I think I've told you before-- men are absolutely afraid of women. I think that drives about 90% of male behavior toward women including and especially all the misogyny and (watch me re-connect to our actual point) the way men portray women badly on the screen.

I agree that we ought to watch Jennifer's Body-- I find the reviews intriguing, too. However, I suspect that the level of blood and gore is way beyond what my poor old sensibilities can tolerate. So, I don't know about that one.

I see you've been watching Murder, She Wrote. I hadn't ever really thought about Jessica Fletcher as a feminist icon, but now I think I'm going to mull that one over. I watched it sporadically in my youth, though the casting of the California coast as Maine along the with the weirdly elastic nature of Cabot Cove's small towniness were always a distraction (is it bad that my enjoyment of these things is so often interrupted by minor features of the narrative).

She's single, independent, has at least two men pursuing her in the course of the series. Though of course all of the coupley subtext is treated in the standard "people over forty are basically dry and sexless" manner of twenty-six year old television executives who still can't bear to think of their parents getting naked together. But her lack of a partner is not treated as any sort of ongoing deficit in her life; she's not Mary Richards.

Fall TV Ladies

So, in our first attempt to watch To Have or To Have Not, a lasagna exploded (which was definitely not my fault for a fun change). Because of this, I haven't really been pushing to watch it again, but it is on the to do list. Also, we have finally signed up for the beloved Netflix, so I am prepared to respond to any claims about anything, if you give me enough time to work on it.

On a side note, I have been half watching a lot of tv online while I do lots of French translation about the chemical reactions that take place to darken cider. The point of this is that all of the things I am about to list you could go seek out yourself. But, these are some of my early notes on what television is doing with women so far this season. On a side note, I also feel that maybe television has the opportunity to do a better job with women than film, if only because of the privilege of time.

1. Something bad has happened to Pam on The Office. Maybe it is just me, but Pam as the unreachable object of Jim's affection was kind of quiet and subtly awesome. I love that the writers are offering her some upward mobility, but the dynamic between Pam and Jim as a couple goes something like this. Jim makes joke. Pam makes joke about how stupid Jim is. Jim says something sweet about Pam. I am not sure where I am going with this, but Pam actually reminds me of Kate Gosselin, and I think that is weird.

2. Glee- So this show is supposed to be fresh (and I will happily admit I enjoy it), but I feel like the underlying message of this show is that all women are crazy. Different sorts of crazy, endearingly crazy, but crazy all the same. Basically, there are a lot of colorful leads in this show, but the heart of it is two guys, both trying to navigate their women. What about this is fresh?

So, 30 Rock starts up next week again, and we all know that Tina Fey is awesome, but I hope it picks back up from next year.

Two other thoughts (Its been a while since I posted, so i have a bunch of things milling)- We should watch Jennifer's Body. I bet this movie sucks, and you will hate how affected the dialogue is, but I feel like I need to see it, because almost all the reviews I read were basically like "How dare these women think that they can make a movie?" I hate that.

Ok, I promise I will watch my Hawks movies this weekend. It makes me sad that Lauren Bacall doesn't scare Bogey. If my ballroom dance class has taught me anything, its that men are really afraid of women. I like that and I kind of think you should be. I apologize at the sort of frantic/schizophrenic nature of this post, but you have to start somewhere.

More Hawks Women

I watched To Have and Have Not, another Hawks film and one that the extras on Rio Bravo referenced extensively.

THoHN has a couple of interesting things going on, not the least of which is it clearly wants to tap directly into the same vein as Casablanca. But while many of the elements are virtually identical (amoral expat has to decide whether or not to help the Free French), the love story makes it a whole other thing.

I can see why Rio Bravo critics often refer back to it. The first kiss in THoHN will be recycled almost exactly in Rio Bravo-- except that Lauren Bacall does not scare Humphrey Bogart. But like a good Hawks hero, he has A Job To Do and so he keeps moving. She is tough, vulnerable, but imo perhaps a bit more submissive than Feathers. But she's also a bit more audacious and funny, so it's a toss up for me. And Bacall sings like a man.

I'll be interested to see what you think.

The Thing (from another world) was directed by a man who worked on Hawks's crews for years, and Hawks is his producer. Lots of film historians argue just how big a hand Hawks took in directing it and it's easy to see why because it plays just like a Hawks film.

And once again, we have a tough woman who has a history with our hero-- he took her out once and she drank him under the table, then pinned a note on his unconscious body and had him shipped back to his base, to the great amusement of his men. She does none of the usual hysterical screaming, getting in the way, or requiring rescue. And at the end of the movie, in a typically Hawnsian non-sentimental way, she basically proposes to him while his men tease him and he realizes (good-naturedly) that she has him completely overmatched.

It occurs to me that all three of these women display the emotional side associated with female characters, but by embracing that side of themselves without getting all sentimental or weepy about it, they actually end up emotionally stronger than the men, who are busy putting a lid on their emotions so they can Do the Job.

Hawks is often cited for male characters who are all about the job, doing what they are supposed to be doing, regardless, and that's what makes them strong and admirable.

So perhaps the short answer is that in Hawks's world, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, and a woman's gotta feel what a woman's gotta feel, and as long as neither of them make a big deal out of it, things work out fine.

But I'll be interested to see what you think.

Rio Bravo and My Picks

Well, I was responding to your list. But I could be a pro-active listy person, too.

I did enjoy Rio Bravo, which apart from the Angie Dickensoniness is an odd little movie in which nothing much happens, and yet it remains fairly interesting throughout.

I see why you like Feathers. She is tough and she manages to dominate Wayne's character without resorting to being either a battle-axe or a slut. The moment when she just walks up and kisses him is pretty special-- it's very frank and forward without being slutty, and the fact that Wayne just kind of stands there stunned and non-plussed makes it funny gender-switch on the classic Big Strong Man Sweeps Woman Off Her Feet film trope (can I say "trope"? it's such a fun word).

I also like that Feathers manages to be strong and vulnerable simultaneously. Openness about feelings is so often portrayed as typical female weakness or whininess or bitchiness. Feathers does all of her emotional processing unfiltered and straight out her mouth, and yet it somehow ends up making her stronger as a character rather than weaker. It's a neat trick.

Okay, my good woman characters in film and tv.

1. Aliens. James Cameron loves him some strong women. His entry in the Alien ouevre (can I say "ouvre"? I feel smarter just typing it) is a great strong woman film. Sigourney Weaver's Ripley is absolute bad ass, and yet is still a woman. Part of the subtext of the film is her working out mother issues (while she was in interstellar suspended animation, her own daughter got old and died) with a the sole survivor of Bad Stuff on Alien World, who is a little girl. We get a re-imagined nuclear family (Weaver plays opposite Michael Beihn, who also plays opposite Linda Hamilton in the Terminator, another Cameron strong woman flick), and I feel certain this is the only movie out there in which the climactic battle is between not just two women, but two mothers.

2. Gilmore Girls. Lorelei is awesome. She's well-written, funny, imperfect (but not expected to suffer endelessly for her sins). You understand of course that I am not referring to anything that happened after the show's writers overdosed on stupid pills in the last few seasons. Rory is awful. Stupid man choices and repeated insistence by everyone else that she is perfect (a perfection that I found impossible to perceive in what I was shown). Actually, my favorite woman on the show might be Paris.

3. Should I just stir up trouble by praising the Goddess-like package that is Andee McvDowell? Can I at least count her work in Groundhog Day? Why you canbnot see her awesomeness is beyond me.

4. Wall-E. Okay, I'm just curious about how it can be so obvious that Wall-E is a boy-bhot and Eve is a woman when they are clearly both pieces of plastic and metal. Okay, maybe Wall-E's doofiness marks him as male, but Eve is totally focused on the job, generally uses force to deal with problems, and is emotionally costipated-- and yet there's no doubt that she's female. What, other than her voice, tells us that?

5. Priscilla Presley in the Naked Gun movies. Rather than simply act like pretty window dressing while the boys get to do all the fun stuff, she's allowed to be just as ridiculous as the rest of the cast. From Margaret Dumont to any woman in a Judd Apatow comedy, it's relatively rare that women are allowed to be as funny as men in a movie. I'm sure other examples will come to me after I click "publish post"

That's my five to start. I'll hope on and add stuff if anything occurs to me.

Rio Bravo and Movies to Watch

Pag and I watched Rio Bravo together last night, so I am looking forward to what he has to say about it. I would just like to reiterate thgat even though Feathers is a too young bad girl, she handles John Wayne. She is a talkative interesting woman in charge, and I love that.

According to the commentary we watched after the movie, Angie Dickinson is playing a character very similar to Lauren Bacall's in To Have and To Have Not. So that has added onto my list with Aliens. Pag needs to watch Eternal Sunshine again!

Also, Pag, what are some female characters that you like? Why didn't you really make a list?

And the other half

I suggested this because I thought maybe if we wrote some of these arguments down, we wouldn't have to have the same ones over and over again. Plus it gives us the chance to have the kind of more heavy-duty talks that we have face to face, but which are not well-supported by facebook, AIM, and phone calls to harried graduate students.

As with many political/cultural matters, I'm not sure where on the spectrum to peg myself. I have a wide range of friends and associates and some consider me wildy feminist while others consider me a grunting testosterone dinosaur. I guess we can sort that out as we go.

But I am always interested and sometimes appalled by the models that our culture provides for men and women, though I'm also reluctant to apply to much weight to them. I am a big fan of strong women and well-told stories, so the tradition of a woman as a whining sack of potatoes with breasts used to suspensefully encumber the hero doesn't do much for me (eg View to a Kill). And while I'm not the forbidding type, if I were the parent of a teenaged girl, I'd be tempted to forbid any contact with the Twillight books/movies.

I don't have a lot of response to the first four films listed because

1) Sunshine I've seen exactly once and I was too busy navigating the narrative weirdness of it to notice anything else.

2) Juno I've seen exactly once and the incredibly affected dialogue was monumentally distracting to me. Nor did I believe for more than ten seconds that these characters were actual high school students. When I'm in the middle of all that, it's hard to notice Juno's feminist credentials. Though I do get that the lack of a mommmy epiphany at the end of the flick is a plus.

3) Jane Austin is hard not to love.

4) Haven't seen this. It will the first of my assigned viewings, since it is such a touchstone film for you.

I'm going to make two suggestions. One is that we just talk to each other here. The other is a rating system. I don't know what we can use exactly -- five ovaries is Sigourney Weaver in Aliens? But something that will let us quantify these characters on a continuum.

1/2 of the New Blogging Team!

I'm not sure how to start, so I am just starting anyway. Pag and I often have epic battles over what counts as a feminist-acceptable female character. He also often gets annoyed because for a woman to look smart, every single man must look like an idiot (prime example- Mulan); I often get annoyed because women in pop culture barely ever reach the depth of male characters. He's mostly annoyed because Andie MacDowell doesn't get much work. The fact that she ever got a job kind of blows my mind.

So we have decided to start reviewing movies, looking for ones that don't set off our heteronormative stereotyping flags. To kick this off, I guess I will list four female movie characters I don't hate (and in movies slanted toward women, which you'd think would behave better than the shitty ones, but mostly isn't):


1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind- For a ton of the movie she is inside Joel's head, but Clementine is more badass in there then most characters are in regular narratives. Kaufman writes her to be weird, frank, and pretty powerful, but she is never asked to apologize for it. If anything, part of the moral of the film is that all of those things make her worth remembering. It also makes her strong enough to fight her own erasure and leave a trace of herself left in Joel's mind. This movie is about as romantic as it gets, but it is so much smarter in so many ways, that there is more room to have this amazing hair-changing, cursing, openly neurotic character.

2. Juno- I know that right now its cliche to like this movie, but God bless Diablo Cody for writing a teenage girl I didn't want to punch in the face. Sure, some of the behavior seems affected, but you have to love a writer who never asks a teenage girl to be sorry for having sex and a baby. At the end of the film, we aren't asked to feel conflicted that the couple who got together but still gave their baby away. Juno, like many of the women on this list, are allowed to make the wrong choice, but learn a lesson in a way that is not demeaning or shoved down their throat. She doesn't have to be "put in her place" to learn.

3. Sense and Sensibility- Sure, Pride and Prejudice could work just as well here, and these women still have a lot of wilting flower sorts of qualities, but in the end both Elizabeth and Elinor are rewarded for their independent thinking. I know that there is a lot to hate here, but no one can convince me that Jane Austen didn't love herself a strong firey woman.

4. Rio Bravo- I'm still pretty obsessed with John Wayne, but the interaction between he and Angie Dickinson as Feathers is pretty fantastic. The man is totally controlled by her, in a way that is both fun and never criticized by the plot or director. Rather than having his male cohort pick at their relationship, they are generally supportive, and every scene between Dickerson and Wayne is pretty adorable, where no matter how much tough guy mugging he does, she still has the upper hand. My favorite John Wayne movie partially because of how rich their relationship is.

Ok, so that's me. Paggy, introduce yourself!