthful, while Rory’s is much more mature for her age, but they remain a mother/daughter team, and a best friendship. Again, this sort of bond is rare. I think that it’s valuable for a show on a network aimed at young people (WB and then CW) to contain positive relationships between parent and child.

In the first season, they deal with questions of how Lorelai can date as a mother, and how she can share the space that she has carved out for herself and Rory with a romantic partner. This is an important question, and one that is realistically complicated (of course, it’s also made unreasonably complicated by the necessary hijinks of television). Lorelai and Rory are given scenes where they discuss their needs, desires and challenges. Furthermore, Lorelai is accepted as a sexual being who can also be a good mother. I would call that a win.

What is arguably more common on television is the relationship between Lorelai and her mother, Emily Gilmore. Many rants and screaming matches are conducted between them, as their relationship appears based in constant misunderstandings. However, despite estrangement and resentment, the relationship between Emily and Lorelai is arguably never unsalvageable. No one can really write off this bond, because Emily and/or Lorelai occasionally show that they do indeed care for and value one another.

Emily Gilmore (Kelly Bishop)

Emily is first seen as a stereotypical suffocating, judgmental, harpy of an older mother, except when she becomes vulnerable and shows that she works hard to keep up appearances. She is bedridden when Lorelai runs away, she attends her granddaughter’s 16th birthday despite hurt feelings, and most of all, she is concerned that she might lose her family. She is far more complex than the typical older woman caricature and Kelly Bishop does a fantastic job with the role. Viewers can potentially sympathize with Emily’s ideals (often a product of her time and upbringing) and her feelings of exclusion from her daughter and granddaughter’s lives, even if they can’t identify with her strategies for keeping them close. At the same time, fans can also understand why Lorelai ran from the privileged life that she had grown up with, as well as the difficulties that accompanied that choice.

Arguably Emily was a type of lone parent, as Lorelai’s father was a typical career man who barely had time to put down the paper or end the conference call for meals. Although Emily was privileged to have a number of servants and nannies at her disposal, the fathering provided by Mr. Gilmore appears to have been very limited. As the most involved parent by far, Emily’s mothering has not fostered an obvious bond, showing that this connection is not inevitable. What Rory and Lorelai have takes work and is very special. It’s not a natural given.

The show allows for an exploration of motherhood from a variety of angles. An important aspect is the interplay between the daughter and mother roles. Throughout its many seasons, all three Gilmore women are placed in daughter and mothering roles. For example, in one scene in the first season, Rory is missing after a dance and Emily accuses Lorelai of raising a child as wild and irresponsible as herself. Lorelai defends Rory and says that she trusts her daughter, acting as a daughter herself in a situation with her mother. However, when Emily leaves and a contrite Rory appears, Lorelai acts as the mother terrified for her missing child and admonishes Rory. The transition between daughter and mother happens in a few minutes and it’s not only beautifully acted, but also representative of the dual(+) roles that many mothers play. You are never just a mother. You are also a daughter, whether or not your mother is always present. You parent with a history as a child. It’s a fantastic scene and shows part of the complexity of a mother’s role.

Three generations of Gilmore Girls

The interactions between Emily, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore make the show Gilmore Girls a unique offering. Rarely do popular shows for young people focus on the relationships between generations of women, or the role (and challenges) of contemporary mothering. Race and class issues abound in the show, which should be unpacked, but as a forum for understanding some aspects of mothering and honouring mother/daughter bonds, Gilmore Girls is fantastic.

Megan Ryland is currently completing her BA, focusing on politics, women and gender. She writes about feminism, body image, and media analysis on her blog, http://beautyvsbeast.wordpress.com. She also releases the weekly show Hello City! Culture Cast, a Vancouver-based podcast that reviews movies, theatre, concerts and more.

Motherhood in Film & Television: 'Carrie'

2012-05-21T15:03:00.002-04:00

Jamie Lynne Grumet on Time

Recently there’s been major hullabaloo about Jamie Lynne Grumet, the 26-year-old California mom who proudly posed on the cover of Time magazine breastfeeding her 3-year-old son. Ridiculed, condemned and completely unorthodox, this shocking image continues to reverberate across the globe.

A similar effigy from the 1976 film Carrie has lingered in our minds for more than three decades. It’s near the end of the movie, when religious momster Margaret White (Piper Laurie) is at the end of her rope trying to jam some fundamentalist sense in her terribly feeble-minded teenage daughter, Carrie (Sissy Spacek).

For several minutes she’s imploring one strict value after the next on Carrie, desperately teaching her to repent for the sin she has committed. But when her daughter needs her the most, she is knee-deep in a sermon trying to shelter her from all the evil in the world. In a fit of rage, her telekinetic daughter mind-hurls several knives at her, stapling her to the wall in a perfect crucifixion. Her head tilted to her right in blissful silence.

“I should've killed myself when he put it in me…. I should've given you to God when you were born, but I was weak and backsliding, and now the devil has come home.”

A crucified Mrs. White

One could discern that Mrs. White was taken out of her misery, which enveloped her throughout her adult life and suffocated her maternal instincts. Or did it?

Often times we are quick to judge parents—especially mothers—whose values and beliefs differ from our own. We deify figures like Angelina Jolie as Mother Theresa or sacrifice them as we do both Jamie and Margaret. But both sides have their own story, and they both think they’re right.

On the surface, it’s so easy to criticize Margaret. But there is something so inherently evil yet desperately loving about Laurie’s pitch-perfect performance of the religion-stricken single mother. You know she wants what she thinks is best for her child, like all great mothers do. But she’s too terrified—or terrifying?—to really consider what she’s saying. She wanted Carrie to be God-fearing, like herself. She wanted her to not suffer the tainted feeling of self-disgust with which she was burdened every day. In essence, she wanted her daughter’s life to be better than her own, by not making the same mistakes she did.

But when Mrs. White saw her daughter developing breasts and getting her period, and even receiving interest to attend the prom, her maternal preference overwhelmed her. She had to intervene before her Carrie ended up shameful, deflowered and ungodly like she had become. It was imperative.

Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie in Carrie

However, she could never really convey her true intentions to Carrie. It was always about what Carrie shouldn’t be doing, even when Carrie herself couldn’t fully comprehend the course her life was taking. It was always about repenting, while never examining what the repenting was for.

Meanwhile, Carrie is relentlessly teased in her school for her extraordinary innocence, and became the object of a vicious stunt that escalated beyond both her and the perpetrators’ most barbaric imaginations. Her fate at school is exacerbated when news gets around about what her mother is like. While her mother’s behavior minimally explains the way Carrie is, it doesn’t end antagonistic remarks of her peers. They don’t understand why neither Carrie nor her mother are the way they are, but they do know that they must be against it.

It’s not until Carrie realizes that there’s something gravely askew about her mother’s parental guidance—really on account of her peers’ reaction to her mien—when the position of her mother’s stance becomes horribly acute. Margaret’s unusual parenting style made sense for a long while, before it was held under the light and scrutinized by those on the outside, and before Carrie knew well enough to attempt to break away from it. That was the precise time when Margaret discovered that her daughter had become the person she tried to prevent all these years, and that her long-time fear had finally come to fruition.

“All the kids think I'm funny, and I don't wanna be. I wanna be normal…. a whole person, before it's too late for me to –“ [Margaret throws tea on her face, Carrie wipes it off].

Piper Laurie as Margaret White

Laurie’s perfect portrayal of a mother obsessed with her own ideals is mesmerizing to watch unfold. She’s like a pressure-cooker that slowly percolates until she eventually boils over and quietly explodes by the end of the movie. But she never loses her cool; she barely offers any inflection in her voice. She’s calm but deliberate. It’s the very thing which unsettles you when you watch her onscreen. You know her heart is in the right place, and that she—like most good mothers—just want her daughter to grow up better than how she saw the rest of the world.

But once her fear overpowered her rationale, once her masked hysteria was put on full blast through the halls of her daughter’s high school, she became victimized by her own steeple of values. She became the monster that you delighted in only when she was sacrificed for the greater good.

Clearly Margaret is not without her faults. As stated before, she wouldn’t impose these atypical morals on her daughter if she didn’t truly believe them to be right. That’s why we see her preaching the message around the neighborhood, to even parents of Carrie’s peers—she sees nothing wrong in what she does, but everything amoral about what everyone else does, which ultimately makes her out to be a frightening proselytizer when all she wants to do is protect them. When she can’t convince others to see her view, she is comfortable knowing that her daughter will at least be saved from the fires of hell.

But by then it’s too late. Her daughter had been influenced by the kids at school, who nominated themselves as judge and jury in the case of Margaret White versus everyone else.

Whatever you think about the way in which other mothers choose to parent their children—and Lord knows some of them are real head-scratchers—is it ever okay for us to impart our notion of right and wrong on them? I wonder how Margaret would have fared if she was on the cover of Time with the cover line, Pimples are the Lord's way of chastising you.

Candice Frederick is an NABJ award-winning journalist and film blogger for Reel Talk. She’s also written for Essence Magazine and The Urban Daily. Follow her on twitter.

Motherhood in Film and Television: Mothers of Anarchy: Power and Control in the Feminine Sphere

2012-05-21T12:00:00.000-04:00

This is a guest review by Leigh Kolb.

The ancient idea that men and women inhabit different spheres based on their biological makeup is rooted deeply in Western culture. In the Nineteenth Century, however, when the Victorian era dictated behavior and the Industrial Revolution changed work, scientists and civilians defined and embraced this idea of True Womanhood. Men’s and women’s spheres were separate—his was public and political, hers was inside the home and maternal. This is certainly not an argument that has died, and one would be hard-pressed not to find the same rhetoric at houses of worship and houses of legislation today. Many representations of women in media reiterate this ideology.

Motherhood is firmly rooted in the feminine sphere—inside the womb to inside the nursery. In the critically acclaimed television drama Sons of Anarchy, the gendered spheres are clear and present. Sons of Anarchy is oftentimes dubbed “Hamlet on motorcycles” since the plot line bears a strong resemblance to Shakespeare’s Hamlet (which is an important note for feminist analysis, considering Shakespeare’s own subversive feminism). As in Hamlet, Sons of Anarchy’s audiences and critics often focus on the protagonist, the “ghost” of his father, his nefarious stepfather, and the men who surround him. The excitement of politics, public tension, violence, and man’s inner struggle always trumps the inner-workings of the home and child-rearing. The power is in the public sphere.

Gemma threatens Wendy. She makes it clear that no one will hurt her son or grandson.

The Mothers of Anarchy, on the surface, have no control. In reality, they have all of the control.

The matriarch “old lady” (the endearing term club members give to their partners) of the California motorcycle club is Gemma (Katey Sagal). She is the Gertrude-inspired character who has married one of the original members of the club, after her husband was killed. Her first husband helped found the Sons of Anarchy motorcycle club after Gemma became pregnant with their son and wanted to settle in Charming, where her parents were from. She may not ride, but her instincts and desires steered the club from its inception. The town’s police chief refers to Gemma as "leaving Charming when she was sixteen and showing up 10 years later with a baby and a biker gang."

This original group, which spawned numerous Sons of Anarchy chapters after its founding, is referred to as Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Originals (SAMCRO).

Tara and Gemma together saved baby Abel's life, and Jax, his father, holds him.

In the pilot episode, there are explosions, murders, gun runs, back room decisions, and motorcycles tearing up the streets. Of course, one doesn’t need to analyze too much to see the clearly phallic representations of masculinity in motorcycles and firearms. It is also clear that the women in the episode are revolving around the hallmark of True Womanhood—motherhood.

Gemma’s son Jax (Charlie Hunnam) has a pregnant ex-wife, Wendy (Drea de Matteo). As Gemma is driving to check on her, Wendy is in the kitchen injecting herself with a syringe-full of meth. The camera pans out to a very pregnant Wendy with her hand on her belly, relaxed. This is a fallen mother. Gemma finds her in a pool of blood, curses at her, and rushes her to the hospital. At the hospital, Tara (Maggie Siff), a surgeon and Jax’s ex-girlfriend, is tending to Wendy and Abel, who was delivered via emergency c-section ten weeks premature. Immediately the audience is presented with the powerful mother and matriarch, the bad mother (and few things are worse in our society than a bad mother), and the professional mother, who is responsible for keeping Abel alive since his biological mother could not.

Gemma's maternal instincts are fierce and stinging.

These three pivotal female characters revolve around a baby, and they are portrayed inside—literally and figuratively. The women are inside when introduced to the audience—Gemma is in her car, Wendy is in her kitchen, and Tara is in the hospital. When Gemma wields her knowledge of and power over the club to Clay, they are in the bedroom. The male characters are largely outside—riding their bikes, working on cars, and scoping out new property.

Toward the end of the episode, the men of Sons of Anarchy are engaged in club warfare, and commit brutally violent crimes (involving guns, explosives, and vehicles) as they navigate the changing waters of their club’s purpose and see their territory shifting to guns and drugs.

Tara and Jax have a son, Thomas, and they together raise him and Abel.

Spliced into this plotline are the scenes from the hospital. Gemma has slipped Wendy a syringe with an order to commit suicide (she puts the syringe in a Bible after they pray—religion and piety is also in the feminine sphere). Tara is operating on Abel, inside of him, and starts his heart after it stops.

The masculine sphere is powerful, aggressive, and largely superficial. The feminine sphere, while perceived as less important and less powerful, deals in matters much closer: giving life, manipulating life, and sustaining life. When Jax comes to the hospital to visit his son, he is beat up and bloodied from his duties outside. Tara tells him to clean himself up, and then he can see his son. Tara—who gave Abel his heartbeat, not Wendy—is in control. It’s simply a matter of time before she and Jax are in a relationship and she is clearly an old lady in training.

Gemma looks at an old photo of her and John, Jax's father and the co-founder of SAMCRO.

While the pilot episode can be examined by itself through a feminist lens, the entire series follows its women with the same watchful eye. What may sound like one-dimensional stereotypes in simple plot descriptions are actually nuanced female characters and plot lines.

Possibly the most obvious mother archetype in Western culture is the Virgin Mary. Sons of Anarchy does a commendable job of avoiding the virgin-whore dichotomy so prevalent in matters of femininity and motherhood. Gemma is a sexual creature and desires sex (one episode even deals with her battling vaginal dryness after menopause), but that isn’t problematic. The show manages to avoid the all-too-often inferred Oedipal nature of Hamlet and Gertrude in the Shakespeare original, showing that a woman can be sexual, and be a mother, and that’s OK.

In season two, Gemma is brutally raped by enemies of the club to divide and destroy SAMCRO. She is lured into the enemy’s hands when a young woman stops her on the road and begs her to check on her baby, who’s not breathing. Lured by her maternal instincts, Gemma rushes out of her car and into the woman’s van where there’s just a baby doll, and she’s knocked unconscious and taken to a warehouse where she’s assaulted. The way that she deals with the assault—secretive and ashamed, yet helped by Tara medically and emotionally—is painful and realistic. Tara was a victim of domestic violence, and the two come together not as victims, but as allies and survivors. When Gemma finally tells her family about the rape, they come together and are more united, not divided. As she explains the assault to Clay and Jax at the family dining table, Patty Griffin’s “Mary” plays softly in the background, conjuring the image of that original suffering mother; however, she is not the pure and perfect image of virginity; she is real, damaged, and whole. This is the True Womanhood, not that of silence and submissiveness. In this depiction, it’s clear that Gemma gains and keeps control and is not the one being controlled.

In an excellent piece at Yes Means Yes, a feminist blogger notes that “The strong women characters are not terminators with breasts, they’re real humans with full inner lives and complicated problems. The plots often explore women’s lives in ways that mainstream shows overlook. And the show humanizes women, like sex workers, who are too often presented as one dimensional.” Indeed, even the porn stars are human in Sons of Anarchy—not just human, but capable of mothering, and mothering well.

SAMCRO becomes affiliated with a porn production company, and club member Opie’s girlfriend (and eventual second wife) is one of its stars. Lyla has a son, and is compassionate in her role as step-mother to Opie’s children. Lyla is a caring mother, and also serves as a catalyst for conversations surrounding the topics of abortion and birth control. For motherhood shouldn’t just be about mothering children, but also about making choices about what’s best for the entire family (which sometimes means not having more children).

In season three, Lyla becomes pregnant and does not want to be (her relationship with Opie is not solid, and pregnancy would end her career in the porn industry, and she wants to work a few more years). Tara offers to take her, and she also is pregnant and decides she wants to schedule an abortion. The entire scene is without judgment or negativity—it’s a clean clinic, and a simple procedure. Tara references having an abortion at six weeks in her previous abusive relationship and that it was “not a baby” at that point. Rarely is abortion presented as realistic in popular culture. Feministing says of the episode, “Most TV shows won’t even present abortion as a viable option and if they do, it’s usually stigmatized and quickly discarded in favor of adoption or keeping the unintended pregnancy.” Later, when Opie discovers Lyla had an abortion and is taking birth control pills even though getting pregnant is her only way “out” of porn, he is angry. But it’s clear that the audience isn’t supposed to be.

Tara ends up not having an abortion, but not because of a moral awakening. She is abducted and almost killed by SAMCRO enemies, and is able to escape by telling the abductors she’s pregnant. After the ordeal, she and Jax see the unharmed baby on an ultrasound, and reconcile. At first, Tara appears to be more submissive after being held captive and choosing to have the baby. As the series progresses, however, viewers see her coming to power in the club by her own choosing. She will mother SAMCRO sons—adopting Abel and giving birth to Thomas—and she will become the matriarch.

Tara is poised to take over Gemma's position as matriarch.

As central as motherhood is to the various story arcs of Sons of Anarchy, one can’t help but notice that these strong female characters lack mother figures themselves. While Gemma had a mother growing up, she died from the family’s “fatal flaw” (a genetic heart condition). Tara’s mother died when she was young, and she inherited her father’s house and car. Father-son relationships are central to many of the storylines (certainly the relationship between Jax and his father’s letters, a.k.a. his “ghost,” and his relationship with his stepfather Clay; Opie’s relationship with his father, SAMCRO’s other founder; and Jax’s relationships with his young sons). In fiction, male protagonists are often driven by their relationships with their fathers—away from them or toward reconciliation. However, while audiences continue to see more female protagonists, those characters often have no mothers or are more influenced by their fathers or male mentors (The Killing and Homeland on television, for example, or Twilight and The Hunger Games in text and on film).

Of course this is not a new phenomenon. In Shakespeare’s works, “Fatherhood appears in full gamut, but motherhood, especially in the relationship of mother and daughter, is almost, though by no means quite, absent.” Hamlet’s Ophelia just had a father and brother to guide her (tragically), and no mother. Strong women are often portrayed as being on their own.

These reminders of the gendered spheres—men are in public, in politics, connected to their ancestors and to the world around them while women are inside, working in the home and raising another generation to fulfill these same gendered roles—continually romanticize the role of father and downplay the role of mother. So when modern women emerge on screen, even the most complex and nuanced characters such as those in Sons of Anarchy, there’s still the trouble of True Womanhood, at its core, not being rooted to power in connection. Instead, these women are lone wolves, seeking power where they can and how they can, because their mothers could not or chose not to—or perhaps because it’s simply not a narrative that’s at all woven into our culture.

In an interview, Sagal said of Gemma, ''At the core of her, she is a mother to all of these men. As tough and dark as she is - and she will slit your throat for the right reasons - she is big-hearted.'' The undertone of this quote is that Gemma cooks big meals, cleans up, and protects her “men.” Tara also grows into the role, serving as an on-call doctor for the club, bringing men back to life who would have otherwise died or been arrested. They are biological mothers to their sons, and mothers to the Sons. While the spheres are in place, the reality of the series is that these mothers may be perceived as being without power behind closed doors while the boys are killing, being killed, and making business decisions, but the power the mothers yield is monumental. Gemma has orchestrated the club from its beginning, and the fourth season ends with Tara standing over Jax at the head of the SAMCRO table. The audience knows the mothers’ roles, but the men often seem oblivious. The same can be said for Shakespeare’s mothers (it’s widely believed that Gertrude had a part in King Hamlet’s death plot). The audience will have to wait, however, to see if Western culture ever gets it right and removes the spheres that give the perception that motherhood lacks the power and strength of a twin-cam Harley.

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Leigh Kolb is an English and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri, and has an MFA in creative nonfiction writing. She lives on a small farm with her husband, dogs, chickens, and garden, and makes a terrible dinner party guest because all she wants to talk about is feminism and reproductive rights.

Motherhood in Film and Television: Nine Months Forward, Three Centuries Back

2012-05-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

Julianne Moore and Hugh Grant in the film Nine Months

This is a guest review by Tyler Adams.

Male Pregnancy

Nine Months, contrary to all expectations, is not about pregnancy. It’s about a man coping with a pregnancy. Yes. Here’s a film whose subject absolutely and biologically requires a woman – and it’s still about a man.

However, Nine Months does achieve sex equality of the most dubious sort – it’s insulting to men and women.

In the world of Nine Months, women have already accepted that their value lies primarily in their fecundity and that raising children is the only thing that matters. And now, it’s time for men to learn the same lesson.

Rebecca, whose unplanned pregnancy kick-starts the plot, knows full well the consequences of pregnancy. And she ignores them. She wants to keep the baby, immediately, after about five minutes of running time where she isn’t even onscreen.

To the film’s credit, it doesn’t demonize Rebecca for subtly, whisperingly alluding to abortion, but the film glosses over it too much to truly be considered ‘pro-choice.’

The conflict in the film’s first act is all about Samuel accusing Rebecca of getting pregnant on the sly. Yes. She tells him she’s pregnant and he turns it into an act of aggression against him. He blames it on her: condescendingly scoffing that birth control could be anything other than foolproof.

Then we get delightful dream sequences wherein Samuel imagines Rebecca as a praying mantis trying to eat him.

As Anita Sarkeesian points out in her excellent video 'Tropes vs. Women: The Evil Demon Seductress,' most praying mantis species don’t engage in sexual cannibalism. And neither do women. Except to adolescent men terrified of female sexuality.

Then there’s Samuel’s friend Sean, our childfree Straw-man. His girlfriend says she wants kids, she leaves when he says ‘no’ – a week later, he’s self-admittedly using another woman to ‘get him over the rough spots.’ He describes her breasts, calves, and skin like food, basically making her sound like a golem made of calzones, candy, and cake.

Bobbie, his ‘girlfriend’ is a stereotypically attractive young woman who literally never says a word during the whole film and has no narrative purpose other than temporary eye candy – so the film treats her about as well as Sean does. With Sean, the filmmakers are essentially equating child-freedom with misogyny. Hey, all women want kids, so not wanting to have kids means being anti-woman, right?

There certainly aren’t any major single, childfree, or independent women in the film. Gail is the only other main adult female character, and she has three daughters and one on the way. She talks to Rebecca about how ‘pregnancy is our profound biological right, something men can never experience,’ when Rebecca expresses her one, solitary note of doubt in the film (in a conversation that doesn’t even pass the Bechdel Test, given that it’s all about men and childbirth). This is pretty much the only time the film really deals with Rebecca’s perspective in a way that doesn’t relate to Samuel.

The idea is that it’s a woman’s duty to have children, which is ‘natural’ and therefore good, and a source of female privilege. Gail even frames this in feminist terms, as if Karen Horney’s ‘womb-envy’ concept was a step forward for gender equality (Enlightenment-era chauvinists celebrated women’s fecundity, too – Enlightenment-era feminists spent more time talking about women’s rights), and there’s anything empowering about the idea that women absolutely must have children regardless of their personal feelings, because, apparently, it’s the one advantage they have over men.

Rebecca calls independent single motherhood ‘fashionable,’ and ‘PC,’ basically dismissing it. She says she would rather have a family – as if a single parent family doesn’t count. All Samuel has to do is propose. Why she doesn’t just pop him the question is unexplained. Apparently, even the audience takes it for granted that that’s the man’s decision to make.

Nine Months is trying to celebrate motherhood through the eyes of a reluctant father. Rebecca’s feelings are barely addressed, and Gail doesn’t seem to know how to celebrate motherhood without also demeaning the childfree. She says of Samuel, ‘You have a baby, that means he’s gotta grow up. That’s what he’s afraid of. I mean, the baby’s the fun part…Look at all this stuff.’

She’s referring to the toy store merchandise. Yes. Apparently the joys of motherhood are not bonding with and nurturing other human beings, but buying them things. Gail has the ultimate conservative vision of motherhood – it combines chauvinism and capitalism!

Professional Parents

“What if the baby can see…your penis, coming toward it, that could scare the hell out of a baby…or what if your penis hit it in the head; it could cause brain damage…”

I’m not embellishing. That’s what Rebecca says, five months into her pregnancy, right before she and Samuel have sex. Rebecca is in her thirties, and – well, given the number of biological errors she made in two lines, I’m terrified of what else she doesn’t know about things you should and shouldn’t do during pregnancy.

What does it say about the state of women’s health education that this scene does not read as satire? And if it was supposed to be funny, well – maybe it could work as horror comedy, but I didn’t see any real commentary.

By the way, it should be mentioned that Samuel is a child psychotherapist. Or ‘kiddy shrink’ as Gail calls him. He’s a child psychotherapist and doesn’t know the first thing about pregnancy. He doesn’t know that amniotic fluid in the uterus protects the baby, and the cervix is blocked throughout most of a pregnancy, or you’d think he would have told Rebecca about it during their attempted sex scene.

He’s allegedly successful at his job, but all we see is his being clueless around children, insensitive around women, and ignorant about everything he should be an expert on. The man has to read a book like What to Expect When You’re Expecting, as if he’s never taken any classes on prenatal development. Well, he didn’t know that birth control is only 97 percent effective, so let’s just assume he’s never even taken sexual education at school.

We do see a competent, female gynecologist who more or less helps set Samuel on the right path, but for some reason, we spend a lot more time with bumbling Russian stereotype Dr. Kosevich. All the better to humiliate Rebecca with, I suppose, during her first doctor’s appointment, and later, during the world’s most farcical labor scene where Samuel nearly kills several people trying to get her to the hospital. Oh, and he starts a fistfight during her delivery. How you advocate birth while making it look horrible and playing it for juvenile laughs is anyone’s guess.

Marty and Gail are ultimately the people Rebecca and Samuel turn to for advice. No matter how poorly socialized their daughters are, they’re experts. A child psychotherapist like Samuel has to ask Marty and Gail for help, and as far as the narrative goes, they outrank a gynecologist. Even though Marty believes that you can tell the fetus’s gender by whether the mother’s carrying high or low, and that sexual positions influence sex determination. Although, the anti-intellectualism works well with the film’s overall sneering at creative and professional individuals.

Sean: “…the world is overpopulated; our society has too many starving children.”

Gail: “Well, I would say our society has too many starving artists…this was our parents’ home, but I don’t see you making any contribution…you keep this up you’ll die alone, like a dog, like a bum. Like Van Gogh.”

Sean is an artist, and Gail demeans him for it, because hey, we all know art doesn’t pay. Not like owning a car dealership like Marty, which is a much better contribution to society, of course.

Of course, Sean’s work seems irrelevant. Since he doesn’t ‘have’ a wife and kids, he’s not making any meaningful contribution to the world at all, according to Gail. She equates being single with being isolated, and being childfree with being childish. And the film takes her side.

When Sean argues that she and Marty used to have interests, and are now just obsessed with their children, she doesn’t even deny it. She just affirms that this is the way it should be. After all, earlier Rebecca instantly accepts that she has to quit her job as a dancing instructor – not just take a leave of absence; actually quit. Samuel, after his transformation, says ‘I don’t give a damn about me; I’m in love with my child.’ Apparently, parents of all genders should be denied personhood outside their children, and this is something all women want, and all men should want.

Girl Children

Ashley Johnson as Shannon Dwyer in Nine Months

Marty goes shopping for sports equipment as he’s assuring Samuel he’s having a boy, on no evidence. Apparently, all boys must be into sports, or they’ll be forced to be, and none of Marty’s daughters are athletes or could be.

When Samuel shows his distaste for being hit in the face or punched in the stomach by Marty or his daughters, Marty and the film insult Samuel’s masculinity. Especially when the daughters do it. When Marty gets into a fight with some Barney stand-in over some petty insults, Samuel doesn’t join in until he’s accused of being gay. It’s okay to be genuinely childish, apparently – like beating someone up in public over petty insults – as long as you look appropriately ‘masculine’ while doing so.

When Marty learns he’s having another girl, he complains (at the end, he relents and says, “I guess having another girl isn’t so bad.” Bravo.), and Samuel smirks about his good fortune in getting a boy. Earlier in the film, one of the reasons Samuel comes around and accepts the pregnancy is learning his child is a boy. The film obviously doesn’t value girls any more than it values women.

Samuel’s character arc is not about him overcoming his sexism – it’s about him ‘growing up’ by accepting fatherhood. When he reunites with Rebecca, he says he’s in love with his son, and is in love with her for having him – in love with her as a vessel, not a person, as Eve Kushner at Bright Lights Film Journal astutely observed. He never really misses her when she’s gone, never really asks how she’s feeling, or even has a real conversation with her – when he comes around, he comes around for the baby and not for her.

The film isn’t subverting the tropes that women, family, and children force men to lose personalities, that all women are content to be homemakers, that losing your personality is part of growing up, or that all people’s worth lies in childrearing – the film is just positively endorsing it all.

There’s nothing inherently bad about having children or getting married. One of the problems comes from the sentiment that you need a spouse and kids regardless of personal taste, or even regardless of the spouse and kids. The way many people talk about this is roughly: get a woman, or get a man, or get some kids. Any will do, apparently.

Children are not your unique children you can nurture and bond with – they’re just a burden that forces you to nobly suffer and mature. Marriage isn’t an outgrowth of a loving relationship between two complete individuals, it’s just an item on your life’s agenda to be crossed off, and establish you as an adult with a life worth living. Your spouse and children exist as objects related to you, and since that’s what you were looking for, that’s what you got.

It’s an attitude that not only reduces acceptable lifestyles down to practically nothing, but degrades the lifestyle it should be promoting. It’s a recipe for unhappy children, and unhappy marriages. Good thing Nine Months stops shortly after the nine months, and we don’t see our couple’s future. What we’ve seen – Samuel’s sullen patients, Marty and Gail’s children, as well as Marty and Gail – are evidence enough.

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Tyler August Adams is a Master’s candidate in Environmental Science and Policy, and writes decidedly unconventional reviews and reflections on the media at http://nevermedia.blogspot.com.

Bitch Flicks' Weekly Picks

2012-05-19T18:47:00.000-04:00

Stephanie's Picks:

Girls' Choice Movie Awards Survey for Adults from New Moon Girls

The Nerve of Lena Dunham by Linda Martin Alcoff for The Feminist Wire

Megan's Picks:

Geena Davis: Movies' View of Women Is Unbalanced via The Wall Street Journal

Hollywood's War on Women by Natalie Wilson via Ms. Magazine Blog

Take Action: Anti-Trans Victim Blaming in The New York Times by Jos Truitt via Feministing

Females Grossly Underrepresented and Misrepresented in Top Grossing Films of 2011 by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood

Zoe Saldana Angry About Lack of Diversity on Magazine Covers by Nicholas Robinson via Rolling Out

The Upfronts: Race and Gender in Fall Television by Alyssa Rosenberg via ThinkProgress

On Our Radar: Push Girls by Latoya Peterson via Racialicious

New TV Shows Created By Women for 2012-2013 by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood

Portland Queer Documentary Film Festival by Kjersten Johnson via Bitch Magazine Blog

Ethical Style: Vogue's Ban on Underage, Unhealthy Models Won't Solve Its Image Problem by Amanda Hess via Good

'Girl in Progress:' Female-Centric Film Tackles Strained Mother-Daughter Relationships, Single Motherhood and Navigating Adolescence

2012-05-17T16:17:00.000-04:00

Cierra Ramirez (Ansiedad) and Eva Mendes (Grace) in Girl in Progress

When I was growing up, I never felt like a child. With her continuous string of bad boyfriends, I always felt like I was the one taking care of my single mother and myself. I couldn’t wait to leave home and start a new life. So I can relate to the female-centric film Girl in Progress which tackles the topics of navigating adolescence and strained mother-daughter relationships.

Directed by Patricia Riggen (La Misma Luna aka Under the Same Moon) and written by Hiram Martinez, Girl in Progress features Eva Mendes as Grace, a struggling single mom. After reading coming-of-age books in school, her teen daughter Ansiedad (whose name means “anxiety”) decides to take a “shortcut to adulthood” and stage her own coming-of-age story. Ansiedad strives to forge her identity and chart her own course in the world.

Wait, a film focusing on women or girls? Directed by a woman? With women of color as characters?? Yes, yes and yes!

Vivacious, flawed and cavalier, single mom Grace left home after having Ansiedad at 17. Working two jobs, she struggles to pay the bills, including Ansiedad’s expensive private school tuition. Grace often seems like a big kid herself -- eating all the cereal, misplacing money, forgetting to buy shampoo. She tries her best but it’s very clear early on she has no clue how to be a mother to her precocious teen.

Played by newcomer Cierra Ramirez, Ansiedad is smart, perceptive, sarcastic and self-aware. She takes care of her mother, doing chores while her mom plays dress up in her bedroom. When her mom passes out after coming home late with her married boyfriend, Ansiedad carefully takes her shoes off. She knows (and tells) her mom she has terrible taste in men. She pushes her mom to pursue her dreams and go back to school. The roles have reversed. Even at her young age, Ansiedad is the responsible one, begrudgingly mothering her mom.

Exasperated by her childhood, Ansiedad decides it’s time to move on and grow up. But in order to do that, she believes she must reach certain milestones first. With the help of her best friend Tavita (scene-stealing Raini Rodriguez), Ansiedad plots her coming-of-age -- winning the chess tournament, becoming rebellious, drinking, transitioning from a “good girl” to a “bad girl,” having sex for the first time -- all so she can leave the mantle of girlhood behind.

Cierra Ramirez and Raini Rodriguez

Through her appearance, Ansiedad tries out various identities -- nerdy, Hot Topic-esque punk, quirky preppy -- all in an effort to find herself. Butterflies are a common symbol throughout the film, a metaphor for Ansiedad’s metamorphosis from girlhood. She yearns to grow up and escape her disappointing mother, who fails to give her the guidance and support she so desperately craves.

There’s a subplot of Tavita struggling with her weight. When Ansiedad tries to fit in with the cool girls, she betrays her best friend, cruelly taunting her weight. Later Tavita swallows diet pills in an effort to conform to thinness. A huge part of adolescence, a negative body image paralyzes many girls’ self-esteem. I just wish the message "you're beautiful the way you are" rang louder.

Beyond scenes of fat-shaming and slut-shaming, the jarring utterance of the R word made me cringe. Granted, teens say assloads of inappropriate and offensive things. But no one corrects them. There’s also a horrific “joke” about domestic violence (WTF??). Grace’s boss tells one of her co-workers she can’t be a restaurant manager because her husband beats her (someone seriously laughed at that in my theatre). He later tells Grace the server quit because she had a “fight with her stairs.” I’m not sure if the filmmakers were trying to convey characters’ douchebaggery or if they just thought ableism and abuse were funny. Newsflash, they’re not. Either way, the issues are treated nonchalantly, never given the exploration they truly need.

The film feels choppy as it vacillates between humorous moments of clarity along with bittersweet earnestness and stumbles of forced melodrama and clunky acting by some of the supporting cast. Despite the missteps and histrionics, moments of brilliance shine through. The opening scene, Ansiedad’s class presentation in which she shares her mother’s mistakes was funny and captivating. I adored Ansiedad and Tavita’s camaraderie. Mendes gave a great performance as the immature mom. But hands down, the absolute best moments in the film belonged to the fantastic Rodriguez. Her nuanced portrayal of a teen finding her way mesmerized and captivated.

With several Latino/a characters and Latinas in leading roles, the Girl in Progress effortlessly weaves class and ethnicity throughout the story. Ansiedad’s mother struggles to make ends meet while Tavita lives in a mansion with her mom sipping cocktails. Riggens said she liked setting the film in Seattle (filmed in Vancouver) as it’s not a border state or city, where most movies with Latinas take place.

Eva Mendes and Cierra Ramirez

One of the best scenes occurs between Grace and Ms. Armstrong (Patricia Arquette), Ansiedad’s English teacher. Ms. Armstrong tells Grace that Ansiedad is planning to run away and force herself into adulthood. We see race and class dynamics subtly play out as Grace believes the white educated teacher judges her and lack of education. In their exchange, we witness Grace’s insecurities about not finishing school and how her mother didn’t provide her with needed support. While we feel the sting of Ansiedad’s understandable resentment towards her mother, Grace’s ineptitude isn't demonized. Rather we begin to understand she failed to receive support from her mother too. Grace just doesn’t realize she’s replicating the same toxic pattern of neglect with her own daughter.

Ansiedad desperately tries to take a different path than her mother. But she realizes (interestingly when she mimics her mother’s hairstyle in a scene), that she’s shadowing her mother, reenacting the same shitty mistakes. But with a feel-good ending wrapped up too neat and tidy, the resolution of Grace and Ansiedad’s mother-daughter dynamic felt inauthentic. It was like, “Why are you never here for me?!” “Okay I’ll be here for you.” Ta-dah…the end! Wait, what??

I wished Girl in Progress delved deeper, exploring the role reversal and tangled relationship between Grace and Ansiedad. It does however perfectly capture that frustrating push pull of adolescence -- the desire to want your mother to support and be proud of you yet the simultaneous craving for independence and freedom.

With women only comprising 33% of speaking roles and even fewer films featuring women of color, we desperately need to see and hear more diverse women’s voices behind the camera and on-screen. Riggens said Girl in Progress "is really about females, about women" of all ages. Repeatedly passing the Bechdel Test, the movie isn't about Grace's search for love or Ansiedad finding a father figure. Despite a number of male characters, they exist peripherally; the women and girls take center stage. Ultimately, Ansiedad realizes her mother truly loves her. She also discovers the value of female friendship, something we don’t nearly see often enough in film.

No matter how nurturing, mother-daughter relationships are often fraught with tension, a complicated web of emotions. To this day, I still grapple with issues surrounding my mother, as many of us do. But Girl in Progress reminds us adulthood isn’t a destination. Rather it’s an ongoing journey where we (hopefully) continually evolve and grow.