Posts Tagged 'feminism'

So yesterday, for whatever reason, I found myself in the mood to watch a cheesy cultish fantasy movie I’d never seen.  Something fun, where the appeal lies more in the visual splendor than the writing or acting.  After browsing the Netflix Instant options, I settled on Heavy Metal.  It’s a film I remember being keenly aware of as a child in the 80′s.  It was one of those rare animated films that I wasn’t allowed to see, which made it unbelievably enticing.  Not only that, but I’d seen enough posters and VHS boxes to know that it involved space ships, epic battles, alien creatures, and pretty ladies in skimpy scifi outfits.  In other words, it was just like my favorite movie at the time, Return of the Jedi, plus it was a cartoon, and it was forbidden.  Needless to say, at the age of eight, I was convinced that Heavy Metal had to be the greatest movie of all time.

And yet, even though it became easy for me to see R-rated films somewhere around the age of 13, I never saw Heavy Metal until yesterday.  Part of that might be the snags that apparently kept it from video release for several years, but separate from that, I feel like sometime in the decade or so after the film’s release, people completely stopped talking about it.  Even later on, when it was on video, and I was taking an interest in psychedelic culture and underground animation, recommendations for Heavy Metal were few and far between.  Now that I’ve finally watched it, I have some ideas as to why.

First of all, the animation itself hasn’t aged well (and I can’t imagine it looked that good to begin with).  Some of the design (much of it inspired by the comics, of course) is gorgeous, but even in those segments the motion is stiff and awkward.  It’s obvious which characters are meant to be hideous and which are meant to be beautiful (and more on them momentarily), but even the “beautiful” characters are frequently pretty ugly.  You can tell the filmmakers spent a lot of time looking at the work of Moebius and others, but they clearly lack either the ability or the inclination to produce anything close to that interesting.

The bigger problem, though, is the extraordinarily overt misogyny on display in this film.  I mean, obviously a 30-year-old psychedelic adventure film is bound to be male-centric, and I wasn’t expecting it to be otherwise.  Still, the volume and shamelessness of the sexism left me shocked.  Heavy Metal is a fantasy about men who get to do awesome, ass-kicking, groovy things, and some of those things they get to do happen to be women.  From the moment any adult female character appears on screen, you can start counting the seconds until she gets totally naked, and you probably won’t make it to ten (so yeah, South Park pretty much has this film’s number). One segment does offer a female protagonist, but she has no lines, alternates between little and no clothing, and is tortured and killed by the end.  No exception could better prove the rule.

This degree of misogyny in a film like this seems glaring in this post Whedon/R.D. Moore/Rowling world, because there’s so much more acknowledgment that just as many women are into scifi/fantasy as men, but I guess that still wasn’t regarded as the case at all in 1981.

I was reminded of some of Amanda Marcotte’s writing, particularly on the subjects of Playboy Magazine and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.  Basically, both essays make the point that there was a time when women could be openly excluded from any sort of culture of cool.  Hugh Hefner presents himself as a symbol of sophistication, and Kerouac and Cassidy are presented as avatars of rebellion against the mainstream, but all three men proceed from an unquestioned assumption that women exist solely to look hot, fuck them, and make them feel good.  This same assumption is at the core of Heavy Metal, which makes it a much harder film to enjoy these days.  Realizing this, I’m actually glad that people stopped discussing and recommending it, because I probably would have looked at those people a little differently afterward.

Amanda Bowers is a psychotherapist and aspiring writer of young adult fiction. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and dog-child, Ruby. When not writing, she enjoys flash-mobbing, dream interpretation, and coloring on her walls.

As if watching Dexter isn’t enough with its colorful setting in bright, multi-cultural Miami and its dark musical motifs and darker characters. As if it isn’t enough to find yourself instantly intrigued by the idea of rooting for a serial killer, and as the series unfolds, to find yourself consistently rooting for this character and enjoying the intricate way that the writers and actor Michael C. Hall bring the many layers of Dexter’s past and present to light. As if it isn’t enough to have original plot lines and award-winning guest stars such as John Lithgow, the writers of Dexter still find time to create and firmly support the development of character Debra Morgan, Dexter’s police detective little sister as played by Jennifer Carpenter.

Hardly anyone could introduce Deb’s character better than Dexter himself. After listening to a voicemail she left him in the first episode, he tells us, “That’s my foul-mouthed foster sister, Debra. She has a big heart but won’t let anyone see it. She’s the only person in the world who loves me. I think that’s nice. I don’t have feelings about anything. But if I could have feelings at all, I’d have them for Deb.” This dialogue says as much about Dexter as it does Deb and the ever-important role she plays in his life and on the show.

When you first meet Debra Morgan, or Deb as she’s most often called, she’s scantily clad while working an undercover prostitution sting and desperately wanting to get in on the action of being a homicide police detective. It would be easy enough to dismiss her character as someone who has mismatched her true talents and her career aspirations given her hooker attire, modelesque beauty, and her constant need to check out her hunches with Dexter rather than trust her gut. And then when she proves herself more than competent as an officer and rises to the rank of homicide detective for the Miami Metro Police Department, it would have been easy enough for the writers to pigeon-hole Deb as “one of the guys,” a hard-nosed, explicative-dropping ball-breaker. But instead, they have consistently chosen to write Deb as a multi-faceted character – so much so, that by the fourth season she is easily one of the strongest characters (and actors!) on the show.

In a throwback to what Joss Whedon got right about his female-empowering character Buffy Summers on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, what I most appreciate about Deb is that she is physically strong while also being emotionally vulnerable. Yet just like in real life, the reverse is also sometimes true – Deb is capable of portraying great psychological strength while struggling with her lack of physical prowess in comparison to other characters trying to [fill in the blank with malicious details here] . . . yes, she’s a favorite target for suspense and drama on the show.

When her colleagues are exhausted and out of ideas, Deb’s intellect and determination help the department find their next lead on a difficult case. When everyone else realizes she might be making a big mistake, Deb plunges ahead, more willing to be wrong than to be invisible or pretend she doesn’t feel something when she does. When faced with complicated ethical choices, Deb carefully weighs her loyalty and her integrity, usually unwilling to sacrifice either while figuring out a compromise that still let’s her sleep at night. And when Dexter is out of line, Deb doesn’t hesitate to reel him in: “I love you, bro, but sometimes you’re a fucking ‘tard.”

Deb is intense and unwavering, yet as highlighted above, she still knows how to take and make a joke. Although at first her foul mouth seems like a bit of a caricature, Jennifer Carpenter owns that aspect of Deb’s character so much that it’s not only one of those familiar things you can count on when you cozy up to your TV on Sunday night, but Deb also serves out happy helpings of much-needed comic relief! In one of her quintessential Deb moments, she delivers the following line after Dex anxiously confides to her that his girlfriend Rita is pregnant: “A baby? A mother-fucking, rolly-poly, chubby-cheeked shit machine? Are you kidding me?” And she delivers this line with a joyous, big-toothed grin. As an audience, we all have permission now to be happy for Dexter. Deb has that kind of power.

Deb’s fiercely loyal to her family, but not at the expense of being devoted to her job. She’s an incredibly intuitive detective, yet still vulnerable to letting her personal feelings get in the way of solving a case. She weeps her heart out in one scene and kicks ass in the next and it doesn’t feel at all unrealistic. It’s no short order to portray all of the seemingly contradictory facets of Debra Morgan’s character. But award-winning actress Jennifer Carpenter more than rises to the occasion, turning Deb into a fleshed out person loved by her fictional character companions and TV-viewing audience alike. The writers and Jennifer obviously understand that real people are always walking contradictions. As such, she has become one of the most vital female characters brought to the TV screen in recent years (and there’s been tough competition from ground-breaking shows such as Battlestar Gallactica and Mad Men). Debra Morgan refuses to fit nicely in any of the oft-prescribed stereotypes written for women, and in doing so she inspires her viewing audience with her bold, crass, intelligent maneuvers while also being relatable as someone who gets her heart broken, makes mistakes, and (falsely) feels as if she’s “fucked up” beyond redemption.

Perhaps most importantly, Deb serves as Dexter’s foil and someone he consistently leans on to keep him planted in humanity. Where Dexter is calculated, Deb is impulsive. Where Dex is logical and seemingly incapable of expressing human emotion, Deb is spewing emotion all over the place in tears, f-bombs, and lusty encounters. Where Dex doesn’t trust anyone other than Deb, Deb lets people into her life and her heart over and over again, even when that decision is unwise. However, as a crackerjack, brother-sister, blood spatter analyst and homicide detective team, Dex and Deb do have one thing in common: they are both cunningly good at nabbing the bad guy by the end of the season.

When I’m standing at the metaphorical water cooler, and people ask me my opinion on Mad Men, my standard short answer is, “I’m in love with Peggy Olson.”  Depending on how well someone knows me, the response is usually, “I can see that,” or “Why?”  Or sometimes, “Yeah, but what about the writing?”  The thing is, though, I’m in love with Peggy because of the writing.  It’s not that Elisabeth Moss isn’t cute, because she certainly is, but Peggy’s appeal goes beneath the surface thanks to Matthew Weiner and the rest of the Mad Men writers.

Peggy Olson is a character so full of creativity and drive that she’s building a life for herself for which there’s no blueprint.  The early 1960′s setting of the show predates the Second Wave of Feminism, but Peggy is presented as one of the women (and there were plenty in real life) who made it possible by showing that it was never ability that kept women from competing with men in the workplace, it was institutional sexism.  Peggy never set out to start a movement; she just wanted a good job.  In her initial job as a secretary, it was only by accident that her natural creativity was recognized.  Once that happened, though, she found a deep well of ambition within her to develop that creativity and be recognized for it.

Because no one around her is living the life she wants, Peggy voraciously soaks up knowledge and skill from everyone she encounters.  Don teaches her the art of persuasion (as well as the art of leaving your past behind).  She learns office politics from Joan.  Kurt helps her develop her personal style.  Bobbie Barrett has a lesson or two about being a woman in the world of men (although Bobbie married into her career, something that wouldn’t work for Peggy).  She even picks up a little bit of callousness from Pete.  With everything those around her have to offer, in the end it’s up to Peggy to weave it all together and build a life for herself that will make her successful and happy.  There will certainly be more bumps along the way (no pun intended), but she’s doing a remarkable job so far.

Meanwhile, of course, the old world tries to hold her back.  Her sister is filled with jealous rage that Peggy dares to put her own needs and desires first, rather than sacrificing everything the way that women are traditionally expected to (and the way she did).  Their priest gets involved as well, ultimately alienating Peggy by insisting that she should be filled with guilt for something she’s long since stopped worrying about.  Meanwhile, the establishment at work is set up to exclude her, holding off-the-books meetings at bars and strip clubs, and not inviting her because it wouldn’t be “appropriate.”  Through all of these obstacles, Peggy continues to insist on her right to the career, and the life, that she knows she’s capable of.

So when I say that I’m in love with Peggy Olson, I don’t just mean she’s a hot girl with cute bangs.  I mean that she’s such an amazing person, and portrayed with such depth and realism, that the fact that she doesn’t really exist makes me a little sad.  I can only hope that Mad Men continues, ideally without a decline in its exceptional writing, so I can see how far the 1960′s take her.

(Credit Where It’s Due Department: A lot of my thinking about this series has been influenced by Amanda Marcotte’s writing on the subject, which you can check out here, here, and here.)